“How can I reach you when I get there?”
“I have to go,” Amy said, and the line went dead.
Chapter 18
It snowed all night and in the morning the earth was absolutely still and the sky a deep clear blue, the snow tufting every branch of every tree. The rest of the family had gone home to the various parts of the world where they lived. Simon, as usual, was asleep. Uncle Bernie and Ginger at the dining room table eating croissants with blackberry jam. My dad, who had come home late the night before, said to me, “I can tell you in advance, Billy, that what you want is not going to happen. My partners are powder hounds, and I’m off for the mountain. This is a perfect day.”
“Go for it, Dad.”
“Keep those peas in place. Twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off. Bernard, are you skiing today?”
Uncle Bernie was still in his bathrobe. “I couldn’t move two feet in this stuff without falling flat on my schnozz.”
“Champagne powder. Very forgiving. You should try it.” He clapped Uncle Bernie on the shoulder. If he did that, he was really in a good mood.
He left the house at nine o’clock. I was alone with Ginger and Uncle Bernie, who had moved to the living room and was doing his version of yoga, stretching in different directions, then stopping to catch his breath and sip some coffee.
“Aren’t you going out with Ginger for a walk or something?” I asked. “It’s a winter wonderland.”
“Later. Want to come along, Billy?”
“No, thanks, I’ve got stuff to do. I was just wondering when you were going.”
I had to call a taxi soon for the airport and I didn’t want them to see me go. I’d already written a note and left it on my pillow: “DAD, I HAD TO GO. I’LL BE FINE. DON’T WORRY. LOVE, BILLY.” I needed to get on standby for an 11 A.M. flight, and the only other flight that would make my Denver connection took off at noon. If I missed that one, I’d have to creep back to Smuggler Street with my tail between my legs. And I’d have no way to let Amy know I couldn’t make it.
I called United again. They told me I was ninth on the standby list. I groaned, because everything was out of my control, and there aren’t many worse feelings.
The front doorbell rang. When I opened the door, a man in a sheepskin coat and tan cowboy hat stood tall on the porch in the bright morning sun, grinning at me. In his late twenties, with a thick brown mustache, like one of those guys in the barbershop quartet competitions, he had the biggest hands I’d ever seen.
“How y’all doin’, Billy?” He pointed a banana-sized finger at the cast on my wrist. “I did that to you. I’m Tom Egan.”
“Oh! Wow!”
He shook my hand; it was like being wrapped up in a sirloin steak. I wondered if all pitchers had hands like that. If they did, it wouldn’t be fair to the batters.
“I was going fast,” he said, “and you come up outa nowhere. I saw you trying to shove that phone in your pocket.”
“It was all my fault, Mr. Egan.”
“I felt bad that I couldn’t get a chance to talk to you afterward. They told me, ‘Not now. Later.’ So here I am.”
“I’d ask you in, sir, but —”
“Hey, no sweat, Billy, this is a quickie. I just swung by to say sorry young buddy. Then I’m heading home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Ranch Road 683, twenty miles northwest of Amarillo, Texas. Got my sweet wife and baby daughter waiting for me. Skiing is not their thing.”
I noticed that a black Isuzu with a ski rack was parked at the curb in front of the house.
“You driving?” I asked.
“Heck, no. That’s a rental car. I got my plane at the airport.”
“Your plane?”
“Cessna One Seventy. Twin-engine lightning.”
I had to take a deep breath and search for courage. I found it.
The Cessna leveled off at two thousand feet above the Rocky Mountains. I’d never seen that much snow in my life. The air was so bright I had to wear special sunglasses that Tom Egan gave to me. From that height you were reminded that the earth was a planet, looking like a round white soccer ball in space. The snowy peaks and spurs stood up like teeth. And whenever we passed over a town I saw people as ants, houses as shelters, roads as links, and cars as magic carpets. Which, if you think about it, is exactly what they are.
“Ain’t it great?” Tom Egan had to yell at me — it was hard to hear above the whine of the engines.
I added flying a plane to my list of ambitions.
