The Eighth Dwarf Read online

  “Who’re you?” Ploscaru said.

  “As I told the man, nobody.”

  “You have a name.”

  “Jackson. Minor Jackson.”

  “Thank you, Minor Jackson,” the dwarf said gravely. “I am in your debt.”

  “Not really.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You are rich, then?”

  “No.”

  “But you would like to be?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You were in the war, of course.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do—in the war?”

  “I was sort of a spy.”

  Still staring up at Jackson, the dwarf nodded slowly several times. “I can make you rich.”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The dwarf rose and thoughtfully dusted off his still-damp palms. It was a gesture that he often used whenever he was trying to decide about something. It was also a gesture that Jackson would come to know well.

  “Drowning is thirsty business,” Ploscaru said. “Let’s go get some drink and talk about making you rich.”

  “Why not?” Jackson said.

  They didn’t have their drink at the actor’s. Instead, they left without saying goodbye to their host, got into Jackson’s Plymouth, and drove to the dwarf’s place.

  On the way, Jackson learned for a fact that the dwarf’s name was Nicolae Ploscaru. He also learned, although these facts were totally uncheckable, that Ploscaru was the youngest son of a minor Romanian nobleman (possibly a count); that there were vast but, of course, long-lost estates in both Bessarabia and Transylvania; that until the war, Bucharest had boasted the most beautiful women in Europe, most of whom the dwarf had slept with; and finally, that before escaping to Turkey, the dwarf, when not spying for the British, had slain four, or possibly five, SS officers with his own hands.

  “I strangled them with these,” the dwarf said holding up the twin instruments of death for possible inspection. “The last one, a colonel—rather a nice chap, actually—I finished off in a Turkish bath not too far from the Palace Athénée. You know the Palace Athénée, of course.”

  “No.”

  “It’s a hotel; quite a fine one. When you get to Bucharest, you should make it a point to stay there.”

  “Okay,” Jackson said, “I will.”

  “And be sure to mention my name.”

  “Yes,” said Jackson, not quite smiling, “I’ll do that too.”

  The dwarf’s place was a house with a view high up in the Hollywood hills. It was built of redwood and glass and stone, and it obviously didn’t belong to the dwarf. For one thing, the furnishings were too feminine, and for another, nearly everything that could take it had a large, elaborate intertwined double W either engraved or woven or branded into its surface.

  Jackson stood in the living room and looked around. “Nice place,” he said. “Who’s WW?”

  “Winona Wilson,” the dwarf said, trying very hard to keep his w’s from sounding like v’s and almost succeeding. “She’s a friend of mine.”

  “And what does Winona do?”

  “Mostly, she tries to get money from her rich mother up in Santa Barbara.”

  “I wish her luck.”

  “I want to get some dry clothes on,” the dwarf said. “Can you make a martini?”

  “Sure.”

  Ploscaru gestured toward a long barlike affair that separated the living room from the kitchen. “It’s all over there,” he said, turned, and was gone.

  By the time the dwarf came back, the drinks were mixed and Jackson was sitting on one of the high stools at the bar looking down across the slightly sunken living room and through the glass to the faraway lights of Hollywood and Los Angeles which were just beginning to come on in the early-September evening.

  Ploscaru was wearing a long (long on him, anyway) green silk dressing gown that obviously had been tailored. Peeping out from underneath the skirt of the dressing gown were a pair of red Turkish slippers whose toes turned up and back and ended in small silver bells that jingled not unpleasantly when he moved.

  Jackson handed the dwarf his drink and said, “What do you do, friend—I mean, really?”

  Ploscaru smiled, revealing large white teeth that seemed almost square. He then took the first swallow of his martini, shuddered as he nearly always did, and lit one of his Old Golds. “I live off women,” he said.

  “Sounds pleasant.”

  The dwarf shrugged. “Not altogether. But some women find me attractive—despite everything.” He made a curiously sad gesture that was almost an apology for his three-foot-seven-inch height. It was to be one of only two times that Jackson would ever hear the dwarf make any reference to it

  Ploscaru glanced about for some place to sit and decided on the long cream-colored couch with its many bright pillows, all with WW woven into them. He settled back into it like a child, with much wriggling. Then he began his questions.

  He wanted to know how long Jackson had been in Los Angeles. Two days. Where had he been before that? In San Francisco. When had he got out of the service? In February. What had he done since then? Very little. Where had he gone to school? The University of Virginia. What had he studied? Liberal Arts. Was that a subject? Not really. What had Jackson done before the war?

  For a time Jackson was silent. “I’m trying to remember,” he said finally. “I got out of school in ’36. Then I went to Europe for a year, bumming around. After that I was with an advertising agency in New York, but that only lasted six months. Then I went to work for a yacht dealer on commission, but I didn’t sell any, so that didn’t last either. After that I wrote a very bad play, which nobody would produce, and then—well, then there was one winter that I skied, and a summer that I sailed, and a fall that I played polo. And finally, in ’40, I went into the Army. I was twenty-six.”

  “Have you ever been poor?” Ploscaru said.

  “I’ve been broke.”

  “There’s a difference.”

