The Golden Gizmo Page 2

  Toddy looked at the table, where, as a matter of habit, he had placed his open box. He saw now that there was another box on it, a kind of oblong wooden tray. A set of tong-type calipers partly shielded the contents; but despite this and the deep gloom of the room, Toddy could see the outline of a heavy gold watch.

  He had taken this in at a glance, his gaze barely wavering from the man. The guy was something to look at. He was the kind of guy you’d automatically keep your eyes on when he was around.

  He had no chin. It was as though nose and eyes and a wide thin mouth had been carved out of his neck. Either a thick black wig or a mopline bowl of natural hair topped the neck.

  He stared from Toddy to the card, then back again. He waited, a faint look of puzzlement on his white chinless face. He smiled, suddenly, and held the card out to Toddy.

  “I can read nothing without my glasses,” he smiled, “and, as usual, I seem to have misplaced them. You will explain your business please?”

  Toddy retrieved the bit of pasteboard with a twinge of relief. There was something screwy here. It was just as well not to leave his or Milt’s name behind him.

  “Of course, sir,” he said. “I—that dog of yours took my breath away for a moment. I didn’t mean to just stand here, taking up your time.”

  “I am sure of it.” The man nodded suavely. “I am certain that you do not mean to do it now. Perhaps, now that you have recovered your breath, Mr.—?

  “—Clinton,” Toddy lied. “I’m with the California Precious Metals Company. You’ve probably seen our ads in the papers—world’s largest buyers of scrap gold?”

  “No. I have seen no such ads.”

  “That’s entirely understandable,” Toddy said. “We’ve discontinued them lately—well, it must have been more than a year ago—in favor of the personal contact method. We—we—”

  He stopped talking. He’d seen plenty of pretty girls in his time, many of them in a state which left nothing of their attributes to the imagination. But this…this was something else again…this girl who had come through the doorway to what was apparently the kitchen. She wore blue Levi’s and a worn khaki shirt, and a scuffed pair of sandals encased her feet; and if she had on any make-up Toddy couldn’t spot it. And, yet, despite those things, she was out of this world. She was mmmm-hmmmm and wow and man-oh-man!

  Toddy stared at her. Eyes narrowing, the man spoke over his shoulder. “Dolores,” he said. And as she came forward, he caught her by the bodice and pivoted her in front of Toddy.

  “Very nice, eh?” His eyes pointed to her buttocks. “A little full, perhaps, like the breasts, but should one quarrel with bounty? Is not the total effect pleasing? Could one accept less after the warm promise of the mouth, the generous eyes, the sable hair with—”

  “Scum,” said the girl in almost unaccented English. “Filth,” she added tonelessly. “Carrion. Obscenity.”

  “¡Vaya!” the man took a step toward her. “¡Hija de perro! I shall teach you manners.” He turned back on Toddy, breathing heavily, eyes glinting. “Now, Mr.…Mr. Clinton, is it? I have allowed you to study my ward to the fullest. Perhaps you will confine your attention to me for a moment. You said you were sent to me by a friend?”

  “Well, I’m not sure she was a friend exactly, but—”

  “She?”

  “A neighbor of yours. Right down the street here. I—”

  “I know none of my neighbors nor are they acquainted with me.”

  “I—well, it’s this way,” said Toddy, and his gaze moved nervously from the man to the dog. The big black animal had been lying down. Now he had risen to stand protectively in front of the man, and there was a look about him which Toddy did not like at all.

  “I buy gold,” said Toddy, flipping open the lid of his box. “I—I—”

  “Yes? And just what led you to believe I had any gold to sell?”

  “Well, uh, nothing. I mean, a great many people do have and I just assumed that, uh, you might.”

  The man stared at him unwinkingly, the dog and the man. The silence in the room became unbearable.

  “L-look,” Toddy stammered. “What’s wrong, anyway? Like I say, I’m buying gold—” He picked up the watch on the table. “Old, out-of-date stuff like this—”

  That was all he had a chance to say. He was too startled by what followed to realize, or remember, that the watch was ten times heavier than it should have been.

  Cursing, the man lurched forward and aimed a kick at Toddy.

