Shelley's Heart

by Charles McCarry

  As Macalaster appeared—in the circumstances, he thought, “materialized” was a better word—Hammett, wearing a stricken look, rose to his feet. “Good God,” he said in an unsteady voice. “You’re covered in blood.”

  Macalaster said, “Covered with blood? I am?”

  He had forgotten his bloody nose. Looking into the mirror in which he had watched Zarah’s troubled face a few nights before, he saw that his upper lip and chin were crusted with dried blood, and that his shirt and tie were stained with it. “So I am,” he said. “I had an accident on the way home.”

  Manal said, “Daddy!”

  Macalaster knew she was remembering the highway crash that had killed her mother. He said, “It’s okay. I hit a deer.”

  Sturdi said, “You killed a deer? With a Jaguar?”

  “No, crippled it,” Macalaster said. “The police finished it off.”

  Sturdi turned to Slim, who was sitting beside her on the floor. “This is disgusting,” she said. Slim gave her a look of sympathy and held out her hand. Sturdi enfolded Slim’s pale and fragile hand in her large swarthy one. Like Hammett, she was obviously the product of an unmixed gene pool. She had jet-black hair like Manal’s, though it was cut short and concealed beneath a blue bandanna.

  Macalaster stepped over the Ouija board in order to look at himself in the mirror.

  Scrambling out of the way, Hammett said, “Don’t come any nearer!”

  Macalaster said, “Why not?”

  Slim said, “Archimedes already told you. You’re bleeding.”

  “Not anymore,” Macalaster said. “But what if I were?”

  Sturdi got to her feet and backed away. Slim, rising also, put an arm around her. Hammett, keeping as far away from Macalaster as possible, was in the process of leaving the room. Suddenly Macalaster understood. All the anger he had been feeling toward Mallory, all the dumb rage he had suppressed about the hypnotized deer for being in the wrong habitat in the wrong era, broke through the dam. “Do you think I’m going to give you AIDS?”

  Slim and Sturdi did not answer the question.

  “Jesus Christ,” Macalaster said. “You do!”

  The women stood their ground, as if providing a diversion so that Hammett, whose life was more valuable than their own, could escape. Seconds later, Hammett did slip through the door; he could be heard running up the stairs to his room.

  Finally Slim said, “You spoke the word, we didn’t. Which proves it’s not such an outrageous thought.”

  “It’s not? After a fucking deer has wrecked a brand-new hundred-thousand-dollar automobile? After this?” Macalaster pointed to his swollen nose as if he were a hypochondriac, too. “You come into my house and tell me not to bleed on you because I might be HIV positive? What the fuck is this?”

  Slim and Sturdi clung to each other, two stringy bodies dressed in the sort of Grant Wood clothes that real farmers had not worn since the invention of the milking machine. Their eyes were wary, hostile, defiant. Macalaster knew this had little, if anything, to do with him or his nosebleed; they would be defiant as a matter of self-discipline toward anyone who lived in a house like his, toward any male except Hammett or a dumb animal.

  “Look,” Macalaster said. “This is my house. I didn’t invite you here. I don’t like your keeping my daughter up until one o’clock in the morning on a school night. I don’t like the disgusting mess you and your leader have made. I don’t like your phony clothes, I don’t like your zero-fat body image, I don’t like the looks on your faces. So get out of here. Now.”

  Manal said, “Daddy, it was only a séance. Mr. Hammett asked me—”

  Macalaster turned on the child. “And you,” he shouted. “You get your little brown bottom up the stairs and into bed right this minute, and don’t let me catch you having another of these ridiculous damn horror shows ever again.”

  Manal bowed her head submissively, pressed her palms together in front of her downcast eyes, and bowed out of the room. She meant this as a snippy joke. Sturdi did not know this. She spoke at last, in a voice filled with the bottomless contempt that comes from having your worst suspicions confirmed. “You’re not fit to have power over another human being,” she said. “Manal will remember this behavior.”

  “Good,” Macalaster said. “I hope you will, too.”

