Big Money (50 page)

“Well, boys,” said the judge, “how's tricks?” “Couldn't be better,” one of them said with his mouth full. “You see, boys,” said the judge, “this young lady wants to make a few small investments with a quick turnover. . . .” The twins grunted and went on chewing.

After lunch the judge drove them all down to the Venetian Pool where William Jennings Bryan sitting in an armchair on the float under a striped awning was talking to the crowd. From where they were they couldn't hear what he was saying, only the laughter and hand-clapping of the crowd in the pauses. “Do you know, judge,” said one of the twins, as they worked their way through the fringes of the crowd around the pool, “if the old boy hadn't wasted his time with politics, he'd a made a great auctioneer.”

Margo began to feel tired and wilted. She followed the twins into the realestateoffice full of perspiring men in shirtsleeves. The judge got her a chair. She sat there tapping with her white kid foot on the tiled floor with her lap full of blueprints. The prices were all so high. She felt out of her depth and missed Mr. A to buy for her, he'd have known what to buy sure. Outside, the benches on the lawn were crowded. Bawling voices came from everywhere. The auction was beginning. The twins on the stand were waving their arms and banging with their hammers. The judge was striding around behind Margo's chair talking boom to anybody who would listen. When he paused
for breath she looked up at him and said, “Judge Cassidy, could you get me a taxi?” “Ma dear young lady, I'll drive you home myself. It'll be a pleasure.” “O.K.,” said Margo. “You are very wise,” whispered Judge Cassidy in her ear.

As they were walking along the edge of the crowd one of the twins they'd had lunch with left the auctioneer's stand and dove through the crowd after them. “Miss Dowlin',” he said, “kin me an' Al come to call?” “Sure,” said Margo, smiling. “Name's in the phonebook under Dowling.” “We'll be around.” And he ran back to the stand where his brother was pounding with his hammer. She'd been afraid she hadn't made a hit with the twins. Now she felt the tired lines smoothing out of her face.

“Well, what do you think of the great development of Coral Gables?” said the judge as he helped her into the car. “Somebody must be making money,” said Margo dryly.

Once in the house she pulled off her hat and told Raymond, who acted as butler in the afternoons, to make some martini cocktails, found the judge a cigar and then excused herself for a moment. Upstairs she found Agnes sitting in her room in a lavender negligee manicuring her nails at the dressingtable. Without saying a word Margo dropped on the bed and began to cry. Agnes got up looking big and flabby and gentle and came over to the bed. “Why, Margie, you never cry. . . .” “I know I don't,” sobbed Margo, “but it's all so awful. . . . Judge Cassidy's down there, you go and talk to him. . . .” “Poor little girl. Surely I will but it's you he'll be wanting to see. . . . You've been through too much.” “I won't go back to the chorus . . . I won't,” Margo sobbed. “Oh, no, I wouldn't like that. . . . But I'll go down now. . . . I feel really rested for the first time in months,” said Agnes.

When Margo was alone she stopped bawling at once. “Why, I'm as bad as Agnes,” she muttered to herself as she got to her feet. She turned on the water for a bath. It was late by the time she'd gotten into an afternoondress and come downstairs. The judge looked pretty glum. He sat puffing at the butt of a cigar and sipping at a cocktail while Agnes talked to him about Faith.

He perked up when he saw Margo coming down the stairs. She put some dancemusic on the phonograph. “When I'm in your house I'm like that famed Grecian sage in the house of the sirens . . . I forget hometies, engagements, everything,” said the judge, coming toward her onestepping. They danced. Agnes went upstairs again. Margo
could see that the judge was just on the edge of making a pass at her. She was wondering what to do about it when Cliff Wegman was suddenly ushered into the room. The judge gave the young man a scared suspicious look. Margo could see he thought he was going to be framed.

“Why, Mr. Wegman, I didn't know you were in Miami.” She took the needle off the record and stopped the phonograph. “Judge Cassidy, meet Mr. Wegman.” “Glad to meet you, judge. Mr. Anderson used to talk about you. I was his personal secretary.” Cliff looked haggard and nervous. “I just pulled into this little old town,” he said. “I hope I'm not intruding.” He grinned at Margo. “Well, I'm woiking for the Charles Anderson estate now.”

