Necessity

by Brian Garfield

  “Use a lot of lemon.” George hobbles away.

  Marian shouts, “Grouch!” at his back.

  The waiter takes no notice.

  “Top of everything else he’s going deaf,” she says to Jennifer.

  Graeme says, “How’s the shrink?”

  It takes her by surprise so that she has to think a moment. Then she says, “All right,” rather irritably and flicks a sharp look at Marian, who pretends an abrupt keen interest in her drink, wrapping both hands around it and peering down into it with an attention so studied it’s comical.

  She’s explained her afternoon absences to Doyle and Marian by saying she’s been seeing a psychoanalyst to find out why she loused up her marriage. Evidently they’ve passed the confidence on to Graeme. Marian is right to be embarrassed. Jennifer makes no gesture to take her off the hook. She’s wishing they hadn’t told Graeme—and she’s wishing Graeme would stop asking so many questions.

  She hasn’t told any of them about Charlie Reid or the flying lessons; she hasn’t told anybody anything—she feels like a spy, parceling out information on a need-to-know basis. She’s compartmentalized everything.

  Graeme says, “I went to a shrink once. He told me I was full of shit. Hell, I already knew that.”

  Marian laughs with him. He goes on, addressing Jennifer: “Bless ’em all—Freudians, Jungians, gurus, messiahs—must be a thousand bloody schools of thought and every single one’s got the corner on truth. The one true religion. Mob of charlatans, you know—all of ‘em. They haven’t got any answers. Just questions. You ask them what something means, they come right back at you with a question—what do you think it means?

  “But then I suppose it’s something to spend the alimony on.” His smile, with a lot of white teeth, is as warm as a Times Square whore’s.

  Jennifer says, “I take it you went through an expensive divorce.”

  “Two of them, darling.”

  Perhaps that explains his animosity; perhaps not.

  Graeme drinks from the bottle. “I think of alimony like buying gas for a junked car. I’d like it a lot if once in a while maybe she’d pay for my bloody doctor appointments. But it doesn’t work that way, does it, ladies.”

  Marian says, “He’s in a mood, as you can tell. He had to get up early to cover an unpleasant story. Somebody had the indecency to get murdered at five o’clock in the morning.”

  A moment’s alarm. “I didn’t know you were on the crime beat.”

  “Sure. I cover the organized crime types. You didn’t see my series about the mob in Hollywood?”

  “I must have been out of town.”

  It seems to take him a moment to decide whether he’s been subtly insulted. Finally he lets it go. “The bloody phone at half-past five—they told me to get right round there. Could have committed murder myself just then—on the bloody city editor.”

  Doyle comes out of the shop with his customer. The sun’s angle has changed; the reflections seem even more painful and the heat is a tangible weight. Jennifer holds the iced glass against her forehead. Marian looks pleased because Doyle’s customer has a bulky parcel under his arm—a large paper bag full of books. Another day’s rent taken care of.

  Doyle comes to the table and pulls a chair out and waves his empty glass at George. In the meantime Graeme describes his early-morning murder:

  “Button named Petrillo. Thirty-seven. Fat bloke, hairy as a gorilla. I’d seen him a few times. They hadn’t loaded him into the ambulance yet because the medical examiners were still taking flash pictures. Cops held us back but I got more of a look at him than I wanted. He’d been shot three or four times—somewhere else, I’d guess. Dumped on the curb downtown where he’d be found.”

  Graeme sucks in a mouthful of beer, flutters it around inside his cheek, swallows. The pause is purposeful. Finally he drops the punch line:

  “Whoever did it wanted him to be found. He’s a mess. They’ve ripped his bloody tongue out.”

  Marian’s face changes: revulsion, then withdrawal—she doesn’t want to hear this. Doyle says, “God almighty.”

  Graeme seems pleased by Marian’s infestivity. “There’d been a rumor Petrillo was making some sort of deal to turn state’s evidence and get immunity from prosecution.”

  Doyle asks, “Prosecution for what?”

