Spellbinder

by Collin Wilcox

  And—now—it was necessary.

  Finally, speaking in a flat, noncommittal voice, Flournoy said, “What’d you make of it? Do you know any James?”

  “No,” Holloway answered slowly, staring off across the walnut-paneled dining room. “No, I don’t.”

  “In that case,” Flournoy said, “there’s probably nothing to it. Still—” He hesitated, thoughtfully frowning. “Still, I’ve got to confess that it made me a little uneasy, talking to him. It seemed as if—” Once more, he hesitated, frowning as he searched for the phrase. “It seemed as if he was very—purposeful. Very determined.” As he spoke, his eyes ventured into direct contact. He was probing now. Testing.

  With an effort, Holloway pushed himself away from the table, positioned his feet beneath him and slowly stood up, gripping the edge of the table with both hands. Immediately, the room lurched, steadied momentarily, then began to slowly slip away from him. He blinked, shook his head, blinked again. Slowly, the room began to right itself.

  “Austin. Are you all right?” Flournoy, too, was standing. Staring at him. Frankly worried.

  “I’m all right. But I think I’m going to lie down. Send Mitchell in to me in my office, will you? Tell him to come right in, by the side door. He’s got a key.” As he spoke, he looked at the door that led from the dining room to the hallway. The distance was perhaps twenty feet from the table to the door. Once in the hallway, he must walk fifty feet, at least, to his office.

  Total distance, seventy feet.

  Suddenly it seemed an impossible journey—a trial that no man should be forced to endure.

  Yet, because of its very impossibility, it was a challenge that, win or lose, he must accept. Now. Immediately. Just as soon as he could stand steadily, without clutching the table for support.

  Twelve

  HE LAY WITH HIS eyes closed, hands folded across his chest. Beneath his clasped hands, his heart was quiet and steady, each pulse measuring the moments of his life, one beat at a time.

  Moment to moment—beat after beat. It was everyone’s fate. It was the way everyone must pass from life to death—from the void before birth to the eternity that lay beyond. Listening to his own heart ticking out the time that was left. Wondering. Waiting.

  Unconsciously, he’d assumed the position of eternal repose—the position in which, someday, they would lay him out in his casket.

  One beat—two beats—three.

  Sometimes, at night, he lay with his finger on the pulse at his throat, counting …

  Wondering.

  Waiting.

  How would they plan his funeral? Lord Mountbatten, before he died, had meticulously planned his own ceremony, down to the smallest detail. It hadn’t been a state funeral. Not quite. Yet crowned heads from all over Europe had paid their respects. Prince Charles had eulogized his favorite uncle—Uncle Dickie, according to the tabloids.

  In years past, state funerals had been important diplomatic functions. After the final rites, the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns and the Romanoffs, all of them related, would gather together privately, taking the opportunity to size each other up, deciding who looked infirm, and might be the next to die. So that, upon returning to their separate kingdoms, they might begin plotting how to profit from the next death among them.

  Just as, at his own funeral, the pretenders to the empire he’d created would gather to mourn—and then retire to plot and scheme, secretly sharpening their daggers behind the rustle of medieval draperies as each rival eyed the others—

  A knock sounded on the outside door. It was Mitchell’s knock: heavy, measured, reassuring. He levered himself upright on the couch, waited until the room steadied, then said, “Come in, Lloyd.”

  Wearing his usual dark blue suit, black shoes and pale blue shirt with a plain tie, Mitchell entered the room, closed the door behind him, tested the lock, then advanced to a chair that faced the couch. He sat with his feet flat on the floor, his big-knuckled hands resting on each knee, clenched into loose fists. At age fifty-six, with his squared-off face and his unrevealing, uncompromising eyes, Mitchell could have been a Roman centurion, implacably awaiting orders.

  “Is there anything about this caller—James—that you didn’t tell Flournoy?”

  Mitchell slid his huge hand inside his coat, withdrawing a sheet of paper, neatly folded into quarters. Holding the sheet of paper in his hand, still folded, he said, “The calls started three days ago. At first, I didn’t think anything about them. By the second day, though—after three or four calls—I started to wonder.

