The Bamboo Blonde (2 page)

Disappointment blurred her eyes but she rubbed it away, pretending it was the night mist now dense on the windshield. He drove the five short blocks to the main street of Belmont Shores, parked the car directly in front of his pet, the Bamboo Bar. She hadn't been in it before. There was something ridiculously sinister in its look, like the opium-den sets in early movies. She cared even less for the interior; the greenish amber lights were too dim for seeing, especially without her glasses, and they made the color of flesh as ghastly as something photographed under water at sundown.

Con said, "Want to sit at a table?"

"I do."

"All right." He eyed the high bamboo stools of the bar with thwarted affection.

They took a table near the door. Con greeted the waiter fondly, "How you, Chang?"

The waiter didn't look as if his name were Chang; if it was, he'd changed it from Buck or Spike. He looked as if he would be a top sergeant in the tank corps if
and when called for duty.

He returned the greeting lovingly, "How're you, Mr.
Satterlee?"

All bar waiters were Con's intimates; all adored him. It wasn't because he bought so many drinks; it was just something about Con, his nice horsey face, his gray eyes that could be careless or keen with equal lack of effort. She adored him too, but she was nothing but a wife. Her adoration didn't matter to him.

Chang-Buck took the order for two Scotches and rolled with a prizefighter's gait over to the bar. He hadn't acquired the cauliflower ear from palming trays. Probably one of Con's lame ducks from past newspaper days. Probably too he was the attraction at the Bamboo Bar, the reason Con couldn't go by it without stopping for a drink. She could just hear them with Con's Scotch as a wailing wall, remembering Tony's and the good old Prohibition years. Not tonight they wouldn't! Her fury hadn't abated one jot. She sat stiffly, her eyes beginning to accustom themselves to the lack of light.

The room was almost empty. There were two couples, from Kansas or Iowa if looks were honest indication, having a devilish good time at one table. There were two men in the far corner, attending to the business of drinking. And perched on a stool there was a blonde girl. She was all alone and she'd evidently been there for too long a time. She was slumped forward on her elbows, her head bent over the flat top of the bar. She wore the inevitable California slack suit; it looked a sickly green-gray in this light, but so did Griselda's own. Her face wasn't visible.

Chang brought the drinks. "How's tricks, Mr. Satterlee?" "Can't complain. How's with you?" "Okey-dokey with me." His voice had a rasp to it, as if his throat had a touch of prizefighter's resin in it. "Travis been in tonight?"

"Not tonight, Mr. Satterlee. His wife was here earlier."

Griselda put a stop to them, asking frigidly, "May I have a cigarette, Con?" She didn't care to hear about this Kathie.

Chang or Buck went away. There was an annoying amusement and sympathy behind his unexpressive face as if he well knew wives on rampage. It didn't help Griselda's temper. She didn't feel like crying now; she felt like smashing things.

The man who started away from the far table looked as a gentleman should, liven in this murky light his brown jacket was the right color and cut, his lighter colored slacks tailored deliberately with casualness. She looked at him again; something about the short crop of his brown curly hair, about the way he moved, straight and secure, was familiar. His head turned back to his companion and she saw the mustached profile.

She cried out in delight, "Con, it's Kew. Kew Brent." No wonder she hadn't known him immediately; he wasn't the man to sit drinking in imitation opium dens; yon only met Kew in the right places, escorting important men or beautiful women.

"Pretend you don't know him," Con muttered, and then groaned, "Oh, my God," for Kew had caught sight of them or had heard her exclamation. He came toward them, settling his ascot as he moved. Con muttered again, "See you later, baby." "Con, you can't," she began, but he could. He was already walking bar-wards rudely, not even waiting to speak to Kew. Her anger rose impotently. There was no reason at all why Con should behave that way about Kew, simply because Kew liked to dress as a gentleman instead of in dirty old sneakers, antediluvian gray trousers, not deliberately casual, but impossible to be anything else; a brown coat that didn't go at all, a blue shirt with neither tie nor ascot to give it shape. Kew was originally Con's friend not hers, dating back to the newspaper days before Kew became the featured Washington correspondent of the greatest news service and Con the crack news commentator for the greatest broadcasting company. He was one of the few remnants from Con's early days who wasn't thoroughly disreputable. That was probably why Con couldn't stand him.

