Venom Business Page 15

  “You think it will work?”

  “I have some hope.”

  “You seem to have thought it out very carefully,” he said, “for a woman who has no business sense.”

  She shrugged. “Everything is different for me now,” she said. “I have changed since Herbert died.”

  “When was that?”

  “In nineteen fifty-eight. A long time now, though it seems only a few days ago. We were taking a motor trip to the south of France, on National Seven. We had a flat in our Citroën—it was a rented car—and my husband got out to look at the tire. The left front tire.” Her voice went low. “Then a car came along and…struck him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a terrible, terrible thing. We got him back into the car, and—”

  “We?”

  “Jonathan. Doctor Black. He was with us. We got him back into the car, and Doctor Black administered first aid. But he was dead before we reached the hospital in Arles. My husband,” she said, “was sixty-eight at the time.”

  “Did they ever catch the driver?”

  “No,” she said. “Never.”

  “And then Richard came home for the funeral?”

  “Yes, he came home. He was more worried about the money than anything else. He was terrified that I might have gotten everything in the will. As it turned out, he was secure—he had only to wait a few years, and it all became his. But he begrudged me even the three thousand pounds.”

  She spoke bitterly.

  “I’m sure Richard has filled you with terrible stories of his return home for the funeral. The fact is that Richard hated his father—his stepfather—almost as much as he hated me. Richard was a mean, irritable child and he grew into a mean, irritable adult, capricious and disgusting. I remember, at the funeral, sitting there and hearing his laughter. A low, obscene laughter like someone clearing his throat. Very soft, but it was there.”

  She paused and lit a cigarette. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to say all this.”

  Raynaud said nothing.

  “But I must be honest,” she continued. “Just because I have asked you to protect him, it does not mean I feel he is worth protecting. I would as soon see him dead tomorrow. Even with the scandal. Even with the newspapers and the courts. I would as soon see him dead.”

  “But you would lose the money.”

  “Yes,” she said. “On the other hand, I would see my husband’s efforts preserved. I want that, want it very badly. Herbert was a strange man. In many ways he was cold and unfeeling. But he had a dream, an ambition, a vision. He worked and sweated to make it come true: half a billion dollars in the largest single business empire in England to be ruled by a single man. I want to see that vision continue and grow. I want to see half a billion dollars used for something besides champagne, motor cars, and abortions for tarts. Is that so strange?”

  “Richard may turn out—”

  “Now you sound like my husband.” She turned away from him angrily. “He watched Richard for years, and refused to believe the bad, refused to see the rot, the decay, the dissipated evil. He continued to hope and believe—right up to the day he died. He loved Richard: and Richard hated his guts.”

  She sighed and looked at her watch. “But we have talked long enough. You have things you must do, and so do I. You’ll keep me informed of what is happening?”

  He nodded.

  “All right then,” she said. “Good luck.”

  She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and they walked back from the gardens, toward the house.

  On his way home he stopped to hire a rental car and drove it cautiously through the wrong-sided London traffic. It was an odd sensation, to drive a car with everything reversed; it seemed strangely appropriate, matching his thoughts.

  Lucienne had put on a remarkable performance, truly skillful, but it did not come off quite right. She was ambiguous: first she wanted Richard protected, and then she wanted him dead. First she was looking out for her own interests, then she was ignoring them. And that final tirade against her adopted son, a viciously accurate catalogue of his faults…

  Why?

  And why had she been unwilling to discuss it the night before? He recalled an old Yucatán saying: “Never trust a woman who talks business in bed. And never trust a woman who talks bed in business.”

  For better or worse, he now realized he did not trust Lucienne. He was convinced Lucienne was pushing him toward something, guiding and directing him as subtly as she knew how.

  Well, he thought, there were certain steps he could take to deal with that. Beginning with his little insurance policy. He always carried it with him to important meetings; it had proved invaluable in the past.

