I did not exactly spring from my wooden chair to my feet, but I didn’t dawdle, either. “Well,” I said, “that wasn’t as bad as I thought.”
I was wondering whether the etiquette of the situation called for a handshake when Rogers went on. “I’m letting you go,” he repeated, “because I don’t think the fact you held back is going to wind up in the newspaper.”
I sat back down.
“You told me you spoke to Lucille Letron the other night, right?”
Oh no, I thought. On the off-chance this was a stab in the dark to get me to blurt something out, I played it cool. “Sure. I told you what we said. You can check it with her, if you like.”
Rogers picked up a piece of paper. “Oh,” he said, “we have. Why didn’t you tell me you went to bed with her?”
This told me two things. One, they were apparently hauling in the whole Letron family, millions or not, and doing it quickly, too. And two, that while I was being a gentleman, protecting a married lady’s reputation, the lady in question had been shooting her mouth off to the cops.
I answered Rogers’s question. “I didn’t tell you because I was embarrassed.”
He nodded. “I thought it might be something like that. Tell me, what would you think if I closed this case?”
I asked him what he meant.
“Closed it. Louis Letron was nuts, tried to kill his sister-in-law, blew himself up instead, case closed.”
“I don’t think I’d like it,” I told him.
“Why not? You’d be off the hook.”
“Faith might still be in danger. It’s the old lady everybody seems to be afraid of. I can’t really blame them.”
“Yeah. I thought you’d say that, too. Get out of here, Ross.”
I didn’t wait for a second invitation. I decided to hell with the handshake, said good-bye, left the room and headed for the exit from the building.
And ran right into a blond, bearded individual who could be no one but Robert Letron.
“Mr. Ross?” he said. “I’d like to talk to you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE INTELLIGENT THING TO do would have been to deny it, but I didn’t think of that. Instead, I nodded miserably, and he confirmed all my fears about his identity.
The fears didn’t have to do with anything physical. I doubted seriously he would start trying to punch me out inside a police station. Besides, I thought I could probably handle him if I had to, or at least hold my own. He was about the same height I was, a little broader in the shoulders, but I had a longer reach. Also, Lucille mentioned something about a heart condition. Angina. He didn’t look like a man who had a heart condition, but angina, I understood, was painful, but not nearly as bad as a lot of heart conditions. In any case, it hadn’t enfeebled him in any obvious way. But all that was secondary—he just plain didn’t look like a violent man.
He didn’t look like the active head of a huge commercial concern, either. He wore a down vest over a plaid shirt, corduroy trousers and high-topped, yellow-orange shoes. With his yellow beard and longish hair parted in the middle, he looked like a cross between a lumberjack and a Scandinavian Jesus. The ethereally pained look in his eyes only added to the impression.
My fears had to do with that look. I mean, the guy had every right to want to beat on me—the night before I had knowingly and willingly cuckolded him. What made it worse was that I hadn’t felt any guilt about it until this very second.
So I stood there looking stupid while he gazed patiently into my eyes. “I really would like to talk to you, Mr. Ross,” he said at last. In another mouth, that might have been a threat; here it was just a polite request.
Time to face the music, Harry.
“All right,” I said. “I have to see about my sister first. Wait here for a minute. Or come with me.” He had no reason to trust me, after all.
“I’ll wait,” he said. “See about Faith, too, will you? After all, she started all this.”
I looked at him. Again, there was no malice in his voice or manner. On the contrary, he spoke with what sounded like genuine concern. The words were a little strange, considering Faith (and Sue and I) had come within an ace of being converted to chopped meat not three hours before, but I knew what he meant.
I went to negotiate with the cops. It wasn’t difficult, but it took a while. It turned out that one of the precinct patrolmen going off duty about that time lived in White Plains, and would be taking the train home. They keep pushing for a residency requirement for New York City cops, but they won’t get one passed until the day they pay a cop enough money to raise a family in New York City—i.e., never. So New York City cops live on Long Island, or in Westchester. This particular commuter would accompany Sue and Faith to my place to get a few things, then to Grand Central Terminal, then ride the train home with them, since Scarsdale is an earlier stop on the same line as White Plains. My mother (and a local police escort, if I knew my mother) would meet them there, then tuck them in safe and sound at her house, happy Thanksgiving to you. The house would be watched by Scarsdale cops, adjusting their patrols to take them by Mom’s address at least once every half hour.
I would take a later train. I disdained police protection, or I would have, if anyone had thought to offer it to me. Not only was I brave, I didn’t want any cops to overhear my conversation with Robert Letron.
He had a place all picked out—the Papaya King hot-dog stand on the corner of Eighty-seventh and Third. Not the busier one a block south and across the street, but the one where you could eat sitting down. We took a couple of stools at the counter. I read signs while I waited for the waitress to finish serving a take-out order. PAPAYA—GIFT OF THE ANGELS, said one. OUR HOT DOGS—TASTIER THAN FILET MIGNON, claimed another. It occurred to me what a mess of a court case it would be if some cattle rancher or somebody tried to prove the hot dogs here were less tasty than filet mignon.
