Death at Charity's Point (18 page)

She stared at me for a moment, then averted her eyes. She pulled her hands away, reached under the table, and slid two postcards toward me. “Explain these, then.”

I looked at them. They were picture postcards, the kind with spaces for a short message and an address on one side, and a gaudy, color photograph on the reverse. Florence’s name and address had been printed by hand in capital letters on each. The places for the message had been left blank. One was postmarked November 10, 1973. It had been mailed from Ketchikan, Alaska. The second bore a postmark from Pittsburg, New Hampshire. Florence must have received it a couple of weeks earlier.

I flipped them over. The one from Alaska showed a snow capped mountain. The New Hampshire postcard featured an autumn farm scene, resplendent with golden maples and a red barn.

I looked up at Florence. “I don’t get it.”

“They’re from Win.”

“What makes you think so?”

She smiled. “It’s just the sort of thing he’d do. Even as a little boy he preferred little secrets and surprises and mysteries. He always signed my birthday cards, ‘Guess who?’ He liked to hide behind the furniture and jump out yelling ‘Boo!’ Besides,” she added, “how else can you explain them?”

I shook my head. “I think there are probably several logical explanations. For example, people go on trips. They bring lists of people to send postcards to. They buy a batch, lug them back to their hotel, address them all at once, copying from their list, stick stamps on them, and drop them all in the mail without remembering to write, ‘Having fun, wish you were here’ on them.”

Florence cocked her eyebrows at me.

“Or maybe,” I said, “whoever sent them just assumed you’d know who they were from. Listen, there’s no reason to believe they’re even from the same person. The printing doesn’t look particularly similar.”

“I think they’re from the same person. Win.”

I sighed. “I suppose you’ll believe what you want to believe. But I don’t think it’s healthy. Now that you’ve lost George, you’re trying to resurrect Win. It’s a sad, sad business, Florence. But you have lost both of your sons. You’ve really got to accept that.”

She glared at me. “Win is alive.”

“Look,” I said. “If you believed this postcard from Alaska was from Win, why didn’t you show it to me when you received it?”

She stared down at the table. “I wasn’t sure it
was
from Win. Not then. I knew it could’ve been just wishful thinking. I mean, I knew I wanted it to be from him, you see.”

“But now…?”

“Now I’m more certain. Now I’ve seen this picture in the paper, and I’ve received this other postcard.” She looked up at me. “Look, Brady. I know exactly how this must sound to you. A foolish old lady with all her heirs gone. A lonely old bag losing her grip, confusing her dreams with the facts. But that really isn’t how it is. I think Win’s alive. I’ve always felt it. Now I feel that I know it. These postcards, this picture, they just confirm what I’ve always felt. Will you find him for me? Or, if you can, prove once and for all that he’s dead? Either one will put my mind to rest.”

“What about George?”

“Okay,” she said. “George first. Then Win.”

I nodded. “I concede. But I think it’s fruitless.”

“Then prove it to me. If the man in that picture isn’t Win, so be it. If I have some secret admirer who likes to send anonymous postcards, okay. I just want to know, once and for all.”

I shrugged. I copied the dates and postmarks into my notebook. Then I handed the postcards to Florence.

She carefully folded the newspaper and placed it beside her on the table. She set the framed portrait of her son as a young soldier face down on top of it, and placed the postcards on the picture. Then she handed me a manila envelope. “Well,” she said. “This is what you came for. I’ll be damned if I know what good it’ll do us, but you might as well have it.”

I accepted the envelope from her, opened the flap, and pulled out George’s photocopy of the
Atlantic Monthly
article. I glanced at it for a moment, then slid it back. I stood. “I’ll take it along,” I said.

She rose, and we walked together around the house to my car. “You still think George jumped, don’t you?” Florence said.

“Seems that way. I talked with his psychiatrist this morning.”

“Psychiatrist?”

“Doctor Wertz. His name was on George’s Blue Shield forms.”

“Was George disturbed?”

“Not really disturbed. A little depressed, maybe. The point is, George seemed to think he needed help.”

“And you think that suggests he would kill himself.”

“It fits.”

We walked back to where I had parked my car. I climbed in and started up the engine. Florence stood by the door. I lifted my hand to her.