He’d been glad to help me out; I think he felt guilty about banging into me on the mountain even though it was my fault. He was so big, I was so small. It was a few miles out of his way to stop at Denver International, he said, but what the heck. A detour for a good reason never killed you. He said later, “I’m a fastball pitcher. Got a curve, but it’s nowhere near as hard to handle as my fastball. They say, ‘Tom Egan challenges the hitters.’ So I appreciate the way you asked if I could fly you to Denver. You challenged me with a fastball.”
When he helped me carry my bags out of the house, he noted movement inside the Adidas bag.
“Hold on, pardner. What’s in there?”
“A space monkey. Is that cool?”
After we cleared the tower at Aspen airport, Tom let Iphigenia run around the cabin. She pressed her nose to the plexiglass, interested by what was whizzing past. The Cessna hit a pocket of cold air, yawed, then settled back into its forward motion. Iphigenia squirmed quickly back into her bag.
Up there in the wild blue, we talked about life on a ranch. He told me about his wife, Bonnie Rae, and his six-month-old daughter, Katie, and his dogs, and his horses, and some cattle he ran. In the Texas panhandle, he said, “the wind’ll blow a dog off a chain.” He talked about his life as a baseball player, how it was tough to be on the road so much of the time, and how you could be at the top of the stats one season and back in the minors the next, and you wondered what you’d be doing when you were forty. That’s why he bought the ranch outside Amarillo.
I told him a few things about Amy, and a lot about rock climbing and how one day I planned to run a chain of gourmet restaurants. Before we landed we exchanged e-mail addresses, and he said, “When the Rockies come to town next summer, I’ll give you and Amy a hoot. Y’all come visit at Shea.”
After he made a perfect three-point landing at Denver airport, he asked me if I had enough money.
I thanked him and said, “Getting to Denver was the hard part.”
“Happy trails, pardner.”
It took me a while to work my way through the airport to the Delta counter, and I signed up for standby on the flight to Islip. If I didn’t get on, they explained, I could stand by for a later flight to LaGuardia. And if that didn’t work, I’d have to spend the night at a motel near Denver airport. I went down the corridor to a Subways restaurant and bought an apple for Iphigenia. Back at the gate, I shut my eyes and imagined myself on the plane. I was there, in my seat, sipping apple juice. I could see it clearly. Ten minutes before the flight took off, they called my name.
The plane wasn’t due into Islip until ten thirty. I still had to get myself out to the South Fork on a bleak winter night. And then, of course, after Amy, I’d have to deal with my mom and dad. They weren’t heavily into the punishment department; they usually just lectured. But neither of their kids had ever mutinied and skipped out to fly 2,000 miles across the USA. I wondered what would happen.
We landed at Islip on a black night, no stars, no moon, with ice on the airport windows. I hurried to get Iphigenia inside. In the terminal building I strained to look over people or around them, to find a bus connection to the South Fork. It was a steaming hot and noisy airport, and all these people were coming back from their holidays.
And then a small shape with a humpy back shot out of the crowd and appeared in front of me.
“Aquí! Aquí, mi cariño…“
One minute I didn’t see her, and the next minute In
ez was hugging me, and I was drowning in the smells of garlic and coffee. Tears slid down her cheeks on to mine.
“I got a limo,” she said.
“Inez, I love you.”
On the highway toward home, with both of us snugged under blankets in the enormous back seat, I said, “How did you know?”
Inez explained that over Christmas she had flown to Barcelona for eight days to visit family. “I get back late this afternoon, I’m still unpacking, and your papa calls. He’s so upset. Comes home, gets your note. Runs out to the airport where he is, and they say no, no kid named Billy Braverman got on the plane. So he calls the police. They check it out, they tell him you got on a plane in Denver, headed for Islip —how you got to Denver, that’s a mystery. He thinks your Uncle Bernie helped you.”
“He didn’t.”
“Anyway, your papa says, ‘Inez, a limo will come to Hedges Lane at nine o’clock to pick you up and take you to Islip airport. Billy’s flight arrives at ten-thirty. Can you do that, Inez? Can you pick him up? Are you too exhausted?” I say, ‘Mr. Jack, in my head it’s two o’clock in the morning, but I would drive in a hurricane over the North Pole for that boy.’ So I drink a jug of coffee black like the heart of the devil, and the limo comes ten minutes to nine, thanks God.” Inez crossed herself. “Billy, your papa wants you to call him soon’s you get home, the hour don’t matter. How could you run away like that? Is it that girl? The one with the crazy father?”
