Eating in the Lasher kitchen that night, Mario had glanced through the book Scotti had put in his mailbox, a belated Christmas remembrance. It was used, as Mario’s gift to her had been. It was a Penguin edition of The Master Key. He had put it in the glove compartment of his van, reading a litde at a time, mostiy at airports while he waited for a client. He had almost forgotten it until he flipped through it at the kitchen table.
His heart began thumping as he read a description of a four-year-old boy being kidnapped.
It was right at that point when Jack Burlingame appeared with the unfinished letter from Delroy to Scotti.
Scotti was smiling as she walked toward the van, pushing her hair back from her face, looking glad to see him.
He could not help thinking of how many times he had been wrong about women. He didn’t know them at all, did he? He was not a good judge of them, not even when all he wanted was a friendship.
She got into the van and said, “You didn’t miss much tonight.” She was carrying her bag and a small package.
“Who read?”
“Cheryl Lewis.”
“Uh-oh. The Civil War epic.”
“It’s your fault. Someone had to fill in for you at the last minute and Cheryl’s the only one who drags her novel around with her at all times.” “Back with the Wind. That’s what she should call it.”
Scotti laughed and put the package by her feet, on the floor.
“Were you shopping in New York?”
“I just bought one thing.”
“You’re not like most women. A whole day in New York and you only bought one thing?”
“I didn’t go there to shop.”
“What did you go in for?”
She glanced across at him with an annoyed frown, which disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. It was not like Mario to ask her a personal question and he appreciated that that was the reason for the look.
“I went there to see old friends,” she told him.
“I started that book you recycled to me.”
“And?”
“And I wonder why you chose that one?”
“How come you chose Lord JimT
“I was getting rid of fiction. I never reread fiction.”
“Well, I was doing the same thing. . . . Did you do the underlining in
Lord JimV “Yes.”
“I like that quote. ... I passed on The Master Key because I just couldn’t get into it.”
“Why not?”
“Mysteries don’t interest me that much. I like writers like Mona Simpson, Thea Asdey. I love her. Do you know her? She’s Australian. You must read The Acolyte. . . . Where are we going, Mario?”
“I have a treat for you. We’re going to have a drink with Jack Burlingame.” “You said he was staying with the Lashers, but I didn’t know you were friendly with him.”
“He was the reason I missed class. He wanted me to help him with something. When I told him we had a date he said to go to Ashawagh Hall and bring you back.”
“I’m not dressed to meet someone like Burlingame.”
“Oh? But what you’re wearing is good enough for me?”
“Mario, I don’t really feel like conversation with a stranger, an important writer, at that. . . . Let’s skip it.” She looked at her watch. “It’s almost nine-thirty.”
“All right, Scotti. This is about Delroy.”
“What about him?”
“He may be in some trouble. He’s been coming and going without telling us his whereabouts. It turns out he visits your mother, too, or so he claims.”
“He isn’t claiming it. He does.”
“So he said.”
“You called my mother about Delroy?”
“Not about Delroy yet. I called her to see if I could catch you before you went off to the workshop. . . . Later on we learned that Delroy visits your mother. It seems so unlikely.”
“It is. They met at Green River Cemetery, near our house. My mother walks her bulldog there. I told you: Delroy’s been over at the cemetery in connection with this half-acre gravesite. . . . My mother’s a very lonely woman. They seem to have hit it off.”
“Okay,” Mario said. “Just tell Mr. Burlingame that.”
Mario could not bring himself to ask her what he knew Burlingame would: what was “the secret”? But he had a disturbing feeling that somehow this woman wasn’t at all what he had thought she was. He had never really believed her when she’d talked about frequenting the discos, covering the same territory he had so many years ago. She wasn’t the type. She was too refined, too hidden. She was the only member of the workshop who was not eager to read her work ... if there even was any. She had never once talked about her book to Mario, though he had told her all about his.
She said, “Is Delroy in serious trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Mario said.
“Well, how did I get involved?”
“After the police verified the fact he visits your place, Mr. Burlingame wondered about it. He knew we had a date after class, so he suggested that I bring you by for a talk.”
“The police?” Mario could hear the panic in her voice.
“Delroy took the estate Jeep,” said Mario. “Actually he had permission, but Mrs. Lasher didn’t know that.”
“Does he still have it?”
“It was in the driveway when I left.”
“I just don’t understand this, Mario. What is really going on?”
“Wait and let Burlingame talk to you. It’s nothing dire.”
But she knew better.
Mario didn’t know what she knew, but he could feel she knew something, smelled trouble of some kind. She was not reacting like someone who wasn’t part of the trouble.
“How did you get involved?” she asked Mario again.
“I told you: I drive for them. I brought Deanie home from school and I walked in on all this: Delroy missing, the Jeep missing.” He had glanced at her as he said Deanie’s name and she’d met his glance with no change of expression.
She said, “You’re not telling me everything.”
“You said Delroy had this ‘connection’ with your mother. Does that go for you and Delroy, too?”
“You know better than that, Mario! I hardly know him. I don’t even like him.”
Her gloves were in her lap. She was wringing her hands.
