Trust

by George V. Higgins

  “Mister Battaglia,” the lieutenant said, opening the envelope and unfolding the document inside, “the secretary regrets to inform you that Specialist Keith P. Battaglia was killed in action while on a routine reconnaissance mission in Quang Tri Province in the service of his country in the Republic of Viet Nam on Sunday, January fourteenth, nineteen sixty-eight, and wishes you to be informed that as his next of kin you may choose whether you wish his remains to be interred there, or to be sent home for burial at a military cemetery or one of your own choosing.” He put the document and the envelope on the countertop in front of Battaglia. “On behalf of the secretary,” he said, “and on behalf of the army and the commander in chief, the president of the United States, we present the deep sympathy and sorrow we all feel on this sad occasion, and hope that your knowledge of our awareness of his bravery and valor, and our gratitude for it, may sustain you and his family in this hour of your grief.”

  Battaglia did not read the document. He stared at the lieutenant. “You don’t know what this means,” he said. “She’ll come back here now. I know that’s what she’ll do. She’ll come back here with that damned kid, and I’ll have to support them. The little bastard. He did this. He did this on purpose. I wonder how the fuck he did it. How did he get out there without me knowing it?”

  “Sir?” the lieutenant said.

  “It doesn’t fucking matter,” Battaglia said. “Just get your fucking asses out of fucking here. You done enough goddamned damage, last you one fucking day. Fucking Ed Cobb. So I know him. What the fuck good did that do? Not a fucking goddamned bit.”

  In the car after the wind, the sergeant said, “I still hate these things, matter what they do. I think I’d rather be back there. And at least it was warm there.”

  “I wouldn’t rather,” the lieutenant said, “matter how cold it gets. And I doubt that you would, either.”

  19

  Late in the morning of the first Sunday in February, Neil Cooke in his blue Mercedes 190SL emerged from the underground garage in the building that housed the duplex cooperative apartment that he shared with his wife, Caroline, at Park Avenue and Seventy-third Street, and headed north toward Bruckner Boulevard and the New England Thruway. The day was warm. He was parked in the commuter pickup lot at the railroad station in Greenwich, Connecticut, when Nora Langley’s New Haven Line train pulled in from Grand Central shortly before 12:30. She was wearing sunglasses and a floppy, red picture hat with a black silk ribbon that trailed off the back brim and set off her long blond hair. Her suit was dark blue silk, and she carried a large red shoulder bag made of soft, bloused leather. She wore matching red leather gloves. Her skirt stopped two inches above her knees. He got out of the car and started toward the platform. They embraced and air-kissed, their cheeks barely grazing, and he escorted her back to the car. She stood back and removed the sunglasses. She had brown eyes. “It’s very nice, Neil,” she said. “It’s lovely. And the top’s not even down.”

  “Well,” he said, “I could put it down, if you like. But I thought it might be a little too cold. A little too chilly, I thought.” He opened the passenger door.

  “Oh, no,” she said, leaning into the car, taking off her left glove and smoothing the leather seat with her left hand. “No, that isn’t what I meant. I was worried about my hat. And if I take it off, I don’t have a scarf for my hair.” She looked at him. “Aren’t I silly?”

  He smiled. “No,” he said. “Not silly.”

  “I wish,” she said, “I wish I could persuade Barry to get something like this.”

  Cooke opened the passenger door and she got in, presenting a brief view of the tops of her stockings and the straps of her black garter belt. He shut the door and went around to the driver’s side. “So, buy him one,” he said, starting the engine. “Find something you like, and when it’s Christmas or his birthday, just make that his present.” He backed the Mercedes out of the spot. “That’s what Caroline did to me.”

  “Didn’t you want this?” she said. “I think it’s beautiful.”

  “Oh,” he said, “sure I did. I’ve been looking around, not really very hard, you know, but always on the lookout, for something just like this. Always liked this car. But whenever I thought I was close, close to getting one, well, it always turned out the clown who owned it’d modified it, put in a Corvette engine or something. Or else it was all shot to hell. One guy I met over in Ridgefield one night said he had one, and I got all excited, and the next day I went over to see it, had it in his barn there, and the thing was up on the blocks. Well, that didn’t bother me. Showed he was taking care of it, he wasn’t going to drive it. And then I opened the hood. No engine. That was why he wasn’t driving it, and I must say I couldn’t imagine a better reason. Gave me some cock-and-bull story about how he’s having it rebuilt. And that was typical. But Caroline saw this one up there in Vermont, and so she snapped it up.”

