Black Money

15

Peter’s father answered the door. He had on pajamas and a bathrobe, and he looked even more transparent and withdrawn than he had in the morning.

“Come in, Mr. Archer, won’t you? My housekeeper has gone to bed but I can offer you a drink. I was rather hoping you’d drop by, I have some information for you.”

Talking as if it was the middle of the day, he led me along the hall to his library. His movements were uncertain but he managed to steer himself through the door and into his chair.

There was a drink beside it. Jamieson seemed to be one of those drinkers who held themselves at a certain level of sobriety all day and all night.

“I’ll let you make your own drink. My hands are a little unsteady.”

He raised his hands and examined their tremor with clinical interest. “I should be in bed, I suppose, but I’ve almost lost the ability to sleep. These night watches are the hardest. The image of my poor dead wife comes back most vividly. I feel my loss like a vast yawning emptiness, in me as well as the external universe. I forgot whether I’ve shown you a picture of my dead wife?”

Reluctantly I admitted that he hadn’t. I had no desire to sit up all night with Jamieson and his irrigated memories. The drink I poured for myself from his fresh bottle was a careful ounce.

Jamieson groped in a leather box and produced a silver-framed photograph of a young woman. She wasn’t especially pretty. There had to be other reasons for her husband’s extended mourning. Maybe, I thought, grief was the only feeling he was capable of; or maybe it was just an excuse for drinking. I handed the photograph back to him.

“How long ago did she die?”

“Twenty-four years. My poor son killed her in being born. I try not to blame poor Peter, but it’s hard sometimes, when I think of all I lost.”

“You still have a son.”

Jamieson’s free hand made a small gesture, nervous and irritable. It said a good deal about his feelings for Peter, or his lack of them.

“Where is Peter, by the way?”

“He went out to the kitchen for a snack. He was on his way to bed. If you’d like to see him?”

“Later, perhaps. You said you had some information for me.”

He nodded. “I talked to one of my friends at the bank. Martel’s hundred thousand – actually it was closer to a hundred and twenty thousand – was deposited in the form of a draft on the Banco de Nueva Granada – the Bank of New Granada.”

“I never heard of it.”

“Neither had I, though I’ve been to Panama City. The New Granada has its headquarters in Panama City.”

“Did Martel leave his hundred grand in the local bank?”

“He did not. I was coming to that. He withdrew every cent of it. In cash. The bank offered him a guard but he couldn’t be bothered. He packed the money into a briefcase and tossed it into the back of his car.”

“When did this happen?”

“Today at five minutes to three, just before the bank closed. He’d phoned first thing in the morning to make sure that they’d have the cash on hand.”

“So he was already planning to leave this morning. I wonder where he went.”

“Panama, perhaps. That seems to be the source of his money.”

“I should report to your son. How do I find the kitchen?”

“It’s at the other end of the hallway. You’ll see the light. Come back and have another short one with me, won’t you, afterwards?”

“It’s getting late.”

“I’ll be glad to give you a bed.”

“Thanks, I work better out of a hotel.”

I made my way along the passageway toward the kitchen light. Peter was sitting at a table under a hanging lamp. Most of a roast goose lay on a wooden platter in front of him, and he was eating it.

I hadn’t tried to soften the sound of my footsteps, but he hadn’t heard me coming. I stood in the doorway and watched him. He was eating as I had never seen anyone eat.

With both hands he tore chunks of flesh from the goose’s breast and forced them into his mouth, the way you pack meat into a grinder. His face was distorted, his eyes almost invisible.

He tore off a drumstick and bit into its thick end. I crossed the kitchen toward him. The room was large and white and bleak. It reminded me of a disused handball court.

Peter looked up and saw me. He dropped the bird’s leg guiltily as if it was part of a human body. His face was swollen tight and mottled, like a sausage.

“I’m hungry.” His voice was fogged with grease.

“Still hungry?”

He nodded, with his dull eyes on the half-demolished bird. It lay in front of him like the carcass of his hopes.

I felt like getting out of there and sending him back the balance of his money. But I’ve always had trouble walking out on bad luck. I pulled up a chair and sat down across the table from him and talked him out of his stupor.

I don’t remember everything I said. Mostly I tried to persuade the boy that he was within the human range. I do remember that my broken monologue was punctuated by a banging noise, which came from the general direction of Marietta Fablon’s house.

The first time I heard the noise, I thought it might be gunfire. I discounted this when it was repeated over and over at irregular intervals. More likely it was a shutter or an outside door banging in the wind.

Eventually Peter said in a clogged voice: “I apologize.”

“Apologize to yourself.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Apologize to yourself. You’re the one you’re doing it to.”

His face was like kneaded dough in the harsh light. “I don’t know what gets into me.”

“You should take it up with a doctor. It’s a disease.”

“You think I need a psychiatrist?”

“Most people do at one time or another. You’re lucky you can afford one.”

“I can’t, though. Not really. I won’t come into my real money for another year.”

“Use your credit. You can afford a psychiatrist if you can afford me.”

“You really think there’s something the matter with my head?”

“Your heart,” I said. “You have a hungry heart. You better find something to feed it with besides food.”

“I know. It’s why I have to get Ginny back.”

“You need to do more than that. If she ever saw you on an eating binge–” It was a cruel sentence. I didn’t finish it.

“She has,” he said. “That’s the trouble. As soon as people find out they turn against me. I suppose you’ll be quitting too.”

“No. I’d like to see things get straightened out for you.”

“They’ll never get straightened out. I’m hopeless.”

He was trying to lean his full moral weight on me. I didn’t want any more of it than I had, and I tried to objectify the situation a little.

“My grandmother who lived in Martinez was a religious woman. She always said it was sinful to despair.”

He shook his head slowly. His eyes seemed to swing with the movement. A minute later he dashed for the kitchen sink and vomited.

While I was trying to clean it and him up, his father appeared in the doorway. He spoke across Peter as if he was deaf or moronic: “Has my poor boy been eating again?”

“Lay off, Mr. Jamieson.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He raised his pale hands as if to show what a gentle father he had been. “I’ve been both father and mother to my son. I’ve had to be.”

Peter stood at the sink with his back to his father, unwilling to show his face. After a while his father drifted away again.

Attached to the great main kitchen, with its tiled counters and sinks and ovens, was a smaller outer kitchen like a glassed-in porch. I became aware of this outer kitchen because there was a noise at the door, a scrabbling and a snuffling which was nearer and more insistent than the banging noise.

“Do you have a dog out there?”

Peter shook his head. “It may be a stray. Let it in. We’ll give it a piece of goose.”

I turned on the light in the outer kitchen and opened the door. Marietta Fablon crawled in over the threshold. She rose to her knees. Her hands groped up my legs to my waist. There was blood like a dyer’s error on her pink quilted breast. Her eyes were as wide and blind as silver coins.

“Shot me.”

I got down and held her. “Who, Marietta?”

Her mouth worked. “Lover-boy.”

The residue of her life came out with the words. I could feel it leave her body.