“I’ll be in touch,” I said. “And please try not to let yourself get too hopeful about Win. Let’s just concentrate on George.”

“And don’t get too hopeful about him, either,” she added sourly.

“They’re both dead,” I said.

She shook her head and turned away. I shifted the car into gear and drove slowly around the long, curving drive, then headed back toward Boston.

“Any calls?” I asked Julie when I walked into the office.

“That anything like ‘Good morning, Julie, and did you have a pleasant weekend?”

“Sorry,” I said. I sat in a chair opposite her desk. “How was your weekend?”

“Shitty,” she said. “Edward had to work. You?”

I thought about my evening with Rina Prescott. “I worked, too,” I said.

“Frank Paradise. Waiting for your report, thank you very much; he’ll be in touch. Mrs. DeVincent. Still on the dogs. Miss Prescott from the school. No message, will try another time. Mr. McDevitt reminding you of your luncheon date tomorrow. Office supply salesman. I handled him. Someone from the Bar Association about you joining some committee. I told him you’d get back to him.” Julie slapped the pages in her notebook. “That’s it.”

“So who’ve I gotta call?”

“Mrs. DeVincent. I think you better call her. She sounded itchy. Bar Association guy—let’s see—a Mr. Kelsey. I’ve got the number. The rest you don’t need to call.”

“Miss Prescott left no message?”

Julie glanced up at me. “I told you, no.”

I heaved myself out of my chair. “Okay. We can do those calls later on. I’ve got some paperwork to go over. Why don’t you put on the machine and get yourself some lunch.”

“What’s the matter? Can’t answer the telephone yourself?”

“Sure I can. Don’t want to. Anyhow, how do you think it would appear if I answered my own phone?”

“Appear?” Julie threw her hands into the air and flopped back into her seat. “
Appear?
Jesus, Coyne, is that what I am? An
appearance
?”

“Aw, you know what I mean.”

“Sure I do. Damn straight I do. That any successful
male
attorney has to have a dumb-headed silly female to answer the phone for him, and buy
birthday
presents for his mistresses, and go get his
Red
Sox tickets, and all that shit. That phone answering is
beneath
any important
male
-type person. That…”

I held up both hands in surrender. “Whoa! I concede. Enough. I’m new at this equality stuff, you know. I’m learning everything I know from you, remember. I’m trying. Honest.”

Julie grinned. “Yeah? Well, you’re a damn slow learner. When it comes to this, I think you’ve got a severe learning disability. Okay. You want to do some uninterrupted reading while I’m at lunch, I’ll put on the answering machine. Just don’t tell me it has something to do with appearances, that’s all.”

I held out my hand to her. “Okay. Forgiven?”

She shook my hand. “Sure.”

Julie began to move things around on her desk, and I went into my office. Something occurred to me. I opened the top drawer of my desk and rummaged among the pencils, half-opened packs of Winstons, bottles of aspirin and antacid pills, and assorted papers. I tried the other drawers. I went to the wall safe, spun the dial, and poked around. Then I went back to Julie.

“Do you remember what I did with that address book?”

She frowned. “What address book?”

“George Gresham’s. The one I got when I was at the school with Florence. I put it someplace.”

She shrugged. “I never saw any address book.”

“Maybe I took it home. I’ll check there.”

“Right. It’s probably there. I never saw it.” Julie put on her jacket. “I’m off. The machine is on. You’ll never miss me.”

I leered at her. “The machine seems to lack a certain something.”

“Slow learner, nothing,” she said. “You’re retarded.” She blew me a kiss and swirled out the door.

I went back into my office, armed with a mug of coffee and the manila envelope Florence had given me. I sat on the sofa, slipped my shoes off, and put my feet up on the coffee table.

It bothered me that I couldn’t find that address book. As I thought about it, I couldn’t remember removing it from my jacket while I was in the office. I supposed I’d find it at home.

I lit a cigarette, sipped from my mug, and slid the
Atlantic
article from the envelope.

It was entitled “Who Are the New American Radicals?” Percy at the library had been pretty close. George Gresham, I assumed, had drawn heavy brackets around the first several paragraphs, and, for good measure, had added two big exclamation points in the right-hand margin. I read it.

