The Last Bastion

by Peter C. Wensberg

  “This isn’t exactly the best time for me to talk.”

  “No problem,” said Demi. “I’ve got to be going. I’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

  “Owen, if you have someone there, why don’t you just say so? Oh, and have you seen my passport? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”

  “Why don’t you call your lawyer about the easement?”

  “She’s a divorce lawyer, not a real estate lawyer. I think you know that. This is something that isn’t in our title, and the bank didn’t spot it when they did a, what do they call it, search, but the buyer’s lawyer did and now everything is tied …”

  “Could I call you back? I haven’t seen your passport.”

  “Owen, you surprise me. I didn’t think you had it in you. It’s only been seven months and twelve days.”

  “Abbie …”

  “You are a fast worker. Not world class, but at least faster than you used to be. What’s her name?”

  Owen took the phone from his ear. “Demi, hold on a second.”

  “What? Sammy? Now you have me confused.”

  “Please sit down. Finish your drink. Tasha, don’t let her out the door. Goodbye, Abbie.” He hung up the phone, pulled Demi’s coat off her right arm, pushed her into a birch log chair, lit a fire, poured two more drinks, pulled the shades, sat down opposite her. “Sorry. That was my wife.”

  “Your ex-wife, I suppose you mean.”

  “Right.” Silence rose like moisture from the floor. The fire crackled merrily. From behind the kitchen wall came a throaty rumble like the purr of an enormous cat.

  “Does she call often?”

  “Nope.”

  “Some problems with the settlement?”

  “Yep.”

  Tasha lay by the door, head between her heavy paws, not only to prevent egress but also because it was the coolest place in the apartment. Her coat absorbed like a white sponge the wet November emanations that gusted under the door. Her eyes remained on Demi, as did Owen’s.

  “Would you like to take me to dinner?”

  “I’d like to take you to bed.”

  She looked at him with that appraising stare that seemed to be weighing all the evidence. Then she smiled. “First things first, I suppose. Don’t move the Ganado.”

  Chapter 14

  The sun was setting as Leonard Lapstrake’s American flight from San Francisco via Chicago landed at Logan Airport. It had been a pleasant flight, both legs on time, no undue delays at O’Hare. He had used a little gold sticker given to him by a stewardess friend to accomplish an upgrade from coach to first class on the first and longest segment. Unfortunately, there had been no empty first class seat on the flight out of Chicago, but the back of the plane was surprisingly light. He found he had two seats to himself, was at least as comfortable as in first class, and celebrated his luck with a third martini. The combination of two airline meals and three drinks induced a spurious sense of well-being as the plane touched down amid a handsome sunset that illuminated the harbor islands from beneath lowering rain clouds. This mild euphoria dissipated quickly, however, as he walked out onto the chilly jetway.

  Lapstrake was a short, well-fed man in his forties who had in the past ten years found a niche in the granite headwall of San Francisco journalism, leaping from City Desk assignments on the Clarion, to byline features, to a four-a-week column with the agility of a chamois. In a city of better than average columnists he had attracted a following that ranked him somewhat below Herb Caen but ahead of most of the rest. His specialty was a wry look at the most recent foible, and his word processor had a rich and inventive invective disk. His admirers felt he was equally adept at spearing social as political fish. Seymour Gland, on a trip to the Bay Area in September to visit Iguana Computer in Sunnyvale, had read three of his columns, including one he particularly enjoyed which skewered a gay city councilman for his retrograde views on prison reform. Gland, on his return, wrote Lapstrake urging him to come to Boston, promising him a story worth two weeks of columns. In a burst of uncharacteristic financial optimism Gland offered to pay expenses under the assumption the Charles Club would make good when he presented his plan.

  It was sultry in Baggage Claim as Lapstrake waited for his two-suiter to arrive on the conveyor. He was curious about Boston. This was his first visit and as long as he had lived in San Francisco he had heard the two cities compared as coastal outposts of culture in contrast to the twin capitals of sophistication and sleaze that lay to the south of them. His head throbbed. He noted the time, seven-thirty, checked his pocket watch, and realized he had been travelling since eight that morning. The very act of setting the watch three hours forward caused a dull ache to detach itself from the general discomfort behind his eyes. It spread rapidly from the bridge of his nose back until it found a place to settle and expand at the base of his skull. He was reminded that his stewardess friend warned him to ignore time when he travelled east. She claimed to do so mitigated jetlag. Gin certainly wasn’t helping.