Kew greeted her, pleasure printed all over his square browned face. "Griselda, this is a good surprise. I thought you were in New York. Where's Con off to?"

She put her hand in his. "Grand to see you, Kew. It's been too long." And she shrugged, laughing to hide her displeasure. "You know Con's thirst. He'll be back." She didn't have the least assurance that he would, but one had to pretend; if he had no manners or bad ones, she must cover up for him.

Kew asked in surprise, "But what are you doing in Long Beach? I understood you were the particular bright-haired child designer of the studios. I should have expected to run into you at the movie hideouts, not here."

She said simply, knowing it would explain all to one who knew him, "Con wanted to come," and she added, "We're married again, you know." He probably hadn't heard; he'd known them in their first two-year attempt, and she had met him once or twice during the four-year divorce desert.

"Congratulations?" he grinned.

But she didn't answer. She was looking toward the bar. The bleached girl had moved to the stool next to Con. He was lighting her cigarette. Her face was still hidden.

Kew's eyes followed hers. "Who is it?"

"I don't know." She turned back to him, picked up her tasteless drink. "I've never been here before." But she couldn't keep from looking again at Con and the blonde. She knew how Lot's wife must have felt; it wasn't being curious; it was urgency.

And she heard the bartender say, "I'm sorry. I can't give her another one."

Con's voice was deceptively mild. "I said I'd buy the lady a drink." Every word was distinctly audible in the small, quiet room.

The barman repeated with unshaken stolidity, "She can't have no more."

"No?" Con put his hand on the girl's arm. "Come on, honey. I know where they'll sell us one."

Griselda's eyes widened. She saw Con help the girl away from the bar, brush past Chang-Buck's attempted words, start with his companion across the room. The blonde had a short coat over her arm and she held it with her free hand.

He didn't stop at Griselda's table but he slowed enough to wink at her in passing. Her hands clenched. He couldn't do this, not on their honeymoon. She remembered to close her fish-wide mouth after they disappeared through the door.

Kew was watching. He smiled. "Same old Con," and then he must have noted the distress she was trying unsuccessfully to hide. "I'm sorry, Griselda. You know he'll be right back. You know how Quixotic Con is. He'll take her home and be right back."

She looked away from him. "I won't be here." He said, "Could I run you home?" His watch was crystalline copper. "I'd ask you to do something better than that but I'm late for an engagement now."

She answered, "No, Kew. Thank you. But it's only a step."

She wouldn't go with Kew. She didn't want to make a fool of herself to Con's friends. She'd wait until she could leave alone with no one to look boredly sympathetic if her eyes were moist. She wasn't 'sure she could pretend to be a casual modern wife even for five blocks—she wanted to howl and kick her heels.

He said, "Tell Con I'll drop by tomorrow. I'm at the Villa Riviera. Give him a ring."

She watched him disappear behind the presumedly artistic doors of swinging bamboo. The now solitary drinker at the table where Kew had been, finished his stint and prepared to leave. He hesitated crossing to the door and her eyes were enormous when he stopped at her table. She'd never seen him before.

He introduced himself sparsely, "Mrs. Satterlee, I am Major Pembrooke."

She had met many of him in London, on the continent, in kinder days. The bulldog British breed, stocky rather than tall, red-faced, with a sand-colored bristle mustache beginning to gray: hair, the same, beginning to recede. She had never met one wearing so cold a mask, almost a brutal face. She didn't like him. Instinctively and with no reason for it, she feared him. He had no business knowing who she was. Kew hadn't told him; Kew hadn't seen her until he was leaving that table.

She acknowledged the introduction as sparsely as it was given.

He was standing there looking down at her but he wasn't interested in her. That wasn't in his face. He announced, "I will escort you home, Mrs. Satterlee."

She was suddenly furious at him, a stranger daring to intrude, the straw at the breaking-point of this insufferable day. She jumped up, said with more anger than hauteur, "You will not escort me home. I am not accustomed to being escorted by strangers. Goodnight, Major Pembrooke." She strode head high out of the place, regretting that swinging doors could not emphasize a point.

