“You’re the type I can sit and look at for a long time and I never stop smiling. And I like your eyes, the sadness in them, the sorrow and the recognition of your fate and the vulnerability—”
“My fate,” she mused. “And men get so wrapped up in female vulnerability!”
“Right now you’re about the most vulnerable female I’ve ever seen. But what do you like, then, a man who treats his women rough?”
“Depends on my mood. Sometimes it’s, well, it’s exciting to be afraid—”
“Female vulnerability again. Like always picking the wrong men—”
“But maybe it’s all an act, maybe I’m not afraid at all—”
“I think you’re acting, all right. But you’re putting on a show of bravery. Every time you turn around, I see the truth in your eyes … you’re looking for Varada.”
“I’m trying to be brave for Victor, Charlie. He’s so worried about me. It’s funny. I’m not even his type—”
“What are you talking about? That’s silly—”
“I’m quite serious.” She nodded toward Victor and I looked. He had moved on, was just having a word with the maitre d’, then he disappeared into the lobby. “I’m not his type but she is. The woman he was talking to. Sammy Barber. She used to be a model. Samantha Frost she was then, before she married Thaddeus Barber. Victor nearly married her.” Her eyes were too bright and vivacious. I nodded, remembering that conversation with Victor in London so long ago. Victor had decided against Miss Frost and was on his way back to help Andy Thorne and now everything was very different. Victor had been very successful at helping Andy Thorne. He’d sent Varada to prison and married Caro Thorne but nothing had turned out quite the way it was supposed to.
Caro had said something more while my mind had been sorting through the ironies of the past. “What did you say?” Surely I had misunderstood.
“Victor’s having an affair with her. Don’t look so shocked, Charlie. Such things do happen, you know.”
“I find it very hard to believe, Caro. I really do.”
“That’s because you are a very loyal friend. But it’s been going on for years. It’s all right, really. Don’t worry, it doesn’t make your old pal a bad guy. He loves me, I know that. He dotes on me. But I’m a case, don’t you see? A head case, a nut case … he can’t get that out of the back of his mind. I’m someone he has to take care of—and he’s very good at caring for me. But the fact is the excitement has gone out of it for him … went out of it years ago. The sexual excitement, to call a spade a spade. He pitied me when we were involved with Anna’s death and the trial of Varada. To return to your point, Victor was powerless to resist my vulnerability, which would seem to prove your theory.”
“It’s not my theory. Just an idea I applied to myself. And I doubt very much that Victor’s having an affair with that woman—”
“And you should know, being such an expert on our marriage.” She was laughing at me.
“Maybe not, but I know something about Victor—”
“But you know almost nothing about me. You see, Victor liked me in bed. It took him a while to realize that I’m almost completely frigid.” She looked up brightly, her gaze fixed on something past me. “Ever since Anna’s death … the way she died. But it took Victor a long time to realize the truth—because I’m such a wonderful little actress!” She changed the tone of her voice completely. “Darling, what’s the matter?” All the playfulness was gone and her face was suddenly tight and afraid.
Victor was standing over us, put his hand on my shoulder. My first reaction was relief that I wouldn’t have to respond to Caro’s accumulated confessions.
“We’ve got to go,” he said. “I just called the house and there was no answer.” There was an uncharacteristic tremor in his voice. “I’m worried about Andy and that goddamn pacemaker of his. All this stress—Christ, I never should have asked him to come to New York. Come on, let’s go home.”
Chapter Eight
ONE
FROM THE STREET OUTSIDE THE brownstone you could see that something was all wrong. It hit me right away and by the time I was halfway up the stairs Victor had the same impression. He was right behind me when we went inside.
The front door stood open, as did the second door into the foyer. The light shone through to the street.
Coming through the second door was, it seemed to me at the time, the final step into the nightmare. I was wrong. The nightmare had just begun.
First I saw the blood spreading away on the black and white parquetry. On his side, having tried to crawl somewhere before his strength gave out and the blood stopped pumping, was Abe Braverman. The smell of the slaughterhouse was everywhere. His head seemed oddly hinged, bent back in the rictus of violent death. His throat had been cut. His hands were covered with blood as if he’d tried to hold his jowls together and failed.
