Area of Suspicion

Chapter 2

Lester Fitch wore a dark gray suit, a white shirt, sedate-figured tie. In his felt hat, and with the sun glinting on the perfect prisms of his glasses he was completely out of key with the beach and the sea as he walked beside me down the sand road to my house.

I have contempt and pity for Lester. I have watched him with others, watched the excellence of his imitation of a sincere young lawyer who is going places in his profession. His act is unsure when he is with me, and perhaps with anyone else who remembers him from high school. He probably wishes no one could remember. He was one of those blubbery, ungainly kids with acne, who grew too fast and who seems to exist in order to be persecuted. He could not run fast enough to avoid torment, and had no strength to match his growth. His cry of pain and outrage was an adenoidal bellow. With those of us who remember him from then, he tries very hard to be the manly lawyer, but the mask is always slipping a bit, exposing the wariness and uncertainty underneath.

He had watched me somberly while I hosed down the “Vunderbar,” looking more than ordinarily ill at ease. I had concealed my impatience to know what had brought him down, and made the routine job last. The rich leather of his briefcase glowed in the pale and ominous light of the day. When I was through he said he’d rather talk at my place. He walked there, beside me, as out of place in Indian Rocks as one of our tanned beach girls would have been in the raw April of Arland.

We went into my small, cypress-paneled livingroom. I had left the windows closed and the air was musty, sea-damp. I opened them wide. Lester sat on the couch and put the briefcase beside him and placed his felt hat carefully on the briefcase. He crossed his legs and adjusted his trouser crease. He seemed intent on little routines, and the whole act was wrong. I didn’t know how it was wrong until I realized how he would have acted had it been an attempt to get me back into the firm. Then he would have been full of false affability, full of chat about what a nice little place this is, and you’re looking well, old boy. Instead of joviality, he was acting like a lawyer awaiting an unfriendly verdict.

“Niki tried to get in touch with you by phone yesterday, Gevan,” he said, on a faint annoying note of accusation.

“So I was told. And you flew down. I was told that too. Now you’re supposed to tell me why?”

He polished his glasses on a bone-white handerchief. His naked eyes looked mild and helpless. Usually it is possible to guess which part Lester is playing, which mask he has selected from his limited supply. This one bothered me because I couldn’t guess what effect he was trying to create.

He put the glasses on, and his smile was something that came and went quickly and weakly, a smile of nervous apology. My unreasoning forebodings had made me as nervous as he acted. I said harshly, “Get to the point! What do you want?”

“Gevan — I don’t know how to — Gevan, Ken’s dead.”

I walked to the window and looked out at the sand road, at the beach, and the oiled gray of the Gulf. The swells curled and broke. The wind had freshened. Pelicans, in single file, glided by, somber and intent. Two husky boys in blue trunks were practicing handstands. They could have been brothers.

Kendall Dean is dead.

One word. A heavy word, like something falling. It did a strange thing. It changed him from a man I thought I hated back into my kid brother. Kid brother, dead at thirty-one. It awakened all the deep, warm things of long ago, all the things I had pushed out of my mind so I could think of him only as a male who had taken my woman from me, so I could deny brotherhood and recognize only the hate and the resentment.

The hate had been strong. But one word took it away. One word brought back the good days, those good, lost summers. He was a face weeping in the window that first day when I was taken to school, because he was not old enough to go, and the days would be lonely for him without our games and projects. Cave, treehouse, hideout, secret rites of many memberships, codes and plots and complicated wars.

I remembered the day the roan threw him and broke his arm, and I walked him home and he would not cry.

I thought of him as my kid brother, and felt a terrifying remorse that we had not spoken in four years, that I had not written him, that the last thing I had done to him was hit him heavily in the mouth and knock him down. I had blamed him, and it was all changed. It had been Niki who had stolen something from me. Stolen the last four years of my brother. All dead now. Mother, father, sister, brother. Sister dead at seven, and all I could remember of her was the way she looked once, running down a wide lawn as fast as she could run, as though she ran away that day from our familiar world.

Now it seemed Niki had stolen half my life and all of his. Too many deaths. He had been the last one who gave a damn what happened to me, what I did, whether or not I was happy. I had told myself I hated him, but I had not realized these past four years that the very awareness of his existence had been a tie with all the good years.

The two boys ceased their handstands and walked down the beach, one of them carrying a yellow beach ball. An old woman in a black bathing suit bent over, fingering a pile of shells. The wind flapped the skirt of her bathing suit against suet-legs and the wind came through the window and I could smell rain and dampness in it.

Lester touched my shoulder and it startled me. I turned and he pulled his hand back.

“I... didn’t mean to break it to you so — bluntly.”

“How did it happen?”

