by Peter Israel
“Grace Bashard,” he answered. “My only child and heir.”
He said this tonelessly, and without further explanation, but I couldn’t help a double take. He was easily old enough to be her grandfather, and this calculation led to a more startling second one. Bashard’s wife, who’d died some ten years before, had been a lot younger than he, this much I knew, but that much younger? To have had a baby—when? In her mid-forties, if not later?
The youngster on the lawn, as I found out shortly, was all of eighteen.
There was, of course, another explanation, and the Counselor had known it. But the Counselor has a bad habit of keeping his counsel when it comes to giving me my marching orders.
“You’ll have breakfast with her at the pool in fifteen minutes,” Bashard said. He turned off the television set. “She’ll have her swim first. She’ll tell you everything you need to know, show you everything you need to see.”
“Won’t you be joining us?” I said.
“I’ve had mine already. I work from eight-thirty to one-thirty, seven days a week. Luncheon is at two, dinner at seven-thirty. We go to bed early here. But we’ll have ample time to review our preparations. If we don’t get to it today, we’ll get to it tomorrow or the next day. Meanwhile, meet the staff. Trust no one. Develop your own opinions. When you decide who’s going to kill me, inform me.”
He turned away. The audience was over.
I went out into the hall, down the curving stone steps to the main floor, and out back through rose gardens to poolside. The cook, who doubled as waiter, was carrying a tray out to the pool. A gardener in white coveralls and heavy gloves stooped among the rosebushes, working with clippers.
The cook, the gardener, the driver, Bashard himself … all male. In fact, the only female in the place, two-legged or four, was Grace Bashard, just taking a shallow dive off the springboard when I walked onto the patio.
CHAPTER
2
CONFIDENTIAL
To: Charles Camelot
Date: 20 May
From: Revere
Subject: R. R. Bashard visit (file Bashard)
There was no need for me to stay any longer. It would have been a waste of my time, Bashard’s money.
The security is the most sophisticated I’ve ever inspected. By the way, he designed the system himself. Maybe helicopters could get in there, otherwise it looks like overkill to me. He’s a lot more vulnerable to stepping on a cake of soap than to a crazy.
He says he trusts nobody except the daughter and his dogs. I interviewed the employees, reviewed their files (see Bashard, staff), found no basis for any suspicion.
One exception. (See Bashard, Grace.)
He seems like a lonely old man, probably paranoid.
I found no basis, at least as far as the physical premises are concerned, for his life to be in danger.
If he’s to go to the BashCon next week, I should check out the facilities. The question, though, is moot. I left against his will, even after he phoned you. He said I wouldn’t do. He said he had no place for quitters. Etc., etc.
He is clearly not a man used to being thwarted.
What next?
For you to decide.
CONFIDENTIAL
To: Charles Camelot
Date: 20 May
From: Revere
Subject: Grace Bashard (new file: Bashard, Grace)
Bashard’s daughter, Grace, is a screwed-up little rich girl, right out of the movies. She is beautiful, knows it, thinks she is sexually irresistible. She gets extra sexy when she knows Daddy’s watching.
According to our abstract (see Bashard, will), Grace Bashard inherits the works. She knows it, makes sure you know it, too. To judge from the way she acts toward him, I’d guess she’s in it for the money.
It was too bad. I mean, after a day and a night and part of another day of fending off Daddy’s Little Girl, I was just warming up. Writing a memo to the Counselor might sound like small revenge, but it was all I had going for me at the time.
Anyway, I was just getting into the subject of Grace that afternoon in my office when the red button on my console started blinking.
I pressed the intercom.
“Erase everything about Grace Bashard,” the familiar voice said.
So the Counselor was reading on his screen, even as I typed.
I started to protest.
“I said: Erase everything about Grace Bashard, Phil,” the Counselor’s deep voice interrupted. “There’s no Grace Bashard file. Then get your ass up here.”
The intercom went dead; the red button stopped blinking.
I did what the Boss said.
