Still Harrison said nothing.
“She thinks we’re too loud when we get together, but she hangs in there. She likes the money. She tried to leave Constant once, and Pa gave her a million dollars to stay. Then the next year she tried to leave him again, and Pa gave her another million. I don’t know how many times she can pull that one off.”
Harrison, reluctant to be a participant in the conversation, said, “Why does she want to leave him so often?”
“She claims he hit her, and you know perfectly well that’s ridiculous. Constant wouldn’t harm a flea.”
“My father would like to see you,” said Kitt.
“Gerald? See me? Why?”
“I don’t know why. He called this morning. Ma told him we’d met. He seemed very pleased that I had discovered you again, if that is what I have done. Pa admires success, you know. He likes the way you write. He said, ‘He’s on the side of law and order. I like that.’ ”
“Your father actually said that?”
“Yes.”
“Good heavens.”
“He wants to take you to lunch at the Four Seasons.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Please, for me, do it. Please, Harrison.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“There’s something he wants to ask you.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. At least you’ll get a good lunch. And you’ll see everyone. My father is the only man allowed to smoke cigars in the Four Seasons.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“But how could you know that?”
“A man named Rupert du Pithon told me. He said it was the sort of information he was full of, that was of interest to no one.”
“Will you see him?”
“When I get back. I’m going to Arizona right after Christmas.”
“Pa doesn’t like to be put off, you know.”
“I said I’d see him when I got back from Arizona.”
“Oh, what a stern look on your face. What’s in Arizona?”
“The mother of Dwane Lonergan.”
“Should I know who Dwane Lonergan is?”
“The prostitute Esme Bland killed.”
“You fell asleep with your glasses on,” said Kitt. Her face was radiant with tenderness. “I was watching you.”
“How’d I look?”
“There are dark places inside you, Harrison.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someday you should videotape yourself sleeping. Watch yourself thrash. Listen to yourself cry out. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were the killer of your parents. Oh, that’s a horrible thing to say, Harry. I’m sorry. I went too far, as usual.”
“Forget it.”
“What happened to those boys?”
“Twenty years.”
“I feel envied, but unworthy. Seeing you, realizing what you’ve done, makes me see how purposeless my life is. What am I really? Just a rich man’s daughter. I’ve made a lousy marriage. I haven’t had a child. My life is all about having lunch, going to Kenneth to have my hair done, going out to the kind of party that gets written up in Dolly De Longpre’s column, and sipping too much white wine. This is not how I ever imagined it was going to be for me. I thought I would do great things, but I haven’t done anything really, except learn to speak French, fluently, and with a perfect accent, or so Philippe tells me, but that’s not such a big deal, is it? Look at you, Harrison. Once they found the key that opened the door to turn on the generator, you were back in your room typing away on your laptop the story of Esme Bland and the prostitute she killed. What was that guy’s name?”
“You haven’t let them break your spirit, have you, Kitt?” asked Harrison.
“By them, do you mean Cheever?”
“No, by them I mean your family.”
“The roads are open. The airport in Bangor is open,” said Harrison. “I guess it’s time to put the show on the road.”
“I’d like to stay here forever,” said Kitt. “Let’s stay through Christmas, Harrison. Just the two of us at the Bee and Thistle.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I have two little boys to spend Christmas with.”
“And Claire, I suppose?”
“Yes. And Claire.”
“I can’t bear to end this,” said Kitt.
“Who said it’s going to end? We just have to go back. The storm’s over. Real life again.”
“Harry, I think I’m beginning to love you,” said Kitt.
“No, let’s not fall in love, Kitt.”
“No?”
“No. It’s too complicated.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right, of course, no love. Lots of lovely lust. No love. It’s already too complicated.”
“Yes.”
“But it’s not going to end, is it? Tell me it’s not going to end, Harrison. Please, please, please.”
