Body For Sale Read online

  She pretended to think it over, but it was only to show me that she didn’t have to jump at every invitation she got. Finally she asked, “What time?”

  “Seven too early?”

  “No. I leave here at five. That will give me plenty of time to get ready.”

  “Seven then. Where?”

  She gave me an address on South Park.

  Esther Simmons’ home was a small frame cottage on a quiet residential street. It turned out that she lived with her widowed mother, a slight wisp of a woman in her sixties. Mrs. Simmons carefully looked me over and seemed to approve. But as we left, she told me to get Esther home early, just as though her daughter were a teen-ager instead of a woman in her late twenties.

  As we walked toward the car, the girl said, “She embarrasses me so. She can’t seem to realize I’ve grown up.”

  “It’s only maternal love,” I told her. “It’s a good thing I brushed my teeth since this afternoon, though. What would she have done if I had breathed liquor on her?”

  “Probably have called me into the other room and advised me to send you away. She’s a little old-fashioned. I have to carry cloves in my purse when I go out because she waits up to kiss me good-night. She doesn’t know I ever take a drink.”

  The old lady’s gray hair would probably have turned snow-white if she had seen how much alcohol her daughter could consume. I took her to the Patio, where we had two Gibsons before dinner and a double brandy afterward. Then we went to the Cellar Club, switched to bourbon and water and settled down to serious drinking.. There wasn’t much of her to get drunk because she was only an even five feet tall and weighed about a hundred pounds wet. But the drinks didn’t even seem to faze her. She was a bottomless pit.

  She was an attractive little package though. Her bare hundred pounds were distributed so that she was pleasingly plump in the right places. And her gown, a white summer semiformal, was cut to expose as much of this plumpness as convention and the laws against indecent exposure allowed.

  At the Cellar Club I asked what she thought of the extramarital activities her employer carried on in his office. By then we were on chummy enough terms for her not to be embarrassed by the question.

  “It’s no business of mine what he does inside his private office.” She shrugged. “Mr. Mathews and I reached a tacit agreement over a year ago when I first started to work for him.”

  “What was that?”

  “He wanted to play house. I let him know in very definite terms that I wasn’t in the slightest degree interested in an affair with a married man. But I also got it across that I was discreet and that he could count on me not to gossip. He got the message. He leaves me strictly alone, and I hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil.”

  “There’s been some to hear and see prior to Gertie Drake?” I suggested.

  I had been building up to this question. My sole purpose in asking Esther Simmons out hadn’t been to pump her. But it had occurred to me that my promise of a district sales manager’s job rested on a precarious basis. I thought it might strengthen my position if I had a few names other than Gertie Drake’s to mention casually to George Mathews in the event he decided to renege on our agreement.

  It wasn’t going to be that easy, though. She smiled at me. “I told you I was discreet, Tom. You found out about Gertie Drake through personal observation, not from me. If you want to find out about any prior women in Mr. Mathews’ life, you’ll have to depend on some other source of information.”

  “Why are you so loyal?” I asked. “You can’t have a very high opinion of your boss.”

  “I have the easiest job in the plant,” she said pragmatically. “I’m classified as Mr. Mathews’ private secretary, but actually I’m nothing but a receptionist. He doesn’t dictate a letter a week. I don’t even have much reception duty because few business people call on him. My main duty is to see that he’s not disturbed when he doesn’t want to be.”

  “Don’t you get bored?”

  “I’m taking some college extension courses. I do all my homework on company time. Where could I find another job that’d let me do that?”

  I had to admit that she had a good deal worth hanging on to, if she was able to reconcile her duties with her conscience.

  Since it seemed that I wasn’t going to get her to reveal anything about her boss’s love life, I decided to work on the other reason I had asked her out. The whisky we were drinking began to give me cozy ideas. It didn’t seem to have the same effect on her, though. When I suggested a nightcap at my apartment, she gave me an indulgent smile.

  “I’m discreet in more ways than one, Tom. It takes more than a dinner and a few drinks to make me that appreciative.”

  I didn’t push it. I took her home at midnight. On the front porch she slid her arms about my neck and gave me a single kiss that was about as passionate as you would expect from a kissing cousin. She had to stand on tiptoes and I had to bend a little to make connections.

  “Will I see you again?” she asked. “Or are you too disappointed in me?”

  “I’ll try again,” I said. “Maybe I can get you drunker next time. Not for a couple of weeks, though. I have a two-week leave and I plan to get in a little fishing.”

  “Oh?” she said. “You rated a leave as well as a promotion?”

  “Uh-huh.” I let it lie there.

  She disengaged herself, opened her bag and popped a couple of cloves into her mouth. In the darkness I could see her white teeth exposed in a grin.

  “Time to face Mother,” she said. “My abnormal capacity is the result of years of having to face Mother dead sober, no matter how much I’ve had to drink. Thanks, Tom, and good-night.”

  She opened the front door just enough to slip inside, but I caught a glimpse of the old lady seated in the front room reading a book.

