Mystery

“You’re pretty quiet,” Victor Pasmore said. “Excuse me, did somebody say something? Did I say ‘you’re pretty quiet’ just now? Nobody said anything back, so maybe I was just dreaming.” They were eating a dinner Victor had prepared with many grumbles and complaints, and though Tom’s mother had not emerged from her bedroom since he had returned home, a plate of unidentifiable meat and overcooked vegetables had been set for her. Booming noises from the television mingled with the dim sound of music that drifted down the stairs.

“What the hell, you’re always quiet,” Victor said. “This is nothing new. I oughta be used to this act by now. You say something, and your kid plays with his food.”

“I’m sorry,” Tom said.

“Jesus Christ, a sign of life!” Victor shook his head sourly. “I must be dreaming. You think next your mother will come downstairs and eat this food? Or will she just stay up there listening to Blue Rose over and over?”

“Blue Rose?”

“Yeah, you mean you never heard of it? Your old lady plays the damn thing over and over, I don’t think she hears it anymore, she just—”

“Blue Rose is the name of a record?”

“ ‘Blue Rose is the name of a record?’ ” His father’s voice was a mincing drawl. “Yeah, it’s the name of a record. Glenroy Breakstone’s famous all-ballad record, which your mother would rather listen to than come down here and eat the dinner I made. Which is par for the course, I suppose, like you sitting there looking goofy when I ask you what you did all day.”

“I went for a ride with Sarah Spence.”

“Big man, aren’t you?”

Tom looked across the table at his father. A smear of grease shone on his chin. Sweat stains darkened the armpits of the shirt he had worn to the office. Broken veins and black pores covered his nose. Dark, wet-looking hair stuck to his forehead. His father was hunched over his plate, holding on to a glass of bourbon and water with both hands. His black eyes glittered. Hostility seemed to come from him in an icy stream. He was much drunker than Tom had realized.

“What did you do all day?” he asked.

Tom saw his father considering saying something he thought astounding—he really wanted to say this astounding thing, alcohol and anger pushed it up into his throat, and he lifted the glass and swallowed whiskey to keep it down. He grinned like an evil dwarf. His eyes had absolutely no depth at all, and the pupils were invisible—light bounced right off them.

“Ralph Redwing came to my office today. The big man himself. To talk to me.”

His father could not reveal what to him was surpassingly good news without gloating—his news was an insuperable advantage over the person to whom he presented it. He took another swallow of his drink, and grinned absolutely mirthlessly. “The Redwing building is a block away from my building—but do you think Ralph Redwing walks anywhere? Like hell he does. His driver brought him over in his Bentley—that’s serious business, when Ralph uses a car. He bought two five-dollar cigars at the stand in the lobby. ‘What floor is Pasmore Trading on?’ he asks—like he doesn’t know, see? He just wants ’em to know that Ralph Redwing respects Vic Pasmore.”

“That’s great,” Tom said. “What did he want?”

“What’s the only reason Ralph Redwing pays a call on Vic Pasmore? You don’t know me, Tom—you think you know me, but you’re fooling yourself. You don’t. Nobody knows Vic Pasmore.” He leaned over his plate and showed two rows of small peglike teeth in what was less a smile than the gesture of a disagreeable dog guarding some nasty treasure. Then he straightened up, looked at Tom as if from far above him, and cut a bit of meat. He began chewing. “You still don’t get it, do you? You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you? Who do you think Ralph Redwing visits? Who do you think he gives five-dollar cigars to?”

Whoever he wants to bamboozle, Tom thought, but said, “Not too many people, I guess.”

“NOBODY! You know what your problem is? You don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on. The older you get, the more I think you’re one of those guys who never gets anywhere. There’s too much of your mother in you, kid.”

“Did he offer you a job?” Tom said. His father had no awareness that what he was saying might be insulting; he had the air of offering great impartial truths.

“You think a man like that comes waltzing into an office and says, hey, how about a new job, Vic? If that’s what you think, you got another think coming.”

This was what his father was like when he was really happy.

“He says he’s been noticing how well I run my little business—maybe not the past few years, when things haven’t been so good, but right up to that. He hints. Maybe he needs what he calls a good general businessman—someone who isn’t wearing blinders, like most of the assholes on Mill Walk. Maybe he was thinking of buying my business and letting someone else run it, so I can handle bigger things for him.”

