CHAPTER THREE: THE MAN WITH AGORAPHOBIA
----The flapping of the curtains wakened Storm. He threw off the single sheet and walked across the thick pile carpet to the picture window that filled the whole of one wall. He drew back the curtains and went out on to the sun-filled balcony. The black and white chequer-board tiles were warm, almost hot to the feet although it could not yet be eight o'clock. A brisk inshore breeze was blowing off the sea, straining the flags of all nations that flew along the pier of the private yacht basin. The breeze was humid and smelt strongly of the sea. Storm guessed it was the breeze that the visitors like, but the residents hate. It would rust the metal fittings in their homes, fox the pages of their books, rot their wallpaper and pictures, breed damp-rot in their clothes. Twelve storeys down the formal gardens, dotted with palm trees and beds of bright croton and traced with neat gravel walks between avenues of bougainvillaea, were rich and dull. Gardeners were working, raking the paths and picking up leaves with the lethargic slow motion of coloured help. Two mowers were at work on the lawns and, where they had already been, sprinklers were gracefully flinging handfuls of spray. Directly below Storm, the elegant curve of the Cabana Club swept down to the beach - two storeys of changing-rooms below a flat roof dotted with chairs and tables and an occasional red and white striped umbrella. Within the curve was the brilliant green oblong of the Olympic-length swimming-pool fringed on all sides by row upon row of mattressed steamer chairs on which the customers would soon be getting their fifty-dollar-a-day sunburn. White-jacketed men were working among them, straightening the lines of chairs, turning the mattresses and sweeping up yesterday's cigarette butts. Beyond was the long, golden beach and the sea, and more men - raking the tideline, putting up the umbrellas, laying out mattresses. No wonder the neat card inside Storm's wardrobe had said that the cost of the Aloha Suite was two hundred bells a day. Storm made a rough calculation. If he was paying the bill, it would take him just three weeks to spend his whole salary for the year. Storm smiled cheerfully to himself. He went back into the bedroom, picked up the telephone and ordered himself a delicious, wasteful breakfast, a carton of king-size Chesterfields and the newspapers. By the time he had shaved and had an ice-cold shower and dressed it was eight o'clock. He walked through into the elegant sitting-room and found a waiter in a uniform of plum and gold laying out his breakfast beside the window. Storm glanced at the Miami Herald. The front page was devoted to yesterday's failure of an American ICBM at the nearby Cape Canaveral and a bad upset in a big race at Hialeah. Storm dropped the paper on the floor and sat down and slowly ate his breakfast and thought about Mr CrazyMe and Mr Goldgengar. His thoughts were inconclusive. Mr CrazyMe was either a much worse player than he thought, which seemed unlikely on Storm's reading of his tough, shrewd character, or else Goldgengar was a cheat. If Goldgengar cheated at cards, although he didn't need the money, it was certain that he had also made himself rich by cheating or sharp practice on a much bigger scale. Storm was interested in big crooks. He looked forward to his first sight of Goldgengar. He also looked forward to penetrating Goldgengar's highly successful and, on the face of it, highly mysterious method of fleecing Mr CrazyMe. It was going to be a most entertaining day. Idly Storm waited for it to get under way. The plan was that he would meet Mr CrazyMe in the garden at ten o'clock. The story would be that Storm had flown down from New York to try and sell Mr CrazyMe a block of shares from an English holding in a Canadian Natural Gas property. The matter was clearly confidential and Goldgengar would not think of questioning Storm about details. Shares, Natural Gas, Canada. That was all Storm needed to remember. They would go along together to the roof of the Cabana Club where the game was played and Storm would read his paper and watch. After luncheon, during which Storm and Mr CrazyMe would discuss their 'business', there would be the same routine. Mr CrazyMe had inquired if there was anything else he could arrange. Storm had asked for the number of Mr Goldgengar's suite and a passkey. He had explained that if Goldgengar was any kind of a professional card-sharp, or even an expert amateur, he would travel with the usual tools of the trade - marked and shaved cards, the apparatus for the Short Arm Delivery, and so forth. Mr CrazyMe had said he would give Storm the key when they met in the garden. He would have no difficulty getting one from the manager. After breakfast, Storm relaxed and gazed into the middle distance of the sea. He was not keyed up by the job on hand, only interested and amused. It was just the kind of job he had needed to clear his palate after Newfoundland. At half past nine Storm left his suite and wandered along the corridors of his floor, getting lost on his way to the elevator in order to reconnoitre the lay-out of the hotel. Then, having met the same maid twice, he asked his way and went down in the elevator and moved among the scattering of early risers through the Pineapple Shopping Arcade. He glanced into the Bamboo Coffee Shoppe, the Rendezvous Bar, the La Tropicala dining-room, the Kittekat Klub for children and the Boom-Boom Nighterie. He then went purposefully out into the garden. Mr CrazyMe, now dressed 'for the beach' by Abercrombie & Fitch, gave him the pass-key to Goldgengar's suite. They sauntered over to the Cabana Club and climbed the two short flights of stairs to the top deck. Storm's first view of Mr Goldgengar was startling. At the far corner of the roof, just below the cliff of the hotel, a man was lying back with his legs up on a steamer chair. He was wearing nothing but a yellow satin bikini slip, dark glasses and a pair of wide tin wings under his chin. The wings, which appeared to fit round his neck, stretched out across his shoulders and beyond them and then curved up slightly to rounded tips. Storm said,
----"What the hell's he wearing round his neck?'