Victor stood staring at the body, then turned to me with a questioning expression on his vast flat face. He took a step backward, slipped in the blood, and grabbed my arm to steady himself.
I looked away from the blood-soaked corpse, sprawled in its dark crimson slick, and saw what Victor had missed.
A hand, white and clenched, in the doorway leading to the room where Caro had first led me when I’d arrived for dinner.
I pushed the heavy sliding door all the way back.
Andy Thorne lay facedown on the carpet and he was very still.
TWO
The next half hour was a blur.
It was obvious that Abe Braverman was dead.
Andy Thorne was still breathing. Shallow and raspy but he was still alive.
Victor started working over him. He seemed to know what to do. Caro got on the telephone and calmly got hold of the Emergency Medical Service, told them an elderly man with a pacemaker had suffered a serious heart attack. When she hung up she was white-faced and biting her lip to keep hold of herself and went to kneel at her father’s side. She’d told me her father would have preferred her dead to Anna but she was his daughter and nothing counted more than that.
The EMS ambulance was there within ten minutes. Operating with a kind of uninvolved superefficiency, they whisked Andy Thorne out on a stretcher. In the meantime Victor called the police. Caro went with her father, and Victor spoke with one of the team members before he came back inside. He stood looking down at Braverman, then looked at me.
“So much for my edge,” he said softly. “I gotta get a drink or I’m gonna puke. I’ve already thrown up on this floor once this week … Jesus, Charlie.” He sighed. “Abe. The son of a bitch killed Abe … what I’d give to know how he managed it—”
“From behind,” I said: “Out of the shadows somewhere, got that big goddamn arm around his throat, one slice, and Abe got this far …” I shrugged. “Varada must have been watching the house.”
We went to the study and I stood with my back to the air conditioner, feeling it chill my clammy shirt and stick it to my back. He handed me a tall gin and tonic. I’d never wanted a drink more in all my life. This was all so different from writing about a murder. This had nothing to do with research. He told me that the EMS guys hadn’t offered any predictions about Andy Thorne. “I have to do something, Charlie. This shit has got to stop.” He was whispering, thinking aloud.
“It must have happened very near here,” I said. “Varada just hangs around, like smoke over a burning house. Braverman couldn’t have gotten far with a wound like that.”
“It’s my fucking house that’s on fire. Mine!” Victor exploded, kicked an embroidered gout stool all the way across the room where it bounced against a bookcase. “We’re going to find a bloody trail leading to my doorway … poor Abe!” His fists were clenched, veins bulging at his temples.
“We’re looking right into hell, Victor. You must see that. We’ve got to leave this to the cops—”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “Up to a point.”
While we waited for the police to arrive he told me to leave the
talking to him. I was just a friend who, happened to be on hand for the festivities. I didn’t know a damned thing.
I figured it was his hand. He could play it any way he wanted.
THREE
I gave the cops a very brief statement, stayed out of the rest of it. I wasn’t even in the room when they spoke with Victor. It took a couple of hours before the remains were taken away and Victor and I were left alone again.
“Well, thanks, old son,” he said with a weary, wry smile. We were slouched in the study. “Thanks for keeping the old trap shut. I can’t let them get any idea Varada’s involved—”
“So how did you explain Braverman’s expiring in your foyer?”
“I told them I knew him, had worked with him. My theory is that he was on some unknown errand in the neighborhood, got mugged, fought back, and paid the price. Realized he was near my house and tried to get to me for help … Andy buzzed him in and had a heart attack when he saw the shape Abe was in. Hell, Charlie, Andy may have been trying to answer my call when it hit him.”
“Did they buy it?”
“So far. Why not? Let’s just hope Abe didn’t leave a lot of notes for the cops to find. About Varada, I mean. We’ll see. If he did, I’ll have to come clean and that’s no problem. All I’ll have been trying to do is protect my wife … anyway, you’re out of it. Cop-wise, anyway.”
“How about Varada-wise?”
