American Quartet

by Warren Adler

  “All decisions will be mine to make. All.”

  He remembered the silence in the room. His admiration was absolute. A thrill had charged through his body.

  “We’ll help you all we can,” one of the men said, a big red-haired fellow who towered over the others. His height seemed to give him added authority. “Rem had his finger on everything.” His implication was clear.

  “So will I.”

  “There’s a lot to it, Mrs. Remington,” another man said. “There’s a great deal at stake.”

  “What’s at stake,” she said sharply, “is mine.” She had squeezed Tad’s hand and looked at him lovingly. “And my son’s.” He was, after all, the only progeny, the golden boy.

  “I can’t believe that Rem meant for you to take an active role in day-to-day management,” the red-haired man said. His tone was patronizing.

  “Why not?” she asked in a silky voice.

  “He would have wanted you protected. This is a complex business, full of intricate details requiring sophisticated decisions.” The big man shifted from one leg to another, his confidence rising with his words. He was obviously expressing a consensus of all the executives. Certainly, while his father lay dying, they had discussed it, planned for it. His mother’s shock tactic had temporarily discomfited them, but they were quickly recovering.

  “You give me options. I’ll decide,” she said, her lips smiling sweetly. How delicious, he remembered. She had their balls in her hand.

  The red-haired man surveyed the faces around him.

  “It’s not as simple as that,” he persisted, his courage fully returned as he looked down at her.

  “I know,” she said. “And I appreciate your candor.” She was calm, revealing not a ripple of tension. “And you’re presenting me with my first options. That’s why I’m firing you.”

  The big man was stunned, his pale skin flushing almost to the color of his hair. He swallowed hard.

  “I helped build this business,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “You have our gratitude,” she had replied. He had seen big tears well in the man’s eyes as he turned and staggered out of the room. By the time she was finished, three others had also gone.

  “Do we understand each other?” she asked the remaining three men. They nodded grimly and left the room, backing out as if she were a figure of royalty.

  “That’s power, my darling,” she said, embracing him. He could still smell her delicious freshness, still feel the glorious special aura of her. Her eyes had always been his mirror.

  “Mama will show you, my sweet wonderful boy.”

  He had tried. He had given it his best and when Kennedy had appointed him an assistant secretary of the navy, both he and his mother were sure he had a foothold on the political ladder.

  It was a perfect time to marry Ann Fairchild, and the golden boy and his fragile wife were given a wedding send-off that made headlines in every social page in America.

  “A reasonably good choice,” his mother had admitted.

  Mostly it was her decision; an appropriate wife was essential to a rising politician with his eye on the White House. With her credentials as an heiress to one of the great old American families, Ann seemed perfectly crafted for the role.

  “She’ll be of great help,” his mother had assured him.

  “She’s not much in other departments,” he had confessed. She had not stimulated him either physically or intellectually.

  “She’ll be good for you in Washington. You just can’t get anywhere being single. You’ll want to entertain. Be seen.”

  Unfortunately, Ann had barely made a dent in his life, although she obediently plodded through his first years in Washington. After three years of mutual boredom, they decided to divorce, but then the Senate chance had come up.

  “You should wait until after the election,” his mother had said. “You owe it to yourself.”

  A fleeting memory, his mind could barely find Ann’s outline. The divorce after his defeat was a relief to them both.

  “Good riddance,” his mother had told him then. “Her indifference lost you that election. Don’t worry, the chance will come again.” Her dreams would not admit defeat.

  Remington was growing more irritable by the moment. The candidate was very late. Had he not been forceful enough in demanding the candidate’s appearance? He tried to rein in his anxieties, to keep that Pandora’s box closed.

  “I can’t stay much later,” the banker collared him again. “You said he’d be here.”

  “He promised, and I promise you he’ll be here.”

  “What’s a politician’s promise?” the banker sneered.

