by Sol Stein
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Alice finally connected with Ludmilla Tarasova in her Central Park West apartment. She put Thomassy on.
“Miss Tarasova,” he said, “do you know who I am?”
“I read the papers,” she said, her accent guttural spice.
“I would like to call you as a witness in the Porter Sturbridge case.”
“I don’t think I have much to contribute,” she said quickly.
“You know a great deal that I want the jury to hear and that I believe to be extremely relevant. If you would give me the courtesy of an hour of your time—I’d be glad to go wherever it would be convenient for you—I think I could persuade you that you would prefer to appear voluntarily rather than under a subpoena.”
“I must speak to my lawyer.”
“You can have him present if you like.”
“I will call you back.”
She was ready to hang up so he said, “You’ll need my phone number,” and gave it to her.
As he suspected, she didn’t phone back. And so the following day he called Ludmilla Tarasova again.
“You are very persistent,” she said.
“Have you spoken to your attorney?”
“He will be at my apartment at eight this evening.”
“Would you like me to come an hour later?”
“You can come at eight, too, Mr. Thomassy. My lawyer and I have already spoken.”
*
Thomassy reached Francine at her office. “I called you last night.”
“I was out.”
“I wanted to apologize,” he said.
She left him hanging in her silence. Then, a flutter in her voice like a bird suddenly bereft of its air current, she said, “I’m sorry I had to testify. I knew how angry you’d be.”
“I guess I was a bit rough with you on the stand. I’m sorry. It’s the way the game is played.”
“They say pretty rough things at the UN sometimes,” she said, not meaning the touch of frost in her voice, “but it’s not personal.”
“Mine wasn’t personal, Francine, believe me. We both got caught in somebody else’s trap. I was hoping to see you this evening, but I have to go somewhere in connection with the case.”
“I’m going out, too,” she said. “No connection to the case.”
“Oh,” he said.
She, skilled mind reader, laughed. “Matilda Brewster’s flying in for a quick visit to New York. We roomed at school. We’re doing the night on the town. I can’t let her stay at a hotel. And I can’t ask her to stay at your place, so she’s staying at mine.”
“You’re being decorous. There’d be no problem with her sleeping in the living room. Does she think you’re still a virgin?”
Francine laughed. “Let’s say that Matilda, like all married people, thinks unmarried types like us fuck all the time, and I don’t want her staying up all night trying not to listen.”
“Have a good time.”
“If the show’s good, we will. I know she’ll enjoy dinner. I’m taking her to an Armenian restaurant.”
“Very funny.”
“George, I want to say something to you.”
“Shoot.”
“Are you listening carefully?”
“Sure.”
“Sure you’re sure?”
“Come on!”
“Despite yesterday,” she said, “I love you.”
He hated the way people parrotted each other, so he didn’t say I love you, too. But after he hung up, he stared at the phone wondering whether, after law school, he had stopped learning about himself.
*
Thomassy drove down toward New York City, got off the West Side Highway at the Seventy-ninth Street exit, made his way crosstown through light traffic, saw someone pulling out of a parking space just east of Columbus Avenue and did what New Yorkers do—he backed up to claim the precious space. If you parked in a garage these days, you were taking a chance on the cassette deck vanishing or an unexplained dent that they’d claim was there when you drove in. If you left your car in the street, you could still lose the cassette deck, but at least no parking lot jockey would use his car to practice U-turns in reverse.
Ludmilla Tarasova lived in one of those grand old buildings he’d liked when he first came down from Oswego. Now, in addition to the doorman, they had a security guard and a TV monitor. The doorman looked him up and down to see if this unfamiliar male was a potential problem. The security guard called the Tarasova apartment, mispronouncing his name. The guard gestured him in.
He stood in front of her apartment door. He’d expected her to be standing there, the door open. After a moment, he rang the bell. He heard steps. Then he realized there was a peephole magnifier at the door that was at the height of his Adam’s apple. He bent a bit so she could see his face. He heard the chain come off. Then the door opened.