  “Then, the night of the second day, I got a report that someone—a man—was seen loitering around your house, approximately eleven o’clock to midnight. All we got was a general description—slim, brown hair, probably in his twenties. Still, I didn’t think much about it. There wasn’t any attempt made to enter the premises. And, as you know, we don’t like to discourage people who want to see you in person—if that’s all they want.

  “But then, last night, Bursten said that the same man tried to force the rear gate. Or, at least, he apparently did enough to the gate to trip an alarm, which could’ve been a matter of just slipping something metallic inside the jam. Again, it didn’t seem like anything very serious. It’s happened before. Many times.

  “But, to double-check, Bursten called the local police station, and they put it out to the sector car. The car was only a block away, so they cruised past—just in time to see someone answering the prowler’s description getting into a car. It was a green Datsun—” Mitchell unfolded the paper, reading: “License number CVC916, registered to Hertz, in Los Angeles—and rented by a Mr. Julian Carson, of Darlington, North Carolina.” Mitchell refolded the paper, returned it to his pocket and resumed his previous position, saying: “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Yes,” Holloway answered slowly. “Yes, Lloyd, it does.”

  Silently—stolidly—Mitchell waited, still sitting as before: a big, broad-shouldered man in an ill-fitting blue suit, erect in the chair, attentively listening, alert to everything that passed between them, spoken or unspoken. Still awaiting orders.

  “How long has it been, Lloyd, that we’ve been together? How many years?”

  “Twenty-four years,” Mitchell answered quietly. “Twenty-four years in December.”

  Holloway nodded. “Yes, I remember. You started working for me on December first. And, on Christmas, you had dinner with us. Do you remember?”

  Impassively, Mitchell nodded. “I remember.”

  For a moment Holloway sat silently, looking into the other man’s eyes. In all those twenty-four years, he’d never known what Mitchell was thinking, or feeling. He could predict what Mitchell would do, but he never knew why. He knew very little about Mitchell’s life, only that he’d been raised an orphan, had been an infantry sergeant in World War II and later had worked as a policeman. He’d been married during the war and then divorced. Somewhere he had a son. Two or three times a year, usually on a Saturday night, Mitchell locked himself in his small apartment over the garage and drank. Monday mornings, his face pale and his eyes bloodshot, he would report for duty as usual. In the trash on those Monday mornings, the maids sometimes reported finding five empty whiskey bottles—which they added to the empty gin bottles taken from Katherine’s suite, one bottle a day.

  For twenty-four years—almost a quarter of a century—he’d entrusted his life to this man, with perfect confidence. Yet, during all those years, they’d always been strangers. It was a paradox. He trusted a man he’d never really known. He spent more time with Mitchell than with any other person on earth. From the very first—from that first Christmas dinner—Mitchell had been included in their family group: a silent, mysterious presence. From the first, the children had accepted Mitchell. They’d been tiny, then—Denise had been four, and Elton had been eight. In those early years, they’d reacted to Mitchell almost as if he’d been a contemporary of theirs: a playmate who never played, yet who understood their games. P
erhaps the children understood intuitively that they were safe with Mitchell. Like a watchdog, he would always protect them, regardless of the danger to himself.

  “Twenty-four years,” Holloway said heavily, repeating his own thought aloud. “I don’t know that I’ve ever thanked you for everything you’ve done for me, Lloyd. Not really thanked you. I’ve paid you—salaries, and bonuses. I’ve often thought I should pay you more. I remember asking you, from time to time, if you needed more money. But you never did.”

  “That’s right,” Mitchell said. Repeating: “I never did.”

  “I can remember paying you,” Holloway said again. “But I don’t remember thanking you.”

  “You’ve thanked me. You’ve thanked me often. Many times.”

