The Last Virginia Gentleman
Page 45
“No thanks,” he said. “I’ll get a bite in the restaurant downstairs.”
The housekeeper told May where she could find him. Ignoring the maître d’, she strode on into the restaurant, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room until she noticed him at a table in the far corner, sitting alone, his eyes fixed on the dark Potomac visible outside the wide windows.
He’d hardly touched his food.
“Daddy?”
Startled, he turned toward her uncertainly, as full of apprehension as surprise. She’d never seen him look so vulnerable, so old.
She sat down before he could rise. It took a while, but he was the first to speak.
“They told me you didn’t want to see me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I needed sleep.”
“I guess you went through hell up there. I’m afraid I’m at fault for some of it. I’m sorry, May. I had no idea about Bernie. None. I probably should have, but when someone’s been such a help to you, for so long …” This sounded so futile and small. He regretted saying it. “I finally woke up. I did what I could. I wish it had been more.”
“I know that, Daddy. It was on the news driving in from Virginia, about Bernie’s being arrested, about how you and the FBI set it up.”
“He made bond immediately. They should have set it at a billion dollars.”
“He’s dead, Daddy.”
“How can he be dead?”
“Someone put a bomb in his car. There was a woman with him.” She halted, then hurried with the next words. “It wasn’t his wife.”
Moody slumped in his chair. He put his hand over his eyes for a moment, then abruptly took it away. Staring at his plate, he picked up his fork idly, as though to give himself something to do. Then he set it down again, clumsily, causing it to fall onto the tablecloth.
“God.”
“I called your office at the White House. They said you weren’t there. That you had left for good.”
“Yeah. For good.”
“Did they …?”
“I resigned, May. The same way your friend Showers resigned his job. I guess for pretty much the same reason.”
“It meant a lot to you, that job.”
“Not today.”
She had an impulse to touch him. When she was a little girl, and he’d come home from work looking sad and troubled, she used to climb into his lap and hug him. She could still remember the scratchy feel of his chin.
She put her hand on his. During her childhood, his hands had been rough and calloused. Now they were soft and well-manicured. A gentleman’s hands.
“Are you in any danger?” she asked.
This produced a grin. “Not from those New Jersey bastards. They don’t want the kind of trouble that would bring down on them. There’s not much I can testify to, anyway—about that goddamn horse.”
She kept her hand where it was.
“I’m going to be married, Daddy.”
He was more surprised than she had expected.
“Are you?” he said finally. “Do you think our family can stand all that fine Virginia blood?”
“There’s not all that ‘fine Virginia blood,’ Daddy. There’s just David.”
“Are you going to get married out there? All those fox hunting types?”
“It’ll be in West Virginia. It’ll have to be soon. He has to go away. I’ve talked to Momma. That’s why I’m here. She thinks you ought to be at the wedding. She’d like you to be, but she didn’t think you’d want to come.”
He took her hand very tightly. “I’ll come.”
It was dark when Showers and Spencer got back from seeing Alixe in the hospital. Showers sat down on the steps to his porch, not wanting to go inside.
“I’ll take that drink now,” he said. “There should be something in the kitchen.”
“I think I can be persuaded to have a drop myself.”
Spencer returned with a bottle of Virginia Gentleman. He brought no glasses. Seating himself beside his cousin, he removed the cap, took a swig, wiped the mouth clean, and handed the whiskey to Showers.
“Country style,” he said. “Couple of good old boys.”
Showers took a pull himself, holding the bottle on his knee afterward.
“When I used to come here as a kid,” Spencer said, “you and I would go out by the barn and do this.”
“You’ve kept it up.”
“They say it’s habit-forming.”
“Are you ever going to give it up?”
“I’m not in a big hurry, now that I’ve got such a charming drinking buddy.”
In the hospital, Alixe had made a joke. She could hardly wait to get her wooden leg, she said, so she could fill it with Virginia Gentleman.
“She likes you.”
“She’s going to make it. Game girl.”
“So is May.”
“I’ll be your best man, if you want.”
“I’d like that very much.”
