“I ain’t gonna answer that. I don’t have to.”
Clement rose and went to the stove, where his mother used to boil water, the kettle singing the only song in her life, Junior at her skirts, thumb in his mouth. He remembered her rising from a scrubbed floor only to have Papa track it with the rippled prints of his work shoes. Pouring more coffee, he said, “Everything all right with the money?”
“I’ve been cashin’ the checks,” Papa said, “if that’s what you mean.”
“Have you been putting aside what I told you for Junior?”
“Yeah, ain’t likely I’m gonna cheat him.”
“When you get a chance, let me see the book.”
“They don’t give books anymore, you get statements.”
“I know what you get. The last statement will do.”
“His name ain’t on it if that’s what you’re gettin’ at. He ain’t bright enough to have a bank account in his own name. And you ain’t his meal ticket, I am.”
Clement carried his coffee mug to the window. Moth wings and bug bodies littered the sill; a spider crept through the debris. “I’m thinking about his future, Papa.”
“His ain’t ever gonna be dif’rent. Mine neither.”
• • •
He had drunk too much coffee, and his bladder interrupted his sleep during the night. It was not until he returned from the toilet that he realized Junior was not in his cot. He slipped into trousers and a shirt and went barefoot outside, where he heard a branch fall from a distant pine and shatter its twigs on the ground. Tree frogs shrilled. He walked slowly and carefully, his eyes sweeping over moonlit weeds to a seated shape on a stump.
“What are you doing, Junior?”
Junior was sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, his eyes cast toward the deeper shadows where the pines mingled with the swamp. The moon was yellow. “Sometimes,” he said, “I can hear her out there.”
Clement crouched. “It’s your head hearing things, not your ears.”
“You comin’ back makes me think of her more.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come back.”
The darkness in the pines quivered in places the way water pulses where fish lurk. Junior said, “Did Papa kill her?”
“Nobody killed her,” Clement said. “God took her.”
Junior said, “I hate God.”
7
The corporate headquarters of Bellmore Companies was a tower of steel and glass in downtown Boston. Bellmore holdings, scattered throughout the Northeast, comprised shopping malls, office parks, hotel complexes, and condominium villages. The prerogative and power of the chief executive officer emanated from a clear, quiet appearance and an un-deflectable gaze. The high walls of his office pulsed with contemporary art. The carpeting had an aura of depth, as if the bodies of lesser men had disappeared into it. Beyond his desk Boston peered in through thicknesses of glass.
Seated at his desk, he did not look up when his secretary of ten years brought her face down to his. Sadness entered her kiss, for she had given up on possibilities. She received no acknowledgment of the steaming black coffee she had set before him, for he expected things without asking and took them without thanks. He had an ice-smooth personality, his true feelings frozen deep.
Without warning, he rose and stretched as an athlete might before picking up a bat or tossing a ball at a hoop. He was of medium height and neither thin nor fat, though his face had a boyish pudginess that rimless glasses stiffened. His dark blond hair was neatly barbered, his jaw closely shaved, and his intelligence honed by an inexorable will to excel. Lately, however, he had been using all his intelligence to maintain viability in a misbehaving economy, brought on in some measure by his own strategies and tactics. Resinking into his high-back executive chair, he said, “Pembrooke.”
That was his secretary’s surname. She was halfway to the door when she stopped and turned, composed and gracious, a smooth golden bun behind her head.
“Am I free for lunch?” he asked.
She returned to his desk, opened his calendar book, and flipped to the page on which she had written C. Poole, Mercury Savings, 1 p.m. She read it aloud.
“Christ,” he said. “That will be a bore.”
Two hours later, Calvin Poole arrived twenty minutes early and waited more than a half hour in comfortable circumstances with a current Newsweek Pembrooke had provided. He lifted himself up with dignity when she looked back in on him and said, “Mr. Bowman is meeting with you in his private dining room. I’ll take you there.”
