Nightwork

25

In the morning, the story was in the Long Island papers, with my picture. And, of course, Priscilla’s. Before I went to the police station, I called the hospital and was told Fabian was resting comfortably. I probably could come and visit him for a few minutes later in the morning. Priscilla got to the police station just ahead of me, with uniformed escort. There must have been ten photographers waiting for us. Inside, we both identified the two men, although how Priscilla could have seen what they looked like in the darkened car with all her screaming and thrashing around was beyond me. They had both confessed anyway, so the identification was really a formality.

The two men looked harmless in the light of day. They weren’t men, really. Neither of them could have been much more than eighteen, scrawny and frightened, with bad adolescent complexions and fake-tough mouths that quivered when the cops addressed them. Punk kids, my policeman friend called them contemptuously. It was difficult to believe that just a few hours before they had shot a man and had tried to kill me and I had tried to kill them.

When I left the building, the photographers tried to get me to pose with Priscilla, but I just kept on walking. I had had enough of Priscilla Dean.

I talked to the doctor before I went in to see Fabian. The doctor was optimistic. “He came out of the operation much better than I thought he would. I think he’ll be around for a while.”

Fabian was lying flat in the neatly made bed, with tubes leading into his arm and somewhere in his chest under the covers. The room was sunny and there was the smell of newly cut grass through the open window. He smiled wanly as I came in and raised his hand in greeting.

“I just talked to the doctor,” I said as I drew up a chair next to the bed, “and he says you’re going to be all right.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” His voice was frail. “Imagine dying to save the honor of Priscilla Dean.” He laughed faintly. “What we should have done was introduce her to those two boys.” He laughed again, a little rasping noise. “They could have gone off to Quogue together and had themselves a hell of a night.”

“Tell me, Miles,” I said, “what possessed you to go for that goddamn gun?”

He shook his head gently on the pillow. “Who knows? Instinct? My better judgment blunted by drink? Maybe it was just a little bit of old Lowell, Massachusetts, sticking out.”

“I guess that’s as good an explanation as any,” I said. “While we’re on the subject, the doctor says you have a great big scar on your abdomen and chest. Where did you get that?” “A souvenir of a previous engagement,” he said. “I’d prefer not to talk about it right now, if you don’t mind. Could you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Will you call Lily and ask her if she could possibly come over for a few days? I think old Lily would do me a lot of good.”

“I’ll call her today,” I said.

“That’s a good fellow.” He sighed. “That was a nice evening, last night. All those polite people. You ought to cable Quinn and congratulate him.”

“Evelyn is doing it this morning,” I said.

“Thoughtful woman. She looked beautiful last night.” I started to get up. “Don’t go quite yet,” he said. “I believe there’s a pad and a pen in that drawer. Will you give it to me, please?”

I opened the drawer and gave him the pad and the pen. He wrote slowly and with difficulty. He tore the top sheet off the pad and gave it to me. “There’s no telling what’s going to happen, Douglas,” he said, “so I…” He stopped, as though he was having difficulty choosing his words. “That note you have in your hand is to the private bank in Zurich. I have an account of my own there, as well as our joint one. The number’s on there. And my signature. What I’m trying to tell you is that from time to time I … I. well – siphoned off a not inconsiderable sum. To put it plainly, Douglas, I was cheating you. That note will restore the money to you.”

“Oh, Christ,” I said.

“I warned you in the beginning,” he said, “I was not running as an admirable man.” I patted his head gently. “It’s only money, friend,” I said.

“The ride was worth it.”

There were tears in his eyes. “Only money,” he said. Then he laughed. “I was just thinking – it was a lucky thing I got shot. Otherwise nobody would have believed that it was anything but a publicity stunt to promote Priscilla Dean.”

The nurse came in and looked at me sternly, so I got up to go. “Don’t neglect the shop,” Fabian said as I left the room.

Lily arrived the next afternoon. I met her at Kennedy to drive her out to the hospital. She was handsomely dressed for traveling, in the same brown coat I remembered from Florence. She was composed and quiet as we sped east down the highway. But she smoked cigarette after cigarette. I had to stop at a diner to get her two fresh packs. I had told her that the doctor believed that there was a good chance that Fabian would pull through. She had merely nodded.

