The Shadow Cabinet (51 page)

Because of Grace Ramsey, his relations with Mary Sifton had become more difficult. The two women never spoke. Mary Sifton came less frequently. Because he was more and more unwilling to leave the house in Grace's eccentric care—hearth fires left burning, the front door unlocked, the electric range still glowing after an afternoon teakettle had been heated, the tea brewed, and the teapot grown cold—he extended the housekeeper's hours from seven in the morning until seven at night. He now had another feminine presence to contend with. He began missing his gin bottles.

“You're not sleeping with her by any chance?” Mary Sifton asked in annoyance one night on the telephone after he'd told her he wouldn't be accompanying her to a recital at the Library of Congress.

“Don't be ridiculous, for God's sake.”

“Then why is she still there?”

“Because it's the only place she has. She always came here when she had a problem.”

“She's trying to separate us.”

“She isn't. She lives her own life.”

“So what's her problem?”

“I don't know but she'll work it out.”

“So you just give her free board and room while she does. It's a menagerie over there. Don't you know she's flaky? She could be a pyromaniac, with all those fires she keeps going.”

“She doesn't like chilly rooms.”

“She's taking advantage of you, Ed. Don't you know that?”

“She's not taking advantage of anyone. She just needs people who care about her the way Jane and I did.”

“Jane! Jane's in Connecticut!”

“Maybe so, but in a way she's still here, like Brian. That's what she feels. She's Brian's godmother, I told you that.”

“What about her own family?”

“She doesn't have any, just us. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Even you're beginning to sound a little flaky. Are you drunk?”

So now, convinced that once more Grace had forgotten to turn the night lock on the front door, Donlon slipped from the bed, drew on his flannel bathrobe, and went downstairs. He'd been right. Grace had gone upstairs without even turning the night latch.

“What is it?” Mary Sifton whispered as he padded back to the bed.

“She didn't lock the door.”

“That's all?”

“What do you mean, that's all? She didn't lock the door.”

“How long have you been up?”

“Just this minute.”

She sat up in bed. “Are you sure?” She'd heard the music and was looking overhead. But then the music stopped abruptly and all was silence. “I smell sherry.”

“That's gin from last night. Sure I'm sure. What do you think I've been doing?”

“Three guesses.”

Upstairs, Grace Ramsey sat in bed, reading Wallace Stevens. The book was one she'd brought from the storage vault that week, an old friend, long sought, long missed, but now returned. It had once stood in the house above the Potomac, a companion from happier times, but now had no other place to claim. It wasn't a book found in airport kiosks, in drugstore racks, or near grocery checkout counters, the merchandise of transit, flight, or forgetfulness. It was an old friend, like Jane Donlon, now in Connecticut, belonging to places of permanence, like this bedroom and this house.

She was conscious of the hour, of the darkness outside, of the two presences downstairs, of other presences here upstairs, even next door, in Brian's old room; and now she felt in communion with them all. Her skin glowed, her mind was luminous, a filament that burned through these enclosing walls as she was absorbed into this old text, expecting the miracle of forgotten incantations, as old as Hecuba, that would restore to her their full power. And so at peace here, vibrant and alive, she found them, and so they did:

There is nothing until in a single man contained

Nothing until this named thing nameless is

And is destroyed. He opens the door of his house

On flames. The scholar of one candle sees

An Arctic effulgence flaring on the flame

Of everything he is. And he feels afraid.

3.

They were celebrating in the hotel suite.

“I figured it would happen,” said Artie Kramer. “I'm not a dumdum, but I'm not always wise about how the feds work. I figured it would happen, just like Pete said it would. I feel pretty good about it. Don't you feel good about it, babe?”

“Yeah, I feel real good,” Rita said dryly.

“You don't look it. Do you think she looks it, Chuckie?”

“She looks it,” Chuckie said, refilling his champagne glass. “How about some more bubbly, Mr. Strykker?”

“Have some more, Nat. Forget about your ulcer. It'll pick you up, that cold you got.”

