“Is this your husband?” she said to Karen.
It was Evelyn Packer.
19
“O
n second thought,” said Evelyn, picking up a puzzle piece, “he couldn’t be your husband—he looks like someone I know rather all too well.” She studied the piece for a moment, then slipped it down the front of her blouse.
“Now, now, Evelyn,” said the nurse: “We’ll never finish our puzzle that way, will we?”
“It’s not
our
puzzle,” Evelyn said. “It’s mine.”
The nurse started to say something, but Karen interrupted. “Thanks for showing us in.”
The nurse closed her mouth and backed out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
Karen pulled up a chair and sat at the table opposite Evelyn. Evelyn picked out another puzzle piece and tried it in several spaces. The borders of the puzzle were done—they were black—and there were clusters of black pieces here and there, some of them silvered. There was also a white shape, somewhat triangular, that might have been a mountaintop. Evelyn’s piece wouldn’t fit. She handed it to Karen and said: “Did you know my father?”
“I never had the pleasure.”
“Don’t be smarmy. Just yes or no.”
“No.”
“You-know-who killed him. He was a fine man. A good man. He never abused me in any way, not the mental way or the physical way or the sexual way. Unlike a certain aforementioned I could mention.” Her gaze rose, fastened for a moment on Eddie. Then she looked quickly away and whispered to Karen, a symbolic whisper, audible to anyone in the room: “Who is he?”
“Don’t you know?” said Karen.
“Whisper.”
Karen lowered her voice. “Don’t you know?”
“How would I? I’m not exactly in circulation. What’s the date today?”
Karen told her. Evelyn nodded, as though receiving news at once bad and unsurprising, then found the thread of the conversation. “I don’t even know you either, although you’ve been visiting lately.”
“Karen. Karen de Vere.”
“Evelyn. Evelyn Andrea Manning Packer Nye. Looks like hell, wants to die.”
“Don’t talk like that, Evelyn.”
She brightened.
“No problemo
. What ax are you grinding, Karen? Or is that just the sound of your teeth?” She started laughing, with the expectation that others would join in. None did.
“No ax, Evelyn,” Karen said. “But your father died of heart disease, according to the hospital records.”
“Driven to it,” said Evelyn, “by the aforementioned unmentionable.”
“Driven to heart disease?”
“You’ve never heard of stress?”
Eddie had been standing by the door, perfectly still on the outside, reeling within. He spoke: “Karen.”
Both women looked up at the sound of his voice. There was fear in Evelyn’s eyes; perhaps it wasn’t entirely absent from Karen’s either.
“I want to talk to you.”
Karen rose.
“Oo,” said Evelyn. “Big manny-man.” Then she had another look at Eddie and said, “Sorry.” Karen followed Eddie to the door. As they went out, Eddie heard Evelyn murmur, “Mental, physical, sexual.”
Eddie and Karen stood in the hall outside the library. “What’s going on?” Eddie said.
“In the old days they called it madness. Now we say dysfunctional.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant what are you doing? Why did you bring me here?”
“I thought you could help me.”
“Do what?”
“Shed some light on her situation.”
“Why would I be able to do that?”
“Because you’re her brother-in-law.”
“I don’t know her.”
“How is that possible? She’s been married to your brother for fourteen years. Besides, you already said you did.”
Eddie looked down into Karen’s eyes, saw complexity. Bits of information—Evelyn’s father and his connections, her madness, the $230,000 check—popped up in his mind but refused to cohere. All he knew was that he was being set up. He didn’t know how, why, or by whom, he just knew it was happening.
Karen put her hand on his arm. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” she said. “I meant what I told you at the pond.”
“Did you?” Eddie said. “I think you were pumping me.”
“No.”
Eddie shook off her hand. “And I don’t think Jack called me what you said he did. You invented that, just to divide us.”
Karen’s voice rose. “Think what you want.”
Down the hall a door opened. A man came out. He had a sandy mustache. Eddie recognized him from the health club: he’d peeked twice through the window of the steam bath, once before Karen entered, once after. Now he was here, living proof. Karen waved him away, too late.
“Where’s the woman in the pink leotard?” Eddie said.
“What are you talking about?” Karen said, but her eyes shifted.