  “Cocaine. Petrillo had connections with the Cleveland mob. Allegedly, as we investigative journalists say, he was a conduit for distribution to Ohio. Anyhow, looks like he got his tail in a bloody crack and he was ready to name names to a grand jury and allegedly a contract was put out and he became the victim of a bloody mob hit a block and a half from the courthouse.”

  Graeme’s grimace is actorish. “When they tear out your tongue it’s supposed to be a warning to anybody else who may be thinking about finking on his pals. The Mafia are like those bloody fundamentalist Moslems—you steal from a don, they leave you lying around with your bloody hands chopped off. You spy on the wrong people, they find your corpse with no eyes in it. Explicit and expressive, the bloody Cosa Nostra.”

  Jennifer pretends to maintain a polite and discreetly shocked interest. In fact her heart pounds painfully and she clenches her muscles against a feeling of faintness. She has never heard of this man Petrillo, but Graeme unwittingly has just dashed her in the face with exactly the images she has tried vigorously to keep out of her mind.

  27 What surprises her about Charlie Reid’s place is that it isn’t a hole-in-the-wall apartment.

  It’s a decent respectable little house in a cul-de-sac in Reseda. Electronic garage door opener. Azaleas and rose bushes on the front lawn and citrus trees in the high-walled back yard where he does his barbecuing.

  In the kid’s bedroom there’s an 8 × 10 glossy of Mike and the other kids in the band—Mike hunched over his saxophone looking vulturish, pale eyes hooded like his father’s. Thinner than she’d expected; but the shoulders are wide and he’ll fill out.

  She strolls through the house with a drink in her hand. He’s out there cooking the steaks and the foil-wrapped corn and potatoes. He doesn’t seem to mind leaving her alone to her explorations. Does it mean he has no secrets?

  She makes her way back to the patio. He’s peering skeptically at the coals. Then he hears the door and looks up at her and likes what he sees: his face brightens. It gratifies her that he approves of her appearance; she spent a bit of careful time deciding what to wear. She’s got on a torquoise squaw blouse and a casual khaki-hued prairie skirt and sandals to match. A Zuñi necklace of silver and stones; a beaded belt. She didn’t want to look severe or glitzy or too anxious: but she wanted to draw his eye and she has succeeded.

  He says, “Be a while yet. I like to cook them slow.”

  “Everything’s so neat and tidy.”

  “Cleaning lady was here yesterday,” he says. “I should’ve moved into a smaller place when Mike went away. Probably could get a fair penny for this dump. But I can’t be bothered. Eight percent mortgage and I couldn’t find any place cheaper to live and at least the kid’s got a place to stay if he feels like coming home to see the old man between semesters.”

  “Does Mike fly?”

  “Some. He got his license two years ago. It’s not a passion with him. He’ll be a Sunday flier.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “I don’t make the mistake of thinking of him as an extension of myself. He’s got his own life.”

  He’s flipping the steaks over. There’s a lot of sizzling. She can smell hickory smoke from the chips he’s sprinkled on the coals.

  “What happened to his mother?”

  “She was someplace up in Oregon last I heard. Waitressing in a lobster place.” His shrewd glance flashes toward her. “I guess you want to know why I got custody of Mike. She’s a drunk. Happens to a lot of Air Force wives.”

  You don’t have to tell me about that, she thinks. My mother and my sisters were just about the only sober women in the—

  Stop it. You haven’t g
ot any sisters. Your mother was a housewife and your father was a plumber and you grew up in Phoenix and Chicago, and they died twelve years ago in a four-car pileup. You have no family. For Ellen’s sake—remember that.

  “Does Mike ever see his mother?”

  “He tried to. For a while. I never put restrictions on it. But it got so he couldn’t stand seeing her boozed up. He writes to her now and then. In a letter you can pretend nothing’s wrong.”

  She takes his empty glass inside and mixes him another bourbon and water.

  On the kitchen wall hangs a ristra of red tongue-searing chili peppers. There aren’t any curtains. It is unabashedly a man’s kitchen.