  “Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” said Sturdi. “We won’t forget a single detail.”

  10

  When he looked back on this incident the thing that surprised Macalaster was that he had done what he had done while almost perfectly sober. He knew this to be the case because he had passed the Breathalyzer test, thanks to Franklin Mallory’s policy of serving only one before-dinner drink and very little dinner wine to his guests. Consequently he felt no shame or remorse for having treated Hammett’s friends with such brutal candor, as he certainly would have if he had behaved in the same way while drunk. In fact, the aftereffect was quite pleasing. He had got rid of the anger and resentment he had been feeling toward himself, and he had been absolutely, unquestionably in the right. He felt refreshed and vindicated.

  Manal was another matter. To give her time to settle down, he cleared the table, rinsed the dishes, and stacked them in the dishwasher. Then he filled a bowl with butter pecan ice cream, Manal’s favorite, and carried it up to her room. She was in bed, with her back to the door. Her night lamp, Kermit the Frog, radiated a dim greenish light that made her dark skin glow.

  He said, “Are you asleep?”

  Unmoving, Manal said, “Yes.”

  “Then wake up and eat your ice cream.”

  Perhaps because she had spent her childhood observing the havoc wreaked by Brook, who had not known the meaning of the word “forgiveness,” Manal had always been quick to pardon affronts. Macalaster closed the door and handed her the bowl of ice cream. She sat up in bed, threw back the magnificent blue-black hair that Brook had considered her daughter’s only good feature, and began to eat.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Macalaster said. “None of what happened downstairs was your fault. I know that and I apologize.”

  “It’s all right, Daddy.”

  “No, it’s not all right.”

  Manal paused, a spoonful of ice cream halfway to her mouth. “Okay. It’s not all right with you. But it’s all right with me.”

  “Then everything must be all right.”

  They grinned at each other. Macalaster had never loved this girl as he believed he could have loved any of the several natural children Brook had aborted. He had never even kissed Manal, and he doubted that Brook had ever done so, either. But he had always liked her and approved of her. She wished the world well and accepted life as it came. She always had. Even as an infant, being delivered by the adoption agency’s courier into the bewildering culture that would never understand her, she had seemed to be a fatalist. Looking up at the Macalasters for the first time moments after her arrival at Dulles International Airport, this small brown baby had shuddered briefly, as if submitting to the weird reality that she had been reincarnated as the child of political criminals (now political martyrs) and then sent halfway around the world to be claimed by a marijuana- and wine-besotted American woman who wanted to feel good about herself. Or was Macalaster romanticizing the girl, as Brook had done, because she was to all outward appearances so ordinary? “Whoever marries you will be a lucky man,” he said, meaning it.

  “That will be nice,” Manal said.

  Macalaster sat quietly on her bed while she finished her ice cream. Finally she licked the spoon, smiling. Her tongue was purplish, like the scalp of Susan Grant’s murderer; this mark of ethnicity had astonished and delighted Brook, who did not notice it for years because nannies had always taken care of feeding the child.

  Manal said, “It really is all right, Daddy. I was glad you came in when you did and sent everybody to bed.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “Mr. Hammett was very upset. The same visitor as before came back.”
<
br />   “Which one was that?”

  “Susan—the one that wanted to talk to you. She asked for you again. She’s still in darkness. She’s very, very angry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was murdered. They’re always angry when that happens because everything is unfinished.”

  “What did she say this time?”

  “The same thing.” Manal said. “ ‘Shelley.’ ”

  “Do you know anyone named Shelley?”

  “No. Maybe it’s someone Mr. Hammett was involved with. Romantically.”

  “That I doubt.”

  “Or knew in another life. It really shook him up.”

  Macalaster took the bowl and tapped Manal gently on the knee with the spoon. “Good,” he said. “Forget what I said. You can have all the séances you want.”

  Manal turned over. “I already have,” she said, and wiggled her long slender fingers in farewell.