“Is that what he said?”

“He hints, I said.” More chewing; more swallowing; more bourbon. “But you know what I think? I think I’m gonna finally get out from under the thumb of Glendenning Upshaw. And there isn’t a good goddamned thing I’d rather do than that.”

“How are you under his thumb?”

“Oh, Jesus.” His father shook his head. The triumph had left his face, leaving only the sour temper. “Let’s just pretend it takes a lot of money to live on Eastern Shore Road, okay? And let’s say this—when I first came here, Glen sort of got me started—but how did he do it? Did he make me vice-president of Mill Walk Construction, which is what I thought he’d do? Is that how he takes care of people? Hell, no. I kept my nose clean for seventeen years, now it’s time for me to get some of the gravy. I goddamn deserve it.”

“I hope it works out,” Tom said.

“Ralph Redwing has this island in his hip pocket, don’t you kid yourself about that. Glen Upshaw is an old man, and he’s on the way out. Ralph has things worked out.”

“What kind of things?”

“I don’t know, kid, I just know that. Ralph Redwing sets things up way in advance. You think he’s gonna let Buddy go on being wild? Buddy’s on a shorter leash than you think, kid, and pretty soon he’s gonna find himself with responsibilities—gonna wander into the honey trap. The man doesn’t take any risks.”

The look of malignant triumph was back in full force now.

“What do you mean, the honey trap?”

“Finish your dinner and get out of my sight.”

“I’m finished now,” Tom said. He stood up.

“You get one more year in this house,” his father said. “That’s it. Then you go to the mainland, and Glen Upshaw pays a quarter every time you take a piss.” He smiled, and looked as if he were going to take a bite out of something. “Believe me, it’ll be better for you. I told you that already. Take what you can get, as long as you can get it. Because you don’t exist.”

“I DO!” Tom yelled, pushed too far now. “Of course I exist!”

“Not to me, you don’t. You always made me sick.”

Tom felt as if he had been bludgeoned. For a second all he wanted to do was to pick up a knife and stab his father in the heart.

“What do you want?” he shouted. “You want me to be just like you? I wouldn’t be like you for a million dollars! You lived off your father-in-law all your life, and now you’re happier than a pig in shit because you think you got a better offer!”

Victor overturned his chair standing up, and had to catch himself on the table to keep from falling down. His face had turned red, and his eyes and mouth seemed to have grown smaller—he did look like a pig, Tom thought, a red-faced pig staggering away from the trough. For a second he thought his father was going to rush at him. “You keep your trap shut!” Victor bellowed. “You hear me?”

So he was just going to yell. Tom was shaking uncontrollably, and his hands were in fists.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Victor said, still loudly but not quite yelling.

“I know enough,” Tom said, louder.

“You don’t know anything about yourself, either!”

“I know more than you think,” Tom shouted at him. His mother began to wail upstairs, and the ugliness of this scene made him want to cry. He was still shaking.

His father’s whole manner changed—he was still red-faced but suddenly much more sober. “What do you know?”

“Never mind,” Tom said, disgusted.

Upstairs, Gloria settled into a pattern of steady, rhythmical wails, like a desolate child banging its head against the crib.

“On top of everything else,” Victor said. “Now we got that.”

“Go up and calm her down,” Tom said. “Or does that stop too, now that your buddy Ralph bought you a cigar?”

“I’m going to take care of you, smartass.” Victor grabbed a napkin from the table and wiped his face. Remembering the cigar and Ralph Redwing’s visit had restored him.

The telephone began ringing in the study. His father said, “You get that, and if it’s for me say I’ll call back in five minutes,” and pushed through the door.

Tom went into the study and picked up the phone.

“What’s that, the television?” came his grandfather’s voice. “Turn it down so I can tell you something.”

Tom turned off the television.

“We have to talk about Eagle Lake,” said his grandfather. “And what were you doing at the hospital this morning?”

“I wanted to find out what happened to Nancy Vetiver.”

“Didn’t I call you back about that?”

“I guess you forgot,” Tom said.

