Payback

by Sam Stewart

  MITCHELL HELD BACK

  William McAllister, claiming that Tate Pharmaceuticals Chairman Robert R. Mitchell had undisclosed knowledge when he purchased McAllister’s foundering lab, testified today before a federal court in Mineola, Long Island. McAllister, whose suit is for “damages and loss,” presented his contention that “Mitchell seemed to know we were working on the formula for Naturalite” when he purchased the company “at fire-sale money.”

  Naturalite, the artificial sweetener, has gross revenues of $450 million a year, but the patent, along with a few dozen others, and the research facility in Merritt, Long Island, were acquired by Mitchell for $7 million in 1982. McAllister, in trouble with a federal tax bill “and several personal problems at the time,” said, “I wasn’t aware of what we had on the boards.”

  Federal court Judge Eliot Donovan asked if McAllister’s “personal problems had something to do with your addiction to coke, and I warn you,” he cautioned, “perjury still remains a crime in New York.”

  The case was dismissed, Donovan invoking “the serviceable doctrine of caveat vendor,” and adding, “though your problems were nothing to sneeze at, I suggest you should have known what your company owned.”

  Mr. Mitchell, who has funded the research facility, employing the profits from McAllister’s loss, refused to make comment.

  Joanna got up, poured another cup of coffee and giggled while she did, spilling coffee on her foot.

  Well … good for Mitchell.

  A Robin Hood, she thought. A renegade prowler in the fast-growing forests of American greed.

  She found a few Seven-grain Stone-ground Salt-free Absolutely Natural and loathsome crackers and brought them to the yard. No grass ever grew under Richard Gough’s feet; it was all terra-cotta. She ambled to the pool.

  Robert R. Mitchell sounded practically terrific.

  He seemed to be standing where the rest of her fine generation should have been, if fashion or comfort or boredom hadn’t taken them to some other port.

  She looked at the hedges that rimmed the back yard and then squinted at the pool. The sun had come up very startlingly bright. The air was still chilly but the water, in the heated little quarry, would be warm.

  On an impulse, she suddenly stripped off her sweatshirt, climbed up the diving board, thought for a moment, and then took the plunge.

  The water was good. She swam a few lengths of it, feeling it tingling and soothing her body, then floated for a while, thinking of nothing but the sun and the sky and how Robert R. Mitchell would undoubtedly be a very grave disappointment if she actually met him.

  In Richard’s bedroom, with a towel wrapped tight and the radio saying it was ten after nine, she checked through the phone book, looking up Entrepreneur magazine. If anyone she knew was a total workaholic, it was Harry Alina. Ten after nine and he’d be ready for his lunch.

  Sitting on the bedspread and combing out her hair, she got him on the telephone.

  “Harry? Joanna Reese. Listen,” she said, “I’ve got a brilliant idea.”

  6

  Mitchell had breakfast. Sitting in a coffee shop, wolfing half an omelet then staring at the rest of it, yellow and soggy, feeling suddenly glutted.

  By the time he got home, half starved and half queasy, limping from the knots that were chewing up his leg, he was ready for a Moment of Silence for himself. As he opened the door, though, the radio was spitting out excitements of Spanish. A head popped out at him. Melda said, “Oh señor. Ju hokay?”

  Wincing, he nodded. He’d forgotten she’d be there. Monday was maid-day.

  The radio blatted. Melda said, “Ju big surprising in the morning,” and waddled through the living room fronted by a mop. Mitchell tried to tell her he’d like to be alone. Melda, oblivious, told him, “Sokay. Ju no bother,” and headed very briskly down the hall. He tried another angle: he said he had to sleep. Nodding comprehension, she lowered the radio, till finally Mitchell used his limited Spanish and said to her, “Comprende. Yo necessito usar el dormitorio,” which netted him a smile. Melda, which he gathered was short for Esmerelda, the girl for whom the Hunchback had busted his hump, understood about bedrooms and their customary use. “Oh,” she said knowingly. “Fren coming, uh? Hokay.” She was giggling, putting down the mop.

  He went into the living room and headed for the bar. The room was immaculate—sterile and neat—a Hollywood decorator’s careful idea of Heterosexual Executive Taste: a desert of beiges in the Beverly Hills. He reached for a bottle.

  Melda came in in a dusty-looking raincoat and hovered at the wall. “I forget,” she said somberly, “but somebody call.” She was rummaging for carfare. Mitchell, without much interest, said, Who?