“Poor fellow,” said Judge Cassidy, getting to his feet. “I had the honor of bein' quite a friend of Lieutenant Anderson's. . . .” Shaking his head he walked across the soft plumcolored carpet to Margo. “Well, ma dear young lady, you must excuse me. But duty calls. This was indeed delightful.” Margo went out with him to his car. The rosy evening was fading into dusk. A mockingbird was singing in a peppertree beside the house. “When can I bring the jewelry?” Margo said, leaning towards the judge over the front seat of the car. “Perhaps you better come to my office tomorrow noon. We'll go over to the bank together. Of course the appraisal will have to be at the expense of the borrower.” “O.K. and by that time I hope you'll have thought of some way I can turn it over quick. What's the use of having a boom if you don't take advantage of it?” The judge leaned over to kiss her. His wet lips brushed against her ear as she pulled her head away. “Be yourself, judge,” she said.

In the livingroom Cliff was striding up and down fit to be tied. He stopped in his tracks and came towards her with his fists clenched as if he were going to hit her. He was chewing gum; the thin jaw moving from side to side gave him a face like a sheep. “Well, the boss soitenly done right by little Orphan Annie.”

“Well, if that's all you came down here to tell me you can just get on the train and go back home.”

“Look here, Margo, I've come on business.”

“On business?” Margo let herself drop into a pink overstuffed chair. “Sit down, Cliff . . . but you didn't need to come barging in here like a process server. Is it about Charley's estate?”

“Estate hell . . . I want you to marry me. The pickin's are slim right now but I've got a big career ahead.”

Margo let out a shriek and let her head drop on the back of the chair. She got to laughing and couldn't stop laughing. “No, honestly, Cliff,” she spluttered. “But I don't want to marry anybody just now. . . . Why, Cliff, you sweet kid. I could kiss you.” He came over and tried to hug her. She got to her feet and pushed him away. “I'm not going to let things like that interfere with my career either.”

Cliff frowned. “I won't marry an actress. . . . You'd have to can that stuff.”

Margo got to laughing again. “Not even a movingpicture actress?”

“Aw, hell, all you do is kid and I'm nuts about you.” He sat down on the davenport and wrung his head between his hands. She moved over and sat down beside him. “Forget it, Cliff.”

Cliff jumped up again. “I can tell you one thing, you won't get anywheres fooling around with that old buzzard Cassidy. He's a married man and so crooked he has to go through a door edgeways. He gypped hell out of the boss in that airport deal. Hell. . . . That's probably no news to you. You probably were in on it and got your cut first thing. . . . And then you think it's a whale of a joke when a guy comes all the way down to the jumpingoff place to offer you the protection of his name. All right, I'm through. Good . . . night.” He went out slamming the glass doors into the hall so hard that a pane of glass broke and tinkled down to the floor.

Agnes rushed in from the diningroom. “Oh, how dreadful,” she said. “I was listening. I thought maybe poor Mr. Anderson had left a trustfund for you.” “That boy's got bats in his belfry,” said Margo. A minute later the phone rang. It was Cliff with tears in his voice, apologizing, asking if he couldn't come back to talk it over. “Not on your tintype,” said Margo and hung up. “Well, Agnes,” said Margo as she came from the telephone, “that's that. . . . We've got to figure these things out. . . . Cliff's right about that old fool Cassidy. He never was in the picture anyways.” “Such a dignified man,” said Agnes, making clucking noises with her tongue.

Raymond announced dinner. Margo and Agnes ate alone, each at one end of the long mahogany table covered with doilies and silverware. The soup was cold and too salty. “I've told that damn girl a hundred times not to do anything to the soup but take it out of the
can and heat it,” Margo said peevishly. “Oh, Agnes, please do the housekeeping . . . I can't get 'em to do anything right.” “Oh, I'd love to,” said Agnes. “Of course I've never kept house on a scale like this.” “We're not going to either,” said Margo. “We've got to cut down.”

“I guess I'd better write Miss Franklyn to see if she's got another job for me.”

“You just wait a little while,” said Margo. “We can stay on here for a couple months. I've got an idea it would do Tony good down here. Suppose we send him his ticket to come down? Do you think he'd sell it on me and hit the dope again?” “But he's cured. He told me himself he'd straightened out completely.” Agnes began to blubber over her plate. “Oh, Margo, what an openhanded girl you are . . . just like your poor mother . . . always thinking of others.”

