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Chapter 8 2 страница
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Francis didn't answer. He was breathing hard. His eyes were cast downward and his face was a bright pink.
'I'm not a mind reader, ' the doctor said at last. 'But in my experience, somebody your age saying they're having a heart attack, it's one of two things. '
'What? ' I finally said.
'Well. Amphetamine poisoning, for one. '
'It's not that, ' Francis said angrily, glancing up.
'All right, all right. Something else it could be is a panic disorder. '
'What's that? ' I said, carefully avoiding looking in Francis's direction.
'Like an anxiety attack. A sudden rush of fear. Heart palpitations.
Trembling and sweating. It can be quite severe. People often think they're dying. '
Francis didn't say anything.
'Well? ' said the doctor. 'Do you think that might be it? '
'I don't know, ' said Francis, after another confused pause.
The doctor leaned back against the sink. 'Do you feel afraid a lot? ' he said. 'For no good reason you can think of? '
By the time we left the hospital, it was a quarter after three.
Francis lit a cigarette in the parking lot. In his left hand he was grinding a piece of paper on which the doctor had written the name of a psychiatrist in town.
'Are you mad? ' he said when we were in the car.
It was the second time he had asked. 'No, ' I said.
'I know you arc. '
The streets were dream-lit, deserted. The car top was down.
We drove past dark houses, turned onto a covered bridge. The tires thumped on the wooden planks.
'Please don't be mad at me, ' said Francis.
I ignored him. 'Are you going to see that psychiatrist? ' I said.
'It wouldn't do any good. I know what's bothering me. '
I didn't say anything. When the word psychiatrist had come up, I had been alarmed. I was not a great believer in psychiatry but still, who knew what a trained eye might see in a personality test, a dream, even a slip of the tongue?
'I went through analysis when I was a kid, ' Francis said. He sounded on the verge of tears. 'I guess I must've been eleven or twelve. My mother was on some kind of Yoga kick and she yanked me out of my old school in Boston and packed me off to this terrible place in Switzerland. The Something Institute.
Everyone wore sandals with socks. There were classes in dervish dancing and the Kabbalah. All the White Level – that was what they called my grade, or form, whatever it was – had to do Chinese Quigong every morning and have four hours of Reichian analysis a week. I had to have six. '
'How do you analyze a twelve-year-old kid? '
'Lots of word association. Also weird games they made you play with anatomically correct dolls. They'd caught me and a couple of little French girls trying to sneak off the grounds – we were half-starved, macrobiotic food, you know, we were only trying to get down to the bureau de tabac to buy some chocolates but of course they insisted it had somehow been some sort of sexual incident. Not that they minded that sort of thing but they liked you to tell them about it and I was too ignorant to oblige.
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The girls knew more about such matters and had made up some wild French story to please the shrink – menage a trots in some haystack, you can't imagine how sick they thought I was for I repressing, this. Though I would've told them anything if I thought they'd send me home. ' He laughed, without much humor. 'God. I remember the head of the Institute asking me once what character from fiction I most identified with, and I said Davy Balfour from Kidnapped. '
We were rounding a corner. Suddenly, in the wash of the headlights, a large animal loomed in my path. I hit the brakes hard. For half a moment I found myself looking through the windshield at a pair of glowing eyes. Then, in a flash, it bounded away.
We sat for a moment, shaken, at a full stop.
'What was that? ' said Francis.
'I don't know. A deer maybe. '
'That wasn't a deer. '
'Then a dog. '
'It looked like some kind of a cat to me. '
Actually, that was what it had looked like to me too. 'But it was too big, ' I said.
'Maybe it was a cougar or something, ' 'They don't have those around here. '
'They used to. They called them catamounts. Cat-o-the Mountain. Like Catamount Street in town. '
The night breeze was chilly. A dog barked somewhere. There wasn't much traffic on that road at night.
I put the car in gear.
Francis had asked me not to tell anyone about our excursion to the emergency room but at the twins' apartment on Sunday night I had a little too much to drink and I found myself telling the story to Charles in the kitchen after dinner.
Charles was sympathetic. He'd had some drinks himself but not as many as me. He was wearing an old seersucker suit which hung very loosely on him – he, too, had lost some weight – and a frayed old Sulka tie.
