Larue was the girl who trembled. She had arrived from California in October, stunned as a refugee, and Gillian immediately took her into protective custody. Larue was dismayed by the snarling city, allergic to every breath of air she took. She was accustomed to a three-hundred-acre ranch near Santa Barbara and blissful Malibu summers.
Her father was a film director, down on his luck and trying to revive his career with a Broadway musical. As a director he had the instincts of Torquemada, and he wasn’t all that much fun around the house, either. Larue’s mother was an actress who worked regularly in Italian co-productions on far-flung locations, a situation Gillian certainly knew by heart. The move would have been trauma enough for Larue, but the half-brother to whom she was devoted had been killed hang-gliding in the Rocky Mountains that summer. Larue had witnessed his speedy, clipped-wing collision with solid rock; thus the occasional spell of the shakes and the long-lost glaze in her eyes when she thought of him. Gillian wanted to take Larue to Acapulco with the family over Christmas, but for some dim reason Larue’s father hadn’t approved.
That Monday before Christmas Larue came over to spend the night. The stores were open late and both girls had shopping to do. It was cook’s night off at the Bellavers’, so they ate at a Beefsteak Charlie’s on Fifty-seventh, did Bloomie’s and caught the eight-thirty show at the Trans-Lux. Snow mixed with rain was falling when the movie let out, but it was only a four-block walk to Sutton Mews, which faced the river just south of the Queensboro Bridge. A freighter plowed beneath the bridge in a blaze of running lights, making waves that smelled of the sea. Larue was instantly homesick for the foggy Pacific.
“If you have to live in New York,” she said wistfully, “this is the place.”
There were three joined, early nineteenth-century Adam houses on the short stretch of cobbled mews, which had been a Bellaver family enclave since the 1850s. The mews was reached through an arched gateway off Sutton Square, and it was protected by a six-man private police force. Gillian lived in the sunny brick corner house. Twelve ample rooms, a staff of seven, most of them day workers. Next door was Grandmother Min’s house, but for most of the year only the houseman was in residence. The third and largest house belonged to Gillian’s cousin Wade, who like most of the Bellaver men was in the banking and investment business. They toiled in discreet offices and peopled boardrooms across the land, tending the family’s money like so many lettuce ranchers. The family was Anglicized French, its fortune solidly based: land grants in millions of acres dating from the time of James II, the value of the land enhanced a hundredfold by fossil fuels.
Two years ago, when Gillian’s father had turned up alive and well on one of the Lesser Sunda Islands after being missing for three weeks, Time magazine reported that Avery Bellaver’s personal worth was in the neighborhood of two hundred and seventy million dollars. It was news to Gillian, and not very interesting news; but she was ecstatic to see in print that “the least-known member of a mighty clan has made lasting contributions to the science of anthropology.” Now there was something to be proud of.
It turned out to be one of those really great evenings that just fall into place without any planning. After the girls changed into around-the-house clothes—sweaters and old Levi’s with wraps and patches of vinyl tape—Gillian coaxed her father from the depths of his ground-floor library. Avery was self-taught and proficient on piano and bass. Larue played both classical and jazz guitar. Gillian was eclectic: harp, flute and stride piano, which she had picked up from one of the musicians who was a fixture at her mother’s parties. They worked on Fats and Willie the Lion and some contemporary swinging lines until after midnight, then cooled out with an hour of recorded Shearing. The girls went to bed too exhausted to gossip, and were asleep in two minutes.
And, in the morning when Gillian woke up, her mother was home, which qualified as an event.
Gillian guessed that she had slept hard, which was a recent problem. Dreamless, muscle-clenching sleep that often left her groggy for minutes after opening her eyes, feeling as played-out as if she’d spent the night climbing mountains. A tepid needle shower usually restored her to the level of brisk efficiency, which mimed her mother’s natural vitality. But this morning she had a dull headache and swollen glands in her neck, and she felt too wan to strip and go through the usual bracing routine. Anyway, there was no school and no pressing business before noon, and Larue was still sound asleep in the other bed, a pillow placed to block the sun. Gillian got up and put on her Indian mocs, drew the drapes together and went to the bathroom.