Strykker mutely held out his glass. He sat on the edge of the damask chair, the puff of henna-colored hair electric in the lamplight, his chocolate-colored suit sharply pressed, the cuffs flared over the patent-leather shoes. A moment before, a vial had been plugged into the socket of his left nostril, lifted there by a plump hand, the other hand pressing delicately on his left eardrum, but now the vial was back in his pocket.

“You look sad, Nat,” Artie Kramer continued. “I told you it'd work out this way, just like Pete said.”

“I'm happy for you, Artie. An assistant secretary—who'd have thought it?”

“I called my old lady down in Miami soon as the White House called. She wanted to know when I was going to be on TV.”

“We were all rooting for you, Artie,” Edelman said, getting to his feet.

“Thanks,” Kramer said without enthusiasm, nostrils flared.

“We're going to be late for our dinner reservations,” Rita said. “It's after eight now.”

“Who cares?” He watched Edelman putting on his coat.

“Yeah, who cares? Artie's a biggie now,” said Chuckie Savant.

“I care. I made the reservations,” Rita said.

“Pardon us for living,” Artie said.

Edelman went out, softly shutting the door behind him.

“He didn't know shit,” Artie said after he'd gone. “He's a very unethical guy, Edelman. He takes my money and he doesn't know shit. This Wilson didn't know shit, either.”

“You can say that again,” Chuckie said.

“Pete Rathbone tells me, O.K., try to get close to him, find out what he knows, but he doesn't know diddly, does he, babe?”

“When did Rathbone tell you that?” she asked.

“When we were playing golf that day at Palm Springs, that Sunday I sent the telex. I forgot to tell you. What time is it?”

“Eight-fifteen,” Chuckie said.

“I'd heard about guys like that, guys like this Wilson. Most of 'em you can't tell from a bookkeeper or a CPA. In Vegas you see 'em walk into a place, sit with the crowd, buy a drink or two, and then walk out again. Next day you read where someone takes a hit in a back alley someplace and the guy that put out the contract was sitting there too.”

“It's a small world those guys live in,” Chuckie said.

“You'd better believe it,” Kramer said. “There was this guy I knew in Vegas, a Mex; a real sleazebag, lemme tell you. This was fifteen years ago, maybe more. I see him sitting one day at a table there talking to this CPA with glasses on, a real invisible guy, you know what I mean. Next thing I hear, this animal is down in Florida, Biscayne Bay, working for the feds after the Cuban screw-up, the Bay of Pigs.”

“That wasn't fifteen years ago,” Rita said.

Her husband ignored her. “His old lady lived in L.A., I heard. Maybe six months later they ship this casket to her from Miami, a closed casket with this affidavit about how he died for his country, and these two CPAs in gray suits bring it to her. They say in the undertaker's letter from Miami how the body was all mangled up from this underwater explosion and how it'd been in the water a long time, even the barracudas chewing on him. But the old woman wants to see this animal son of hers for the last time, fish bait or not, it don't matter. So after these feds leave, she has them cut off the top of the casket with an acetylene torch and there it is—in this sharkskin suit and a face like a choirboy, not a mark on it, except it isn't her son. But she don't say a word, just has them dump it in another coffin, and has it buried.”

“So what happened to him?” Chuckie asked.

“What do you think? This animal got himself a new life—living someplace else under the federal witness program, I figure, cutting his grass every day, drinking beer with the boys down at the bowling alley, only he's got a couple of million stashed away in some Bermuda bank. You feeling any better, Nat?”

“A little better. Maybe we better go on down. Irene will be waiting.”

Artie got up. The others followed.

“What were you expecting Wilson to tell you?” Rita said as she took her coat from the closet.

“Just what he knew,” Artie said. “Like what Pete Rathbone said.”

“What was he supposed to know?”

“You never can tell.”

“So what were you hiding?”

“Nothing. Get off my back. But you never can tell when these guys start asking around.”

“Artie's right,” Strykker said.