  Then the dog called Toddy an unpleasant name, the same name the man had called him.

  “¡Cabrone!” it snapped. Bastard!

  And then the dog howled insanely and leaped—at the man. For he had received the kick intended for Toddy and in a decidedly tender place.

  The watch slid from Toddy’s nerveless fingers. He slammed the lid of his box and dashed for the door.

  In his last fleeting glimpse of the scene, the dog was stalking the man and the man was kicking and shouting at him. And in the doorway to the kitchen, the girl clutched herself and rocked with hysterical, uncontrollable laughter.

  “I,” said Toddy, grimly, as he raced toward the Wilshire line bus, “am going to call it a day.”

  The box seemed unusually heavy, but he thought nothing of it. Late in the day, like this, it had the habit of seeming heavy.

  4

  Like most people with a tendency to attract trouble, Toddy Kent had a magnificent ability to shake it off. Hot water, figuratively speaking, affected him little more than the literal kind. He forgot it as soon as the moment of burning was past.

  This afternoon, then, he was not only troubled and worried but troubled and worried at being so. Sure, he’d had a bad scare, but that had been more than an hour ago. An hour in which he’d ridden into town and had three stiff drinks. Why keep kicking the thing around? What was there to feel blue about? It was even kind of funny when you looked at it the right way.

  Irritated and baffled by himself, Toddy turned in at the twelve-foot front of the Los Angeles Jewel & Watch Co.

  Most of the shop was in darkness, but the door was unlocked and a light burned at the rear. Milt was reading off a buyer, one of the new ones. And his brogue was as broad as the young man’s face was red.

  “So! Yet more of it!” Milt slapped aside his brilliant swivel lamp and jerked the jeweler’s loupe from his eyes. “Did you look at dis, my brilliant young friend? Did you feel of it, heft it—dis bee-yootiful chunk of eighteen-karat brass?”

  “Why—why, sure I did, Milt! I—”

  “You did not!” the little wholesaler proclaimed with mock sternness. “I refuse to let you so malign yourself! Better I have taught you. Better you would have known. I vill tell you what you felt, my friend, vot you looked at! It was dis bee-yootiful young housewife, was it not? Dot vas where you were feeling and looking!”

  A chuckle arose from the other buyers. The young man’s voice rose above it.

  “But it’s stamped, Milt! It’s got an eighteen-karat stamp right on it!”

  Milt threw up his hands wildly. “Vot have I told you of such? On modern stuff, yess. The karat stamp is good. It means what it says. But the old pieces? Bah! Nodding it means because dere vas no law to make it. It means only dot you must have good eyes. It means only dot you have a file in your box and a vial of acid, and better you should use dem!”

  The young man nodded, downcast, and started to move away. Milt beckoned, spoke to him in a harsh stage whisper.

  “Tell no vun, but dis time I make it up myself. Next time”—his voice rose to a roar—“FEEL DER GOLD AND NOT DER LADY!”

  Everyone laughed, Milt the loudest of all. Then he saw Toddy and hailed him.

  “Ah, now here ve have a real gold-buyer! What has my Toddy boy brought, heh? Good it will be! Always a good day it is for hot Toddy!”

  His voice was a little too hearty, and he stood up as he spoke and jerked his head toward the curtained doorway to his apartment.

  “If
these gentlemen will excuse us for a moment, I would have a word with you in private.”

  “Sure,” said Toddy. “Sorry to hold you up, boys.”

  He followed Milt back through the drapes, and the little jeweler whispered to him for a moment. Elaine. Again. He cursed softly and raised his shoulders in a resigned shrug.

  “Okay, Milt. I’ll come back later and check in.”

  “You understand, Toddy? There was not much I could do. I could not get away at this hour, for one thing, and the money—I was afraid I would not have so much as was required.”

  “Forget it,” said Toddy. “You’ve done enough for me without having to take care of her.”

  Jaw set, he shouldered his way through the drapes again and strode out of the shop. Milt watched him through the door, then sank heavily down into his worn swivel chair. He took a long swig from an opened quart of beer and wiped his mouth distastefully. He looked up into the shrewd-solemn circle of his buyers’ faces.

