Gangway! (23 page)

    Vangie clutched Gabe's arm. "Oh, Gabe, say yes!"

    "I just don't think so," Gabe said.

    Vangie frowned at him, bewildered again. "Well, what, then?"

    "I've been thinking," Gabe said, "about real estate."

    "Real estate?" Vangie looked around, looked back at Gabe again. "You mean houses?"

    "No, land."

    "But all the land in San Francisco is already built on."

    "Outside town," Gabe said. He nodded, agreeing with himself. "Across the Bay, I think."

    "Across the Bay?"

    "Land should be cheap over there."

    Vangie said, "Well, of course it's cheap. There's no way to get to it, nobody wants it."

    "Some day," Gabe said, "there'll be a bridge across the Golden Gate."

    Vangie stamped her foot in impatience and disbelief. "For Heaven's sake, there will not!"

    Francis said, "I do doubt that, Gabe, you know. That's far too wide for any bridge."

    "I think they'll do it anyway," Gabe said. "Put a bridge right across. And then that land up there… What's it called, anyway?"

    "Oh, who knows!" Vangie cried.

    "Marin County," Francis said. "But Vangie's right, Gabe, that land up there won't be worth much. Now, the cancan shows…"

    "No," Gabe said. He just had a feeling deep down inside that he was right. "Land," he said.

    "I'm going to open a chain of discount stores," Ittzy said. "And never clerk in any of them."

    "I'll stick to land," Gabe said.

    "Oh, Gabe," Vangie cried, at her wit's end. "You've done everything right, you got away with the robbery even though you shouldn't, and now you're just going to throw it all away."

    "Land," Gabe said.

    "You never listen!"

    Gabe nodded. "That's right," he said.

    He gazed out over the raw new countryside; his countryside now. Vangie and Francis talked to him, argued with him, pleaded with him-but he never listened.

    

    

    
BRIAN GARFIELD
lives in the pre-1900 general store of Alpine, New Jersey with his wife, English actress Shan Willson, and a platoon of dogs and cats. The thirty-four year old Arizonan has been a jazz musician, a college instructor, and a reluctant soldier. He has lived in many places from San Francisco to Paris, and has written several well-received novels ranging in subject matter from Wall Street to the Old West. Described by the
New York Times
as a "virtuoso," he is the author of the non-fiction study
The Thousand Mile War
, as well as the recent suspense thriller
Death Wish
which has become a "cult" book and will soon appear as a United Artists film. A former president of the Western Writers of America, Mr. Garfield reports that shortly before writing his half of
Gangway
he was caught cheating at cards and was shot by Donald E. Westlake with a .32-caliber poker chip.

    
DONALD E. WESTLAKE
was born in a filling station near Aardvark, Oklahoma, early in February. Attending public schools in Pittsburgh, Akron, and Sinking Province, he took his degree in elliptical engineering from the Brooklyn Academy of Music late in June. Mr. Westlake has operated a bootleg yellow pages factory in Detroit, panned for gold in Albania, and was the copywriter responsible for the unintentional double meaning in the Prune Whip Yogurt advertising campaign of 1966-67. Turning to writing after his left leg was bitten by an alligator in the New York City sewer system, Mr. Westlake has addressed himself to the central concerns of our troubled times with all the verse and passion with which he pursued his earlier, more active career. His first novel,
Sprigs of Eiderdown
, won the coveted Prix Fixe, the most prestigious literary award ever offered by the city of Marseilles. Many of his tales of adventure have been made into television playlets without his knowledge or consent. He makes his home in a converted bathysphere in Lake Como, Switzerland, and has never paid any income tax.