The dining room had a clubby look, dark oak, with early American paintings on the wall. Gerald Bowman greeted him briskly, a man’s handshake, all business. Bowman, in charcoal gray, was younger; Poole, in pinstripes, was taller. Bowman said, “You look tired.”
Lunch was sole smothered by a delectable sauce, with broccoli heads and carrot slices on the side. The servings were of a size meant for men watching their weight, though Poole had no cause to watch his. The middle-aged woman who served them was eager to please, quick to anticipate a complaint, of which Poole had none and Bowman had many. He distrusted cutlery and glassware and saw spots where there were none. Poole looked for the salt until he remembered Bowman did not allow it on the table. He attempted small talk.
“Our wives have been seeing a bit of each other.”
“Good that they should get together. I believe they both went to Wellesley.”
“I didn’t know that,” Poole said.
“We share something.”
Poole had gone to Andover and Harvard, Bowman to Boston University on a full scholarship. His air of privilege was acquired, his ambition was innate. From the day he had entered the business world he had been perpetually on the move for a higher salary, a better golf score, a drier martini, and a greater climax. The climax diminished in importance when money and power delivered a heftier punch.
“Don’t you like the fish?” he asked.
“It’s delicious.” Poole’s hand trembled when he lifted his water glass, which was of heavy cut crystal. “I’m afraid we share something else,” he said. “A problem.”
“Ah, yes,” said Bowman. “The loan.”
Two years before, a subsidiary of Bellmore Companies had begun building an immense shopping complex in western Connecticut, with Mercury Savings and Loan providing the lion’s share of the financing and pumping in more money when urgency demanded it. Now the project was at a standstill, ninety percent completed and less than thirty percent occupied.
“The whole country’s hurting,” Bowman said philosophically. “We really should have learned something from the Japanese.”
Poole kept his voice under control. “Can you at least resume the interest payments?”
“Very good fish,” Bowman said as the woman cleared away their plates and replaced them with dessert, small portions of Indian pudding. “Thank you very much,” he said with unaccustomed civility.
“Nothing has been paid for four months,” Poole said.
“That long?”
“I wouldn’t want to be forced to repossess the properties.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t. What would you get — a dime on the dollar? This is crunch time for everybody, separates the men from the boys.”
“I understand that.” Poole’s voice stayed strong and, to a degree, hopeful. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
Bowman consumed his dessert with three spoonfuls. Poole did not touch his. The woman quietly disappeared. “I’m afraid in this instance we’re both going to take a bath,” Bowman said and called the woman back. “We’ll have our coffee now.”
“I could go under,” Poole said starkly.
“Nonsense. The bank could go under, not you. And is that such a bad thing?”
Coffee was poured. Poole creamed and sugared his but did not trust himself to lift the cup. He looked at paintings on the wall. A fury of colors was in one, the blood of a sunset in another. He watched the woman linger and then leave.
>
“How old are you, Poole?”
“I won’t outlive my wife.”
“Take my advice,” Bowman said. “Go with the tide.”
• • •
“He’s not in,” Meg O’Brien said to Lieutenant Bakinowski and clamped her lips over her pony teeth.
“I don’t need to see him,” Bakinowski said. “I just want to look at the old Rayball file, the woman who drowned or hit her head or whatever. Mind getting it for me?” She hesitated, glancing over at Sergeant Avery, who was picking his nose. “I think he’d like me to see it,” Bakinowski added.
Sitting at Chief Morgan’s desk, he opened the dog-eared folder and read the reports slowly and carefully. He scanned the brittle newspaper clips, which carried no pictures of the victim. The only photos of Eunice Rayball were those taken at the scene and in the hospital morgue. He stared at them for some time but could get no sense of the woman. Death had taken everything. He closed the file, left it beside the chief’s calendar block, and returned to Meg O’Brien.
“Tell me about Eunice Rayball,” he said. “What was she like?”