“I’m working on that. We’re getting down to the short strokes, old son. The keen legal eagle had better think of something. Pronto.” He yawned, looked at his watch. “Look, I’m going to the hospital. Andy’ll either pull through or not. The one I’m worried about is Caro. I know her, she won’t come home until Andy’s in the clear or dead.” He stood up. He wasn’t looking very spiffy anymore. All the starch was pretty well taken out of him. A starchectomy.
At the door I stopped him. “One last thing,” I said. “Maybe I’m dense, but what’s the point in keeping Varada out of it now? Maybe they could nail him for Braverman’s murder—”
“No, he’s too smart for that. Believe me, Charlie. First they’d have to find him. Then they’d have to break his alibi and he’d have one, Charlie, bet on it. Probably some woman he’s got scared half to death. Or a bartender and some winos who’ll swear to God he was with them all night. On and on and on. I know what I’m doing. Varada is gonna be clean on this. At St. Pat’s praying with Cardinal O’Connor. No, I’ve got to keep Varada out of their thinking for now. Or it’s all gonna come out, Caro will maybe crack up, I’ll be disbarred, Varada will sue my ass. There’s no other way.”
“Victor … what are you saying to your old pal Charlie?”
“I’m telling you there is only one way out of this now. I’m going to kill him.” He smiled abruptly and looked twenty years younger. “Don’t look so surprised. You know enough about this sort of thing. You’ve written books about these guys, the sociopaths, the psycho killers who exist to kill. Think about it, how many people has Varada killed? Does he even remember? I’d say some girl he picked up at a carnival, a girl who thought he was quite a hunk, a quick naughty thrill … and they found her in the high weeds a couple days later. Maybe a guy with a car at a highway diner at just the time Varada needed a car … and they found him wedged behind a rock under a one-lane back-road bridge somewhere.” He looked back at me from the stoop. “He’s not going to kill me and he’s not going to kill Caro. But he is going to die trying. I promise you. Believe it, old son.”
Alone in the house I found it all but impossible to close my eyes, let alone sleep. Me, the guy who was usually gone by the time his head hit the pillow. Adrenaline, I suppose. Aftershock. I went upstairs to my room and got into pajamas and lay down but it was pointless.” So I took a shower and got to thinking about Varada. He was out there somewhere. He’d killed one man, left another paralyzed. Taken another’s eye and almost as directly put Andy Thorne into an intensive-care unit. And he hadn’t even reached Caro and Victor.
I was prowling the hallways when I came to Thorne’s room. The door was open and I went in. It was spare and neat, like the man. His silver-backed hairbrushes were set precisely squared on the night table, next to a framed photograph. His late wife, I thought, picking it up to get a look at her. Then I saw that it was Caro. I held it to the dim light, peering into her eyes.
But it wasn’t Caro, either.
It had to be Anna. The daughter who shouldn’t have died.
FOUR
Morning came and Victor returned from the hospital with a plan and the news that the word on Andy Thorne was “guarded.” He’d spent the night keeping Caro company and quietly figuring things out. When he explained it all to me it sounded like one gigantic mess waiting to land on all of us. On the other hand, Victor was a master of planning.
He said he had to bring Varada out in the open. The way to do it was to make Varada curious by hiding Caro. If our pattern of behavior was broken, if he couldn’t find her, Victor reasoned, then Varada would come after her. To the brownstone. Because it was Caro he’d chosen to terrorize. And because he was insane.
“Once I can get him into the house,” Victor said with the utter calm of the truly desperate, “I’ll kill him as an intruder. I’ll worry about the consequences when I come to them—they won’t be as bad as Varada alive.”
“Look,” I said, “this plan is made up primarily of holes stuck together with occasional possibilities. What if he won’t play the game, just goes away? What if he—hey, wait a minute, where will Caro actually be? You’re not thinking of keeping her here to lure him in? That would make all three of you insane—”
“Of course not, Charlie. That’s where you come in. Caro has begun to look upon you as something like her knight in armor, protecting her, keeping her company. You’ve been a hell of a sport—and she has complete faith in you … which is why I’d like you to be her keeper for just a while longer. Until I can finish this thing. I want you to take her away. Secretly. Nobody will know but the three of us.”