“The doctor also said” – I broke the silence as we passed Riverhead – “that Miles has an enormous scar running down his chest and abdomen. He said it looked like shrapnel. Do you know anything about that? I asked Miles, but he said he preferred not to talk about it.”

“I saw it, of course,” Lily said. “The first time we went to bed together. He seemed almost ashamed of it. As though it somehow lessened him. He’s vain about his body, you know. That’s why he’d never go swimming and always wore a shirt and tie. I didn’t press him about it, but after a while he told me. He was a fighter pilot – I suppose he told you that…”

“No,” I said.

She smiled gently through the cigarette smoke. “He’s a great one for selective information to selected people, our Miles. Well, he was a pilot. He must have been a very good one. I found out from older American friends of mine who had known him that he had almost every medal a grateful government could hand out.” Her mouth twisted ironically. “In the winter of nineteen forty-four, he was sent on a mission over France. It was a ridiculous, hopeless mission in impossible weather, he told me. I wouldn’t know anything about that, of course, but on something like that I tend to believe him. He said his wing commander was a stupid, murderous glory hunter. I’m not up on wars, but I have some idea what that means. Anyway, he and his best friend were shot down over the Pas de Calais. His friend was killed. Miles was taken by the Germans. They took care of him – in a nice, German way. That’s where the scar came from. When the hospital he was in was finally overrun, he weighed a hundred pounds. That big man.” She smoked in silence for a while. “That’s when he decided, he told me, that he had done his last deed for humanity. That explains something of the way he lived. Or does it?”

“Something,” I said. “Did you believe that English act?”

“Of course not. We laughed about it, I coached him on Britishisms. You were involved in quite a bit of business with him, weren’t you?”

“A bit,” I said.

“You remember I warned you about him when it came to money?”

“I remember.” “Did he cheat you?”

“A bit.”

She chuckled. “Me, too,” she said. “Dear old Miles. He’s not an honest man, but he’s a joyous one. And he gives joy to others. I’m not the one to say, but maybe one is more important than the other.” She lit a fresh cigarette. “It’s hard to think of his dying.”

“Maybe he won’t die,” I said.

“Maybe.”

We said no more until we reached the hospital. “I think I’d like to see him alone,” Lily said, as we drove up to the door of the handsome red-brick building.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll drop your bags at the hotel. And I’ll be home if you need me.” I kissed her and watched her go into the hospital, in her smart brown coat.

It was dark by the time I got home. There was a car I didn’t recognize standing in front of the house. More reporters, I thought disgustedly, as I walked up the gravel path. Evelyn’s car wasn’t in the garage and I guessed that Anna had let whoever it was into the house. I opened the door with my key. A man was sitting in the living room, reading a newspaper.

He stood up when I came in.

“Mr Grimes…?” “Yes.”

“I took the liberty of coming in and waiting for you here,” he said politely. He was a thin, studious-looking man with sandy hair. He was neatly dressed in a lightweight, dark-gray summer suit with a white shirt and dark tie. He didn’t look like a reporter. “My name is Vance,” he said. “I’m a lawyer. I’m here on behalf of a client. I came for a hundred thousand dollars.”

I went over to the sideboard where the whiskey was and poured myself a drink. “Would you like a Scotch?” I asked the man.

“No, thank you.”

I carried my drink with me and sat down in an easy chair, facing Vance. He remained standing, a neat, small-boned, unmenacing, indoor type of man. “I was wondering when you’d come,” I said.

“It took some time,” he said. His voice was dry, low, and educated. It would bore a listener in a short while. “You were not easy to follow. Fortunately …” He made a little movement with the newspaper. “You’ve made yourself into quite a hero out here.”

“So it seems,” I said. “There’s nothing like a good deed for hilling in a naughty world.”

“Exactly,” he said.

He glanced around at the room. From the nursery came the sound of the baby crying. “A nice place you’ve got here. I admired the view.”

“Yes,” I said. I felt very tired.

