The Victim

by W. E. B Griffin

  He tried to handle the problem himself. He was, after all, no longer a little boy who had to run to Daddy with every little problem but a grown man, a university graduate, and a police officer.

  His next learning experience was how insurance companies regarded their potential liability in insuring unmarried males under the age of twenty-five who drove automobiles with 140-mile-per-hour speedometers that were fancied by car thieves and whose previous insurance had been canceled. Five insurance agents as much as laughed at him, and the sixth thought he might be able to get Matt coverage whose premium would have left Matt not quite one hundred dollars a month from his pay to eat, drink, and be merry. At that point he went see Daddy.

  The next Monday morning, a letter on crisp, engraved stationery, the letterhead of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester, Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, Philadelphia, went out to the general counsel of the First Continental Assurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut. It was signed by J. Dunlop Mawson, senior partner, and began, “My Dear Charley,” which was a rather unusual lack of formality for anyone connected with Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester.

  But Colonel Mawson had quickly come to the point. Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester was representing Matthew W. Payne, he said, and it was their intention to sue First Continental Assurance Company for breach of contract, praying the court to award $9,505.07 in real damages and $2 million in punitive damages.

  Six days later, possibly because the general counsel of First Continental recalled that when they had been socked with a $3.5 million judgment against the Kiley Elevator Company after a hotel guest had been trapped for eight hours in an elevator, thereby suffering great mental pain and anguish, the plaintiff had been represented by Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester, Matt had both a check for $9,505.07 and a letter stating that First Continental Assurance Company deeply regretted the misunderstanding and that they hoped to keep the favor of his business for many years.

  A week later, after the Porsche mechanic told him that after a smash like that, getting the rear quarter panel and knocking the engine off its mounts, cars were never quite right, Matt took delivery of a new one, and the old one was sent off to be dismantled for parts.

  It was generally believed by Matt’s fellow officers that with a car like that he got laid a lot, so how could he miss?

  But this was not the case. When he thought about that, and sometimes he thought a lot about it, he realized that he had spent a lot more time making the beast with two backs when he was still at U of P than he had lately.

  He had once thought that if the activity had been charted, the delightful physical-encounters chart would show a gradual increase during his freshman and sophomore years, rising from practically zero to a satisfactory level halfway through his sophomore year. Then the chart would show a plateau lasting through his junior year, then a gradual decline in his senior year. Since his graduation and coming on the job, the chart would show a steep decline, right back to near zero, with one little aberration.

  He had encountered a lady at the FOP Bar, off North Broad Street, a divorcee of thirty-five or so who found young policemen fascinating. He did not like to dwell on the aberration on the declining curve.

  There were reasons for the decline, of course. In school there seemed to be a pairing off, some of which had resulted in engagements and even marriage. He had never met anyone he wanted to pair with. But there had been a gradual depletion of the pool of availables.

  And once he’d graduated and shortly afterward come on the job, he had fallen out of touch with the girls he knew at school and at home.

  Tonight, he hoped, the situation might be different. He had met a new girl. He almost had blown that but hadn’t. He had heard that God takes care of fools and drunks, and he thought he qualified on both counts.

  Her name was Amanda Chase Spencer. She had graduated that year from Bennington. Her family lived in Scarsdale and they had a winter place in Palm Beach. So far he liked Amanda very much, which was rather unusual, for it had been his experience, three times that he could immediately call to mind, that strikingly beautiful blond young women of considerable wealth, impeccable social standing, and, in particular those who went to Bennington, were usually a flaming pain in the ass.

  Matt had met Amanda only four days before, at the beginning of what they were now calling “the wedding week.” He had not at first been pleased with the prospect. When informed by the bridegroom-to-be that it had been arranged that he serve as escort to Miss Spencer throughout the week, his response had been immediate and succinct: “Fuck you, Chad, no goddamn way!”