  “There,” he said, sadly, his dialect forgotten, “is one of the best boys I know. Brains he has, and looks, and deep down inside where it counts, goodness! And wasted, all of it is. Thrown away on a—on—”

  They nodded. They all knew about Elaine. Toddy didn’t talk, of course, except to Milt. And Milt wasn’t a gossip either. But they all knew. Elaine got around. Elaine was hot water, circulating under its own power.

  “Why don’t he dump her, Milt?” It was a buyer named Red. “You can’t do anything with a dame like that.”

  “I have asked myself that,” said Milt, absently. “Yes, I have even asked him. And the answer…he does not know. Perhaps there is none. The answer is in her, something that cannot be put into words. She is vicious, selfish, totally irresponsible, physically unattractive. And yet there is something…”

  He spread his hands helplessly.

  One by one, the buyers drifted out, but Milt remained at his bench. He was musing, lost in thought. As if it were yesterday he remembered that day a year ago, the first time he had seen Elaine and Toddy Kent.

  …It had been raining, and Toddy’s bare head was wet. He had left Elaine up at the front of the shop and come striding back to the cage by himself.

  “I have a watch here,” he said, “that belonged to my grandfather. I don’t suppose it’s worth much intrinsically, but it’s very valuable to me as a keepsake. Give it a good going-over, and don’t spare any expense. I’ll pick it up in a couple of days.”

  Milt said he would. He would be glad to. He was considerably awed by the young man’s manner.

  “Oh, yes,” said Toddy, and he slapped his pockets. “Just put an extra five dollars on the bill, will you? Or, no, you’d better make it ten. I lost my wallet a little while ago. Think it must have been out in Beverly Hills when I was leaving my bank.”

  He did it so smoothly that Milt’s hand moved automatically toward the cash drawer. Then it stopped, and he looked at the watch and at Toddy, and down the aisle at Elaine.

  “It is a disagreeable day,” he said. “You and the lady—your wife?—are both wet. If you will step back here, have her step back, I have a small electric heater…”

  “Some other time,” Toddy said, imperiously pleasant. “Just make it ten and—and—”

  “Yes,” nodded Milt. “My suggestion is good. It is very, very good. Come back, sir, you and your wife.”

  So they had come back, warily. And Toddy had accepted a brandy in silence. And while he was sipping it, Elaine drank three.

  She saw Milt watching her, amazed, and she grinned at him impudently. He looked hastily away.

  “Where,” he said, “did you lose your wallet?”

  “At our hotel.” Toddy laughed shortly. “We lost our baggage there, too. And our clothes. Not to mention…not to mention anything.”

  “Ten dollars would do you no good.”

  “It would get us dinner and breakfast,” Toddy shrugged. “It’d get us into some fleabag for the night. Tomorrow, I’ll probably run into something.”

  “Not tomorrow. You have already run into it. Now.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes,” nodded Milt. “So I will give you ten dollars and you will visit me tomorrow morning. By tomorrow night, you will have the ten back and twenty, twenty-five, maybe fifty dollars besides.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Toddy. “Sure, I will.”

  “Surely, you will,” said Milt, gravely. “And even if you are not sure, you will be here in the morning. You will be here because you are not sure. Is it not so?”

  Toddy had looked blank for a moment. Then his eyes narrowed and he grinned. “You’ve got my number, mister,” he said. “I’ll be here. And if there’s fifty dollars to be made I’ll make it.”

  They had gone out, then, taking Milt’s ten dollars with them; and when Milt looked around for the brandy bottle, he found it gone, too.

  5

  Airedale Aahrens had once broken a man’s jaw for asking why he’d been given the handle. It was like asking a one-armed man why he is called Wingie. Airedale had a long thick neck on a short stocky body. His hair was a crisp brownish-yellow, and his eyes were large and liquid and brown.

  He didn’t speak when Toddy entered the bail bond office. He simply picked up a pencil and the telephone and dialed the police station. After a moment he grunted, “Airedale. What’s the score on Mrs. Elaine Kent?”

  Toddy drew a chair up to the bondsman’s desk and sat down. Elbows on his knees, he studied the familiar abbreviations which Airedale scrawled on a scratchpad:

  “DD.”

