Uncivil Seasons (26 page)

“I like the old stuff.”

“Who doesn’t?”

I could hear the pulse in my ears as I kept waiting.

“Okay,” he grinned. “You’re busy, I’m busy.” Lawry stroked his close-trimmed sideburn with affection. “Anyhow, Susan says she told you Cloris Dollard mentioned me at that play, the night she died, about how she was feeling ‘bad’ or something about me?”

“Pardon?”

“Dollard’s wife, right? Should have gotten in touch earlier, I guess, but who thinks these little things are going to matter. To be honest, I didn’t connect the times right off. Because the damn thing is, I think I was trying to call her from Atlanta just about the time she died.”

“What?” My pulse and the muscles of my face hurried to adjust to the news that Whetstone was apparently here not to talk to me about Susan, but to talk to me about Cloris Dollard. “You called Cloris Dollard Sunday, January ninth?”

“Right. Called her twice. The first time she said she was just leaving to go to the Hillston Playhouse—weren’t you in that Shakespeare thing they did?—and so would I mind calling her back. So I did, around eleven, eleven fifteen, that night. No later. I crashed pretty early.” He finished stroking his sideburn and went back to pulling on his nose. “Thing is, she didn’t answer. Phone all of a sudden clicked off. Around eleven. You can check the time with the hotel; don’t they keep telephone records? I was returning her call. How this all got started was, she asked me to do her a favor. I guess that’s what she was telling Susan she felt guilty about. I mean, I hardly knew her. Still, it’s sort of a bummer hearing she got killed.”

The Dollard phone transcripts for that Sunday had, I thought I recalled, included among Cloris’s many long-distance calls, one to Atlanta, but given the department’s premise that robbery was the motive for the crime, morning calls had not been followed up. I asked, “What favor?”

“Right. Well, I was down in Atlanta on business, and C&W, I guess, told Mrs. Dollard I’m staying at the Hyatt Regency, so she catches me in on Sunday morning. I was half-asleep, to be honest. It was damn funny. Out of the blue.” Then Whetstone sat back with a silky rimple of his pastel suit, and waited expectantly for me to invite him to continue. He had an effective rhetorical trick of luring you on by pausing. When I said, “And?” he recrossed his legs and told me that Cloris Dollard had called him for advice: an Atlanta textiles firm had approached her recently about purchasing any drawings there might still be in her possession executed by her first husband, Bainton Ames, shortly before his death; designs for an innovative type of loom that was supposed to cut costs and labor.

“Why should they want a design at least fifteen years old?” I asked.

“Oh, back then they couldn’t be bothered with energy efficiency, you know; they all thought Ames was some kind of half-baked, genius-type nut.” Whetstone opened his eyes wide to symbolize madness. “But now it’s the thing; everybody’s into saving power, et cetera. So, okay, Mrs. Dollard digs out these old Ames folders, but naturally she doesn’t have the foggiest what she’s looking for, so she zips over to old Cadmean here in town, and he tells her anything Bainton Ames designed belongs to
him.
And he grabs the papers away from her. So, that was that. Mind if I smoke? Ever try these Ultra Lights? Pretty damn good.”

I pushed over an ashtray (one I’d made up in the mountains), and Lawry slid from his pocket a leather-and-gold cigarette case that was exactly like the one Susan had given me and I could feel now in my breast pocket being beaten on by my heart. Why had old Briggs Cadmean lied to me by saying Cloris had never brought him any designs? Why lie? I asked Lawry, “What does this have to do with her calling you?”

“Oh, I’m C&W, too.” He gave me a collegial shrug. “She liked to ask men’s advice; you know the type. So, okay, she says she’s started getting p.o.’d at old Briggs; he’s such a senile old bullshitter, I’m not surprised. So, he tore her head off about the designs, and she’s p.o.’d, et cetera, you know: ‘Who is he to tell
me
?’
She’s
the inventor’s widow, right? And what she wants to know is, does Cadmean really have the right to stop her from selling them?”

“Well, she had the copies she’d made,” I said. “Did he grab the copies?”

“Copies? Oh, I guess, well, I didn’t know about that.”

Staring down at my note pad, I kept doodling the word
Cadmean
, making stairs of it. “My mother was with Cloris when she had some copies made. She mentioned it.”

“Nice tie,” Whetstone said suddenly. I looked up and saw him studying my chest. “Dior?”

I flipped the cloth over and read the label. “Valentino. What exactly did Cloris want your advice about?”

“Nice tie. She wanted me to get in touch with the textiles guy who’d approached her. I said I would, and I’d call her back. Just to be a nice guy, right?”

“Was this a Cary Bogue at Bette Gray Corporation?”

