by Stuart Woods
“Thanks, Bill.”
“Shall I send her over to see you?”
“Sure; I’m here all day.”
“You’ll find her a little… different.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s hard to characterize. You can make your own judgments. If you don’t like the way it’s going, I’ll pull her and assign you somebody else.”
“Okay.”
“Talk to you later.” Eggers hung up.
Less than an hour passed when Joan buzzed. “There’s an Allison Wainwright to see you.”
“Ah, yes. I forgot to tell you, she’s an associate at Woodman amp; Weld, and Eggers has assigned her to me. Send her in, and then you can put her in the office next to yours.”
“Okay.”
There was a rap at the door, and Stone looked up to see an impeccably dressed young woman, with perfect dark hair and chiseled features. “Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning. I’m Allison Wainwright.”
Stone stood up, shook her hand, and waved her to a chair in his seating area, then sat down himself.
“Do you have any idea why I’ve been assigned to work here?” she asked.
“Bill Eggers thinks I need an associate. I’ve no idea why he picked you.”
“I’m not sure I like the idea of being stuck in Turtle Bay,” she said.
“The door you came in by works both ways,” Stone said, “but before you leave, shall we talk a little?”
“Oh, all right,” she said.
“Tell me about your background.”
“Personal or educational?”
“Whatever you think is important for me to know.”
She took a deep breath. “Born and raised in New York City, Spence School, then Mount Holyoke and Columbia Law.” She hadn’t needed a second breath.
“You look like all of those,” Stone said.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked, sounding defensive.
“I meant it to be a compliment,” Stone replied.
“Oh. What, exactly, do you expect from me?”
“For a start, I want you to read all the corporate paper that comes into this office from Strategic Services and, starting soon, from Steele Security, our new client, and brief me on the high points. In short, I want to be able to appear that I know about everything financial in both firms, without actually having to read the documents.”
“I get the picture.”
“I believe they’ll be sorting out the files as they arrive from the client’s previous firm, so you won’t have to do that.”
“What else?”
“I’ll let you know when it comes up.”
“Is your secretary my secretary, too?”
“Did you have a secretary in the Seagram Building?”
“Just somebody to handle the phones.”
“Joan will do that for you here. We have a line that runs through the main switchboard, so you should probably route your calls through them; Joan will give you an extension number. My advice to you is, make friends with Joan.”
“Why?”
“First, common courtesy; second, she’s a very nice lady and extremely capable; third, she makes a bad enemy.”
“All good reasons,” Allison said.
“And if you’re unhappy working in Turtle Bay, you can work from your own desk at W amp;W, but don’t let your distance make more work for Joan, like calling her to come get a file. If you become friends, she’ll go out of her way to help you.”
“Okay.”
“Allison, you seem to have some sort of chip on your shoulder. You want to tell me about it?”
“It’s nothing to do with you, in spite of what I’ve heard. I just thought that by this time, I’d be doing more important work.”
“What sort of work?”
“More client contact.”
“You’ve been with the firm for what, a year?”
“Yes.”
“There are people over there who’ve been associates for twenty years or more and have rarely seen a client, and they’re doing important work. My experience of Bill Eggers is that he likes to see people succeed, and if you impress him, you’ll be given all the responsibility you can handle.”
“I’ve heard that,” she said.
“Did you expect that you’d make partner by now?”
“No, of course not.”
“Why do you think Bill sent you to me?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“Have you been having problems with people in Seagram?”
“A little, maybe.”
“Well, there are fewer people to get along with here; maybe Bill thought it would be good practice for you to start small, before you go back to the offices.”
“You haven’t asked what I’ve heard about you,” she said.
“I’m not interested in gossip. If you’ve heard something that concerns you, then bring it up now or later, and we can talk about it.”
“All right. I’ve heard that you will screw anything that moves, and I’m not up for that.”
Stone laughed. “Perhaps you haven’t heard that I’m recently married.”
“No, I hadn’t.”
“She’s in Virginia, moving into a new house that she started a year ago, and she’ll be gone the better part of a month, but your virtue is not in jeopardy. And we have a son who’s in school at Knickerbocker Hall, on the Upper East Side. His name is Peter, and you’ll meet him in due course. You’ll find that he’s smarter than you, just as he’s smarter than I. It can be a little unsettling at first, but he’s a good kid.”
“I’ll look forward to meeting him.”
“One other thing: a gossip-type journalist has been sniffing around since our wedding, so be on your guard, and let me know immediately if somebody sidles up to you and starts asking questions. Our privacy is important to us.”
“Of course.”
“Any other questions?”
“I expect I’ll have some soon.”
“Try Joan first, then me. Go see her, and she’ll get you settled. You’d be smart to take her to lunch one day soon.”
“I’ll do that.” Allison got up and left Stone’s office.