  11

  Julian Hubbard uttered a shout of surprise when he read about the appointment of Alfonso Olmedo C. in the daily White House press summary. He sprang to his feet and hurried down the corridor toward Norman Carlisle Blackstone’s office. It was seven o’clock in the morning, forty-five minutes before his routine morning meeting with the President in the Lincoln sitting room.

  He expected to find Blackstone alone as usual. However, he had a visitor. Both men faced away from the door. They were deep in conversation. Julian paused on the threshold and stared at the back of the stranger’s head, which was covered with a mass of carrot-red curls.

  “Carlisle,” he said. “Excuse me.”

  “Ah, Julian,” said Blackstone, swiveling in his chair to face him. “Good day to you. Come in. We were just talking about you.”

  “Were you now?”

  “Indeed we were. I’d like you to meet Mr. John L. S. McGraw, an associate of Alfonso Olmedo, about whom I think you know.”

  Julian said nothing in reply to this. The stranger stood up and turned around. His lantern-jawed Celtic face was freckled and battered—skewed broken nose, thick eyebrows interrupted by thicker white scars, more scars around the bright-green eyes. Red hair grew on the back of his bony, large-knuckled hands. He wore a powder-blue glen-plaid suit with a pair of cheap brown bucks and figured socks, a semitransparent polyester shirt that revealed the curly red hair on his chest, and a yellow necktie with brown and green stripes. As Julian stepped closer in order to shake hands, he saw that the stripes were actually made up of a printed motto that read—he squinted to make it out—”Non carborundum bastardum est,” which Julian remembered was beer-joint Latin for “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

  Gripping McGraw’s hand, Julian said, “How do you do.”

  “Okay. How about you?” McGraw replied in a staccato New York voice. He spelled out his surname. “And before you ask, no, I’m no relation to Iron John McGraw of the Giants, and yes, the L. S. stands for John L. Sullivan.”

  “Ah,” said Julian. “The boxer.”

  McGraw said, “Carlisle here was just going to bring me down to your office. I’ve got a few questions for you about your half brother.”

  Julian said nothing, but lifted his eyebrows in polite inquiry.

  McGraw said, “It won’t take long. I know you’re busy.”

  Julian looked down at him. The splotched face was full of shrewd intelligence. “You’re a lawyer on Olmedo’s staff?” he asked.

  McGraw shook his head. “Mr. Olmedo doesn’t have a staff. There’s just him and his secretary.”

  “My goodness,” Julian said. “Then how do you fit in?”

  Blackstone said, “Mr. McGraw is an independent investigator.”

  “That’s right,” McGraw said. “Sometimes I help Mr. Olmedo and Mr. Blackstone out. Like now.” He cocked his head, displayed a tight-lipped smile, and rocked on his toes. He gave the impression that he was chewing gum as he spoke, though he wasn’t. These ticks seemed to be natural mannerisms rather than the involuntary impersonation of Jimmy Cagney that Julian at first took them to be.

  “Fascinating,” Julian said.

  McGraw gave him a look of keen interest, as if this patronizing remark contained an important clue to Julian’s character—which, Julian realized, it did.

  “Anyway,” McGraw said. “Can we do it now?”

  “Do what now?”

  “Like I said, talk about your half brother.”

  “Mr. McGraw, it’s seven o’clock in the morning. I have a meeting with the President in half an hour and I must prepare for it.”

  “I understand your situation. That’s why I got up early. Because the case can’t wait.”

  Julian shot a puzzled look in Blackstone’s direction. Nodding his agreement with McGraw, Blackstone said, “The President did assure Alfonso Olmedo of complete cooperation from everybody.”

  “He did? When was that?”

  “Last night, when he engaged Olmedo as his sole counsel in connection with the Mallory allegations. The situation is moving fast, Julian.”

  “So it seems.” Julian paused, as if to lift an invisible curtain and give them a glimpse of the impossibly busy day, week, and lifetime that lay before him. “All right,” he said at last. “Follow me, sir.” He gestured McGraw through the door before him, then, sotto voce, said, “Carlisle, I want you in my office at eight-fifteen.”