“Anyway, you’ll get to meet a famous author,” Mario tried to humor her with a chuckle.
“I won’t be able to tell the famous author much about Delroy Davenport,” she said angrily.
“I’m sorry.” He was. Sorry, disappointed, mistrustful. It was familiar, wasn’t it? Another woman he’d misjudged. The past repeats itself.
“Mario?”
“What?”
“Can we skip this meeting and just have a drink someplace?”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?” Besides anger in her tone there seemed to be fear, too.
“Scotti,” he said, “would you mind going along with this as a favor to me? We’re almost there. It won’t take long.”
“Are you giving me a choice?”
“No. I work for them, Scotti. I’m sorry.”
He could feel her rage.
He went faster, fearing she might even try to jump from the van.
“He’s been waking up and he’s very agitated,” Mrs. Metcalf told Delroy. “He keeps asking for Deanie, and he’s thrashing around and making those noises of his. But I think he’s asleep now. . . . Where were you?”
Delroy said, “The Missus sent the police after me. Can you believe that?”
“She said you ran off with the Jeep.”
“I had permission from Mr. Burlingame.”
“That’s not permission from her. You know her.'"
“Mr. Lasher was planning to spend special time with Deanie, so I didn’t hurry back here.”
“Deanie’s not even here, Delroy. She’s sleeping over at the Candles’.” “You must have heard w
rong. Deanie can’t go to the Candles’.” “She’s there right now,” said Mrs. Metcalf, putting on her coat.
“She couldn’t be.”
“She is. I’m leaving now.”
“You might be needed here tomorrow, too, Mrs. Metcalf.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“What do you have, a girlfriend, Delroy?”
“I have a conscience.”
“Oh my my my. A conscience. Who doesn’t?”
“Some people don’t.”
“What does having a conscience have to do with your not being here tomorrow? . . . Now, as far as I know Mr. Lasher hasn’t had a sedative, though he may not need it.”
She was putting on her gloves, not at all interested in what Delroy had to say about what having a conscience had to do with his not being there the next day. Not that he would have told her the Mister was planning suicide. It was just as well she wasn’t curious about why he had mentioned his conscience. That had just slipped out.
She said, “I have to know tonight if I’m needed tomorrow, and when. I’ve been having car trouble and tomorrow I have to take it in.”
“You’re needed all day. I won’t be around.”
“I can’t come for the whole day. What does having a conscience have to do with your not being here?” She reached for her bag from the table and slung it over her shoulder. She looked at him. “Well?”
“Never mind,” Delroy said.
“And never you mind about planning on me being here all day tomorrow. I’ll come in the morning and stay no later than noon.”
“Tell Mr. Burlingame that,” Delroy said.
“Mr. Burlingame doesn’t want to be disturbed. He’s in the kitchen with guests. You tell him.”
“Tell Mrs. Lasher then.”
“She’s in the study and she doesn’t want to be disturbed. I didn’t want to be disturbed tonight myself, but you had your new sweetie to see, so you handle it.”
She started out the door, turned, and said, “If your conscience permits you to do so. Good night, Delroy.”
“Good night,” he said.
Then he sat down beside Mr. Lasher’s bed.
“Mister? Sir? Mister?” He sat there for a moment. Then he said, “I know sometimes you wait until Mrs. Metcalf’s gone, so you don’t have to deal with her. If you’re awake, please listen carefully to me. I can’t go through with it, sir. Living and dying are in the hands of God, Mr. Lasher. It’s not something you or me should decide. You or I. It’s not for us to decide. . . . Mister?”
Delroy reached out and shook him gently.
He turned him over, face up.
Len Lasher’s eyes reminded Delroy of the eyes of a fish at the end of a hook.
Dead eyes and the mouth slack.
“Oh, no, Mister. Oh, no.”
The chair fell over as Delroy sprang from it and ran, down the hall, to the stairs, taking them by two, calling out, “Missus! Missus! Missus!”
The moment Mario had mentioned that the police were involved, Scotti had automatically thought of the letter the institute issued pre-ops explaining their situation. Hers from Dr. Rush was in a file in her desk. She never carried it with her, anymore, not even on her brief visits to Manhattan.
Although she couldn’t imagine needing it that evening, anything to do with authority brought back all the What If Exercises the institute drilled into its members.
Whether you were pre-op or post-op, they devised every imaginable situation you might find yourself in and provided answers to help you cope.
What if you’re to blame in a traffic accident and you find yourself at a police station? What if they hold you there? The letter from Rush would probably allow you to be put in a cell by yourself, but it might not keep you from a cavity search.
The institute dealt with a variety of confrontational situations, and Scotti had only half listened much of the time, for she could not believe anything of that sort would happen.
It could easily have happened on Thanksgiving night, and ever since she’d thanked God for her luck, if she could call that murky interlude with Delroy “luck.”
Since her arrival that night at Le Reve, Scotti began to entertain the possibility that her luck could be running out.
It was bad enough that Mario had brought her there under protest. It was worse when Burlingame did not invite them into the rest of the house. He kept looking at the clock above the stove and then checking it against the time on his wristwatch. He did not offer her or Mario a drink, and did not even sit down.
