“Care about the money. Because money is the one language that Philip ultimately understands. There is a problem, however.”
“He’ll deny everything?”
“That’s right. But . . .”
“What?”
“If I provoke him enough, he just might blurt out the admission you’re after.”
“You don’t sound hopeful.”
“I know the man all too well. Still, it’s worth a shot.”
“Thank you.”
She scooped up all the documents. “I’m going to need all this evidence,” she said.
“It’s yours.”
“Now would you drive me back to my car, please?”
She said nothing during the few minutes we headed back to the bookshop. I glanced at her once. She was holding the file tightly to her chest, looking completely preoccupied and silently furious. When we pulled up out front, she simply leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. And said, “You’ll be hearing from me.”
Then she climbed out of my car, got into her own vehicle, and drove off. As I returned to the cottage, I thought: That was exactly the reaction I was hoping for.
But days went by without even a word from her. Alison, however, was in regular contact, wondering how I had deployed that batch of xeroxed evidence. I lied and said that I was still perusing it, still trying to figure out a way that we could use it against him.
“You are such a shitty fibster,” she said.
“Think what you like, Alison.”
“I just hope you’re being smart for a change.”
“I’m working on it. Meanwhile, do you or your legal eagle have any further thoughts on how we might be able to sue the asshole for literary theft in the first degree?”
“We’ve looked at every aspect, and . . . no, nothing. The guy’s got every angle covered.”
“We’ll see about that.”
By the time an entire week had passed without contact from Martha, I too started to wonder if he did have every angle covered . . . to the point where she couldn’t get a single confessional word out of him. And I found myself fighting off a wave of despondency. Because three weeks from now, an alimony payment would be due—and there was no way I’d be able to even meet half of it. Which meant that Lucy would probably retaliate by attempting to end my phone access with Caitlin. As I also wouldn’t be in a position to afford Walter Dickerson’s services in court (or elsewhere), she’d legally steamroller me in a nanosecond. Then there was the matter of Willard Stevens. He’d called me personally from London a few days ago for a quick getting-to-know-you hello and to ask if all was fine in the cottage and to inform me that he’d probably be returning to the States within two months, so . . .
But how would I find anything to rent in Meredith on $280 a week? Hell, the cheapest unit around town was around eight hundred a month, which meant that, once I dealt with the roof over my head, I’d end up with eighty bucks a week to pay for everything, from gas to electricity to food. In other words, Mission Preposterous.
By the time I’d played out this catastrophic scenario, I was homeless on Wilshire Boulevard, sprawled on the sidewalk, with a hand-painted sign that read: They Used to Return My Calls.
And then, finally, Martha phoned. It was Friday night . . . a full ten days after I’d seen her. She called the shop around six p.m. Her tone was succinct, businesslike.
“Sorry I haven’t been in touch,” she said. “I’ve been away.”
“Do you have any news?”
“When are your days off?”
“Monday and Tuesday.”
“Can you keep Monday completely free?”
“Sure.”
“Fine. I’ll pick you up at the cottage around two.”
And she hung up before I could ask her anything.
I wanted to ring her straight back and demand to know what was going on. But I knew that, at best, that would be counterproductive. So I could do nothing except count the hours until Monday.
She showed up on time, parking her Range Rover right by my front door. Once again, she looked bewitching: a short red skirt, a tight black halter, the same jean jacket as last week, the same broken horn-rimmed glasses, and an old-style cameo around her neck. Isabel Archer meets Downtown Hip. I came out to greet her. She favored me with a big smile—a smile that made me wonder if she had good news for me. When she gave me a light kiss on the lips—squeezing my arm simultaneously—I thought: This is promising . . . and just a little confusing.
“Hello there,” she said.
“And hello to you. Do I detect an air of good humor?”
“You never know. Is that what you’re planning to wear today?”
I was dressed in a pair of old Levis, a T-shirt, and a zip-up gray sweatshirt.
“As I didn’t know what we were planning to do today . . .”
“Can I put a proposition to you?”
“I’m all ears.”
“I want you to let me take charge of everything today.”
“By which you mean . . . ?”
“By which I mean, I want you to agree that you won’t question a single thing I do . . . and at the same time, you’ll do everything I ask of you.”
“Everything?”
“Yes,” she said with a grin. “Everything. But don’t worry: nothing I suggest will be illegal. Or dangerous.”
“Well, that’s a relief . . .”
“So, do we have a deal?”
She proffered her hand. I took it.
“I guess so . . . as long as you don’t want me to bury a body.”
“That would be far too banal,” she said. “Come on, let’s get you out of those slacker clothes.”
She walked past me into the cottage and straight into the bedroom. Then she opened my closet and rifled through my clothes. Eventually, she pulled out a pair of black jeans, a white T-shirt, a lightweight leather jacket, and a pair of black Converse hi-tops.
“That should work,” she said, handing me the lot. “Go on, get changed.”
She walked back into the living room. I undressed and put on what she had chosen. When I came out, she was standing over the desk, looking at an old photograph of me and Caitlin. She looked me up and down.
