The Hunting Trip (14 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Around the turn of the century a man appeared at the offices of the Caldwell Fabric Manufactory in Boston. Somehow, he got into the offices of my great-grandfather, whose son was the first Jonathan Fitzwater Caldwell.

“The man said that he was a bicycle repairman from Detroit and that he intended to transform the world by mass-producing horseless carriages.

“Family legend holds that my great-grandfather had just returned from a rather liquid luncheon, but whether or not that's true, my great-grandfather decided, what the hell, I'll hear this chap out.

“The fellow said that he had already made a half-dozen such vehicles and was ready to really start rolling them out the door ‘by the dozens, or maybe even the hundreds.'

“‘If you're trying to sell me one of your infernal machines, forget it,' Great-grandfather said. ‘The only person I'd like to see get in one is my mother-in-law sixty seconds before it becomes enveloped in flame.'

“The man told him that what he was really after was a large quantity of fabric, preferably but not absolutely necessarily black in color, with which to upholster the seats of his horseless carriages, which would be called ‘Lizzies' after the daughter of a neighbor, Miss Elizabeth Firestone. He said Mr. Firestone had loaned him enough money to put tires on the first Lizzies.

“The man said that what was absolutely necessary
vis-à-vis
the fabric he sought was that it be made available on credit to be paid for after he had produced enough Lizzies to put the nation on wheels.

“Ordinarily, asking for credit would have been enough to see this chap thrown out the window for effrontery, but this was different for
a number of reasons. One was that my great-grandfather had in the warehouses eleven thousand yards of sturdy, black woolen fabric he had ordered loomed for the Roman Catholic Church, who would use it as suiting for their clergy.

“That deal had fallen through when the cardinal archbishop of Boston demanded a substantial discount after the two monsignors, six priests, and two friars who had been issued trial suits for testing all complained that the material was so stiff that they had trouble getting down to their knees to pray and then found it almost impossible to get off their knees when they were finished asking the Good Lord for whatever it was they were asking of Him.

“Great-grandfather knew unloading the eleven thousand yards elsewhere was going to be difficult if not impossible. The material was not up to the sartorial standards of the Episcopals, far above Methodist sartorial standards, and the Lutherans simply didn't have any money and ritually dressed their clergy in Episcopal discards.

“Other reasons may have included that Great-grandfather rather liked the image of my great-great-grandmother being toasted in a flaming Lizzie. And, of course, he had been drinking.

“Whatever the reasons, history tells us that a historic deal was struck that day. The bicycle mechanic from Detroit was given all the sturdy black fabric he needed to upholster his Lizzies at a fair price—cost of manufacture plus ten percent—with payment to be made after Lizzies had ‘rolled off the line' and, it was to be hoped, been purchased. In return, Henry, the bicycle mechanic, signed a contract perpetuating the cost-of-manufacture-plus-ten-percent deal in perpetuity for all the seating material for the Lizzies that Henry could make and foist off on the public.

“About nine months later, Henry reappeared at my great-grandfather's office. Great-grandfather feared he was coming in an attempt to get out of the deal, but that was not the case.

“‘Mr. Caldwell,' Henry said, handing Great-grandfather a check. ‘The line's been running a little faster than I thought it would. Here's a check for the nine thousand yards of your Clerical Black fabric that is already cushioning the bottoms of Lizzie owners, which means the line's supply is down to about two thousand yards. So I urgently need more. How soon can you get another five thousand yards of Clerical Black out to Detroit?'

“‘Henry, two thousand yards will be on this afternoon's Detroit Flyer, with more to follow in the immediate future,'” Great-grandfather said. ‘And I think the time has come that I may permit you to call me Abner.'”

“That, sir,” Phil said, “if I may be permitted to say so, is a fascinating bit of unknown Americana.”

“Why not? Well, where was I? Aha!

“So there I was, son, fresh from saving the world for democracy and having a hell of a good time doing it, and there's my father telling me what he thinks I should do is enroll in MIT and get a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Textile Technology so that I would be prepared to take over the business knowing a little something about fabric.