A word about our setup.
We work, as I’ve mentioned, in a five-story town house in Manhattan’s East Seventies. In the bottom two stories, to be exact. It’s a lovely tree-lined block with mostly town houses on either side, a couple of sturdy redbrick apartment buildings, and one garage where the locals stable their chariots, at, the last time I okayed a bill, a measly three hundred dollars per car per month. You can still buy your way into the neighborhood, I guess, if you’ve got a few million dollars lying around. The last house to be sold on our block was advertised in the Times at a round $4 million, and it was snapped up inside of two months by a partnership of ob-gyns. There are, to judge, enough ob-gyns in the few blocks around us to leave an overflow even if the entire female population of the Upper East Side decides to get pregnant at the same time. And a heavy dosage of other medical specialties of the more expensive variety, including a goodly sprinkling of shrinks, surgeons, an orthodontist or two, one ophthalmologist. And only one attorney-at-law. In other words, although the Counselor might land on me for saying it, the professionals in the neighborhood are of either sufficient specialty or sufficient reputation to be able to pass on their costs to their clients.
Our building, good-sized in the neighborhood, would be considered small by Bashard standards, and it would be too small for any normal law offices (much less a combination law office and city residence). But it fits our professional needs, for particular reasons, and also fits the living requirements of the Counselor and his wife. Although if the Counselor’s Wife ever lives up to her threat to bring a Baby Camelot into the household, it’s hard to know where we’d fit it in. As is, it’s a handsome brick edifice from the double white half-columns and white lintel framing the doorway to the polished brass announcing: CHARLES CAMELOT, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW.
The first person you meet when you come in is the receptionist, Mr.—or Monsieur—Roger LeClerc, of New York and the Ivory Coast. To your left is a small reception room and a still smaller computer room. To the right is my office: PHILIP REVERE in brass on the door, a comfortable room with two windows giving out onto the street and a fold-out couch where I’ve been known to sleep when the Counselor has the pressure on. If you have to wait to see someone, chances are Roger will offer you coffee and tea; there’s a small kitchen substation behind him, also a half-bathroom. The decor is subtle, the lighting mostly indirect—all such touches chosen, I should say, by the Counselor’s Wife.
Upstairs on the second floor are the Counselor’s chambers, the office of his secretary, Ms. Shapiro, and also the office of our “secret weapon,” Ms. Charlotte McCullough, who’s been with us since the Firm. She’s a CPA and also a pure genius, if I may say so, at both financial and data-processing matters.
And that, except for the elevator and the main staircase, which ends in a closed door above the second floor, is the sum and total of the professional part.
What makes it livable (and an oddity compared to most legal offices) is the almost total absence of paper. Consider these two factors: for one, we are now well into the Computer Age and the Counselor has us computerized within an inch of our sometimes unwilling lives. Everyone who works for us, Roger included, must take at least an introductory course. Secondly, when he left the Firm to “go private,” the Counselor didn’t cut all his ties. Instead he negotiated an arrangement which, t
hough unique in its time, is now becoming more and more commonplace in the New York profession: we are cabled into the Firm’s mainframe, which houses our own data base and files. Thus, we have full access to the Firm’s law library, which is now largely an electronic library, and other aspects of the Firm’s services that no small law office could either afford or house. Those basic documents we have to hold on to—wills, contracts, leases and the like—are kept for the most part in waterproofed, fireproofed steel cabinets in the basement.
Our relationship to the Firm goes deeper, of course. In exchange for its services, the Firm gets to print a discreet “Charles Camelot, of Counsel” on its letterhead, a small but significant item any New York law firm would readily recognize and pay for. In addition, we use the Firm regularly for certain kinds of legal matters, including litigation, for Charles Camelot would, I suppose, cut his own throat sooner than appear in a courtroom. And the Firm, in exchange, refers certain matters to us, especially those of a sensitive, sometimes unsavory, nature that might besmirch its largely corporate practice. It is, in sum, a mutually useful connection—more hands-off than I’ve made it sound, but more hands-on than the outside world might suppose.
