Two Much!

59

Carlos was grumpy at being fired, but there was no point keeping him on. I would drive the Alfa myself mostly, or at times I might take the wheel of the Thunderbird I’d inherited from my brother, but the Lincoln I would sell, replacing it with a limousine service on an annual contract for those rare occasions when a chauffeured vehicle was needed. The car would come only when called for, and the driver need not be housed or fed. It was more economical, and more sensible as well.

I took care of all that on Saturday, the fifteenth of September, the day after returning with Gordon from San Juan. Nikki I moved into Betty’s bedroom, but I myself stayed in the room I’d shared with Liz; thus I had access without too much familiarity. Blondell stayed on exactly as before.

New York, by and large, had remained unaware of the latest tragedy in the Kerner family. When a major airline wants to avoid publicity, it avoids publicity. A small item had appeared in the city papers, saying that a local woman, Mrs. Arthur Dodge, had been involved in a freak fatal accident aboard a plane bound for Puerto Rico, but no connections had been drawn with the Elisabeth Kerner Dodge who had been gruesomely murdered with her husband Robert on Fire Island the week before. Given no coincidence to worry their heads about, people did not worry their heads. And to the few Kerner relations and friends whose recent phone calls had to be returned, I simply said that Liz had died “in an airplane accident,” permitting them to place their own incorrect interpretation on the phrase. No one — not the airline, the San Juan police, the attorneys, no one — ever suggested for a second that Liz’s death had been anything other than an accident.

As to the fugitive, Volpinex, Alworthy sent me a clipping from Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, saying that the death of the late Mrs. Volpinex in Maine a few years ago was under renewed investigation, and that the original judgment of accidental death was likely to be revised. “The circumstances were very suspicious,” a Maine sheriff was quoted as saying. If any confirmation of Volpinex’s guilt in the Fire Island murders were needed, that was it. (The item, so far as I know, didn’t make the New York City papers at all.)

I only had one bad moment that weekend: on Sunday afternoon, when I belatedly unpacked the two Air France bags. Unzipping one of them, I found myself looking yet again at that envelope, that same envelope, would it never leave me alone? Would nothing ever—

It was the other envelope. Laughing at myself, albeit shakily, I took it from the bag and it was indeed from Linda Ann Margolies, containing her thesis on humor. What with one thing and another, I’d never had a chance to read it.

So I read it now. Or tried to, I should say. From the first paragraph, the whole piece seemed to me sophomoric in the extreme. I got through two pages before I tossed it in the wastebasket.

On Monday I met with three of the senior members of Leek, Conchell & McPoo. At first they urged me to transfer Gordon’s duties to some older and more experienced member of the firm, but I expressed myself as perfectly satisfied with Gordon’s performance in San Juan and totally confident in his abilities for the future, so they gave up on that point and called him in for the rest of the discussion, which centered on our handling of the dissident Kerner cousins. Among them they owned no more than eleven percent of the family holdings, but unfortunately their combined strength lay in a few key areas: a major lumber mill, the television station in Indiana, one or two others. It was decided to buy them off individually, refuse to deal with them en bloc, and drive wedges between them wherever and whenever possible. Our goal was full consolidation within thirty-six months. The attorneys were pleased with my decisiveness after nearly a year of bickering between the Kerner girls, and I was pleased with their grasp of the company problems and potentials. We shook hands all around — Gordon displayed his gratitude with a manlier-than-ever grip — and I left.

I still had some remnants of my former life to deal with, so off I went to that scruffy office in the garment district. Gloria was typing a letter to her mother when I walked in, and she looked up in surprise, saying, “By God, I remember you.”

“Of course you do,” I said. I didn’t have time for nonsense. “Did we get a response on the sale offer?”

“My, we’re in a hurry.” In leisurely fashion she went to the filing cabinet and got me the folder. The attorney, some hole-in-the-wall grub named Mandel, had replied to Gloria’s call with the expected unacceptable offer. My prepared response had gone out, and in today’s mail another offer had arrived which came closer to making sense. “Good,” I said. I gave Gloria the LC&McP number and said, “I’ll want to speak to Gordon Alworthy.” Then I carried the folder on into my office.

How had I ever stood this place? Squalor everywhere. Sitting at my desk, I took out my checkbook and went steadily through the accumulated mail. Some of these people, I thought with amusement, would be quite startled when they received payment in full.

Buzz.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Alworthy.”

“Thank you.” Click. “Gordon?”

“Yes, Art. What can I do for you?” (No secretary delay this time.)