  She’s still unnerved from this afternoon—the reporter’s wallow in mob-style murder. She feels jumpy. Things keep blundering around inside her, hitting taut cords.

  Through the kitchen window she watches him step back from the barbecue and clench his eyes against the smoke.

  It’s silly to be coy with him. What’s the sense in delaying any longer? He’s not going to be a pushover for soft lights and bedtime games. Whatever his answer would be then, it’ll be the same now. Get it over with.

  She’s rehearsed it long enough: the story in detail. It’s part truth, part fabrication. There ought not to be any questions that can take her by surprise. There’s no excuse for procrastination except fear; and she’s got to set fear aside out of concern for Ellen and the deadline, less than a month now, that hangs over her like a boulder perched on the lip of a cliff.

  At the edge of the flagstones there’s a patch of mint. She breaks off a sprig; rinses it with the garden hose and pokes it down amid the ice cubes in his drink.

  He tastes it and shows his approval.

  She moves to one side to get out of the smoke; the wind keeps pushing it around. She senses he is aware of the sexual tension. She reclaims her own glass from the redwood table and thinks about another drink.

  But that would just postpone it. And let’s not forget the rules of the new game: never drink enough to make the head fuzzy or the tongue loose.

  Come on. It’s Ellen’s future you’re farting around with. Blurt it out.

  She says: “I had a motivation for learning to fly. It wasn’t just for fun.”

  “No?”

  “There’s something I need to do and it requires an airplane.”

  Her abrupt determination seems to amuse him. “Smuggling wheelbarrows?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. Old joke. Go ahead.”

  She takes a breath. “I’ve got a daughter—fourteen months old. I’m having a custody fight with her father.”

  “Must be painful.” An upward glance: the concern is genuine. “Sorry to hear it.”

  She tries to decide how to phrase it. Prompting her, he says, “Your little girl got something to do with learning to fly a plane?”

  “I wanted to be my own air rescue service. My daughter’s.”

  “You’re serious now.”

  “The son of a bitch has got my kid, Charlie. I want to get her back.”

  28 The steaks are seared; she watches Charlie crank the grill higher so they will cook more slowly. She can’t decipher his expression. All he says is, “Go on.”

  “Last year we separated and I moved out here. I thought I’d get settled and then go back and collect Wendy. As soon as I’d established California residency I filed for divorce here. But then I found out he’d filed at the same time—back in New York.”

  “And?”

  Now more lies: “There’ve been custody hearings in both states. California says I get the child. New York says he gets custody.”

  “He’s got possession of the kid?”

  “For the moment.”

  He pokes the steaks with a long fork. Fat dripping on the coals has started a fire and he sprays it with water from a hand-pump bottle that used to contain window cleanser. Out here he’s startlingly different from what’s he like at the airport or in the plane. His domesticity seems wildly out of place.

  She says, “It’s not altogether selfishness on my part. He’s not a fit father. She can’t stay with him. She just can’t.”

  “Well—you’re talking about kidnapping now.”

  “She’s my own daughter. My child!”

  “Love, I’m talking about the law.”

  “It’s kidnapping in New York—it’s honoring a court order in California. Depends where you’re standing.”

  “Forget the legalities. The baby’s in New York with her old man? Then—possession being nine points of the law and all—you’re talking about kidnapping. You get caught, that’s what they’ll arrest you for.”

  “I know that.”

  “I think you belong on a funny farm.” But he says it with gentle humor. “What kind of guy is the father?”

  “You won’t get an objective opinion from me.”

  “Granted. Tell me about him.” He’s taking the steaks off the fire.

  “On the surface very charming.”

  “He’d have to be, to get you to marry him.”

  He’s not looking at her just then and she wonders how he means the remark to be taken. Is it the casual flattery of a man on the make or a compliment meant sincerely?

  “He’s dangerous.” Then abruptly she stops, feeling awkward. She didn’t mean to put it that way. It seems to reveal too much. She doesn’t want to scare him off.

  She continues quickly: “He can be unpleasant.”

