The Havana Room

by Colin Harrison

  Because oxygen uptake tends to decrease at night, especially during REM sleep, he was probably using the oxygen tanks mostly then. The hyperbolic chamber, I learned, is used to saturate the tissues of the body with as much oxygen as possible. Its effectiveness occurs in the outer margins of measurable oxygen uptake but it does help prevent certain kinds of infection and stiffening of tissues. Jay was doing everything he could. But no matter what, the books said, FEV keeps dropping, and once it falls below a score of 11, then death is imminent. No wonder Jay was trying not to be obsessed with it.

  * * *

  Walking out of the library, I remembered the mail I'd shoved in my pocket and had a look at it. Marceno had discovered what was now my former address, perhaps through the New York Bar Association, and sent me a request for interrogatories, which is basically a questionnaire used to prepare for a deposition. I threw it in the trash and flipped through the rest of the mail. There was nothing coming to me that I might look forward to, so I didn't expect to see a postcard from Casole d'Elsa, a Tuscan hill town with lovely stone towers hundreds of years old. It was from my son, in his sloppy script:

  Dear Dad, Mom doesn't love Robert anymore. She says we might fly to New York City. I know the difference between gelato and ice cream.

  Love, Timothy

  P.S. Italian kids don't like baseball.

  Never have I scrutinized a document like this one. Not when I was studying for the New York State bar, not when I was checking the final contracts for the sale of a $562 million office building in midtown. The fact that Judith had taken my address with her was at least somewhat interesting. What did Judith and Timothy say to each other about me? Did they talk about me, did she ask him if he missed me, did he ask her what I was doing? And how did he know she didn't love Robert anymore? Is this why he wrote the card? Timothy had addressed the card himself, which meant one of two things; that he'd discovered my address among Judith's things, her address book most likely, or whatever trendy little electronic gizmo she used, because he suspected or knew that his communication was forbidden, which meant that he had secreted a stamp and mailed the postcard on the sly, a complicated undertaking for a boy his age. The other possibility was that Judith had simply provided the address to him, which meant that she knew the card was being sent and may well have known its message. Which meant that she sanctioned its existence, which then was a message directly to the husband she'd dumped not so long ago: Our son wants to communicate with you, and this is okay with me. Who knew?

  I had an idea. I hurried down to the great sporting goods store a few blocks away, near Grand Central Station, where fathers buy their children birthday presents before taking the train home from work. The store was open until eight. I bought a fielder's glove and a new Yankees cap and packed them, with the ball signed by the great Derek Jeter, five-time All-Star, owner of four World Series championship rings, in a box marked TIMOTHY WYETH, c/o JUDITH WYETH, AMERICAN TOURISTAS EN IL VILLAGGIO D'CASOLE D'ELSA, TUSCANA, ITALIA [POSTINO: PER FAVORE PORTARE. GRAZIE]. Close enough, and not bad for a guy who hadn't been to Italy since the Clinton administration. For a return address I taped one of my new business cards to the box. Judith would scrutinize the card, see if the address was a good one, inspect the quality of the paper. If the box arrived, that is. But I liked my chances. I've been to these little Tuscan hill towns. There's generally one post office, a public servant dutifully selling stamps, weighing packages. Nobody is in a hurry but everything gets done. The winter season is the slow time in Tuscany, very few foreign tourists. An American woman like Judith would stand out.

  I took the box to an international overnight shipper.

  "American tourists in a small Italian town?" said the clerk.

  "Yes, the husband is an executive of an American company."

  "He might be getting business mail from the States on a regular basis then?"

  "Quite possibly, yes."

  "Our guy over there might know who it is." He shrugged. "You never know."

  Good enough. You have to shoot to score, you have to hunt to kill.

  * * *

  There's a nice hotel around the corner from the Public Library, the Bryant Park, and they had a room, the desk clerk said. Just the place to hide for a night or two. He asked about my luggage and I said I had none. "Late meeting at the office," I lied. "And a very early one tomorrow." He met this statement with a shrug. A few minutes later I stood at the window, watching the traffic. After my lunch with Dan Tuthill the option of going to the police about the destruction of my apartment seemed even less advisable. If he caught wind of it, Dan would rescind his job offer immediately. Lawyers breaking laws end up not practicing. No, I needed to surf and wriggle and duck my way through the problem. They'd found Poppy. Martha Hallock was coming into the city tomorrow. I'd meet her and take her to the steakhouse, try to talk to Allison again. As for Jay, I pulled out my cell phone and called. Nothing. The machine picked up the call, beeped with no message. I left my number. He could be anywhere. He could be with Allison, I realized. Maybe he was in the oxygen chamber and couldn't hear the call. Aside from his daily medications, though, he seemed to have no schedule, no routine I could anticipate, just circling around Sally Cowles. I recalled his fragment of a letter to her father about the cartilage in his own ear. Did he have a hearing problem? Did Sally? Not if she practiced the piano, not if—

  I knew where I'd find Jay.

