(1961) The Chapman Report

by Irving Wallace

  During the past week, she had seen him every day but one. She had never before felt so contented, so quickly, with a man. Yet the

  old worry hung over her like a naked sword. She would not dare to let herself think of it or of what might happen between them, before he left on Sunday. Now, as she invited him to wander through her head, she felt suddenly cheating and unworthy. She tried to think about the other women that she knew in relation to Paul. How would they manage him? Who did she mean? Naomi? Oh, God, no. But someone as … as cool and controlled, outwardly, as herself. Who was like herself? No one, really. Yet, there was Ursula Palmer. She was a writer. Paul was a writer. Things in common. More than that, Ursula was so in-control-of and self-assured. Those were characteristics required in a situation like this. None of the black uncertainty. She envied Ursula… .

  “Well,” said Bertram Foster at last, after having placed the glass of champagne on the coffee table before her, “I bet this is the first time you ever had bubbles in your nose at breakfast.”

  “Yes,” said Ursula Palmer dutifully.

  The day before, Foster had telephoned her to change the time of their meeting. He had complained that Alma simply would not give him a night off, even to work, and so he had arranged the next best thing. He had conspired with a studio to have her taken on a visit to a location shooting at Lake Arrowhead. She would be back by dinner. But, at any rate, this would give Ursula and himself all of Thursday morning and afternoon together. He had suggested that they begin by breakfasting early in his suite.

  Ursula had felt better about the breakfast. Increasingly, the dinner date had troubled her. Breakfast had an uninvolved, unromantic, anti-sexual atmosphere. -After all, who could be inspired to fornicate after Wheaties? But when she had arrived, morning attired, in her open-throat blouse and pleated light wool skirt, she had been dismayed to find Foster wearing a thin, polka-dot silk robe over his gray silk pajamas. His round face was freshly shaved and smelled of pine and talcum. And behind him, on the breakfast cart, was the open bottle in the iced bucket.

  He held his glass aloft. “Piper Heidsick,” he said. “The best money can buy. Go ahead, go ahead-try it.”

  He drank and watched over his glass as she brought her glass to her lips. Ursula tried to keep from grimacing. It tasted like something squeezed out of wet wood. “Delicious,” she said, and felt the heat of it rise to her temples.

  “Umm,” said Foster, drinking. “Breakfast can wait.” He came

  around the table to her, set the glass down, and dropped heavily on the couch beside her. He peered owlishly at the cleft made visible by her open-throat blouse. “Well, Miss Editor,” he said, “where is it?”

  For Ursula, the long-deferred, dread moment had finally arrived. “Here,” she said, patting the large manila envelope beneath her purse. The completion of the notes on her sex history had been a miracle of ambition. Constantly during her typing of it, she had been delayed and held up by involuntary mental odysseys into her childhood, her years with Harold, her inadequacies as a sexual partner. In a busy, eventful life, where love had been sublimated to a lesser part of it, her shortcomings had never been fully faced or even partially apparent to her. But once concentrated in one place, as a separate biography of her behavior, this portion of her life loomed larger than heretofore, and its failures were evident and haunting. The distasteful task of reliving this segment of her biography, of knowing it would be soon seen by another, these facts as well as the knowledge that her husband was being serviced in his office by a German chippy, had made the last days unbearable. Several times the thought, unthinkable weeks ago, that the cover line and the job in New York were not worth the price, had crossed her mind, but in the end she had gone on and finished the loathsome assignment.

  Now, unclasping the manila envelope, opening it, extracting the clipped pages of typed notes, she wondered if it would be less galling simply to sleep with Foster rather than let him peek into the bedroom and watch her perform through the years.

  “It’s twenty-seven pages,” she said, and she handed it to him.

  He held the notes in his hands, and held also a serious, businesslike face. “A real contribution,” he said.

  “It’ll take a while to read, Mr. Foster. Maybe I could go for a walk and come back.”

  “No. I want you here to discuss. Have champagne.”

