The Instant Enemy

chapter 31

BEFORE HEADING BACK to Los Angeles, I paid a final visit to Mrs. Fleischer. She came to the door wearing a black hat and coat. Her face was freshly made up but under the makeup it looked pasty and inert.

She seemed almost completely sober, but very nervous. “What do you want?”

“The tapes.”

She spread her gloved hands. “No havey, no savvy.”

“Don’t give me that, Mrs. Fleischer. You said they’re where you could put your hands on them.”

“Well, they’re not any more.”

“Did you turn them over to the police?”

“Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. You’ve got to let me go now. I’m expecting a taxi.”

She started to close the door on me. I leaned against it casually but firmly. Her eyes moved sluggishly up to my face.

“What is this, anyway?”

“I’ve decided to raise my offer. I’ll give you two thousand.”

She laughed joylessly. “That’s peanuts. Chicken feed. If I wasn’t a lady I’d tell you what you can do with your lousy two thousand.”

“Who have you been talking to?”

“A very nice young man. He treated me like a gentleman, which is more than some people do.” She gave the door a fretful shove, which my shoulder blocked. “And he told me how much those cans of tape were really worth.”

“How much?”

“Ten grand,” she said with the pride of a daily-double winner putting down a loser.

“Did he buy them from you?”

“Maybe he did.”

“I know. And maybe he didn’t. Can you describe him to me?”

“He’s very good-looking, with nice brown curly hair. Much better looking than you are. And quite a few years younger,” she added, as if she could score off her husband through his old buddy Jack Archer.

Her description failed to evoke anyone, unless it was Keith Sebastian, which seemed unlikely. “What name did he use?”

“He didn’t mention his name.”

That probably meant she had been paid in cash, if she had been paid. “Ten grand is a lot of cash,” I said. “I hope you’re not planning to carry it around loose.”

“No, I’m gonna–” She bit her lower lip and got lipstick on her front teeth. “It’s none of your business what I’m gonna do. And if you don’t lay off me, I’ll call the police.”

That was the last thing she was likely to do. But I was weary of her, and of myself talking to her. I drove around the block and parked at the corner. After a while a yellow cab came from the other direction. It stopped in front of her house and honked gently.

Mrs. Fleischer came out carrying a light-blue traveling bag. She got into the taxi. I followed it across town to the freeway and north along the freeway to the local airport.

I didn’t try to find out where Mrs. Fleischer was flying to. I didn’t care. She wouldn’t be leaving town if she hadn’t sold the tapes.

I drove south to Woodland Hills, feeling empty and light and futile. I think I’d been harboring a secret wish that I could somehow pull it out for Davy, save his life at least, give him a long-term chance for rehabilitation.

Such wishes for other people were always going sour. Langston’s wish for Davy had turned into a secret triangle which meant the opposite of what it seemed to mean. I was beginning to worry about my wish for the girl.

Bernice Sebastian let me into her house. She was sallow and desolate, with black glittering eyes. Her grooming was coming apart for the first time that I’d seen. She had cigarette ashes down the front of her dress, and her hair needed combing.

She took me into the living room and seated me in a golden drench of late afternoon sunlight which came in through the high glass.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No thanks. A glass of water would taste good.”

She brought it to me formally, on a tray. She gave the impression of trying to hold together, by such formalities, all the centrifugal pieces of her life. I drank the water and thanked her.

“Where’s your husband?”

“Off on one of his missions,” she said dryly.

“He didn’t go to Santa Teresa, by any chance?”

“I don’t know where he went. We had a quarrel.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. It isn’t the sort of talk I’d care to repeat, to anyone. Essentially we were blaming each other, for this disaster.”

She sat down on a hassock facing me, folding her knees and holding them with locked fingers. Nothing she did was graceless, as she knew. She turned her pretty, disheveled head self-consciously under my eyes.

“I’ll tell you what our quarrel was about, if you promise not to do anything.”

“What do you want me not to do?”

“I don’t want you to do anything to stop Keith. That would be treachery.”

“Stop him doing what?”

“Promise first.”

“I can’t, Mrs. Sebastian. I will promise this: I won’t do anything that would harm your daughter.”

“But not Keith?”

“If their interests turn out to be separate, I’ll do my best for Sandy.”

“Then I’ll tell you. He’s planning to take her out of the country.”

“Jump bail?”

“I’m afraid so. He’s talking in terms of South America.”

“It isn’t a good idea. She’d have a hard time ever coming back, and so would he.”

“I know that. I told him that.”

“How is he planning to finance the trip?”

“I’m afraid he’s thinking about embezzling money. Keith seems to be breaking up. He simply can’t bear the idea of Sandy standing trial and possibly going to jail.”