  Bursts of chill air swept into the hall as the doors slid open and shut like the shutter of a camera aimed at the street. He glimpsed a long impatient line waiting outside for taxicabs. Something in their body language told the columnist that Bostonians were not stoic queuers. It had been a beautiful crisp morning in San Francisco, he recalled, as he shrugged into his trench coat. Rain hissed under the tires of the traffic passing the door, moving, it seemed to him, too fast for the congested airport roadway. He grabbed at his soft leather bag, missed it because he hadn’t been paying attention, and excited some derisive applause as he trotted through the crowd trying to catch it at the next corner. He trudged out to the cabstand and stood amid chaos until the starter shoved him in the direction of a distant vehicle bearing the markings: GYPSI TAXI, INC. As he dropped into the back seat he was surprised to discover that he was separated from the driver by a wall of sheetmetal topped with a thick, evidently bulletproof, plexiglass window. A hand-lettered sign taped to the glass exhorted:

  NO SMOKIN

  TALK LOUD

  “The Charles Club,” he said with as much force as he could muster. The driver, a swarthy lascar, turned from adjusting his radio and answered in a voice as inaudible as it was incomprehensible. But since they pulled quickly away from the curb, Lapstrake felt the message had been conveyed. He tried to adjust his legs to the cramped space and glanced outside to reassure himself that Bostonians were not routinely shorter than himself. Finding that with his back pressed against the seatback both his knees and his toes were jammed against the armor, he briefly tried sitting crosswise on the seat, leaning against his bag. It was more comfortable but he felt silly and resumed his penitential position as the cab raced over the potholes.

  Gland had recommended he stay at the Charles Club. Lapstrake, who belonged only to a loosely organized writers’ drinking and poker club, thought it would give him some of the Boston flavor. Also he knew there was some sort of a story about clubs brewing and wanted to get in on it. He had done half a column already about problems that had recently arisen at the Bohemian Club. “You’ll find it quite comfortable,” Gland had assured him, and did not mention that it eliminated half the expense of the trip.

  The cab paused briefly at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, which turned out to be a totally different city on the other side of a river; the doorman invited Lapstrake to look up the address of the Charles Club in the telephone book. Lapstrake gave the driver the information, carefully inscribed on a small piece of paper, just as he had once done with cabbies in Tokyo. Thirty minutes later he stepped out into a puddle at the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Hereford Street. The meter indicated sixteen dollars, actually less than he had paid to get from his apartment on Russian Hill to the San Francisco airport. He handed a twenty through the open window and watched the cab whistle away. This stretch of city street was lit by a file of archaic-looking light posts each supporting a cluster of four bare bulbs enclosed in a lantern of plate glass. The light cast by these fixtu
res barely exceeded the gaslights they were supposed to resemble. A Disney movie set, thought Lapstrake.

  Head throbbing, he glanced up at the dark building, dimly perceived in the mist. Its Georgian facade was a mixture of brick and granite. Broad steps led to a wide black lacquer door embellished in brass hardware, crowned with a fanlight tiara, flanked by Doric pillars and narrow leaded windows. No nameplate on the door, noticed the columnist as he hefted his bag and with leaden tread surmounted the steep steps. No bell either, he noted. He tried the knob and found the door locked. Suspended in the center of the door panel was a giant brass hand, forefinger pointing down. He lifted the finger and let it drop on the plate, sending a crash echoing through the bowels of the building. Water dripped from his rather sparse yellow hair, trickled over the ache at the base of his skull, and found its way down the back of his neck. He lifted the knocker again and loosed another volley. Dimly he heard movement within, but no light showed.