9
Harrison took a plane to Phoenix, where he transferred to a plane for Tucson. The heat was scorching and the sunlight blinding. At the Tucson airport, he rented a car to drive the sixty miles south to the town of Nogales on the border of Mexico. On the outskirts of Nogales, he stopped and took out the directions Maxine Lonergan had given him over the telephone. “I’m on the American side, remember,” she said. “Don’t cross the border. You get on the Patagonia Highway at the 7-Eleven store, just before you hit town. Stay on it for about six miles. You’ll come to a dirt road called Vista del Cielo. Hang a left there for a couple of miles. On the right-hand side you’ll see a mailbox with RFD and a picture of a red cow on it. Turn in there. That’s me.”
At the mailbox with the picture of the red cow he turned in, as directed. He had imagined a small adobe or a trailer home, but there was no house in sight. He drove on the dirt road for a couple of miles. At times his vision was impaired by the dust his car raised. On each side was barren desert land with an occasional cactus. He thought he had misunderstood her directions. Then he came to two stone pillars and a closed gate. On each side of the pillars there was a high brick wall that seemed to surround the area of the house beyond. Confused, he pulled up to the gate before he noticed a bell and a speaker on a freestanding post. He pushed the bell. He could see that a closed-circuit television camera directed at him was activated by the bell. A man’s voice said, “Si?”
“I think perhaps I’ve made a mistake,” said Harrison into the speaker. “I’m looking for a Mrs. Maxine Lonergan. I thought she said to turn in at the post box with the red cow, but perhaps I misunderstood her. I wonder if you could direct me.”
“Your name?”
“My name? Harrison Burns.”
The gates opened. Harrison drove in. Inside was a green lawn with gardens, and ahead, at the end of a gravel drive, was a long, low ranch house of handsome design and graceful lines with a red tile roof. He parked his rented car in the circular courtyard in front of the house. Almost immediately the door opened. A tall, thin handsome young man dressed in cowboy clothes and wearing a gun in a holster stepped outside.
“Mr. Harrison?” he said.
“Burns, it is. Harrison is the first name,” Harrison said.
“Right. Come in.”
Harrison walked past him. Inside, the house was air-conditioned cool. There was a big central hall. To the right, through a set of double doors, was a large living room. Beyond it, through another set of double doors, was a smaller room. From the hall Harrison could see a giant television screen. A sound system was playing the songs of Dom Belcanto, the late Las Vegas and Hollywood singer who was widely believed to have had gangland connections.
“She’s puttin’ on her face,” said the man with the gun. “She don’t like nobody to see her until she’s put on her face.”
“I see,” said Harrison. “Does she work here?”
“Who?”
“Maxine Lonergan.”
“Work here? Are you kiddin’? This is her house.”
&
nbsp; “This is Mrs. Lonergan’s house?” asked Harrison, unable to disguise the surprise in the tone of his voice.
“Miss Lonergan, not missus. Yeah, this is her house. What’d you think?”
Harrison nodded away his doubts. “Why do you have a gun?” he asked.
“I’m her bodyguard.”
“Oh.” He nodded his head. “Is it loaded?”
“Of course, it’s loaded.”
“Oh. Looks like it’s a beautiful house.”
“Yeah, it’s beautiful. And safe. It’s like a fortress, this house. The windows are all bulletproof. I could fire this gun right at that window, and it wouldn’t do nothing but shatter the glass. See this button here? You push this button and zap, just like that, steel doors drop out from under the eaves, and you’re encased. Completely encased. She’s got buttons like that in every room.”
Harrison nodded. “Who are you protecting yourself from?” he asked.
The question was ignored. “But,” said the man, “as Maxine always says, if they’re going to get you, they’re going to get you, no matter what kind of security you got. Right?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” agreed Harrison. “You don’t think when you’re driving up that dirt road that you’re going to find anything like this.” With a broad, two-handed gesture, Harrison indicated the impressive house in which he was standing.
“That’s the whole fuckin’ point, man,” said the man, as if he were talking to an idiot.
“Yes, of course, I see.”
“She says to tell you wait in the bar.”
“I would like to use the men’s room.”
“That way. Down that hall. Turn left. Maxine always says, ‘Turn left at the Renoir,’ but that’s her joke, not mine, so laugh when she says it, if you should happen to ask her to go to the bathroom again.”