  “Yes,” Jackson said. “There is.”

  “Your family is wealthy.” It wasn’t a question.

  “My old man is still trying to get that way, which is probably why he married my mother, who always was rich and probably always will be as long as she keeps marrying rich husbands. The rich tend to do that, don’t they?—marry each other.”

  “To preserve the species,” Ploscaru said with a shrug as though the answer were as obvious as preordination. He then frowned, which made his thick black hair move down toward his eyes. “Most Americans don’t, but do you speak any languages?”

  “French and German and enough Italian to get by.”

  “Where did you learn your languages?”

  “At a school in Switzerland. When I was thirteen my parents got divorced and I turned rotten. They packed me off to this school for three years, which was really more like a boys’ prison. Rich boys, of course. You either learned or else.”

  Ploscaru examined his cigarette and then crushed it out in a soapstone ashtray. “So now you would like to make money?”

  “It would be a change.”

  “When a war ends,” the dwarf said slowly, “there are a number of ways for the enterprising to make money. The most obvious, of course, is to deal in scarce goods—the black market. Another is to provide certain services for the rich who managed to remain rich even though they themselves were, in effect, casualties of the war. This I propose to do. Does it interest you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, I really didn’t expect you to.”

  “But it’s a way to make money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it legal?”

  “Almost.”

  “Then I’m interested,” Jackson said.

  3

  There was a gas war going on in Long Beach, and Jackson pulled the Plymouth into a station with
a big sign out front that boasted of gasoline for 21.9 cents a gallon. Catty-corner across the street, the man at the Texaco station, a grim look on his face, was taking down his own sign and putting up a new one that would match his competitor’s price.

  The top was lowered on the convertible, and music was coming from its radio. The music was Jimmy Dorsey’s version of “Green Eyes,” and the dwarf sang along while the attendant filled up the tank. The dwarf liked to sing.

  That was one of the several things Jackson had learned about Ploscaru since their meeting at the actor’s pool three weeks before. A week after that, Jackson had accepted the dwarf’s invitation to move in and share the house in the Hollywood hills that belonged to Winona Wilson—who, it seemed, would be staying on in Santa Barbara indefinitely as she struggled to get money out of her rich mother.

  It was during those same three weeks that Ploscaru had carried on his often mysterious negotiations with the people in Mexico—negotiations that Jackson would be concluding later that day in Ensenada. And it was also during those same three weeks that Jackson had discovered that the dwarf knew an incredible number of people—incredible, at least, in Jackson’s estimation. Most of them, it turned out, were women who ran the dwarf’s errands, chauffeured him around, and took him—and Jackson—to parties. At the parties Ploscaru would often sing and play the piano, if there was one. Sometimes the songs would be sad Romanian ones, and if the dwarf had had enough to drink, he would sing with tears streaming down his face. Then the women would cuddle and try to console him, and while all that was going on the dwarf would sometimes wink at Jackson.

  But more often than not, the dwarf would sing popular American songs. He seemed to know the words to all of them, and he sang in a true, deep baritone. His piano playing, while enthusiastic, wasn’t really very good.

  Jackson came to realize that most men resented the dwarf. They resented his singing, his size, his charm—and most of all, they resented his success with women, which small knots of them would often discuss in prurient whispers at the endless succession of parties. Ploscaru seemed to enjoy the resentment; but then, the dwarf, Jackson had learned, doted on almost any kind of attention.

  With the tank now full, Jackson followed the coast highway south toward San Diego. It was still early morning, and the dwarf sang most of the way to Laguna Beach, where they stopped at a hotel for coffee.

  After the waitress had poured him a refill, Ploscaru said, “Are you sure you remember the code phrases?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “What are they?”

  “Well, for one thing, they’re silly.”

  “In spite of that, what are they?”

  “I’m supposed to call her on the house phone and tell her my name and then, like a fool, I say, ‘Wenn der Schwan singt lu, lu, lu, lu.’ Jesus.”

  “And what does she reply?”

  “Well, if she can stop giggling, she’s supposed to come back with, ‘Mach ich meine Augen zu, Augen zu, Augen zu.’”

  The dwarf had smiled.

  After the coffee they continued down the coast, stopped for lunch at La Jolla, and then drove on into San Diego, where Jackson dropped Ploscaru off at the zoo.

  “Why don’t you go to a picture instead of hanging around here all afternoon?”

  The dwarf shook his head. “There’ll be children here. Children and animals and I get along famously, you know.”

  “I didn’t, but I do now. I’m going to try to get back here before midnight. Maybe when you get through with the kids and the animals you can locate us some bourbon. Not gin. Bourbon. I can’t take any more gin.”

  “Very well,” the dwarf said, “bourbon.”

  A half hour later, Jackson was across the border checkpoint, through Tijuana, and driving south along the narrow, much-patched coastal road into Baja California. There was a lot of scenery and not much else to look at between Tijuana and Ensenada. Occasionally there would be a cluster of fishing shacks, a substantial house or two, and the odd tourist court, but mostly it was blue sea, steep bluffs, fine beaches, and on the left, dry, mulberry-colored mountains.