“And next time you’re pretending to be blind as a bat, don’t let anyone see your contacts.”
“Everything all right?” said the man with the sandy mustache, coming down the hall.
“Please, Eddie,” Karen said, “I’ve got to talk to you.”
“I don’t talk to cops.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“He is.”
One of the mustached man’s hands disappeared inside his
jacket. Arrest, Eddie knew, was next. Arrest, trial, prison. He knew the drill.
Eddie didn’t think. He just let things happen. Things like snatching the tortoiseshell glasses off Karen’s face and flinging them at the mustached man.
“Hold it right there,” the man said.
Things like moving, the way he could move. The mustached man had time to get his gun out, but not raise it, before Eddie hit him. The mustached man went down. Instant disorder. Eddie ran from it, down the parquet hall, past many rooms, to the front door, out. He kept going, down the lane, through the gateposts with the carved owl heads on top, into some woods across the road. There he stopped, listened for sounds of pursuit. Hearing none, he stayed where he was.
Through the trees Eddie could see lights in the windows of the Mount Olive Extended Care Residence and Spa. He felt like a barbarian coming upon an outpost of civilization: much safer where he was. A few minutes later clouds slid across the moon, blackening the night. Eddie felt safer yet. Then it began to rain. He didn’t care.
Not long after that, headlights appeared in the lane. Two cars drove out, the first a sedan, the second Karen’s Japanese two-seater. They turned onto the road and sped away. Eddie waited until their taillights vanished before leaving the woods.
He recrossed the road, went back through the gate, cut over the lawn to the library end of the house. He peered through a mullioned window.
Evelyn was sitting in the chair by the fire, shaking her head no. The nurse was standing over her, saying something Eddie couldn’t hear. They went on like that, the nurse talking, Evelyn shaking her head. After a while the nurse took Evelyn’s hand. Evelyn snatched it away. The nurse took it again, this time in both of hers. Evelyn tried to free herself, but failed. The nurse pulled Evelyn to her feet and led her from the room.
Eddie backed away from the house. Soon a light went on in an upstairs room, directly over the library. The nurse appeared
in the window. She drew the curtains. A few seconds passed, long enough for her to cross the room. The light went out.
Eddie moved under a tree. Rain fell on him through the leafless branches. He wiped the top of his head, felt the stubble. Gray stubble: that made him mad.
Room by room, the house darkened. Eddie waited until every light had gone out except the one in the front hall. He approached the library and examined the windows. Casement windows—he remembered the name from one of the Inspector Maigret books—hinged on the outside, opening in the middle. He put his hand in the middle and pushed, not hard. The window didn’t budge. Eddie pushed harder, then much harder. The window gave, not without a splintering sound. Eddie stood still, waiting for an alarm, running footsteps, an anxious voice. There was none of that. He placed his hands on the sill and climbed into the library.
The fire in the grate burned low. It gave off enough light for Eddie to see that the jigsaw puzzle was finished. The black pieces were the night sky, the silvered ones were moonlight on the sea, the white triangle was the tip of an iceberg, the great blank space was now filled with the
Titanic
, steaming across the puzzle toward its doom. Only one piece was missing: the red base of the
Titanic’s
foremost smokestack.
Eddie walked out into the darkness of the corridor. The tassel loafers clicked on the parquet. Eddie took them off. Light glowed in the entrance hall. He moved toward it, soundless in his stocking feet.
Eddie reached the entrance hall. To his left was a desk. A man in a security-guard uniform had his head on it. To Eddie’s right, broad stairs led up into darkness. Eddie climbed them to the top.
The second-floor corridor was carpeted and lit with dim ceiling lights every ten or fifteen feet. Eddie walked past closed doors toward the end. Through one of them he heard a man muttering about Jesus.
The door to the last room, over the library, was closed too. Eddie put his hand on the knob and turned it. The door opened. Eddie went in.
The room was dark. Eddie couldn’t see a thing. He advanced
with little sliding steps across the floor, his hands out in front of him, until he touched the wall. Then he felt along it for the curtains, found them, drew the string. Moonlight flooded in; the sky had cleared again. Eddie turned to the bed. Evelyn was lying in it, her eyes open, reflecting back the moonlight.