Sitting on the john she felt a little dizzy, and the headache wasn’t going away. She seldom needed medicine of any kind, so there was nothing in reserve in her own bathroom. But a couple of painkillers seemed like a good idea. She walked upstairs to her parents’ floor and chewed up four of the orange-flavored baby aspirin which Katharine Bellaver stored behind twenty kinds of natural vitamins.
Avery had departed early for the Museum of Pan American Culture which he had founded, and which was preparing the definitive exhibit on Toltec mythology. But Gillian heard Katharine thumping around her atelier and went up the winding iron stair to say hello.
Her mother had come in around 3 A.M. from Washington; it was now a little after seven and here she was in a leotard serenely doing the Plow. Katharine was forty-five, as long-legged as Gillian but not as tall. She was bronze-tan, with auburn hair worn in a full springy cascade of choice curls; on the girlish side but she could still get away with it. Her teeth were so good they looked unused, as if she’d been raised intravenously.
Gillian coughed glumly and looked around the studio where Katharine worked at her photography. It was one of her favorite rooms in a house she loved: vastly overblown celebrity faces looking back at her from eggshell walls, the pungent darkroom airs, the way the incoming sun joined floor and walls in brilliant geometry. Sitting here, warmed on a winter’s morning, was like sitting in the shallows of an equatorial sea.
Katharine was a pretty good photo-journalist; originally she got work and magazine space because she was fabulously well-connected, but that was years ago and she had two volumes of photo essays behind her to prove she wasn’t a dilettante. She had an excellent working knowledge of modern art, owned a gallery on Madison and a gallery in the Hamptons that made money, was a partner in a documentary film company and had published two short stories which Truman Capote, the grande dame of American letters, had described as “magical.” Katherine segued from the Plow into something else that looked excruciating, and smiled at Gillian.
“You didn’t get accreditation for the Teheran Conference,” Gillian said without thinking, and was sorry. It wasn’t the time for prescience. Katherine’s smile turned a little sour.
“You are uncanny this morning.”
“I remember you told me it was going to be a tough nut to crack.”
“Oh, well, it isn’t that much of a problem. The Shah will be in Switzerland this weekend. So Duff will mention me to Binnie and Binnie will mention me to His Imperial Majesty and I’ll be in, and screw the goddamn protocol.” She moved slightly and something popped, causing her to wince in surprise. “Do you feel Christmasy yet? I don’t feel very Christmasy this year.”
Gillian’s nose was leaking, so she nuzzled it unobtrusively against the sleeve of her robe, which had to go into the laundry anyway. “Aren’t you well?” Katharine asked.
“I feel okay.”
“Your eye is really turning in this morning.”
“Thanks for telling me.” It was the one thing Gillian hated about herself, the slightly inward left eye that other people found charming and no distraction in a beautiful face. She’d been turning down modeling jobs since she was twelve. Well, so Katharine had scored, and they were even for now. Why it always had to be like this she didn’t know. They certainly liked each other. Probably they loved each other. But they cohabitated badly, really nothing to be done about it. Gillian had too quick a tongue and her mother’s ob
sessive sense of competition was wearing. Maybe it was something as simple as Katharine’s fear that Gillian knew more about her love life than Gillian could possibly know.
“Want to join me? Rhythmic breathing is the key to—”
Gillian pressed her nose against her sleeve again.
“I’m not dressed.”
“Who’s watching?”
Who indeed, but Gillian was just coming into her shape and her style and she had a natural sensitivity about her body, about the last bit of baby fat and the burgeoning breasts with nipples that overwhelmed them like the noses on the faces of baby seals. She excused herself and went back to her own room.
Larue was waking up with little groans of pleasure. Gillian made room for herself on her bed beside Mr. Rudolph and Sulky Sue the house cats and explored the glands under her jaw with her fingertips. Pressure hurt. She wondered if she was about to come down with something.