  Eight

  I TRIED JAY'S PHONE fifty times over the next twelve hours, and if that sounds like harassment or stalking that's because it was. I was due to start a new job in a mere two days, and, standing at the window in my hotel room listening to the phone ring endlessly, I was keenly aware that if I could lay down several decent years in Dan Tuthill's new shop— and there was no reason to think I couldn't— then I'd have levered myself back into the game. With the gyrations in the economy, firms had shrunk and grown, splintered and recombined; no one would care what had happened to me a couple of years back. People forget, after all. (They forget that George W. Bush was once a dry-well oilman with a drinking problem, that Hillary Clinton once had a brown afro and snaggleteeth.) A few good years, that's all I needed. I could eat mountains of paper, I could clock monster hours. And maybe the firm would do well as a whole. Dan had private financing from his father-in-law if he needed it. And if he was walking the straight and narrow, he'd throw himself into the enterprise. So, my boat had come in and I needed to make sure I climbed aboard— not get caught in the riptide of Jay Rainey's strange life.

  I called Allison, too, wondering where we stood, and reached her at the steakhouse.

  "Well, look who it is," she said. "The man who called back."

  "Of course I called back."

  "They don't always, you know."

  "About what happened—"

  "I want you to know that, contrary to expectation and all previous behavior patterns, I am issuing an apology."

  "You are?"

  "I think I was a bit brittle the other morning."

  "Well—"

  "I had a headache."

  I didn't ask why. "You're in a good mood now."

  "Yes, I am."

  "I was expecting crankiness and accusation."

  "And until yesterday, you would have gotten it, too."

  "What happened?"

  "There was an arrival, a somewhat unexpected arrival."

  "Who?" Had Jay shown up?

  "Not a who, but a what."

  "Fish?"

  "Fish. It puts me in a good mood."

  "You addicted to this stuff, Allison?"

  "Only psychologically. Now then, are you coming to see me?"

  "Yes, but I'm bringing a date."

  "What?" came her shrill response.

  "An older woman."

  "How much older?"

  "About fifty years."

  "Who is it?"

  "The woman who sold Jay's farm."

  "This is still tangled up? There's still a problem?"

>   "Yes. Want to hear about it?"

  "No, I don't. I want to dream about my fish."

  * * *

  I collected Martha Hallock at the corner of Forty-third and Third Avenue, which is where the luxury bus into Manhattan drops people from Long Island's North Fork, and in the low light of a winter's day, she stepped down with her cane, looking more tired than I remembered. This was a great effort for her; I doubted she could walk without the cane. But she'd gone to the trouble, so something was at stake. I helped her into the hired car I'd arranged through the hotel and we drifted downtown.

  "Things have changed." She looked out the window. "I came to the city so much when I was younger."

  "See a lot of shoes?"

  "Yes." She smiled, pleased that I remembered her terminology. The wrinkles around her eyes collapsed in upon themselves. "Many shoes, Mr. Wyeth. Big ones, small ones. Nice ones, rough ones. The city was good for that. I could come in and have an adventure and then disappear out into the country, and no one at home would know. Once met a man standing in line at the movies. He didn't know which movie to see and I told him to see the one I was watching."

  "What was the movie?"

  "Oh, for goodness' sake, I have no idea. I doubt I saw five minutes of it." She settled her purse in her lap. "I was like that. Some girls are, and most people condemn them for it."

  We pulled up to the steakhouse a few minutes later and I helped her out of her door and down the steps, into the vault of mahogany and oil paintings. The door to the Havana Room, I noted, was closed.

  "Wonderful!" Martha Hallock cried. "Still."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I ate here years and years ago!" she said, throwing her gaze toward the back of the room, then letting it come forward, over the white tablecloths and silverware, the pitchers of water sweating in the corners. "They used to say Frank Sinatra owned the place. It looks the same."

  "Well, we probably changed the carpeting," said Allison, gliding up to us, carrying her clipboard. "Hi, I'm the manager."

  Martha Hallock took Allison in. "What do you manage?"

  "I manage people's expectations."

  "She does more than that," I added.

  Martha nodded skeptically. Allison showed us to Table 17.

  "Need anything?" she asked. "A pillow, anything at all?"

  "A drink. I'll take that."

  "Bill?" said Allison. "What may I get for you today?"

  "Nothing. I can wait for the waitress."

  "Oh, there must be something you'd like?"

  Martha Hallock looked up at Allison. "He's taken right now, honey. Sorry, all mine."

  "Then I'll have to wait," she said. "Very nice to meet you." She met my eyes. "Hope you find your meal delicious, sir."

  Martha watched Allison move away. "I'd say that you know her."

  "Well, I eat here a lot."

  "I repeat. I'd say you know her." The waiter appeared. "I'll have a gimlet, then your New York sirloin, well done."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "I mean burnt, so well done the chef objects."