Leaving comparisons out of it, the hot dogs were pretty tasty, and I was reminded by the smell of them that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. The waitress asked us what we wanted. Robert ordered two hot dogs with sauerkraut and a fourteen-ounce pineapple juice. I took two plain and a fourteen-ounce papaya drink.
He smiled at me. “I love this place,” he said.
Okay, I thought. He wants small talk, I’ll give him small talk. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d know this sort of place, moving in the kind of circles you do.”
“I may be rich, Mr. Ross, but I’m still human.” The waitress plunked the order down on the counter. I reached for my wallet, but Robert waved me off and paid. I felt more like a shit than ever. I screwed the guy’s wife; now I was eating on his money.
I took a sip of the cold, smooth, pastel-orange papaya drink he’d bought for me and waited for him to say something. Instead, he unintentionally proved how human he was, first by not noticing a mustard-stained shred of sauerkraut that dangled from his mouth in the wake of a too-big bite of hot dog, then by starting to cry.
The waitress, the grillman, pretended not to look (this was New York, after all), but I was still embarrassed for him. I gathered up what was left of our lunch, and said, “Come on, let’s hit the bricks.”
“What?”
“Let’s go outside. Nice, cool November day.”
“What?” he said again. “Oh, sure. Sure.” His voice was hoarse, and tears were beginning to wet the edges of his beard. He walked as if he had no knees.
Outside, he turned left, toward the avenue, but I took his arm and steered him east along Eighty-seventh Street, toward the river. “We’ll meet fewer people this way,” I told him.
“I’m all right,” he said. He sniffed, then repeated, “I’m all right.”
He did sound better. I asked him if he had any particular place he’d like to go.
“No. Not right now.”
“Okay then, we’ll keep going this way. We’ll take a look at the river. I live about a block and a half from the East River, but I never see it unless I make a spec
ial effort. I’m about due. Once a month, I like to go over to the river, lean on the railing, look across to Queens, and thank God I don’t live there.”
“What’s wrong with Queens?”
I smiled at him. The man was not a New Yorker. “Got a few hours? Seriously, though, I think you’d better say what you were going to say to me.”
His face fought against the anguish there to produce a smile. It was painful to watch, but I appreciated the effort.
“What I was going to say to you? All right. ‘Stay away from my wife or I’ll kill you.’”
“Message received,” I told him. “And will be complied with. I suppose it’s useless to apologize, so I won’t. I’ll just say I should have stayed away from your wife in the first place, and I know it.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” he said.
“I don’t?”
“No, I understand. I understand about you. Lucille can be irresistible when she wants to be.”
“It wasn’t all her,” I said. “I was there, the door worked, and so did my legs. I could have gone. I stayed. I’m just as responsible as she is.”
It occurred to me that this was the weirdest conversation I had ever been a part of. I mean, if I succeeded in convincing him of the extent of my responsibility, he could probably whip out a gun and shoot me and get away with it. Not that he would. We were being so civilized about the whole thing, we would have made Noel Coward look like a slob.
“I understand Lucille, too,” he said with a civilized little smile. “But it doesn’t make any difference, because I haven’t said it. That’s just what I was going to say to you. A simple, knee-jerk, jealous-husband response, but there’s nothing simple about it. I simply have trouble thinking straight where Lucille is concerned. She probably told you I have trouble thinking straight under any circumstances. I certainly wasn’t functioning too well back at the police station.”
“You had a lot on your mind,” I suggested. The Grayness would have approved of the understatement.
“A lot on my mind,” Robert Letron echoed. “I guess you could say that. My brother dead, apparently in the act of attempted murder. Paul still in a coma, this whole mess with Faith. It’s only natural that we’d feel a little fear, a little resentment for her. But to have let it go so far. We have enough money—we’ll always have enough money. Louis certainly would have. His tastes may be—may have been—unusual, but they were well defined and provided for by his trust, by Paul’s will. I never dreamed he would try to… try to—”
“Maybe it wasn’t the money. Maybe it was the family tradition.”
“Louis never cared about family tradition.”
“Maybe he has the same kind of hang-up about artificial insemination your wife has.”
He looked at me as if I had just told him I was crazy. “Louis never cared enough about anything to try to do something so drastic. He just wanted to relax and have fun. He used to kid me about it, my working so hard at the company, helping Paul, learning the business. He used to say if the work was that hard, I shouldn’t do it. He said Peter had his glass sculpture, and he had his ‘dusky beauties’; and Paul had the talent for making money. That’s what he enjoyed, so we should let him do it, but that I should build myself a cabin in the woods, because being in the woods was what I’d like to do. He said some unfortunate people had to work to earn a living, but we didn’t. I remember exactly what he said—‘Idleness is not anything to be proud of, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of, either. I just call it a gift from God in the person of my half brother, and try to enjoy it.’ Does that sound like a killer?”
A lot of potential replies went through my head, ranging from “How the hell should I know” to “No, but maybe it sounds like an unsuccessful killer.”
“Does it?” Robert demanded. His civility was starting to decline.
I cut him off before he could start crying again. “Peter saved our lives, you know. It was very brave of him.”