  Chad was Chadwick T. Nesbitt IV (University of Pennsylvania ’73) of Bala-Cynwyd and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where he was a second lieutenant, United States Marine Corps Reserve. Matt Payne and Chad Nesbitt had been best friends since they had met, at age seven, at Episcopal Academy. No one was surprised when Chad announced that Matt would be his best man when he married Miss Daphne Elizabeth Browne (Bennington ’73) of Merion and Palm Beach.

  “I told you,” Mr. Payne had firmly told Lieutenant Nesbitt, “the bachelor party and the wedding, and that’s it.”

  “She’s Daffy’s maid of honor,” Chad protested.

  “I don’t give a damn if she’s queen of the nymphomaniacs, no, goddammit, no.”

  “You don’t like girls anymore?”

  “Not when more than two or three of them are gathered together for something like this. And I’ve got a job, you know.”

  “Tell me about it, Kojak,” Chad Nesbitt had replied.

  “Chad, I really don’t have the time,” Matt Payne said. “Even if I wanted to.”

  “I’m beginning to think you’re serious about this, buddy.”

  “You’re goddamn right I’m serious.”

  “Okay, okay. Tell you what. Show up for the rehearsal and I’ll work something out.”

  “All I have to do is show up sober in a monkey suit and hand you the ring. I don’t have to rehearse that.”

  “It’s tails, asshole, you understand that? Not a dinner jacket.”

  “I will dazzle one and all with my sartorial elegance,” Payne said.

  “If you don’t show up for the rehearsal, Daffy’s mother will have hysterics.”

  That was, Matt Payne realized, less a figure of speech than a statement of fact. Mrs. Soames T. Browne was prone to emotional outbursts. Matt still had a clear memory of her shrieking “You dirty little boy” at him the day she discovered him playing doctor with Daphne at age five. And he knew that nothing that had happened since had really changed her opinion of his character. He knew, too, that she had tried to have Chad pick someone else to serve as his best man.

  “Okay,” Matt Payne had said, giving in. “The rehearsal, the bachelor dinner, and the wedding. But that’s it. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Lieutenant Nesbitt had said, shaking his hand and smiling, then adding, “You rotten son of a bitch.”

  Matt Payne had been waiting inside the vestibule of St. Mark’s Protestant Episcopal Church on Locust Street, between Rittenhouse Square and South Broad Street in central Philadelphia, when the rehearsal party arrived in a convoy of three station wagons, two Mercurys, and a Buick.

  Mrs. Soames T. Browne, who was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a flowing light blue silk dress briefly offered Matt Payne a hand covered in an elbow-length glove.

  “Hello, Matthew. How nice to see you. Be sure to give my love to your mother and father.”

  “I’ll do that, Mrs. Browne,” Matt said. “Thank you.”

  She did not introduce him to the blonde with Daffy.

  “Come along, girls,” Mrs. Browne said, snatching back her hand and sweeping quickly through the vestibule into the church.

  “I’m Matt Payne,” Matt said to the blonde, “since Daffy apparently isn’t going to introduce us.”

  “Sorry,” Daffy said. “Amanda, Matt. Don’t be nice to him; he’s being a real prick.”r />
  “Who is Daffy Browne and why is she saying all those terrible things about me?”

  “You know damn well why,” Daffy said.

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” Matt said.

  “Well, for one thing, Matt, Amanda won’t have a date for the cocktail party after the rehearsal.”

  “I thought I was going to be her date.”

  “Chad said you flatly refused,” Daffy said.

  “He must have been pulling your chain again,” Matt said. “He has a strange sense of humor.”

  “He does not,” Daffy said loyally.

  “He was suspended from pool privileges at Rose Tree for a year for dropping Tootsie Rolls in the swimming pool,” Matt said. “That isn’t strange?”

  It took Amanda a moment to form in her mind the mental image of Tootsie Rolls floating around a swimming pool, and then she bit her lip to keep from smiling.

  “Is that true?” Amanda asked.