“Nobody knew her that well,” Meg said. “She didn’t get out much. But a sweet thing, what we saw of her.”
“Wasn’t she from Bensington?”
“She grew up in Lawrence, St. Ann’s Home. That’s an orphanage. At sixteen she was working in one of the Lawrence mills. Papa had a job there, janitor or something. That’s how they met.”
“Are you talking about Ralph Rayball?”
“Everybody calls him Papa. He married her young and made her old.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just my opinion,” Meg said with an edge.
Bakinowski looked over at Sergeant Avery, who was drinking root beer from a can. “That your opinion too, Sergeant?”
“What Meg says, I say,” Sergeant Avery replied, wiping his chin.
“That’s it?” Bakinowski challenged. “Nothing to add?”
Sergeant Avery thought for a moment. “She was pregnant when they married. Everybody knew that, except maybe Papa.”
“Of course he knew,” Meg said. “She was showing.”
“Was it his?” Bakinowski asked.
“That’s the queer thing,” Sergeant Avery said. “Clement, the first, he never looked like any Rayball I knew, but Papa always favored him. It’s Junior, the second one, Papa had doubts about, which is crazy. They’re two peas in a pod.”
“Junior is slow,” Meg said.
“And Papa?”
“Ornery is what he is,” Meg replied.
“And sharp as a tack,” Sergeant Avery said. “My uncle used to play cards with him.”
Bakinowski lifted a cuff and read his watch, then compared it with the clock on the wall, which was a minute more. “The chief seems to think that Rayball killed his wife,” he said, looking at Meg. “What do you think?”
“On a possibility scale of one to ten, I’d give it a seven, but the chief knows more. He gives it a ten.”
“I give it an eleven,” Sergeant Avery said.
“I see.” Bakinowski straightened and buttoned his suit jacket. “And who fired the shot that killed the Laphams?”
Sergeant Avery, squashing the empty root beer can, looked at Meg and deferred to her. She said, “I can tell you with certainty it wasn’t our Matt MacGregor.”
• • •
At the hospital cafeteria Matt MacGregor, out of uniform, got himself a cup of coffee and carried it to a back table where a man with salt-and-pepper hair was eating his lunch. “You don’t know me, Doctor,” MacGregor said, “but do you mind if I sit down?”
The doctor looked up from his soup, into which he had crushed crackers. “I know who you are, Matthew. I’ve seen you with Lydia often. Sit down.”
MacGregor drew a chair, a light of noble purpose in his eyes. When he seated himself, heavily, the light faded a little, then reignited. “Long time ago, Doctor, I used to be jealous of you, you probably know that.”
“A long time ago you might’ve had reason. Since then I’ve been jealous of you.”
“I’ve known her since we were kids. Our first real date I took her to a McDonald’s and stole a souvenir. The napkin she wiped her mouth on. That’s how bad I had it for her.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” the doctor said and resumed eating his soup.
“I’m worried about her.”
“She’s a survivor.”
“Somebody should be looking out for her, Doctor. I don’t feel I got the right anymore.”
“Look, Matt, forget I’m a doctor, all right? My name’s Frank. We’re two guys with deep feelings for the same woman, and we’re both in the same boat. She doesn’t want either of us.”
The light in MacGregor’s eyes flickered. “Is that the truth? She didn’t leave me for you?”
“Ask her.”
“I don’t want to bother her anymore.”
The doctor sipped milk from a straw, his gaze angling to a table occupied by a lone woman who apparently had been visiting someone. She wore her hair short, shaped like a mushroom, which emphasized the length of her neck. The back of her neck was shaved. Her earrings were the dangling sort.
“And I didn’t want to bother you.”
The doctor’s eyes journeyed reluctantly back to MacGregor. “Life’s too short not to get on with it, Matt. That’s the best advice I’ll ever offer, appropriate to everyone, including myself.”
“She said something like that.”
“Yes, she would.”
MacGregor tasted his coffee and wanted no more. Rising, he said, “Don’t tell her I talked to you.”
