Chapter 21: Take Another Drink
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That being the obviously smart thing to do, I called Eddie Mars and told him I was coming down to his Club that evening to talk to him. That was how smart I was. I got down there about twenty-six, under the hard high light of Saturn that lost itself in the top layers of the evening mist. The Cypress Club was at the far end of the habitat, a rambling frame house that had been transported wholesale from Earth by a rich man, and had later become a hotel. It was now a big dark outwardly shabby place in a thick grove of Venusian Cypresses at the edge of the dome, which gave it its name. It had enormous scrolled porches, turrets all over the place, stained glass trims around the big windows, big empty stables at the back and a general air of nostalgic decay. Eddie Mars had left the outside much as he found it, instead of making it over to look like a movie set. I left my rickshaw on a street with dim streetlights and walked into the grounds along a damp gravel path to the main entrance. A doorman in a double-breasted guards coat let me into a huge dim silent lobby from which a white oak staircase curved majestically up to the darkness of an upper floor. I checked my coat and waited, listening to music and confused voices behind heavy double doors. They seemed a long way off, and not quite of the same world as the building itself. Then the slim pasty-faced blond man who had been with Eddie Mars and the pug at Geiger's Counter came through a door under the staircase, smiled at me bleakly and took me back with him along a carpeted hall to the boss's office. This was a square room with a deep old bay window and a stone fireplace in which a real log fire burned in defiance of atmospheric management regulations. It was wainscoted in walnut and had a frieze of faded damask above the panelling. The ceiling was high and remote. There was a smell of cold sea. Eddie Mars's dark sheen-less desk winked discreet lights at me. It didn't belong in the room, but neither did anything made after 1900. His carpet had a Florida suntan and a china tea set on a copper tray sat in the corner of the shiny bar-top. I wondered who that was for. There was a door in the corner that had a time-lock on it. Eddie Mars grinned at me socially and shook hands and moved his chin at the vault. "I'm a pushover for a heist mob here except for one thing," he said cheerfully. "The local johns drop in here every morning and watch me open it. I have an arrangement with them." "You hinted you had something for me," I said. "What is it?" "What's your hurry? Have a drink and sit down." "No hurry at all. You and I haven't anything to talk about but business." "You'll have a drink and like it," he said. He mixed a couple and put mine down beside a red leather chair and stood cross-legged against the desk itself, one hand in the side pocket of his midnight-blue dinner jacket, the thumb outside and the nail glistening. In dinner clothes he looked a little harder than in grey flannel, but he still looked like a horseman. We drank and nodded at each other. "Ever been here before?" he asked. "Once or twice. I don't get any kick out of gambling." "Not with money," he smiled. "You ought to look in tonight. One of your friends is outside betting the wheels. I hear she's doing pretty well. Vivian Regan." I sipped my drink and took one of his monogrammed cigarettes. "I kind of like the way you handled that yesterday," he said. "You made me sore at the time but I could see afterwards how right you were. You and I ought to get along. How much do I owe you?" "For doing what?" "Still careful, eh? I have my pipeline into headquarters, or I wouldn't be here. I get them the way they happen, not the way you read them on the newsnets." He showed me his large white teeth. "How much have you got?" I asked. "You're not talking money?" "Information was the way I understood it." "Information about what?" "You have a short memory. Regan." "Oh, that." He waved his glistening nails in the quiet light from one of those antique bronze lamps that shoot a beam of light at the ceiling. "I hear you got the information already. I felt I owed you a fee. I'm used to paying for nice treatment." "I didn't ride down here to make a touch. I get paid for what I do. Not much by your standards, but I make enough. One customer at a time is a good rule. You didn't bump Regan off, did you?" "No. Did you think I did?" "I wouldn't put it past you." He laughed. "You're kidding." I laughed. "Sure, I'm kidding. I never saw Regan, but I saw his holo. You haven't got men for the work. And while we're on that subject don't send any more gun punks with orders. I might get hysterical and blow one down." He looked through his glass at the fire, set it down on the end of the desk and wiped his lips with a sheer white handkerchief.
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Part 1