Chapter 3
The next morning we went to see Mr. Zimmer he man who'd been trying to buy the sightseeing business from Diana.
I figured he was worth a shot before we began making the rounds of the banks. We knew Zimmer had dough. Whether we could deal with him depended on whether he'd be interested in coming in as a partner instead of buying the business outright.
If he said yes, we would have a three-way partnership, since Diana had already agreed on a split with me.
It hadn't been difficult bringing her around to that point-not after we'd spent the night together. Every inhibition she owned had melted in the heat of our passion, and Diana had turned out to be a free-wheeling sex machine. All she'd needed had been a stud like yours truly to press her starter.
We ran the gamut that night. She must have been spending a lot of long, lonesome hours of late, dreaming up things to do when she finally got a man in her bed again, because she took advantage of the occasion in a big way. All of which was great, as far as I was concerned. By morning we were bushed but happy, and I was sure I'd convinced her I was a handy man to have around.
When we started talking business over scrambled eggs and coffee, I pointed out that an employer-employee relationship between us really wouldn't do. She saw what I meant and didn't raise an objection.
Then, too, she realized she didn't have the know-how or the drive it would take to put the business on its feet. Frankly, I don't know what convinced her I did, unless she figured that a man who had know-how and drive in bed would also have it behind an office desk. More than likely, though, she just wanted to make sure I'd stay on deck. On her deck, that is.
The deal we made was that she would contribute to the partnership all the assets of the company as presently constituted, I would contribute my services, and we would split the proceeds down the middle.
As soon as I'd gotten that nailed down, I brought up the matter of Mr. Zimmer.
At first, Diana bridled.
"I don't know if we want him in the deal, Jack," she said.
"Why not?" I asked, chomping toast.
"Well, in the first place, I don't like the man. He's ... I don't know, kind of funny. He gives me the creeps."
"Between the two of us, we can handle him," I said. "Our two votes can make him a silent partner any time we want. How much was he prepared to pay for the business?"
"I was asking fifteen thousand and he'd offered twelve," she told me. "That was for everything, including the busses, but not the real estate, of course. He was to get a five-year lease on that. I hoped I could bring him up to thirteen-five."
"Let's try to get a flat ten grand for a one-third share," I suggested. "If we can swing it, that will leave the physical assets clear so that we can float another loan from a bank if we need it later."
"But ten thousand for a third?" she said. "I bet he won't go for it."
"He won't be buying merely a third of what you have now," I pointed out. "It will be a third of whatever the business becomes. If things go the way I think they will, he'll get his money back the first year."
"Can you convince him of that?"
"I'm a pretty good convincer," I said with a sly leer.
She studied me and I could see she was a little afraid she'd let me move in too fast, in more ways than one. She said, "If my husband could see me now, I'm afraid he might call me a dunce."
That made me sore, but I shrugged. Always play it cool; that's the best way to go. "There's still time to send me on my way," I said. "We haven't drawn up any papers yet."
She took my hand. "I don't want to do that, Jack," she assured me firmly.
"All right, then," I said with relief, then smiled at her. "You know, I'm risking something in this venture, too. I'm going to devote a lot more than eight hours a day to it. I'll be working like hell to make it succeed. And I've got some contacts in this town that will help us."
"I'm sorry," Diana murmured. "I didn't mean what I said before."
"I understand how you feel," I said. "You're taking a chance with me. But it's going to turn out to be the best bet you ever made in your life. I really mean that, Di. I like you too much to give you a snow job."
"Do you, Jack?" she said, getting up from her chair and moving over to sit on my lap. "Do you like me that much, really?"
"Angel...." I murmured as I opened the front of her robe.
She was wearing nothing underneath it.
We did get over to Zimmer's place that morning. But it was late-close to eleven-thirty.
He lived in a house on Westlake Avenue.
Now, if you know Los Angeles, you know that the Westlake district isn't on a par with Brentwood or Bel Air. It isn't even on a par with Hollywood. It's sort of one step away from being an out-and-out slum, and that one step's a shorty.
As we drove down there in Diana's three-year-old Buick, she said, "This isn't much of a neighborhood, but the man does have money. I had him checked before I started to negotiate with him." She smiled at me. "You see, I'm not always impulsive."
I figured from this that Zimmer couldn't be a very exciting specimen. Either that or else he hadn't given her a tumble. I was firmly convinced, with good reason, that the way to Diana's confidence was through her panties.
I asked, "What's his business?"
"He owns income property-rooming houses, mostly. They're cheap stuff, but I guess they pay."
"What got him hot to go into the sight-seeing business, I wonder?"
"He said he had some ideas about what he could do with it. Like you have, maybe." She paused thoughtfully. "I guess I've been missing a bet these last two years."