----'You never seen one of those?' Mr CrazyMe was surprised. 'That's a gadget to help your tan. Polished tin. Reflects the sun up under your chin and behind the ears - the bits that wouldn't normally catch the sun.'
----'Well, well,' said Storm. When they were a few yards from the reclining figure Mr CrazyMe called out cheerfully, in what seemed to Storm an overloud voice,
----'Hi there!' Mr Goldgengar did not stir. Mr CrazyMe said in his normal voice. 'He's very deaf.' They were now at Mr Goldgengar's feet. Mr CrazyMe repeated his hail. Mr Goldgengar sat up sharply. He removed his dark glasses.
----'Why, hullo there.' He unhitched the wings from round his neck, put them carefully on the ground beside him and got heavily to his feet. He looked at Storm with slow, inquiring eyes.
----'Like you to meet Mr Commander, Storm Commander. Friend of mine from New York. Countryman of yours. Come down to try and talk me into a bit of business.' Mr Goldgengar held out a hand.
----'Pleased to meet you, Mr Nosander.' Storm took the hand. It was hard and dry. There was the briefest pressure and it was withdrawn. For an instant Mr Goldgengar's pale, china-blue eyes opened wide and stared hard at Storm. They stared right through his face to the back of his skull. Then the lids drooped, the shutter closed over the X-ray, and Mr Goldgengar took the exposed plate and slipped it away in his filing system. 'So no game today.' The voice was flat, colourless. The words were more of a statement than a question.
----'Whaddya mean, no game?' shouted Mr CrazyMe boisterously. 'You weren't thinking I'd let you hang on to my money? Got to get it back or I shan't be able to leave this darned hotel,' Mr CrazyMe chuckled richly. 'I'll tell Sam to fix the table. Storm here says he doesn't know much about cards and he'd like to learn the game. That right, Storm?' He turned to Storm. 'Sure you'll be all right with your paper and the sunshine?'
----'I'd be glad of the rest,' said Storm. 'Been travelling too much.' Again the eyes bored into Storm and then drooped.
----'Til get some clothes on. I had intended to have a golf lesson this afternoon from Mr Armour at the Boca Raton. But cards have priority among my hobbies. My tendency to un-rooster the wrists too early with the mid-irons will have to wait.' The eyes rested incuriously on Storm. 'You play golf, Mr Nosander?' Storm raised his voice.
----'Occasionally, when I'm in England.'
----'And where do you play?'
----'Huntercombe.'
----'Ah - a pleasant little course. I have recently joined the Royal St Marks. Sandwich is close to one of my business interests. You know it?'
----'I have played there.'
----'What is your handicap?'
----'Nine.'