  Just as he was about to pick up his bag and begin the search for a hotel, the doorknob turned. A nose and a pair of eyes appeared in the crack as the door opened to the length of a chain. “Good evening. I am Leonard Lapstrake. I believe you are expecting me?” Try as he might, he could not prevent ending the sentence as a question. Somehow he knew a Boston clubman would have simply stated it as a fact. The door closed. “Is this the Charles Club?” he shouted at the glistening panel. A chain rattled and the door opened again. Lapstrake stared at the blackness within. “The Charles Club?” he repeated. Hesitantly he entered, the desire to get out of the freshening rain overcoming his trepidation. The door swung silently behind him revealing a glimpse of a bent figure in the light from the street. Nilson secured the chainlock, scuttled past, opened the foyer door and led the way to a small desk by the elevator shaft. There a single brass banker’s lamp illuminated a large cat sitting on the open pages of a book. Lapstrake, who harbored feelings for cats which ranged from dislike to allergic revulsion, noted with a measure of alarm that it had an inordinate number of toes on each paw. The cat seemed to smile at the visitor but did not move from the pages of the register.

  Nilson struck it a swift blow and handed Lapstrake a pen. His impassive face watched as the writer entered his name and address and the name of the man who had brought him to this pass. When he finished he returned the pen to Nilson who spoke for the first time. “You’ll have to walk.”

  “Where? Why?”

  “The elevator is temporarily broke. You’ll have to walk up. It’s on the fourth floor. Switch on the lights at the head of each landing.”

  Lapstrake stared at the man, hoping for additional information. The cat jumped back on the desk and in the yellow radiance of the lamp its calico bulk seemed to glow from within. It licked a forepaw, carefully extending one claw after another from a seemingly inexhaustible supply. Lapstrake sneezed and started for the stairway.

  “It’s a Boston Cat,” said Nilson. This announcement halted Lapstrake’s passage upward.

  “I didn’t think it was from London.”

  “Might have been! See its feet?” He grabbed a hind-quarter of the unresisting animal and held it up for inspection. “See all those toes? Any cat with extra toes is descended from the one tom who came over on the Mayflower.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” said Lapstrake, who had reached the first landing and was looking for the light switch.

  “Call them Boston Cats.” Nilson watched him grope along the wainscoting. “Room six,” Nilson added as an afterthought.

  Lapstrake found the switch, an old-fashioned ceramic cylinder with a serrated black knob which, when turned, lighted a single receptacle hanging above the next landing. As he picked up his bag—which was becoming heavier with each step—he thought he heard a faint ticking noise. Nilson had switched off the light in the lobby and disappeared into the darkness. The club was quiet but not silent. Each stair tread breathed as Lapstrake made his hesitant way upward. A metallic noise sounded far off and somewhere a shutter slapped the side of the house. He was certain that he and Nilson were the only inhabitants of the place. Or perhaps Nilson left for the night. Lapstrake, now filled with deep misgiving, longed for a shower. His clothes hung on him like damp towels. Of course the room would have a bath. Until this moment it had not occurred to him to question such a thing. It had been years since he had spent a night in a room without adjoining bath. It had, in fact, been a country house in Ireland which reminded him a great deal of … The light went out above him with a click. Something brushed against his foot. Lapstrake conquered an almost overwhelming desire to scream.

  He gripped the leather handle of his bag and strove to orient himself. He was only about six steps away from the next landing. The light switch there would undoubtedly be in the same place as the last one. There was a sturdy banister that would protect him from, well, that would protect him. He stretched a tentative hand to his left and was relieved to touch the smooth oak banister that followed the curve of the stairs. He gave it a little shake to demonstrate its sturdiness. “Oh, Christ!” he whispered as it sagged outward under his hand.

  It was important not to make noise. Lapstrake was buffeted by the conflicting notions that he might be the only human in this black cavern or, if he was not, that he did not want anyone else to know he was here. Slowly he raised his foot to the next step. He hit a stair rod that rattled and the tread gave a squeak that sounded reassuringly like the previous one. He took another step, another, and another. The last pitched him forward into stygian emptiness. After a moment he caught his breath. He was soaked with perspiration, but he realized he had gained the second landing. Setting down his bag, he took off his raincoat and the jacket of his tweed suit—which in another time he had felt appropriate for Boston—both of which he dropped on the bag. His heart rate began to slow as he loosened his tie and unbuttoned the cuffs of his clammy shirt. Damn Seymour Gland. It he had stayed at the Ritz or the Copley he would have showered by now and be enjoying a nightcap. Instead his life was in jeopardy.