“She’ll be back on duty in a day or two. Seems she called in sick four or five days in a row. Dr. Milton scouted around, found out she was staying out too late, probably drinking too much, and bawled her out. She gave him a runaround, and he suspended her for a couple of weeks. Had to make an example of her, or they’d all be doing it. None of those girls have any background, of course. That’s the whole story.” He coughed loudly, and Tom pictured him holding the receiver in one hand, his cigar in the other.

“She gave him a runaround?” Tom asked.

“Tried to lie her way out of it. But with the shortage of nurses, even Shady Mount has to take what it can get.” He paused. “I trust that now this matter is closed.”

“It’s closed,” Tom said. “Absolutely, completely, irrevocably closed.”

“Glad you can listen to reason. Now, I have a suggestion for you concerning your trip to Eagle Lake.”

Tom said nothing.

“You still there?” his grandfather shouted.

“Still here.” He heard his mother screech something at his father. “Completely, entirely here, and no place else.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m not too sure. I just had a fight with Dad.”

“Give him time to calm down, or apologize to him, or something.” Tom’s mother screamed again. “What was that?”

“The television.”

His grandfather sighed. “Listen. To get to Eagle Lake in the old days, we had to get to Miami and take a train to Chicago, then change trains for Hurley. The whole thing took four days. I just worked out a way for you to do the whole thing in one haul, as long as you can leave the day after tomorrow. I think you should do it.”

Tom nodded, but said nothing.

“Ralph Redwing uses a private plane to take himself and his friends back and forth to the lake. The plane is coming back here to pick up the Spences, and as a personal favor to me, Ralph has agreed to let you tag along. Get your things packed, and be at the field by eight Friday morning.”

Tom said, “Okay. Thanks.”

“Breathe some of that fresh air, take walks in the woods. Get in some swimming. You can use my membership at the club. Don’t worry about getting back. We’ll work that out when the time comes.” Tom had never heard Glendenning Upshaw sound so friendly. “You’ll love it up there. Gloria and I used to think of summers at Eagle Lake as the best time of the year. She loved that place. Used to spend hours sitting on the balcony, looking at the woods.”

“And the lake, I suppose,” Tom said.

“No, some of the lodges have raised verandas overlooking the lake, but ours is on the other side—looks right into the woods. You can sit on the dock, see the lake all you want.”

“You can’t see the other docks from the balcony?”

“Who wants to see other people’s docks? Gloria and I went up there to get away from other people. In fact, until you came along—until Gloria got married and you came along—I used to think about retiring up there with her, when the time came. Didn’t know I’d never want to retire.”

“Wouldn’t she like to come with me?”

“Gloria can’t go back,” his grandfather said. “We tried it once, the year after my wife died—didn’t work. Didn’t work at all. She couldn’t handle it. Eventually I gave up and came back early, got on with my Miami business. Worked out for the best in the long run.”

“Worked out for the best?” Tom asked, appalled.

“I got that hospital built in record time.” Perhaps hearing that he and Tom had been talking about different things, he added, “I made a couple of appointments for Gloria with a doctor in Miami, the kind of fellow they called an alienist in those days. Turned out to be nothing but a quack. Most of those fellows are, you know. He wanted me to come in for appointments, and I told him that I was a lot saner than he was. Pulled the plug on that nonsense. Gloria was a child who had lost her mother the summer before, that was the whole of the trouble.”

Tom remembered his mother gripping her martini glass at her father’s table on the terrace.

“Can you think of anything else that could have upset her that summer?” Tom asked.

“Not at all. Apart from Glor’s trouble, it was a perfect summer. One of the young Redwing boys, Jonathan, was getting married to a pretty girl from Atlanta. A Redwing wedding is always a real event, and it should have been a delightful summer, what with all the parties at the club.”

“But it wasn’t,” Tom said.

“You’ll have better luck. Just get to the airport on time.”

Tom promised to do so, and his grandfather hung up without waiting to be thanked or saying good-bye.

