Going for the Gold

by Emma Lathen

  “Just as well,” grinned Dick Noyes. “Melville seems able to swallow you, but the mention of Egon still turns him purple.”

  This came as no surprise to Bernard, who shook his head disapprovingly. “I told Egon to forget about that brief he wrote. But nothing would stop him from shoving it at Melville after the cable car was down. Egon honestly thought he was going to get it printed somehow.”

  “Get what printed?” Tilly asked a second before Thatcher could.

  Gunther and Dick both felt she had missed one of life’s joys. “Didn’t you ever get a chance to read it?” they demanded.

  Tilly reminded them that the IOC delegates had rushed her into seclusion as soon as they had regained control at Whiteface Mountain. It had been part of Melville’s policy for downplaying the publicity value of the Swiss confrontation. No dangling gondolas to photograph, no pretty girls to interview, no inflammatory press releases to publish.

  “Egon did a beautiful job,” Gunther murmured. “Even I could tell that much. You would have loved it.”

  Bernard had no use for futile regrets. “Egon thinks he can reform the world all at once,” he said dispassionately. “Things don’t work that way. We must proceed step by step. But this time Egon is being stubborner than usual. He must know that release has served its purpose.”

  John Thatcher had more experience with bright young men than Bernard Heise, and he realized that this was not a case of misplaced idealism. Egon was fired by the enthusiasm of the creative artist; he was infatuated with his own masterpiece. He could not bear to think that something so beautiful, so perfect, so supremely well-tailored to the immediate need, should be discarded.

  Dick Noyes took a simpler approach. “Egon’s mad at the whitewash, and I don’t blame him. You weren’t there, Bernard, but you should have seen the way Melville acted today when it was all over. He was patting Tilly on the shoulder, beaming paternally at her, and welcoming her back aboard. Naturally it was so wonderful, we were pleased. But when you think about it, that old fox has gotten everything his own way. There wasn’t one word about finding out who drugged Tilly and disqualifying her. That would make too much of a stink. But Melville doesn’t mind draping medals on some girl who wins the slalom by passing out Mickeys.”

  “Wait a minute.” Tilly had been looking first at Bernard, then at Dick in confusion. “Was Egon claiming that someone in the slalom drugged me?”

  “Of course he was.” Dick had worked himself into a welter of indignation. “Look, Tilly, I know you’ve been too busy trying to undo the damage to wonder who was responsible. But whoever she was, she’s going to get away with it, and I say that’s a crying shame.”

  Tilly was serenely confident. “You’re all wrong. I know the girls who are competing, and none of them would do something like that.”

  Dick immediately said that Tilly was too trusting for her own good. He was supported by Bernard, who urged Tilly not to underestimate the depravity of others.

  Thatcher, on the fringes of the controversy, was struck by the warmth with which the boys continued to press their conviction. Why did they assume they knew better than Tilly? By all accounts she had been on the international circuit for three or four years. Dick was the merest tyro and even Bernard was a latecomer. The only one who could claim his experience outclassed hers was Gunther Euler. And Gunther, Thatcher suddenly realized, was frowning heavily and not volunteering one single word.

  Moved by genuine curiosity, Thatcher edged over to the ski jumper. “You’re the veteran, Euler,” he said in an undertone. “What’s your opinion? Would most competitors act that way?”

  Euler hesitated. But when he spoke, there was nothing indecisive about his words. “Take drugs themselves . . . yes. But feed them to someone else? Absolutely not.”

  The adversaries, meanwhile, had not succeeded in budging each other an inch. Tilly insisted that she knew the people involved. Bernard had theories about the underside of life. And Dick informed both of them that he was the one with his feet on the ground.

  “Because you’ve got to face facts, Tilly,” he said. “Somebody had to have a reason for drugging you, and it sticks out a mile what that reason was.”

  “If we’re going to talk about facts,” she retorted instantly, “nobody in the slalom had a chance to do it.”

  “You can’t be sure of that. It was days ago.”

