A Man of Affairs by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

heavy features of that spuriously noble design that makes you think of togas and Cicero. A shock of prematurely white hair, unkempt in the contrived way of a second-rate poet. Nobody seemed to know very much about his past. His father had been well off. Mike had never gone to college. He got his first national publicity back in 1934 when he was thirty. In the big receivership tangle over the Geiss Roller Bearing empire, it was Mike who popped up out of no place, holding aces back to back. He had never married. I had heard a lot of words about him. Crafty, unscrupulous, power-mad, egomaniac. And also, charming, able, generous, genius.
    I was not braced for Mike in the flesh. He had a deep tan and he wore a straw coolie hat and an ankle-length pink sarong, professionally knotted at the waist and thoroughly rump-sprung. He was shorter than he had looked in his pictures; he stood about five-nine. There were hard shifting slabs of muscle in his back and shoulders and chest, and the sarong was knotted around a slightly protruding belly that looked hard as a rock. His eyes were a very pale gray-blue, and his chest hair was heavy and white. He had something of a Hawaiian look about him. He radiated intense energy, and a conspicuous charm. It was almost impossible to imagine him in any group he would not dominate merely on the basis of an animal magnetism. I sensed that this was a man who would commit himself one hundred and ten percent to anything he decided to do. I sensed that it would be a sorry situation to be standing in his way.
    Fletcher Bowman introduced us. Mike was, bewilderingly, a jolly and muscular elder brother to Puss, a courtly uncle to Louise, a drinking partner to Warren Dodge, a fellow sportsman to Tommy, all in the space of a minute and a half. When he released my hand he grinned shrewdly up at me and thumped me lightly in the ribs with a slow fist big as a burl of mahogany, and said in a voice the others could not hear, “Well make some talk when we get a chance, Big Sam.”
    And the hell of it was that it made me feel flattered and honored to be given this special attention, even though I knew it was only a part of his tactics. “I’m the uninvited guest,” I said.
    “Self-invited. And the only reason for that is because I didn’t think there was a chance you’d come. You fit right into this picture the way we want to set it up, Sam. Folks, you’ll need a drink before we make the rounds. No, Fletcher, I’ll take them around.”
    He motioned and one of the white-coated men came over and took our drink order. Mike was drinking steaming coffee from a pewter mug with a glass bottom. A small boy with a white jacket and great dignity came over to us and offered a tray of hors d’oeuvres.
    Mike rapped him on the top of the crinkly skull and the boy grinned with quick pleasure and worship. “This is Skylark,” he said. “Romeo and Ruby’s youngest. Romeo and Ruby stay here on the island the year round and keep things in shape. When I move in with a crowd, they beef up the staff with their relatives and stock up on food and liquor.”
    Our drinks came and Mike took us on a circuit of the pool. I knew it would take quite a little while before I could fit names to the faces. But there was one that was easy. Bonny Carson. I had expected to find at least one person from the entertainment world there, but I would not have guessed it would be Bonny. She hit her peak in the late forties and early fifties when she starred in several hit musicals. Outside of infrequent guest spots on television, she had dropped out of sight. But the big-eyed clown face was unmistakable. She had strong gifts of comedy, and a brass voice with which she could lift the roof off the house when she belted out a song. But on a Wednesday evening, the tenth of May, on Dubloon Cay, she was solemnly and somewhat sullenly drunk, and she was showing her thirty-five-plus years. There was a little man hovering around her, name of Bundy. He had a