The Matlock Paper (26 page)

The effect was incredible, thought Matlock, as he walked by his host’s side toward what his host modestly
claimed was his private library.

The southerner closed the thick paneled door and strode to a well-stocked mahogany bar. He poured without asking a preference.

“Sam Sharpe says you drink sour mash. You’re a man of taste, I tell you that. That’s
my drink
.” He carried two glasses to Matlock. “Take your pick. A Virginian has to disarm a northerner with his complete lack of bias these days.”

“Thank you,” said Matlock, taking a glass and sitting in the armchair indicated by Stockton.

“This Virginian,” continued Howard Stockton, sitting opposite Matlock, “also has an unsouthern habit of getting to the point.… I don’t even know if it’s wise for you to be in my place. I’ll be honest. That’s why I ushered you right in here.”

“I don’t understand. You could have told me on the phone not to come. Why the game?”

“Maybe you can answer that better than I can. Sammy says you’re a real big man. You’re what they call … 
international
. That’s just dandy by me. I like a bright young fella who goes up the ladder of success. Very commendable, that’s a fact.… But I pay my bills. I pay every month on the line. I got the best combined operation north of Atlanta. I don’t want trouble.”

“You won’t get it from
me
. I’m a tired businessman making the rounds, that’s all I am.”

“What happened at Sharpe’s? The papers are full of it! I don’t want
nothin
’ like that!”

Matlock watched the southerner. The capillaries in the suntanned face were bloodred, which was probably why the man courted a year-round sunburn. It covered a multitude of blemishes.

“I don’t think you understand.” Matlock measured his words as he lifted the glass to his lips. I’ve come a long way because I
have
to be here. I don’t
want
to be here. Personal reasons got me into the area early, so I’m doing some sightseeing. But it’s only that. I’m just looking around.… Until my appointment.”

“What appointment?”

“An appointment in Carlyle, Connecticut.”

Stockton squinted his eyes and pulled at his perfectly groomed white moustache. “You’ve got to be in Carlyle?”

“Yes. It’s confidential, but I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

“You haven’t told me anything.” Stockton kept watching Matlock’s face, and Matlock knew the southerner was looking for a false note, a wrong word, a hesitant glance which might contradict his information.

“Good.… By any chance, do you have an appointment in Carlyle, too? In about a week and a half?”

Stockton sipped his drink, smacking his lips and putting the glass on a side table as though it were some precious
objet d’art
. “I’m just a southern cracker tryin’ to make a dollar. Livin’ the good life and makin’ a dollar. That’s all. I don’t know about any appointments in Carlyle.”

“Sorry I brought it up. It’s a … major mistake on my part. For both our sakes, I hope you won’t mention it. Or
me
.”

“That’s the
last
thing I’d do. Far as I’m concerned, you’re a friend of Sammy’s lookin’ for a little action … and a little hospitality.” Suddenly Stockton leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, his hands folded. He looked like an earnest minister questioning
a parishioner’s sins. “What in tarnation happened at Windsor Shoals? What in hell was it?”

“As far as I can see, it was a local vendetta. Bartolozzi had enemies. Some said he talked too goddamn much. Aiello, too, I suppose. They were show-offs.… Frank was just there, I think.”

“Goddamn Eyetalians! Mess up everything!
That
level, of course, you know what I mean?”

There it was again. The dangling interrogative—but in this southerner’s version, it wasn’t really a question. It was a statement.

“I know what you mean,” said Matlock wearily.

“I’m afraid I got a little bad news for you, Jim. I closed the tables for a few days. Just plum scared as a jackrabbit after what happened at the Shoals.”

“That’s not bad news for me. Not the way my streak’s been going.”

“I heard. Sammy told me. But we got a couple of other diversions. You won’t find Carmount lacking in hospitality, I promise you that.”

The two men finished their drinks, and Stockton, relieved, escorted his guest into the crowded, elegant Carmount dining room. The food was extraordinary, served in a manner befitting the finest and wealthiest plantation of the antebellum South.