  Tilly, whose blood was up, had no qualms about sweeping Roger Hathaway into the dispute. “You remember, don’t you, Roger? We had lunch in the cafeteria and we sat with Gunther and Dick.”

  As befitted a banker, Hathaway qualified his reply. “I remember lunch,” he admitted cautiously, “but you could have bumped into anyone before.”

  “You see, Tilly!” Dick was almost crowing. “You don’t know when you got the stuff.”

  “But I do! The doctor told me all about the results of the analysis. And he says I would have been feeling the effects within 30 to 40 minutes.”

  Dick was looking more and more like a baffled bull. Well, thought Thatcher unsympathetically, he was the boy who had wanted to deal in facts. If they were unpalatable, he had only himself to blame.

  “That just doesn’t make sense,” Dick complained. “Nobody knew where you were going to eat. Are you trying to tell me that somebody was wandering around with a bunch of knockout drops?”

  “Not knockout drops. The doctor said it was a type of allergy medicine. Probably a double or triple dose.” Tilly, who had been so positive until now, faltered. “It seems some people carry it around all the time.”

  Her confusion, Thatcher decided, was a tribute to rampant good health. A bodily ailment, in her life, was a broken leg or a twisted shoulder. Of course Tilly knew, in a vague academic way, that the world was filled with asthmatics, diabetics, epileptics. Nonetheless the simple statement that certain individuals routinely carried medication opened vistas that seemed to her outlandish. Thatcher found this naiveté rather endearing. As for Everett Gabler, whose whole existence was a battle to avoid offending his stomach, he looked downright envious.

  “I suppose you wouldn’t have any tolerance for this medicine,” Thatcher remarked to her. “Particularly for an overdose. That would certainly explain your reaction.”

  “The doctor said I was suffering from an acute case of antihistamine drowsiness,” Tilly quoted as if by rote. “He said I was lucky I didn’t crash into a tree.”

  Her calm was raising Dick’s hackles. “Listen, I want to make sure I’ve got this straight. The doctor claims the stuff had to go into you at lunch. But, Tilly! You had lunch with me and Gunther. I remember calling to you and Roger as soon as you got off the line and you came straight over.”

  Before anybody could explore the appalling implications of this remark, Roger Hathaway coughed compellingly. They all turned to stare at him.

  “I think you might expand lunch to lunchtime,” he suggested. “Tilly pushed that tray from one end of the counter to the other, and she stopped a number of times to say hello to people. In fact I remember waiting for her at the end while she was finishing up with that Italian.”

  “Carlo Antonelli,” Dick supplied instantly.

  It was all coming back to Tilly. “You’re right,” she agreed. “And I wished Suzanne luck in the school figures, too.”

  There was an uneasy silence.

  “I suppose you could say,” Tilly continued reluctantly, “that the people who were near my tea were the same ones who went snowmobiling at Saranac.”

  Privately Thatcher thought that was an overly polite way of describing them. You could also call them the group suspected of murdering Yves Bisson.

  That, in any event, was how it struck Dick Noyes. “Jesus Christ!” he roared loudly enough to rivet the entire bank. “I’ve been thinking this police malarky was a joke until now. But somebody did shoot Yves and, if the same guy is after you, Tilly, you’re in danger.”

  “Now don’t exaggerate,” she said with an edge to her voice. She had rattled herself
enough not to welcome any intensification. “A couple of harmless pills isn’t the same thing as killing someone.”

  “I didn’t say it was, but it’s still no joke.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that! I’m the one who went down Whiteface half unconscious.”

  If Dick had been more experienced, he would have been warned by the rising note. Instead he plunged doggedly on. “Well, thank God the IOC hearing is over. Now there’s nothing to keep you here. You can simply clear out.”

  “I’d have to think about that, I don’t know how it would look,” Tilly said irritably. “Nobody leaves right after they race.”

  “What’s to think about? We agreed you were going to visit my folks in Colorado as soon as the Games were over. You’d just be going a little early. And I don’t mean tonight, I mean now, on the next bus.”

  Tilly could not believe her ears. “Dick, the slalom starts in two hours.”

