Cut and Thrust

by Stuart Woods

  “This is what you were talking about, isn’t it?” Betsy asked. “Barbara’s PR campaign to destroy Ed Eagle?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  —

  IN SAN FRANCISCO, Charles Grosvenor was watching the evening news at his desk at the dealership. He was there to receive the Bentley he had loaned Hugh Gordon, and Gordon had just driven up. He came into the office just as 60 Minutes began, and he heard Morley Safer’s opening remark.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “This isn’t about Barbara, is it?” Charles asked.

  “It can’t be. The station manager told me he wasn’t . . .” He stopped and thought.

  “He wasn’t what?”

  “That he wasn’t going to run the interview. He didn’t tell me that 60 Minutes was going to run it.”

  “Oh, shit,” Charles said. He grabbed the phone and called home; the number was busy. He tried Barbara’s cell phone, but it went directly to voice mail. “Sweetheart,” he said, “call me immediately!” He hung up just as Safer returned.

  “Some years ago,” Safer was saying, “a prominent trial attorney from Santa Fe married a woman called Barbara. He says now that it turned out to be the worst mistake he ever made. Our correspondent Pamela Hale interviewed Barbara Eagle, now Mrs. Charles Grosvenor, and got her side of the story.”

  Charles tried the number again; still busy. “I’ve got to get home,” he said. “There’s no telling what she’ll do if she sees this.” He let himself and Hugh Gordon out of the building and locked it behind them.

  “I’m awfully sorry about this, Charles,” Gordon said. “I did everything I could to prevent it.”

  “My advice to you, Hugh, is get out of town—take a vacation,” Charles said. “Maybe in a couple of weeks she’ll have cooled off.” He got into his car and drove away. Traffic was bad: people coming back from their weekends.

  —

  STONE AND ANN watched the first part of the interview. “That was awful,” Ann said. “If she’d gotten away with that, Ed would be ruined.”

  “We haven’t seen the next part,” Stone replied. “Ed may be ruined yet.”

  Part two came on, and they watched, transfixed, as Pamela Hale backed Barbara into a corner, allegation by allegation, until Barbara fled the set, tripping over her microphone wire.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that on television,” Stone said. “Hale just burned her down.”

  Then Safer came back on and introduced Ed Eagle. “Ed,” he said, “you’ve just watched Barbara’s interview. What did you think of it?”

  “I was absolutely stunned, Morley. It was like reading a false biography, written by your worst enemy.”

  “Let’s go back to the beginning of this relationship,” Safer said. “How did you first meet Barbara?”

  “I visited a women’s prison in upstate New York, where I had arranged to interview Barbara for some background on an upcoming trial. She made a very big impression on me.”

  “A favorable impression?”

  “Oh, yes. As you saw in the first part of her interview, Barbara can be a charming and fascinating person to talk with. I asked her to come and see me in Santa Fe when she got out and told her that I’d help her restart her life. She had another four or five years to serve.”

  “But she got out sooner, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. The State of New York, under a court order, was required to alleviate overcrowding in their prisons, and they adopted an early-release program. Barbara managed to qualify for it, and she turned up in Santa Fe a few weeks after our first meeting.”

  With Safer leading the way, Eagle went on to recount the high and low points of their marriage.

  When they were done, Stone switched off the TV. “He did it!” he said. “He made up the lost ground and then some!”

  “With a lot of help from Barbara,” Ann pointed out.

  —

  CHARLES GROSVENOR KEPT trying his home number as he drove, and finally Barbara answered.

  Barbara picked up the phone. “Yes?”

  “It’s Charles,” he said.

  “Get home!” she said. “And right now!”

  “What’s wrong, dearest?”

  “Disaster! Catastrophe! Why did I let myself get talked into doing that interview?” Her voice was pitched higher than usual, and it wavered. “Hugh Gordon is going to pay for this.”

  “Oh, come now, it can’t have been all that bad.”

  “That woman knew everything, and I mean everything! She knew about Mexico, for God’s sake. How could she know about that?”

  “Now, Barbara,” Charles said soothingly, “you’ve got to get ahold of yourself.”

  “Order the airplane!” she shouted. “We’re leaving the country tonight!”

  “Where shall I tell them to take us, sweetheart?”

  “Anywhere they can’t get at me.”

  “London, then?”

  “Yes, London. Call the pilot right now, then come home and pack.”

  “I’ll get right on it, my dear.” Charles hung up.

  —

  CHARLES DROVE the rest of the way, thinking hard. Everything was coming unglued. He’d known something like this might happen if anyone important ever got wind of her past doings, and apparently that was just what had happened. Half the population of San Francisco must have seen the program; his dealership would be doomed; nobody would buy a car from a man married to the murderess Barbara Eagle. What could have possessed her to submit to a television interview? He had to find a way out of this.

  —

  BARBARA RANG for her maid.

  The woman appeared. “Good evening, Mrs. Grosvenor,” she said. “May I get you something?”