Above the offices begins the very separate world of the Camelot residence. The third floor of the building is their suite: living room and bedroom. The fourth contains the kitchen and dining room, and is where Althea and Gorgeous live. Althea is the housekeeper and sometime cook; Gorgeous is Althea’s calico cat.
But what makes the house special, even in that gilt-edged neighborhood, is the top floor: an entire solarium glassed in on all sides and above, with awnings and plantings, a hot tub room, and a wraparound terrace on the outside. Its the Counselor’s Wife’s creation, and perfect for the parties she loves to give and which the Counselor puts up with. But if you’re a reader of Architectural Digest and similar magazines, you will already have ooh-ed and aah-ed over it.
And there you have it. The two sections, home and office, are, as I’ve said, entirely separate. Except, that is, for the Counselor’s Wife’s cocker spaniel, Muffin. The cocker bitch has the run of the place, both sections.
Except for my office.
Oh yes, the Counselor’s Wife has her own profession. She’s a shrink, and she specializes in sex therapy. Her office is a few blocks north on Park Avenue. She practices under her maiden name: Nora Saroff. You’ve probably seen her on TV.
The Counselor was sitting at his desk, smoking a pipe and holding a set of documents. Whether he was actually reading them or not makes no difference. I’ve watched people from all walks of life, all kinds of experience, all sizes of bank accounts, sit on the client’s side of the Counselor’s desk and wait. To a man, and woman, they all learn to wait.
I sat down and waited. The CRT, screen behind him was blank.
He’s a big man, with a craggy head and a shock of hair that was gray when I first met him and is now almost pure white. He reads with horn-rimmed glasses. He puffs nonstop at a pipe when he’s working, a tobacco mixture made specially for him by Peterson’s, and the atmosphere in his office is a constant struggle between pipe smoke and the air conditioner. Usually the smoke wins. Even in shirtsleeves, with the white French cuffs rolled back twice on themselves and the pipe smoke curling around his head, he has a well-dressed air. This wasn’t always so. The bow ties, the matching suspenders, the silk socks and handkerchiefs—these are the Counselor’s Wife’s touches. His suits are now tailor-made, from fabric she chooses. Ditto his shirts. All in all, you’d have to admit there’s been an improvement, but the Counselor affects not to notice. The only place she’s failed totally is with the pipes. The hundred-dollar Dunhills, the Charentons, the Petersons, the Lullehammers from Scandinavia, all these get smoked once or twice and then put aside. The Counselor prefers the seconds he picks out himself, at a tobacconist downtown.
His office decor reflects a similar tug-of-war. It is all her doing—the carpeting, plantings, lighting, drapery, the signed Trova lithographs—but for the desk and chair. These are massive mahogany constructions that came with us from the Firm. One time, when he was out of town, she had them replaced with chrome and glass creations from Knoll. What went on between them I can’t report, but the day after he came home the Knoll was gone and the originals were back in place, and the only improvement she’s managed since was to get the chair reupholstered in a taupe-colored, brass-studded leather.
The chair still creaks when he tilts back.
The Counselor, I’ve long since realized, likes a cluttered desk, likes papers, memorabilia, pens, pencils, ashtrays, pipes, in a jumble. He would rather rummage for matches or his reading glasses than look for them in a set place, would rather twist a paper clip out of shape to scrape at his pipe bowls than use a tool. His desktop has defeated a run of secretaries. No matter how orderly they’ve made it when he comes down for the start of the working day, it looks like it’s been totaled by the time he heads off for lunch at the French bistro he patronizes on Lexington near Seventieth.
I think the mess helps him think. I mean, the act of rummaging through the rubble gives him time to think. Time, too, on occasion, to hold his patience and his temper.
“You’re the best thing that’s happened to him since Pearl Harbor, Phil,” the Counselor said without looking up. “That’s what Raul Bashard told me.”