“A big improvement,” she said. Then she held up the photograph. “Mind if I take this with us?”
“Uh . . . no. But could I ask why?”
“What did you agree not to do?”
“Not to ask questions.”
She came over and gave me another light kiss on the lips. “Then don’t ask questions.”
She linked her arm in mine. “Come on,” she said. “We’re out of here.”
We headed off in her Range Rover. Once we left Meredith behind us and turned north up the Pacific Coast Highway, she said, “I’m very impressed, David.”
“With what?”
“That you haven’t asked me what happened over the last ten days. That’s very disciplined of you.”
“Well, you did say: no questions.”
“I will give you an answer . . . but on another proviso: that after I tell you, we don’t discuss it again.”
“Because it’s bad news?”
“Yes, because it is less-than-satisfactory news. And because I don’t want it spoiling our day together.”
“All right.”
Looking straight ahead through the windshield—her eyes occasionally flickering upward toward the rearview mirror—she started to speak.
“After I saw you, I went back to LA and arranged for the Gulfstream to fly me directly to Chicago. Before getting on the flight, I ducked into a little electronics shop at LAX and bought a tiny voice-activated microrecorder. Then, once we were airborne, I called Philip and said that I had to see him immediately. When I got to his suite at the Four Seasons and threw the entire file at him, do you know what he did? He shrugged and said he didn’t know what I was talking about. So I took him through the entire scam, piece by piece, backing everything up with all the evidence you gave
me. He denied any knowledge of anything. He didn’t even ask me where I got the evidence from. He ignored the whole damn thing. Even when I lost it and started screaming at him for an explanation, he clammed up and switched right into zombie introvert mode. I must have spent the better part of an hour playing the actress, trying every trick imaginable to get him to make just one admission. But he completely ignored me. And so, eventually, I gathered up all the papers and stormed out and took the Gulfstream right back to LA.
“I spent the next couple of days doing a little research of my own. Lubitsch Holdings is definitely one of Philip’s shell companies . . . though it’s so carefully ‘disguised’ in that Cayman Island way that nobody could ever trace it back to him. And though I don’t have proof, I’m pretty damn sure that, in addition to the big benevolent fund payoff, Philip also put a big bonus payment right into the pocket of SATWA’s executive director.”
“How did you find that out?” I asked.
“What’s our rule today?”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, that’s about it. Everything you told me the other day turned out to be absolutely on the money. Philip decided to demolish you. I don’t know why he did it. But he did it. He’ll never admit it—he’ll never explain his reasons. But I know he’s guilty. And he’s going pay a price for this. And the price is I’m leaving him. Not, of course, that that will faze him in the least.”
“You’ve told him you’re leaving him,” I asked, hoping that it didn’t sound like a question.
“No, I haven’t told him yet. Because I haven’t spoken to him since. And yes, well done for trying to make a question sound like a statement.”
“Thank you.”
“For nothing. I only wish I’d been able to get an admission out of him. Then, at least, I might have been able to force him to put things right. Instead . . .”
She shrugged.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“No. It’s not.”
“For today, it’s all right.”
She let go of the wheel with one hand and intertwined her fingers with mine. And she kept them intertwined until we turned off at Santa Barbara and she had to downshift into third gear.
We passed through the gasoline alley where I sold my Porsche and hocked my computer. We headed down the main drag of designer shops and the sort of upscale eateries where arugula and shaved parmesan were de rigueur. When we reached the beach, we turned and followed the coast road until we reached the gates of the Four Seasons Hotel.
“Uh . . .,” I started to say, remembering my illicit week here with Sally when I was still married and oh-so-risibly arrogant. Before I had a chance to raise a question, Martha said, “Don’t even ask.”
The valet parking guy relieved us of the car. Martha led me through the main door. But instead of heading in the direction of the reception desk, she brought me down a side corridor to a pair of large oak doors, above which were the words The Wellness Center.
“I decided you needed a little wellness,” Martha said with a grin as she opened one of the doors and pushed me ahead of her. She took complete charge of everything, telling the receptionist that I was David Armitage and that I had been booked in for an all-afternoon special, including “a stint with the coiffeur.” And speaking of the coiffeur, could she have a word with him, please? The receptionist picked up the phone. After a few moments, a tall sinewy gentleman emerged from the rear doors. He spoke in a near-whisper and introduced himself as Martin.
“Well, Martin,” Martha said. “Here’s the victim.” She reached inside her shoulder bag and pulled out the photograph of Caitlin and myself, handing it to Martin. “And here’s how he looked before he moved into a cave. Do you think you can bring him back to his pre-Neanderthal state?”
A thin smile from Martin. “No problem,” he said, handing the photo back to Martha.
“Okay, handsome,” she said to me. “You’re in for four hours of fun. See you on the veranda for drinks at seven.”
“What are you going to do?”
Another light kiss on the lips. “No questions,” she said. Then she turned and headed out the door. Martin tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for me to follow him into his inner sanctum.