  Reaching into his breast pocket, he removed the tiny tape recorder and set it on the seat beside him. At the next spotlight, he flicked a switch and heard the tinny but still recognizable voice say, “He loved Richard, and Richard hated his guts.”

  He switched the recorder off.

  Some day that tape might be very useful.

  3. THE GAME OF AGE

  IT WAS GOING TO be all right, she thought. It was going to be beautifully, gorgeously all right.

  She stood in front of the mirror, wearing the leotard, going through her exercises with smooth precision. For as long as she could remember, she had done these same exercises, in the same order, feeling the sweat seep through the black knit of the leotard, feeling the burning ache in her muscles as she strained. But it had repaid her amply: at thirty-nine, her stomach was still flat and hard, her thighs firm, her calves slim and attractive. And her face was still good, the green eyes bright, the lashes long, the wrinkles slight and easily hidden by amphetamines and makeup.

  She did not look her age. She knew it, and it pleased her. At parties, when she got tight, she defied men to guess her age, while she watched their faces carefully for signs of flattery and underestimation. Usually, they said thirty-two or -three; the liars said twenty-eight. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that no one cautiously ventured forty, or forty-two. What mattered was that they were pleased to talk to her, pleased to command her attention, at least for a moment, pleased to feel that she was interested in them. That was what mattered.

  She lay down and did one hundred sit-ups, in quick succession. She did them easily, with barely a catch in her breath; she had good stomach muscles, no children, never, and anyone with her knew that, and that pleased her, too. She had never wanted children, but Herbert hadn’t understood. He thought it had something to do with him, with her feeling toward him.

  Perhaps it did. But she didn’t think of it that way. When she thought of it at all, she thought of something pushing out—pushing out—and she thought of the size of the head, really gigantic when you considered it, a stretching, unnatural, painful thing, and for what purpose?

  No, no children. Never. She hadn’t the slightest desire for them. She knew men, and knew what they thought. She knew the way their minds worked. You could have a man and hold him in a thousand ways, keep his attention, his interest, his desire, but at the bottom of it all there was sex, raw sex, pure hot hard sex, or there was nothing at all. So funny: the English girls who insisted on displaying their minds, on attacking men with their minds, on raping their intellects. English girls understood nothing. Men were not excited by a woman’s mind. It was nothing of interest.

  She remembered the first time, when she had been just a girl, newly arrived to Paris from the country, but already making a name, une petite célèbre. She had been introduced to a wealthy banker and minister in the cabinet. He was an older, experienced man with wide contacts and influential friends; he knew everyone in Paris, was well educated, spoke wittily of things she had never heard of. She had been terrified to meet him, convinced he would find her dull and insipid. But it hadn’t turned out that way; instead, he found her charming, installed her in a luxurious apartment, introduced her to his friends, and was very good to her for as long as it lasted. In the end,
she threw him over, and she had the satisfaction of seeing the hurt, the sadness, and the fear in his face. She felt very strongly that she had triumphed, there was the pleasurable knowledge that she had ended it, not he.

  And she had learned. She had learned how to trap a man, how to shift the balance of power and initiative from him to her, how to arrange a relationship to suit her needs. In any love affair, one person was insecure—she resolved that it would never be her. And it never had been.

  Later, of course, it was easy. She was Lucienne Ginoux, a singer, a personality, a “creative force,” whatever that was. She always read the papers and the critics with a kind of sad amusement. The critics were men, and like all men their judgment was, she discovered, flexible. It was her rule never to make an enemy of a critic—and never, precisely, a lover; she kept them hanging, dangling, hoping, and the reviews glowed.

  Her affairs were numerous but, at first, discreet. She was young and uncertain and acted cautiously. Later, when she was an established artist and personality, she became bolder, taking what she wanted when she wanted it, ignoring the rest. Oddly, this seemed to please her audiences; they wished to believe that she was a hotly passionate woman, almost as if this fact increased her availability to them, to each man sitting in the darkened room, staring at the figure in the spotlight. It gave substance and hope to their dreams; the fantasies became more tangible, and she prospered.