He grinned as if I’d just told a clever joke. “How’d you know Bogue?”

“He was with Bainton Ames the night of his death; way back. I’ve been looking back at the reports.”

“Right.” Whetstone nodded. “I actually gave Bogue a call on this Mrs. Dollard thing, and he mentioned that drowning episode. Did you know this? Pretty interesting. Ames was so pissed then at old Briggs Cadmean, he was planning on walking out. That’s why Bogue was up there, negotiating about getting him to come down to Atlanta. Ames had come up with some new rapier-type loom, I guess.”

I had to get out of my chair and start walking. Why hadn’t Bogue mentioned this to Stanhope at the time? Had Cadmean known Ames was leaving him? Walter Stanhope’s rasping whisper came back.
If I were you, I’d be leery of the man with the strings.

Whetstone gave me the ingratiating smile that he followed with the pause.

“Leaving why?” I asked. “Did Cadmean know?”

“Couldn’t say who knew. Way before my time. The story I heard was that Ames had a burr in his butt about old Briggs’s roughing up the union types that were agitating back then. Ames—now, this is all according to Bogue—Ames was trying to pressure the old man into going union by holding the designs out on him, and when Mr. C. called his bluff, Ames said he was taking his ball and was going to go play elsewhere. You know how it was in the old days. A little sandbox and everybody kicking sand. A more personal-type lifestyle, know what I mean?” Whetstone leaned smoothly forward and twisted his cigarette out half smoked. His eyes were as blue and as empty as the sky, and they were the precise color of his pocket handkerchief. I had been dreading the possibility that I would
like
Lawry Whetstone. But I didn’t like him.

Now he smiled broadly, his teeth slightly bucked and intensely white in his tan face. “The thing is,” he said, “it’s all so rinky-dink. I mean, about the dumb designs. You know? Bogue told me it was no big deal; sure, he was curious to see the drawings, but what he really wanted was an intro to talk about buying some kind of coin collection. He’s a coin-type nut. But old Briggs, that’s just the sort of small beer he has a hernia over, the loom thing. How the designs belonged to him. That man is so out of it. And too full of himself to step down.”

I sat back. “What do you mean, out of it?”

Whetstone pulled on his nose and then glanced at his nicely buffed nails. “Ever met our Mr. Cadmean?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then you know what I mean. How he loves every square inch of C&W. How
FDR
shook his hand for beating the ‘Krauts and Japs’ with his parachutes. Et cetera. Right? Whereas, news flash. We
are
Germany and Japan. Old Briggs hasn’t got even a rudimentary grasp of what’s going on at C&W these days. But you’d have to kill the old shit to get him out.”

I leaned back on the rear legs of my chair. “That’s not what I hear from him. He says he’s down there all day every day.”

Whetstone laughed; his tan fingers laced around one knee; on his right hand, a gold college ring. “Right! And the peacock spreads its tail on NBC every day too. But it doesn’t negotiate the deals, now does it? I like to say, ‘Corporations aren’t made out of whole cloth’: obviously, if we’d counted on the cotton mills for capital, Chink imports would have closed C&W down years ago, the way they have most of the old man’s buddies. Nobody wants to tell him, but his beloved mill is just a dinosaur we have to work around until we can cart off the bones.” His grin invited me to share in this corporate fun, but instead I tore the scribbled note off the pad, and asked him to repeat the times and contents of his calls to Cloris Dollard on the day of her death. He did so affably.

Then he surprised me by leaning over my desk and picking up the silver letter opener Susan had given me. It was the most recent of her gifts and the one that had prompted my asking her again to stop buying me things, and her telling me again that one of the advantages of having an affair was it gave her someone else to shop for. Shopping was her occupation. Now Lawry tapped his forefinger on the silver blade’s tip. “Are you in a real hurry?” he asked. “Susan give you this?”

I kept my eyes on his, their blue blankness impossible to interpret. “Yes,” I answered. “She did.”

“Nice.” He placed it back at a pleasant angle to the rock crystal desk garniture. “I’ve got one too,” he added. “Listen, have you got a minute, Justin? To be honest, this Dollard thing was a kind of excuse to come in.”

Here, then, it came. And what I couldn’t understand was why he was smiling the energetic salesman’s grin that was too kinetic to be so close to the eyes’ blue blandness.

“Justin,” he said, and I felt his body as well as his voice hone toward me. “Justin, Susan really enjoys herself with you. She really does. The thing with you’s been a good deal for her. You and I have never laid it out, but let’s take it as programmed in—and filed. And go from there. Right?”