She guided the car to the curb and I looked around us. The street was lined with two-and three-story houses that dated back to the early part of the century. Originally single family dwellings for the upper middle class, most of them had been converted into flats or room rentals. They were in various stages of dilapidation peeling paint, sagging porches, roofs that looked as if they might blow away in a stiff breeze.
We got out and walked up a cracked strip of concrete that bisected a patch of dry Bermuda grass and weeds. The mess could hardly have been called a lawn.
On the porch an old man sat in a rocker, a blanket wrapped around him even though it was a warm day. He had a thick cane in his hands, its black rubber tip trained on a spider that was crawling along the porch rail. After the old man had watched the spider closely for several seconds, the cane-tip following above it, he drove the rubber against the rail, squashing the arachnid. Then he grinned at us toothlessly.
The front door of the house was standing open behind a screen. Beyond it a high-ceilinged, narrow corridor stretched away in the gloom, a staircase with an ornate balustrade taking off at the left.
I pressed a stained white button beside the door and a bell rang somewhere in back.
"Go on in ... go on in...." the spider-man advised in a harsh, thin voice.
I gave him a slight smile and turned back to the door again. We waited.
There was a shuffling sound in the dimness, and then a man seemed to materialize from nowhere just inside the door. He had a smooth, expressionless face, thin-lipped, the eyes pale blue and watchful. His hair, which was combed across the top of his forehead, was coarse and medium-brown, showing no gray in spite of the fact that he must have been about fifty. He wore a nondescript flannel sport shirt and gray slacks.
He looked at Diana. "Come in, Mrs. Manzer." He didn't smile, but merely reached to open the door.
We walked in.
"Mr. Zimmer, I want you to meet Jack Bartley," Diana said. "He's my partner."
"Partner?" Zimmer looked closely at me. "I don't understand."
I extended my hand and Zimmer took it. His hand was large and thick, but his grip had no conviction. He released my hand quickly.
The old house had a musty smell which had struck me the moment I'd entered. I was also struck by something else-the fact that Zimmer wore a very cheap set of false teeth. Not only did they look false, but they clicked when he talked.
"I've decided not to sell the business," Diana said.
"Oh?" Zimmer continued to look at her expressionlessly.
"There is something we wanted to talk with you about, though. I'll let Mr. Bartley explain it."
Zimmer looked from Diana to me, and we all just stood there awkwardly. I could sense what Diana had felt about this man. There was something peculiar about him.
Finally he turned toward the back of the house. "Well, come in," he said. We followed.
Zimmer was evidently a tight man with a buck, judging by the dimness of the house. The bare bulbs which burned in every other socket along the ceiling must have been 25-watters.
We turned into a narrow side corridor which was even more gloomy. Zimmer's apartment opened off that.
His living room was drab and cheerless. It had two high windows but they were filmed with dust and shaded by an adjacent building. The furniture was ponderous, old and mismatched. Against one wall was a roll top desk which was littered with papers. Above it, strangely incongruous in the surroundings, hung a large calendar which featured a color photograph of a nude, large-busted girl.
"Sit down," Zimmer said. He took a straight-backed chair near the desk while Diana sat in a black leather lounge chair and I lit on an ottoman which didn't seem to match anything else in the room.
"Well?" Zimmer said, looking from one of us to the other.
I had come to the conclusion he was going to be a hard nut to crack. That made me sorry I'd talked.
Diana into coming to see him, for I was afraid, if I failed to convince him" to throw in with us, it would lower my standing in her eyes. Taking a deep breath, I prepared to plunge ahead and do the best I could.
"Mr. Zimmer," I began, "I have some ideas about how this business can be put on its feet. That's why Mrs. Manzer took me in as a partner. It's no secret that we need capital for expansion, and therefore we're prepared to sell you a one-third interest."
He smiled for the first time, very thinly, but he didn't speak. So I went on:
"We're going to expand operations as quickly as possible-set up tours to other points of interest and put on a promotional campaign."
Zimmer looked at Diana. Then he asked bluntly, "Does Mr. Bartley speak for you?"
"Why ... yes." She glanced uncertainly from him to me.
"Then perhaps Mr. Bartley and I should discuss some things privately." He was looking at me again, his expression still uncommunicative. "I have some definite ideas of my own."
"I'm sure," I said slowly, "that anything you have in mind can be discussed in front of Mrs. Manzer. After all, she's been the sole operator of the business for some time and...."
He cut me off without raising his voice. "I wouldn't want to embarrass her," he said.
I looked at Diana and she shrugged. Her eyes were puzzled.
"Well, I have no objection if Mrs. Manzer doesn't," I said, wondering what the hell old Zimmer had in mind.
Diana stood up. "I'll wait for you in the car, Jack."
"All right." I walked with her to the door of the room.