  By the late forties, her fame had spread all over Europe. She was wealthy, in a fashion, but she was also tired. The public eye, the perpetual scrutiny which had once been so exhilarating began to pale. She was tired: tired of hotel rooms, late hours, interviews at dockside where she sat on her white leather suitcases and posed with her legs crossed, tired of interviews, of the popping flashbulbs, tired of the intimate dinner parties on two continents, where famous men she did not like kissed her hand and touched her leg experimentally under the table.

  Tired of the rush, of the quick changes backstage, of the gowns to be fitted and the appointments to be kept. Tired, even, of the lovers who no longer saw her as a person, but rather grunted over an idol, isolated from her, wrapped not in her arms but in their private dreams.

  Tired of too many cigarettes, too much scotch, too many roses sent backstage, and too much bad air. She was drinking more—drinking too much—and bothered by the bad air. She went to see a doctor in Paris, feeling sick and disgusted and tired and bored.

  She remembered the incident vividly, even twenty years later. God, was it twenty years? She shook her head: it was. He had been a famous physician, a patriarchal, white-haired man, lean and handsome, a man who ministered to Ministers, and even the Premier in those days: was it Mendès-France? No, he was later.

  Anyway, she had gone to see him, in his expensive, subdued offices, and he talked to her for an hour about her life and work. Talking with him, she had the old feeling—he did not see her as a patient, or as a person, or even as a collection of sickened organs. He saw her as Lucienne Ginoux, hot-blooded singer of hot-blooded songs. Finally, irritated, she had cut him off and announced that she sought medical advice, not polite conversation.

  He examined her briefly, saying nothing, and then he sat down again behind his desk.

  “You know,” he said, “what the problem is.”

  She shook her head.

  “The liver,” he said. “You are headed for disease of the liver. The early changes are already there.”

  “What should I do?” She was horrified by his words: she was only in her teens, still young and vibrant.

  “You know that as well.”

  She stared at him steadily, then said, “I can’t quit.”

  “You must.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You must.”

  Angrily, she had stormed out of his office. What did he know, anyway? He was just an old man, who treated old men, whose fingers probed the diseases of heads of state, government officials, weak old men who sat behind a desk. She went out and immediately arranged a full schedule for the coming months, trips to Germany, Italy, and England….

  It was in England that the cough began. A bad, choking cough, and her weight began to fall. At first, she was pleased; the bones of her ribs showed, giving her a slim, taut look which she enjoyed. But later, she worried. So she saw an English doctor.

  He was younger, handsome, but very businesslike. He examined her briskly and did an X-ray of her chest.

  “Lung disease,” he said.

  She threw up her hands. The French said liver disease, the English said lung disease.

  “Is it serious?”

  “I’m afraid it is,” he said. “You have tuberculosis.”

  She sagged back in the chair. This time, the words meant something. Her father, an army colonel from Lyon, had died of tuberculosis. She had been fourteen at the time. She remembered it vaguely—the hacking, gravelly cough, the changes from a vigorous man to a pale skeleton, the weakness, then the blue color toward the end….

  “What can I do?”

  The young doctor smiled reassuringly. “Ten years ago,” he said, “it would have been difficult. Even two or three years ago, it would have been hard, because antibiotics were in short supply. Now, however, there are drugs.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Yes. A new drug called streptomycin, and another called isoniazid. They seem to work well.”

  “Must I quit singing?”

  “You must go to a hospital,” he said.

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes. But with luck, you will be out in six months.”

  “Six months!” It had seemed an eternity. She was just nineteen. “But I have engagements, concerts, night-club—”

  “Cancel them,” he said. “It is the only way.”