'Poor Francois, ' he said. 'He's such a fruitcake. Is he going to see that shrink? '
'I don't know. '
He shook a cigarette from a pack of Lucky Strikes that Henry had left on the counter. 'If I were you, ' he said, tapping the cigarette on the inside of his wrist and craning to make sure that no one was in the hall, 'if I were you, I would advise him not to mention this to Henry. '
I waited for him to continue. He lit the cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke.
'I mean, I've been drinking a bit more than I should, ' he said quietly. 'I'm the first to admit that. But my God, I was the one who had to deal with the cops, not him. I'm the one who has to deal with Marion, for Christ sake. She calls me almost every night.
Let him try talking to her for a while and see how he feels… If I wanted to drink a bottle of whiskey a day I don't see what he could say about it. I told him it was none of his business, and none of his business what you did, either. '
The? '
He looked at me with a blank, childish expression. Then he laughed.
'Oh, you hadn't heard? ' he said. 'Now it's you, too. Drinking too much. Wandering around drunk in the middle of the day.
Rolling down the road to ruin. '
I was startled. He laughed again at the look on my face but then we heard footsteps and the tinkle of ice in an advancing cocktail – Francis. He poked his head into the doorway and began to gabble good-naturedly about something or other, and after a few minutes we picked up our drinks and followed him back to the living room.
That was a cozy night, a happy night; lamps lit, sparkle of glasses, rain falling heavy on the roof. Outside, the treetops tumbled and tossed, with a foamy whoosh like club soda bubbling up in the glass. The windows were open and a damp cool breeze swirled through the curtains, bewitchingly wild and sweet.
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Henry was in excellent spirits. Relaxed, sitting in an armchair with his legs stretched out in front of him, he was alert, well rested, quick with a laugh or a clever reply. Camilla looked enchanting.
She wore a narrow sleeveless dress, salmon-colored, which exposed a pair of pretty collarbones and the sweet frail vertebrae at the base of her neck – lovely kneecaps, lovely ankles, lovely bare, strong-muscled legs. The dress exaggerated her spareness of body, her unconscious and slightly masculine grace of posture; I loved her, loved the luscious, stuttering way she would blink while telling a story, or the way (faint echo of Charles) that she held a cigarette, caught in the knuckles of her bitten-nailed fingers.
She and Charles seemed to have made up. They didn't talk much, but the old silent thread of twinship seemed in place again. They perched on the arms of each other's chairs, and fetched drinks back and forth (a peculiar twin-ritual, complex and charged with meaning). Though I did not fully understand these observances, they were generally a sign that all was well. She, if anything, seemed the more conciliatory party, which seemed to disprove the hypothesis that he was at fault.
The mirror over the fireplace was the center of attention, a cloudy old mirror in a rosewood frame; nothing remarkable, they'd got it at a yard sale, but it was the first thing one saw when one stepped inside and now even more conspicuous because it was cracked – a dramatic splatter that radiated from the center like a spider's web. How that had happened was such a funny story that Charles had to tell it twice, though it was his reenactment of it that was funny, really – spring housecleaning, sneezing and miserable with dust, sneezing himself right off his stepladder and landing on the mirror, which had just been washed and was on the floor.
'What I don't understand, ' said Henry, 'is how you got it back up again without the glass falling out. '
'It was a miracle. I wouldn't touch it now. Don't you think it looks kind of wonderful? '
Which it did, there was no denying it, the spotty dark glass shattered like a kaleidoscope and refracting the room into a hundred pieces.
Not until it was time to leave did I discover, quite by accident, how the mirror had actually been broken. I was standing on the hearth, my hand resting on the mantel, when I happened to look into the fireplace. The fireplace did not work. It had a screen and a pair of andirons, but the logs that lay across them were furry with dust. But now, glancing down, I saw something else: silver sparkles, bright-needled splinters from the broken mirror, mixed with large, unmistakable shards of a gold-rimmed highball glass, the twin of the one in my own hand. They were heavy old glasses, an inch thick at the bottom. Someone had thrown this one hard, with a pretty good arm, from across the room, hard enough to break it to pieces and to shatter the looking-glass behind my head.
Two nights later, I was woken again by a knock at my door.