  “To hell with the slalom! That’s how you got clobbered last time. Suppose this weirdo decides to use cyanide this time?”

  “You’re not serious. I worked to get to Lake Placid for three years, and so far, what have I got to show for it? First I look like a clown on the slope, then I get thrown out in disgrace. Today, things are going to be different.”

  Dick was leaning over her as if he wanted to ram his argument down her throat. “I’m not talking about how you look on TV,” he shouted, beginning to wave his hands. “I’m talking about your life. Can’t you get that through your fool head?”

  “You may be convinced I’m in danger, but I’m not. And don’t call me a fool!”

  “Well, you’re acting like one! Which is more important, your safety or some tinpot medal?”

  Tilly’s eyes narrowed to slits. “That medal wouldn’t be so tinpot if you had ever stood the slightest chance of winning one.”

  “Wonderful!” Dick spat. “So now I’m supposed to be jealous of you as a skier.”

  Thatcher and Gabler had instinctively faded back several paces, only too grateful to let the tide of bank business sweep Tilly forward to the teller and out of their immediate vicinity. Bernard and Hathaway had not been quite so agile and they paid the penalty.

  Bernard, proving his dedication once again, even ventured into the arena. “Now, Tilly,” he said ponderously, “it doesn’t make any difference how badly Dick skis. You should listen to him, he’s making sense.”

  “Just 24 hours ago you were telling me that my being in the slalom was so vital it excused kidnapping and hijacking. Now, when it’s what I want to do, it doesn’t matter at all. Why should I listen to someone who can’t make up his mind?” Tilly demanded, plunking a traveler’s check under the grille.

  Bernard bit his lip. “I can make up my mind,” he retorted, making the fatal error of justifying himself . “Yesterday was a matter of principle.”

  “Ha!” bleated Tilly. “Well, today it’s my principle.”

  The teller, who had been vainly trying to attract Tilly’s attention by flourishing a neat packet of bills, abandoned sign language. “Your Eurocheck is quite valid,” he announced in stentorian accents.

  “You’re damned right it is,” said Tilly, reminded of old grievances. “And so was the last one I cashed here, no matter what anyone says!”

  But the teller, unlike so many of his contemporaries, had dealt with the great American public. “Yes, miss ,” he mumbled in such an impersonal, disembodied voice that Tilly might just as well have tangled with a recording. Abandoning him in search of worthier prey, Tilly swung on Roger Hathaway.

  “And I suppose you think Dick’s making marvelous sense, too,” she dared him.

  One glance at her white pinched face was enough for Hathaway. “I agree you ought to leave, but I don’t see that a couple of hours makes all that much difference.”

  Thatcher wished that the branch manager had as much sense as his teller. He should have foreseen that pacifying Tilly would enrage Dick.

  Sure enough, Dick came barging in. For the next five minutes an astonishing number of charges and countercharges hurtled through the air. Hathaway’s departure from competitive skiing after college, in Dick’s eyes, debarred him from encouraging anyone to race.

  “You didn’t think it was so all-important.”

  Dick’s assumption that Colorado and Whiteface were Tilly’s only alternatives was labeled a monstrous piece of egotism.

  “I can always go back to Interlaken, to my job at the bank!”

  Bernard’s ill-considered plea that they should all remain calm and discuss this like civilized beings almost brought Hathaway down on him.

  But if the men had unlimited time for these pyrotechnics, Tilly did not. She had to change, to catch the bus to Whiteface, to take the lift to the waiting area.

  “And that’s what I’m going to do,” she said roundly. “If you want to see me, you know where to find me. If you don’t want to see me, that’s all right too!”

  Her exit was living proof of the powers of femininity. In spite of heavy boots and a cumbersome down jacket, she produced a flounce that could not have been bettered in a bustle.

  Dick Noyes stared at the closing door, then transferred his embittered gaze to his companions. Gunther Euler, who had prudently sidelined himself during the hostilities, offered a bromide about tension immediately prior to competition. This was apparently the final straw. Dick took a deep breath, prepared to blast him to smithereens, then abruptly ran out of steam.

  “Oh hell!” he said to no one in particular before he too stormed out of the bank.