  She did, with a peculiar mixture of sadness and relief. And she spent only four months in the hospital, as it turned out. The drugs made her feel sicker, but she began to gain weight and strength. It was a pleasant hospital, in Switzerland. Because of the publicity, she had entered under an assumed name, Françoise Doreau. She liked life there. The nurses and the doctors did not realize they were dealing with the great and glamorous Lucienne Ginoux. To them, she was just a pretty, but sick, girl. At the very first, it annoyed her to be deprived of the attention and adulation, but soon after, she realized what she had been missing. The chance to talk to people, the acceptance. The freedom of conversation unencumbered by awe. Nobody after her autograph. No reporters, no photographs, no rigidly fixed smiles for the cameras.

  That was where Herbert Edgar Pierce came in.

  She had met him shortly after her return to the circuit. She was taking things easy, recuperating. When she left the hospital, she had had great plans for a new life, for a change. But she found herself falling back into the old pattern. A German actor was first, then an Italian auto manufacturer. Neither lasted more than six weeks. She was becoming depressed, and her voice was showing it—the old fire, the old confidence, was disappearing. She was drinking more than ever, and smoking three packs a day, though her doctors forbade it.

  Then she met Herbert Pierce.

  She knew, of course, what he meant. Half a billion dollars. Prestige. Acceptance. But she saw other things as well: he was a kind, mature, gentle man. She could imagine him as a stabilizing influence, a man to fix and hold her love, to freeze it forever and give her peace from restlessness.

  So she had married him.

  She was a happy, domestic wife for six months, and then she had met Jonathan Black at a dinner party. He was the first. Others came later, and still others…

  Lucienne finished her exercises, stripped off the damp leotard, and walked into the bathroom to shower. She felt tired and rang for the maid, and asked for a vermouth. It was too early for a drink, but she needed something. Something to take away the sting of dead relationships, slaughtered hopes, lost faces. Something to keep her from looking too closely into the mirror.

  A pretense, she thought. A fabu
lous and absurd game, to battle with age. One never won. All the exercises and diets and drugs and makeup did not cure age—only postponed the inevitable deterioration.

  She remembered how it used to be. Once, she could do whatever she wished with her body—fill it with liquor, cover it with straining young men, keep it up late at parties, dance it until dawn. Her body never complained, never showed fatigue.

  Then the sickness, and afterward, the slow decline. She saw the signs everywhere. That slight, telltale fatigue at the top of the stairs. The desire to leave a party at midnight. The dentist who told her she needed gum treatment. The ladies who worked in the lingerie shops who no longer complimented her on her figure, as they once had. The slow change in dress size: from a five, to a seven, and now an occasional nine.

  She did not wear bikinis, anymore. She told herself it was propriety; a mature woman dressed more demurely. But she knew there was more. She had never worn makeup until ten years ago, not even lipstick or eyeshadow. She had never dieted until eight years ago. She had never taken amphetamines until five years ago.

  And the men were changing. Once, it had been older men, patient, willing to help her, to wait. She was drawn by their wealth, their confidence, their self-assurance. Now it was younger men, who were no doubt attracted to her for the same reason. The tables were turning, the balance shifting.

  Exercises, diets, makeup.

  Damn.

  All her life, she had lived by her wits, her voice, and her beauty. Her beauty now was fading; her voice was gone. She was left with her wits.

  Well, she thought, that was something. Wits and experience, experience with men. That would be enough. She looked in the mirror, tugging at her face, her breasts, her stomach.

  Not so old, she thought.

  A brief flash of color caught her eye. Glancing out the window, she saw a girl in a shocking pink miniskirt. No, it was more: microskirt, they called it. Barely covering the buttocks. The girl was no more than sixteen or seventeen, her long legs bare, taking easy, loping strides.

  Damn London. It was not, she thought, a pleasant place to grow old. Irritably, she stepped into the shower and turned I the water on, hot and stinging. The maid brought the vermouth and Lucienne told her to leave it on the basin.