“I had no choice of course. I had to do what Daddy said, or go get a job like ordinary people, which of course was absolutely out of the
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
question. So I went to MIT and got my doctorate in Polymer Science and Textile Technology.

“I never use the title, of course, out of modesty, except when I call my doctor's office. I had quickly learned if I said, ‘Dr. Caldwell is calling Dr. Chancremechanic' or whatever, they would put me right through to the
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
pill-pusher. Otherwise they would put me on hold. Now when I need a doctor, I have that
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
idiot Brewster, or another member of the West Point Ring Knockers Association who works for me, call up and order one to report to me.

“Where was I? Oh. Then Daddy put me in charge of the Detroit office. The only good thing I can say about that is that I met Victoria there at the Grosse Pointe Country Club.

“When people like you and I, Phil, look up ‘Hell on Earth' in
Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia
or a similar reference work, what we get is a picture of either the Detroit Auto Club or the Grosse Pointe Country Club. The Detroit Auto Club has nothing to do with coming to help when your battery is dead or you have a flat tire. The Detroit Auto Club is full of men who work in the automobile business, and hang out there to talk about Guess What, and the Grosse Pointe Country Club is where their wives go to pick up a little romance.

“I forget why I went to the
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
GPCC that day, as significant a day as it proved to be in my life, but I did. And I came across Victoria near the ninth tee, quietly weeping as she dabbed at her eyes with a lace hankie.

“As strange as I knew the customs of the people out there seem to people like us, Phil, I didn't think any of their women looking for a little romance were so weird as to believe a good way to pick up a man while looking for romance was to stare coldly at him from bloodshot eyes while noisily blowing their nose.

“I took the chance. I tend to take chances where good-looking women are concerned.

“‘May I be of assistance?' I inquired.

“Victoria replied: ‘I wouldn't reply if I didn't hear Harvard in your somewhat nasal voice. Please tell me it's so.'

“‘It is. And please tell me that's Wellesley I hear in yours.'

“‘It is. Until just now, I didn't think there was anyone in Detroit who could distinguish between a Wellesley accent and Adamawa, which is what the poor Ubangi speak. Whatever are you doing in this terrible place?'

“I told her, and she told me, when I posed a counterquestion. Her father was a lawyer involved in the legal problems of failing automobile manufacturers. It was a lucrative practice, as they were falling like pins in a bowling alley, and as her PopPop, as Victoria calls him, naturally was following the lawyer's creed of never getting far from the business entity or person which, or whom, a good barrister can easily shove into bankruptcy, and then onto the street, here she was surrounded by the GPCC and DAC barbarians.

“It was love at first sight, and I said, ‘My dear, let me take you somewhere away from all this.'

“What I had in mind was my suite in the Book Cadillac Hotel, and she came with me, but only as far as the Motor Bar Restaurant & Bar on the ground floor. She said she had a strict rule to never go above the ground floor on a first date.

“The way it turned out, what she meant was that she was going to hold off on getting onto the Book Cadillac elevator until I had, with appropriate ceremony, slipped both a diamond engagement ring—an emerald cut of at least five carats—and a matching wedding ring onto the somewhat bony third finger of her left hand.

“Cutting to the chase again, Victoria and I tied the knot at a small ceremony at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan, presided over by the presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA. The Philadelphia Orchestra played appropriate music, and the Metropolitan Opera sent over a massively bosomed mezzo soprano who sang ‘I Love You Truly.'

“As we came, now Dr. and Mrs. Jonathan Fitzwater Caldwell the Third, down the aisle to the strains of Felix Mendelssohn's ‘Wedding March,' I thought I was hallucinating, for I saw a face from my past among the Standing Room Only guests near the door.

“Because there was no question in my mind that the face belonged to a comrade-in-arms who was now looking up at the grass from an
unmarked grave somewhere in what had been Nazi-occupied France, I attributed the hallucination to the several healthy belts of Famous Pheasant I had taken to give me the courage to go through the nuptials ceremony, and put it from my mind.