  Nora sighed. “Well,” she said, “I thought I did that. I had this little white ’fifty-six Thunderbird, with red leather seats and a hardtop. Just a lovely, lovely car. And we were going, this was just before we were leaving for Europe in May. I’d finally persuaded him to take a vacation. And the car was supposed to be ready when we got back. Well, I made a mistake. I left the house one day to do some shopping for the kids, because when his mother comes to stay with them, I like them to be well dressed. She’s such a picky woman. And while I was out, the man called, and the maid said that I wasn’t there. So he called Barry at his office, something about getting a signature on something or other before we left, insurance or something, and of course that let the cat right out of the bag. Barry came home in an absolute fit. Said he didn’t care if we could afford it, he didn’t want the damned thing. Well, I didn’t want it. I like my Jaguar a lot, and it does have room for the kids, when I have to take them with me, or Barry and I take them somewhere. So that was the end of that notion.”

  “How was the trip?” he said. “It’s really been a long time since I’ve seen you. Much too long, in fact.” The Mercedes moved quietly in the travel lane of the Connecticut Turnpike, north through Stamford and Norwalk, traveling at a steady fifty miles per hour, being overtaken and passed by every driver who cared to.

  She exhaled loudly. “Oh,” she said, “it was all right, I guess.”

  “Meaning that it wasn’t?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I was putting too much on the line. Expecting too much of it. I went to a lot of work, planning it. Drove the travel agent crazy. The dinner reservations at Tour d’Argent, and I made sure they’d light the Tower. The suite at the Georges Cinq, right on the Seine. The week at the Beaulieu Sur Mer, at this lovely hotel.”

  “La Réserve,” he said.

  “That’s the place,” she said. “I should’ve taken you. Then down to Florence. It was all just so perfect. And all Barry could think about was what was going on back home. He was on the phone, three, four times a day. Getting up at six or seven, allowing for the time change. Working himself into absolute rages when the operators didn’t speak Texan. Yelling at people in his office for forgetting to tell him things that he asked them about yesterday. What a romantic way to greet the morning. Sunlight streaming through your windows off the Mediterranean, fresh coffee and croissants on a tray outside your door, with fresh orange juice and the morning paper, and your husband screaming like a banshee on the phone because some poor filing clerk in the office back home didn’t remember to do something he asked the day before. He doesn’t know how to relax. I guess he never did. I just never noticed it till now. Or else I did, and I was so busy, doing other things, it didn’t bother me.”

  “Now it does, though,” Cooke said.

  “Now, it does,” she said. She looked directly at him. “You sound like you’re familiar with it,” she said. “Same thing with Caroline?”

  He shrugged. “Same only different,” he said. “We’ve been married almost twelve years now. Known each other, thirteen. She’s a very i
mpatient lady. Always has been, always will be. Craves action, all the time. It’s like her ego’s on the line, every single day. If something happens, and she didn’t make it happen, she feels left out of things. Where I’m just the opposite. Probably about seven, eight years ago, I woke up one morning, it was during the week, and I thought: ‘Well hell, I don’t feel like going in today. And I don’t think I will.’ So I called in and said I wouldn’t be there. And my secretary naturally assumed I was sick, said: ‘Hope you feel better tomorrow.’ And I didn’t correct her, just thanked her. I spent the first part of the morning in my study, first with the papers and then with some new charts I’d bought, probably a month before, and never even unwrapped, of the Intracoastal Waterway. Just going over again in my mind the route we’d be taking down, jotting down notes here and there, and that’s what I was doing when Caroline finally figured out I hadn’t gone to work. She sleeps until about ten, ten thirty—she’s a night bird and she doesn’t really start to function until close to noon. So she came in and found me sitting there in my robe, and she assumed I was sick, too, and I said no, I was just having a day to myself. ‘My clients have all their days to themselves,’ I said. ‘They have lunch at Côte Basque and they have lunch at La Grenouille. They have lunch at Sparks’ Steak House and they have lunch at Périgord. The ladies go out shopping and the gentlemen retire to their usual positions at the Athletic Club. Then when the cocktail hour comes, they go home and have a drink. Freshen up and go to dinner and then go hear Bobby Short. Well, how can they do all these wonderful things? Why don’t they lose all their money? Because their obedient servant, me, is watching over their lives. Coast Guard Cooke: “Semper paratus, numquam dormio.” Well, knock out the “numquam,” ’cause today is “dormio,” least as far’s the job’s concerned. You wanna screw?”