Tom found himself in the hall at the foot of the staircase without any memory of leaving the study. Soft intermittent wails and wordless, high-pitched imprecations came from the floor above. He looked into the wide living room and saw that everything in it was dead. All the furniture, the chairs and tables and the long couch, was dead furniture. “So she gave him the runaround,” he said. “So she tried to lie her way out of it.” His father’s voice rumbled. “It should have been a delightful summer,” Tom said. Upstairs, something crashed and broke. His feet walked him back into the study. He sat on the arm of his father’s recliner and looked at the smooth charcoal screen of the television for a time before realizing that it was switched off. His legs took him across the room, and his hand pushed the power button. In a row of men in sports jackets behind a long curved desk, Joe Ruddler grimaced violently toward the camera. Wide printing at the bottom of the screen announced ALL-ISLAND LIVE ACTION NEWS NEXT! A commercial for auto wax battered the air. Tom turned down the volume and moved to a wobbly rush-bottomed chair and waited.

“I hope you told ’em I’d call right back,” his father said.

Tom turned his head and saw his father standing just outside the doors. “The call was for me. It was Grand-Dad.”

A layer of cells died just below the surface of his father’s face.

“We had a long talk. Probably the longest talk I’ve ever had with him. On a one-to-one basis, I mean.”

Something happened to the dark pouches beneath his father’s eyes.

“Ralph Redwing came up. I’m going up north on your buddy’s plane the day after tomorrow. Grand-Dad sounded pleased with himself.”

His father’s eyes looked bruised—that was it. Not the pouches, the eyes themselves.

“I didn’t say anything about the wonderful visit and the five-dollar cigar. I didn’t tell him anything at all. How could I? I don’t exist.”

Victor placed his hands on the doorjamb and leaned the top half of his body into the room. A black curl of hair plastered itself to his forehead. Victor’s mouth opened, and the bruised look deepened in his eyes. “I’ll take care of you later.” He pushed himself back out of the room.

Brisk, bouncy theme music blared from the set, and a resonant voice announced: “It’s time for your All-island live action news team!”

Bulging cheeks and flaring eyes flashed on the screen for a moment, declaring that Joe Ruddler was prepared to savage words, sentences, and paragraphs between his square white teeth.

Then a blond man with an almost clerical look of concern on his regular features looked at Tom and said, “Tragic death of a local hero. After this.”

For thirty seconds, a shampoo commercial blew images of billowing hair at him.

The blond man looked at Tom again and said, “Today Mill Walk has lost a hero. Patrolman Roman Klink, one of two police officers wounded in the native quarter shootout that resulted in the death of suspected murderer Foxhall Edwardes, suffered fatal gunshot wounds in an armed robbery attempt at Mulroney’s Taproom late this afternoon. When Patrolman Klink, working a temporary part-time job at the Taproom while awaiting full recovery from his wounds, pulled his service revolver and attempted to halt the robbery, his assailants gunned him down. Patrolman Klink died instantly of a head wound. Three men were observed fleeing the area, and though no identifications were obtained, arrests are considered imminent.”

A fuzzy black and white Police Academy photograph of a wide-faced boy in a uniform cap appeared on the screen.

“A fifteen-year veteran of the Mill Walk police force, Patrolman Roman Klink was forty-two years old, and leaves a wife and one son.”

The blond man glanced down at his desk, then back at the camera and Tom. “In a related story, Officer Klink’s partner, Patrolman Michael Mendenhall, died today at Shady Mount Hospital of wounds suffered at the hands of Foxhall Edwardes in the Weasel Hollow shootout. Patrolman Mendenhall had been in a coma since the event, one of the most violent in Mill Walk’s history.

“Both officers will be buried with full police honors at Christ-church Cemetery at two o’clock on Sunday following a memorial service at St. Hilda’s Procathedral. Captain Fulton Bishop has announced that donations to the Police Welfare Fund will be gratefully accepted.”

He turned his profile to the camera and said, “A sad commentary, Joe.”

Joe Ruddler burst upwards out of a blue button-down shirt which had captured the tight knot of a yellow challis necktie. “TERRIBLE! OUTRAGEOUS! YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK? I’LL TELL YOU WHAT I THINK! SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT PUBLIC HANGINGS—”

Tom stood up and switched off the television.

“Hey, that was Joe Ruddler,” Victor said.

Tom turned around to see his father standing in the door frame. He had his hands in his pockets. “I like Joe Ruddier.”

