Scruff

by Robert Ludlum

  “There were advantages to be gained.”

  “I’m sure there were, if you had been serious in your intentions.”

  “Are you implying that I wasn’t?”

  Oh, Lord, I was serious, Phyl! I was concerned. I was young and angry.

  “I arrived at that conclusion, Mr. Trevayne. I’m sure others did also.… You let the word out that you’d be interested in exploratory talks of merger. One by one you held successive conferences with no less than seventeen major defense contractors over a three-year period. A number of these were written up in the newspapers.” Hill flipped through the file and removed a sheaf of clippings. “You certainly had an impressive assortment of suitors.”

  “We had a great deal to offer.”

  Only “offer,” Phyl. Nothing else; never anything else.

  “You even went so far as to arrive at tentative agreements with several. There were a number of startling fluctuations on the New York Exchange.”

  “My accountants will confirm that I was not in the market then.”

  “With reason?” asked the President.

  “With reason,” answered Trevayne.

  “Yet none of the exploratory conferences, none of these tentative agreements, was ever satisfactorily concluded.”

  “The obstacles were insurmountable.”

  The people were insurmountable. The manipulators.

  “May I suggest, Mr. Trevayne, that you never intended to reach any firm agreements?”

  “You may suggest that, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “And would it be inaccurate to suggest further that you gained a relatively detailed working knowledge of the financial operations of seventeen major corporations involved in defense spending?”

  “Not inaccurate. I’d stress the past tense, however. It was over a decade ago.”

  “A short period of time when you’re talking about corporate policy,” said the President. “I imagine that most of the executive personnel remain the same.”

  “Probably so.”

  William Hill rose from his chair and took several steps to the edge of the mahogany table. He looked down at Trevayne and spoke quietly, good-naturedly. “You were exorcising a few demons, weren’t you?”

  Andrew met the old gentleman’s eyes and couldn’t help himself; he smiled slowly, with a marked degree of defeat. “Yes, I was.”

  “You were repaying the sort of people who destroyed your father.… March, nineteen fifty-two.”

  “It was childish. A hollow kind of revenge; they weren’t responsible.”

  Remember, Phyl? You told me: “Be yourself. This isn’t you, Andy! Stop it!”

  “Satisfying, however, I would think.” Hill walked around the desk and leaned against the front edge between Trevayne and the President. “You forced a number of powerful men to make concessions, lose time, become defensive; all for a young man barely in his thirties who held a large carrot in front of their faces. I’d say that was very satisfying. What I can’t understand is why you so abruptly stopped. If my information is correct, you were in a position of extreme strength. It’s not inconceivable that you might have emerged as one of the world’s richest men. Certainly possible that you could eventually have ruined a number of those you considered the enemy. Especially in the market.”

  “I suppose I could say I got religion.”

  “It’s happened before, I’m told,” said the President.

  “Then let’s call it that.… It occurred to me—with my wife’s help—that I had involved myself in the same form of waste I found so appalling in … March of nineteen fifty-two. I was on the other side, but the waste was the same.… And that, Mr. President, Mr. Ambassador, is all I care to say about it. I sincerely hope it’s acceptable.”

  Trevayne smiled as best he could, for he was sincere.

  “Entirely.” The President reached for his highball as Hill nodded and returned to his chair. “Our questions have been answered; as the Ambassador said, we were curious, we had to know. Among other things, your state of mind—which, frankly, we never doubted.”

  “We assumed it to be healthy.” Hill laughed as he spoke. “Anyone who leaves his own company to take on a thankless State Department job and then assumes the headaches of a philanthropic foundation is no ruthless Caesar of the financial world.”

  “Thank you.”

  The President leaned forward, locking his eyes with Andrew’s. “It’s of paramount importance that this job be carried out, Mr. Trevayne; go the distance. The specter of financial and political collusion is always ugly; it becomes worse if it’s suspected of being covered up. In other words, once you commit yourself, that’s it. There’s no turning back.”