  “Yeah, well we all can be unpleasant.” He’s plucking potatoes and corn on the cob out of the coals, using the long barbecue fork to peel the foil off them.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bert. Albert. Some of his friends call him Al.”

  “Albert what? Hartman?”

  “Of course,” she lies.

  Is it her imagination or did he notice her instant’s hesitation?

  His face gives nothing away. His eyes are squinted against the smoke. “We’re about ready here.” With deliberate care he breaks the leaves off the corncobs and removes the silk. He slides the potatoes deftly off the fork onto the plates and when she carries them inside there’s a corner of her troubled mind that appreciates the precision with which he effects all these little accomplishments: he only looks disorderly.

  He shakes up a decanter. “Salad dressing. My recipe. English mustard in it—hope you don’t mind.”

  And he actually holds her chair for her.

  When he sits down opposite her she’s grateful to him for not lighting the candles. That would be carrying it too far.

  She says, “Wendy’s not in the city. They’re at our—his summer house in the Adirondacks. Outside Fort Keene.”

  “That in New York State?”

  “Yes. Near Lake Placid.”

  “Mountain cabin?”

  “You could call it that. It’s got twelve rooms.”

  He gives her a sharp sidewise look and pours the wine—something red from a California vineyard. She tastes it and it makes her tongue tingle pleasantly. Must be careful—ration herself to one glass.

  She says, “They’ll be going back to Manhattan on Labor Day. So I’ve got a deadline and it’s less than four weeks away.”

  Now she lets him see her distress. It is genuine enough. “Doesn’t look as if I’m going to be an accomplished pilot by then, does it.”

  “No.”

  It provokes her quick smile. “One thing about you, Charlie, you certainly don’t believe in polite lies.”

  “I try not to lie to my friends, honey bun.”

  He hasn’t started to eat yet. He points with his fork toward her plate. Not until after she begins to eat does he pick up his knife. He’s a strange fossil, she’s thinking. The last of his breed.

  He asks, “What makes Labor Day the deadline?”

  “In the city I wouldn’t have a chance of getting near her. We live—they live in a condominium with its own private elevator. One apartment per floor. It’s a top-security building. Guards a
ll over the place. Even the doormen are private police. And you can be sure they’ve been warned about me.”

  “But you think you can get out of this house in the country. Even with her father right there?”

  “I know how to do that. Things are more casual at Fort Keene and anyway he’s not always there. Sometimes he commutes to the city during the week.”

  “I’ve got to tell you something,” Charlie says. “This isn’t exactly the dinnertime conversation I had in mind for tonight.”

  He ruminates on a mouthful and reaches for his wine and otherwise busies himself with actions that fail to conceal how industriously he’s employing the time to absorb and to think. From his expression there is no way to tell how he feels about what she’s told him.

  Eventually he says, “Why an airplane? What’s wrong with a car?”

  “There’s a seventeen-mile road in to the house. It’s not a private drive—there are other houses—but it’s the only road and it takes at least forty minutes to get out to the highway. He’d have the police on it before that—he’d just telephone.”

  “Cut the phone wires.”

  “Wouldn’t help. He’s got CB radios in the cars.”

  “Those can be disabled.”

  “I suppose they can. But there are always three or four cars in the lean-to and around the driveway. It would be hard to bash in all those radios without being noticed. They can see the driveway from the house.”

  “You’ve worked it out, haven’t you.”

  “I’ve tried to.”

  He’s cutting a piece of steak; scowling at it. He sits for a moment with knife and fork poised over the plate and she has the feeling he’s making a decision but in the end he only asks another question:

  “Three or four cars. What are you guys—the Kennedys of Hyannisport? How many people around the kid?”

  “There’s the housekeeper and her husband. He’s sort of all-around caretaker and handyman, gardener, mechanic, so forth. And my husband’s hired a practical nurse—a nanny to look after Wendy. And most all the time he’ll have two or three of his partners and business associates there. They play cards and spend half the day doing business on the telephones. They like to hunt, even out of season,” she adds pointedly.