Early in the morning of June 19, 1971, before even the milkmen had begun their rounds, the quiet of Norton Street in Queens was rocked by an explosion. Within minutes the five-story brick apartment building at number 72 lay in a smoldering heap of rubble.

When the Fire Department and the Bomb Squad and the NYPD and the FBI completed their investigations, the world was told that the blast had been produced by a group known to the radical underground as “The Sewing Circle”—an unlikely sorority of wealthy college girls devoted to the cause of creating anarchy and bringing the “corrupt establishment” to its knees.

In a joint statement issued to the press, the authorities reconstructed the event as follows:

“Five young women were constructing pipe bombs in the basement of 72 Norton Street, the apartment building owned by Martin Cashen, the father of one of the young women. Huge quantities of nitroglycerin, a very volatile and unstable explosive, were stored there. This material was accidentally detonated—probably as a result of careless smoking.

“It is believed that all five young women were killed by the powerful blast.

“The so-called ‘Sewing Circle’ has publicly claimed responsibility for three recent bombings of Federal buildings, in which a total of eleven people were killed—the courthouse in Chicopee, Massachusetts, a post office in Brooklyn, and an Army recruiting center in Concord, New Hampshire.

“In each of these three cases, the ‘Sewing Circle’ claimed to have acted ‘on behalf of exploited victims of capitalist greed in Amerika (sic) and in Southeast Asia.’

“The five victims of the blast are: Melissa Cashen, Bennington, ’72; Barbara O’Callahan, Bennington, ’71; Carla Steinholtz, Brandeis, ’71; Monica Pratt, Vassar, ’73; and Evelyn Blondaro, Smith, ’71.”

George Gresham had drawn a circle around the name of Carla Steinholtz and written “SP” beside it in large, angry letters—just as he had on Harvey Willard’s paper. Evidently both Harvey and the author of the article had trouble with spelling. It was the sort of detail, I concluded, that would annoy the careful scholar.

The article continued, no longer quoting the “joint statement”:

What has fired the imagination of the American public—and what has struck terror into the heart of every American parent—is the background of the members of the “Sewing Circle.” The five young women who met their death in that early morning explosion were America’s future—bright, well-educated, popular, attractive.

Martin Cashen, father of one of the victims, said in a recent interview, “I thought I knew my little girl. And her friends—they seemed like nice kids. Clean-cut, polite. They had all the advantages. Where did we go wrong?”

Where, indeed, did we go wrong? What has happened to the fabric of American society, that five young women would set out to destroy it, and in the process, tragically, themselves?

The rest of the article reviewed the history of underground anarchists of the Sixties—the Weathermen, the Black Panthers,
et al.
—linking the phenomenon of their appearance with the “imperialist” war in Southeast Asia, the Civil Rights movement, and the Women’s Liberation movement. The author found significance in the backgrounds of each of the five women. They had come from wealthy families, their fathers were upper-level managers of giant corporations, they had all been “model” students in high school. Two of them had been cheerleaders, and all five had been members of the National Honor Society. They had all been liberal arts majors at prestigious and highly selective Eastern private colleges.

I flipped the article onto my desk and sat back in my chair. So what? So it tells me that George Gresham was a painstakingly thorough teacher, willing to double-check the facts in a student’s paper. Certainly if the paper dealt with an area in which George didn’t feel especially competent, he might well want to educate himself further. That would explain the books on his desk. I could understand why he’d want to read the article. But why photocopy it?

I went over to my desk and found Harvey Willard’s paper in the bottom drawer. I took it back to the sofa and read it. I glanced at the
Atlantic
article again. Then I reread Harvey’s paper.

I went back to my desk and buzzed Julie. She didn’t answer. I punched my palm. Still at lunch.

“Damn it, Julie,” I muttered out loud. “I
need
you.”

I
WAITED IN THE
outer office for Julie. When she returned she looked quizzically at me and said, “I’m not late. What’s the matter?”

“Leave the machine on and come on in here, will you?”

“What’d I do?”

“Nothing, Julie. I need you.”

“Ha! He needs me. You know how I hate shorthand.”