  The blackness was disorienting him so he moved cautiously, sliding his feet along the carpet as if testing the ice on a pond. This skating motion propelled him sideways until his right foot met the wall. With a sigh of relief he spread both palms against the wall and began to search for the switch. Had he come too far forward? He moved back a step or two until suddenly one foot slipped into deep space. He clawed his way forward and caressed the wall like a man making frantic love to an elephant. His fingers grazed the hard nipple of the switch and panting he gave it a vicious twist. Light poured down from the landing above. Lapstrake heard a ticking sound emanating from the switch. So that was the deal! A timer, one of those old European timer switches that shut off the lights behind you. Well he was up to it! Lapstrake ran for the next flight and, taking the steps two at a time, was halfway up before, with a sob of frustration, he realized he had left bag and coats behind. He raced down, scooped them up and regained the first step when the switch shut itself off with a click as final as the snap of a bone.

  The stairs between the third and fourth landing exhibited a sickening reverse camber slanting off in the direction of the stairwell due no doubt to settling of the house over the years. Lapstrake knew the elevator enclosure was there but the knowledge did not comfort him. A vision of himself spreadeagled on it, clinging like a human fly to the brass rods, flashed before his eyes. A rustling noise above him froze Lapstrake in midstep. He stood like a Balinese dancer, one foot in the air, his face contorted in a mask of violent emotion. The house was alive with tiny sounds. It ticked and creaked and groaned and popped and rubbed its surfaces together. Somewhere he could hear rain being driven against a windowpane. “Fuck this!” he roared, and stamped heavily upward drowning the gentle obbligato.

  The fourth floor had no carpet, he discovered, as his shoe hit wood. He was sure he knew where the switch was and indeed after pounding the panelling for less than a minute he found it. He switched it on and the light revealed a hallway with thr
ee doors on each side, an armoire with one door hanging open and finally a sight which broke his fighting spirit. Dimly through a half-open door at the far end of the hall he glimpsed a washstand and a clawfoot tub.

  Number six, the gnome had said. The light switch ticked like the mechanism of an infernal device. The doors had no numbers. Wait, yes, a small brass plate beside the doorknob. Number one. Across from it, number six. As Lapstrake pushed open the door of his room the hall light went out again. He kicked a table, threw his bag and the coats on the floor and flailed about until his clutching hands caught a bedside lamp and strangled it into life. A fit of sneezing took him. The room was stifling hot. I will settle with you, Gland, he thought as he picked up his soggy clothes from the floor. He sneezed again as he hung his raincoat on a wooden hanger inscribed Dependable Cleansers and his suit jacket on a more elegant model from the Miramar Hotel in Palm Beach. It was only as he emerged from the closet that he saw the Boston Cat smiling at him from the middle of his bed.

  Chapter 15

  “Have you met Gland’s journalist?” Walter Junior and a man named Blankinship were standing in front of the bank of American Standard urinals.

  “No, I haven’t. I didn’t know Gland had his own journalist,” said Blankinship.

  “He says the Club agreed to import one from San Francisco.”

  “Odd. I don’t recall anything about that, either.” He pronounced the word eyethah.

  “Yes. Nor do I. One would think Boston was oversupplied with journalists.”

  “I knew he had a Luders 32, but I didn’t know he had a journalist.”

  “The Sphere has written a dozen stories mentioning the Charles Club in the past month and each one of them was signed with a different name.”

  “I think he keeps her at Hyannis.”

  “No, it’s a man, and he is reputed to be staying here.”

  They moved to the basins, dried their hands on snowy towels monogrammed with two ornate C’s back to back and dropped them into a white wicker basket. Walter Junior began to comb his hair while the other looked on with a trace of envy. “Why would the Club bring a scribbler to Boston?”