  Melda had forgotten “what he nane was,” she said, “but he tell me he calling ju many many tine and ju no calling heen. Sending many many postcard, ju no calling heen. What he say was, ju calling heen now or no what.”

  Mitchell cocked his head.

  Melda, departing, said, “Is all writing down. In thee bedroom,” she told him, and giggled at the word.

  Mitchell shook his head. He had no idea what she was talking about, and he wasn’t in a hurry to get in there and look.

  He poured himself a Scotch and then reached in the bookshelf for an Ellington record, “‘A’ Train” starting to rumble off the tracks as he turned on the bathwater, hot as he could take it, and stripped off his sweater.

  The note was on the bed, on a torn blue envelope, the printing in pencil, and it stopped him like a shot. For a moment he stood there, staring like a dunce as though he might have misread it, which wasn’t in the cards. It was one easy word; it was something that a slow first-grader couldn’t muff.

  CAT

  And a number.

  He could hear the bathwater running in the tub. He could picture it catapulting over the tubline and flooding on the floor. He still didn’t move.

  He thought about calling the number right now. Get it over with. See who was fucking around. Still he didn’t move. Trying to remember exactly what she’d told him. “He sending you letter.” “He calling many tine.” He pictured the folder of letters in the office, the folder marked Calls. He pictured the doorman handing him the tied-up bundle last night.

  He turned off the tub.

  Melda had neatly put his mail in the second of the night table drawers. He pulled off the twine and a rainbow of letters fell over on the blue Navajo blanket. Bills. Statements. Mailers from his congressman. Diseases wanting money. “Important Special Offer To Cardholders.” More bills. The postcard jumped at him and slipped to the floor. GREETINGS FROM DISNEYLAND just about said it. Mickey Mouse intrepidly dancing on a wall, waving Hi there, sucker.

  And something told him he’d require that whisky and he’d better sit down.

  The glass was on the sink. The “A” Train was pulling into Pennsylvania Station and he stopped it in its tracks. He went back to the bedroom and settled on the bed; reaching for the postcard, he turned it up slowly like the unseen hole-card in Blind Man’s Stud.

  Hey ole buddy, I just got to town and I’m figuring we ought to have a family reunion. Happens I’ve even got the family jewels—cheap piece of tin with some personal engraving, but me, I wouldn’t part with it for less than, say. 500,000 in cash. Call you next Monday. (On Tuesday, the sentimental value goes up.)

  Yer old buddy “Cat”

  Mitchell turned it over and stared at the mouse.

  Cat and mouse was supposedly the game. Five hundred thousand dollars was the prize. He looked at the postmark: 1/23. He’d left for Guatemala on—what?—the twenty-fifth—so the thing had been sitting there for practically a month. What shot through his mind now was I am not afraid. Jungle catechism: I am not afraid. Mantra. Repeat it. Repeat it till you think it; think it till you feel it. Rule #1: Your worst enemy is panic. Rule #2: Don’t move before you think, and Rule #3: Don’t think yourself to death.

  Lighting a cigarette it came to him that Rule #1 was off the list. He could p
ut his checkmark next to it. He felt no panic. What he felt now was numb. Dead but alert. And the thing was to handle it a step at a time; don’t jump to a conclusion (don’t move before you think).

  He was being blackmailed for half a million dollars.

  Accepting that one, the next thing to think about was clearly, By whom?

  By “Cat”?

  But of course there wasn’t any Cat. The Cat was dead. Twice. Both ways. Any way you reckoned. He’d seen one body and he’d personally and carefully buried the other.

  So from there, he could take it onto one of two paths. One—it had nothing to do with the murders. It was simply in the nature of a “personal problem.” Not the kind of problem he could take to the police, but a problem he could handle. Maybe. Or not. And pulling on his cigarette, pulling on his Scotch, he could almost convince himself that that was the case. If he pictured the universe as neutral and random, having no more direction than a couple of schmucks playing billiards in the sky, then once in a while it could pull off a shot—an amazing demonstration of articulate timing that was really nothing greater than a stab in the dark.

  But the other conclusion kept jumping on his back.

  He picked up the telephone, dialed the office, got Janet, said, “Look—” then heard his own urgency and started it again. “I just wondered,” he said, and asked her if he’d gotten any calls from a “Cat.”