Although pleasant—even relaxing, in a way—the dinner was pointless to Matlock. Howard Stockton would not discuss his “operation” except in the vaguest terms and with the constant reminder that he catered to the “best class of Yankee.” His speech was peppered with descriptive anachronisms, he was a walking contradiction in time. Halfway through the meal, Stockton excused himself to say good-bye to an important member.

It was the first opportunity Matlock had to look at Stockton’s “best class of Yankee” clientele.

The term applied, thought Matlock, if the word
class
was interchangeable with
money
, which he wasn’t willing to concede. Money screamed from every table. The first sign was the proliferation of suntans in the beginning of a Connecticut May. These were people who jetted to the sun-drenchedislands at will. Another was the easy, deep-throated laughter echoing throughout the room; also the glittering reflection of jewelry. And the clothes—softly elegant suits, raw silk jackets, Dior ties. And the bottles of sparkling vintage wines, standing majestically in sterling silver stands upheld by cherrywood tripods.

But something was wrong, thought Matlock. Something was missing or out of place, and for several minutes he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. And then he did.

The suntans, the laughter, the wrist jewelry, the jackets, the Dior ties—the money, the elegance, the aura was predominantly
male
.

The contradiction was the women—the girls. Not that there weren’t some who matched their partners, but in the main, they didn’t. They were younger. Much, much younger. And different.

He wasn’t sure what the difference was at first. Then, abstractly, it came to him. For the most part, the girls—and they
were
girls—had a look about them he knew very well. He’d referred to it often in the past. It was the campus look—as differentiated from the office look, the secretary look. A slightly more careless attitude in conversation. The look of girls not settling into routines, not welded to file cabinets or typewriters. It was definable because it was
real. Matlock had been exposed to that look for over a decade—it was unmistakable.

Then he realized that within this contradiction there was another—minor-discrepancy. The clothes the girls wore. They weren’t the clothes he expected to find on girls with the campus look. They were too precisely cut, too designed, if that was the word. In this day of unisex, simply too feminine.

They wore costumes!

Suddenly, in a single, hysterically spoken sentence from several tables away, he knew he was right.

“Honest, I mean it—it’s too groovy!”

That voice!
Christ, he knew that voice!

He wondered if he was meant to hear it.

He had his hand up to his face and slowly turned toward the direction of the giggling speaker. The girl was laughing and drinking champagne, while her escort—a much older man—stared with satisfaction at her enormous breasts.

The girl was Virginia Beeson. The “pinky groovy” perennial undergraduate wife of Archer Beeson, Carlyle University’s history instructor.

The man in an academic hurry.

Matlock tipped the black who carried his suitcase up the winding staircase to the large, ornate room Stockton had offered him. The floor was covered with a thick wine-colored carpet, the bed canopied, the walls white with fluted moldings. He saw that on the bureau was an ice bucket, two bottles of Jack Daniels, and several glasses. He opened the suitcase, picked out his toilet articles, and put them on the bedside table. He then removed a suit, a lightweight jacket, and two pairs of slacks, and carried them to the closet. He
returned to the suitcase, lifted it from the bed, and laid it across the two wooden arms of a chair.

There was a soft tapping on his door. His first thought was that the caller was Howard Stockton, but he was wrong.

A girl, dressed in a provocative deep-red sheath, stood in the frame and smiled. She was in her late teens or very early twenties and terribly attractive.

And her smile was false.

“Yes?”

“Compliments of Mr. Stockton.” She spoke the words and walked into the room past Matlock.

Matlock closed the door and stared at the girl, not so much bewildered as surprised.

“That’s very thoughtful of Mr. Stockton, isn’t it?”

“I’m glad you approve. There’s whisky, ice, and glasses on your bureau. I’d like a short drink. Unless you’re in a hurry.”

Matlock walked slowly to the bureau. “I’m in no hurry. What would you like?”

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever’s there. Just ice, please.”

“I see.” Matlock poured the girl a drink and carried it over to her. “Won’t you sit down?”

“On the bed?”

The only other chair, besides the one on which the suitcase was placed, was across the room by a French window.