  Remington could no longer cope with the anxiety of waiting. He went up to his bedroom and searched his faces in the many mirrors, moving close to one of them, as close as he could get without losing focus.

  “I need this sign, mama,” he whispered, probing into his mother’s blue eyes. He had made such careful, elaborate plans. He resisted going to his closet, to touch the gun hidden there. What had gone wrong? A wave of tremors wracked his body. His mouth went dry. What had he done to incur such a defeat?

  “Mama,” he pleaded, searching her eyes again.

  The door chimes clanged like the clarion of church bells. Racing down the stairs, he appeared in time to be the first to greet the candidate, to touch the cool flesh of his hand. A lightning shock passed through him, eliminating anxiety.

  “Tad,” the candidate said, pressing his hand, palms touching, fingers intertwined. He did not want to let go. The man’s energy flowed into him.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” the candidate said, looking around at the faces of the waiting men, awed and silent now. “Sorry, guys,” he waved, pressing into the crowd. Remington’s hand was locked around one arm. He introduced the candidate to every man in the room. The candidate, picking up the cues, smiled boyishly, nodding as he caught and repeated each man’s first name.

  Remington felt the muscle of the man’s upper arm, strong, hard, like his own. When they had made their rounds, the candidate was given a drink and sat down on the couch. Remington made his introductory remarks.

  “This man is our next President.” He lingered over the words, feeling every man’s eyes on him. He felt the candidate’s presence beside him, their mingling energy. We are one, he wanted to say.

  Instead he said: “We are of one mind. One mind—in philosophy, outlook, vision and hope. The future of our country is at stake. We’ve come forth with our money to support this man in whom we believe.” He had wanted to say love. “But our dollars are only one small part of what support he must have. Money has its limits.” He was surprised that the familiar words had come out, as if by divine fiat. Surely, it was yet another sign.

  As the candidate rose, Remington’s heartbeat leaped, his armpits flooded, and a pleasurable tingle began at the base of his spine. He felt the sheer power of himself.

  “This is one helluva fella,” the candidate said, putting an arm around Remington. He felt as if he would swell up and burst with pleasure. He was glowing, with a perfect blue flame.

  The sign had come, validating his motives, the rightness of his projected act. Tomorrow, he thought happily. September 6.

  9

  WITH all suspects checked out and eliminated, the Damato case became a gnawing embarrassment. Thankfully, the press turned its attention to other matters. The hostage crisis. The declining economy. The presidential campaign.

  The eggplant assigned them to the boring routine of checking out natural deaths, which did not improve Jefferson’s disposition. He didn’t like being part of the punishment to Fiona. What she learned later through the grapevine was that Jefferson, too, was being disciplined for a brutal beating he had given a drug dealer involved in an earlier murder.

  But the Damato case continued to bug her and, when she found the time, she would mentally retrace the investigation. Was there something she had overlooked? It was not a subject she cared to discuss wit
h Jefferson.

  She pressed Hadley, the firearms examiner, on the question of the gun and the bullets. He was a tall ascetic man, not given to speculation.

  “As my report says, from the lands and grooves, it could only be an English Bulldog or a Wembley. Hard to tell the age. They stopped making them in ’39.”

  “When did they start?”

  “The design was first manufactured in 1880, a historic piece. Qualifies as an antique.”

  “And the bullets?”

  “Old. Made, I’d say, about that time.”

  “Why a bullet that old?”

  “I just identify them,” he shrugged.

  “You don’t think it’s odd?”

  “In this business, everything’s odd. Old ammo is not that rare. It hangs around. Sometimes it’s not reliable.”

  “This was.”

  “Shows how good they made ’em back then.”

  “But why would someone go out of his way to use old bullets if he could get new ones?”

  “You’re the detective,” Hadley said.