Con had, of course, taken the car as well as the pick-up blonde. Griselda was always nervous walking alone after dark; short as the distance to the cottage was, she dreaded to turn from the lighted main street for the final two blocks on the one closed to traffic. There was the night-lonely beach of the bay on one side, the drawn blinds of white apartments on the other. She walked in the center of the wide pavement.

It couldn't be that she heard footsteps falling accurately in hers. It was nerves, her usual night nerves. She could glance over her shoulder and make certain it was only imagination but she didn't. She hurried her steps and the relentless echo-steps paced faster. She strolled now; whoever it was behind her could pass easily, she'd rather have it precede her than follow. But the sound steps retained their metronomic mimicry. Without willing, her eyes slid left to the bay and she saw the shadow of a man, not far, not far enough from her own shadow. Her feet began to move swiftly, blindly, forward. She could hear her breath come and go, louder than those insistent pursuing steps still behind her as she began to climb the long stairway leading to the catwalk porch and her front door. She was near hysterical laughter listening—one-two-three-four— those- last steps thwarted, silenced, not accompanied by hers. She didn't know who or what she expected to see but she couldn't turn.
She
stood there breathing.

And then the voice spoke, stones dropped on the cold gray of the Pacific beyond. "I would have preferred to escort you home, Mrs. Satterlee."

She turned slowly. The fear she had smelled on seeing this man in the bar was tangible now. There were no neighbors to hear a shout for help. The sea wall extended about the left, the other side of the house. The cottage a sand lot away on this side was unoccupied. She stood at the head of the steps, hoping he would climb no further, hoping she might continue to bar his way. She had her voice now. "What do you want? How did you know I was Mrs. Satterlee?"

"Mr. Brent told me who you were." That was a lie; Kew hadn't even known she was Con's wife again until she told him.

She wanted her heart to stop pounding so hard that it hurt to breathe. She asked, "Are you a friend of Kew's?"

"I knew him in Washington. I didn't know he'd come to the West Coast until I ran into him tonight. I was pleased to find him here. I was also pleased to learn that Con Satterlee was here."

She questioned, "You know my husband?" She wasn't surprised at that; Con was always pulling some astonishing creature out of his bag of acquaintances.

But he said, "No, I wish to meet him."

She stated firmly then, "I'm sorry, Major Pembrooke, but Con isn't here. And I don't know when he will return. If you will call some other time—" It was dismissal but he didn't accept it. Not even his eyes moved. They retained their cold expressionlessness, against hers. He said, "I presume Mr. Satterlee is here for the same purpose as Mr. Brent."

She could speak up now and she did. "Then you are quite mistaken, Major Pembrooke. My husband is here on his honeymoon. I doubt very much that Kew's presence in Long Beach is for the same reason." She actually smiled. The darling bachelor Kew wasn't to be caught by matrimonial entanglements.

Pembrooke was silent for the moment. "Mr. Satterlee is not here seeking Mannie Martin?"

Amazement must have been wide in her eyes. She could feel it there. "Seeking whom?"

"Manfred Martin. Mannie Martin. You know him, of course."

"I have never heard of him." She repeated definitely, "I have never heard the name before."

"Con Satterlee has heard of him," the Major stated.

"Possibly." She didn't know half of Con's freaks.

"Con Satterlee knows him. Martin has been production director of the West Coast division of the broadcasting company."

She remembered then. But she had never met this Martin. Con hadn't even looked him up in Hollywood. Why should he be seeking the man here? Her face must have been a question mark.

Major Pembrooke said, "Mannie disappeared two weeks ago Monday." He explained before she could protest, "It hasn't been in the papers. The studio didn't want publicity unless they were certain it was not a self-induced disappearance. By now, however, not having heard from or of him in that time, his associates are becoming nervous." His mouth was scornful. "By now the trail is cold."

 She picked her words icily, "What has this to do with my husband?"

The Major ignored her ill humor. "I was certain Con Satterlee came here to trace his friend. Even as Mr. Brent has come."

She took a deep breath for courage. "What is it to you?"

"Mr. Martin was entering into a partnership with me. The contracts are ready but I can do nothing until he is found. And my backers are becoming impatient."