“I’m sorry.” He removed the suitcase and the girl sat down. Howard Stockton, he thought, had good taste. The girl was adorable. “What’s your name?”

“Jeannie.” She drank a great deal of her drink in several swallows. The girl may not have perfected a selection in liquor, but she knew how to drink. And
then, as the girl took the glass from her mouth, Matlock noticed the ring on her third right finger.

He knew that ring very well. It was sold in a campus bookstore several blocks from John Holden’s apartment in Webster, Connecticut. It was the ring of Madison University.

“What would you say if I told you I wasn’t interested?” asked Matlock, leaning against the thick pole of the bed’s anachronistic canopy.

“I’d be surprised. You don’t look like a fairy.”

“I’m not.”

The girl looked up at Matlock. Her pale blue eyes were warm—but professionally warm—meaning, yet not meaning at all. Her lips were young. And full; and taut.

“Maybe you just need a little encouragement.”

“You can provide that?”

“I’m good.” She made the statement with quiet arrogance.

She was so young, thought Matlock, yet there was age in her. And hate. The hate was camouflaged, but the cosmetic was inadequate. She was performing—the costume, the eyes, the lips. She may have detested the role, but she accepted it.

Professionally.

“Suppose I just want to talk?”

“Conversation’s something else. There are no rules about that. I’ve equal rights in that department. Quid pro, Mister No-name.”

“You’re facile with words. Should that tell me something?”

“I don’t know why.”

“ ‘Quid pro quo’ isn’t the language of your eight to three hooker.”

“This place—in case you missed it—isn’t the Avenida de las Putas, either.”

“Tennessee Williams?”

“Who knows?”

“I think you do.”

“Fine. All right. We can discuss Proust in bed. I mean, that
is
where you want me, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps I’d settle for the conversation.”

The girl suddenly, in alarm, whispered hoarsely, “Are you a cop?”

“I’m the furthest thing from a cop,” laughed Matlock. “You might say that some of the most important policemen in the area would like to find me. Although I’m no criminal.… Or a nut, by the way.”

“Now
I’m
not interested. May I have another drink?”

“Surely.” Matlock got it for her. Neither spoke until he returned with her glass.

“Do you mind if I stay here awhile? Just long enough for you to have balled me.”

“You mean you don’t want to lose the fee?”

“It’s fifty dollars.”

“You’ll probably have to use part of it to bribe the dormitory head. Madison University’s a little old-fashioned. Some coed houses still have weekday check-ins. You’ll be late.”

The shock on the girl’s face was complete. “You
are
a cop! You’re a lousy
cop!
” She started to get out of the chair, but Matlock quickly stood in front of her, holding her shoulders. He eased her back into the chair.

“I’m not a cop, I told you that. And you’re not interested, remember? But
I’m
interested. I’m
very
interested, and you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”

The girl started to get up and Matlock grabbed her arms. She struggled; he pushed her back violently. “Do you always get ‘balled’ with your ring on? Is that to show whoever gets laid there’s a little class to it?!”

“Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus!” She grabbed her ring and twisted her finger as if the pressure might make it disappear.

“Now, listen to me! You answer my questions or I’ll be down in Webster tomorrow morning and I’ll start asking them down there! Would you like that better?”

“Please!
Please!
” Tears came to the girl’s eyes. Her hands shook and she gasped for breath.

“How did you get here?!”

“No! No …”

“
How?
”

“I was recruited.…”

“By whom?”

“Other … Others. We recruit each other.”

“How many are there?”

“Not many. Not very many.… It’s quiet. We have to keep it quiet.… Let me go,
please
. I want to
go
.”

“Oh, no. Not yet. I want to know how many and
why!
”

“I told you! Only a few, maybe seven or eight girls.”

“There must be thirty downstairs!”

“I don’t
know
them. They’re from other places. We don’t ask each other’s
names!
”

“But you know where they’re from, don’t you!”

“Some.… Yes.”

“Other schools?”

“Yes.…”

“
Why
, Jeannie? For Christ’s sake,
why
?”

“Why do you
think? Money!
”