I thought about what she’d said. Something didn’t parse.
“Inez, how do you know about the crazy father?”
“Listen to this. Quarter to nine, I’m drinking my coffee and eating crackers with cheese. Front doorbell rings. Limo, I think, got here early. I go, I look through the peeper-hole, there’s this man, all bundled up, ‘cause it’s cold. I don’t like his look, gives me creeps. I say through the speaker, ‘Yes, what is it, please?’ He says, ‘Let me in. I wanna talk to my daughter.’ I tell him you got the wrong house, no daughter here.’ He yells, ‘Don’t lie to me, lady, I know she’s there.’ He starts cursing. He tries to bang the door open, like he knows we don’t lock it, but thanks God this time I threw the bolt. I think, I’ll call the police, but then I think, no, I have to get to the airport, I don’t want no trouble with police.”
“What did you do, Inez?”
“I keep hoping this guy will get tired and cold and he’ll go. It’s starting to snow. But he keeps ringing the bell, he pounds on the door with his fist, he’s so angry he stamps his foot. He yells, ‘You don’t open this door, lady, I break it down, you — you — “… and he calls me a bad name. ‘I break the window. I got a rock right here.’ I say, ‘The police are coming. Go home now while you still got time. I don’t want to see you go to jail.’ You get it, Billy? Bluff.”
“Good, Inez. And… ?”
“So thanks God, the limo gets there. Big lights coming up the driveway. This man who says his daughter’s in our house thinks it’s the police. I hear him run off on the gravel. I wait. Seems okay. I open the door and I tell the limo driver, ‘Come on in, quick.’ You saw him — a young black guy, looks strong. I ask him if he’s got a gun. He says, ‘Jesus Christ, lady, no, why do I need a gun?’— and he looks like he’s gonna run back to the limo or faint on our carpet. I tell him to calm down. I say, ‘Don’t waste time, let’s go.’ And that’s what we do. And here we are. I just hope that poor girl’s father is not waiting for us when we get home.”
“Did you get a look at him, Inez?”
“In the porch lights, sure. Right in his eyes. Crazy eyes. Acts crazy, too.”
“Did he have these very white teeth?”
“I saw that. A denture. Falso.”
Now I understood why they looked like bathroom tiles. I’d never seen it. Inez had dentures, and so she knew. And she thought he looked crazy even through a peep-hole.
I wondered about Amy. If she wasn’t at home, and Carter was out hunting for her on an ice-cold black winter night — where was she?
The headlights lit up the front of the house and the motion-detector lights popped on as soon as we crossed the invisible beams. But beyond all that light, it was as dark as a cave and bitter cold. Inez used her key to open the front door. She gave the limo driver a thumbs-up signal. Off he went, into the night, to wherever limo drivers go.
It was after midnight, and I was tired, but I knew I had to call my dad in Aspen. Inez had left the heat on high and the house was cozy warm. She bolted the door again. I put Iphigenia, in her travel bag, on the living room sofa. I was thinking about going to the fridge and taking off the bandage and putting a fresh bag of frozen peas on my nose. Anything to postpone calling my dad.
But I don’t think we’d been in the living room more than a minute, when we heard a scratching on the french doors that led to the garden.
Inez and I flew into each other’s arms.
“What’s that?” My heart pounded.
“I don’t know, cariño…”
“You think it’s him?”
“He don’t scratch. He bangs.”
She scuttled over to the fireplace, grabbed a poker, and, holding it tight, straightened her back as best she could and tiptoed across the carpet over to the french doors. She peered through the glass into the darkness, and then she looked down at the ground.
“Madre de Diós . . .”
Inez threw the bolt and swung the door open. Cold air sailed into the room, and right behind it came a hunched-over figure, gloved hands crossed on its chest, red hair matted with snow — it bumped against a glass door, and it let out a tiny moan.
“Pobrecita,” Inez whispered.