"I can find my way from here," she said, and touched my arm before she disappeared into the hall. I closed the door after her.
"What's this all about?" I asked Zimmer as I walked to a chair nearer him.
He gave me a long, sober look. His expression had not changed except for a slight narrowing of the eyes. He sat calmly erect, his legs crossed, his mouth forming a hard line.
"When I offered to buy Mrs. Manzer out, I had a definite reason in mind, Bartley. The tours she was running didn't interest me. What I liked about the company was the fact that it was firmly established and had a good, legitimate reputation."
I watched him closely' and allowed him to go on:
"I have no interest in sight-seeing as such. But the business would lend itself very nicely to another purpose. Can you guess what I have in mind?"
"I'm sorry, but I can't," I told him.
He gave me a long steady gaze. "Girls, Mr. Bartley. Prostitutes. Do you follow me now?"
What he'd said had startled me; you can be sure of that. But I didn't see exactly what he was driving at. I told him so.
"The company would continue to run tours," he explained. "But that would just be a front. The real business would be transacted at several houses I would establish outside of the city where the law enforcement agencies are more ... tolerant. We would transport the clientele in sedan busses-unmarked, of course-in groups of ten or twelve in each car."
"You mean cars like those elongated jobs that run back and forth to the airport?"
"Exactly. Arrangements would be made through the tour office on referrals from bars. It would be very discreet, I can assure you."
"You have the girls, do you, Mr. Zimmer?"
He smiled thinly again. "Let's just say that I can get them. There will be no problem in that regard."
"And the out-of-town locations?"
"I have certain properties in mind."
"It sounds risky," I told him.
He said, "There i i a certain degree of risk attached to every opportunity to make a large profit. The risk in this case would be slight, however. There would be nothing the city police could do, since no money would be accepted at the tour office except for transportation-sight-seeing excursions to the country."
"An interesting idea," I said.
"If you and Mrs. Manzer are prepared to operate along these lines-leaving all the special arrangements to me, of course-I would be willing to make a substantial investment in the business." He paused. "Say something in the neighborhood of twenty-five thousand dollars."
I pursed my lips and barely restrained a whistle. "It sounds tempting," I admitted.
As I mentioned before, I have nothing against prostitution. In San Diego, as a matter-of-fact, my buddy and I had dabbled in it on a small scale. We'd had these girls, two of them, who used to hustle drinks and sometimes accommodate a customer, when they found themselves a live one. We worked on a fifty-fifty split with them.
Zimmer remained silent and watched me, waiting for a more conclusive reaction.
Finally I said, "Diana-Mrs. Manzer-might not be willing to go along."
He still didn't say anything.
"Twenty-five thousand," I said. "Is that a firm offer?"
He nodded. "On the terms that I indicated."
"I'll talk with her," I told him.
"Use your own judgment, of course," he said. "But it might be possible, if she's prepared to leave the management to you, for us to go ahead with it and not involve her in the details."
"It might be possible," I agreed noncommittally.
Zimmer stood up. "Let me hear from you."
"I'll do that," I said as I walked with him to the door. I was turning the proposition around in my mind.
When I stepped into the Buick and Diana started the engine, she asked, "Well, what was that all about?"
I had decided to tell her. To try to operate any other way would have been difficult and, anyway, I felt I owed it to her to be frank. After all, it used to be her business.
"I said, "Zimmer has some ideas of his own, all right. The main one is that he wants to put us in the pandering business."
"What?" She threw me a startled glance.
"That's it," I said. Then I went on to outline exactly what he'd told me.
"Well, it's out of the question," she said indignantly.
"That's what I though you'd say," I admitted.
"What you thought I'd say? You don't mean that you would actually go for it?"
"It sounds like a slick operation," I told her.
"But prostitution, Jack!" she said, as if the mere idea were unthinkable.
"It's the world's oldest business. Always been with us and always will, regardless of anything the puritans try to do. All we'd be doing would be providing transportation. Zimmer would run the messy end of it."
"You called it by its right name the first time, Jack," she said. "It would be pandering."
"We'd still concentrate on legitimate tours," I told her. "This other would just be something extra. The money Zimmer's prepared to throw in would cover all the expansion we'd want to do. It would put us on our feet, Di."
"You really want to play along with it, hm?" She gave me a close look.
"Not if you don't want to," I said firmly.
"Bait if it were up to you...."
I finished the sentence for her: "I'd let Zimmer make us rich."
"I still don't like the man," she said.
"Neither do I. But I like his twenty-five thou, and what we'll make in dealing with him."
"You're not exactly a man of high principle, are you?"
"I never claimed to be," I said. "But I'm leveling with you."
"Let's think it over, shall we, Jack?"
"Sure."
I figured I'd gotten her about half sold. The process could be completed, I hoped, that night in bed.