  Andrew realized that the President was giving him his last opportunity to reconsider. But the decision had really been made when he’d first heard the rumors. He knew he was the man to do it. He wanted to do it. For many reasons.

  Among them, the memory of a Boston courtroom.

  “I’d like the post, Mr. President. I won’t quit.”

  “I believe you.”

  6

  Phyllis Trevayne wasn’t often annoyed with her husband. He was careless, but she attributed that to his extraordinary concentration on whatever project he currently undertook, not to indifference. He had little patience with the niceties, but he was a nice person, time permitting. Abrupt, but gentle in his relationships. Abrupt even with her sometimes, but always considerate. And he had been there when she needed him most. The awful years.

  She was annoyed with him this evening, however.

  He had told her—asked her, really—to meet him in town. In the Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel. He specifically had said seven-thirty; there was no reason why he should be late, he’d expressly pointed that out.

  It was eight-fifteen, and no message had arrived to explain his absence. She was hungry as hell, among other things. And besides, she had had her own plans for the evening. Both children were leaving for their respective schools within the week; Pamela back to Miss Porters, Steve to Haverford. Husbands never understood the preparations; there were as many logistic decisions to be made prior to sending children away for three months as there were in most business dealings. Probably more. She had wanted to spend the evening making a few of those decisions, not driving into New York.

  Besides, she had a lecture to prepare. Well, not really; that could wait.

  She was going to talk to Andy about getting a chauffeur. She hated that goddamned Lincoln. She hated the idea of a chauffeur, too, but she hated the Lincoln more. And Andy wouldn’t let her drive a smaller car into New York. When she objected, he produced statistics about the vulnerability of small cars on the highway.

  Oh, damn! damn! damn! Where was he?

  It was eight-twenty now. Carelessness was rapidly becoming rudeness.

  She’d ordered a second vermouth-cassis and nearly finished it. It was an innocuous drink, a feminine drink, and the best to sip while waiting, because she didn’t really like it. And of course it was necessary that she didn’t like it. She was flattered that several men had passed her table and given her second looks. Not at all bad for forty-two—about to be forty-three—and two grown children. She must remember to tell Andy about them. He’d laugh and say something like: What did you expect, you think I married a mongrel?

  She had a good sex life, Phyllis reflected. Andy was a passionate man, an inquisitive man. They both enjoyed the bed. What had Tennessee Williams said? Was it Williams? Yes, it had to be.… Some character in an early play, a play about Italians … Sicilians, had said it. If the bed’s okay, the marriage’s okay!… Something like that.

  She liked Tennessee Williams. He was a poet as much as a playwright. Perhaps more of a poet.

  Suddenly Phyllis Trevayne felt sick, terribly sick. Her eyes lost their focus, the entire Palm Court seemed to spin around and around. And then she heard voices above her.

  “Madame, madame! Are you ill? Madame! Boy! Boy! Get smelling salts!”

  O
ther voices, crescendos of volume, a blurring of words … nothing made sense, nothing was real. There was a hardness against her face, and she vaguely knew it was the marble floor of the room. Everything began to go dark, black. And then she heard the words.

  “I’ll take care of her! It’s my wife! We’ve a suite upstairs! Here, give me a hand! It’s all right!”

  But the voice wasn’t that of her husband.

  Andrew Trevayne was furious. The taxi he’d taken from his office at Danforth had rammed into a Chevrolet sedan, and the policeman had insisted he remain on the scene until all the statements were taken. The wait was interminable. When he told the police officer he was in a hurry, the patrolman replied that if the passenger in the Chevrolet could wait, prone on his back, for an ambulance, the least Trevayne could do was wait for the statements to be taken.

  Twice Trevayne had gone to a corner pay phone to call his wife at the Plaza and explain, but each time he reached the bell captain to have her paged, he was told she wasn’t in the Palm Court. The traffic down from Connecticut was probably lousy, and she’d be doubly upset if she arrived late and found him not there.