“My client has instructed me to tell you that you have three days to deliver the money. He does not want to be unreasonable.”

I nodded. Even that was an effort.

“I will be at the Blackstone Hotel. Unless you prefer the St Augustine.” He smiled, skull-like.

“The Blackstone will do,” I said.

“In the same conditions in which it was found, please,” Vance said. “In one-hundred-dollar bills.”

I nodded again.

“Well,” be said, “that takes care of everything, I think. I must be on my way now.”

At the door, he stopped. “You haven’t asked me whom I represent,” he said.

“No.”

“Just as well. I couldn’t tell you if you had asked. Still, I can say that your … your escapade … was not without its benefits. It might ease the pain of having to return the money to know that it saved several distinguished people … very distinguished people from considerable embarrassment.”

“That makes my day,” I said.

It was nine o’clock when I went up in the elevator in the apartment building on East Fifty-second Street. I had left word with Anna to tell Mrs Grimes that I had been called to the city suddenly on business and that I would be gone a day or two. I could have called Evelyn at her office, but I didn’t want to have to explain anything.

Henry let me into the apartment. I had caught him just as he was about to go out. He and Madeleine had tickets for the theater, but when I said he would have to wait for me, he said, “I’ll be here.” He looked worried as he opened the door. Madeleine was in the living room. dressed for her night out in New York. She, too, looked worried.

“Maybe it would be better if you and I talked alone, Hank,” I said. But he shook his head. “I’d rather she stayed, if you don’t mind.” “All right,” I said. “It won’t take long. I need a hundred thousand dollars. Hank. In hundred-dollar bills. I haven’t time to collect it from Europe and I don’t have it here. I have only three days. Can you get it for me in three days?”

Henry sat down suddenly. We had all been standing in the middle of the living room. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, in a gesture that was a hangover from childhood. “Yes,” he said, almost inaudibly. “Somehow. Of course,”

It only took two days.

I called Vance’s room from the lobby of the hotel. He was there. “I’m coming up,” I said. I held the heavy suitcase in one hand while I held the telephone with the other.

“Excellent,” he said.

I waited while he counted the bills. He did it slowly and carefully. I hadn’t asked Henry where he had found the money and he hadn’t told me. “That’s it,” said Vance, as he snapped a rubber band around the last bundle of bills. “Thank you,”

“You can keep the bag,” I said.

“That’s kind of you.” He escorted me to the door.

I drove fast. I wanted to look in at the hospital before it was too late for visitors. I had called at noon and spoken to Lily. Fabian was resting comfortably, she had said. I wanted to tell him that the man had come, as he had predicted, and asked for a hundred thousand dollars and that I had had it to give to him,

When I got to the hospital, the nurse at the front desk stopped me. “I’m afraid you’re too late, Mr. Grimes,” she said. “Mr. Fabian died at four o’clock this afternoon. We tried to reach you, but…”

“That’s all right,” I said. I was mildly surprised at how calm my voice sounded. “Is Lady Abbott here?”

The nurse shook her head. “I believe Mrs Abbott has left town.” Even at that moment her American distrust of titles prevented her from saying Lady Abbott. “She said there was nothing more she could do here. She thought she could catch a night plane back to London.”

I nodded. “Very wise,” I said. “Good night, nurse, I’ll be here in the morning to make the necessary arrangements.”

“Good night, Mr Grimes.” she said.

I drove slowly toward East Hampton. There was no hurry now. I did not want to go home just yet. I drove to the barn, dark now, with the newly painted sign. The South Fork Gallery, in small, modest letters above the door. “Don’t neglect the shop,” Fabian had said. I took out my ring of keys and opened the door. I sat on a bench in the middle of the room, without turning on the lights, thinking of the joyous, dishonest, scarred, cunning man who had died that day, and who, by the terms of the contract we had signed that slushy day in the office of the lawyer in Zurich, now had left me free and absurdly wealthy. The tears came slowly.

I got off the bench and went over to the switch and turned on the lights. Then I stood in the middle of the room and looked at the paintings of the wanderings of Angelo Quinn’s father, glowing on the walls.