“She’s still in the Psychiatric Center, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Call them and find out.”

Bernice went into the study and closed the door behind her. I heard her talking, too dimly to know what she said. She came out with a frightened grimace pulling at her mouth.

“He took her out of the Center.”

“When?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Did he say where he was taking her?”

“No.”

“Or give you any clue?”

“This morning he talked about flying to Mexico City, and then perhaps on to Brazil. But he wouldn’t go without telling me first. He expects me to go along.”

“Do you want to?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think any of us should go. We should stay here and fight it out.”

“You’re a good girl.”

Her eyes filled up with feeling but what she said was: “No. If I were a good person, my family wouldn’t have got into this mess. I made all the mistakes in the book.”

“Do you feel like naming them?”

“If you can bear to listen.” She sat quiet for a minute,ordering her thoughts. “I don’t really want to talk it out at any length. This isn’t the time, and I doubt that you’re the person.”

“Who is?”

“Keith should be. He’s still my husband. The trouble is we stopped talking years ago. We started a game of let’s pretend, without ever admitting it to each other. Keith was to be the rising young executive and I was to be his model homemaker, making him feel like a man, which is hard for Keith. And Sandy was to make us both feel good by doing well in school and never doing or saying anything wrong. What that boils down to is exploitation. Keith and I were exploiting each other and Sandy, and that’s the opposite of loving each other.”

“I still say you’re a good girl.”

“Don’t try to make me feel better. I have no right to.”

But she closed her eyes and leaned her face toward me. I held it between my hands. I could feel her mouth and her breathing warm on my fingers.

After a while she straightened up. Her face was more composed. It had recovered some of the pride that made it beautiful.

She said: “Are you hungry? Let me fix you something to eat.”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“You said it yourself just now. People shouldn’t play let’s pretend.”

“Is that what I’d be doing?”

“That’s what I’d be doing, Bernice. There’s something else we should be doing.”

She misunderstood me, and gave me a quick-frozen quizzical look. “Really?”

“That wasn’t a pass. But I have to ask you a question that may embarrass you. It has to do with Sandy’s sex experience.”

She was startled. She stood up and walked away from me, to the far side of the room.

“How much did your daughter know about sex?”

Slowly, she turned to face me. “I haven’t the faintest idea. We never discussed the matter.”

“Why not?”

“I assumed she learned all about it in school. She took a course on the subject. Anyway, I didn’t feel qualified.”

“Why.”

She looked at me angrily. “I don’t know why you’re insisting on this catechism. It has nothing to do with anything.”

“People are always telling me that about their central concerns.”

“Sex is not one of my central concerns. I can take it or leave it. Keith and I–” She heard herself, and paused.

“What about you and Keith?”

“Nothing. You have no right to ask me these questions.”

I moved toward her. “Tell me one thing. What happened to Sandy last summer – the incident you’ve been suppressing in her diary?

“It hardly matters any more.”

“Everything matters.”

She looked at me with a kind of incredulity. “You really believe that, don’t you? I never met a man like you before.”

“Let’s not get off on the personal. Did she write about her LSD experience?”

“That was part of it. Incidentally, I forgot to tell you, the doctor left a message for you. The substance you gave him for analysis was LSD of a poor quality. He said that helped to account for Sandy’s reaction.”

“I’m not surprised. What else helped to account for it?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I’m asking you, Bernice. What was the rest of it?”

Her face darkened. “I can’t tell you. Honestly I can’t.”

“If Sandy could do it or have it done to her, you should be able to say it. Are we talking about her sexual relations with Lupe?”

She bowed her head. “There were more than one of them: They took turns at her, doing – different things.”

“And she spelled this out in her diary?”

“Yes.”

“May I see it?”

“I destroyed it. Honestly. I was so terribly ashamed.”

“Why do you suppose she wrote it out?”

“To shame me. She knew I read her diary.”

“Don’t you think she may have been asking you for help?”

“I don’t know. It came as such a shock, I couldn’t think clearly about it. I still can’t.” Her voice was hurried and monotonous, with a shrill note of panic running through it.

“Why, Bernice?” I wondered if the same sort of thing had ever happened to her.

She raised her head and looked at me with black dislike. “I don’t want to talk to you any more. Go away.”

“Promise me one thing first. Let me know when you hear from Keith. All I want is a chance to talk to him and Sandy.”

“I’ll call you. I promise that much.”

I told her I would wait for her call in my office, and went outside. Late afternoon sunlight spilled over the mountains to the west. The light had a tarnished elegiac quality, as if the sinking sun might never rise again. On the fairway behind the house the golfers seemed to be hurrying, pursued by their lengthening shadows.