I gave him a backgrounding on the Wonderful Folks negotiations, and he said he’d send a messenger up for the folder and would carry the deal from here. Then I buzzed Gloria, asked her to call my sister, and-return to paying bills till the call came through.

“Doris?”

“My goodness, another phone call. Is this going to happen every month?”

“I’m afraid not, Doris. Basically I’m calling to say goodbye. I’ve—”

“You never even said hello! Fine brother you are. Did you call Duane? You did not. And you prom—”

“Doris, I will never call Duane. I think a Legal Aid attorney would be much more useful to you than I could possibly be.”

“I don’t see why you can’t simply call him and—”

“I’ve sold my business, Doris,” I said, “and I’m going to Europe.”

“You what?”

“Possibly for a year, possibly longer. I’ve been feeling the need for a change for some time now.”

“But—” A speechless Doris was a rare and beautiful thing. She stammered a bit more, then said, “Europe? Where in Europe?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll send you a postcard.”

“You never will,” she said accurately.

“We’ll see. Good-bye, Doris,” I said, and hung up. Then I finished paying the bills and turned to the phone message memos. Wastebasket, wastebasket, wastebasket—

Candy.

I stared at it, her name on the phone memo, and the walls folded in on me. Everybody else had been dealt with, but what about Candy? What story did I have left for her?

Then I noticed the number she’d given, and it was her apartment, Ralph’s apartment. What was all this?

I dialed the number myself, and Candy’s sharp voice promptly answered. “It’s Art,” I said. “Don’t tell me you and Ralph had a reconciliation.”

“Marriage is something you have to work at,” she said. “You wouldn’t know about that, Art.”

“Well, I’m very happy for you both.”

“Ralph and I both agree,” she said, “to just forget the past. You follow me, Art?”

“You mean that letter you gave me?”

“You might think it would be fun some time,” she said, “to send that letter to Ralph. I know the way your mind works.”

She didn’t; I’d long since destroyed the copy she’d given me. But I said nothing, and heard her out.

“You’ve been up to something yourself, you know,” she said.

I held the phone more tightly. “I have?”

“I don’t know exactly what,” she said, “but you’ve been running some kind of confidence racket or something. I think I could make a lot more trouble for you than you could for me.”

No doubt. I said, “Candy, I wish you and Ralph nothing but eternal joy and success.”

“And don’t you forget it,” she said, and broke the connection.

Well. Much relieved, I put down the phone, wrote out a severance check for Gloria, and brought it outside. “This is my last day here,” I told her. “I’m definitely selling the company.”

I was amazed to see her eyes well up with tears, but relieved that none actually fell. She said, “I knew this was coming.”

“Of course you did,” I said soothingly.

“You’ve changed a lot in the last few weeks, Art,” she said. “You may not like me saying this, but it’s that Kerner woman’s money.”

Obviously she hadn’t seen that tiny item about Mrs. Dodge’s demise. “I appreciate your concern for me, Gloria,” I said, “but I think I can take care—”

“Jesus, Art,” she burst out, “what’s the matter with you? You never talked like that before.”

It was possible my intense association with attorneys over the last week had had some temporary influence on my speech patterns. “I’ve never sold a company before,” I pointed out, “nor have I ever fired a good friend and a valued employee.” And I stuck my hand out with the check in it “Severance pay in lieu of notice.”

She took the check, and stood for quite some time looking at it. The tears had receded from her eyes. “Two thousand dollars,” she said softly, and looked up with what might have been an ironic smile. “Well, at least you feel guilty about it.”

“Not at all,” I said. “You have been invaluable here, and I think you know that yourself, and this is really a very small token of my appreciation.”

Squinting as though looking at me through drifting smoke, she said, “Art, won’t you need a secretary wherever you’re going?”

“This company isn’t folding,” I told her. “Why not call that lawyer Mandel, meet with the illustrators? Who knows the business better than you do?”

“You do,” she said.

I smiled at the compliment. “Not any more,” I said.

She hesitated, then turned away, holding the check and shaking her head. “I’ll just finish up this letter here.”

“Take your time.”

“Oh. This came for you.” She turned back with a legal-size white envelope. “I didn’t put it with the business things.”

It was marked Personal, and Linda Ann Margolies’ name and address were in the upper left-hand corner. “Thank you,” I said, and carried the thing back to my office with me.

I very nearly tossed it out at once — something about my brief encounter with that girl bothered me, I couldn’t say what — but curiosity got the upper hand. Opening it, I found a greeting card inside of the kind I used to publish, though not one from my company. The front showed a man in the front half of a horse suit, with a theater’s stage in the background. Inside, it said, “I just can’t go on without you.”

Was that supposed to be funny? I threw it away.