----'That is a coincidence. So is mine. We must have a game one day.' Mr Goldgengar bent down and picked up his tin wings. He said to Mr CrazyMe, 'I will be with you in five minutes.' He walked slowly off towards the stairs. Storm was amused. This social sniffing at him had been done with just the right casual touch of the tycoon who didn't really care if Storm was alive or dead but, since he was there and alive, might as well place him in an approximate category. Mr CrazyMe gave instructions to a steward in a white coat. Two others were already setting up a card table. Storm walked to the rail that surrounded the roof and looked down into the garden, reflecting on Mr Goldgengar. He was impressed. Mr Goldgengar was one of the most relaxed men Storm had ever met. It showed in the economy of his movement, of his speech, of his expressions. Mr Goldgengar wasted no effort, yet there was something coiled, compressed, in the immobility of the man. When Goldgengar had stood up, the first thing that had struck Storm was that everything was out of proportion. Goldgengar was short, not more than five feet tall, and on top of the thick body and blunt, peasant legs, was set almost directly into the shoulders, a huge and it seemed exactly round head. It was as if Goldgengar had been put together with bits of other people's bodies. Nothing seemed to belong. Perhaps, Storm thought, it was to conceal his ugliness that Goldgengar made such a fetish of sunburn. Without the red-brown camouflage the pale body would be grotesque. The face, under the cliff of crew-cut carroty hair, was as startling, without being as ugly, as the body. It was moon-shaped without being moonlike. The forehead was fine and high and the thin sandy brows were level above the large light blue eyes fringed with pale lashes. The nose was fleshily aquiline between high cheek-bones and cheeks that were more muscular than fat. The mouth was thin and dead straight, but beautifully drawn. The chin and jaws were firm and glinted with health. To sum up, thought Storm, it was the face of a thinker, perhaps a scientist, who was ruthless, sensual, stoical and tough. An odd combination. What else could he guess? Storm always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big - bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world. And what about a misshapen short man with red hair and a bizarre face? That might add up to a really formidable misfit. One could certainly feel the repressions. There was a powerhouse of vitality humming in the man that suggested that if one stuck an electric bulb into Goldgengar's mouth it would light up. Storm smiled at the thought. Into what channels did Goldgengar release his vital force? Into getting rich? Into power? Probably into both. What could his history be? Today he might be an Englishman. What had he been born? Not a Jew - though there might be Jewish blood in him. Not a Latin or anything farther south. Not a Slav. Perhaps a German - no, a Bait! That's where he would have come from. One of the old Baltic provinces. Probably got away to escape the Russians. Goldgengar would have been warned - or his parents had smelled trouble and they had got him out in time. And what had happened then? How had he worked his way up to being one of the richest men in the world? One day it might be interesting to find out. For the time being it would be enough to find out how he won at cards.
----'All set?' Mr CrazyMe called to Goldgengar who was coming across the roof towards the card table. With his clothes on - a comfortably fitting dark blue suit, a white shirt open at the neck - Goldgengar cut an almost passable figure. But there was no disguise for the great brown and red football of a head and the flesh-coloured hearing aid plugged into the left ear was net an improvement. Mr CrazyMe sat with his back to the hotel. Goldgengar took the seat opposite and cut the cards. CrazyMe won the cut, pushed the other pack over to Goldgengar, tapped them to show they were already shuffled and he couldn't bother to cut, and Goldgengar began the deal. Storm sauntered over and took a chair at Mr CrazyMe's elbow. He sat back, relaxed. He made a show of folding his paper to the sports page and watched the deal. Somehow Storm had expected it, but this was no card-sharp. Goldgengar dealt quickly and efficiently, but with no hint of the Mechanic's Grip, those vital three fingers curled round the long edge of the cards and the index finger at the outside short upper edge - the grip that means you are armed for dealing Bottoms or Seconds. And he wore no signet ring for pricking the cards, no surgical tape round a finger for marking them. Mr CrazyMe turned to Storm.
----'Deal of fifteen cards,' he commented. 'You draw two and discard one. Otherwise straight Regency rules. No monkey business with the red treys counting one, three, five, eight, or any of that European stuff.' Mr CrazyMe picked up his cards. Storm noticed that he sorted them expertly, not grading them according to value from left to right, or holding his wild cards, of which he had two, at the left - a pattern that might help a watchful opponent. Mr CrazyMe concentrated his good cards in the centre of his hand with the singletons and broken melds on either side. The game began. Mr CrazyMe drew first, a miraculous pair of wild cards. His face betrayed nothing. He discarded casually. He only needed two more good draws to go out unseen. But he would have to be lucky. Drawing two cards doubles the chance of picking up what you want, but it also doubles the chance of picking up useless cards that will only clutter up your hand. Goldgengar played a more deliberate game, almost irritatingly slow. After drawing, he shuffled through his cards again and again before deciding on his discard. On the third draw, CrazyMe had improved his hand to the extent that he now needed only one of five cards to go down and out and catch his opponent with a handful of cards which would all count against him. As if Goldgengar knew the danger he was in, he went down for fifty and proceeded to make a canasta with three wild cards and four fives. He also got rid of some more melds and ended with only four cards in his hand. In any other circumstances it would have been ridiculously bad play. As it was, he had made some four hundred points instead of losing over a hundred, for, on the next draw Mr CrazyMe filled his hand and, with most of the edge taken off his triumph by Goldgengar's escape, went down unseen with the necessary two canastas.