Amy was wearing her old coat, a navy blue woolen watchcap, jeans, and her old sneakers, but that wasn’t enough to bar the cold from your bones on a night such as this. Her nose was bright pink like some exotic jungle flower. Her lips and cheeks looked blue.
Inez hauled her into the living room. “Get some blankets, Billy, from the linen closet.”
I ran upstairs and then back down. Inez warmed Amy by hugging her. Then she wrapped her in the blankets I brought. Amy looked half-frozen, but I’d read a lot about the bad things that happened on Everest and I could see that she didn’t have frostbite.
“Billy,” Inez said, “you take her up to the room with the big red quilt and the treadmill. I’m gonna make some hot cocoa. I be there in a minute. I got to think.”
Amy and I hadn’t really spoken to each other yet. I hadn’t turned on the upstairs lights. It was quiet on the staircase, with just the sound of our breathing.
Amy said, “You look funny.”
“I broke my nose.”
I heard the noise of a car engine coming up our driveway. No, not a car — a pickup truck. And I recognized the thumping beat of those pistons.
Putting a finger to my lips, I drew Amy a few steps down the hall, close enough for me to hear what would happen, not close enough for us to be seen from the entry downstairs. I stood motionless, leaning against the wall.
The doorbell rang and I heard Inez padding out from where she’d been making cocoa in the kitchen. The spotlights had detected motion, and they had jumped on. The bell rang again, hard and angry. When the sound died out, Inez said, “Go away.”
Carter Bedford yelled, “I want my daughter.”
“It’s late. Do yourself a favor, mister. Go ‘way. “
After a brief a silence, the telephone rang. I was so startled that I jumped, because it rang upstairs and downstairs, and the sound shot at you from both directions.
Carter snarled, “She’s there, lady. I seen her footsteps. You better open up before I get really annoyed.”
“I gotta answer the phone, mister.”
“Where’s Jacob Braverman? Where’s the master of this house?”
I don’t think Inez wanted to admit that she was alone there on Oak Lane, but Carter must have figured that out. Our nearest neighbors didn’t start coming out until April. He was the garbage man; he would kn
ow. The phone kept ringing.
I didn’t dare move.
“I got a club,” Carter yelled. “I’ll break the window.”
Inez was brave. “Don’t make me call the police again. You go to jail for sure.”
I heard a thumping sound outside and I thought for a moment Carter was hitting the big front door with the club. Then it got through to me that he had stamped his foot.
“I’m her father,” he yelled.
“Leave decent people alone,” Inez yelled back.
The phone stopped ringing.
The wind whistled in the chimneys. From time to time a tree branch fell. The old wooden boards of the floor under my feet creaked. I heard a faraway squeak from Iphigenia, curled up in her bag on the living room sofa. Amy’s face was against my chest, and I had her wrapped in my good arm. It felt as if we were under siege.
Carter growled like a bear. “I want her.”
I realized that Inez had never lied and told him that Amy wasn’t there. “Send her out.” Carter wasn’t yelling anymore, just talking loud. But the night was so quiet that I could hear him clearly.
“I won’t hurt her,” he said.
Inez didn’t answer.
“Red-headed bitch, I know you’re in there. I can smell you.”
Chapter 19
“I got to call the police. No bluff.” Inez reached for the telephone on the bedside table.”
I sprang in front of her. “Inez, please don’t do it.”
She had padded upstairs with the hot cocoa, a plate of Pepperidge Farm cookies, and the brass fireplace poker tucked under one arm. We all sat on the bed in the smaller of the two third-floor guest rooms. Carter had stopped his shouting and his door banging. But he was still out there. We whispered, for fear he had his ear planted against the door, or even against the wall of the house.
“He could break a window, Billy. The man sounds loco in the coco. Excuse me for saying that,” Inez said to Amy.
Amy shrugged, meaning that was her opinion, too.
Bundled in a white blanket, she busily worked her way through the cookies: plain butter, chocolate, some filled with red jelly. The blue color had gone from her cheeks and they had turned rosy in the warmth of the house. Now that I had met Ginette I could see the strain of Asian blood in Amy, even though her skin was usually white as milk: it was in the cut of her eyes and the bones of her head.
Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller Page 14