  At the autopsy, she had watched Dr. Benton’s strong dark fingers deftly slice into the cold alabaster flesh. In the glare of the overhead light the corpse looked like a bloated fish. Dr. Benton’s rich voice, with its Louisiana back parish accents, fell soft and melodious in the quiet room as he dictated his findings. Deftly he extracted the bullet where it had lodged in the pancreas. It had severed a main artery, and the man’s life had quickly hemorrhaged away.

  “Destructive devil,” Dr. Benton said as the bullet pinged into a metal pan. His hair was white and cottony, his carriage stooped and scholarly, an authentic wise man’s mien. Of all the men that she had met in police work, he seemed to have the widest understanding of human nature.

  “It’s as if he aimed straight for that artery,” he said, pointing to the shredded lifeline. Autopsies had never made her queasy, although she gagged when she had to put the garbage in her apartment’s compactor chute.

  “Purely accidental,” Dr. Benton said. Gently, he opened the man’s lids as if he were still alive. The eyes were glazed, as dead as his living dreams. “It was a fluke shot. A smaller projectile might have missed it.”

  “What kind of a person shoots another in the back?” she had asked him over coffee at Sherry’s a few weeks later.

  “A guilty man, perhaps.”

  “Of course he’s guilty.”

  “I mean guilty of something else other than the crime. Why then not face his victim? Normally, your garden variety killer would shoot from the front, finding the heart. A contract killer, on the other hand, would go for the head on a rear shot. No. This man is guilt-wracked. Driven.”

  “You learned that from the autopsy?”

  “From living. From seeing so much violent death. This was no random shot.”

  “Sounds more like instinct than science.”

  He sipped his hot coffee, smacking his lips.

  “Science is nothing without intuition,” he muttered, staring off into space.

  He was a widower and lived in an attached house in Northeast Washington, a few blocks from Capitol Hill. It was stuffed, floor to ceiling, with books and magazines. Occasionally he had invited her in for Sunday afternoon tea. He had been deeply attached to his late wife, a lawyer, and memories of her were framed throughout the house: her degrees, photographs, awards.

  “You don’t think it was a crime of passion or revenge?” Fiona pressed.

  “No. It wouldn’t explain the rear shot.”

  “Maybe it got out of hand. Maybe he only wanted to maim?”

  “It was not the gunman’s to control,” Dr. Benton said.

  “Do you think the victim knew the killer?”

  He was always open with her, treating her as an equal. She attributed that to a general respect for women, a by-product of his happy marriage. He was the closest thing to a “rabbi” that she had in the department. Unfortunately, as a medical examiner, he was far outside the chain of command and of little practical help.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, mulling over the question. “If it was an act of passion or revenge, the killer would not forego the psychic pleasure of direct confrontation. The dramatist knows this, and he is right. This man killed for other reasons.”

  “And therein lies an enigma.” The frustration was eating badly at her.

  The enigma lingered in her mind, waiting to be supplanted by other more pressing concerns. And, they came, they always did.

  She had promised Bruce she would go with him to New York for the Labor Day weekend, the deadline for their experiment in communal living. Outside pressures had intervened, making any definitive decisions impossible. He hadn’t expected to be confronted with a formidable challenger and she had not expected things to go badly in her work. The gallery case remained unsolved. Nothing was going right.

  When the duty roster came down, marking her for the entire Labor Day weekend duty, she stormed into the eggplant’s office.

  “I need this weekend,” she said abruptly.

  “I can’t spare you.” He did not look up from the pile of papers on his desk.

  “It’s okay with Jefferson,” he growled. She stood over him a long time, fighting to control her anger. He looked up and smiled a big toothy grin, goading her.

  “I won’t beg you.”

  “I know,” he said calmly. She could have called in sick. It was too late now.

  “You’re being unfair,” she said.

  “I’m being a boss.”

  A bastard, she thought.

  “It’s a big weekend. We need all hands.” Although he was being official, his eyes told her otherwise. It was rumored that the chief had given him the deadline of Labor Day on the gallery case, but things had quieted down. He was beginning to believe that the crisis was passing and he was celebrating the event by showing her who was boss. He picked up the telephone, dismissing her.