36
K elli Keane got out of a taxi a couple of doors down the street from Stone Barrington’s house, and stood opposite, stamping her feet in her boots and wrapping her long coat around her legs, trying to keep warm. It was seven a.m., and she was just going to wait until the kid went to school.
She was fortunate that Peter left the house only a few minutes later and walked up to Third Avenue, while Kelli kept pace with him on the opposite side of the street. He waited for a bus while she hailed a cab and got in. “Just wait here until the bus comes,” she told the driver, “and when it does, follow it and don’t get ahead of it.”
“Follow a bus?” the driver said. “Whatever happened to follow that car?”
“Times are hard,” Kelli replied. “More people are taking the bus.”
The bus arrived, Peter got aboard, and the two vehicles moved in tandem up Third Avenue. Finally Peter got off and walked toward Second Avenue, and Kelli told the driver to turn right and stop. She watched as Peter ran up the steps of a large building and disappeared inside.
“Go down to that building and stop,” she said to the driver, who did so. “What’s the name of this place?” she asked.
“Knickerbocker Hall,” the driver replied. “It’s chiseled in stone over the front door.”
“Oh, yeah.” She gave him the address of the Post.
“You work at the Post? I thought you were a private eye,” the driver said.
“You’re a romantic, aren’t you?”
“Sure; you want a demonstration?”
“Just drive.”
Peter walked upstairs in the nearly empty building. It was only seven-thirty. As he was about to turn into the film department, he heard piano music coming from the opposite direction. He turned right inst
ead of left, into the music department, and the music got louder. Like a cross between Chopin and Rachmaninoff, he thought, if that was possible. He looked through a window in a door marked “Recital Hall” and saw a very pretty girl seated at a nine-foot grand piano, playing with enthusiasm and precision. He pushed open the door, tiptoed in, and took a seat at the rear of the little hall.
She finished the piece with a flourish and, without looking up from the keyboard, said, “Come on down front; you’re bothering me way back there.”
Peter walked down and took a seat in the front row, only a few feet from where she sat.
She began to play again, this time in a jazz-inflected style. Peter thought he heard the left hand of Errol Garner and, in the right hand, traces of Nat Cole. She finished, and he said, “I don’t recognize that.”
“I’m just improvising,” she said.
“The first piece, too?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen you here before. Who are you?”
“I’m Peter Barrington. I’m in the film school.”
“I’m Hattie Patrick,” she said, leaning over the lip of the little stage and offering her hand.
Peter thought she was even more beautiful close up.
“Are you new here?”
“Yes, I just started this term.”
“Where were you in school before?”
“In Virginia. I moved to New York just before Christmas. I live in Turtle Bay. Do you know it?”
“Yes. I once saw it from a tall building on Third Avenue. The interior garden looks very inviting,” she said.
“I’ll give you a tour of the gardens sometime.”
“I think we should wait until spring for that; everything’s dead now.”
“Do you compose or just improvise?”
“Composition is what I’m studying at Knickerbocker,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I’ve made a film, which is nearly finished, but I don’t have a score. Would you like to try writing it?”
“How old are you?” she asked.
“I’m eighteen,” he said. “How old are you?”
“I’ll be eighteen on Saturday,” she replied. “You talk like someone a lot older, no slang.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve heard that,” Peter said. “So do you.”
She laughed. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard that, either.”
“If you’re interested, I’ll take you to a birthday lunch on Saturday and then screen the film for you.”
“Screen it where?”
“At my house. Don’t worry, my dad will be there to chaperone us.”
She looked at him. “I’m not worried,” she said. “I’d like that, but could I see the film before then? That way I might have some ideas about the score to talk about.”
Peter took the screenplay and DVD from his leather envelope and handed it to her. “It looks best on Blu-ray.”
“I’ve got Blu-ray in my room. I’ll watch it tonight. What’s it about?”
“You’ll know tonight. Where do you live?”
“At Park and Sixty-third Street.”
“Do you know the Brasserie restaurant in the basement of the Seagram Building, entrance on Fifty-third?”
“Yes, I’ve been there.”
“May we meet at the Brasserie at twelve-thirty on Saturday?”
“Yes, that will be fine. You said your dad will be at the house. How about your mother?”
“She’s back in Virginia for a couple of weeks,” Peter replied, “moving us into a new house.”
“Are you going to live there?”
“Only part-time. New York is home, now.”
“Welcome to the big city. How do you like it so far?”
“It’s everything I dreamed it would be,” Peter said.
“You dreamed about living here?”
“Everybody who doesn’t live in New York dreams about living here. I’m no exception. I can go to the movies as often as I like.”
“The movies are your thing, are they?”
“I like the theater, too, but I’m crazy about movies. If you’re not, I’ll probably bore you rigid.”
She laughed. “I like movies, and you don’t seem in the least boring.”