Confused, in a foul temper, I switched on the lamp and reached blinking for my watch. It was three o'clock. 'Who's there? ' I said.
'Henry, ' came the surprising reply.
I let him in, somewhat reluctantly. He didn't sit down. 'Listen, ' he said. 'I'm sorry to disturb you, but this is very important. I have a favor to ask of you. '
His tone was quick and businesslike. It alarmed me. I sat down on the edge of my bed.
'Are you listening to me? '
'What is it? ' I said.
'About fifteen minutes ago I got a call from the police. Charles is in jail. He has been arrested for drunk driving. I want you to go down and get him out. '
A prickle rose on the nape of my neck. 'What? ' I said.
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'He was driving my car. They got my name from the registration sticker. I have no idea what kind of condition he's in. ' He reached into his pocket and handed me an unsealed envelope. 'I expect it's going to cost something to get him out, I don't know what. '
I opened the envelope. Inside was a check, blank except for Henry's signature, and a twenty-dollar bill.
'I already told the police that I lent him the car, ' said Henry.
'If there's any question about that, have them call me. ' He was standing by the window, looking out. 'In the morning I'll get in touch with a lawyer. All I want you to do is get him out of there as soon as you can. '
It took a moment or two for this to sink in.
'What about the money? ' I said at last.
'Pay them whatever it costs, ' 'I mean this twenty dollars. '
'You'll have to take a taxi. I took one over here. It's waiting downstairs. '
There was a long silence. I still wasn't awake. I was sitting there in just an undershirt and a pair of boxer shorts.
While I dressed, he stood at the window looking out at the dark meadow, hands clasped behind his back, oblivious to the jangle of clothes-hangers and my clumsy, sleep-dazed fumbling through the bureau drawers – serene, preoccupied; lost, apparently, in his own abstract concerns.
It wasn't until I'd dropped Henry off and was being driven, at a rapid clip, towards the dark center of town, that I realized how poorly I had been apprised of the situation I was heading into.
Henry hadn't told me a thing. Had there been an accident? For that matter, was anyone hurt? Besides, if this was such a big deal – and it was Henry's car, after all – why wasn't he coming, too?
A lone traffic light rocked on a wire over the empty intersection.
The jail, in Hampden town, was in an annex of the courthouse.
It was also the only building in the square that had any lights on that time of night. I told the taxi driver to wait and went inside.
Two policemen were sitting in a large, well-lit room. There were many filing cabinets, and metal desks behind partitions; an old-fashioned water cooler; a gumball machine from the Civitan Club ('Your Change Changes Things'). I recognized one of the policemen – a fellow with a red moustache – from the search parties. The two of them were eating fried chicken, the sort you buy from under heat lamps in convenience stores, and watching 'Sally Jessy Raphael' on a portable black-and-white TV.
'Hi, ' I said.
They looked up.
'I came to see about getting my friend out of jail. '
The one with the red moustache wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. He was big and pleasant-looking, in his thirties. 'That's Charles Macaulay, I bet, ' he said.
He said this as if Charles were an old friend of his. Maybe he was. Charles had spent a lot of time down here when the stuff with Bunny was going on. The cops, he said, had been nice to him. They'd sent out for sandwiches, bought him Cokes from the machine.
'You're not the guy I talked to on the phone, ' said the other policeman. He was large and relaxed, about forty, with gray hair and a froglike mouth. 'Is that your car out there? '
I explained. They ate their chicken and listened: big, friendly guys, big police. 385 on their hips. The walls were covered in government-issue posters: fight birth defects, hire veterans, REPORT MAIL FRAUD.
'Well, you know, we can't let you have the car, ' said the policeman with the red moustache. 'Mr Winter is going to have to come down here and pick it up himself. '
'I don't care about the car. I just want to get my friend out of jail. '
The other policeman looked at his watch. 'Well, ' he said, 'come back in about six hours, then. '
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Was he joking? 'I have the money, ' I said.
'We can't set bail. The judge will have to do that at the arraignment. Nine o'clock in the morning. '
Arraignment? My heart pumped. What the hell was that?
The cops were looking at me blandly as if to say, 'Is that all? '
'Can you tell me what happened? ' I said.