“Sure I'm right, but the way it turned out, Wilson didn't know shit.”

“I met him once, this Wilson,” Strykker said. “He never owned a two-hundred-dollar suit in his life.” He opened the door.

“Maybe he didn't have to,” Rita said. Strykker and Chuckie went ahead into the hall.

“Got you there,” Artie said. “Isn't that what you're always telling me? Don't end a sentence with a proposition.”

“Maybe he didn't have to, asshole,” she called after Strykker, but Artie had slammed the door shut.

“You listen to me—”

“You touch me and I'll break your arm,” she said coldly.

“Touch you? What the hell's wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Just leave me alone. I'm not going down to dinner with those schmoes.”

She turned and went back toward the bedroom.

“O.K., see if I care! It's our big night and you have to get touchy all of a sudden—”

The door slammed as he went out, but she knew he'd be back.

She went into her bedroom, stood there for a moment, still furious, looking around the room. She saw her face and shoulders in the dressing table mirror, turned away to the window, but then came back to the dressing table and took out a pair of scissors. She unwound her hair, drawn to the back of her head, and stood at the mirror in the bathroom, cutting away at the long auburn strands, cropping them silently in a jagged fringe just below her ears.

4.

“You have some new information,” Fred Merkle asked dryly from behind his desk, “or is this another fishing expedition?” The gray afternoon light from Constitution Avenue flooded through the window behind Fred's chair, fracturing Haven Wilson's concentration and dissolving Merkle's bony face in a haze of silver grays, like the glare from a sun-glazed pond. Conscious of the annoyance, which gave Wilson a sleepy, puzzled look, Merkle turned to rotate the blinds and turn on his desk lamp.

“Both,” Wilson said from the brown leather chair in front of the desk. “A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a name to you. Artie Kramer, a Caltronics officer. I just heard he's been given a political appointment.”

“So I heard. The announcement was made yesterday.”

“You're not pleased.”

Merkle shrugged indifferently. “Not my bailiwick. Is that what you wanted to talk about?” His face seemed tired.

“I suppose that means the case against Caltronics is now closed.”

“You could interpret it that way.”

“And if it's closed, maybe you can answer a question that's been bothering me. A loose end that won't go away.”

“What's the question?”

“It's about Morris, the Caltronics salesman who managed the Washington office, the guy that disappeared. Was he the bribery suspect?”

Merkle looked away, rolling an old-fashioned barrel pen between his white fingers. “I seem to recall that he was,” he said, frowning as if recalling a fragment of ancient history.

“A possible witness too?” Merkle didn't answer, but Wilson hadn't expected him to. “I understand that when he disappeared he had a hundred thousand dollars with him.”

Merkle considered the question thoughtfully and finally nodded, still looking away toward the far window. “He made some substantial withdrawals the week before he left. Whether he had the money with him when he disappeared isn't clear.”

“Has Caltronics brought charges?”

“They say they intend to. Embezzlement, conversion, I'm not sure. The auditors disagree on how much money's missing, and that seems to be holding up legal action.”

“Tell me something about Bernie Klempner,” Wilson continued. He watched Merkle turn to him, surprised. “Where does he fit in?”

“I'd rather not get into that, Haven.”

“You got us together once. You arranged that meeting outside.”

“Call it poor judgment,” Merkle acknowledged with a weak smile. “We were getting no place officially. I thought by going out of channels, I could make things happen. They didn't.”

“I hear Klempner's got a hunting license. What he bags, you'll look at, and vice versa. An informal arrangement.”

Merkle got up from the desk, opened the blinds again, looked down into the street, and then joined Wilson in an adjacent leather chair in front of the desk. “Bernie can sometimes be very useful. He has a special talent for operating in those gray areas—those gray areas where the law leaves off and litigation begins.” He smiled suddenly. “That's a sure sign of old age. More and more when I dictate these days, I have a queer feeling that I'm quoting someone. Most often I am. Myself, twenty years ago. The euphemist of the criminal division subculture.” He smiled again in self-deprecation.