  “Did she?” Nora said.

  “More or less,” he said. “I’ll give Caroline that: she’s never turned me down. If she’s around, and I get horny, her pants hit the deck. But she’s like everybody else. Sometimes she feels like it herself, and sometimes she does it purely to oblige me. This was one of those kind of times. She looked at her watch when I asked her, and said it’d have to be quick, because she was meeting Frieda down at Christ Cella for lunch. Well, that was all right, so I banged her, and she went flying out the door in a rush, and I finished what I’d been doing, took a shower, had a shave, got myself dressed, and went over to the Yacht Club for a sandwich and a drink or three. Another thing I never do. Father and my uncle went through all kinds of hell to make sure I’d get in there, and so naturally, as a result, I almost never use it. ’Bout the only contact I have with the place, one end of the year to the other, ’S when the bills for the dues come in, and I tell Maurice to pay them. So nobody paid any attention to me, and I browsed in the library after lunch and some coffee, started walking back home around six, and that night Caroline and I did the same thing we always do, which is go out to some dinner we promptly forget, with people we see all the time, then come home and get into bed. And the next day I went to the office, told everyone who asked me—which was not that many; it’s a big shop, and everyone’s very busy, and one guy being out doesn’t make a big stir—that I felt much better, thanks.

  “And you know what’d happened as a result of my being out? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The same brokers who’d called me the day before to try to talk me into churning my clients’ trust assets into some hot new issue, called me again the day I was back, most likely with some newer, hotter issue. And I told them the same thing I would’ve told them the day before, if I’d been there: ‘Thanks very much, Joe,’ or Harry, or Tom, or Dick, or whoever, ‘but I think everyone’s pretty content right now. I think it’s time to stand pat.’

  “Well,” he said, “that day taught me something. First, a little humility. I’m as full of myself as the next man, but it sort of brings you up short when you play hooky and nobody notices. Just how important are you, if they don’t know when you’re not there? How do you tell when a trust management lawyer isn’t at his desk? He doesn’t make any noise when he is. He doesn’t take his phone calls? What are secretaries for, if not to screen the phone calls that their busy bosses get while they’re studying the markets, clipping coupons for their clients, and weighing proxy statements with care and thoughtful judgment. But the second thing was pleasanter, and the third was quite exciting. The second thing was that if they didn’t notice I was out, every now and then, then every now and then I could stay out with no one caring and do anything I liked. So long as it didn’t involve one of the three or four clubs or restaurants where my partners invariably go for the same lunch and the same iced tea every damned day of the year, and nobody actually saw me, I wouldn’t have to explain anything to anybody. Chances are if they had seen me, I still wouldn’t’ve had to, either—they just would’ve assumed whatever I was doing must have something to do with firm business. We trust lawyers, you know, we’re very secretive. No point in asking us lots of sharp questions; we most likely can’t answer anyway. ‘Ethics, you know. Sorry, old boy. Client’s trust is inviolable.’ They get embarrassed they asked.

  “See, Nora,” he said, “I know what I am. I guess that I always have. What I am is vanilla. Just plain vanilla. My mother called it ‘old-headed.’ I never broke a bone when I was a kid. I was never in a fight. I was never on academic probation in school, nor was I in college, and if you searched the dean’s list or the honors list, whatever, you’d find I wasn’t on them, either. While the big, muscular lads were out on the practice field, preparing to show Yale a few things, I was marching with the band, playing clarinet. Second clarinet. When the scholarship kids with the glittering eyes were up all night at the Crimson, I was attending coming-out parties, eating buffets at the Ritz. The first girl that I asked to be my wife said: ‘No thanks,’ and you know the reason she gave me? She said that her parents said I was ‘steady,’ and really liked me a lot, and she knew that that meant if she married me, I’d drive her nuts in a month.”