'What? '
My voice sounded flat and strange to me. 'What exactly did he do? '
'State trooper pulled him over out on Deep Kill Road, ' said the gray-haired policeman. He said it as if he were reading it. 'He was obviously intoxicated. He agreed to a Breathalyzer and failed it when it was administered. The trooper brought him down here and we put him in the lock-up. That was about two-twenty five a. m. '
Things still weren't clear, but for the life of me I couldn't think of the right questions to ask. Finally I said, 'Can I see him? '
'He's fine, son, ' said the policeman with the red moustache.
'You can see him first thing in the morning. '
All smiles, very friendly. There was nothing more to say. I thanked them and left.
When I got outside the cab was gone. I still had fifteen dollars from Henry's twenty but to call another cab I'd have to go back inside the jail and I didn't want to do that. So I walked down Main Street to the south end, where there was a pay phone in front of the lunch counter. It didn't work.
So tired I was almost dreaming, I walked back to the square past the post office, past the hardware store, past the movie theater with its dead marquee: plate glass, cracked sidewalks, stars. Mountain cats in bas-relief prowled the friezes of the public library. I walked a long way, till the stores got sparse and the road was dark, walked on the deep singing shoulder of the highway till I got to the Greyhound bus station, sad in the moonlight, the first glimpse I'd ever had of Hampden. The terminal was closed. I sat outside, on a wooden bench beneath a yellow light bulb, waiting for it to open so I could go in and use the phone and have a cup of coffee.
The clerk – a fat man with lifeless eyes – came to unlock the place at six. We were the only people there. I went into the men's room and washed my face and had not one cup of coffee but two, which the clerk sold me grudgingly from a pot he'd brewed on a hot plate behind the counter.
The sun was up, it was hard to see much through the grime streaked windows. Defunct timetables papered the walls; cigarette butts and chewing gum were stomped deep into the linoleum. The doors of the phone booth were covered in finger 4 prints. I closed them behind me and dialed Henry's number, half-expecting he wouldn't answer but to my surprise he did, on the second ring.
'Where are you? What's the matter? ' he said.
I explained what had happened. Ominous silence on the other end.
'Was he in a cell by himself? ' he said at last.
'I don't know. '
'Was he conscious? I mean, could he talk? '
'I don't know. '
Another long silence.
'Look, ' I said, 'he's going before the judge at nine. Why don't you meet me at the courthouse. '
Henry didn't answer for a moment. Then he said: 'It's best if you handle it. There are other considerations involved. '
'If there are other considerations I'd appreciate knowing what they are. '
'Don't be angry, ' he said quickly. 'It's just that I've had to deal with the police so much. They know me already, and they know him Coo. Besides' – he paused – " I am afraid that I'm the last person Charles wants to see, ' 'And why is that? '
'Because we quarreled last night. It's a long story, ' he said as I tried to interrupt. 'But he was very upset when I saw him last.
And of all of us, I think you're on the best terms with him at the moment. '
'Hmph, ' I said, though secretly I was mollified.
'Charles is very fond of you. You know that. Besides, the police don't know who you are. I don't think they'll be likely to associate you with that other business. '
'I don't see that it matters at this point. '
'I am afraid that it does matter. More than you might think. '
There was a silence, during which I felt acutely the hopelessness of ever trying to get to the bottom of anything with Henry.
He was like a propagandist, routinely withholding information, leaking it only when it served his purposes. 'What are you trying to say to me? ' I said.
'Now's not the time to discuss it. '
'If you want me to go down there, you'd better tell me what you're talking about. '
When he spoke, his voice was crackly and distant. 'Let's just say that for a while things were much more touch-and-go than you realized. Charles has had a hard time. It's no one's fault really but he's had to shoulder more than his share of the burden. '
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Silence.
'I am not asking much of you. '
Only that I do what you tell me, I thought as I hung up the telephone.
The courtroom was down the hall from the cells, through a pair of swinging doors with windows at the top. It looked very much like what I'd seen of the rest of the courthouse, circa 1950 or so, with pecky linoleum tiles and paneling that was yellowed and sticky-looking with honey-colored varnish.