“It was one of those crazy, pointless things.” There was anger in his voice. “It happened just after midnight Friday night, Gevan. Lord, that seems weeks ago. He and Niki were having a quiet evening. She went to bed, but she wasn’t asleep when it happened. Ken was taking a walk around the place. The police think he surprised a prowler. Somebody shot him in the back of the head. It killed him instantly.”

I stared at Lester. “In the back of the head!”

“It’s such a senseless waste,” he said. “It’s the sort of thing that’s always happening to people you don’t know. You read about it in the papers. You think what a bad break, but it doesn’t touch you, because it never happens to people you know.”

“When is the funeral?”

Lester looked at his watch. “A lot of company people want to attend, of course. And things are so rushed at the plant that it was decided they’d have it today. About three hours from now. Niki is terribly, terribly shocked, as you can well imagine. It shocked the whole city. He had a lot of friends, Gevan.”

“I know.” I sat down. He had a lot of friends because he was a good man. The news changed the look of my world. My livingroom was alien, as if I had wandered into a place where strangers lived. I got up to make myself a drink. I asked Lester if he wanted one. He asked for a light one. I made mine stiff. A prowler with a twisted mind and a finger on a trigger. There would be quite a few stiff drinks, but I knew there wouldn’t be enough of them.

As I brought the drinks, Lester was opening his briefcase. The zipper made a secretive sound. I put the drink beside him and said, “What have you got there?”

His specialized knowledge gave him assurance. He was out of the world of bad tidings, and back in his garden of torts and writs. Assurance brought back his air of patronizing efficiency. “You know I hate to bother you with this sort of thing at a time like this, Gevan. But it’s best to get the details taken care of. I have a plane connection to make. But if you’d rather not, of course, we can—”

“Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He handed me a paper, saying, “I need your signature on this for the probate court. Under the terms of your father’s will, as Ken died without issue, his share of the trust fund reverts to you. Ken’s will, of course, leaves everything to Niki. You can have another lawyer check this, but—”

I read it carefully. He uncapped a pen and handed it to me at precisely the right moment. If he had been handling the personal legal affairs of Ken and Niki, he had acquired a pleasantly profitable account. I signed it and gave it back to him.

He handed me another bit of paper. I saw that it was a standard proxy form. It was made out to Niki, to Mrs. Kendall Dean.

“This will require more explanation,” he said.

“I should think so.” I hadn’t voted my shares since I had left.

He shrugged. “Actually it’s a case of finding someone acceptable to you, Gevan. We didn’t think you’d care to — have me vote it.”

I stared at him and he flushed and looked down and did some unnecessary rearrangement of the papers. I knew that he was remembering, as I was, that day years ago when he had come to me with a choice and tainted little scheme that involved a “friendly” salvage officer and a rigged auction of some army surplus material. He’d presented it as though he were doing me a favor, letting me in on it. He was trying to scrape up enough financial backing to swing the whole purchase. He came to see me on a day when I had no time for soft answers and no patience with such schemes. I had told him in blunt words what I thought of the plan, the salvage officer, and Lester Fitch, until he wheeled with flaming face and ran from my office.

“What’s all this ‘we’ talk, Lester?” I asked him softly.

“We? Oh, I see what you mean. Through Ken I’ve been doing quite a bit of state tax work for the firm, and I’ve been made a member of the board — pro tem — to be confirmed at the next meeting.”

“Niki too, I suppose?”

“She’ll sit in on the emergency meeting a week from tomorrow. An open meeting. Board and shareholders. Notices will go out tomorrow.”

I looked at the proxy form again. “That doesn’t explain why you want this, Lester.”

He gave me a condescending glance, big business talking to a beach boy. “You’ve made it definite that you don’t want to come back, Gevan. It was talked over. We — everyone decided when we couldn’t contact you in time to make the — ceremony, you’d rather have it handled this way than come up and attend the meeting yourself.”

It took a few moments to get my attention back to what he was saying. I had drifted off again into memories of Ken.

I stared at Lester. “I don’t want to seem dull. But the questions I’ve been asking sound reasonably simple to me. Why do you want a proxy form signed? For what purpose?”

He waved a large white hand. “Oh, that’s not something so terribly special, Gevan. It’s one of the usual rows. A minority group trying to clobber management. We need a show of strength.”

“What minority group? What do they want?”

He sighed, patiently. “You’ve been out of touch, Gevan. I’ll have to give you some background on this. If you happened to glance at the annual report you must have—”

“I read it with interest.”

“Good!” he said. “Splendid! That saves time. We’ve just been awarded another twenty-five million’s worth. We have so much government work a Colonel Dolson — a fine officer — has been stationed at the plant with his staff. For some time Colonel Dolson has felt that Ken, quite frankly, wasn’t big enough to handle the new picture. He told me quite confidentially that he had spoken to Ken about stepping down in favor of Stanley Mottling some time ago. Ken had seemed in favor of the suggestion and had said he would think it over.”