“Yes,” Robert said. He looked down at the sidewalk as though movies were being projected on it. “I should be proud of him. I will be proud of him, as soon as I get over my astonishment. Peter’s always been in his own world, never been involved in anything but his hobbies. This has been a day… I mean, you think you know people…”
We came to First Avenue. I saw there wasn’t much traffic (one of those inexplicable days, and the magic was holding) and started across. I turned to say something to Robert, but he wasn’t there. He was back at the curb, waiting for the WALK light. WALK lights in New York exist strictly for lawyers to argue over in personal-injury cases. New Yorkers know if you pay attention to them, you don’t get anywhere, because the cars are ignoring the traffic lights.
I went back and rejoined him at the curb. “You don’t do much walking in New York, do you?”
“I don’t do much of anything in New York, walking least of all. Not since I’ve been married, anyway. I don’t care much for Paris, either. I’m not a city person. In Paris or New York, when I come into town for board meetings, the limousine meets me at the door, and takes me back home when I’m done. As far as I’m concerned, in the States, ‘home’ is our place in Connecticut. I’m perfectly happy to stay there, whether it’s been made ready or not.”
The WALK light came on. We crossed the street without incident.
“I wish I were there now,” Robert said. “I was out chopping firewood—”
“When I first saw you, I thought you looked like a lumberjack.”
He smiled and went on. “—chopping firewood when Harkins came running out of the house. A New York City policeman had telephoned him, said there was an emergency, and that I should come to the city right away. Harkins got the car and brought me to that police station. They questioned me, then they told me what had happened, then they questioned me some more.
“And it was funny. In the light of all those terrible things, my angina didn’t act up, just a little twinge. You know I have angina?” He patted a pocket in the down vest as he asked the question.
“It’s been mentioned.”
“I didn’t have to use any medicine. I felt completely calm, my mind was clear. I think I was numb. The only thing I was able to get worked up about was the fact that Lucille Berkowitz had collected another trophy.”
“You know,” I said stupidly.
“Of course I know. I’ve known all along. I may not be the business genius Paul is, but his father was my father, and I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t marry a woman, no matter how much I loved her, if I didn’t know something about her. All the more so since she so obviously didn’t want to tell me anything. I checked, then I hired a detective to check more deeply.”
“And you learned she was Jewish.”
“She had been born Jewish. She didn’t practice.”
“For Jewish, that doesn’t make any difference. And you married her anyway.”
“I love her.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“You think I’m a coward.” He went on before I could deny it. “Maybe I am. If Lucille had told me, if she had been willing to defy Mother, I would have gone along with her. But Lucille herself was hiding her past, not just from me, from everyone, and I thought, why complicate things?”
He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “Now I know why. Lucille has built her life—our lives—around a deception, and no one can live that way. She punishes herself by bringing men to that apartment and seducing them. She feels like a cheat, so she acts like one.”
I wasn’t crazy about the idea that sex with me was a way women might choose to punish themselves, but I let it go.
“It really has become intolerable, Mr. Ross.”
I told him to call me Harry, and he took it as if I had done him some great honor.
“Thank you,” he said, and shook my hand. I could feel the calluses from the ax. “You must call me Robert. But the situation is intolerable, really. It affects everything. I can’t help but think—”
; I never did find out what he couldn’t help but think. A police car, lights but no siren, pulled into the curb beside us so swiftly that Robert and I both jumped. A handsome young cop got out and stood in front of us on the sidewalk. He hadn’t drawn his gun, but he was ready to.
He spoke to Robert. “Mr. Letron? Mr. Robert Letron?”
“Yes?”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be all right?” Just then, Robert’s eyes rolled up in his head, he clutched his chest, and collapsed heavily on the sidewalk.
A voice I knew came harsh and angry from the back of the squad car. “Don’t be a fool! Ross made him say that! He’s kidnapped my son, and now he’s killing him!”
Robert groaned. He started scrabbling for his pocket.
The other cop got out of the car, spun me around and slammed me against it. “Grab the roof,” he told me. The gun was out.
“He’s kidnapped my son!” Alma Letron said again. “Shoot him!”
The cop didn’t listen. I began to talk. “It’s a heart attack. He’s got a heart condition. I think he’s got the medicine in the pocket he’s reaching for.”
The first cop, who was now tending to Robert, took a look. I tried to twist my neck so I could see what he was doing, but the second cop gave me a poke with the gun, and I changed my mind.
“Amyl nitrate,” the cop said. “Poppers. He’d better have a prescription for this.”
“He does, Officer,” Robert’s mother said. “Of course he does. Give it to him.”
What do you know, I thought. For once the old woman and I are on the same side.
“If you don’t treat my son immediately, I’ll swear out a murder complaint against you!”
I don’t think the threat is what made the cop go along, I think it was the fact that Robert was such a mess, he couldn’t hurt him much even if he did give him an illegal drug. In any case, I heard a snap and a grunt, and by the time the second cop had finished frisking me, Robert was trying to get to his feet. The first cop practically had to sit on him to keep him down. They radioed for an ambulance for Robert. “You,” they told me, “are coming with us.”
Keep the Baby, Faith Page 11