Spearfield's Daughter

by Jon Cleary

  “Be on your best behaviour. I don’t want any of your Aussie ocker image. Do you have a better suit than that?”

  “No.”

  “Crumbs, you look worse than Tom. And Jack, too. Why have I always surrounded myself with bums?”

  The two bums greeted each other warily, since Sylvester was offering his daughter and Tom was offering only himself. But within ten minutes Sylvester was convinced Cleo had made a good choice; and Tom relaxed, knowing he was accepted. Cleo watched them with the self-satisfied smile of a successful match-maker.

  “Are you coming to this dinner tonight?” Sylvester asked.

  “No, the help hasn’t been invited,” said Tom, relieved that he had not been. Alain and Simone would probably be at the dinner and he did not want to face them, not so close to his wedding day. He would be better prepared to face them, if he had to, when he was properly anchored.

  “I’ve never met this Mrs. Roux. I gather she’s something worse than Lucrezia Borgia.”

  “Only on her good days,” said Cleo. “Come on, Dad, I’ll drop you off at your hotel. I have to go back to the paper for a couple of hours. I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”

  When she picked him up she looked at him in surprise. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “I was kidding this afternoon. When I knew I was coming home this way, I decided I wouldn’t disgrace you any more. I went to Harrods and bought this suit.”

  “Tom bought a suit there. Once.”

  “He is a bit of a bum, isn’t he? But it suits him. The same with me. Notice this shirt? I bought it at some pansy shop in Jermyn Street, cost me the bloody earth. The salesman kept trying to make us a couple of consenting adults.”

  “You look marvellous. Now behave as well as you look and they will think Australia is civilized.”

  Claudine was all regal charm, Catherine greeting a minor prince from Outer Mongolia. “Is this your first visit to America, Senator?”

  “I first came here in 1936. I jumped the rattler—rode the rods, as you call it—from San Francisco to Chicago. I came across to see Harry Bridges—remember him? He was an Aussie who ran your West Coast waterfront. Then I went on to an IWW conference. The Wobblies, you remember? Industrial Workers of the World. They were trying to revive them, but it never came to anything.”

  “1936?” said Claudine. “I think my late husband and I were tiger-shooting in India that year.”

  Sylvester didn’t let go with the belly-laugh. He smiled and shook his head and Claudine returned the smile. “I’ve been heckled many times, Mrs. Roux, but never like this. You win.”

  “I always do, Senator. Now may I have your arm to go into dinner? You are sitting on my right.” A few moments later, sitting at the head of the table, she looked at her butler. “What is the main wine this evening?”

  “A Margaux, 1937, madame.”

  “1937. Was that a good year for the Wobblies, Senator?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sylvester. “I was back home shooting rabbits.”

  Oh Dad, Cleo thought, I love you! She settled down to enjoy the dinner as much as possible, knowing he was going to hold Australia’s end up. She was surprised at her own nationalism; she had never flown the flag except when she felt she was being put down as an Australian. Sylvester had never been anything but what he was tonight, a patriot, and all at once she determined, if only for tonight, to be her father’s daughter.

  But there was no need to wave the flag. Everyone at the table listened to Sylvester and Roger; not everyone agreed with them and they didn’t always agree with each other, but the argument was good-tempered and well-informed. Louise had come with Roger, and Cleo wondered if they were living together again. Several times Louise glanced across the table and smiled at her, but she appeared amused by rather than interested in the talk. She’s come to terms with herself, if not Roger, Cleo thought. Let Tom and me always come to terms with each other.

  From opposite sides of the table Cleo and Simone watched each other carefully. It was the first time Cleo had met Alain’s wife, Tom’s ex-wife; the two of them, in a way, had more in common than anyone else at the table. Simone was slim and svelte, her hair worn in a chignon; Alain had made her get rid of the bangs. Cleo could see what any man would see in her; she just wondered what was that little extra that, in Tom’s and Alain’s eyes, put her on a par with herself. She had no vanity, but she liked to put a true value on herself. From further up the table Alain, who might have given her at least half the answer, watched her with the same carefulness. Claudine, not missing a point, open in her gaze, watched them all.