Tom’s stomach clenched—his body from his lungs to his gut felt like a closed fist. He bent down and punched the power button. “—LILY-LIVERED, FAINT-HEARTED COWARDS WHO CAN’T ACCEPT—” Tom twisted the volume control and shut off the sound.

“A policeman got murdered today.”

“Cops accept that risk. Believe me, they make up for it.” Victor edged into the room, looking shamefaced. “Uh, Tom, I said some stuff.…” He shook his head. “It isn’t … I don’t want you to think.…”

“Nobody wants me to think,” Tom said.

“Yeah, but, I mean it’s good you didn’t tell Glen anything about … you didn’t, huh?”

“I noticed something about Grand-Dad,” Tom said. “He likes to tell you interesting things, but he never wants to hear them himself.”

“Okay. Okay. Good.” Victor edged around Tom to get to his recliner. “You want to go up and see your mom now? Turn the sound up on that thing?”

Tom twisted the volume knob until Joe Ruddler was screaming. “SO SHOOT ME! THAT’S WHAT I THINK!” His father peeked at him. He left the room and went upstairs.

Gloria was lying on top of her bed in a wrinkled pair of men’s pajamas, with a pillow bunched up behind her and the covers rumpled over a bunch of magazines. The shutters had been closed. A lamp covered by a scarf burned on top of her dressing table. The other lamp, which usually stood beside the bed, lay in two pieces, a thick stand and a long thin neck, on the floor beside the bed. Next to where the lamp should have been stood a brown plastic bottle with a typed prescription label. A few cloudy bits of glass glinted up from the blue carpet. Tom started picked pieces of broken glass out of the carpet. “You’ll cut yourself,” he said.

“I felt so tired all day I could hardly get out of bed, and then I thought I heard you and Victor shouting at each other, and …”

He looked up over the edge of the bed. She had covered her face with her hands. He snatched up as much of the broken glass as he could see, dropped it on the heap of white tissues in the wastebasket beside the bed, and sat down beside his mother. “We had a fight, but it’s over now.” He put his arms around his mother. She felt boneless and stiff at once. “It was just something that happened.” For a moment she leaned her head against his shoulder, and then jerked away. “Don’t touch me. I don’t like that.”

He instantly dropped his arms. She gave him a cloudy look and yanked at the pajama top and tugged it around until it satisfied her.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Not really. But I hate fights—I get so scared when I hear people fighting.”

“I hate hearing you scream,” he said. “That makes me feel terrible. I don’t think I can do anything for you—”

“Do you think I like it? It just happens. This little thing inside me goes pop, and then I hardly know where I am. I used to think—it was like the real me went away somewhere and I had to hide inside myself until she came back. Then later I realized that this was the real me—this thing like a dead person.”

“You’re not always like this,” he said.

“Will you turn off the record player? Please?”

He had not noticed the record spinning on the turntable of the portable record player atop a dresser. He turned around and pushed the reject button, and the tone arm lifted from the end grooves and returned to its post. Tom watched the label stop spinning until he could read the words on the label. Blue Rose, by Glenroy Breakstone and the Targets. He took the record from the turntable and searched for the sleeve in the row of records propped on the floor against the dresser, then saw it half-hidden under the bed. The split seams on its top and bottom had been repaired with yellowing transparent tape. Tom slid the record into the sleeve.

“What’s he doing now? Watching television?”

Tom nodded.

“How does that make him so superior to me? I stay up here and listen to music, and he watches the stupid television downstairs and drinks.”

“You’re feeling better,” Tom said.

“If I really felt better, I’d hardly know how to act.” She moved sideways, and levered herself up so that she could pull down her covers and slide her legs beneath them. Some of the magazines slithered onto the floor. Gloria drew the covers up over her body and leaned against the pillows.

It was like being in the bedroom of a teenage girl, Tom suddenly thought: the little record player on the dresser, the men’s pajamas, the mess of magazines, the darkness, the single bed. There should have been posters and pennants on the walls, but the walls were bare.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked.

“You can stay a little while.” She closed her eyes. “He looked ashamed of himself, didn’t he?”

“I guess.”