  “You could have helped me out,” she told Jefferson as they cruised the city on routine patrol. Their verbal back-and-forth had been so scanty that she realized she had never even broached the subject.

  “You never asked, mama.”

  “I won’t ask you for squat.”

  “You sure are an uppity woman,” he grinned.

  “I’m a cop, not a woman.”

  They had maintained a kind of professional truce during their weeks together and she had steadfastly avoided confrontations, hoping that nature would take its course and this unnatural alliance would fall apart on its own volition. Sooner or later they would have to be separated. But both knew the timing for such a divorce was still a long way off. It had become, for both of them, a test of patience.

  “I can’t wait for the day,” she muttered.

  “I’m jes gettin’ to like it. Nothin’ like a challenge.”

  “It’s a dead end for both of us.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ but a woid.”

  “Those stupid ghetto expressions. They make me sick.”

  “Jes don’t throw up on the seats, mama.”

  When she told Bruce about their lost weekend, he fell into one of his hurt child moods.

  “What are you trying to prove?” he asked, after an evening of icy indifference. They were sitting on the patio of his townhouse, having their after-dinner coffee. She had cooked him a meal before breaking the news. “Call in sick. Ask for a transfer. Quit. Anything. Why should you let those bastards control your life?”

  “I’m a professional,” she mumbled.

  “It’s not worth the candle.”

  “You’re asking me to understand your war. Understand mine.”

  “Dammit, Fi, you could be a senator’s wife,” he fumed.

  “I don’t like titles, especially ‘wife’ of . . .”

  “Better than having to take shit from a bunch of shmoogies. Besides, you’re lost in a man’s world, the lower depths at that, strictly blue collar. Cops got no class.”

  “Bad for your image, you mean,” she
snorted. “The great liberal. At least we’re not hypocrites.”

  “What is it you women want?” he shouted.

  “That’s what Freud asked,” she said calmly.

  The saucer shook, clattering the cup. He seemed to be making an effort to soften his anger.

  “How about what I want?” he said more gently.

  “I know what you want, Bruce.”

  “So then, why all this . . . stubbornness?”

  “I’m not going to let the bastards do me in.”

  “At my expense?”

  “I’m sorry. I have battles, too.”

  He took her hand.

  “I can lean on them, you know. There’s a way to horsetrade.”He looked into his cup. “If I lose, I also lose the clout. That’s the name of the game. Clout.”

  “You miss the point. What the good Dr. Freud couldn’t know was the answer. I want . . .” She paused, clicked her tongue. “My own.”

  “Your own what?” He paused, observing her. “Penis?”

  “Jesus.”

  “He had one.”

  “My God.”

  “Him, too.”

  The wisecracks loosened him and he framed her face in his hands.

  “I love you and admire you.” He kissed her lips. “You’re a beautiful sexy lady. How did you get mixed up in such a macho business? Your sex is an intrusion. Don’t you understand that? I mean there is a difference. A cop is a father figure. It’s a no-win career. And most of them are not even your intellectual equals.”

  “Who’s the bigger bigot?”

  To argue further would get them nowhere. Besides, she came from a long line of thick-headed micks who felt something sacred about their calling.

  “Maybe I’m just a dumb Irish cop,” she said.

  “Well, if we don’t have the weekend . . .” He moved closer and his warm breath tingled her ear. “We’ll just have to compress the timeframe,” he said, biting into her neck.

  She moved out on Saturday morning. There were no tears or recriminations. No sad words; no bad words.

  “We’ve got too much on our plates just now,” she told him. “Maybe later.”

  “You’re still my girl,” he said, turning to embrace her as they lay in bed. She traced his profile with her fingers. Before she moved in, they had rarely spent full nights together. He had wanted to be home when the children wakened and the delicious luxury of the morning was lost to them. Now they both clung to it.