  “I liked that story on the terrorists in the Courier, Miss Spearfield.” The Senator from the Mid-West, silver-haired and smooth, a Van Cleef and Arpels version of Sylvester, sat on Cleo’s right. “You were properly rough on them. But I thought the editorial on the Shah went too far.”

  “So did I,” said Alain.

  “Not at all,” said Roger, and Cleo didn’t have to defend herself. “The Courier needs to take some definite stands these days.”

  “You have a definite enough one on the Mafia,” said the Senator from New England, plump and shiny-skinned, as if New England rock had been pulverized and made into a mud-ball. “You really named names there. The mobsters out in Chicago and Kansas City can’t be too happy.”

  “That’s our policy now,” said Cleo, aware of Alain’s cold stare. “Naming names.”

  When the dinner party broke up Claudine put her hand on Sylvester’s arm. “I hope this won’t be the last time you’ll visit us, Senator.”

  “Now Cleo’s settled here I’ll be coming over as often as I can. I might even ask Mal Fraser to appoint me Consul-General.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  He laughed, softly; he wouldn’t trust her as far as he could throw her with his arthritic shoulder, but he liked her. “I still have a few old friends back home in the Party. If President Carter made you ambassador to somewhere, would your friends speak to you?”

  “I see your point, Senator. Except that I have never worried about what my friends think of me.”

  “That’s the difference between us. You’d never have felt at home in the Wobblies.”

  “I’ll try hard not to regret what I’ve missed.”

  Going back to his hotel in the limousine, he said, “What’s wrong between you and Mrs. Roux’s son?”

  “You don’t miss much, do you?” She explained what the personal position had been; he made no comment. He was an old-fashioned father who believed in the double standard, especially for daughters. “Now I’m not sure whether he’s being personal, getting his own back on me, or he’s suddenly just got plain ambitious. He makes it pretty clear he doesn’t like the way I run the paper.”

  “Who’s winning?”

  “I am, so far. But if ever Jack Cruze sold his interest in the paper, I think I’d be out on my neck.”

  “Is he likely to do that?”

  “I don’t know. I could never bring myself to ask him not to sell. He doesn’t owe me anything, not any more.”

  The limousine drew up outside the Pierre, where Cleo had booked him in. She would have preferred to have had him stay with her in the apartment, but the second bedroom had been converted into a study and it would have meant his sleeping on a couch in the living-room. On top of that Tom was now sleeping every night at her apartment, having virtually abandoned Kips Bay Plaza. It had been easier all round to book her father into the Pierre at her expense and give him some of the luxury that, because of his stubborn ideals, he had dodged all his life.

  “Come up for a drink.”

  “I’m tired, Dad. And I have to go back to the office for half an hour—”

  “I’m tired, too, sweetheart. But I haven’t talked to you, really talked, in ages. We’ve let so many chances go—”

  She was suddenly drawn to him. She put her arm in his and they went up to his room, scrutinized by the elevator operator out of the corner of his eye. He wondered
how some of these old bastards managed to get some of these younger chicks up to their rooms. She certainly didn’t look like a hooker.

  As they got out of the elevator Cleo said, “I’m his daughter. I’m not a hooker.”

  “Don’t let her fool you,” said Sylvester. “She is a hooker.”

  They both let out the Spearfield belly-laugh as the elevator doors closed and they went down the corridor arm in arm, enjoying their silly joke. It was the sort of joke they had enjoyed together twenty years ago.

  Sylvester mixed them a night-cap, then said, “Did you hear Mrs. Roux asking me about whether I was coming back to New York? I didn’t want to tell you in front of her, but Mal Fraser has offered me the post of Consul-General here.”

  “Dad! Why didn’t you tell me and Tom earlier?”

  He swirled his drink in its glass. “I don’t know. I guess I’m a bit ashamed. It hasn’t been announced back home yet, but I’m going to get hell when it is.”