First I was relieved of all my clothes. Then two women attendants escorted me to a large marble shower stall where I was hosed down with pressurized jets of very hot water and scrubbed with seaweed soap and a hard-bristle brush. Then I was dried off and robed and sent to Martin’s chair. He used a pair of clippers to remove the vast majority of my beard. Hot towels followed, lather was applied, and a straight-edged razor appeared from a surgical sterilizer. He scraped my face clean, swathed it again in a hot towel, then removed the towel and swirled the chair around and dunked my head backward into a sink and shampooed my long, tangled hair. Then he sliced it all off, bringing it back to the short-back-and-sides style I favored until everything started going wrong.
When he was finished, he tapped me on the shoulder again and pointed me toward another door, saying: “I’ll see you at the end.”
For the next three hours I was pounded and kneaded and mummified and covered in clay and massaged with oil and eventually sent back to Martin’s chair, where he did a little blow-dry-and-brush action and then pointed to the mirror and said:
“Back to where you once were.”
I stared at myself in the mirror and found it a little hard to adjust to this new old image. My face was thinner, my eyes deeply tired. Though I looked appropriately buffed and burnished after four hours of intensive wellness, a significant part of me didn’t believe this act of tonsorial and cosmetic magic. I didn’t want to see this face because I didn’t trust this face anymore. And I vowed to start growing my beard again tomorrow morning.
When I walked onto the veranda, I found Martha seated at a table with a perfect view of the Pacific. She had changed into a short black dress and had her hair loose around her shoulders. She looked up at me. She graced me with a smile and said, “Now that’s better.”
I sat down beside her. “Come here, please,” she said. I leaned forward. She put her hand against my face. She inclined her head toward mine and kissed me fully.
“In fact, that’s a lot better,” she said.
“I’m glad you approve,” I said, my head swimming from the kiss.
“The fact is, Mr. Armitage—there is a shortage of attractive, smart men in the world. You can find plenty of attractive/stupid, and plenty of smart/ugly . . . but attractive/smart are about as rare as sightings of the Hale–Bopp comet. And so, when an attractive/smart guy decides to turn himself into something resembling Tab Hunter in King of Kings . . . well, steps have to be taken to bring the boy back to his senses. Especially as I would never sleep with anyone who looks like he’s just stepped out of some Woolworth’s painting of the Sermon on the Mount.”
Long, long pause. Martha took my hand and asked, “You did hear what I just said?”
“Oh yes.”
“And?”
Now it was my turn to lean over and kiss her.
“That was the response I was hoping for,” she said.
“Do you know how hard I fell for you that first night?” I suddenly said.
“You’re asking a question again.”
“So what? I want you to know that.”
She took hold of my jacket and pulled me so close we were tête-à-tête.
“I do know that,” she whispered. “Because I felt that too. But now, say no more.”
And then she gave me another kiss. And said: “Want to try something really different?”
“Absolutely.”
“Let’s keep it to a glass of wine each tonight. Two tops. Because something tells me it would be nice to be relatively sober later on.”
So we stuck to a glass each of Chablis. Then we moved on to the restaurant. We ate oysters and soft-shelled crabs, and I drank one more glass of wine, and we spent the next hour talking a lot of very amusing rubbish that made us both laugh li
ke idiots. And then, when the final dishes were whisked away, and we turned down coffee, she took me by the hand and led me back into the main hotel building and up an elevator and into a large, plush suite. When she shut the door behind us, she took me in her arms and said, “Do you know that standard-issue scene in every Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn movie, where Cary whisks off Kate’s glasses and kisses her madly? I want us to reenact that scene right now.”
We did just that. Only the scene got carried away, as we stumbled backward onto the bed.
And then . . .
Then it was morning. And—surprise, surprise—I woke to discover that I’d slept wonderfully. So wonderfully that, for the first minute or two of quasi-consciousness, I simply lay in bed, replaying the entire extraordinary evening over again in my head. But as I reached over for Martha, my hand touched a wooden object: the framed photo of Caitlin and myself, positioned on the adjoining pillow. I sat up and realized that I was alone in the room. I glanced at my watch. Ten twelve a.m. Then I noticed a black case on the table, with an envelope on top of it. I got up. The envelope said David on the front. Inside:
Dearest David,
I have to go. I will be in touch very soon . . . but, please, let it be me who makes contact.
The object in the case is a little gift for you. If you decide to get rid of it, I will never talk to you again. And as I do want to talk with you again . . . well, I think you can take it from here.
With love,
Martha
I unzipped the case and stared down at a brand-new Toshiba laptop computer.
A few minutes later, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, rubbing my now lightly bristled face. There was a phone to the left of the sink. I picked it up and called the front desk. When the guy on duty answered, I said, “Morning. Is there any chance I might be able to get some shaving stuff sent up to me?”
“No problem, Mr. Armitage. And would you like some breakfast?”
“Just some orange juice and coffee, please.”
“Coming right up, sir. And one final thing: your friend has arranged one of our drivers to take you home.”
“Really?”
“Yes—it’s all taken care of. But checkout time is not until one, so . . .”
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #2 Page 29