Harrison walked down the hall. There on the wall was a Renoir-looking painting. He peered at it. He touched it. He looked at the signature. He turned left and entered the bathroom. On the wall were two urinals, as in a public bathroom. He took out a pen and notebook and made a few notes.
“ ‘Fly me to the moon,’ ” came a second voice from the hallway, singing along with Dom Belcanto’s voice on the sound system. “I hope Pony took care of you,” Maxine Lonergan said, as she came up behind Harrison, who was sitting on a tall stool in her bar. “No drink? Pony didn’t offer you a drink?”
She had a cigarette smoker’s voice. He saw her in the mirror behind the bar before he turned and looked at her, hopping off the barstool as they shook hands.
“Miss Lonergan, I’m Harrison Burns,” he said.
“What do they call you? Harry?”
“Sometimes, yes. I prefer Harrison.”
“Then Harrison it shall be,” she said, smiling at him. “It’s a nice name. Your mother’s maiden name, I bet?”
“Yes, it was.”
She was a tall, beautifully built woman of forty-five. Her face, chiseled regularly by a doctor in Brazil to retain its youth, was expertly made-up, as if she were about to go on stage. Her hair, blond, iridescent blond, had just been done in an elaborate manner. She was dressed in off-white cashmere slacks and an off-white silk blouse opened down several buttons. She wore no brassiere. Around her neck and on her wrists, fingers, and ears were a great many diamonds. “The daytime stuff,” she said later, waving her hands in front of him, when he remarked on them. She walked behind the bar, snapping her fingers in time to the Dom Belcanto song on the sound system. There was about her a sense of friendliness and good humor.
“There better be ice out here, or somebody’s going to lose her job. And there’s not. Concepcion,” she called out, rolling her eyes. “Con-cept-tione. ¿Donde està el hielo? That’s Spanish for where’s the fucking ice,” she explained to Harrison.
A Mexican maid rushed into the room with a Lucite ice bucket.
“Gracias, Conception,” said Maxine, taking the bucket. “And bring us some munchies. Or your guacamole dip.”
“Si, señora.”
“What will you have?” she asked Harrison. “You name it, we got it. This is what is known as a well-stocked bar.”
“Just Perrier,” he said.
She made a face at his choice. “I might have a little champagne myself. You sure you don’t want to join me? The best money can buy,” she said, waving a bottle of Dom Perignon in front of him.
“No, thanks.”
She closed her eyes for a minute as she listened to the music, singing along with Dom Belcanto’s voice. “Was he the greatest, or was he the greatest?” she asked. She didn’t expect an answer. With eyes cast heavenward, she shouted out, “Oh, Belcanto, wherever you are, I love you, Belcanto.”
“Are you a singer?”
She laughed. “No.”
“An actress?”
“No.”
“What?”
“I’m an ex-party girl who did well,” she said. “Now I raise cattle. Santa Gertrudis cattle, to be exact. It’s a crossbreed. Developed at the King Ranch in Texas about forty years ago. They’re red, like the picture on the mailbox.”
“Your place looks huge,” said Harrison.
“Not really. Couple a thousand acres. Take the Obregon Ranch farther down the Patagonia Highway. Now, that’s huge.”
Harrison nodded.
“I take it you were a friend of my son’s?” she said.
“No, I actually never met your son. I’ve just heard about him,” said Harrison. “I’m writing a piece on a possible insurance fraud on the death certificate of a man named Esmond Bland, and your son’s name figured in my investigation.”
She nodded. “I get letters all the time from men who loved him. Rich guys. Prince somebody, what’shisname? Flew him to Rabat, in Morocco. A couple of Hollywood studio heads. On and on. You’re not one of those guys?”
“No.”
“Oh. I got that screwed up, I guess. Dwane had something. There’s no two ways about it. There’s this myth building up about Dwane. Like James Dean.”
“I have seen Esme Bland.”
“She still in the nuthouse?”
“Yes. In Maine. The Cranston Institute. She is ill.”