He was surprised at how female a sixty-year-old woman could be. Her hair was shoulder length, and he could imagine her brushing it vigorously. Her eyes, dark in a bright face, looked at him as if with a glance she could fathom his thoughts. Her figure was spare, though fuller in the breast. She shook his hand with stark strength. “Come in, Mr. Thomassy.”
He wished he was wearing a hat so that he could take it off. The apartment had a slightly musty smell, which was immediately explained by the thousands of visible books, lining the hall, and then the living room.
“I believe you know my lawyer,” she said.
From his armchair, Archibald Widmer rose to shake Thomassy’s hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
As Francine made the right-hand turn from the service road into LaGuardia, she thought Departures are from stages. For her, airports, railroad stations, intercity bus terminals provided expectations of drama. According to the dashboard clock, in one minute Tilly Brewster was due to arrive from Detroit. Did that mean touchdown, arrival at the gate? Maybe the plane was ahead of schedule. Fat chance. And the baggage wait, at best, was twenty minutes. Though Tilly was coming for two days, she was always loaded with presents as if it were Christmas. Even in school Tilly had felt she had to buy her space on earth.
The parking lot was jammed. Francine spied a child-loaded station wagon backing out of a slot, and positioned her bright red Fiat. Fight for the space if you have to. No opponents, a potential fracas aborted, she slipped into the spot, got out, locked the door, and ran through the lot to the walkway, pushed the button on the pole. The light seemed to take forever to say “walk.” When there was a momentary gap between taxis, she ran across to honking and made it, breathless, into the terminal. She checked the Arrivals side of the TV monitor: the plane was in. Down the stairs—don’t run!—Francine scanned the grouped crowds waiting for baggage. “Tilly,’’ she shouted, just as Tilly was reaching for her large red suitcase. Tilly glanced up, and the bag went by ungrabbed. They had a good laugh, hugging each other, till the winding carousel brought the red suitcase around again.
The bag retrieved, Tilly stared at Francine the way old friends permit each other. Finally Tilly said, “How do you stay the same?”
“I’m not,” Francine said.
“You look the same.”
“I feel different,” Francine said.
“Ooooh.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Tilly?”
“What’s his name?”
“He’s a crazy lawyer named George.”
“Not the Princeton George who jilted Arabella?”
“This is an Armenian George. I told you about him months ago.”
“I guess it didn’t register. You know I never knew anyone who actually knew an Armenian,” Tilly said.
“Maybe you did, and didn’t know he was Armenian.”
They both guffawed as if the word Armenian triggered the memory of how they once laughed together at school.
“Is he very handsome?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
“You’re in love, Fran. It’ll pass
in three weeks. Don’t give it a thought.”
“It’s been nearly a year, Tilly.”
“Oh my God, what are Mummy and Daddy saying?”
“They’re not in the prompting box anymore. Besides, my father dotes on criminal lawyers like George who—”
“He’s not the man…”
Francine nodded. Tilly paid a moment’s respect to the rape. They’d spent many hours on the phone around that time.
“How’re the kids?” Francine asked.
“Would you believe Harriet is six and Frieda is nearly five? Harriet’s in school, Frieda’s in kindergarten.”
“Ready for another?”
“Only by immaculate conception.”
“The other way’s more fun.”
As Tilly fluttered words, changing the subject, Francine remembered that in school it had been Tilly’s humor that had made her every girl’s best companion. Each of them had swings and spirals, preexam, premenstrual, pre-big-date, but Tilly was the constant, that rarest of all human animals, an unremittingly happy person it was a pleasure to be with.
“I know, I know,” Tilly said, under observation patting the sides of her hair. “Premature graylings before thirty are a sin against nature. A sin against my nature,” she said, and her attempt to slough it off suddenly, like a squirrel jumping from limb to limb and missing, fell precipitously to earth. “Never mind about me,” Tilly said, “where’s your car?”