  Already he was eagerly reading. Ursula tried to avoid his face, but several times glanced sidelong at it and saw that this was the face that stared at stag films in darkened living rooms and avidly read the classic eroticism of John Cleland. Ursula swallowed her champagne, feeling sick at heart, feeling Belle Boyd delivering Harold’s secrets to the enemy, feeling betrayer of the only God-chosen private part of her life. (When you sold this, what else was left?)

  She was aware that he was beginning to skip pages, hurriedly.

  “What’s the matter, Mr. Foster?”

  “The kid stuff-who cares? Where’s the grown-up part?”

  “You mean premarital?”

  “Whatever you call it,” he said impatiently.

  “Page eighteen.”

  He found the page and began to read again. His eyes did not blink. He kept wetting his lips.

  After a while, he looked at her. “So you put out before?”

  “I was very young, Mr. Foster,” she said hastily, resenting her defensiveness but not wishing to give him license.

  He read on and looked at her again, and she had the strange sensation that his “eyes reflected not Ursula Palmer but a side of stripped beef. “You live and learn,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Position is everything,” he said, and he showed his teeth and winked. Her skin went cold.

  He read on. She saw, from the comer of her eye, the pages steadily flipping. She judged that he was reading about her life with Harold. She despised herself and wanted to snatch the manuscript from

  his fat hand.

  He held his finger on the page and shifted toward her. “He’s not

  so much,” said Foster. She met his eyes. “Who?” “Your husband.” She was blinded by indignation. “He’s as good as anybody-as you or anybody.” “Not by my book.”

  Losing restraint, she fought back. “Why are men so conceited? They always think they can do better for a woman than her husband.”

  “Loyalty, I don’t knock-but facts are facts.” His lardy lips spread. “Excuse me; maybe he improves with age.”

  He resumed reading. She trembled with the outrage of it. This misshapen old lecher, with his soiled brain, derogating and mocking Harold, dismissing her whole married life with his filthy tongue.

  He had turned a page, and now he brought it back again and reread it slowly. His lips silently formed the words. He held the page stiffly, not turning it. He began to speak without looking at her. “It says here, ‘Question: Do you-’” His bloated face was turned toward her. “Come here,” he ordered. His finger was on the page. “Read this and tell me if I understand.”

  Tensely, she edged beside him, inclining her head to follow his finger on the page. She felt his asthmatic breath on her cheek.

  “What does that mean?” he demanded.

  She pulled back, sitting upright. He stared at her. She wanted to burst into tears. His expression was queer. He was breathing through his mouth only.

  “What does that mean?” he repeated.

  Her voice was almost gone, “What it says.”

  “What I think?”

  “Yes, but … it’s different-“

  “Ah-” he wheezed.

  His face was before her, and his command came in a harsh undertone.

  Her temples were ablaze. “Mr. Foster-” “Yes!” he shouted, reiterating his command. He reached for her, but she tore free of his grasp and slapped him with all her strength. “You pig-you filthy pig!” “You’re the pig.”

  She leaped to her feet, to evade him, grabbing for her purse and then the manuscript.

  He sat, wheezing,
and his voice was now a pleading whine. “Ursula-listen, sweetheart-I can help you-anything-“

  She started for the door.

  “You did it before!” he shouted. “You like it!”

  She had the doorknob.

  “You leave, and you leave the job-everything!” ‘ From the open door, she wheeled. “You know what you can do with your job?” she shouted back. And then, like a longshoreman (she would remember later), she told him. And then she fled, past the elevators, down the three flights of stairs, through the lobby, and she did not stop running until she had reached the car. Then, and only then, did the full impact of her break with the past, not

  the future but the past, strike her forcefully. Curiously, she felt no need to weep. Through the windshield, between the two tall, gray office buildings ahead, she could see the lowering blue-green mountains to the north, every furry crag and crevice defined. It was a wonderfully clear day for California, she was pleased to note.

  Still comfortable on Naomi’s sofa, Kathleen Ballard had hardly moved in a half hour. A dozen playlets, produced by daydreams,

  had intervened between herself and the mystery novel on her lap. In each playlet, the hero was always Paul, but the heroine bore a different countenance imposed upon her own person. Ursula Palmer had come and gone, and Ruth Joyce, and Felicia Scoville, and now she had introduced Sarah Goldsmith into her corporeal being, on her private stage, and had presented her to Paul.