  Aware that his head was heavy, Holloway nodded. “Good. That’s good. Because I wouldn’t want you to think, Lloyd—never would I want you to think, even for a moment—that I didn’t appreciate everything you’ve done for me. Because I do appreciate it. And, more than that, I realize—I’ve always realized—that, really, you’re the only one I’ve got around me, here, that I can trust. Do you realize that?”

  For a long, silent moment Mitchell didn’t respond, either by word or gesture. Then, almost reluctantly, he gravely nodded. Nothing more: just one simple inclination of his big, grizzled head.

  “The reason I’m telling you all this—” Holloway said, speaking with slow, deliberate emphasis, “the reason I want you to understand that you’re the only one I can trust, is that I’m about to tell you something that no one else knows. Or, at least, no one here knows—no one in the Temple, and no one in my family, either.”

  Once more, Mitchell nodded—stolidly waiting.

  “Twenty-seven years ago,” he said, “I met a woman named Mary Carson. She was just a girl, really—just nineteen years old. We were doing The Hour from Raleigh, and we were in town one week, as I remember. Mary was a real believer—an old-fashioned, down South fundamentalist, the kind you never see these days—and almost never saw even then. She was stagestruck and she was—well—she thought I was Jesus Christ come down to earth, I’d have to say. The only problem was, she was a little crazy. At first, it seemed as if she was just crazy for the love of God. But later—well—” He gestured with an open palm, pushing the memory aside. “That’s another story.

  “In any case, when she heard I was coming to Raleigh, she told her folks she was going to see me—that she was going for the whole week. She was going to hear me preach, and she was going to sing for me, too, in the hope that there’d be a place for her in the choir. Well, her parents said no. They were fundamentalists, too—real Bible thumpers, and no mistake. They were both of them very old to be the parents of a nineteen-year-old girl. Sixty, at least. They’d gotten married late—waiting for permission from the Lord, according to Mary. But then, again according to Mary, they apparently neglected to get permission from the Lord to have a child. So that, when Mary was born, they figured she was sin incarnate, and she must be purified. Which is to say that her life was just pure hell. Everything she ever did that was wrong, it was God’s judgment visited on her parents, to punish them for the sin of conceiving her. And, apparently, she could never do anything right.

  “So, anyhow, when she felt she was called to Raleigh, her parents felt just the opposite. They saw Raleigh as both Sodom and Gomorrah. So when she insisted, they threw her out of the house. That didn’t deter her, though. She was determined to hear me preach.

  “Well, she arrived in Raleigh with a cardboard suitcase, and her Sunday dress, and the most angelic smile you ever saw—plus three dollars and forty cents, exactly. And I can tell you—” He paused, momentarily lost in memory. “I can tell you, Lloyd, she was beautiful. I mean, everything about her was perfection. Absolute perfection. She was beautiful all over, if you know what I mean.

  “Well, I won’t go into all the details, except to say that I enfolded her to my bosom, so to speak. And she—well—she accepted me with an innocence that was absolutely awesome. So—” He paused again, once more remembering the week in Raleigh, twenty-seven years ago. Then, in a clearer, brisker voice: “So—very shortly—I realized that I had a problem on my hands. You know what I mean. You ought to know, if anyone in the world does. In a manner of speaking, it was like having a tiger by the tail. I couldn’t let her go. I simply couldn’t, never mind the risk. But I couldn’t hold on, either. Or, at least, I couldn’t bring her back to Los Angeles. That would’ve been just plain foolhardy.

  “So, finally, I struck a compromise. I found her a job singing in a tabernacle in Raleigh. Or, to be more accurate, I, ah, subsidized her. And, of course, in the months to come, I found business, in Raleigh. I was, in a word, obsessed by her. It was the first time it had happened to me—at the age of thirty-six.” He broke off, letting his eyes wander across the room. Even now, twenty-seven years later, he could still see her: a creamy body lying on a moonlit bed, her pale hair a halo around her head, her pink-nippled breasts rising to his caress, her flaxen pubes an eager mound, lifted to receive him.