  Goddamn it! Goddamn it!

  Finally, at eight-twenty-five, he’d given his statement to the police and was allowed to leave the scene.

  As he flagged down another cab, he vaguely thought about the fact that the second time he’d called the Plaza, the bell captain seemed to recognize his voice. Or, at least, the time span between his requesting the paging of his wife and the answer seemed much shorter than on the first call. But Trevayne knew his impatience was heightened when he was angry. Perhaps that was it.

  And yet, if that were so, why didn’t it seem longer?

  Not shorter.

  * * *

  “Yes, sir! Yes, sir! The description is the same! She sat right there!”

  “Then where is she?”

  “Her husband, sir! Her husband took her upstairs to their rooms!”

  “I’m her husband, you goddamned idiot! Now, tell me!” Trevayne had the waiter by the throat.

  “Please, sir!” The waiter screamed, as most of the Palm Court turned in the direction of the loud voices, heard above the punctuated strains of the violin quartet. Two Plaza house detectives pulled Trevayne’s hands away from the pleading waiter. “He said they had rooms—a suite upstairs!”

  Trevayne threw the arms off him and raced to the desk. When one of the detectives came up behind him, he did something he wouldn’t have thought he was capable of doing. He slammed his fist into the man’s neck. The detective fell backward as his fellow officer withdrew a pistol.

  Simultaneously, the frightened clerk behind the desk spoke hysterically.

  “Here, sir! Trevayne! Mrs. A. Trevayne. Suite Five H and I! The reservation was made this afternoon!”

  Trevayne didn’t think about the man behind him. He ran to the door marked “Stairs” and raced up the concrete steps. He knew the detective followed; the shouts came at him to stop, but he refused. It was only necessary to reach a suite at the Plaza Hotel marked “Five H and I.”

  He pushed his full weight into the corridor door and emerged on the thin rug that bespoke of better times. The doors in front of him read “Five A,” then “B,” then “Five C and D.” He rounded the corner and the letters stared him in the face.

  “H and I.”

  The door was locked, and he threw himself against it. It gave only slightly under his weight. Trevayne moved back several feet and slammed the heel of his foot against the lock area.

  It cracked, but did not open.

  By now the winded, middle-aged house detective approached.

  “You goddamn son-of-a-bitch! I could have shot you! Now, get away from there or I will!”

  “You will not! My wife’s in there!”

  The strident urgency of Trevayne’s command had its effect. The detective looked at the panicked husband and lent his own foot to Trevayne’s next assault. The door came off the upper left hinge, crashing down obliquely into the short foyer. Trevayne and the detective rushed into the room.

  The detective saw what he had to see and turned away. He’d seen it before. He’d wait in the doorframe, both eyes on the husband, to make sure there was no violence.

  Phyllis Trevayne was naked in the white sheets of the bed; the covers were at the foot, lumped as if thrown off carelessly. On the night table, on the left side, was a bottle of Drambuie, two glasses half-full.

  On Phyllis Trevayne’s breasts were lipstick marks. Phalluses outlined toward the nipples.

  The detective assumed that somebody had had a ball. He hoped to Christ the third party had left the premises.

  Goddamn fool if he hadn’t.

  Phyllis Trevayne sat up in the bed drinking coffee, wrapped in towels. The doctor had finished his examination and motioned to Trevayne to come into the other room.

  “I’d say a very powerful sedative, Mr. Trevayne. A Mickey Finn, if you like. There won’t be much aftereffect, perhaps a headache, upset stomach.”

  “Was she … was she assaulted?”

  “Debatable, without a more thorough examination than I can perform here. If she was, it was a struggle; I don’t believe there was penetration.… But I think an attempt was made, I won’t disguise that.”

  “She’s not aware of the … attempt, is she?”

  “I’m sorry. Only she can answer that.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  Trevayne returned to the front room of the suite and took his wife’s hand, kneeling down beside her.