Eddie spoke quietly. “That was a good job you did on the puzzle, when no one was watching.”
Evelyn spoke quietly too. “Thank you, manny-man.”
“Don’t you know me?” Eddie said.
“Sure. You’re the new inmate.”
Eddie felt that chill again, across his shoulders, down his spine. He sat on the bed. She went still. “Evelyn, what happened to you?”
“Since when?”
“Since we knew each other.”
“When was that? I’ve forgotten so many memories. It’s all because of the brain-loss diet they’ve got me on.”
“We met at Galleon Beach,” Eddie said.
There was a silence. Evelyn’s eyes moved, changing the angle of reflection of the moonlight. “I remember Galleon Beach,” she said.
“Then you remember me.”
She looked at him. “You’re the unfortunate bro.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of what the pigs did to you.”
“What pigs?”
“The wild ones. They’ve got wild pigs down there. You know that, if you are who you say you are. I was married to one. Then I married a much wilder one.”
“Jack?”
“The aforementioned. He had designs on me. The same designs as Pig One, only bigger.”
“What designs?”
Evelyn sat up. “You’re a spy. Like Ms. de Cool.”
“I’m not. I just want some answers, that’s all.”
“Then you’ve got to ask questions, silly.” She lay back down. “Pharmaceuticals kicking in,” she said, and closed her eyes.
“Evelyn?”
“I hear you loud and clear. Over.”
“I’ve got a question.”
“Shoot. Over. And say
over
. Over.”
“Why did Jack get kicked out of USC?”
She opened her eyes. “Raleigh should have been kicked out too.”
“What did they do?”
“Does it matter now? Except that it’s how he got his foot in the door. In retrospect, if you take my meaning. He was clever. He knew how to sacrifice the pawn to topple the king.”
“What door are you talking about?”
“The same door Brad stuck his stinky foot in—the door to my father’s influence. Did you know him?—Daddy, I’m talking about, not Stinky.”
“No. What kind of influence did he have?”
“Contacts. From his practice, from Yale, from Groton. How do you think the aforementioned got started in the fleecing business?”
“Tell me.”
She started talking faster. “And it wasn’t enough. He wanted money too. Well, the joke is, Daddy didn’t have a lot of money, not the kind of money the big dreamers call a lot. Brad got himself punched by that punch line too. But it served him right for all his unfaithfulness.” She began to laugh, harsh and unpleasant. “I owe you thanks.”
“For what?”
“For fucking his little fuckee. Pardon my French.” She stared at Eddie. “But they made you pay. I forgot. So what good are thanks?”
“What do you mean—they made me pay?”
“Click,” said Evelyn. “Channel change. I’m tired of all your questions. Here’s one for you—why can’t men be faithful? Answer me that.”
“Were you having an affair with Jack at Galleon Beach?”
Evelyn’s voice rose. “What a nasty suggestion. I couldn’t help myself. Now go away.”
“Not till you tell me who made me pay.”
She thought. He could feel her thinking, feel her giving up.
“The details are sketchy, like all details. Why not ask the cook? Or should I say
aks
?”
“The cook in this place?”
“What would he know? I’m talking about JFK.”
“That’s a good idea. Where is he?”
“Don’t take that patronizing tone.”
“Where is he?”
“Around. He showed up for money, like a lot of jetsam in the aforementioned’s glory days.”
“Around where?”
“Try the hospices.”
“What hospices?”
“In the city. Or ask the aforementioned.” She laughed the harsh laugh again. “On second thought, don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Footsteps sounded outside the door. Eddie froze. Evelyn smiled at him, moonlight gleaming on her teeth. “You’re gonna get it,” she said.
Eddie put his finger to his lips. She grew solemn, then quickly pressed something into his hand. Eddie dropped down on the floor, rolled against the wall.
The footsteps came closer. The nurse said: “Can’t sleep, dear?”
“Yes, I can. I’m very good at it.”
“Then why don’t you, instead of talking to yourself?”
“I’m not talking to myself.”
“I could hear you all the way down the hall.”
“That doesn’t prove your insinuation in all its particulars.”
“And how do you expect to sleep with your curtains open?”
“I like the moonlight in Vermont, or anywhere in the lower forty-eight, for that matter.”