  "Before we start," I said, "I want to make sure you understand the situation, my situation."

  Martha considered me. How many messy problems had she dealt with in a life? City dwellers, especially New Yorkers, tend to underestimate the sophistication of country people. She gave me a humoring little nod. "Mr. Marceno thinks something untoward is buried on his land," she began, her voice confident and analytical, "based on the fact that local police discovered the former owner of the property, Jay Rainey, and his attorney, you, on that land hours after the deal was done. He is also suspicious because there appeared to be a lot of heavy bulldozer work done the afternoon of the closing."

  "There's also—" I stopped. Better to listen first.

  "Mr. Marceno is apparently not aware of the fact, not yet anyway, that Herschel Jones was found dead of a heart attack on his bulldozer that same night on the adjoining property. Mr. Jones was known to do work for Jay Rainey and his family for many years. He was a good man, loved by all. The police were called by another man—"

  "Poppy," I said.

  "Yes—"

  "Who is your nephew."

  That I knew this was a surprise to her. "I'm afraid that's true," she said after a moment's consideration. "Poppy called the police to report Herschel's death. He had a long history of heart disease, four heart attacks in the last few years, and the local doctor who signed the death certificate happened also to have seen him a few weeks earlier when he came into the emergency room with a scare, and had specifically warned him against heavy labor, or working in the cold. Herschel should've told Jay this. But Jay never should've sent him out into that cold."

  "I don't think he did."

  Martha held up her hand. "Because the body had been frozen solid, the family was advised to have him cremated, which they did. Am I right so far? Is this the topic under discussion?"

  I nodded.

  "The problem is that Jay is being hounded by Mr. Marceno?"

  I wondered if I should tell her about H.J. and his friendly limo riders. Not necessarily. "Mr. Marceno is putting a lot of pressure on Jay and on me. I'm having trouble finding Jay. I don't want to talk to Marceno, not yet anyway. You yourself said on the phone that it didn't seem to be much trouble to dig up a bit of sand. But now you're ready to talk to me?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know what's out there, what Herschel was covering up?"

  "No."

  "You're sure?"

  "Positive."

  "Then why're you here?"

  "Because I realized that you and Jay have no idea what you're up against."

  "A Chilean winemaker with deep pockets who wants to get a foothold on the fabulous North Fork of Long Island, no?"

  "Yes, but also no."

  "I don't get it, Martha."

  She shook her head and appeared resigned to having to provide me a remedial education. She opened her bag and pulled out a tax survey map. "This is the area around Jay's land," she said. "These tracts aren't labeled or named but I know who owns them. Now look."

  The map showed the land between Long Island Sound and the north road, and looked like this:

  Then she labeled the lots, and it looked like this:

  "Okay," she said, "let's talk about each of these properties. The old estate piece has some nice high bluffs, some roll to the land. It was once owned by the Reeves family, very nice people, and then they sold it. Not much has happened to it. In the sixties there was a commune there and they all lived in the old barn and tried to make goat cheese. Well, you know what happened."

  "What?"

  "All the girls got pregnant and the boys grew beards and they found out that the world doesn't need any more bad goat cheese."

  I smiled. But Martha Hallock stared grimly at me. "Foolishness, Mr. Wyeth— the world runs on it. When it comes to real estate, foolishness makes things happen. More important than money, actually. Then the piece was bought by some fellow from North Carolina who said it was perfect for a golf course. He'd developed a dozen of them. Paid too much, but the development rights remained intact. I sold it to him. He had the surveys done, he got the approvals, which last ten years. Those ten years expire in eighteen months, by the way. As for him, he had trouble in the stock market, was in no position to develop. Okay, now, this large tract, Sea Gull Vineyards— terrible name for a vineyard, makes you think of bird poop in your wine— they, the Hoyts, planted one of the first vineyards out here, and their vines are now very good. Good vines with a bad name. Needs a new name. The development rights were sold to the county ten or fifteen years ago. You can only farm it. But Mrs. Hoyt got multiple sclerosis and her husband became depressed and the place started going downhill. Now then, next to it, to the east, is Jay's land. This little strip was a set-aside for the farm housing, separately deeded. You can see that it's a beautiful run, straight from the north road to the water. Mostly level, with a good well set back from the ocean, nice land. It was in
his family a long time, came through the father's side. Remember it's in the middle of our map, it's the keystone property. Over here on the inlet is the preserve. It used to be part of the piece that was owned by Jay's family. It's beautiful but unfarmable. Marshes and lovely birds. You can catch crabs in a little rowboat. The land was deeded to New York State back in 1965 or '66. The way the deed was set up, the owner of the adjacent piece, Jay's piece, has a right-of-way along a dirt road from one property to the other. Remember that. Whoever owns Jay's piece has sole legal access to the water through here. In other words, access to the marshes and so on, but also to—"