  “Meaning the Party will accuse you of selling out?”

  “What else? They’ll be right. I still can’t believe I’ve accepted the job—it’s as if it’s someone else, a distant relation. It just sort of happened. I was at a reception and I found myself in a corner with Mal Fraser. I’ve always got on okay with him, as well as one can with such a shy, stuffy bastard. He asked me about you and I said you were doing fine, but I never saw enough of you. Then he said he was appointing a new Consul-General here and jokingly I asked him, What about me? He laughed and we both thought it was a good joke. Two days later he rang me and asked was I serious. It was one of those days when you’d just phoned me. I was sentimental, I suppose—” He looked at her. “I get like that, occasionally.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I added it all up and I decided I wanted to spend my declining years, as they call them, with you. I’d have had only one more term in the Senate and that would have been it. I’ve given damned near fifty years to the Party and it wouldn’t comfort me in my old age. I’ve seen it happen to other blokes who’ve retired. I’ve been a success, a moderate one anyway, and I decided I wanted to come here and bask in your success.”

  She put a hand on his. “I want you here, Dad. But my success has nothing to do with it.”

  “Righto, have it your way. But you are successful and I’m proud of you. It wasn’t easy, was it?” He smiled at the frown of puzzlement on her brow. “Sweetheart, I’m not blind, never was. You ran away from home to get away from me. There’s a quotation from Milton that begins, Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise . . . I’ve forgotten the rest of it. There’s something else about fame. It throws a shadow. You wanted to get out of that shadow, right?”

  She stood up, wanting to go home to Tom before she broke down and wept like the small child that she felt. “Come to New York, Dad, and we’ll start all over again. You and me and Tom, and no shadow.”

  He stood up, kissed her. “It’s not too late. I hope your mother is watching.”

  Then she did break down. She leant her face against his chest and wept for all the chances that had been lost.

  V

  Rosa Fuchs got out of the cab on Fifth Avenue and walked down 89th Street. She was wearing a light tan raincoat; in its pocket was the fully loaded Luger. She had brought no gun to the United States, not wanting to set off any alarm if she were searched; her new American friends, who had not been told why she needed a gun and had not asked, had had no trouble in finding the Luger she had insisted upon. Assassination has become a trade and tradesmen prefer to use tools they have become accustomed to.

  She was wearing nothing to disguise herself except the black wig; no dark glasses, since it was eleven o’clock at night, no broad-brimmed hat pulled low down over her face. It was her own wry joke, and she was not much given to humour, that she had chosen to wear a wig that duplicated the hair style of the woman she had chosen to kill.

  She had spent the past three days studying Cleo Spearfield’s daily routine. She knew now that the Australian bitch came home around this time every night, often with the American Tom Border, with whom she was apparently living. She hoped to find the two of them arriving home together, but if they didn’t it wouldn’t matter. She would kill whichever one arrived first. Her preference would be the Spearfield woman, since it was she who wielded the power.

  On the opposite side of the street Tony Rossano’s hit man got out of the black Buick; his companion behind the wheel started up the engine. The hit man crossed the street, walking unhurriedly, the sawn-off shotgun held against his side under his black raincoat. He was from Cleveland and he did not know New York well; he did not like the narrow cross-streets, busy with traffic even at this hour, and he would have preferred to have made the hit somewhere else. He had come into New York two days ago, had studied several photos of the woman he had to kill; last night he had waited across the street to catch a sight of her in the flesh and seen her come home in a limousine. He wondered why, tonight, she should be coming home on foot; he had heard that women walked nowhere in New York at night for fear of muggers and rapists. Well, he was neither of those, thank Christ.

  He stopped in front of the woman and, because he always made sure he was killing the right person, he said, “Miss Spearfield?”