Francine took Tilly’s bag. “Just out in the lot.”
They walked side by side, the hurry, by understood mutual agreement, over. “Still the red Fiat?” Tilly asked.
“Twelve thousand miles older,” Francine said.
“Sounds like me.”
On instinct, Francine said, “How’s Burt?”
“I hope dead.”
Francine put the bag down. “What’s the matter, baby?”
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s go on.”
“Of course it matters. Tell me.”
“What’s to tell? The kids are with Mother. I can’t stay in Detroit. Burt’s squiring his new woman all over the places we used to go to together. He sees our friends. He sees my friends. He invites them to her apartment.”
“Oh Tilly, I never guessed.”
“You didn’t? I didn’t! I was the last goddamn woman in Detroit to know!”
“Are you separated? Officially?”
“We’re not anything. I went to talk to Jim Magruder and he said that if it came to a divorce, he’d have to be Burt’s lawyer, would you believe that?”
Francine opened the passenger side of the Fiat first so that Tilly could take her tear-stained face out of sight of passersby, then put Tilly’s bag and the armload of presents in the trunk. As Francine turned the key in the ignition, Tilly said, “Since your friend’s a hotshot lawyer, maybe he knows somebody who kills for hire and is willing to travel to Detroit.”
*
Traffic sped away from the airport, racing the descending darkness. Francine tried to concentrate on the road ahead, watching for the Whitestone Bridge sign she had once missed and vowed never to again. In college, they had all expected happiness at the end of the line, an amorphous reward for getting through the tortured years, a vent into what they used to call real life, meaning a job or marriage, a settling without a settling down. Of all the boys they had dated then, Tilly’s Burt had been the highest flyer, learning commodities trading from his father at the time that he learned to drive a car. He had scored with money made by himself while the rest of them were still on the family dole. Francine hadn’t cared for Burt’s talkathon—speak first, think second—but she had accepted him as she would have accepted anything that was good for Tilly.
“Watch out!” Tilly said.
“Watch what?”
“Didn’t you see that car?”
“What car?”
Tilly pointed right to an ancient tail-finned white Cadillac. “He nearly sideswiped us. He came that close.”
Francine pulled the Fiat ahead. When they were parallel with the Cadillac, she glanced right. There seemed to be three Hispanic-looking men jammed into the front seat, all grinning at her.
“They’re drunk,” Tilly said.
“How can you know?”
“Burt drinks now. I know what drunk looks like. Let them get ahead.”
Francine eased off on the gas pedal, checked her rearview mirror, and then clicked on her right-hand turn signal and moved over behind the offending Cadillac. Suddenly the Cadillac braked sharply, and Francine had to brake fast. She could hear the tires of the car behind her squealing, too.
“He’s playing games,” Tilly said. “He didn’t have to do that.”
Francine was glad they were now on the bridge. Carefully she pulled left one lane, then another, and then speeded up. “I’ll tell the toll booth attendant,” Francine said.
Suddenly the Cadillac was in front of them again, braking.
“He’s crazy,” Tilly said. “I thought they’re supposed to be cracking down on DWIs?”
Behind them somebody was honking because they had slowed down in the fast lane.
Francine wondered what George would do. Would he go to the toll booth? He’d ram that damn car!
She’d moved right and right again to get away from the Cadillac till she had a clear path to the toll booths ahead. She had the quarters for the automatic toll machines, but she had to queue up for the manned booth. As she waited while car after car in front of her paid the Whitestone toll, she caught sight of the Cadillac going through the automatic collector somewhere to her right. When she reached the booth she handed her money over and told the young man, “That Cadillac that just passed through there, on the right, the driver is drunk. They’ve been driving recklessly.”
“What do you want me to do, lady?”
“Can’t you radio a police car? Something?”