  “Of course,” he said finally, speaking in a low, soft voice, “she became pregnant. I tried to tell her about birth control, but I knew it was no use. I couldn’t tell anyone else to tell her, because then the secret would be out. And, worse yet, I couldn’t simply do the intelligent thing—break it off, arrange for the tabernacle to fire her, and hope that she got back home. I was obsessed, as I said. So, when she told me she was pregnant, I did the next best thing. I suggested an abortion. But she wouldn’t do it. I never thought she would. So—” He shrugged. “So she had the child. A boy. She named him James.”

  Speaking quietly, in a voice that was without inflection, revealing nothing, Mitchell asked, “What’s he like, this James? What’s his background?”

  “That,” Holloway said, “is the problem. James Carson is a criminal—a vicious, sadistic degenerate, according to my information.”

  “Have you ever seen him?”

  “No. I haven’t seen him, and he hasn’t seen me, to my knowledge. Up until now, as far as I know, he didn’t know I existed. His mother took him to Darlington, North Carolina, soon after he was born. She had an older brother there—Julian Carson. All these years, I sent both of them money. I sent Mary money to keep her child—and to keep her quiet. And I sent Julian a like amount, to make sure she kept quiet. He was my insurance, I thought.

  “But, four years ago, James went to prison. And less than a year ago, his mother finally went over the edge. She’s completely insane, and she’s institutionalized. About a month ago, I heard from Julian that James was being paroled. So—” He gestured with a heavy, hopeless hand. “So, in one sense, I was expecting this.”

  “Do you think he’s dangerous?”

  “Yes,” Holloway answered reluctantly. “Yes, I think he probably is dangerous.”

  “Then we should get him arrested.”

  “It’s not that simple, Lloyd. The fact that he’s here means that he knows he’s my child. And if it ever comes out that I have an illegitimate child—a degenerate illegitimate child who’s an ex-convict, with a mother who’s crazy—I’m afraid I’d be in trouble. Deep trouble.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Mitchell answered thoughtfully. “A lot of things are hushed up. They’re whispered about, but they’re never made public—like Kennedy’s love affairs, for instance. There’s a kind of gentlemen’s agreement, not to smear public figures.”

  Holloway nodded. “That’s right. That’s very true. Which is precisely why all this has never been a problem. Certainly, over the years, there’ve been suspicions about me and Mary—and about me and other women, too, as far as that goes. As you well know. But that’s exactly the point, Lloyd. As long as everything’s done quietly, there’s no problem. There’re whispers, but nothing more. But let something appear on the public record—an arrest, for instance, that would connect me and James—and all bets would be off. I’d be finished. I’m not saying that everything would coll
apse around our ears. Probably it wouldn’t. God knows, Aimee Semple McPherson weathered many a storm. But, at the very least, I’d have to keep a low profile, and simply ride it out. Which would mean, sure as anything, that the China Crusade would die a-borning. And that, I won’t tolerate.”

  “What’s to be done, then?”

  “I don’t know,” Holloway answered slowly. “I’m sorry to say, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe all he wants is money. If he doesn’t want too much, it might work out. I think I should meet with him, and size him up. He might take a hundred thousand dollars, and go on his way.”

  “Somehow I doubt that. Blackmailers, you know, always want more. They keep coming back.”

  Mitchell lifted his massive shoulders, shrugging. “Let him come back, then. As long as he stays away from you, and keeps quiet, and doesn’t ask for too much, where’s the harm? After all, you’ve been paying him, in a manner of speaking, for years.”

  “I suppose,” Holloway answered thoughtfully, “that you could be right.” He sat silently for a moment, considering. Then, decisively, he nodded. “You are right, Lloyd. As always. How do you suppose that we handle it?”

  “I take it,” Mitchell said, “that Flournoy doesn’t know any of this.”

  “I’ve already told you, Lloyd, that you’re the only one who knows the whole story. Howard knows about the calls, of course. But that’s all.”

  “Does he know that blackmail’s involved?”

  “Yes,” Holloway admitted. “And that’s what concerns me. I don’t want him to know about Mary and James. I don’t want him to have that knowledge—that leverage.”