I had not expected so many people would be there. There were two tables before the judge's bench, one with a couple of state troopers, the other with three or four unidentified men; a court reporter with her funny little typewriter; three more unidentified men in the spectators' area, sitting well apart from each other, as well as a poor haggard lady in a tan raincoat who looked like she was getting beat up by somebody on a pretty regular basis.
We rose for the judge. Charles's case was called first.
He padded through the doors like a sleepwalker, in his stocking feet, a court officer following close behind him. His face was blurry and thick. They'd taken his belt and tie as well as his shoes and he looked a little like he was in his pajamas.
The judge peered down at him. He was sour-faced, about sixty, with a thin mouth and big meaty jowls like a bloodhound's.
'You have an attorney? ' he said, in a strong Vermont accent.
'No, sir, ' said Charles.
'Wife or parent present? '
'No, sir. '
'Can you post bail? '
'No, sir, ' Charles said. He looked sweaty and disoriented.
I stood up. Charles didn't see me but the judge did. 'Are you here to post bail for Mr Macaulay? ' he said.
'Yes, I am. '
Charles turned to stare, lips parted, his expression as blank and trancelike as a twelve-year-old's.
'It'll be five hundred dollars you can pay it at the window down the hall to your left, ' said the judge in a bored monotone.
'You'll have to appear again in two weeks and I suggest you bring a lawyer. Do you have a job for which you need your vehicle? '
One of the shabby middle-aged men at the front spoke up.
'It's not his car, Your Honor. '
The judge glowered at Charles, suddenly fierce. 'Is that correct? ' he said.
The owner was contacted. A Henry Winter. Goes to school up at the college. He says he lent the vehicle to Mr Macaulay for the evening. '
The judge snorted. To Charles he said gruffly: 'Your license is suspended pending resolution and have Mr Winter here on the twenty-eighth. '
The whole business was amazingly quick. We were out of the courthouse by ten after nine.
The morning was damp and dewy, cold for May. Birds chattered in the black treetops. I was reeling with fatigue.
Charles hugged himself. 'Christ, it's cold, ' he said.
Across the empty streets, across the square, they were just pulling the blinds up at the bank. 'Wait here, ' I said. Till go call a cab. '
He caught me by the arm. He was still drunk, but his night of boozing had done more damage to his clothes than to anything else; his face was fresh and flushed as a child's. 'Richard, ' he said.
'What? '
'You're my friend, aren't you? '
I was in no mood to stand around on the courthouse steps and listen to this sort of thing. 'Sure, ' I said, and tried to disengage my arm.
But he only clutched me tighter. 'Good old Richard, ' he said. " I know you are. I'm so glad it was you who came. I just want you to do me this one little favor. '
'What's that? '
'Don't take me home. '
'What do you mean? '
'Take me to the country. To Francis's. I don't have the key but Mrs Hatch could let me in or I could bust a window or something – no, listen. Listen to this. I could get in through the basement. I've done it millions of times. Wait, ' he said as I tried to interrupt again. 'You could come, too. You could swing by school and get some clothes and '
'Hold on, ' I said, for the third time. 'I can't take you anywhere.
I don't have a car. '
His face changed, and he let go my arm. 'Oh, right, ' he said with sudden bitterness. 'Thanks a lot. '
'Listen to me. I can't. I don't have a car. I came down here in a taxicab. '
'We can go in Henry's. '
'No we can't. The police took the keys. '
His hands were shaking. He ran them through his disordered hair. 'Then come home with me. I don't want to go home by myself. ' 1 'All right, ' I said. I was so tired I was seeing spots. 'All right. j| Just wait. I'll call a cab. '
'No. No cab, ' he said, lurching backwards. 'I don't feel so hot.
I think I'd rather walk. '
This walk, from the courthouse steps to Charles's apartment in North Hampden, was not an inconsiderable one. It was three miles, at least. A good portion of it lay along a stretch of highway.
Cars whooshed past in a rush of exhaust. I was dead tired. My head ached and my feet were like lead. But the morning air was cool and fresh and it seemed to bring Charles around a little.
About halfway, he stopped at the dusty roadside window of a Tastee Freeze, across the highway from the Veterans Hospital, and bought an ice-cream soda.
Our feet crunched on the gravel. Charles smoked a cigarette and drank his soda through a red-and-white-striped straw.