When Tony got to Miami he looked pale as a mealyworm but lying on the beach in the sun and dips in the breakers soon got him into fine shape. He was good as gold and seemed very grateful and helped Agnes with the housework, as they'd let the maids go; Agnes declared she couldn't do anything with them and would rather do the work herself. When men Margo knew came around she introduced him as a Cuban relative. But he and Agnes mostly kept out of sight when she had company. Tony was tickled to death when Margo suggested he learn to drive the car. He drove fine right away, so they could let Raymond go. One day when he was getting ready to drive her over to meet some big realtors at Cocoanut Grove, Margo suggested, just as a joke, that Tony try to see if Raymond's old uniform wouldn't fit him. He looked fine in it. When she suggested he wear it when he drove her he went into a tantrum, and talked about honor and manhood. She cooled him down saying that the whole thing was a joke and he said, well, if it was a joke, and wore it. Margo could tell he kinder liked the uniform because she saw him looking at himself in it in the pierglass in the hall.

Miami realestate was on the skids, but Margo managed to make a hundred thousand dollars' profit on the options she held; on paper. The trouble was that she couldn't get any cash out of her profits.

The twins she'd met at Coral Gables gave her plenty of advice but she was leery, and advice was all they did give her. They were always around in the evenings and Sundays, eating up everything Agnes had in the icebox and drinking all the liquor and talking big about the good things they were going to put youall onto. Agnes said she never
shook the sand out of her beachslippers without expecting to find one of the twins in it. And they never came across with any parties either, didn't even bring around a bottle of scotch once in a while. Agnes was kinder soft on them because Al made a fuss over her while Ed was trying to make Margo. One Sunday when they'd all been lying in the sun on the beach and sopping up cocktails all afternoon Ed broke into Margo's room when she was dressing after they'd come in to change out of their bathingsuits and started tearing her wrapper off her. She gave him a poke but he was drunk as a fool and came at her worse than ever. She had to yell for Tony to come in and play the heavy husband. Tony was white as a sheet and trembled all over, but he managed to pick up a chair and was going to crown Ed with it when Al and Agnes came in to see what the racket was about. Al stuck by Ed and gave Tony a poke and yelled that he was a pimp and that they were a couple of goddam whores. Margo was scared. They never would have got them out of the house if Agnes hadn't gone to the phone and threatened to call the police. The twins said nothing doing, the police were there to run women like them out of town, but they got into their clothes and left and that was the last Margo saw of them.

After they'd gone Tony had a crying fit and said that he wasn't a pimp and that this life was impossible and that he'd kill himself if she didn't give him money to go back to Havana. To get Tony to stay they had to promise to get out of Miami as soon as they could. “Now, Tony, you know you want to go to California,” Agnes kept saying and petting him like a baby. “Sandflies are getting too bad on the beach anyway,” said Margo. She went down in the livingroom and shook up another cocktail for them all. “The bottom's dropped out of this dump. Time to pull out,” she said. “I'm through.”

It was a sizzling hot day when they piled the things in the Buick and drove off up U.S. 1 with Tony, not in his uniform but in a new waspwaisted white linen suit, at the wheel. The Buick was so piled with bags and household junk there was hardly room for Agnes in the back seat. Tony's guitar was slung from the ceiling. Margo's wardrobetrunk was strapped on behind. “My goodness,” said Agnes when she came back from the restroom of the fillingstation in West Palm Beach where they'd stopped for gas, “we look like a traveling tentshow.”

Between them they had about a hundred dollars in cash that
Margo had turned over to Agnes to keep in her black handbag. The first day Tony would talk about nothing but the hit he'd make in the movies. “If Valentino can do it, it will be easy for me,” he'd say, craning his neck to see his clear brown profile in the narrow drivingmirror at the top of the windshield.

At night they stopped in touristcamps, all sleeping in one cabin to save money, and ate out of cans. Agnes loved it. She said it was like the old days when they were on the Keith circuit and Margo was a child actress. Margo said child actress hell, it made her feel like an old crone. Towards afternoon Tony would complain of shooting pains in his wrists and Margo would have to drive.