He had a country place up in Westchester, deep in the hills, off a narrow private road, unmarked, not a clue as to ownership. It was about as anonymous as it could be, a secure hideaway. There was simply no way that Varada could know about its existence, let alone how to find it. It was there that I would take Caro until the Varada thing was over.
“There’s something wrong with this,” I said. “Taking matters into your own hands, I don’t like it, Victor. We live in a civilized society, there are ways to handle things like this—”
“Charlie, the social compact was scrapped a long time ago. We pay our taxes and when you turn the handle water comes out of the faucet. The garbage usually gets picked up. And that’s it. The rest of the time we’re just victims awaiting our turns. It can come in the subway or in the park or while you’re walking your dog or trying to find a cab or leaving Yankee Stadium. Wham, it’s your turn, you’re left dead or bleeding and nobody much gives a shit. So much for the social compact. The miracle in this town is that a Bernie Goetz doesn’t turn up every day having had absolutely enough: enough fear and enough thuggery and enough terror. Where are the frustrated people blazing away at the punks and hoods and practiced killers who’ve taken one look at this brave new world of ours and decided it’s their very own? I don’t know but I’m damned sure I feel no obligation to be a victim … so let’s not talk about how we’d take care of this in a civilized society because that’s just not where we happen to be. We are in the deep dark woods, my friend, and sometimes we get the bear … and sometimes the bear gets us. This time I’m going to get the fucking bear and make him an ex-fucking-bear.” He’d kept talking while he led the way into the study. “If you have a better plan, then now is the time to trot it out.”
I didn’t. He nodded at my silence and went to the wall rack and took the Purdey down from its resting place. “Best gun I’ve ever had. And I’ve had a few. I thought about this gun during the night, Charlie, remembered the day we went round to Audley Stree
t in that fancy little car of yours and picked it up. Damn, they were happy days, sport. Y’know what I was thinking about that gun, Charlie?”
“No, I don’t suppose I do.”
“I was thinking about whether I wanted to kill Varada with it or … or if I wanted you to guard Caro with it—”
“Guard her from what, for God’s sake? Nobody knows where we’re going, there’s no way to identify it as your house, and now I’m guarding her with a shotgun? I’m no good with a shotgun. Anyway, what’s the point?”
“The point is, I’ll feel better. And she is my wife. And you’re my pal. Just do it, okay?”
FIVE
We worked on the assumption that Varada was somehow still watching the brownstone. I packed a bag. Victor filled another with some of Caro’s things. Victor carried them down the steps to the street. I carried the Purdey in its leather case. We stood at the curb while the taxi waited. Like a couple of very bad actors we played a farewell scene, handshakes, pats on the back, and I got into the backseat. He stood on the sidewalk waving as I pulled away obviously heading for the airport. A few blocks away I told the cabbie to forget Kennedy and go to the hospital. He couldn’t have cared less.
Caro was dozing in one of the visitors’ waiting rooms, half a cup of cold coffee nearby. She came to, fully alert, as soon as I sat down next to her. Andy Thorne was more or less out of danger, stabilized, the doctors said, vital signs all right, but he was still in intensive care. Caro’s face was pale and drawn, showed the wear and tear not only of the night but of the whole Varada campaign. She stared at me while I told her Victor’s plan. She sipped at the cold coffee.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “As a plan, let’s face it, it’s dog food.”
“Well, I’m not the guy to argue with you. But I didn’t have a better one. And you know Victor—”
“Oh yes, Victor’s very determined. I can see him, sitting at the desk in the study, shotgun across his knees, waiting for Varada … while Varada calmly sets fire to the house … but there’s no arguing with him. He’ll have his way.” She smiled tiredly. “Can you face guarding the troublesome damsel in distress? It’s a very nice place, actually. You’ll like it. And in a couple of days, when nothing happens and Victor gets bored, we’ll come home … Is the front hall cleaned up? All that blood—I’ve been thinking about Father all night, now it just hit me, oh Christ, Charlie, poor Braverman’s dead …”
The Saberdene Variations Page 9