  Jack Cruze got out of the limousine where he had been sitting for the past half-hour. He had cancelled his connecting flight to Charleston; the sight of Cleo this afternoon had upset him too much. He had to see her again, make one last attempt to have her come back to him. He had felt ridiculous and juvenile sitting in the limousine and he knew the chauffeur must have been wondering what sort of English fool had hired him and the car. He had no real hope that Cleo would listen to his plea, but he had to make the attempt. If she turned him away, no matter how gently, that would be the end of it. He would sell the Courier stock, cut her out of his will and go back and try for a reconciliation with Emma. He did not want to end his days alone and he knew he could never fall in love again.

  At first he did not see the man in the black raincoat crossing the street. He was ten yards from Cleo before he saw that it was not her at all, just someone with the same hair style. Then the man in the raincoat stepped in front of the girl, said “Miss Spearfield?” and took the gun from under his coat and shot her. Jack wasn’t sure whether the girl had answered the question the man had put to her; he was already running forward when he saw the gun exposed. He would never know if he was being heroic; perhaps, because the girl did resemble Cleo, he acted on instinct. He ran at the man, shouting a protest that died in his mouth as the killer turned and put two bullets into his chest. He stumbled sideways, hit a parked car and fell to the sidewalk only feet from the dead Rosa Fuchs. In the moment before he died he wondered why he had been rushing to save a stranger, something he had never done in his life before.

  20

  I

  CLEO AND Tom postponed their wedding; there was no disagreement between them about it. Sylvester could not delay his return to Australia and went home shocked and disappointed, promising to be back as soon as his appointment as Consul-General was ratified. A phone call to Tom’s parents told them of the tragedy in the street outside Cleo’s apartment and they were shocked that their future daughter-in-law should have been the intended target of such a killer. They said they would come to New York as soon as a new date was set for the wedding. In the meantime if Tom wanted to bring himself and Cleo home to Friendship, a safe town, they would love to have them both.

  “You could be married here,” Olive Border said.

  “Thanks, Mom. But we both have to stay here in New York. We still have our jobs to do.”

  Tom wanted to write the story on the double killing, but the night of the murder had been his last at the Courier and he had left the office, was already in Cleo’s apartment, when the shooting took place. He was on hand to get the facts but Cleo, coming home five minutes later, insisted that his name could not be on the story. The Courier’s chief crime reporter, Bob Wilk
ie, came to the scene, put together his story in Cleo’s apartment and phoned it in from there. Cleo had rung the production manager and told him to hold the presses; she was then switched through to the newsroom and caught Carl Fishburg just as he was leaving for home. Page One was ripped apart and remade. Carl, an old-fashioned newspaperman, had always been less than enthusiastic about video display terminals, but that night he appreciated the time saved by the VDTs. The last edition of the Courier went on the street only forty minutes later, running a bigger spread with its story and pictures than either the Times or the News.

  At one o’clock in the morning Cleo rang Carl, still in the office, to congratulate him. “I couldn’t have held my head up if we’d missed getting out the story. The Post would have run it over two or three pages this afternoon and beaten us on our own story.”

  “There was no time to remake the editorial page, Cleo. Are you going to run an editorial?”

  “We’ll have to. And an obit on Lord Cruze. I’ll write that. I’ll do the editorial too.”

  “Cleo—” Carl sounded concerned. “Why don’t you take it easy? You know as well as I do that the Fuchs dame and the hit man, whoever he was, were gunning for you. Something went wrong and it was screwed up. But it doesn’t alter the fact you were the target.”

  “I’ll be all right, Carl. Tom is here with me and so is my father. I’ll be in tomorrow at the usual time.”

  But she was not as calm as she tried to sound. She had busied herself as a newspaperwoman to keep her mind from blacking out under shock. When she had reached home, the bodies in the street were already covered with sheets and waiting for the ambulances; Tom had been down on the sidewalk and he had told her what had happened. She had not had to look at Jack’s body; Tom would go down tomorrow to the morgue to identify it officially. She felt nothing about Rosa Fuchs, not even pity for the girl’s death; Tom had told her the police had found the Luger in the German girl’s raincoat and it had not been difficult to guess on whom she had intended to use it. But she felt for Jack: pity, love, a sense of loss. He had died for some reason connected with her and he did not deserve to have gone in such a way.