“No reason that I should,” the doctor said and managed to catch the woman’s eye.
• • •
Chief Morgan slept late. He had been up much of the night cruising Lydia Lapham’s neighborhood and peering at the fronts of darkened houses where people had gone to bed hours ago. He could have had his night officer perform the duty, but he saw it more as a mission, a personal obligation, a response to feelings he had not yet put into words and perhaps never would. Lydia, home from the hospital at eleven-thirty, did not put the lights out until three. That was when he parked near the house, rolled all the windows down, and listened to sounds of the small hours. The howl of a cat in heat mimicked the bawl of a baby.
Now he was in his own house and pulling himself from bed, running his hand over the stubble on his jaw. The first thing he did was phone the station to say he would not be in for a while. Meg O’Brien, with a razor in her wit, told him to take his time, Lieutenant Bakinowski was making good use of his desk. When she told him the reason he was uncertain whether to smile or grimace. He did neither.
He was showered and shaved and dressed in chinos and a striped shirt open at the neck when the doorbell rang. It was Christine Poole, a surprise, for she had never come to his house before. She was costumed in a pink sweatsuit. A headband gave her an Olympics look. She stepped just inside the doorway, no farther, and smiled, sort of.
“I’m returning these,” she said, and he knew immediately what was in the clear plastic bag, which he accepted tentatively. “Mrs. Bowman thought you looked cute in them. My opinion was different.”
“Not my style,” he said.
“That’s what I told her. You’ll also find a latchkey in there. She thought you’d want it back.” Her smile evolved into a shape more gentle than not. “You have eclectic tastes with women, James. Or are we all the same to you?”
He had an urge to touch her, but he did not. “Hardly,” he said.
“How’s your back. Has it healed?”
“Pretty much.”
She touched him. “I regret nothing we’ve had together, absolutely nothing, but I’m glad it’s over. It never would have led to anything, am I not right?”
“We’ll never know.”
“Tell the truth.”
“Probably not.”
“That’s what I always liked about you, J
ames. You never made false promises. The fact is you never made any promises at all, and you took only what was offered. But what you got was more than you deserved, which I don’t hold against you, unlike your other friend.” She moved back a step, with a more comfortable pitch to her voice. “Do you like my outfit? I’m on my way to becoming a new woman, one who doesn’t need an extra man in her life for whatever spurious reasons that come to mind.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Yes, of course, you would — and you did your job, James. You aroused my large, dozing breasts. I know what you’re thinking, it didn’t take much. But now it’s time for the rest of me to awake. I want to look in the mirror and feel good — all by myself, no need of you.”
When she took another step back, he teetered forward. “Christine. You’re a wonderful woman.”
“Don’t flatter me, James. I’m just a woman. But in some ways I’m stronger than your friend.”
He walked her to her car, opened the door for her, waited while she started the motor, and watched her buckle up. On the seat beside her was a videotape of Jane Fonda’s Beginner’s Workout. “We still friends?” he asked.
“We were never more than that,” she said, putting on oversize sunglasses that consumed the greater part of her face. She looked out at him. “I can understand what attracted you to Arlene Bowman, but you must’ve known you were playing with fire.”
“That’s over and done with,” he said.
“Then I must warn you. You may still get burned.”
• • •
Lieutenant Bakinowski, driving slowly on the rural road, scanned mailboxes. Then there were none. Pines reared up on each side, and a crow flew across the road like a thrown boot. Then he saw a crude sign nailed to a tree, bikes repaired, and a mailbox bearing the name he was looking for. Gravel and ruts took him to a small, weathered house. He looked at wild raspberry canes and wished the fruit were ripe. He saw an abandoned bicycle that could have been the cadaver of the one he had ridden until it was handed down to a younger brother. Climbing out of the car, he peered through live pines to dead ones populating a swamp, which queerly gave him a sense of his own boyhood, mostly the mysteries.
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