Child Wife

It was his flavor of insolence, of an amused and total inspection of her, that made Grace feel uneasy. He was big and fair, with the squared jaw and beginning softness of the ex-athlete. His grin, she decided, was meant to be charming, but there was a blank glassiness about his eyes that made it quite horrid. They were on the restaurant terrace overlooking the public beach, aswarm with Sunday families.

Frank Haas said, “You guess what Norton Pomeroy would marry as a second wife, and you come up with the traditional picture, the ball of fluff with the dumb blue eyes. You are obvious class, Mrs. Pomeroy.”

She reached and picked her purse up, pushed her chair back. “I guess this was a mistake,” she said. “On the phone you made it sound mysterious and important. Good day, Mr. Haas.”

When she was halfway up he put his hand on her shoulder and forced her back down again, firmly. “I’ve worked for the great man five years, Grace. It’s time we met. He’s out of town till Wednesday. Let’s talk about where you’ll be when the roof falls in.”

She frowned, not understanding his words. “Are you trying to scare me about something?”

“Stop being the princess talking to the peasant, Grace. I’m talking about survival. When big daddy falls off his tightrope, you want to come crashing down with him?”

“When I tell Norton what you’ve been saying to me—”

“You won’t. You’ll listen to me. I’m his bright young man, Grace. The secret is reliability. There isn’t much of that around any more. I’m given something to do, I get it done.”

“Congratulations!”

“I like that. I like a woman who can be ironic. The way I tick, I have a head for figures. Over a year ago I began to get the idea Norton Pomeroy was-being a little too cute about a few things. No proof. A little irregularity. A funny balance on a tax figure. He’s in a lot of complex operations. I had to dig for proof. A situation like he’s in, Mrs. Pomeroy, once you get hold of the right thread and tug it, you can unravel the whole thing.”

“Are you trying to tell me Norton is dishonest?”

“Sweetie, I’m telling you that your big daddy is done. It is a question of time. He has been concealing income. He has been juggling accounts. I got into his private safe four months ago. I estimate the Feds could come after him for six hundred thousand. His liabilities are just about double his assets. The next time he slips, it all comes tumbling down. And he knows it.”

Grace was silent, and he shrugged. “About that safe in his office, I spent a lot of time on that. I guess I spent 20 hours before I hit the combination. I knew you wouldn’t believe me, so after we set the date up on the phone, I stopped by the office this morning and borrowed this.”

He took it out of his pocket and handed it to her. It was a passport. She opened it and looked uncomprehendingly at the picture of her husband. He was wearing steel-rimmed glasses. They made him look muted and clerical. The personal data said that he was 48, unmarried, and his name was Garson Dorn.

Haas reached and took it out of her hand and put it back into the inside pocket of his jacket. “God knows where and how he got it. I think it’s a fake. There’s a pass book in the safe, too. A numbered account in Zurich showing 28,000 British pounds on deposit. There’s an envelope in the safe with $10,000 in U.S. currency. And there’s a packed suitcase in the back of his office closet.”

“No!” she said. But there were Norton’s strange silences, his irritability, the way he moaned in his sleep, his recent exceptional tenderness toward his baby daughter. She looked down the beach and saw nothing. There was a coldness under her heart. She had known after the first year the marriage was a mistake. But, out of pride, you endure. The search for security. A good future for Jeanie. Status.

“I think he’ll tap all the ready cash he can lay his hands on when he leaves.” Haas was speaking again.

She frowned at him. “Why have you come to me with — all this?”

Green eyes glinted in the reflected sunlight. “Survival, honey. Take my choices, for example. Pomeroy Associates collapses. Innocent or guilty, I get a mark I can’t rub off. Too close to scandal and disaster, Bright young man with no future at all. Even if I left tomorrow, it would work out the same. Haas? Oh, he was mixed up in that Pomeroy mess. Second choice: I go to the Feds and blow the whistle. Who likes an informer? And that could they collect? Ten per cent of nothing is nothing. Now how about you? You’ve filed joint personal tax returns with him for three years. You’ve been a party to fraud, honey. He runs, and you are the only target left. People can be very cruel.”

She shivered in the heat. “I don’t understand. If there’s nothing we can do—”

“Did I say there was nothing? I am a very ambitious guy, Grace. Sometimes opportunity comes at you looking like disaster.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

He leaned back and looked at her with hooded, speculative eyes. “Let’s try a hypothetical case. The way he’s set up, there are two corporations! You own stock in both. I’ve figured the whole situation out. I won’t trouble you with the details. Take my word for it. On a hypothetical basis, if he dropped dead tomorrow, a very agile guy could keep the whole thing from foundering. An agile guy with a little money. I have some. The market has been good to me. I would have to go along with the audit, use corporate insurance to pay back what he’s stolen, talk the Feds into playing along, In the end we’d be left with one little shoestring, no liabilities we couldn’t handle, and some profit possibilities on a long-run basis.”

“We? You keep saying we.”

“How does a bright young man get over being a hired hand? The way it would work, when the dust settled, I would turn up with a firm option to buy from you any shares you hold in either corporation. So that would include the estate shares.”

She cleared her throat, and when she spoke she did not recognize her own voice. “But — he is not going — to drop dead.”

“Let’s be prepared, sweetie, just in case he does. He’s under terrific tension. How good is his heart? You don’t have to understand all these business details, Grace. All you have to do is think of survival, right? For that cute baby daughter. Here’s what you do. Take this card. It’s a lawyer we can both trust. It’s all set up. You be in his office tomorrow morning at eleven, and we’ll set up the option agreement. Just in case.”