  Considering Sarah, Kathleen could see how her natural warmth, her down-to-earth housewifeliness, her air of fecundity, would appeal to a man like Paul. Surely, in Kathleen’s situation, she would react affectionately and generously. It was a matter of the forty-eight chromosomes, in the end. How did the Creator distribute them? How Sarah hers, and how me, mine, my mashed, dried gelatinous genes that gave me my me-ness? Genetically, Sarah has it by a unanimous decision.

  Never, since that Halloween night when she was six or seven and the headless skeleton had risen shrieking from behind the fence, and she and the others had bruised and bloodied themselves in their heart-stopping scramble to the illuminated shelter of the main street, had Sarah Goldsmith known such icy fear.

  Flattened against the living-room wall, behind the drape, beside the large window, she peered outside. The Dodge had not moved, nor the dark avenging spirit of haunting guilt that was inside it. Withdrawing from the glass pane with a breathless gasp, Sarah pushed herself from the wall, and, steadying herself on the furniture she passed, made her way on collapsible legs to the kitchen.

  For the third time this morning, since she had first sighted the car and the driver after Sam’s departure, she was dialing Fred’s number. Since the terror of Monday, she had awaited the return of the avenging spirit, the adhesive conscience, the all-knowing eye. But on Tuesday, and again Wednesday, the street had remained empty, and, following Fred’s advice, she had remained away from his bed and stayed anchored to Sam’s house.

  This morning she had mystically, neurotically, compulsively, latched her peace of mind to the number three. If three days would pass with the street empty, then she and Fred were safe, and it had all been a coincidence. But on this, the third watch, the Dodge had been inexorably waiting, and her magical incantation had melted before a demoralizing reality. Even as she had telephoned Fred to report the terror, her dependence had been on the number three, the third call that would find him in his apartment. But her wizardry had vanished. The devil rode a Dodge, and bewitchery had fled from her hands to his.

  The telephone buzz hummed persistently, mechanically subdued, controlled, unable to exclaim the urgency of her panic.

  At last, she returned the receiver to the hook. Fred was out, and she was alone with their evil. The slant walls of the house were the rising tide, engulfing her, and the only refuge lay in the sun, where also waited the danger. But outdoors was the sanity of her living Street, and friends, and the path to Fred’s apartment, and ultimate safety.

  Who was the shadowing, four-wheeled figure anyway? A man. A ear. A detective on duty. A commercial shadow, fifty dollars a day, hired, fired. By whom? Mrss Tauber? Sam? But look, she was invincible, Sarah told herself, free, white, a mother, a shopper, with daylight her armor. How could the four-wheeled figure harm her more? Follow again? Make another note? For Sam? Mrs. Tauber? There were notes enough, surely, already. More did not matter. What mattered was seeing Fred, measuring, evaluating, deciding, knowing someone stood beside her, flintlock in hand, defying the world to jeer her scarlet letter.

  She found her leather jacket in the closet and reached the front door and opened it. For a moment, she hesitated, saw the gardener across the way, then the Dodge, and then she hurried into the sun and daylight. Once in the cool station wagon, she swiftly started it, backed out, attained the street, made the turn away from the parked conscience, and then turned again, and when she was in the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard, she was relieved to find no reflection of the Dodge in her rear-view mirror.

  There was no memory of the ride to Beverly Hills, and no sight of the terrifying shadow. But crossing Santa Monica Boulevard, past the great hotel, she thought she saw in her mirror, two cars back, the familiar grill. She made the right turn south, then two blocks, and, across from Fred’s apartment, she parked. She tore herself from the front seat, searched behind, and felt limp pleasure in the view of the street barren of traffic and enemy.

  She hastened into the apartment building, up the flight of stain more familiar than Sam’s front door, and it was when she turned to touch the doorbell that she saw the sheet of paper pasted with Scotch tape above the knocker.

  There was a message, classically slanted, printed, in Fred’s hand. “Reggie,” it began-a name unknown to her, but male-“Had to skip out early to the barrister-” jocular, although maybe not, but indicating no crisis-“and will be closeted with him through lunch. Will settle the matter and call you late afternoon. Forgive me. Sit on the phone and wait. Fred.”