“A month later, shortly after returning from our honeymoon to what had been the Dodge Brothers Suite in the Book Cadillac but was now, having been so re-dubbed by Victoria ‘Our Passion Pit,' I received a rather eerie telephone call.

“‘Fitzy, this is Dartmouth Billy,' my caller said.

“‘Bill Colby?' I asked incredulously. ‘It can't be. You're dead!'

“‘Yes, I am. What I want you to do now is tell those thugs guarding your elevator to pass a man named Ralph Peters and his two thugs.'

“‘Who the hell is Ralph Peters?'

“‘I can't tell you that over a nonsecure line. And tell your thugs that if they even look like they're even thinking about patting down me or my thugs looking for weapons, I'll have to kill them. Acknowledge.'

“‘Fitzy acknowledges last Billy. Fitzy out,' I said.

“The phrase brought back many warm memories of World War Two.

“Then I hung up and gave instructions to our security people, and finally turned to Victoria, who was standing there wearing a look that suggested bafflement and absolutely nothing else.

“‘Victoria, my precious,' I said, ‘as much as I hate to say this, you're going to have to put your clothes back on. We are about to receive our first guest. And two of his thugs.'

“Two minutes later, the door opened and two men burst in, weapons drawn, and moved quickly through the apartment.

“‘Clear!' one of them called loudly. ‘Nobody else in here but a skinny bimbo pulling on her panty hose.'

“And then ol' Bill came into the apartment.

“‘Fitzy,' he said. ‘It's been a long time.'

“‘No, it hasn't, Bill. Not if that was you standing with the Standing Room Only people in Saint John's.'

“‘That was me. But don't call me Bill. Bill's dead. Or at least we want people to think I am.'

“‘Well, whoever the hell you are, I'm delighted to see that you're alive.'

“‘So delighted that you might have, after all these years, finally forgiven me?'

“‘Forgiven you for what?' Victoria asked, as she swept into the room in her dressing gown. ‘More to the point, how dare you burst into the home of a just-returned-from-their-honeymoon couple?'

“‘My dear lady,' ol' Bill said. ‘Unfortunately, I was forced to conclude that asking your husband to answer again the trumpet's call to duty and mount up and ride to the sound of AK-47 and other musketry in the bloodstained hands of the Red Menace had a greater priority than any middle-of-the-afternoon lascivious plans you might have had for him.'

“‘Huh!' Victoria snorted, and then said, ‘When you speak, sir, you sound like my cousin LeRoy, who, when bounced from Harvard finished up at Dartmouth. How close does that arrow strike?'

“‘Bull's-eye, my dear lady.'

“‘What did you say your name was?'

“‘They call me Ralph Peters. The Honorable Ralph Peters.'

“‘Then why did my precious Fitzy call you Bill when you came in? And, more important, what was it you did to him that you entertain the hope that he will, after all these years, forgive you for doing?'

“‘Why don't you tell her, Fitzy?'

“‘If you like, Ralph.'

“‘You can continue, of course, Fitzy, to call me Bill, as our wartime service taught me that most of the time you can be trusted to keep secret our beloved nation's most secret secrets. But when others . . . Got it?'

“‘Got it, Bill. And what would you like my beloved bride to call you? Bill or Ralph?'

“‘The former. Surprising me no end, you seem to have married well.'

“‘Well, my precious, what Bill here did, years ago, that did annoy me a little—'

“‘A little?' Bill said. “What I recall was that when you finally sobered up and learned that I had gone to Norway without you, you stormed into David Bruce's office and declared . . . What exactly did he say, Mulligan?”

“The larger of the thugs took a notebook and an S&W Detective Special Model .38 Special revolver from his briefcase. While dangling the revolver by his index finger in the trigger guard, he went through the notebook, then handed it to Peters.

“‘Here it is, Mr. Deputy Director, sir, on page nine of the things you said you might want to review on the Learjet.'

“Peters read it, as the man tried, and failed, to slip the revolver into the holster on his ankle.