  “This morning?” Janet asked.

  “Or while I was away.”

  There was nothing this morning, but he asked her if she’d go check the folder on his desk. He waited, pulling Scotch, pacing on the carpet till his leg almost buckled, then sitting on the bed.

  Janet said thoughtfully, “No. I don’t see it.”

  “Well, I don’t think it would only be an it. According to Melda he’s been calling me a lot. Starting … I don’t know. First Monday I was gone.”

  “Oh. I don’t know.” She was riffling paper. “Well … the only person who was calling you a lot, if you’re starting that Monday, was a jewelry salesman. He didn’t leave his number and he—”

  Right. That was it. “No name? just ‘jewelry salesman’?”

  “That’s it,” Janet said. “And he never left a number. He simply kept telling me to give you the message. I don’t think he really believed you weren’t here.”

  “I can see that,” Mitchell said. “Just one other question. What was the date of the last time he called?”

  “Last Wednesday,” she said. She sounded concerned. “Was it something I really should have told you long distance? I really thought it—”

  “No.” He handed her a tale about looking at a Rolex and the guy was just a pest. “But there wasn’t any Cat.”

  She assured him there wasn’t.

  Rule #4: After you’ve thought about it carefully, act.

  He picked up the envelope and studied the number. 212. Manhattan. New York. He dialed, fudged it, hung up, dialed again, and got a feminine machine. “This is Marian Cleaver. I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now—”

  Mitchell hung up and then dialed it again, carefully and slowly.

  “This is Marian Cleaver …” He waited for the beep. Hesitated. Then he said, “Tell him it’s the jewelry buyer and I’m back in L.A.”

  He sat for a moment wondering if Melda’d really fucked up the number, transposed a few digits.

  He might never know.

  He got into the bathtub. The water had cooled to a temperature that wouldn’t quite boil a lobster, just stun it. He lay there kneading at his leg, the whisky and an ashtray sitting on the rim.

  He could see how it went. The putative Cat felt ignored by the mouse so the value of the “family jewels” went up. By a count of seven and, according to the radio, possibly nine.

  Against all logic, his leg was relaxing. Dumb little fucker didn’t have a logical bone in its bone, hadn’t gotten the message. You could calm it with water, comfort it with Scotch.

  Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, he suddenly thought.

  Comfort me …

  His mind went back to Vietnam.

  1969. The Year of the Rooster.

  The Year of the Cat.

  7

  Catlin took his eyes very slowly off his feet and looked at the mountain he was marching to. Everything incredibly green. Even the skies could look green in Vietnam. The color of vomit. The color of mold. Vertiginous rot. He shifted his pack. The guy up ahead of him—bare shoulders rippling and gleaming in the heat—had a boil like a burgeoning tomato on his neck.

  He looked at his feet.

  His father’d been in Paris in August ’44. He’d liberated seven Parisian virgins. He’d learned how to say “couchez avec moi,” and sometimes he’d whisper it to Catlin’s mother—“couchez avec moi,” and she’d giggle in the kitchen, flushing, hit him with an elbow in the ribs. But that had been, Christ, maybe ten, twelve years ago. Before things had changed. It was ancient history. Like World War Two. Like Liberating Armies and Paris champagne.

  He wondered, just briefly, what his father would’ve thought, from his high-point in France, of this particular army, this particular platoon that was marching into glory. Hair to their shoulders; headbands ripped out of camouflage parachutes; earrings; beads; transistor radios that dangled like ornaments from bandoliers of ammo that were strapped across roiling bugbitten chests; passing off a lighted joint down the line.

  Catlin took a pull and then, waiting, he passed it on to Ammo behind him. The guy was called Ammo, no other name. Half the time you didn’t know anybody’s name except the name they got stuck with or decided on themselves. Day-Tripper. Red Dog. Doctor. The Monk.

  Ammo said sullenly, “Hot enough for ya?”

  Catlin said nothing. He moved on ahead again looking at his feet as they settled into deep red in-country mud. He lit a cigarette and the smoke seemed to hang there, supported on the air. It was eerily quiet. Too hot for the birds, too hot for the snakes. It was too hot for anything except the mosquitos, which seemed to have adopted a kamikaze spirit towards mosquito repellent, approaching Last Suppers with defiant, frenzied, fatalistic intensity.

  Catlin envied them.