  Sarah’s disappointment at Fred’s absence was now tempered by a new bright hope. It would require no Champollion to decipher this discovery. Fred had spoken often about seeing an attorney to divest himself from the juiceless Mrs. Tauber. But always Sarah’s questions had hung unanswered, deferring to the immediacy of their clinging bodies, and afterward the questions had evaporated into thin air; nor did she mind, for the more demanded answer had been given.

  She had removed her spectacles, before ascending the staircase, and now she returned them to her face. She studied the note for a word wrongly read, a phrase misunderstood. But the message was all clarity. Fred was closeted with his attorney. This could mean, at last, at long last, he was arranging the divorce, a proceeding, a word, not yet part of their vocabulary of love. Her body was permeated by the marvel of it, the glittering Utopia of it. A divorce. But who was Reggie? Here was needed Champollion. Or merely Fred.

  She opened her purse, dug through a miniature cosmetic warehouse, and found the gold pencil. She reflected a moment, and then, at the bottom of the sheet pasted to the door, she wrote: “Fred-came calling to discuss business-will call later today-S.” She considered her handiwork, crossed out business, and replaced it above with Dodge. This was unmistakable.

  As she descended the staircase, a momentary trepidation held her elbow, escorted her to the heavy door. Outside, she met her car. She examined the street, right and left. There was no other car.

  As she crossed the street, a deduction entered her mind. It was so obvious that it had almost eluded her farsightedness. Why was Fred conversing with an attorney today, why now, after these many weeks? Because of her urgent call Monday, because of M. Javert. Fred was anticipating Mrs. Tauber. Or Sam. The inevitable detective had produced the inevitable crossroad of decision. Why await confrontation? Scandal? A grand slam? Anticipate. Disarm. Poor Mrs. Tauber. Or Sam.

  She had reached the car. She was proud of Fred, her Fred, her Fred. The Dodge was ineffectual now. Pitiful Dodge. Stupid, foolish Dodge. Those wasted notes (“Subject
left home 10:32. Entered Tauber ap’t. 10:57. Emerged 12:01. Halted to comb hair, adjust make-up”), so promisingly erotic, so suddenly respectable. She

  wondered if it would be in the newspapers. She remembered that she had promised Jerry and Debbie that she would not disgrace them again by forgetting the PTA paper drive. Nevertheless, she felt almost gay.

  Kathleen Ballard had finally got past the first chapter of the mystery novel, aware early that it was of English origin because honor was spelled honour and aware also that the nephew Peter was too detestable to have done it (yet the author-at his twenty-fourth novel-would surmise that Peter, being detestable, would be dismissed, and therefore it might be wise to make it Peter, after all). She turned the page, having just met Lady Cynthia returned from Nepal, when the telephone shattered the stillness.

  Kathleen swung to her feet, limped on the leg that had almost gone to sleep, and snatched up the receiver in the kitchen after the third peal. A remote telephone operator’s voice announced the nurse’s registry. Miss Wheatley, who had been assigned at noon, would be detained until six. But she would definitely appear. Kathleen protested. There was a patient requiring expert care. Wasn’t anyone else available? The remote voice avoided involvement. No one available before evening, but then Miss Wheatley would be on hand. Kathleen fought the detached system. What if there was an immediate emergency? Would they have a nurse then? The remote voice would not be baited, no more than would a phonograph record. The voice was in no position to reply to the questions. The voice accepted messages and delivered them. Good day.

  Kathleen was used to these lesser disappointments, and once having adjusted herself to the six hours ahead, she took inventory of the kitchen for sustenance. Naomi, it was evident, always ate out. Or, more likely, based on the single stocked cupboard, did not eat at all, but drank her meals on the rocks. A determined search disclosed, at last, a bent can of pea soup, a mammoth can of beef stew, a dusty, unopened box of cheese crackers, and several bottles of Seven Up (seasoned survivors of an old lost battle against gin). Kathleen decided that the beef stew would suffice, and this was a good day to start a diet, anyway.