Tom wandered from the side of the bed and sat down backwards on the chair before the dressing table. He was still holding the record in its sleeve. “Grand-Dad just called.” Gloria opened her eyes and pushed herself up against the head of the bed. She reached for the bottle of pills and shook two out into her hand. “Did he?” She broke the pills in half and swallowed two of the small halves without water.

“He wants me to go to Eagle Lake the day after tomorrow. I can get a ride on the Redwing plane with the Spences.”

“The Spences are flying up north on the Redwing plane?” After a second, she added, “And you’re going with them?” She put the two small sections of the other pill in her mouth, made a face, and swallowed.

“Would you like me to stay here?” he asked. “I don’t have to go.”

“Maybe you should get out of the house for a while. Maybe it’s nicer up north.”

“You used to go there in the summers,” he said.

“I used to go a lot of places. I used to have another kind of life, for a little while.”

“Can you remember your place at the lake?”

“It was this big, big house. All made of wood. Everything was made of wood. All the lodges were. I knew where everybody lived. Even Lamont von Heilitz. Daddy didn’t want me to talk about him at lunch—the day we went to the Founders Club, remember?”

Tom nodded.

“He was famous,” his mother said. “He was a lot more famous than Daddy, and he did wonderful things. I always thought he was rather grand, Lamont von Heilitz.”

Where does this come from? Tom wondered.

“And I knew a lady named Jeanine. She was a friend of mine too. That’s another terrible story. One terrible story after another, that’s what it adds up to.”

“You knew Jeanine Thielman?”

“There’s a lot I’m not supposed to talk about. So I don’t.”

“Why aren’t you supposed to talk about Jeanine Thielman?” Tom asked.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter anymore,” Gloria said, and sounded more adult and awake. “But I could tell her things.”

Tom asked, “How old were you when your mother died?”

“Four. I didn’t really understand what happened for a long time—I thought she went away to make me feel bad. I thought she wanted to punish me.”

“Mom, why would she want to do that?”

She cracked her eyes open, and her puffy face looked childish and sly. “Because I was bad. Because of my secrets.” For a moment, Tom thought that the slyness was like a pat of butter in her mouth. “Sometimes Jeanine would come and talk to me. And hold me. And I talked to her. I hoped she would be my new Mommy. I really did!”

“I always wondered how my grandmother died,” Tom said. “Nobody ever talked about it.”

“To me either!” Gloria said. “You can’t tell a little kid something like that.”

“Something like what?”

“She killed herself.” Gloria said this flatly, without any emotion at all. “I wasn’t supposed to know. I don’t think Daddy even wanted me to know she was dead, you know. You know Daddy. Pretty soon he was acting like there never was any Mommy. There was just the two of us. Her and her’s Da.” She pulled the covers around herself more tightly, and the magazines still on the bed moved up with them. “There was just her and her’s Da, and that was all there ever was. Because he loved her, really, and she loved him. And she knew everything that happened.”

She slid deeper into the bed. “But it was all a long time ago. Jeanine was angry, and then a man killed her and put her in the lake too. I heard him shooting—I heard the shots in my bedroom. Pop! Pop! Pop! And I went through the house and out on the veranda and saw a man running through the woods. I started to cry, and I couldn’t find Daddy, and I guess I went to sleep, because when I woke up he was there. And I told him what I saw, and he took me to Barbara Deane’s house. So I’d be safe.”

“You mean he took you to Miami.”

“No—first he took me to Barbara Deane’s house, in the village, and I was there a little while. A few days. And he went back to the lake, to look for Jeanine, and then he came back, and then we went to Miami.”

“I don’t understand—”

She closed her eyes. “I didn’t like Barbara Deane. She never talked to me. She wasn’t nice.”

She was silent for a long time, breathing deeply. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”

He stood up and went to the side of her bed. Her eyelids fluttered. He bent down to kiss her. When his lips touched her forehead, she shuddered and mumbled, “Don’t.”

In the study, Victor Pasmore lay tilted back in his recliner, asleep before the blaring television. A cigarette that was only a column of ash burned in the ashtray, sending up a thin line of smoke.

Tom went to the front door and let himself out into the cool night. Chinks of light showed through Lamont von Heilitz’s curtains.