  At least their mission had a fathomable purpose, understandably selfish. Catlin could understand nothing of his own. When they’d drafted him they’d tried to explain it in a sentence that was ripe with “liberation”; markers over maps, images of dominoes, but Catlin had only seen images of death. Earth made useless, people made blind, crippled, ugly, terrified, and some of them ultimately dead—the final Liberation.

  He looked at his feet.

  Onward Christian Soldiers, he thought. Marching off to what they’d marched to before. Just the way it happened: thirty-six grunts had been marching up a mountain and bang, there were none. None except Catlin who’d swallowed his breath and then hidden under corpses when the Cong had come ferreting, shooting into bodies, hacking off earlobes, testicles, dicks.

  He looked at his feet. What amazed him was that here they were doing it again, marching up a hill again with thirty other grunts; giving brand-new meaning to My feet are killing me.

  A Rolling Stones record kept playing in his head. “Two Thousand Light-Years from Home.” He could hear it now as though it were actually playing in a room. And with it, some knowledge that he’d better wake up because the Battle Scene was coming and he knew what it would be. It held no surprises. He’d seen that movie, he’d seen it every night and it never got better. There was nothing at the end of it but gun-smoke and noise—smoke so thick you couldn’t see through it, couldn’t breathe through it, automatic fire so loud you couldn’t even hear the screams of the wounded. Diving for cover he’d crash and come up with something evil on his fingers that was somebody’s brains. And he’d have to look at Ammo with the hole in his stomach, and The Doctor with his head blown cleanly from his neck, and he’d have to keep shooting—just standing there shooting with the M-16 going fully automatic, automatically feeding it with clip a
fter clip until it suddenly occurs to him there’s nothing up front. There’s nothing coming back at him. Everything’s dead. Everything. Desperate silence on the hill. He felt like an astronaut—lonely, lonely.

  He opened his eyes. The music had been playing on a fading cassette. He’d been sleeping on a carpet. Living room in somebody’s suite in Saigon. Continental Hotel. A window was open and he squinted in the light. Sounds from the sidewalk. Motorcycles revving. A faint hot breeze. The cassette playing “Two Thousand Light-Years from Home.” Stones to the stoned. Dayton, on the couch. Scarf on the floor, his hand gripped tightly on a half-empty fifth. The guy named Mitchell was the only one awake, or half-awake anyway. Or maybe he slept with his eyes half-open.

  “Real spooky,” Handler’d said. Couple of nights ago. First night that Catlin was assigned to the squad. Sitting in the bunker and it feels like the whole fucking planet is shaking. Rolling Thunder. The old whiz-bang. Later you’d go out, there’d be fires in the mountains like the fourth rim of hell. “Spooky,” Handler’d said. “That is one heavy dude. That’s an actual tripper on the Mystery Tour. What you want to do is give the man a very wide path,” Handler’d said. “You don’t want to make him mad. I’ll tell you what he does, he gets mad,” Handler said. “You want to ask about the sergeant.”

  Catlin didn’t ask.

  The sky was really violent with incoming now.

  “So what happened,” Handler said, “he just slit the guy’s throat. Guy was just sitting there shitting on the can and the next thing he’s got himself an ear-to-ear grin about three inches lower than it ought to be, right? Story was officially it’s Charlie’s on a call. Only nobody’s telling me that Charlie hits a can, does one shitty sergeant, disappears,” Handler said. “No way,” Handler said. “That was local expression, if you follow what I’m saying. That was something like the finish of a war within a war. That guy holds a grudge,” Handler said, “like a knife.”

  Catlin heard the story maybe half a dozen times, maybe half a dozen versions, but the ending was the same. Catlin wasn’t sure. Mitchell was a guy who inspired speculation, who seemed to be practically barnacled with myth. Mitchell was a Lurp—one of the Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrollers, guys who went out to the jungles in the night, “looking for trouble,” was the way they liked to put it, following up on intelligence reports, creeping alone around VC base camps or moving columns of Charlie-on-the-run. When there wasn’t any recon patrolling to do, no intelligent rumors to attempt to check out, they were sent to the jungles as Nightstalkers, “Midnight Ramblers,” they said; teams of maybe four, maybe half a dozen guys, only spread so thinly they were basically alone. Get up in the morning and you’d see them come back, faces still blackened up with nightfighter paint, knives at their waistbands glistening with red. And whatever was out there was written in their eyes. Talk about the long dark night of the soul.