Reliquary

= 4 =

BILL SMITHBACK STROLLED nonchalantly past the grand facade of Nine Central Park South, a stately McKim, Mead, and White building of brick and carved limestone. A brace of doormen stood beneath the gold-trimmed awning that stretched to the curb. He could see a variety of other service people standing at attention inside the opulent lobby. As he’d feared, it was one of those ridiculously overstaffed parkfront apartment buildings. This was going to be tough. Very tough.

He turned the corner of Sixth Avenue and paused, considering how best to proceed. He felt in the outside pocket of his sports jacket, locating the record button of his microcassette recorder. He could turn it on unobtrusively when the time came. He glanced at his image, reflected among countless Italian shoes in a nearby shop window: he was the very model of preppiedom, or as near as his wardrobe would permit. He took a deep breath and returned around the corner, walking with confident step toward the cream-colored awning. The closer of the two uniformed doormen gazed at him imperturbably, one gloved hand on the great brass handle of the door.

“I’m here to see Mrs. Wisher,” Smithback said.

“Name, please?” the man asked in a monotone.

“A friend of Pamela’s.”

“I’m sorry,” the man said, unmoving, “but Mrs. Wisher is not receiving any visitors.”

Smithback thought quickly. The doorman had asked who was calling before telling him this. That meant Mrs. Wisher was expecting someone.

“If you must know, it’s about this morning’s appointment,” Smithback said. “I’m afraid there’s been a change. Could you ring her for me?”

The doorman hesitated a moment, then opened the door, leading Smithback across the gleaming marble floor. The journalist looked around. The concierge, a very old and very gaunt-looking man, was standing behind a bronze construction that looked more fortress than front desk. At the back of the lobby, a security guard sat behind a Louis XVI table. An elevator operator stood beside him, legs slightly apart, hands folded across his belt.

“This gentleman is calling on Mrs. Wisher,” the doorman said to the concierge.

The concierge gazed down at him from his marble pillbox. “Yes?”

Smithback took a deep breath. At least, he’d broached the lobby. “It’s about the appointment she’s expecting. There’s been a change.”

The concierge paused a moment, his hooded eyes checking out Smithback’s shoes, running up his sport coat, examining his haircut. Smithback waited, silently chafing under the examination, hoping he’d captured the look of an earnest young man from a well-to-do family.

“Who may I say is calling?” the concierge rasped.

“A friend of the family will do.”

The concierge waited, staring at him.

“Bill Smithback,” he added quickly. Mrs. Wisher, he was certain, did not read the New York Post.

The concierge looked down at something that was spread in front of him. “What about the eleven o’clock appointment?” he asked.

“They sent me instead,” Smithback replied, suddenly glad that it was 10:32 A.M.

The concierge turned around and disappeared into a small office. He came out again sixty seconds later. “Please pick up the house telephone on the table beside you,” he said.

Smithback held the receiver to his ear.

“What? Did George cancel?” said a small, crisp, expensive voice.

“Mrs. Wisher, may I come up and speak with you about Pamela?”

There was a silence. “Who is this?” the voice asked.

“Bill Smithback.”

There was another silence, longer this time. Smithback continued. “I have something very important, some information about your daughter’s death, that I am sure the police haven’t told you. I feel sure you would want to know—”

The voice broke in. “Yes, yes, I’m sure you do.”

“Wait—” Smithback said, his mind racing again.

There was a silence.

“Mrs. Wisher?”

He heard a click. The woman had hung up.

Well, Smithback thought, he had given it his best shot. Maybe he could wait outside, on a park bench across the street, on the chance she’d emerge later in the day. But even as he considered this, Smithback knew that Mrs. Wisher would not be leaving her elegant fastness for the foreseeable future.

A phone rang at the concierge’s elbow. Mrs. Wisher, no doubt. Eager to avoid a bum’s rush, Smithback turned and started walking quickly out of the lobby.

“Mr. Smithback!” the concierge called loudly.

Smithback turned. This was the part he hated.

The concierge gazed at him expressionlessly, telephone at his ear. “The elevator is over there.”

“Elevator?” Smithback asked.

The concierge nodded. “Eighteenth floor.”

The elevator operator slid open first the brass cage, then the heavy oak doors, depositing Smithback directly into a peach-colored foyer crammed top to bottom with flower arrangements. A side table was overflowing with sympathy cards, including a fresh stack that had not been opened. At the far end of the silent room, a set of French doors stood ajar. Smithback walked toward them slowly.

Beyond the doors lay a large drawing room. Empire sofas and chaise longues were placed at neat symmetric angles on the dense carpet. Along the far wall stood a series of tall windows. Smithback knew that, when open, they would afford a spectacular view of Central Park. But now they were tightly closed and shuttered, throwing the tastefully appointed space into heavy gloom.

There was a brief movement to one side. Turning, Smithback saw a small, neat woman with well-coiffed brown hair seated at one end of a sofa. She was wearing a dark, simple dress. Without speaking, she motioned him to sit down. Smithback selected a wing chair opposite Mrs. Wisher. A tea service had been laid out on a low table between them, and the journalist’s eye roved over the array of scones, marmalades, dishes of honey and clotted cream. The woman made no move to offer any, and Smithback realized the setting had been for the intended appointment. A brief uneasiness came across him at the thought that George—no doubt the real eleven o’clock arrival—might appear at any moment.

Smithback cleared his throat. “Mrs. Wisher, I’m very, very sorry about your daughter,” he said.