  “You’re a rough old lady, you know that?”

  “Andy?” Phyllis Trevayne looked at her husband calmly, but with a fear he rightfully had never seen before. “Whoever it was tried to rape me. I remember that.”

  “I’m glad you do. He didn’t.”

  “I don’t think so.… Why, Andy, why?”

  “I don’t know, Phyl. But I’m going to find out.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In a traffic accident. At least, I thought it was an accident. I’m not sure now.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Not we, Phyl. Me. I have to reach a man in Washington. I don’t want any part of them.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Neither do I, really. But I think there’s a connection.”

  “The President’s in Camp David, Mr. Trevayne. I’m sorry, it wouldn’t be convenient to reach him now. What’s the matter?”

  Trevayne told Robert Webster what had happened to his wife. The presidential aide was speechless.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes.… Yes, I did. It’s horrible.”

  “Is that all you can say? Do you know what the President and Hill told me last week?”

  “I have a good idea. The chief and I discussed it; I explained that.”

  “Is this connected? I want to know if this is part of it! I have a right to know!”

  “I can’t answer you. I don’t think he could, either. You’re at the Plaza? I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

  Webster hung up, and Andrew Trevayne held the disconnected telephone in his grip. They could all go screw! The Senate hearing was scheduled for two-thirty the next afternoon, and he’d tell them all to go to hell! Phyllis was no part of the bargain! It was one thing to go after him; he could handle that. Not his family. He’d level those bastards at two-thirty tomorrow as they’d never been leveled! And he’d hold a press conference afterward. He’d let the whole goddamn country know what kind of pigs inhabited a town called Washington, D.C.! He didn’t need it! He was Andrew Trevayne!

  He replaced the telephone in its cradle and walked over to the hotel bed. Phyllis was asleep. He sat down on a chair and stroked her hair. She moved slightly, started to open her eyes, and then shut them again. She’d been through so much. And now this!

  The telephone rang, its bell causing him to jerk his head up, frightened, furious.

  He ran to it.


  “Trevayne! It’s the President. I’ve just heard. How’s your wife?”

  “Asleep, sir.” Trevayne was amazed at himself. In the midst of his anguish he still found the presence of mind to say “Sir.”

  “Christ, boy! I haven’t any words! What can I say to you? What can I do?”

  “Release me, Mr. President. Because if you don’t, I’m going to have a great deal to say tomorrow afternoon. Inside the hearing and out.”

  “Of course, Andrew. It goes without saying.” The President of the United States paused before speaking further. “She’s all right? Your wife is all right?”

  “Yes, sir.… It was a … terror tactic, I guess. An obscene … obscene thing.” Trevayne had to hold his breath. He was afraid of the words that might come out of his mouth.

  “Trevayne, listen to me. Andrew, listen! You may never forgive me for what I am about to say to you. If you feel strong enough, I’ll accept the consequences and expect your roughest condemnation tomorrow. I won’t rebut you … But you must think now. With your head. I’ve had to do it hundreds of times—granted, not like this—but, nevertheless, when it hurt badly.… The country knows you’ve been chosen. The hearing is only a formality now. If you tell them to shove it up their ass, how are you going to do it without paining your wife further?… Don’t you see? This is exactly what they want!”

  Trevayne took a deep breath and replied evenly. “I have no intention of paining my wife further or of allowing any part of you to touch us. I don’t need you, Mr. President. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You certainly do. And I agree with you completely. But I have a problem. I need you. I said it would be ugly …”

  Ugly! Ugly! That goddamn terrible word!

  “Yes, ugly!” Trevayne roared viciously into the telephone.

  The President continued as if Trevayne had not shouted. “I think you should think about what’s happened.… If it can happen to you, and by all our estimates you’re one of the better ones, think what can happen to others.… Are we to stop? Is that what we should do?”

  “Nobody elected me to anything! I’m not beholden, and you know damn well I’m not! I don’t want it to concern me.”