“I’ll say she’s ill. She’s loony. She shot my kid. Right between the eyes.”
“I meant that she is terminally ill. She has cancer. She wants to leave you some money in her will. I don’t think she has any idea you live in this manner.”
“You can tell Miss Bland that Miss Lonergan don’t need her money, thank you very much.” She began to sing. “Miss Otis regrets, she’s unable to lunch today, madam. Tell her to leave it to AIDS.”
“I must admit that I am confused myself by this sense of opulence about you, Miss Lonergan,” said Harrison.
“Try Maxine, Harrison.”
“You’re an unlikely candidate for home-on-the-range, Maxine,” he said.
“I’m a lady in retirement.”
“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I was expecting a trailer, or a mobile home.”
She laughed. “I wasn’t exactly born to the purple. I worked damn hard for my money. One hair from a pussy can pull a freight train, as Dwane used to say. You must know that. Dom Belcanto left me a bundle when he cooled. His wife, Pepper, wanted to contest my inheritance. It’s called the fifth-wife syndrome. Gimme, gimme, gimme. I fixed her. I said, sure, honey, sue, go ahead, and I’ll show you and the FBI and the president of the United States a few pictures of Dom and Sal and some of the boys, taken in Vegas and Havana and Hollywood, and right here at the ranch, where they came when they wanted to be really private for their confabs, if you get my point. Pepper shut up pretty quick after that. She moves in high society now. She didn’t want that to come out. After all, I serviced Dom for a good ten years, and that wasn’t always easy, especially when he was drunk and belligerent. And then, of course, there was Sal. Sal was the real love of my life.” Her eyes misted over. She pulled a flowered Kleenex from a Lucite holder on the bar and turned and faced herse
lf in the mirror as she dealt with her tear before it could roll onto her makeup. “Took me an hour and a half to put on this face,” she said, looking at him through the mirror. “Can’t fuck it up so soon. Sal really took care of me. He bought me the ranch, the pictures, everything.”
“Sal?”
“Salvatore Cabrini. You heard about Lansky. You heard about Giancana. You heard about Trafficante. You heard about Roselli. Who you didn’t hear about was Sal Cabrini. No relation to Mother Cabrini, by the way. Not even distant cousins. Silence. That was Sal’s power. He kept a low profile. And he kept me. He would have married me. He wanted to. But he had this sick wife. Angela. Sick for years. And he wouldn’t divorce her. We kept thinking Angela was going to die, but she never did. She’s still alive. Lives in Miami. I liked that about Sal. He had honor. Then he got killed in a plane crash, flying to Miami for Angela’s birthday. Well, those are the breaks. Anyway, you know something? I’m better as a solo act. Listen, would you like to see my pictures?”
“Sure.”
“I love Monet, Van Gogh, and all that stuff,” she said. “Some of them may be hot, for all I know. Sal started giving me pictures, and I always thought it was best not to ask questions. He didn’t know shit about art. He just knew what they were worth.”
Harrison laughed. “I saw the Renoir,” he said.
“Oh, you went to the john already? Nuts. I always say, ‘Turn left at the Renoir,’ when guys ask me where the john is. Gets a laugh every time.”
“Yes. Pony showed me.”
“Sal had the urinals put in. You know, on the wall like that? Dwane used to love to stand at those urinals when he was a kid.”
“Why was your son a prostitute?” asked Harrison.
“Dwane? He liked it. He enjoyed it. It was the money, the trips, the gifts, that made him erotic. It was an exciting life. He was just another version of me. If he’d lived, he’d have settled down after thirty, thirty-five, gotten out of the business. We make very good wives, us ex-hookers.
“I had this casket flown in from L.A. Eight thousand bucks. All brass. Gorgeous. I’ll say this for Dwane. He was a beautiful corpse. I had him laid out in there at the end of the living room. Right in front of the big picture window. You could see the purple mountains beyond. It was a beautiful sight. The service was private. Just Pony and me, and Concepcion, and some of the cowboys, and the people who work on the ranch. Angela Cabrini sent flowers. I thought that was nice.”
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