“You talk in your sleep,” Larue said.
“I do?”
“Loud enough to wake me up. It must have been three or four o’clock. It was still dark out, but it wasn’t raining. I could see you in the light from the street. You were sitting up in bed with your eyes wide open. I thought you were talking to me, but when I said something you acted like you didn’t hear. You went right on talking to somebody else. A boy, I think.”
“What’d I say?”
“I couldn’t catch a lot of it. You asked him if he was happy. You wanted to know—if they were treating him all right. Then you didn’t say anything for a long time. You didn’t move. You just—stared. You started to cry.”
“God, how weird! Then what?”
“You tried to get out of bed, but you were as uncoordinated as a baby. You said, ‘No, no, don’t let them do that!’ Then I guess the dream was over. You just collapsed and rolled over and pulled the covers up around your head. I had to go to the bathroom, and when I came back you were totally zonked. Do you know what you were dreaming about?”
“I never remember my dreams.”
“I don’t either, just the bad ones.” Larue yawned. “What are we going to do today?”
“Well, I have flute at one, and after that—we could go ice skating?”
“Okay,” Larue said.
Chapter Two
The Trailways bus from Newark left Peter Sandza in Atlantic City at a quarter past six in the morning. He had an hour’s wait for the feeder-line bus that would take him on down to Royal Beach. The snack bar in the bus terminal wasn’t open yet, so he walked three blocks, bucking the gritty salt wind off the Atlantic, and had coffee and buttered toast in the coffee shop of a hotel that looked, as most of the city looked by winter light, long-dead and archaeological.
Several rugged old men were bragging about their morning plunge into the frigid breakers. Tanya Tucker on the radio. I believe the South is gonna rise again. Breakfast cost Peter forty cents, so he was down to a little more than three dollars. He had his return ticket already. The coffee made his stomach hurt, a warning which he had managed to ignore for quite a while.
Royal Beach was fighting a losing battle with beach erosion. A battering storm in November had moved the tide line frighteningly close to the half mile of downtown boardwalk. Abandoned houses were crumbling into the surf. There were Corps of Engineers dredges in the harbor. Peter walked the length of the boardwalk. Shuttered shops and stalls. Pancakes. Souvenirs. Shooting gallery. Then a fading sign over a door that looked as if it had been padlocked for many a season. “Your fortune told * World-renowned psychic reader and advisor * The Tarot interpreted, Palmistry.”
There was also part of a poster in a display case, the glass shattered by storm or vandals. You’ve read about his fantastic powers’ Now let Raym ie tell you wh re holds!!
Eight thirty-seven. Peter drank milk this time, in a place on the main drag where the two waitresses were dying of boredom. Peter’s waitress had pink hair and freckles turning dark as soot on her aging mug.
“Kind of a quiet place.”
“Oh, listen, it’s gory death in the winter! It’ll be death in the summer too if the Army engineers can’t do something about the beach. Worse here than it is down around Cape May. One more good blow will do the trick. Having anything to eat? The jelly doughnuts are fresh this morning.”
“No, thanks.”
“First time in Royal Beach?”
“I came down hoping to find someone. But I guess he’s long gone.”
“If he’s got good sense he is. You used to have to walk almost two hundred yards to get to the water. I’m not lying! That beach was as neat as a pin when I was a little girl, not all gobbed up with tar from the tankers. When the oceans go, what happens to mankind? That’s the question we should be asking ourselves. Personal friend?”
“Excuse me?”
“The one you said you were looking for.”
“He’s someone I heard about. His name is Raymond Dunwoodie.” The waitress looked a little more closely at him.
“Oh, yeh. People still do come looking for Raymond. ‘Psychic miracle worker.’ I wouldn’t have figured you were the type to fall for that old wheeze.”
“Just curiosity. I thought there might be a piece in it. I’m a freelance writer.”
She seemed to look too long at the frayed collar of his shirt. “Had any success at it?”
Peter smiled, inviting sympathy.