  “Goddamn you, Matt!” Daffy said, making it clear it was true.

  “The mother of the bride made one of her famous running dives into the pool,” Matt went on. “Somewhere beneath the surface she opened her eyes and saw one of the Tootsie Rolls. She came out of the pool like a missile from a submarine.”

  Amanda laughed, a hearty, deep belly laugh. Matt liked it.

  “My father wanted to award her a loving cup,” Matt said, “inscribed ‘to the first Rose Tree matron who has really walked on water,’ but my mother wouldn’t let him.”

  “I absolutely refuse to believe that,” Daffy Browne said. “Matt, you’re disgusting!”

  Mrs. Soames T. Browne reappeared.

  “Darling, the rector would like a word with you,” she said, and led her into the church.

  Amanda smiled at Matt Payne.

  “You are going to the cocktail party?” she asked.

  He nodded. “And the dinner. As a matter of fact, Amanda, whither thou goest, there also shall Payne go. That’s from the Song of Solomon, in case you’re a heathen and don’t know your Bible.”

  She chuckled and put her hand on his arm. “I’m glad,” she said.

  “Pay close attention inside,” Matt said. “You and I may well be going through some barbarian ritual like this ourselves in the very near future.”

  She met his eyes for a moment, appraisingly.

  “Chad tells me that you’ve taken a job with the city,” she said, smoothly changing the subject.

  “Is that what he told you?” Matt asked dryly.

  “Was he pulling my chain too?”

  “No.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Street cleaning.”

  “Street cleaning?”

  “Right now I’m in training,” Matt said. “Studying the theory and history, you see. But one day soon I hope to have my own broom and garbage can on wheels.”

  “City Sanitation, in other words? Aren’t you ever serious?”

  “I was serious a moment ago, when I said you should pay close attention to the barbaric ritual.”

  The only thing that hadn’t been just fine with Amanda in the time since he’d met her in the vestibule at St. Mark’s was that he hadn’t been able to get her alone. There had always been other people around and no way to separate from the group.

  He had managed to kiss her, twice. The night before last he had tried to kiss her at the Merion Cricket Club, before Madame Browne had hauled her off in the station wagon. She had turned her face at the last second and all he got was a cheek. A very nice cheek, to be sure, but just a cheek. Last night she had not turned her face as she prepared to enter what he thought of as the Barque of the Vestal Virgins to be hauled off from the Rose Tree Hunt Club to the Browne place in Merion.

  It had not been a kiss that would go down in the history books to rank with the one Delilah gave Samson before she gave him the haircut, but it had been on the lips, and they were sweet lips indeed, and his heart had jumped startlingly.

  Tonight they would be alone. The Brownes were entertaining, especially their out-of-town guests, at cocktails and dinner at the Union League in downtown Philadelphia. It was tacitly admitted to be an old-folks’ affair, and the young people could leave after dinner. Amanda liked jazz, another character trait he found appealing. So, they would go listen to jazz. With a little luck the lights would be dim. She probably would let him hold her hand, and possibly permit even other manifestations of affection.

  If the gods favored him, after they left the jazz joint she would accept his invitation to see his apartment. There, he wasn’t sure what he would do. On one hand, he would cheerfully sacrifice one nut and both ears to get into Amanda’s pants, but on the other, she was clearly not the sort of girl from whom one could expect a quick piece of tail. Amanda Spencer was the kind of girl one marched before an altar and promised to be faithful to until death did you part.

  Matt Payne was very much aware that he could fuck up the whole relationship by making a crude pass at her. He didn’t want to do that.

  God only knows what that goddamn Daffy has told her about me. Going back to me talking her out of her pants when we were five.

  The residence of Mr. and Mrs. Soames T. Browne in Merion was an adaptation, circa 1890, of an English manor house, circa 1600. The essential differences were that the interior dimensions were larger and there was inside plumbing. But everything else was there: a forest of chimneys, a cobblestone courtyard, enormous stone building blocks, turretlike protrusions, leaded windows, ancient oaks, formal gardens, and an entrance that always reminded Matt of a movie he’d seen starring Errol Flynn as Robin Hood. In the movie, when the heavy oak door had swung slowly open, Errol Flynn had run the door opener through with a sword.