  Blackstone smiled perfunctorily in response to these words. As chief of staff, Julian was nominally his superior, but he had never before reminded Blackstone of this fact by giving him an order. Of course Blackstone had never before gone around Julian, the man who stood between the President and everybody else, to accomplish a purpose. He bowed in assent, then swiveled back to face his desk.

  Julian and Blackstone, as the two highest-ranking members of the presidential staff, occupied corner offices on the westernmost face of the West Wing. The journey between them was less than fifty of Julian’s steps.

  McGraw had to hurry to keep up. He said, “I’ve never been in here before. I thought it would be more impressive.”

  “Really? In what way?”

  “Higher ceilings, nicer furniture, cuter secretaries.”

  “You must visit the public rooms in the mansion itself. They have high ceilings. And impressive furniture. Carlisle can arrange a tour for you.”

  Inside Julian’s office, McGraw sat down in the single chair in front of the desk and looked around him. It was the only chair in the room besides Julian’s worn leather desk chair.

  “How come only one chair?” he asked.

  “I like to see people one at a time. Now, sir, what can I do for you?”

  “My name is John,” McGraw said. “This part won’t take long. Later on we’ll talk again about other stuff.”

  “Fine … John,” Julian said, looking at his watch. “Shoot.”

  McGraw took a small drugstore notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped through it until he found a blank page. He looked at his own watch and wrote something down in a slow painstaking hand, underlining it twice.

  “Okay,” he said. “Here we go. Horace Elliott Christopher Hubbard is ten years older than you, the only issue of your father’s first marriage to the former Alice Earle Parsons Jessup of Manhattan and Chipmunk Island, Maine. This union ended in divorce in nineteen hundred and forty-eight, the year you were born. Both parents are deceased. He’s your only sibling.”

  Julian said nothing. Looking up from his notebook, McGraw said, “Question mark.”

  “What?”

  “Have I got everything straight?”

  “All correct.”

  “Where is he?”

  Julian put his fingertips together precisely, whorl to whorl. “I have no idea.”

  “Any educated guesses?”

  “No. My brother makes a habit of disappearing, sometimes for years at a time. He always has. I’m used to it.”

  “Why does he disappear?”

  “For professional reasons.”

  “You mean
he’s a CIA man.”

  “The CIA was abolished years ago.”

  “Then an FIS man.”

  “He’s a retired banker.”

  “Which bank?”

  “D. & D. Laux & Company, New York.”

  “That’s the one with all the FIS computers in the cellar, right?”

  “Our time is limited, John,” Julian said. “It might be better to find out what I know rather than impressing me with what you think you know.”

  “You’re right.”

  “No offense.”

  “Forget it. Let me ask you this. Where are your kids?”

  Julian put pressure on his fingertips. Stress: McGraw noted the way the nails changed from pink to white as the blood was forced out of the capillaries beneath them, and Julian could see him watching this happen. He said, “Elliott and Jenny are with their mother and her husband aboard his boat.”

  McGraw said, “The husband is Leo Dwyer, famous writer, little short guy—correct?” Julian nodded. McGraw continued, “Where are they right now exactly?”

  “I’m not sure. On the high seas. It’s an oceangoing yacht. They planned to sail down the east coast of South America to Antarctica, then up the west coast to California. I have no exact itinerary.”

  “What about school?”

  “They carry tutors on board.”

  “You don’t worry about not hearing from the kids?”

  “They’re with their mother.”

  “On a boat that maintains radio silence?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Julian said. “Leo writes on the boat. He requires complete isolation.”

  “So he always maintains radio silence on all his voyages?”

  “That’s right. It’s a ritual connected to his writing.”

  “Okay, that clears that up,” said McGraw. “Your ex-wife, Caroline, now Mrs. Leo Dwyer. She’s on good terms with your brother?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “So they’re friends, her and Horace? And Leo?”

  “Yes, good friends—for years in Caroline’s case. Horace and her father were classmates in college.”