o o o
I rang the doorbell of the Sprague mansion at exactly 8:00. I was dressed in my best outfit–blue blazer, white shirt and gray flannels–and put money on myself as a fool for kowtowing to the surroundings–I’d be taking the clothes off as soon as Madeleine and I got to my place. The ten hours of phone work stuck with me despite the shower I’d taken at the station, I felt even more out of place than I should have and my left ear still ached from the barrage of Dahlia talk.
Madeleine opened the door, a knockout in a skirt and a tight cashmere sweater. She once-overed me, took my hand and said, “Look, I hate to pull this, but Daddy has heard about you. He insisted you stay for dinner. I told him we met at that art exhibit at Stanley Rose’s Bookshop, so if you have to pump everybody for my alibi, try to be subtle about it. All right?”
I said, “Sure,” let Madeleine link her arm through mine and lead me inside. The entrance foyer was as Spanish as the outside of the mansion was Tudor: tapestries and crossed wrought-iron swords on the whitewashed walls, thick Persian carpets over a polished wood floor. The foyer opened into a giant living room with a men’s club atmosphere–green leather chairs arranged around low tables and settees; huge stone fireplace; small Oriental throw rugs, multicolored, placed together at different angles, so that just the right amount of oak floor bordered them. The walls were cherrywood, and featured framed sepias of the family and their ancestors.
I noticed a stuffed spaniel poised by the fireplace with a yellowed newspaper rolled into its mouth. Madeleine said, “That’s Balto. The paper is the LA _Times_ for August 1, 1926. That’s the day Daddy learned he’d made his first million. Balto was our pet then. Daddy’s accountant called up and said, ‘Emmett, you’re a millionaire!’ Daddy was cleaning his pistols, and Balto came in with the paper. Daddy wanted to consecrate the moment, so he shot him. If you look closely, you can see the bullet hole in his chest. Hold your breath, lovey. Here’s the family.”
Slack-jawed, I let Madeleine point me into a small sitting room. The walls were covered with framed photographs; the floor space was taken up by the three other Spragues in matching easy chairs. They all looked up; nobody stood up. Smiling without exposing my teeth, I said, “Hello.” Madeleine made the introductions while I gawked down at the still-life ensemble.
“Bucky Bleichert, may I present my family. My mother, Ramona Cathcart Sprague. My father, Emmett Sprague. My sister, Martha McConville Sprague.”
The ensemble came to life with little nods and smiles. Then Emmett Sprague beamed, got to his feet and stuck out his hand. I said, “A pleasure, Mr. Sprague,” and shook it, eyeing him while he eyed me. The patriarch was short and barrel-chested, with a cracked, sun-weathered face and a full head of white hair that had probably once been sandy colored. I placed his age as somewhere in his fifties, his handshake as the grip of someone who’d done a good deal of physical labor. His voice was cut-glass Scottish, not the broad burr of Madeleine’s imitation: “I saw you fight Mondo Sanchez. You boxed the pants off him. Another Billy Conn you were.”
I thought of Sanchez, a built-up middleweight stiff I’d fought because my manager wanted me to get a rep for creaming Mexicans. “Thanks, Mr. Sprague.”
“Thank you for giving such a dandy performance. Mondo was a good boy, too. What happened to him?”
“He died from a heroin overdose.”
“God bless him. Too bad he didn’t die in the ring, it would have spared his family a lot of grief. Speaking of families, please shake hands with the rest of mine.”
Martha Sprague stood up on command. She was short, plump and blonde, with a tenacious resemblance to her father, blue eyes so light that it looked like she sent them out to be bleached and a neck that was acned and raw from scratching. She looked like a teenaged girl who’d never outgrow her baby fat and mature into beauty. I shook her firm hand feeling sorry for her; she caught what I was thinking immediately. Her pale eyes fired up as she yanked her paw away.