Early Autumn

CHAPTER 26

Paul and I spent the night in my apartment in Boston. And the next morning about ten thirty we broke into his father’s apartment in Andover. There was no one home. Like all the other good suburban business types, Mel Giacomin was out laying nose to grindstone.

“His office is in back where I slept when I was here,” Paul said.

Through the dining room with the kitchen opening to the right and down a very short hall there were two bedrooms and a bath. Mel wasn’t a neat guy. The breakfast dishes were still laying around the kitchen. Coffee for one, I noticed, and a Rice Krispies box. A health food addict. Mel’s bed in the right-hand bedroom was unmade and there were dirty clothes on the floor. There were wet towels on the bathroom floor. The other door was closed and locked with a padlock. I stepped as far back as the narrow hall would let me, raised my right foot, and kicked the door with the flat of my foot The padlock hasp tore loose from the wood. We went in. The office was neat. There was a studio couch. A table that once functioned in a kitchen, a straight chair, and a two-drawer metal file with a lock. On the table were a phone, a lamp, a beer mug holding pencils and pens, and a card file. The card file was locked too. There was a small Oriental rug on the floor, an air conditioner in the room’s one window, and nothing else.

“Let’s just take the files,” I said. “Simpler than breaking them open and going through them here.”

“But won’t he know?”

“He’ll already know I kicked in his door. I don’t care if he knows that someone took his files. If he thinks it’s me, fine. If there’s things in here to make him nervous, maybe he’ll make a move. If he does, things will happen. That’s a plus. You take the card file.”

And out we went. Paul with the card file, and me wrestling the bigger file. “It’s not heavy,” I said. “It’s just awkward.”

“Sure,” Paul said. “That’s what they all say.”

We loaded the files in the back of the Bronco and drove away. No one yelled at us. No policemen blew their whistles. I’d learned over the years that if you’re not wearing a mask you can walk in and out of almost anywhere and carry away almost anything and people assume you’re supposed to.

I parked in the alley in back of my office and Paul and I carried the files up. It had been a while since I’d been in my office. There was a batch of mail on the floor below the mail slot. A spider had made a web in one corner of my window. Since it didn’t interfere with my view of the ad agency across the street, I left it alone.

I put the big file down next to my desk. Paul put the card file on top of it. I opened the window and picked up my mail and sat at my desk to read it. Most of it went right to the wastebasket unopened. What was left was a copy of a book autographed by the woman who’d written it, a woman I’d done some work for awhile ago, and an invitation to attend the wedding of Brenda Loring to someone named Maurice Kerkorian. Reception following the ceremony at the Copley Plaza Hotel. I looked at the invitation for a long time.

“What are we going to do with these files?” Paul said,

I put the mail down. “After we get them open we’ll look and see what’s there.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Don’t know. We’ll see what’s there.”

“What did you mean it would be good if my father knew you’d taken the files?” Paul said.

I got a pinch bar out of the coat closet in the corner of the office and began to pry the file drawers open.

“Gets him moving. The worst thing that can happen if you’re trying to find out about people is to have them hunker down and stay put. If they simply sit on whatever it is and do nothing, then nothing happens. They don’t commit themselves, don’t give you a chance to counterpunch, don’t make mistakes, don’t open themselves up, if you follow.”

“What do you think my father might do?”

“He might try to get the files back.”

“And what if he does?”

“We’ll see.”

“But you don’t know?”

The last file drawer snapped open under the pressure of the bar. “No, I don’t know. But if you’ll excuse the phrase, it’s the way life is. You don’t know what’s going to happen. People whose lives work best are the ones who recognize that and, having done what they can, are ready for what comes. Like the man said, ‘Readiness is all.’”

“What man?”

“Hamlet”

“That’s what you did with Harry.”

“Yeah, partly. You go from handle to handle. I tried Buddy, and then Harry, and now your father. It’s like walking down a long corridor with a bunch of doors. You keep trying them to see which one opens. You don’t know what’s behind the doors, but if you don’t open any, you don’t get out of the corridor.”

“All that’s in this card file are a bunch of names,” Paul said.

I took a card and looked at it. It said Richard Tilson. 43 Concord Avenue. Waltham. Whole Life. 9/16/73. Prudential #3750916. “Client file, I guess,” I said. I looked at some other cards. Same setup. “Run through them,” I said. “Make a note of any names you know. Make sure it’s all client information.”

“Why do you want me to list people I know?”

“Why not? Might matter. It’s a thing to do with the file. Maybe a pattern will crop up. You won’t know till you’ve done it”

I gave Paul a pad and pencil from my desk and he sat in my client’s chair with the file on his side of my desk and began to go through it I turned on the portable radio to a contemporary sound station for Paul and began to go through the contents of the big file on my side of the desk. It was slow. There was correspondence to be read, all of it couched in the clotted, illiterate jargon of economic enterprise. After ten minutes I was getting cerebral gas pains. The music wasn’t helping. “If Andy Warhol were a musician, he’d sound like this,” I said.

Paul said, “Who’s Andy Warhol?”

“It’s better you should not know,” I said.

At one thirty I tuned to the ball game. Relief. At two I said to Paul, “You hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you walk over to that sandwich shop on Newbury and get us some food.”

“Where is it?”

“Just a block down and around the corner. Right across from Brooks Brothers.”

“Okay.”

I gave him some money. “Get whatever looks good,” I said.

“What do you want?”

“Use your own judgment,” I said.

“Okay.”

He went out and I kept at the files. Paul came back with turkey sandwiches on oatmeal and roast beef sandwiches on rye and two lemon turnovers and a carton of milk. I had coffee from the coffee pot. By three Paul had finished with his file. He said, “I’m going to walk around.”

I said, “You need any money?”

He said, “No. I still got change from what you gave me before.”

At five Paul came back. He’d bought a book on ballet at the Booksmith up Boylston.

He read his book while I worked on the files. It got dark. I turned on the lights in the office. At eight fifteen I said, “Enough. Come on, I’ll buy you dinner.”

We went up to Cafe L’Ananas and ate. I got a bottle of wine and Paul had some. Then we walked back to my apartment. “What about your car?” Paul said.

“We’ll leave it there. It’s only a four-block walk to my office.”

“We going back tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’m not through.”

“I only found three people on the list.”

“More than I’ve found so far.”

We went upstairs and went to bed.