“What happened to him at Pearl Harbor?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He continued to flip through the papers in his hands.
“What’s with the daughter?” I went on. “Grace Bashard. Why no file? She exists, doesn’t she?”
There was, of course, no rushing him.
“I’m surprised you didn’t like her better,” he said at length, glancing momentarily at me over the reading glasses, then down again. “Isn’t she your type?”
“My type?” I said, irritated. “Have you met her?”
“Not recently …” he answered, distracted.
I realized after the fact that he was only teasing me. My alleged confirmed bachelorhood is a standing office joke. But I wasn’t in the mood.
“In the first place,” I went on, “I’m old enough, just about, to be her father. Second, I’m not used to teenage girls offering me their bodies before breakfast.”
“Hmmm …” he said. “Did she really do that?”
“Yes,” I said.
Finally he put down the documents, also the reading glasses. His chair creaked, and he locked his hands behind his neck.
“All right, Phil,” he said, “let me tell you the story.”
The Counselor, I should add, relishes being a raconteur. Like most lawyers, he wants you to think he could have made a career on Broadway, which means that he has a tendency to long-windedness.
“Raul Bashard’s always said Pearl Harbor changed his life. It’s true enough, in more ways than one. I imagine you found him a fairly exotic character, didn’t you? Well, do you know what he did before the war? He was an accountant. Not a CPA, the distinction didn’t mean much at the time, but an accountant. He worked for a pretzel company in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he grew up. He’d started as a junior bookkeeper and worked his way up to chief accountant, where he might have stayed the rest of his life.
“The week after Pearl Harbor—he would have been what then? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?—he enlisted in the Navy. He also married his childhood sweetheart, like thousands of other young men did when their lives suddenly changed. He went to Officer Candidate School, determined to go from that to pilot training. Of course the Navy had other plans for him. He was too old to fly planes. He ended up junior supply officer on a carrier—a bookkeeper, in other words. He spent most of the war bobbing around the Pacific while others got the medals and lost their lives. That was when he started to write stories. He says he did it to keep his sanity. He also discovered he could make money at it, not a great deal of money but enough to encourage him. He started out writing war stories for pulp magazines, then went on into science fiction.
>
“The war ended. His wife, meanwhile, had given him a baby. Six months later he quit the pretzel factory, divorced the childhood sweetheart and moved to the West Coast—San Francisco—took up writing full-time. About a year after that, the childhood sweetheart committed suicide.”
He paused for effect. He knocked the dottle out of his pipe, then put the pipe aside and reached for another.
You didn’t have to be a genius at arithmetic to figure that the baby in question wasn’t Grace.
“It was a boy, anyway,” the Counselor went on, seeming to read my mind, “not a girl. And it fell to him to bring the kid up.
“This he did, more or less. They banged around the country a lot during the fifties. They were up in the Northwest, then back here for a while, then in Europe for a year. Then the ranch out in Arizona. I guess it didn’t do the kid much good, all the bouncing around, though Nora says that doesn’t necessarily matter. Nora says it’s love that matters. Love, and belonging. John Jacob Bashard was the kid’s name. Maybe he didn’t feel loved enough. At any rate, he was in and out of a number of schools. When it came to college, he just couldn’t cut it. I don’t think he ever got his degree. Hell, I don’t think he ever got through freshman year.”
It made me think of Grace, presumably John Jacob Bashard’s kid sister. Or step-kid sister. She was eighteen and not going to school either. Her daddy, she’d told me, was her mentor. Her daddy was all the mentor she needed.
“Along the way,” the Counselor said, “Raul started making money. A living first. Then more than a living. Then a hell of a lot of money. It’s one of the great ironies of his life, he likes to say, that having wanted to be a hero in the war, he only got to be one through writing science fiction.” I thought of the pictures I’d seen of Bashard shaking hands with astronauts. “Along the way, too, he met the ‘woman of his dreams.’”
“And little Grace’s mother?” I put in.