“Stanley Mottling? Just who the hell is Stanley Mottling?”

He raised his eyebrows. One of those oh-come-now expressions. “Don’t you know about him? Ken brought him in as executive vice-president. Amazing man. Enormously capable. It’s a credit to Ken that he located him and brought him in. A world of experience, believe me. Exactly the sort of man to put Dean Products on its feet.”

“I wasn’t aware that it had been knocked off its feet.”

“You don’t realize the tremendous problems involved in setting up entirely new production—”

“I’m just a poor cracker-boy.”

He smiled uneasily. “I was about to say, in the quantity that they’ve been loading on us. With Ken gone, Niki and I — and the Colonel, of course — feel that Stanley should take over with the least possible delay. In fact, we’re grateful that he’s available and willing. But Mr. Karch, from the bank, as board chairman, has been rocking the boat. He’s been organizing the other shareholders and putting them squarely behind old Walter Granby to take over.”

“Any firm could do much worse. Walter is shrewd and able.”

Lester shook his head. “He was shrewd and able. He’s failed badly in the four years you’ve been gone. You’d be shocked to see him. But even at his best, Gevan, or — and I say this in complete honesty — at your best, neither of you could measure up to Mottling. We need your shares behind Mottling to confirm Ken’s wishes and keep little people from upsetting the apple cart. I’m pretty certain they won’t go as far as a mismanagement suit. It will be enough just to vote Granby down. A suit like that wouldn’t stand a chance, not when you stack it up against Mottling’s record.

“If this Mottling is so hot, why the opposition?”

“Jealousy. Unwillingness to keep up with the times. Inability to comprehend that Dean Products is in the big time.”

“I seem to remember that Dean Products was in the big time ten years ago.”

He gave me a hush-hush tone of voice, leaning forward. “Gevan, we’ve been entrusted with the production of — some very crucial items. I’m not permitted to say more than that.”

“Why should Walter buck Mottling? Walter is bright.”

“He lives in his own world these days.”

I flicked my cigarette into the small littered fireplace and turned back toward Lester. “It seems so damn fast, Lester. Too damn fast. Ken was killed on Friday. This is Sunday. And here you are with a proxy form.”

“You have absolutely no idea of the tremendous pressure on the firm,” he said solemnly. I wondered if he knew how he sounded. I sensed anxiety. All right, so Lester had deeded his heart and soul to the company and become a very dedicated young man. But that did not fit my understanding of Lester Fitch. Maybe they were giving him a bonus or something for coming back with the signed proxy.

“I don’t want anybody voting my shares. You or Niki or Karch or anybody else.”

He looked at me sadly and shook his head. “I’d hate to think you’d apply emotional reasoning to anything this important, Gevan.”

I suspected it was a phrase he had thought up on the plane ride down, complete with rehearsed head-shaking.

“Exactly what does that mean?”

He coughed and fiddled with the strap on his briefcase. “If you weren’t being emotional about it, you’d have no objection to Niki. That seems clear to me.”

“Don’t oversimplify. If it’s this important that my stock be voted, I should vote it myself.”

The light caught his glasses in such a way I couldn’t see his eyes behind them. “Maybe I have oversimplified it. I didn’t realize that now you’d have such a much better reason for coming back.” The insinuation was unmistakable, and unmistakably nasty.

I reached him in one stride, caught the front of his coat and lifted him up off the couch. His briefcase slid to the floor. I had my right fist back, I saw the mouth go slack, and saw behind his frightened eyes a lumbering lout bleating his way across the playground with the pack shrill behind him. I pushed him back onto the couch. He sat on his hat, mashing it. It wasn’t worth hitting him. He’d used a snide and clumsy weapon. The very crudeness of it was perhaps an index of his anxiety.

“I know I shouldn’t have said—”

“Shut up, Lester,” I said wearily. “Just go away. Go catch your plane.”

He thumbed his hat back into shape. “I’ll leave the proxy form with you.”

I turned away. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Go back and tell them you don’t know what I’m going to do.”

I heard him go to the door. He said, “I’m — very sorry about Ken. When you get over the emotional shock and give this some rational thought, Gevan, you’ll see that the best...”

I turned toward him. He swallowed, and fixed his hat and left. The wind banged the door shut. I saw him going down the road, holding his hat brim. He looked back. His face was too pallid for this land. The two boys had come back. They had a girl with them. Her yellow suit matched the beach ball. One of them slung the ball at her. Her back was turned. I heard the thin squeal and watched her chase him, agile and brown.