“Not lately.”
“Well—I don’t think there’s much to Raymond. Gypsy fortunetellers are dime a dozen in the resorts. Raymond was just selling the same old snake oil. A little more successful at it than most. But those investigators called his bluff—”
“What investigators?”
“Oh, you know, the kind of people who are always poking around in haunted houses and exposing mediums—they got interested in Raymond when the newspapers started writing him up. Four, maybe five years ago. So Raymond went up to New York or Boston or someplace and they tested him with all kinds of machines. Sure enough, he was just a big blowhard. A fraud. Came dragging back into town a few months later. He’d taken to drink. His mother tried to get him back on the straight and narrow, but the sheriff locked him up one night after they found him naked in a cow pasture screaming about mind-taps and government conspiracies and I don’t know what. They had to send him up to Ancora for a spell.”
“Ancora?”
“State hospital. The funny farm.”
“Is he there now?”
“Oh, no, he calmed down and they let him go. I guess two summers ago he was back on the boardwalk reading palms, but he fell off the wagon again. He’s been on and off ever since. For all I know he’s out at his mother’s place right now.… Hey, Hannah, when’s the last time you saw Ray Dunwoodie?”
“Shee, who keeps up with that kook?”
“Where does his mother live?” Peter asked.
“Out the Bellbrook road. Ground floor’s a bridal shop.”
“Can I walk it?”
“It’s maybe two miles, two and a quarter. You look like you’ve got stout legs.”
Peter left one of his remaining dollars on the counter.
“Jingle bells.”
“Have a merry,” the waitress said, beaming at the buck.
For most of the way the Bellbrook road went parallel to the sound and was lined with dink cottages, boathouses, grocery stores and bait shops with old flies in the empty windows, a marina or two. It all looked tediously temporary, sand-filled, a neglected encampment. Civilization had moved on, and found something a little better. Gulls coasted above an inland dump that burned slow and soured the air.
When he saw the police car coming toward him Peter suffered a deadly moment of paranoia, cold as the point of a knife at his temple. But he kept walking briskly along, and when the car was near enough he smiled and waved. The officer didn’t wave back; nor did he look Peter over too closely.
Near where the road ended in the tufted dunes he found the house, a vast salt-cured Victorian, its four st
ories affording enough elevation for a glimpse eastward of the sea, scintillating, blue as Old Glory. Behind the house the sound formed an inlet ringed by willows thrown together by strong winds, entangled like old mops. Peter walked up a shell drive. Someone wearing a curiously old-fashioned white dress was standing in a parlor window watching him, or so he thought, but when he was nearer the porch he saw that it was a mannequin in a satin-finish wedding gown. Otherwise Mrs. Dunwoodie didn’t advertise her business.
A woman with a bulbous nose and pins in her mouth answered the bell.
“We’ve been sewing day and night, but it won’t be ready a minute before four-thirty. I thought that was understood. Four-thirty’s the best we can do.”
“Mrs. Dunwoodie?”
“No. Aren’t you Carolyn Oberdeck’s brother-in-law?”
“No.”
“What do you want then?”
“It’s about Raymond.”
She stared at him, mouth pursed around the pins, then opened the glass storm door.
“Good God. It’s not like we haven’t been expecting something, but it would have to come on this day of days.”
She took a piece of cardboard from a pocket of her denim apron and began transferring the pins from her mouth to the cardboard, not trying to talk again until she finished. The house was overheated. The long center hall was furnished with two rubber plants. Peter heard a sewing machine somewhere back beyond the stairs.
“I hope you don’t have the wrong idea about who I—”
“If it’s bad you better tell me first. I’m the strong one in the family. The least little bit of added tension, and Essie will have a blowout.”
The woman had two or three pairs of glasses in another pocket. She tried on one pair, couldn’t make him out at all and switched to the proper lenses. She frowned at his seediness.
“What was it?” she said sharply. “Burnt himself up in bed, hey? Or was it one of those packs of ghetto kids, kicked him to death in an alley.”
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