  As peace descended, Roger Hathaway returned to his superiors. “Whew!” he said feelingly. “Dealing with these wildcats makes you glad to get back to banking.”

  Thatcher could see a lecture taking shape on Everett Gabler’s lips, and an unfair one at that. It was not Hathaway’s fault that Sloan customers should choose the bank, out of all the amenities provided in Olympic Village, for their domestic spats.

  “We could all profitably get back to business,” he said hastily.

  Hathaway was right with him. “If there’s nothing more I can do for you, I’d better check out the downtown branches.”

  “Splendid,” said Thatcher, speeding him on his way. “And, Everett, defer your indignation for a moment. I want to talk about something else. Were you paying attention to what Noyes was saying?”

  “Of course I was,” Everett rejoined. “With the Antonellis and Euler virtually cleared, the Saranac party reduces to Noyes and Tilly Lowengard. And, in spite of your earlier suspicions, Miss Lowengard is not seizing excuses to leave Lake Placid.”

  Thatcher was more troubled than he cared to admit. “No, but Noyes is remarkably anxious that she should. He started out by trying to tie the drugging to a competitor. When that didn’t work, he shifted with remarkable promptitude into the effort to have her depart.”

  Everett liked to lay out all possibilities. “It could be genuine solicitude.”

  “Of course it could. But why these attacks on Tilly in the first place? None of these young people suggested so much as a hint of a reason.”

  Everett snorted. “Naturally. They are incapable of rational thought.”

  “Rational or not, his eye on the ball. If the girl is in danger, her protection is the immediate concern.”

  “Are you suggesting that we prevent her from eating and drinking? How can we? That isn’t our province.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Thatcher had made up his mind. “But it is Ormsby’s. I think the police had better take a hand.”

  Chapter 20

  Frost Heaves

  WHAT Thatcher required was a phone and privacy. The Sloan in Olympic Village offered the first, but not the second. In theory, discreet conversations could be conducted under cover of the pervasive clatter. But Thatcher was wise in the ways of applied acoustics; the minute he reached Captain Ormsby, the bank would fall silent as a tomb. Since he did not want his comments reverberating through the whole compound, he set off fo
r the pay phones in the main lobby.

  Ormsby was not happy when he heard what Thatcher had to say.

  “My God, I read all about her being kicked out. Now you’re telling me that somebody may have been trying to shut her up. How long have those stuffed shirts at the IOC known about this? And why the hell didn’t they report it?”

  Tempers were getting short at the police station too, Thatcher realized. “I think they just got the complete analysis this morning,” he said.

  “And never put two and two together,” Ormsby groaned. “Well, that kid’s going to have a long talk with me about everything she knows, or thinks she knows.”

  Thatcher was sorry to have to carp. “She’s racing this afternoon.”

  But Ormsby’s blood was up. “I’ll send a couple of my boys to Whiteface, and they’ll pick her up the minute she hits the finish line.”

  Well, that took care of where Tilly Lowengard would be eating and drinking tonight, Thatcher thought as he hung up. Now he could turn his attention to what he himself would be doing along those lines.

  “Everett,” he said, upon returning to the bank, “let’s have lunch.”

  “So long as it isn’t the cafeteria,” said his loyal subordinate.

  Any cafeteria was penance for Gabler. The rich profusion of dietary abominations, the mountains of saturated fats, the carbohydrates heaped on carbohydrates, all these offended his purist’s soul, as if his chaste cottage cheese could be contaminated by its neighbors. But at Olympic Village it was the trays that staggered him, not the steam tables. Watching hungry young athletes stoke up left him aghast.

  “Pizza, chop suey, french fries, followed by two helpings of banana pie, and chocolate ice cream!” he had choked during their one and only visit. “They’re poisoning themselves.”

  “If anything, they’re too healthy,” Thatcher replied as Gabler repeated the sentiment.

  “In view of the virtually non-stop spectacles we have witnessed here this morning,” said Gabler, rising to follow Thatcher, “I am inclined to suspect some sort of chemical imbalance.”