Showers’ border collie came bounding out of some distant bushes, barking, to no apparent purpose. Just enjoying himself. He skittered to a stop at Showers’ feet and sat down, waiting to be petted. Showers indulged him.
“Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do?” Spencer asked, taking back the bottle.
“Yes. I made up my mind some time ago, when I was down at Fort A. P. Hill. I’ve already set things in motion. I’m going back into the army.”
“The hell you say.”
“I’m now the oldest captain in my National Guard battalion. In two weeks, I’m probably going to be the oldest major in the Third Army.”
“I thought they were cutting back on manpower.”
“I pulled strings. It’s worth doing sometimes. I’ll have a good six or seven years before I might have to retire, maybe longer. Who knows, I may end up a lieutenant colonel.”
“Why not just join the French Foreign Legion?”
“It’s not like that at all, Jack. I really like the military. I always have. I think I was meant for it. If it hadn’t been for the farm, I would have stayed in the first time.”
“Are you any good at it? I know you killed those men up there.”
“I’m good enough. Perhaps killing someone helps. Not that I enjoyed it very much. But it helps to know you can do it, if it comes to that.”
“How’s it going to work, being married to an actress who’s off doing plays and movies, while you’re mucking around with a bunch of grunts in some swamp?”
“I think it will work very well. What May and I have seems to be pretty portable.”
They drank. An owl swooped among the trees in the woods across the yard, disappearing into the darkness. They heard its soft call a moment after.
“What will you do with this place?”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking about most. I wanted to talk to you about it, before I go through with my plans.”
He stretched out his legs. Spencer waited.
“Do you know about Henry Showers? The man who started this farm back in the 1700s, when it was part of the frontier?”
“I’m sure mother dear must have told me.”
“He was a tanner and a harness maker,” Showers said. “He got this land collecting on a bad debt. We don’t know much about his father, except that he was a dirt farmer in the Piedmont, and that his people had the good luck to arrive here on an English boat, and not some Irish one a hundred years later.
“Out of that they built this ridiculous notion of aristocracy, setting up the Showerses as superior beings, like all the other old dirt-farmer families out here, just because they hung on to this land and made a little money out of horses. There’s a racialist component in it, too, isn’t there? What’s the term, Wasp? English blood and some horse-trading profits and the passage of time somehow translates into nobility, an exalted race, entitled to spit on everyone else. It’s all nonsense, Jack, but that’s what the tradition out here amounts to. The English can’t help it. They’ve been living
with their class system for a thousand years, but this country? It’s no wonder people like Bernie Bloch get such grand, arrogant ideas. Look at the example we set.”
“I don’t recall anyone in the family committing murder, or bribing U.S. senators.”
“Don’t go looking in the records too closely. You might be surprised. The same is true of your side of the clan, too, Mr. Spencer. My mother’s side. That sainted ancestor of ours who came over on the Mayflower? He was a cooper. He made barrels. And not very well, apparently. He died stony broke. It wasn’t until his grandson that a Spencer began making any money, and he got his start selling fish. Yet your mother and my mother treated their listings in the Mayflower Society and the Colonial Dames and the Daughters of the American Revolution and all that garbage as though it were testament to royal descent. And the Social Register. That’s put together by some little old lady no one ever heard of in some dingy office down in lower Manhattan.”
“I’m not sure I get your point. Are you joining the Socialist party?”
“I’m not about to take to the barricades, Jack. I’m just telling you what’s on my mind.”
He took another sip of bourbon. He and his cousin might even go on a real bender that night. It wasn’t necessarily such a bad idea—once every twenty years or so.
“I was in Boston a few years ago,” Showers said. “I wanted to visit that little burying ground off Tremont Street, just down from the Common?—where the original Hester Prynne is buried. What was her name? Elizabeth Pain. Afterward, I went down the hill to where the original Spencer house is supposed to have been. There’s a big glass and steel office building there now. Yet the seas haven’t parted. The earth hasn’t flung up the fires of hell. The firmament is still in place. And you Spencers are doing just fine, except for your drinking habits.”