  The heavy oak door swung open and an elderly black man in a gray cotton jacket stood there.

  “I’m very glad to see you, Matt,” the Brownes’ butler said.

  “Why do you say that, Mr. Ward?” Matt asked. He had known the Brownes’ butler, and his wife, all of his life.

  “Because the consensus was that you wouldn’t show and I’d wind up driving Daffy’s friend into town,” Ward said. “They’re all gone.”

  “This one’s sort of special,” Matt confessed.

  “It was her and me against everybody else,” Ward said. “She insisted on waiting for you.”

  “Really?” Matt replied, pleased.

  “I’ll go tell her you’re here,” Ward said. “There’s a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen, if that interests you.”

  “No thank you. I’ll just wait.”

  He watched the elderly man slowly start to ascend the stairs. He had taken only four or five steps when Amanda appeared at the top and started down.

  “See?” she said to the butler. “We were right.” She looked at Matt. “I saw you drive up. I love the car, but you don’t strike me as the Porsche type.”

  “I can get a gold chain and unbutton my shirt to the navel. if you like,” Matt said.

  She had come up to him by then.

  “No thank you.” She chuckled, then surprised him by kissing him on the lips.

  “Hot damn!” he said.

  “Draw no inferences,” she said. “I’m just a naturally friendly person.”

  When he got behind the wheel and looked at Amanda as she got in beside him, he remembered too late that he had forgotten to hold the door for her.

  “I should have held the door for you,” he said. “Sorry. My mother says I have the manners of a cossack.”

  She laughed again, and all of a sudden it occurred to him that their faces were no more than six inches apart—and nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  “God, that was nice!” he said a moment later.

  “Drive,” she said. “Has this thing got a vanity mirror?”

  “A what?”

  She pulled the visor down and found what she was looking for.

  “That’s a vanity mirror,” she said, and replenished her lipstick. “You’ve probably got some lipstick on you.”<
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  “I will never wash again.”

  She handed him a tissue.

  “Take it off,” she ordered, and he complied.

  “These are really nice wheels,” she said a short while later. “But I bet all the girls tell you that.”

  “My graduation present,” Matt said.

  “You already dinged it,” Amanda said.

  “You mean the cracked turn-signal lens?” he asked, surprised that she had noticed it. “That’s nothing. You should have seen what happened to my first Porsche. That was totaled.”

  “Are you putting me on?”

  “Not at all. A guy in a van ran into the back and really clobbered it.”

  “I think I would have killed him.”

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” Matt said. “Took out my trusty five-shooter and blew his brains out.”

  He heard her inhale. After a moment she said, “You mean six-shooter,” and then added, “That wasn’t funny. Sometimes, Matt, you don’t know where to draw the line.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That was the pot calling the kettle black,” she said. “I’m sorry, I had no right to say that to you.”

  “You have blanket authority to say anything you want to me.”

  He gave into the temptation and grabbed her hand. When she didn’t object and withdraw it, he kissed it. Then she pulled it free.

  “Am I going to have trouble with you tonight?”

  “No,” he said. “We do what you want to do, and nothing else.”

  “Funny, I thought you were going to offer to show me your etchings.”

  “I don’t have any etchings,” he said.

  “But you do have an apartment, right?”

  “You’re supposed to wait until I ask you before you indignantly tell me you’re not that kind of girl,” Matt said.

  She laughed, the genuine laugh Matt had come to like.

  “Touché,” she said.

  “After we escape from this dinner, would you like to see my apartment?”

  “I’m not that kind of girl.”

  “I was afraid of that,” he said. “No, that’s not true. I knew that. You brought this whole thing up. I’m getting a bum rap.”