“That’s the nicest thing anybody has said to me in the big city,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “I have an appointment with some editing equipment. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll see you on Saturday.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” she replied. She turned back to the piano and began to play again.
Peter left the recital hall and walked back to the film department, feeling a little light-headed. He felt some other things he hadn’t felt before, too.
37
Alan Ripley switched off the light in his office and, in the gathering dusk, walked across the campus at Herald Academy in tidewater Virginia, kicking at little piles of leaves the wind had gathered. Autumn came late here, but now there was a real nip in the air. He wrapped his muffler tighter.
He climbed the stairs to his small apartment in the faculty residence and switched on the lights, then he lit the already laid fire and backed up to the hearth as it caught. When his backside got too hot to handle he poured himself a small scotch, settled in a leather wing chair near the fire, and picked up the le Carre novel he had been reading. He had just opened the book when the phone rang. He closed the book and grabbed the phone. “Hello?”
“Alan?” A vaguely familiar voice.
“Yes, who’s that?”
“A voice from the past. It’s James Heald.”
Ripley was pleasantly surprised. “James? It’s good to hear from you. I haven’t heard that voice since we left Harvard.”
“Good to hear yours, too.”
“Where are you? What are you doing?”
“I’m teaching set design at the Yale School of Drama.”
“Good for you. I’d heard you were working on Broadway at some point.”
“Yes, but it was too fast a track for me, and the gaps between jobs were too long. I’ve been at Yale for nearly two years, now, and it suits me better.”
“Congratulations. It sounds like a good place to be. How did you find me?”
“Well, I stopped in the dean’s office for a minute last week and I caught a bit of your performance.”
“Performance? What do you mean?”
“Your screen acting performance.”
“You baffle me.”
“Didn’t you act in a student film down there?”
“Oh, Christ, yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t make the connection. We don’t really have a film department as such, and I acted as faculty adviser on a student project last year. I got roped into playing a part. That must have been what you saw.”
“That’s exactly what I saw, and just enough to get the gist of the plot. I must say, I was impressed. Perhaps you missed your calling.”
“Well, if the recession ever catches up with music teachers, maybe I’ll try Broadway or Hollywood.”
“Did you know I went to Herald?”
“No, I didn’t. I don’t expect it’s changed much since you were here.”
“Probably not. I have to tell you that I’m surprised the powers that be down there allowed the film to be made.”
“You baffle me, James. Why shouldn’t they allow it?”
“Did anybody from above read the script?”
“No, I guess not. I haven’t even read it myself.”
“You were the faculty adviser, and you didn’t read the script?”
“No, the boy who directed it came over all Woody Allen and insisted that the actors saw only the pages of the scenes they were appearing in. He was very secretive about the project. I wondered why, at first, but he assured me that there was no nudity, no sex, and only minimal, prep-school-boy bad language.”
“Ah, now I begin to get it.”
“Get what?”
“Well, after I saw the scene in our dean’s office, I filched the script
from his secretary’s desk and read it.”
Now Ripley was getting worried. “Was there anything alarming in it?”
“Nothing that would alarm the general public, since it’s only a student film, but you should hope the headmaster never sees the film.”
“Why on earth should I be concerned about that?”
“You obviously don’t get it, Alan. The script fairly closely follows some real events at the school. It would have been before your time, of course-five or six years ago. I could see why you wouldn’t have known. I can also see why the student wanted to keep his film under wraps. I take it you haven’t seen the finished product.”
“No, the boy left school early, and he was still editing, I think. He promised to send me a DVD, but he hasn’t as yet done so.”
“Mmmm, yes.”
“James, exactly what real events does the film follow?”
“Well, as I said, it was before your time there, and after mine. I didn’t hear about this until I attended my tenth reunion. There was some talk about it at that time.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the rough outline is something like this: a master diddles a student, student drops out of school, hangs himself while allegedly doing that sex thing that’s supposed to generate an orgasm with partial asphyxiation-but suicide is a possibility.”
“Good God!”
“Hang on to your hat, my friend, there’s more.”
“The investigation is cursory-small-town Virginia police, you know, but back at Herald, the boy’s death brings attention to bear on a chemistry master. A few weeks later, the master is found dead in his study.”
“Dead how?”
“The supposition is suicide, but the autopsy report does not give a cause of death. But the fellow is a chemistry master, after all, and the feeling is that he mixed up some sort of untraceable potion and offed himself.”
“This is awful,” Ripley said, downing the remainder of his scotch.
“Just one more thing: there was a suspicion in the air that one or more of his students, out to avenge their classmate, may have concocted the potion and somehow introduced it into his system. The police questioned everybody, but they could find no evidence pointing to anyone in particular. By that time, the master’s remains had been cremated, and his ashes scattered on the James River, so the whole business eventually petered out.”