Thankfully, there was no sign of police.
“. . . and that’s all there is to it,” Scotti wound up her brief statement regarding Delroy. Of course it was minus the bladder emergency at the side of the road.
She sat at the table across from Mario. His light blue eyes could not look at her, and he kept running a hand through his straight brown hair.
Neither Scotti nor Mario had removed their coats, nor had Burlingame suggested they do so. Scotti was holding her bag and the package from FAO Schwarz.
“That is not all there is to it, Miss House,” said Burlingame. “There’s this.”
He held out a piece of paper.
As Scotti leaned forward, her hand trembling, her elbow pressed against Fanny Fortune, the mechanical voice sounded.
“What the hell was that?” Burlingame said.
“It’s nothing.”
“What’s in that bag?”
“Somediing I bought in New York this morning.”
She was about to take the paper from Burlingame’s hand when he held it back. “But what is it in that bag?” he asked.
“A doll.”
“A talking doll?”
“It’s the Fanny Fortune doll,” she said, but he would not have any idea what the Fanny Fortune doll was.
He grabbed the bag, rude son of a bitch.
Mario spoke up. Finally. “I saw those advertised on television.”
“I got it for a friend’s daughter. May I have it back, please?” Burlingame had the doll out of die bag. Fie squeezed it. The doll’s mouth opened and the voice said, “You’re going on a trip. Good-bye.” Scotti held out her hand. “May I please have it back?”
“Sure,” said Burlingame. “Any litde girl would love that. . . You want to read this now, Miss House?”
She put the doll back in the bag. She heard Mario’s agonized sigh. Then she read the letter addressed to her, which Delroy had begun and left unfinished.
“What’s the big secret?” Jack Burlingame asked her.
She could feel her face get red.
“I have no idea,” she said. “And if I did, Mr. Burlingame, I wouldn’t feel obligated to tell you.”
“Why not?” When he tried to smile, amiably, the effort twisted his face to a nearly feral expression that reminded Scotti of a fox.
“Why would I?” Scotti said. “You’re not up-front with me about everything that’s going on here. I don’t know what is going on, but something is.”
Jack Burlingame said, “A secret your mother doesn’t even know?” “Does your mother know everything about you?” Scotti asked. “Then there is a secret?”
“Is this about the Jeep Delroy borrowed to visit my mother? Or is this about something else?”
Burlingame gave her the fox grin again. “I ask the questions.”
“So do I,” Scotti said. “And I’m not getting anywhere. Shall we go, Mario?”
She looked across at him, and his answer was a helpless shrug. She was disappointed in him, sorry for him that she was a witness to his servility, but no longer angry at him. He was too pathetic, too weak for her to feel anything but pity for him. Her father used to call Scott an “infra-caninophile”: an underdog lover.
Before Bolton House had ever heard the word transsexual, he would ask his young son why he was so taken with underdogs, say, “It takes one to love one, but you’re no underdog!”
“Pleas
e call me a taxi,” Scotti said to Burlingame.
“Why is it so hard for you to cooperate?”
“Cooperation is a joint venture.”
“There are reasons we can’t tell you everything,” Mario finally spoke up, and quickly Burlingame put him back in his place, saying, “I’ll handle this, Rome.”
Burlingame looked at the clock above the stove again, at his watch again, a far cry from the soft-spoken author who had come to the East Hampton Library a month ago, his deep, sea green eyes making contact with the audience as he read in gentle tones about a corpse beneath a Christmas tree.
“What are you hiding, Miss House?”
“What are you hiding, Mr. Burlingame?”
“My hands don’t shake. My face isn’t red. I’m not hiding anything.” It was right at that point when they heard the wailing. “MISSUS! MISSUS! MISSUS!”
Liam stopped in at Rowdy Flail for a few fingers of bourbon, to get a grip on himself. He wanted to be calm when he called the Lashers. He had to get Jimmy Rainbow out of his mind, get past that message on the answering machine and get back his control. He would put off dealing with Nell, put off thinking about her insistence that she stay in New York City once this was past.
Rainbow was back in their lives; in hers, anyway. He didn’t know that for sure, but how much proof did he need?
It was just the sort of thing that happened when you worked with a partner. He had known men who botched perfecdy plotted jobs because they misjudged situations. Men who ran when they didn’t have to, screwed up in some irreversible way when they didn’t have to. Nell herself had done that, going back to check on the old lady she’d robbed, getting caught, serving time.
He had already broken one of his own rules by stopping for a few fast ones. The Jack Daniels hadn’t calmed him down; it never did. You got from booze what you took to it, and he’d taken Rainbow to it. Whatever was going on with Nell and Rainbow, Liam had to deal with it later, or he would lose everything, serve time like all the others who lost control.
He left Rowdy Hall and walked down Newtown Lane, went behind the Village Hardware to the parking lot.
It was a clear, cold night. He went toward the phone booth. The sky was filled with stars. Liam worked his jaw, doing an Affirm exercise for teeth grinding, loosening himself up.
He shook his shoulders and spread his fingers, telling himself to let go of everything but what he had to do.
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