----'By golly, I nearly screwed you that time.' Mr CrazyMe's voice had an edge of exasperation. 'What in hell told you to cut an' run?' Goldgengar said indifferently,
----'I smelled trouble.' He added up his points, announced them and jotted them down, waiting for Mr CrazyMe to do the same. Then he cut the cards and sat back and regarded Storm with polite interest. 'Will you be staying long, Mr Nosander?' Storm smiled.
----'It's Commander, C-O-M-M-A-N-D-E-R. No, I have to go back to New York tonight.'
----'How sad.' Goldgengar's mouth pursed in polite regret. He turned back to the cards and the game went on. Storm picked up his paper and gazed, unseeing, at the baseball scores, while he listened to the quiet routine of the game. Goldgengar won that hand and the next and the next. He won the game. There was a difference of one thousand five hundred points -one thousand five hundred dollars to Goldgengar.
----'There it goes again!' It was the plaintive voice of Mr CrazyMe. Storm put down his paper.
----'Does he usually win?'
----'Usually!' The word was a snort. 'He always wins.' They cut again and Goldgengar began to deal. Storm said,
----'Don't you cut for seats? I often find a change of seat helps the luck. Hostage to fortune and so on.' Goldgengar paused in his deal. He bent his gaze gravely on Storm.
----'Unfortunately, Mr Commander, that is not possible or I could not play. As I explained to Mr CrazyMe at our first game, I suffer from an obscure complaint - agoraphobia -the fear of open spaces. I cannot bear the open,horizon. I must sit and face the hotel.' The deal continued.
----'Oh, I'm so sorry.' Storm's voice was grave, interested. 'That's a very rare disability. I've always been able to understand claustrophobia, but not the other way round. How did it come about?' Goldgengar picked up his cards and began to arrange his hand.
----'I have no idea,' he said equably. Storm got up.
----'Well, I think I'll stretch my legs for a bit. See what's going on in the pool.'
----'You do just that,' said Mr CrazyMe jovially. 'Just take it easy, Storm. Plenty of time to discuss business over lunch. I'll see if I can't dish it out to my friend Goldgengar this time instead of taking it. Be seeing you.' Goldgengar didn't look up from his cards. Storm strolled down the roof, past the occasional splayed-out body, to the rail at the far end that overlooked the pool. For a time he stood and contemplated the ranks of pink and brown and white flesh laid out below him on the steamer chairs. The heavy scent of suntan oil came up to him. There were a few children and young people in the pool. A man, obviously a professional diver, perhaps the swimming instructor, stood on the high-dive. He balanced on the balls of his feet, a muscled Greek god with golden hair. He bounced once, casually, and flew off and down, his arms held out like wings. Lazily they arrowed out to cleave the water for the body to pass through. The impact left only a brief turbulence. The diver jack-knifed up again, shaking his head boyishly. There was a smattering of applause. The man trudged slowly down the pool, his head submerged, his shoulders moving with casual power. Storm thought, good luck to you! You won't be able to keep this up for more than another five or six years. High-divers couldn't take it for long - the repeated shock to the skull. With ski-jumping, which had the same shattering effect on the frame, high-diving was the shortest-lived sport. Storm thought to the diver, 'Cash in quick! Get into films while the hair's still gold.' Storm turned and looked back down the roof towards the two Canasta players beneath the cliff of the hotel. So Goldgengar liked to face the hotel. Or was it that he liked Mr CrazyMe to have his back to it? And why? Now, what was the number of Goldgengar's suite? No 200, the Hawaii Suite. Storm's on the top floor was 1200. So, all things being equal, Goldgengar's would be directly below Storm's, on the second floor, twenty yards or so above the roof of the Cabana Club -twenty yards from the card table. Storm counted down. He closely examined the frontage that should be Goldgengar's. Nothing. An empty sun balcony. An open door into the dark interior of the suite. Storm measured distances, angles. Yes, that's how it might be. That's how it must be! Clever Mr Goldgengar!
, and its coming along great!