  3

  IF THERE WAS ANY SCANDAL OVER MY APPOINTMENT AS district sales manager, most of it had died down by the time I returned from my two-week leave. In the interest of harmony Harry Graves, who had expected the promotion, had been moved to another district so that he wouldn’t have to serve under me. And while congratulations on my appointment from my sales force struck me as perfunctory, there was no sign of resentment, at least to my face.

  Esther Simmons was the only one whose congratulations sounded completely sincere. The little receptionist seemed thrilled by the big jump I had taken.

  “I had no idea you were in for so big a job,” she told me the first morning I was back. “When you said you were being promoted, I thought it would be to something like senior field representative. And here you are a junior executive.”

  “Think we ought to celebrate again?” I asked her.

  “If you’d like. But not until the weekend. I have to get up too early.”

  “Friday night then,” I said. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  There had been nothing in her tone to suggest she thought there was anything odd about my appointment after being with the company only six months. But I knew from the attitude of my immediate boss, Henry Hurlington, that there had been some speculation among the company executives. I got the impression that he wasn’t at all pleased but had no intention of jeopardizing his position as general sales manager by getting off on the wrong foot with someone who was obviously a crony of the big boss. But there were no signs of a similar reaction from the rank and file.

  In my new status as a junior executive, I had my own office, but I wasn’t important enough to rate a private secretary. When I wanted to dictate, I had to draw on the stenographers’ pool. But since the pool reserved a particular girl for each junior executive as much as possible, for all practical purposes I had my own stenographer. She was the same girl Ed Harmony had used before he retired, so she was invaluable in helping me find my way around.

  She was a stringy brunette in her mid-thirties named Norma Henstedder. She walked slightly round-shouldered from trying to look shorter than her five feet eight. And her thin face, with eno
rmous brown eyes behind thick-lensed glasses, wore an expression of sexual starvation. She seemed to have been fond of Ed Harmony, who had been sixty-five, fat, bald and with grandchildren. She developed an instant crush on me.

  Fortunately for both of us, it manifested itself as the office-wife type of crush, which demands nothing except the privilege of slavishly serving the employer. I did nothing to discourage it, but I was careful to keep our relationship on a businesslike basis, for I sensed that the least familiarity would send her completely overboard.

  The woman’s dedication to her work was a big advantage to me during the first week, because my job was no soft touch. Though I had blackmailed my way into it, I knew I had to produce in order to hold it, and that involved work. I stuck to the office night and day going over the records of everything Ed Harmony had done for the past five years. And Norma Henstedder stuck right along with me, digging items from the files and, in some cases, filling in with sidelights on past jobs she was acquainted with.

  Beyond reporting in to George Mathews my first day on the new job, a short and frigid meeting, I made a point of avoiding him since I didn’t care to push my luck. Except for an occasional glimpse of Gertie Drake in the main office, I didn’t see her either the first few days I was back, which set me to wondering if she were avoiding me. We’d had some pretty smoky sessions at my apartment, and I thought she might at least pop her head in long enough to admire my new office. It wasn’t until Friday, when I finally began to feel a little more at home in my job, that I found time to give Gertie more than passing thought, however. Then, suspecting she might still be embarrassed by my catching her with Mathews, I took the trouble to look her up.

  I arranged to get her alone by the simple device of asking Norma Henstedder for the file on a dead account. The storage files were part of Gertie’s province, and I knew the request would be relayed to her by phone. After waiting ten minutes, I went to the dead-file room.

  This was a perfect place for privacy because no one aside from Gertie had any reason to go there. And even she used it rarely.

  I found her in a rear alcove formed by twin rows of file cabinets. Startled by my unexpected appearance, she looked up from the drawer she was searching.

  She made a face at me. “You’re developing a bad habit of sneaking up on people, Tom.”

  The complete lack of self-consciousness in her tone, coupled with the oblique reference to the last time I had startled her, convinced me it wasn’t embarrassment that had kept her away.

  “Sinners ought to lock their doors,” I said. “How have you been, Gertie?”

  “All right.” She turned her attention back to the drawer.

  For a few moments I admired her in profile. She had a nice one all the way down from her pert little nose to her tiny feet.

  Finally I asked, “How’d you like to get together some night soon?”

  She shook her head without looking at me. “Sorry, Tom. I’m pretty busy these nights.”

  The answer surprised me. Gertie had always been a healthy animal with the moral outlook of an alley cat. About the only men in the office she hadn’t favored with her body were the ones who had never suggested it.

  I said, “You must not have understood the question, honey.”

  Lightly I gripped her arm and pulled her against me. Momentarily one round breast pressed into my chest, but before I could encircle her with my arms, she twisted away. The almost prim look on her face astonished me.

  “I’m not like that any more,” she said. “I only play with one man, Tom.”

  “Oh? Who’s the lucky fellow?”

  “None of your business.” She closed the drawer she’d been searching and began to search another.

  “You’re serious about this guy?”

  She barely nodded.

  “Serious like marriage?”

  She glanced at me, then away again. “Eventually, maybe. Not right away. It hasn’t gotten to that point yet.”