She wet her lips. Her vision seemed blurred. “Are you trying to — to tell me you’re going — to kill my husband?”

With a warning flicker of motion, a big hand cracked her across the face. The world darkened for a moment. She tasted blood. She sat with her head bowed, tears running down her cheeks. He fastened his big hand on her forearm.

“Don’t ever say anything like that. Don’t ever think anything like that, honey. All you have to do is sit tight. Wait. Everything will work out.” His grasp was very strong. It gave her a strangely sweet feeling of weakness.

He gave her arm a little shake and said, “Dry your eyes, little rabbit. We’re alike, you and me. Whatever happens, we land on our feet. You remember that.”

“All right.”

“All right, Frank.”

The world had changed for her. The big house did not look the same to her when she returned. She took Jeanie out onto the lawn under the trees. As she played with her daughter, she thought how little she had really known about her husband. You have two bitter and exhausting affairs, and then you want to hunt for a safe harbor. So you go at it very coldly, stalking fair game. It amused her faintly that Frank Haas could tell her she had class. Norton’s old friends didn’t think so.

She had been a bar waitress at the country club. Norton Pomeroy had been just a name. Important member. A quiet man. A widower 20 years her senior. She was trim and blonde. The club uniforms were cute. It had not been difficult to make him aware of her. She had kept thinking, “This time it’s my turn.” Always used instead of using. This time it’s my turn.

So she had waited in the shadows by his car one night. Night ride. Long talk. Coffee at her place. And weeks later she could make her mouth say that she loved him, and make him believe it.

She pulled Jeanie back onto the blanket, put her face in the sweetness of the baby-neck, and sobbed once.

This was the great irony, to be left worse off than in the beginning. It had a strange equity. She felt as if she had known it all along. Three years of a big house, a maid and a cook, cars and jewels, and then, inevitably, back to the lunchrooms on sore feet, with a child to support. Unless Frank...

She thought it odd that Frank should remind her so strongly of Hal and of Vern. A certain type of girl, she thought, cannot ever truly escape that type of guy.

At the lawyer’s office she followed Frank’s lead. It seemed just an ordinary business thing. There was some sort of a certification of her ownership of the shares, and then the papers were witnessed and notarized. Frank was right. You had to think of survival. You had to think of your daughter...

Norton Pomeroy wired her from Chicago to meet his 11 o’clock flight Wednesday night. He came through the gate and gave her a tired smile and an absent-minded kiss. As he waited for his suitcase he said, “You better drive, dear. I am absolutely bushed. How’s Jeanie?”

“Fine. Just fine.”

As they drove away she said, “Did you have a successful trip, darling?”

“When I get my shoes offhand a drink in my hand, I’ll tell you all about it.”

The master bedroom was huge. He had her sit in the chair at the far end of the bedroom. He was in robe and slippers. He had his bedtime drink in his hand.

He paced back and forth and said, “Gracie, darling, I’ve been under a hell of a strain for a full year now. I guess it’s been rough for you. Explanations and apologies are in order. Lonely life for a gal your age, husband working fifteen hours a day. We’ve gotten a little bit estranged from each other. No, don’t say anything. I know it and you know it. But that’s all over now.”

“Is it?”

“I have a surprise for you, darling. We are going to close this barn for a year, maybe more. You and I and Jeanie and a nursemaid are going to cruise around the world, slowly and luxuriously, honey. For a year or longer. We’re going to get reacquainted, darling.”

She stared at him. “I... I don’t understand.”

“Young wife, your husband is now retired, or will be by this time next week. Why should I kill myself in that office? I’ve spent this year making the profit picture just as attractive as possible, while looking around for the proper nibble. I’m taking the capital gains, honey. That’s what this trip was about. I made the final dicker with the Covington interests in Chicago. Their stock is currently selling at a hundred and ten. On the basis of a complete audit, they are taking over my entire ball of wax. So you and I, darling, we trade every share of Associates for six shares of Covington, and every share of Pomeroy for five shares of Covington. You’ll be a rich lady.”

She felt far away, close to fainting. She saw him as though he was at the far end of a tunnel. “But — in the safe in your office—” She stopped as he came to her, his expression one of bewilderment.

“Safe? In my office? There’s no safe in my office, dear.”

She rose, her hands clapped tightly against her face, whining and coughing against them. She knew she could never again let him look into her eyes...

At long last the sleeping pill took effect, and her breathing changed and deepened. Norton Pomeroy stood and looked down at the emptied, tear-marked face of his young wife. Even in her sleep, he could see the look of petulance around her mouth. He left the bedroom and made a fresh drink and carried it to the study and phoned Frank Haas.

“What’s the proper thing to say, Frank? Well done?”

“Was it pretty bad, sir?”

“Pretty bad. Yes. She’s asleep now.”

“Sir, you sound depressed. But... well, I guess it’s a good thing to know how easy it was. She snapped at it. It was like clubbing a rabbit. It’s better to know a thing like that.”

“Is it?”

“Mr. Pomeroy, with what we’ve got now, and with the investigation reports, you can get off the hook without any trouble at all, no big settlement, just the minimum maintenance for her and the trust fund for the child.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Sir?”

Pomeroy sighed. “Maybe there’s an implied obligation when you destroy someone. I really don’t know. At least now I know where I stand. She’s shallow and silly and sly. She’s greedy and impressionable. Child wife. But I’m not going through with it. You see, she doesn’t have anyone else.”

There was a long silence. Then Haas said, “Well, if you—”

“And neither do I,” said Norton Pomeroy and hung up.