I stretched out on the couch and went back through all the years, like looking at old photograph albums. The world had been a safe place then, full of high, square automobiles, full of sailboats and ponies and summer camps.

But the depression had put an end to the extra things. Other firms had folded, but Dad had held Dean Products together with guts and bare hands. I remember how he would sit with us at dinner, silent, his face very old. The bad years lasted a long time.

In 1939 Dean Products got an order from the British Purchasing Commission for Bren machine-gun mounts. Ken and I got all heated up over the war. We were going for sure. But in my past was that year in Arizona and the healed scars were too impressive on the X-ray plates. And when the checked Ken they found sugar, and he went on a diabetic’s diet. Healthy kids.

So it was college then, and the feeling of being left out. There were all kinds of uniforms and training programs around the colleges. I went on to Harvard Business School. After I got out I went into the firm and got a full year of shop experience before Dad’s stroke, coma, and death. The war was over and things had eased, and I guess they made me boss man because there didn’t seem to be any specific damage I could do. Scared witless, I concealed it behind what was supposed to be a confident manner. Walter Granby helped. They all helped. I found out how reins can feel good in your hands, and a profit is a good thing to make because it shows you how well you’ve been doing. When I found Niki I knew that she had been the one thing missing...

The phone rang and I reached over and picked it up after the first ring. “Mr. Dean, sir? One moment, please. Arland is calling.”

I knew who it had to be before she spoke, and I knew precisely how her voice would sound. “Gev?”

“Hello, Niki.” You couldn’t say that and let it go at that. There had to be more. The standard words. “I’m sorry about Ken, Niki.”

“It’s so — so unfair. That’s all I can think. So unfair.”

“I know.”

“I’m lost, Gev. Just terribly lost and alone. I want to crawl away and hide. But there’s all these business things I don’t understand. I just talked to Lester. He said you’re upset.”

“About Ken. And Lester irritated me.”

“He shouldn’t have gone down there. He thought it would be all right after we couldn’t get in touch with you yesterday.”

“I supposed he told you I refused to sign the proxy.”

“I don’t know what he said. I hardly listened to him. Oh, Gevan, it’s raining here like it would never end. Fat gray rain. What do they say — a good day for a funeral?” The sound she made was half-sob, half-laugh.

“Easy Niki.”

“Lester didn’t know whether you’re coming up here or not. Maybe you should come up here, Gev. I... I want to see you.”

Yes, you want to see me. To check on the damage, maybe. Ken never would have touched you without invitation. Bitch.

I kept thinking of how she would look. Four years older now. Sitting with her fingers white on the telephone, a strand of that black hair swinging forward, to be thrown back with the familiar, impatient gesture. In the right light her hair would glint violet and blue. Her eyes were a strange blue, darker when she was troubled or aroused. Now she would be staring into an empty distance, her white teeth set into the roundness of underlip, and she would be wearing black...

I could sense the pull of her, the sheer physical pull that could moisten my palms, shorten my breath, even when she was fifteen hundred miles away. I remembered my finger tips on the silk of her cheek, remembered how when my arms were around her I could feel, under my palm, the slow warm sliding of her muscles under the warmth of her back.

“Like Lester said,” I told her harshly, “I haven’t decided.”

“I’m sorry I said that. I wasn’t thinking. I haven’t any right to ask you to come up here, or ask you for anything, Gevan.”

“You have a right to ask. You were my brother’s wife. I want to do anything I can for you, naturally.”

Her voice became fainter and there were noises on the line. I had to strain to hear her. “... all this company business. I don’t know. I have to leave soon, Gev. Good-by.”

“Good-by, Niki.” I went to the window. The rain came out of the west. It wasn’t fat and gray. It was in wind-driven sheets. I shut the windows on the west. The kids were gone from the beach. A brown palm frond slid across the sand road with the wind.

No point in going up there. Nothing I could do. Nothing I could do about the four wasted years. They don’t give you two chances. Not on the biggest table in the house. They make you pass the dice.

No adolescent urge for vengeance would hasten the capture of the prowler by the police. Stay here, Dean, and keep on with the routines of four years.

If I went up there, Ken wouldn’t come striding toward me out of the rain, an inch shorter than I, a few inches broader. A husky guy with nice eyes. Always a bit shy. He had always followed my lead. Even, I thought mockingly, with Niki.

I looked at my watch. The services would begin soon. The plot was on a hill. There were cedars there. The big granite stone said Dean. Three generations there. Now Kendall. If Niki never married again, she would be there one day. And I would, too. Strange reunion on the green hill.

The wind rattled the jalousied windows and I told myself again that I would not go back.

But on Tuesday, after too many restless, aimless hours, too many drinks and troubled dreams, George Tarleson drove me across Courtney Campbell Causeway to catch a flight from Tampa International. And George seemed to be driving too slowly.