My throat felt dry as sand, dry as mornings in the mountains when I would awaken to the faint jiggle of the nurse’s tray and wonder why she, a stranger, should come with such efficient comfort into my estranged delirious room. It took me a minute to wet my throat enough to reply. “I don’t know what to say, Lawry. I hadn’t realized you knew about my relationship with Susan. I can only—”

He broke in cheerfully. “Come on! Let’s be real! This is today. You knew Susan and I have always been open about all our affairs.”

I reached into my jacket for my cigarettes. “No, I assure you. I didn’t know you
had
‘affairs.’”

He grinned. “Well, you knew of at least one affair that one of us was having.” And he pointed at the gold-trimmed case in my hand. “Come on, Justin, everything’s fine, not to worry, okay? Long as nobody’s got herpes.” He guffawed, then looked at me. “You know, Susan told me you weren’t going to make this too easy.”

“Make what easy?” The sweat was starting across my upper lip, and heat pulsing into my hands. “Make
what
easy?”

Looking at his coat, he said, “Well, to be honest, what would you say to the possibility of a foursome? How does that strike you?”

“A foursome?”

“You know.” He gave his nose a few short pulls, and turned to me and smiled.

“No, I don’t.” But I was beginning to suspect that I did, and the skin of my scalp warmed.

Whetstone’s voice became confidential. “Look. I’d really enjoy getting something together, and so maybe you would too. I’ve got this gal I’ve been seeing, works in Personnel. She’s pretty damn great, believe me. And we’ve tried it with another couple.” He nodded at me encouragingly, as if he were selling me insurance. “It worked out fantastically, just great. So, okay, what I’m proposing is, how about getting her together with Susan and you and me, and see what happens? Susan says fine with her—you know her, she’s adventuresome, right?—but she didn’t think you’d go for it. But me, I like to say, nothing ventured, nothing et cetera. I promise,” he laughed, “we won’t do any coke around you. She tells me you really don’t like getting into that. Okay?”

I stood up fast. “The answer’s no.”

Undismayed by my face, Whetstone rose from my father’s old chair and advised me, “Remember the old cliché, don’t knock it ’til. Think it over. Maybe you’ve already got somebody else you’re into things with now. I don’t know what your lifestyle is, but somebody new’d be okay with me, if it’s okay with Susan. Does she know her? I mean, no real reason it has to be this gal I was mentioning before. Slash is slash, right?”

I hit him. I didn’t know I was hitting him, I didn’t know I’d come around the side of my desk to do it, until I was watching my fist fly into his jaw and seeing his tan complacent face shoot backward, the mouth open in suprise. His head clattered loudly down the front of my file cabinet to the floor. From down there he rubbed his blue handkerchief over his jaw and then stared at it eagerly. There was no blood. After that, he looked up at me; his unclouded eyes giving no signal at all of what he might say. Then he bounced agilely to his feet, wiggled his jaw, and said, “What’s with you? You some kind of S&M macho cop type or something? I’m beginning to wonder about Susan’s taste.”

“Me too,” I said.

The doorknob turned, and Cuddy Mangum’s head poked through. “Excuse me,” he drawled. “I thought I heard the sound of violence. Y’all playing squash, or what?”

I said, “This is Mr. Whetstone. He just brought us some information.”

“Sounds like it wasn’t very good news,” Cuddy said.

Whetstone pulled his cashmere coat off the rack and wiggled his finger at Cuddy. “You ought to do something about this guy.” He shook the finger at me. “He’s a nut.”

“Well, we’ll give him some more shock treatments,” Cuddy replied. “Let me walk you out, Mr. Whetstone. Our chief’s in the hall, and he’s not very stable either.” He turned to me sternly. “Savile, go to my office.”

I said to Lawry, “If you want to continue, I’m at your service.”

“God Almighty,” Cuddy muttered. “He wants to fight a duel.”

Cuddy Mangum’s cubicle was stacked with crates of paperback books, for which he had the same ravenous appetite that was set loose upon the candy bars and crackers whose boxes and cellophane wrappers littered the area near the wastebasket, giving his floor the look of a movie theater after a Saturday matinee. On one of his walls was a poster of Elvis Presley, and on the other a blackboard, and on the blackboard were scribbled notations of the sort always there, for Cuddy thought aloud with chalk in what he called an academic way, although I’d often suggested that it was actually from detective films that he’d acquired his diagramming habit. This he admitted: “Well, hey, of course. How do you think the Indians learned how to sneak up on the buffaloes except from watching the dance? The whole twentieth century comes out of the movies—luvvv, everything, don’t you know that? You’re the smoking detective and I’m the chalking detective. I’ve got six channels, movies is all they show. Some of them are real old black and white ones; you’d like those.”