  “Oh?” I couldn’t think of anything more to say, so I finally murmured lamely, “Well, I wish you luck, Gertie,” and retreated.

  It wasn’t until later that same day, when I happened to spot her coming from George Mathews’ office with a radiantly happy smile on her face, that the incredible thought hit me that Mathews was the man. If she expected eventual marriage from him, she was in for a jolt, I thought. George Mathews would never divorce his meal ticket, no matter how much he was in love.

  As Gertie moved off toward her own department, I went over to the railing behind which the blond Esther sat.

  “This one seems to be lasting a while, doesn’t it?” I said.

  “What’s that?” she inquired.

  “Gertie Drake and the boss.”

  She frowned at me. “You know I won’t gossip about Mr. Mathews, Tom.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Still set for tonight?”

  “Of course. You’ll be there at seven?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  When I returned to my office, I found Norma waiting with some letters I had dictated. As I signed them I decided to take a calculated risk.

  In a large company such as Schyler Tools there is a gulf between the executive force and the workers similar to that between army officers and enlisted men. Each has certain prerogatives, which it is tacitly accepted neither must violate. Just as whatever gossip there had been about my appointment had never reached the rank and file, plant gossip among the workers rarely came to the attention of the executive force. I knew it might be unwise to try to cross the delicate line with my stenographer, but I had to take the chance.

  When I finished signing the letters and Norma was gathering them up to carry away, I said, “You’ve been going at top speed all day, Norma. Sit down for a minute and take a cigarette break.”

  The woman flushed with pleasure. “I’ve just been doing my job, Mr. Cavanaugh.”

  “You’ve been doing twice your job all week,” I told her. “Sit down and relax for a minute. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said obediently. “But I don’t smoke.” She perched herself on the edge of a chair and looked at me expectantly.

  I lit a cigarette and made a to-do of blowing out the match and dropping it in a tray while I mentally worked out the safest approach.

  Finally I said, “You know, Norma, even though you’re in the pool and I have no permanent claim on your time, I tend to regard you as my personal secretary.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I kind of think of myself that way, too.”

  “A confidential secretary is in a little different status than a mere stenographer, you know. There is a sort of unwritten rule that anything said by a boss to his personal secretary goes no farther.”

  She looked a little distressed. “Surely you don’t think I’ve been gossiping about you, do you, Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  I gave her such a trusting smile that she blinked. “Of course not, Norma. I have absolute faith in your discretion. I’m merely trying to define our relationship as a little closer than that between the average executive and the girls in the pool.”

  Immediately she looked radiant. “You can be sure I’d never mention a word of anything you told me in confidence, sir. They could twist my arm off first.”

  “It isn’t anything that serious,” I said with an indulgent chuckle. “There is a rather delicate matter I’d like to discuss with you, though.”

  She gave her head a jerky nod.

  “This is something you may think is none of my business.

  But I assure you it’s of importance to everyone concerned with company policy. I wouldn’t want you to think I was prying into something that was no concern of mine merely to satisfy petty curiosity.”

  “Oh, I’d never think that, Mr. Cavanaugh.”

  I tapped ashes from my cigarette and kept my eyes on the tray when I said, “I suspect there’s some gossip going around the plant that you may have heard.”

  “About you?” she asked in surprise. “No, sir.
I wouldn’t allow it!” Then she blushed a furious red at her own fervency.

  “I meant about Mr. Mathews, Norma.”

  Her blush faded and she blinked again. I had crossed the invisible line, and for a moment she didn’t know what to make of it. Then she seemed to decide that her loyalty demanded that she not question my motives.

  “You mean about him and Gertie Drake?” she asked warily.

  “Uh-huh.”

  After a moment of silence, she said quietly, “There is some gossip going around, I guess.”

  “Confidence works both ways, Norma,” I said. “No one is going to call you a tale-bearer because no one is ever going to know about this conversation.”

  This assurance disposed of her last reluctance to cross over the line. “You want to know everything that’s being said?” she asked.

  I merely nodded.

  4

  WHY NORMA HENSTEDDER THOUGHT I WANTED THE INFORMATION, I don’t know. Possibly she thought I had been delegated by the top brass to try to straighten out the company president before scandal disrupted the whole plant. But whatever she thought, I believe she was convinced I had some righteous motive in wanting to know what was going on and wasn’t just prying for dirt. She unloaded everything she had heard.

  I gathered that the whole plant was buzzing over the love affair because the principals made so little effort to keep it secret. Gertie Drake moved in and out of Mathews’ office at will, often remaining as long as an hour, while his secretary-receptionist barred entry to all visitors with the excuse that Mathews was “in conference.” What the blond Esther’s opinion of this sentry duty was remained a secret, she apparently being the only nongossiper in the office.

  Gertie made no bones about being the boss’s mistress, Norma told me, seeming to take considerable pride in the position. She didn’t exactly brag about it, but her attitude left no doubt that she considered Mathews her private property.

  “As though any of the rest of us would be interested in a married man,” Norma inserted virtuously. “She even refers to him as George, though she makes a point of calling him Mr. Mathews to his face when any of us girls are around.”