“I can’t do that. Look at the lineup behind you. Did you get the license number?”
“No. It’s one of those ancient Cadillacs with tail fins. And white. There can’t be more than one of them on the road up ahead.”
“Come on, lady, move on.”
Francine tried to spot something, an ID tag on the attendant, a booth number, anything. She’d tell George, he’d know what to do. He’d say the world was falling apart. She zoomed onto the Hutchinson River Parkway.
Tilly, whose mind was probably somewhere in Detroit, said, “Look, Fran, I didn’t know what your living arrangements were. I didn’t—”
“You’re staying at my place. We’re staying at my place. He’s got a house.”
“Sure it’s okay?”
“It’s okay.”
Francine had never liked the Hutchinson River Parkway, two narrow twisting lanes in each direction, one of those roads you couldn’t wait to get off of. Suddenly, up ahead, there was something. Francine pumped her brakes, switched her brights on. In the right-hand lane, stopped, was the white Cadillac.
“I hope he’s run out of gas,” Tilly said.
“I hope his engine block cracked,” Francine said, and they both laughed, and Francine pulled the Fiat over to the left and realized they’d both been wrong. The Cadillac was starting up again, it’d just been waiting for some more sport, preferably with the two young ladies they’d already given a few scares. There was no exit on the right, the double guard rail on the left, and cars behind wanting to speed up. Well, she had the space, Francine thought, the Cadillac was just starting, and she put her foot down on the accelerator, never dreaming that the Cadillac would dare pull into the left lane ahead of her.
“Watch out!” Tilly screamed, and Francine put her full weight forward on the brakes, screeching, stopping, and suddenly whatever it was behind them slammed into them, pushing them violently into the angled side of the Cadillac in front of them with an explosion of smashed metal and glass and sudden, terrible pain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Amid the chitchat of arrival, Thomassy decided that Ludmilla T
arasova’s apartment was the kind of place he could imagine himself holing up in for weeks, eating small special meals of exotic foods, listening to music with his feet up, sampling her voluminous library. If Tarasova had been twenty years younger, he could have seen her as someone whose sharp mind and self-comfort made her a suitable companion for an arrogant bachelor like himself.
It was a good thing Ned Widmer couldn’t read his mind. Warn your daughter, Prospero. Every bright and interesting woman interests me.
“Good to see you, George,” Widmer said.
“I assume,” Thomassy said, “your presence here is not a coincidence?”
Tarasova took charge. “Mr. Widmer and I have known each other many years. I haven’t had the need of a lawyer until now.”
Thomassy’s was an old trick. Don’t answer the speaker. Talk to the weaker party on the other side.
“Ned old boy, it looks like you’re part of the federal witness protection program.”
Widmer said cheerfully, “This case is in state court, George.”
“Sure. And Perry and Randall are spectators. With all the international press, I’m surprised we don’t get moved from Westchester to the Hague. What the hell is going on, Ned? I don’t like mysteries I don’t create for tactical purposes.”
“No mystery. Miss Tarasova is the heir apparent now that Fuller’s dead.”
Tarasova, whose back while standing or sitting was as straight as a soldier’s, bent as she calmly poured tea. She straightened up, handed Thomassy his cup. He thought she looked like a beautiful tree overseeing the lawn of life.
“I was asked to consult with Miss Tarasova more than a dozen years ago,” Widmer said.
“On some pretext,” Thomassy offered.
“Of course it was a pretext,” Tarasova said. “In a society that allows you one phone call when you are arrested, I had to be given someone trustworthy to call, yes?”
“George,” Widmer said, “you don’t doubt that I’m worthy of trust?”
Thomassy sipped at the strong tea.
“I know how you feel, George,” Widmer went on. “Nobody likes surprises. The fact is that I share your annoyance about the government’s intrusiveness. In normal times. Most people—” He looked at Thomassy as if to be certain that Thomassy did not exclude himself. “—are not aware that we are at war.”