Desperate Measures

2

The man locked the door and led the way, escorting his mother along a wide wood-paneled corridor that had landscape paintings, forests and farmhouses, on the walls. The frames looked old enough to be from the nineteenth century.

They passed a brightly polished maple staircase, its banister beautifully carved. At the end of the corridor, lights glowed in several rooms, from one of which a tall man wearing a white jacket appeared.

“Where have you been, Frederick?” Meecham asked. “I found my mother answering the door.”

“I thought she was upstairs,” the man in the white jacket said. “I apologize, sir. I didn’t hear the door. I was down in the wine cellar, looking for the Rothschild you requested.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The ’71?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Mother, why don’t you rest until dinner? Frederick will take you up to your room. Perhaps you can watch one of your television shows.” Meecham’s tone implied that he himself did not watch television.

“Victory Garden is about to begin, Mrs. Meecham,” Frederick said.

“Yes,” the elderly woman said with enthusiasm, allowing herself to be escorted into a small elevator.

As the cage rumbled and rose, Meecham turned to Pittman and Jill. “In here, please.”

They entered one of the many rooms that flanked the wide corridor. There were bookcases with leather-bound volumes on them, mostly law books. The furniture was subdued, correct, and, Pittman assumed, more expensive than he would have dreamed. An Oriental rug stopped three feet short of the walls on each side, revealing a rich oak floor.

Meecham gestured. “Sit down. May I have Frederick get you anything?”

Pittman and Jill each took a chair across from where Meecham stood by the fireplace.

“Thank you, no,” Pittman said.

“I was just about to have a cocktail,” Meecham said, his hospitality surprising Pittman.

I don’t get it, Pittman thought. He was ready to give us the bum’s rush until I mentioned Grollier. Now he invites us in and wants us to have cocktails. Either he needs the drink, which it doesn’t look like, or else he hopes a little booze might get us to talk more candidly than we normally would have.

“A cocktail would be nice,” Jill said. “Whatever you’re having.”

“Vodka martinis.”

“That would be fine.”

Meecham walked to the door, opened it, spoke to someone, then shut the door again and sat on a Chippendale chair next to the fireplace.

He looked steadily at Jill and then Pittman. “Grollier Academy.”

“That’s right. Your father went there, I believe,” Pittman said.

“Oh, indeed he did. But I don’t quite understand. Of all the students who went to Grollier, why would you have chosen my father for an interview?”

“Because he was a classmate of the so-called grand counselors. Jonathan Millgate, Eustace Gable, Anthony Lloyd…”

Meecham’s features hardened. “I know who the grand counselors are. My father had no relationship with them after he left Grollier.”

“But evidently he was close to them at the time.”

Meecham spoke quickly. “What makes you think that?”

“In his junior year, your father enrolled in a course in political science. The number of students was quite small. Only six. The five grand counselors-”

“And my father.”

It was the first time that Meecham had volunteered any information. Pittman tried not to look surprised.

“Yes,” Jill said. “Naturally in so close an environment, especially on the subject of political science, your father would have heard ideas exchanged that might have explained the direction the grand counselors took in their political careers.”

Meecham studied them. “My father never discussed that with me.”

The room became silent. Meecham was through volunteering information.

“Then perhaps he said something about the grand counselors themselves,” Pittman said, “some kind of reminiscence when he read about them in the newspapers, something that would give insight into their formative ideas.”

“He never discussed that with me, either,” Meecham said flatly.

“No comment at all when he read about something controversial that they did?”

“Only that he’d gone to school with them.”

Yes, Meecham had definitely stopped volunteering information.

The room became silent again.

Someone knocked on the door. Frederick came in carrying a tray that held glasses and a martini pitcher.

“Frederick, we won’t have time for cocktails after all. I just remembered that the San Francisco office is going to be phoning me in five minutes,” Meecham said.

Frederick paused where he was about to set the tray on a sideboard.

Meecham stood, approaching Pittman and Jill. “I don’t like conducting business in the evening. That’s probably why I forgot about the telephone call. Let me escort you to the door. I regret I couldn’t be of more help, but my father was a private man. He seldom talked to me about personal matters. Grollier was a long time ago.”

Pittman stood, as well. “One last question. I wonder if you have any idea why your father didn’t graduate from Grollier.”

Meecham, whose gaze had been steady, blinked twice.

“He dropped out of the political science course that he was taking with the grand counselors,” Pittman said. “And then he stopped attending Grollier altogether.”

“I’ve changed my mind, Frederick,” Meecham said. “The San Francisco office can talk to me tomorrow. When the phone rings, tell them I’m unavailable.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Please, serve the martinis.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Meecham sat again, looking uncomfortable. Pittman and Jill lowered themselves back into their chairs. Frederick poured the martinis and brought a tray to each of them, offering a choice of olives or pearl onions.

Pittman sipped, enjoying the cold, smooth taste, suddenly realizing how little alcohol he had had to drink since he’d followed Millgate to the Scarsdale estate five nights earlier. Prior to then, he’d been really putting it away, guzzling it. He hadn’t been able to face the day-and especially the nights-without it. He had needed to distance himself from reality. Now he couldn’t allow anything to keep him from facing reality.

The situation became awkward. No one said anything, waiting for Frederick to leave.