As he spoke, he realized he might actually mean it. Seeing this elegant room, seeing how little all this wealth mattered in the face of ultimate tragedy, somehow brought the woman’s loss forcefully home to him.

Mrs. Wisher continued to gaze back, hands folded in her lap. She may have made a barely perceptible nod, but Smithback couldn’t be sure in the dim light. Time to get the show on the road, he thought, reaching casually into his jacket pocket and slowly pressing the record button.

“Turn off that tape recorder,” said Mrs. Wisher quietly. Her voice was thin and a little strained, but remarkably commanding.

Smithback jerked his hand out of the pocket. “I’m sorry?”

“Please remove the recorder from your pocket and place it here, where I can see that it’s turned off.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Smithback said, fumbling with the machine.

“Have you no sense of decency?” the woman whispered.

Smithback, placing the recorder on the low table, felt his ears begin to burn.

“You say you’re sorry about my daughter’s death,” the quiet voice continued, “while at the same time turning on that filthy thing. After I invited you into my home.”

Smithback shifted uncomfortably in his chair, reluctant to meet the woman’s eyes. “Yes, well,” he babbled. “I’m sorry, I’m just… well, it’s my job.” The words sounded lame even as he spoke them.

“Yes. I’ve just lost my only child, the only family I had left. Whose sensitivities do you think should take precedence, Mr. Smithback?”

Smithback fell silent, forcing himself to look at the woman. She sat unmoving, staring steadily back at him across the gloom, hands still folded on her lap. A strange thing was happening to him, a very strange thing, so foreign to his nature that he almost didn’t recognize the emotion. He was feeling embarrassed. No, that wasn’t it: he was feeling ashamed. If he’d fought for the scoop, unearthed it himself, perhaps it would be different. But to be brought up here, to see the woman’s grief… All the excitement of getting assigned a big story drained away beneath this novel sensation.

Mrs. Wisher raised one of her hands and made the briefest of movements, indicating something on a reading table beside her.

“I assume you are the Smithback who writes for this paper?”

Smithback followed her gesture and noticed, with a sinking feeling, a copy of the Post. “Yes,” he said.

She folded her hands again. “I just wanted to be sure. Now, what about that important information regarding my daughter’s death? No, don’t say it—no doubt that was a ruse, as well.”

There was another silence. Now, Smithback found himself almost wishing that the real eleven o’clock appointment would show up. Anything to get out of here.

“How do you do it?” she asked at last.

“Do what?”

“Invent this garbage? It isn’t enough for my daughter to be brutally murdered. People like you have to sully her memory.”

Smithback swallowed. “Mrs. Wisher, I’m just—”

“Reading this filth,” she continued, “one would think that Pamela was just some selfish society girl who got what she deserved. You make your readers glad my daughter was murdered. So, what I wonder is simple. How do you do it?”

“Mrs. Wisher, people in this town don’t pay attention to something unless you slap them in the face with it,” Smithback began, then stopped. Mrs. Wisher wasn’t buying his self-justification any more than he was.

The woman sat forward very slowly on the sofa. “You know absolutely nothing about her, Mr. Smithback. You only see what’s on the surface. That’s all you’re interested in.”

“Not true!” Smithback burst out, surprising himself. “I mean, that’s not all I’m interested in. I want to know the real Pamela Wisher.”

The woman regarded him for a long moment. Then she stood up and left the room, returning with a framed photograph. She handed it to Smithback. A girl of about six was pictured, swinging on a rope tied to a massive oak branch. The girl was hollering at the camera, her two front teeth missing, pinafore and pigtails flying.

“That’s the Pamela I’ll always remember, Mr. Smithback,” Mrs. Wisher said evenly. “If you really are interested, then print this picture. Not that one you keep running that makes her look like a brainless debutante.” She sat down again, smoothing her dress across her knees. “She was just beginning to smile again, after the death of her father six months ago. And she wanted to have some fun before starting work this fall. What’s criminal about that?”

“Work?” Smithback asked.

There was a short silence. Smithback felt Mrs. Wisher’s eyes on him in the funereal gloom. “That’s correct. She was starting a job in a hospice for AIDS patients. You would have known that if you’d done your research.”

Smithback swallowed.

“That’s the real Pamela,” the woman said, her voice suddenly breaking. “Kind, generous, full of life. I want you to write about the real Pamela.”

“I’ll do my best,” Smithback mumbled.

Then the moment was over, and Mrs. Wisher was again composed and distant. She inclined her head, made a brief movement of her hand, and Smithback realized he had been released. He mumbled his thanks, retrieved his tape recorder, and headed for the elevator as quickly as he dared.

“One other thing,” Mrs. Wisher said, her voice suddenly hard. Smithback stopped at the French doors. “They can’t tell me when she died, why she died, or even how she died. But Pamela will not have died in vain, I promise you that.”

She spoke with a new intensity, and Smithback turned to face her. “You said something just now,” she went on. “You said that people in this town don’t pay attention to something unless you slap them in the face with it. That’s what I intend to do.”

“How?” Smithback asked.

But Mrs. Wisher withdrew onto the sofa, and her face fell into deep shadow. Smithback walked through the foyer and rang for the elevator, feeling drained. It wasn’t until he was back on the street, blinking in the strong summer light, that he looked down again at the childhood picture of Pamela Wisher, still clutched in his right hand. It was beginning to dawn on him exactly how formidable a woman Mrs. Wisher was.