  Nora Langley squeezed his right bicep. “I don’t know,” she said, “you seem pretty exciting to me.”

  “Well, thank you,” he said, “but that’s because after that first day, I discovered the third thing I mentioned. When you get to be thirty-six, thirty-seven, and you’ve been dull all your life, people expect nothing else. Every time they see you again, you can watch them placing your name, sorting the cards through their memory banks: ‘Category: Boring. Subclass: Very Boring. Occupation, Line of Work: Something Extremely Boring. Now what the hell’s his name?’ You know the one thing that most of my college classmates remember about me? In the summer between our junior and senior years, my roommate and I shipped out for the Orient. He signed on as able seaman, on a tramp freighter from New York. I went aboard in San Francisco, the Princess of Asia. He spent the summer wearing jeans and getting sunburned, scraping rust all the way through the Panama Canal, then across the wide Pacific. I spent my nights in a white dinner jacket, in the first-class lounge, playing clarinet for people who thought wild abandon was when they began the beguine, and my days playing canasta with old ladies in the sun. Ron got VD in Singapore, and beaten up in Brisbane. One old, addled gentleman was going to cane me for my attentions to his wife, who was over seventy—the bandleader smoothed it over and the barman watered both their drinks till they got off in Hong Kong. My father paid my airfare on Pan Am out of Manila so I’d have a couple weeks to rest before the school year started. Ron got in a fight in a bar in Subic Bay—when classes reconvened in September, Ronald was in jail. In the Philippines. My souvenir of the summer was a locket that a shy girl gave to me with a lock of her hair in it, sort of a mousy brown. That was in lieu of screwing me—she thought her aunt would mind. Ronnie’s was a blue panther, tattooed on his left arm, and a real, fire-breathing dragon, green and gold, tattooed on his right.

  “Nobody was surprised,” he said, “when I graduated, or when Ronnie didn’t. Nobody was surprised, either, when I joined the
Coast Guard Reserve, and Ronnie got drafted right off. For me it meant two weekends a month, and two weeks more every summer, but with all but ironclad assurance that my orderly progression first through the UVA Law School, and then through the ranks of Arnold, Cooke, would not be interrupted by some inconvenient war. And no one was surprised at all when things worked out that way, without the slightest hitch. The second girl that I proposed to, on a moonlit Vineyard beach—she had long gold hair, like yours—thought about it for a minute and said: ‘What the hell, I guess so.’ I went around to pick her up for lunch and a sail the next day, and her mother told me that Pamela’d left on the earliest ferry that morning: ‘Her best friend from Chapel Hill called her up at three. She tried to kill herself last night. Pam simply had to go.’ I never saw her again. And that surprised no one, either.”

  He laughed. “The only thing I ever did,” he said, “the only time in my whole life that people were surprised, was when I brought Caroline up to New York for the weekend, and introduced her around. When Eddie Fisher brought Elizabeth Taylor down the aisle at the Academy Awards—this was right after he left Debbie Reynolds for her—one of the other partners saw it. Said his wife always insisted on watching the damned thing, of course, lest we think it was his vulgar taste—you’re not supposed to enjoy anything, and only approve of good taste—and came in the next day laughing like hell. ‘I tell you,’ he said, ‘when I saw that Fisher boy with that high-stepper, all I could think of was some fifteen-year-old kid, just found the keys to Dad’s Ferrari. “Okay, now I got this thing—what the hell do I do now?” ’ Well, that’s exactly the same train of thought that was going through the minds of the people she met, that weekend. They looked at her, and then looked at me, made sure it really was me, with this magical creature on my arm. And then back at her, in complete disbelief. Breathing like goldfishes do. If they hadn’t had country-club lockjaw, plus good manners of the finest whalebone, they would’ve said: ‘God, you’ve got to be daffy, miss, this man’s the dullest around. He’ll make you wear glasses, hair in a bun, corsets and sensible shoes. Neil Cooke thinks that oatmeal’s exciting, especially if it’s getting cold. You should be here with a sultan, a pirate or maybe a Bogart’d do.’ I tell you, Nora, whatever little disappointments Caroline may have brought me since then, I’ve enjoyed very few weekends as much as I relished that one. And I’ll thank her for the rest of my life.”