  “Drunk and disorderly.”

  “Assoff.”

  “Assaulting an officer.”

  “Rear.”

  “Resisting arrest.”

  It was quite a list, even for Elaine. She had obviously been in unusually good form today.

  Airedale stopped writing for a moment. Then he wrote “four-bits” and cocked an eye at Toddy. Toddy sighed, made a loop with his thumb and forefinger. Airedale said, “Oke,” and slammed up the receiver.

  Toddy counted fifty dollars onto the desk, and the bondsman recounted them with thick stubby fingers. He made a balling movement with his hand and the money vanished. He discovered it tucked beneath Toddy’s chin, shook his head with enigmatic disapproval, and dropped the bills into a drawer.

  Toddy grinned tiredly. He didn’t ask why the bond was not put up. He knew it was up. Airedale was in the real estate business. He sold lots. He bought them, too—cheap ones that were plenty adequate for dumps. He’d hold on to them until he needed them, and in the meantime a few hundred bucks slipped to his cousin in the city hall would miraculously produce an official assessment of the land at several times the purchase price—and the value.

  Every once in a while somebody would wonder what had happened to all the forfeited bail. Where was the cash? What did the city have to show for it? The cash was in Airedale’s pocket, but he’d give the city something to show for it, all right. He was no crook. He’d let the city have a nice thousand-dollar lot for ten or twelve grand in forfeited bail.

  Airedale said, “How come they’re going after Elaine? They trying to roust you, kid?”

  Toddy shrugged. “You know how Elaine is.”

  “I do,” Airedale nodded. “I thought maybe you didn’t. You workin’ full time as her chump, or can I rent you out? Let me be your agent, kid. They’s millions in it.”

  Toddy chuckled wryly. Characters, he thought. Ten thousand characters and no people. “Maybe we’d better talk about something else,” he suggested.

  “Maybe we had,” Airedale agreed promptly. “What do you hear from Shake’s boys these days? Still trying to chisel in on you?”

  “Still trying,” Toddy said.

  “You don’t think they mean business, huh?”

  “Probably,” Toddy shrugged. “Where they slip up is in not thinking that we mean business, too; guys like me. Anyone tough enough to make it in the gold-buying game is plenty tough enough to hold on to what h
e makes. I’m not going to let a bunch of punks like Shake’s tap me for protection. If I scared that easy; I wouldn’t be in the racket.”

  “So? How come Shake’s so stupid?”

  “He had a little luck. He tapped a few Sunday buyers—old-age pensioners, kids, college boys, people like that.”

  Airedale nodded appreciatively. He looked toward the door. “Here she comes,” he said. “God’s little gift to Los Angeles—or why people move to Frisco.”

  Elaine didn’t look bad, for Elaine. She always looked mussed and sloppy and she looked no more than that now. Though she was grinning, a delightful, elfin, heart-warming grin, it was immediately apparent that she had heard Airedale’s remark. She made an obscene gesture with her forefinger.

  “You can kiss my ass, you fat-mouthed, nosey son-of-a-bitch!”

  “You mean that one under your nose? Not me, honey. I’m strictly an under-the-skirts guy—the clean stuff, y’know.”

  “Why, you dirty bas—”

  “Knock it off.” Toddy grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her toward the door. “That wasn’t very funny, Airedale.”

  “So who’s joking?” said Airedale. He broke into a roar of laughter as they went out, the legs of his chair banging against the floor with the rocking of his body. He stopped at last: wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his checkered shirt. He looked thoughtfully into his cash drawer, then firmly pushed it shut.

  Meanwhile, riding toward the hotel in a taxi, Toddy was barely aware of the profane and obscene words which streamed softly, steadily from Elaine’s mouth. It wasn’t that he was used to such talk; somehow he had never got used to it. In the always-new fascination of watching her face, he simply lost track of what she was saying.

  She had perfect control of her expressions. In the space of seconds she could register sorrow, elation, bewilderment, terror, surprise—one after the other. And unless you knew her, and sometimes even when you did, you could not doubt that the pantomimed emotions were anything but genuine.