“And?”
“I want your permission to do what I’m going to do with the farm. I’ve talked to my sister, and she doesn’t mind at all. You’re my only other relation.”
“You’re going to put up an office building?”
“I’m going to give it away.”
Spencer stared down at the ground. “To the Little Sisters of the Poor?”
“No. Don’t worry. My father’s ghost will be appeased. So will my grandfather’s. I’m going to give it to the federal government.”
“Cousin, I think you were in that coal mine too long.”
“The house will be preserved. The local Daughters of the Confederacy will be happy to take it over. After all, Robert E. Lee had breakfast here once. John Mosby fought a little skirmish up on the hill. They can put a plaque up and call it a battle. The rest of it, all the back pasture land, it’s going to be dedicated as a national military cemetery, if the local town fathers will go along, and I don’t know how such patriots could object.”
“Don’t they already have Arlington?”
“That’s nearly full. You have to be very special to get in there. Quantico is filling up, too. There’s going to be quite a need, with so many World War Two veterans beginning to die off now. The Veterans Administration is looking all over the country for new sites.”
Spencer took a long slow drink, then tilted back his head, completely relaxed.
“I don’t mean to be giving you a hard time, cousin,” he said. “I don’t mind the idea at all. I’ve never had much interest in this place.”
“Thank you, Jack.”
“It’s funny to think of it. Old Bob Moody could end up being buried here. He was in Vietnam, wasn’t he?”
“He wouldn’t go here. He won the Silver Star. He’ll go to Arlington.”
“Well, you could end up here, if you’re serious about the army. Sooner or later. If they send you to Belize or some such place, it could be sooner.”
Showers thought of May, how marvelous all the days and weeks and months and years of the rest of his life now promised to be.
“Let’s hope it’s later. I’ve spent enough centuries here as it is.”
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful to two friends and most admirable horse people, Heather Freeman of Berryville, Virginia, and Bob Welsh of Barrington, Illinois, for their help and guidance in the preparation of this book. I would know much less about the world of the horse without them. Author Dick Francis also gave splendid advice.
I must also thank a great many others in and out of government in Washington for their assistance over the years in enhancing my work as a journalist and my knowledge of the capital, including Jeffrey Bergner, Jim Coates, Torrie Clarke, Bob Funseth, Tex Harris, Elaine Povich, Arnie Sawislak, Wendy Webber Toler, and Mary Frances Widner.
My agent, Dominick Abel, and editors Ruth Cavin and Tom Dunne, have my special thanks.
I am grateful to my wife, Pamela, and my sons, Eric and Colin, as only they can know.
I owe a considerable debt to my great-great-grandfather, John Showers of Virginia, who left the Old Dominion and its slavery in pre-Civil War days to migrate to New York, and to his son, William, who died in that war fighting to preserve the Union in which this modern-day story was set. I have resided in both Virginia and West Virginia for many years now, and hope none of the fictional occurrences in this book detract from the deep and abiding affection I bear both states.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Michael Kilian
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1927-9
This 2015 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com
MICHAEL KILIAN
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.
MysteriousPress.com. offers readers essential noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FOLLOW US:
@emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom
MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
The Mysterious Bookshop, founded in 1979, is located in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. It is the oldest and largest mystery-specialty bookstore in America.
The shop stocks the finest selection of new mystery hardcovers, paperbacks, and periodicals. It also features a superb collection of signed modern first editions, rare and collectable works, and Sherlock Holmes titles. The bookshop issues a free monthly newsletter highlighting its book clubs, new releases, events, and recently acquired books.
58 Warren Street
info@mysteriousbookshop.com
(212) 587-1011
Monday through Saturday
11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
FIND OUT MORE AT:
&nb
sp; www.mysteriousbookshop.com
FOLLOW US:
@TheMysterious and Facebook.com/MysteriousBookshop
SUBSCRIBE:
The Mysterious Newsletter
Find a full list of our authors and
titles at www.openroadmedia.com
FOLLOW US
@OpenRoadMedia