  “Pack a bag, two changes of clothes and a trench coat. I’m leaving within the hour.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the woman said, then fled to the master bedroom.

  Barbara left her to her work, went to the bar, and poured vodka into a glass—a lot of vodka. She knocked back half of it, then walked out onto the terrace. The sun was below the horizon, but the sky was still aglow, and the lights of the city were coming on as darkness approached.

  Suddenly, she had it: they would stop in Santa Fe, and she would go out to Eagle’s house and shoot him and that actress wife of his. She would do it herself this time—no middleman. Then they could continue to London, and she could begin to rebuild her life.

  “South America,” she said aloud. “Nobody knows me in Buenos Aires. I’ll take the city by storm!”

  The maid appeared on the terrace behind her. “Pardon me, Mrs. Grosvenor,” she said sweetly. “Shall I pack some handbags?”

  Barbara wheeled on her. “Can’t you do any goddamned thing? Don’t you know by now what I want and don’t want?” She was spewing vodka as she screamed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the maid said, then fled the terrace and went back to her packing.

  —

  CHARLES DROVE INTO the apartment building. He jumped out of the car, leaving the door open and the engine running. The doormen would take care of it. He waited impatiently for the elevator to arrive, then pressed the P button, and half a minute later the doors slid open.

  He felt sick to his stomach. Now, just when he had nearly everything he wanted, she was coming apart. He knew what the flight to London would be like, and the days beyond. She could be the bitch from hell for weeks at a time, especially when she had had some upset, and this sounded like the upset to end all upsets.

  He didn’t want to leave San Francisco; he loved the city, and the city loved him. He had friends here, even admirers, whereas in London he was nothing but a moneyed arriviste, the creature the British upper classes despised most. He had been blackballed by the Garrick Club and White’s, after he had practically forced business acquaintances to put him up for member
ship. He had bought a yacht, then had had to sell it at a huge loss because no top yacht club would have him, and Barbara wouldn’t let him join anything less. She had made a public scene at Annabel’s when they had had to wait half an hour for a table, humiliating him in front of people he wanted to be his friends, and someone from the yellow British press had witnessed the event and spread it over the gossip columns, along with his history of being blackballed. People had stopped returning his phone calls. His heart was pounding. How could he stop her from going to London? He couldn’t, he realized. He was at her disposal, pure and simple.

  It had to end.

  The elevator doors opened, and he could see straight through the apartment to the terrace, where she stood, looking out over the city. She put a glass to her lips and threw back a drink, then set the glass on the parapet.

  Charles was walking toward the terrace, then he was walking faster, then he was running. She heard him coming and glanced over her shoulder. “Where the fuck have you been? Get me another drink,” she spat, then turned back to the Bay view.

  Charles went straight for her. He stopped, bent over, grabbed her by the ankles, and dumped her over the parapet. She didn’t scream, she shouted obscenities all the way down, until they ended in a soft plop.

  He didn’t pause to think about what he had done; he ran back to the elevator, turned, and screamed, “BARBARA!” Then he walked quickly through the living room.

  The maid appeared from the direction of the bedroom. “Mr. Grosvenor,” she called at his back as he walked. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Didn’t you see her go over?” Charles walked to the parapet and looked down. He could hear horns blowing and brakes screeching from the street fifteen stories below. “Barbara!” he shouted.

  The maid appeared at his elbow. “What’s happened?”

  “She went over,” Charles replied, feigning shock. “As the elevator doors opened I saw her standing there, then she put down her glass and climbed over the edge.” The glass stood empty on the parapet.

  “Oh, my God!” the maid half whispered. “Should I call somebody?”

  “Call 911,” he said. “Tell them a woman has jumped from the terrace into Green Street.”

  The maid ran for the phone.

  A feeling of relief washed over Charles. He was free of her, free at last. He could be a man again, and anywhere he wanted. He walked back into the living room, to the bar, poured himself a stiff scotch, then sat down in a living room chair. He took a swig and stared at the floor, composing himself for what lay ahead.

  He was still sitting there in that pose when the police arrived.

  —

  LATER, AFTER THE eleven o’clock news, Billy Burnett, aka Teddy Fay, switched off the television and turned to Betsy. “It seems my work in San Francisco is done,” he said.

  —

  For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit www.penguin.com/woodschecklist

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.

  However, if you have access to the Internet, you may visit my website at www.stuartwoods.com, where there is a button for sending me e-mail. So far, I have been able to reply to all my e-mail, and I will continue to try to do so.

  If you send me an e-mail and do not receive a reply, it is probably because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their e-mail address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned as undeliverable.

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  Please do not send me your ideas for a book, as I have a policy of writing only what I myself invent. If you send me story ideas, I will immediately delete them without reading them. If you have a good idea for a book, write it yourself, but I will not be able to advise you on how to get it published. Buy a copy of Writer’s Market at any bookstore; that will tell you how.

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  A list of my published works appears in the front of this book and on my website. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.