  Jackson made the sixty-five-mile trip in a little less than two hours and pulled up at the entrance of the sprawling, mission-inspired Hotel Riviera del Pacífico, which had been built facing the bay back in the twenties by a gambling syndicate that Jack Dempsey had fronted for.

  It was a little after five when Jackson entered the spacious lobby, found the house phones, picked one up, and asked the operator for Suite 232. The call was answered by a woman with a low voice who said only “Hello,” but even from that Jackson could detect the pronounced German accent.

  “This is Minor Jackson.”

  The woman said nothing. Jackson sighed and recited the prearranged phrase in German about the swan singing lu, lu, lu, lu. Very seriously the woman replied in German that it made her eyes close. Then in English she said, “Please come up, Mr. Jackson.”

  Jackson went up the stairs to the second floor, found 232, and knocked. The woman who opened the door was younger than the dwarf had led him to expect. Ploscaru had said that she was a spinster, and to Jackson that meant a maiden lady in her late thirties or forties. But Ploscaru’s English, sifted as it was through several languages, occasionally lost some of its exactness.

  She was, however, certainly no spinster. Jackson guessed her to be somewhere between twenty-five and twenty-nine, and on the whole, he found her almost beautiful, but if not quite that, at least striking. Her face was oval in shape and light olive in complexion. She wore no makeup, not even a touch of lipstick on her full-lipped mouth, which was smiling slightly now.

  “Please come in, Mr. Jackson,” she said. “You are just in time for tea.”

  It sounded like a phrase that had been learned early from someone with a British accent and hoarded carefully for later use. Jackson nodded, returned her small smile, and followed her into the suite’s sitting room, where a tea service rested on a table.

  “Please sit down,” she said. “My father will join us presently.”

  “Thank you, Miss Oppenheimer,” Jackson said, and picked out a comfortable-looking beige chair near the window. The Oppenheimer woman decided on a straight chair near the tea service. She sat down slowly, keeping her ankles and knees together, and was not at all concerned about what to do with her hands. She folded them into her lap, after first smoothing her dress down over her knees, and smiled again at Jackson as though waiting for him to say something observant about the weather.

  Jackson said nothing. Before the silence became strained, the woman said, “You had a pleasant journey?”

  “Very pleasant. Very … scenic.”

  “And Mr. Ploscaru, he is well?”

  “Very well.”

  “We have never met, you know.”

  “You and Mr. Ploscaru?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “We have only talked on the telephone. And corresponded, of course. How old a man is he?”

  “Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, somewhere around there.”

  “So young?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the telephone he sounds so much more older. No, that is not right. I mean—”

  “Mature?” Jackson supplied.

  She nodded gratefully. “He could not come himself, of course.”

  “No.”

  “The trouble with his papers.”

  “Yes.”

  “They are very important these days, proper papers. Passports. Visas.”

  “Yes.”

  “He is a large man, Mr. Ploscaru? From his voice he somehow sounds quite large.”

  “No, not too large.”

  She again nodded gratefully at the information. “Well, I am sure you will be able to handle everything most satisfactorily.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jackson had never prided himself on his small talk. He was wondering how long it would continue, and whether he might risk lighting a cigarette,
when the blind man came in. He came in almost briskly from the bedroom, carrying a long white cane that he didn’t really seem to need. He moved into the center of the room and stopped, facing the window.

  “Let’s see, you are near the tea, Leah,” the blind man said in German.

  “Yes, and Mr. Jackson is in the beige chair,” she said.

  The blind man nodded, turned slightly in Jackson’s direction, took two confident steps forward, and held out his hand. Jackson, already up, accepted the handshake as the blind man said in German, “Welcome to Ensenada, Herr Jackson; I understand you speak German.”

  “I try.”

  The blind man turned and paused as if deciding which chair to select. He moved confidently toward a wingbacked leather one; gave it a cursory, almost careless tap with his cane; and settling into it, said, “Well, we’ll speak English. Leah and I need the practice. You’ve already met my daughter, of course.”

  “Yes.”

  “We had quite a nice chat about Mr. Ploscaru,” she said.

  The blind man nodded. “Damned clever chap, that Romanian. Haven’t met him, of course, but we’ve talked on the telephone. Known him long, Mr. Jackson?”

  “No, not terribly long.”

  The blind man nodded again and turned his head slightly so that he seemed almost to be looking at his daughter, but not quite: he was a trifle off, although no more than a few degrees. “Think we might have the tea now, Leah?”

  “Of course,” Leah Oppenheimer said, and shifted around in her chair toward the tea service, which Jackson, for some reason, assumed was sterling.

  Afternoon tea was apparently a studied and much-enjoyed ritual in the Oppenheimer household. It was certainly elaborate enough. There were four kinds of delicate, crustless sandwiches, two kinds of cake, and a variety of cookies.

  While the daughter performed the tea ritual, Jackson scruntinized the father, Franz Oppenheimer, the man who the dwarf had said spoke no English. Either Ploscaru had lied or Oppenheimer had deceived the dwarf. Jackson bet on the dwarf. For if Ploscaru was not a congenital liar, he was certainly a practicing one who regarded lying as an art form, although perhaps only a minor one.