Double

I had backed myself into a corner. Trying to get out of it, I said the first thing that came to my mind, “A fellow in Borrego Springs. He, ah, belongs to the club out there.”

It was the right thing to say, even though I had no idea why. Littlejohn beamed again and said, “Mr. Darrow?”

Darrow was one of the names that had been on the list among Lauterbach’s notes, one of those with a check mark in front of it. I said, “That’s right. Arthur Darrow. You know him, then?”

“Oh, yes. He and his charming wife both. Lovely people. They buy from me occasionally, you know.”

“I didn’t know that. The same sort of items Beddoes is interested in?”

“Somewhat. Although their tastes generally run more to the heterosexual.”

I pretended to study a complicated Oriental silk painting. “Does Beddoes come in often?”

“Oh, yes,” Littlejohn said. “Every week or two.”

“Does he buy much?”

“Well, I do consider him one of my best customers. He has a very large collection.”

“All homosexual and S and M stuff?”

“For the most part. Just last week I found a marvelous whipping statuette from Germany for him. And before that, a rare first edition of Teleny, or the Reverse of the Medal — one of the earliest and best of the homosexual erotic novels, published in 1893 and quite probably written by Oscar Wilde.” Littlejohn beamed again, but there was a glint of avarice in his eyes. He was telling me all this because he thought I had money to spend and that I would be impressed by his ability to satisfy his customers. I was impressed, all right. But not the way he thought.

I said, “Items like that rare first edition must be pretty expensive.”

“One must always pay well for the rare and the unusual. Don’t you agree, Mr. Wade?”

“Sure. Always.”

“And may I ask what you’ve seen that strikes your fancy?”

I hesitated. I wanted to ask him some more questions about Beddoes, and about the Darrows of Borrego Springs, but I couldn’t figure a way to do it without arousing his suspicions. And if his suspicions got aroused, he’d be on the phone thirty seconds after I walked out the door, telling Beddoes and the Darrows all about my visit. The smart thing for me to do was to back off and be satisfied, for now, with what I had already learned.

To make it look as if my hesitation had been over one of his offerings, I reached out and picked up an item at random. “What would this set me back?”

“Ah,” Littlejohn said. His smile got wider and the gleam in his eyes got brighter. “An excellent choice, sir. A truly excellent choice. That figure is from the third or fourth century B.C., of Mexican origin. Note the simplicity of the design, the superior condition of the terra-cotta. A rare work of art. I know of only three others like it in existence.”

“How much?”

“I could let you have it for five thousand.”

“How much?”

“Five thousand dollars. A bargain at that price, Mr. Wade. A bargain.”

I took a closer look at the thing in my hand. And then put it down in a hurry. “Well, uh, I’ll have to think it over, Mr. Littlejohn. Five thousand might be a little out of my price range.”

But it wasn’t the price that made me put the figure down so fast. It was what the thing was — for all I knew, a statuette of old Priapus himself. The guy it depicted was naked and grinning, probably because he had the biggest jutting phallus you ever saw. And that, for God’s sake, was what I had been holding it by.

25: McCone

Lloyd Beddoes looked terrible. He sat hunched on the edge of his couch, wearing a blue shirt and pants that he must have slept in. Yesterday afternoon his hair had had the appearance of having been clawed at; now it looked like someone had been working on it with a rake. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes red. I couldn’t decide if he’d been crying or had a bad hangover — or both.

I’d spent a while longer at the Deveer place, making a thorough search of the office and Deveer’s personal belongings, in the hopes of turning up a more concrete link between the financier and Beddoes, but nothing had materialized. Then I’d called to see if Beddoes was at home and, on hearing his subdued voice, had hung up without speaking and driven to his shingle-and-glass home perched high on a bluff in Point Loma. To my surprise, he’d admitted me without a protest, almost indifferently, and now he was trying to ignore my presence.

In spite of his wretched appearance, I had an irresistible urge to needle him. “Are you feeling okay, Mr. Beddoes?” I asked, sitting down on the other end of the couch.

He gave me a baleful sidelong look. “What do you think?”

“That was a nasty scene yesterday at Victor Ibarcena’s.”

“No more than I should have expected from the little faggot. But surely you didn’t come here to talk about my emotional life. What is it?”