Blackflies whined around our ears.
'So you and Henry had an argument, ' I said, just for something to say.
'Who told you? Him? '
'Yes. '
'I couldn't remember. It doesn't matter. I'm tired of him telling me what to do. '
'You know what I wonder, ' I said.
'What? '
'Not why he tells us what to do. But why we always do what he says. '
'Beats me, ' said Charles. 'It's not as if much good has come of it. '
'Oh, I don't know. '
'Are you kidding? The idea of that fucking bacchanal in the first place – who thought of that? Whose idea was it to take Bunny to Italy? Who the hell wrote that diary and left it lying around? The son of a bitch. I blame every bit of this on him.
Besides, you have no idea how close they were to finding us out. '
'Who? ' I said, startled. 'The police? '
The people from the FBI. There was a lot towards the end we didn't tell the rest of you. Henry made me swear not to tell. '
'Why? What happened? '
He threw down his cigarette. 'Well, I mean, they had it confused, ' he said. 'They thought Cloke was mixed up in it, they thought a lot of things. It's funny. We're so used to Henry. We don't realize sometimes how he looks to other people. '
'What do you mean? '
'Oh, I don't know. I can think of a million examples. ' He laughed sleepily. 'I remember last summer, when Henry was so gung-ho about renting a farmhouse, driving with him to a realtor's office upstate. It was perfectly straightforward. He had a specific house in mind – big old place built in the i Soos, way out on some dirt road, tremendous grounds, servants' quarters, the whole bit. He even had the cash in hand. They must've talked for two hours. The realtor called up her manager at home and asked him to come down to the office. The manager asked Henry a million questions. Called every one of his references. Everything was in order but even then they wouldn't rent it to him. '
'Why? '
He laughed. 'Well, Henry looks a bit too good to be true, doesn't he? They couldn't believe someone his age, a college student, would pay so much for a place that big and isolated, just to live all by himself and study the Twelve Great Cultures. '
'What? They thought he was some kind of a crook? '
'They thought he wasn't entirely above-board, let's put it that way. Apparently the men from the FBI thought the same thing.
They didn't think he killed Bunny, but they thought he knew something he wasn't telling. Obviously there had been a disagreement in Italy. Marion knew that, Cloke knew it, even Julian did.
They even tricked me into admitting it, though I didn't tell that to Henry. If you ask me, I think what they really thought was that he and Bunny had some money sunk in Cloke's drug-dealing business. That trip to Rome was a big mistake. They could've done it inconspicuously but Henry spent a fortune, throwing money around like crazy, they lived in a palazzo, for Christ sake.
People remembered them everywhere they went. I mean, you know Henry, that's just the way he is but you have to look at it from their point of view. That illness of his must've looked pretty suspicious, too. Wiring a doctor in the States for Demerol. Plus those tickets to South America. Putting them on his credit card was about the stupidest thing he ever did. '
They found out about that? ' I said, horrified.
'Certainly. When they suspect somebody is dealing drugs, the financial records are the first thing they check – and good God, of all places, South America. Luckily Henry's dad really does own some property down there. Henry was able to cook up something fairly plausible – not that they believed him; it was more a matter of their not being able to disprove it. '
'But I don't understand where they got this stuff about drugs. '
'Imagine how it looked to them. On one hand, there was Cloke. The police knew he was dealing drugs on a pretty substantial scale; they also figured he was probably the middleman for somebody a lot bigger. There was no obvious connection between that and Bunny, but then there was Bunny s best friend, with all this money, they can't tell quite where it's coming from.
And during those last months Bunny was throwing around plenty of money himself. Henry was giving it to him, of course, but they didn't know that. Fancy restaurants. Italian suits. Besides.
Henry just looks suspicious. The way he acts. Even the way he dresses. He looks like one of those guys with horn-rimmed glasses and armbands in a gangster movie, you know, the one who cooks the books for Al Capone or something. ' He lit another cigarette. 'Do you remember the night before they found Bunny's body? ' he said. 'When you and I went to that awful bar, the one with the TV, and I got so drunk? '
'Yes. '
That was one of the worst nights of my life. It looked pretty bad for both of us. Henry was almost sure he was going to be arrested the next day. '
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