Escape the Night (25 page)

His secretary opened the door. “Mr. Carey's here.”

“One more minute.”

The door shut; once more Levy read the penciled question, “Does Peter blame Phillip?” Next to that, underlined, he asked himself, “And for what?”

In troubled silence, Levy listened to Peter tell the story of Barth's past, revealed by an unknown caller. But it was the end which most shocked him.

“Why did you call the lawyer?”

“I'd had the dream.” Peter's voice trailed off. “Now I feel like an idiot.”

“But do you have some feeling that your parents' death was not an accident?”

“Oh, I don't know.” Peter's tone was grudging. “I suppose it's easier for a kid to fantasize what he can't remember, like pretending you're adopted because you can't remember childbirth.”

“Yes?”

“There are things I can't define, doctor. That must be true in your own life …”

To his own surprise, Levy interrupted. “The nightmare, Peter—
when
did you first have it?”

“When I was seven—I told you that.”

“I meant precisely
when
—what day?”

“Why is that important?”

“Don't you find it strange that the nightmare started nearly one year
after
your father's death?”

Peter hesitated. “I've never thought of that.”

“Well, I'm suggesting that it's
strange
, like calling your lawyer is strange, and that there's a reason for it.” Levy felt his nameless worry overcome him. “People do things for a reason, Peter, even children and idiots, even if the reason is absurd. Don't blame something on coincidence unless you've nothing else to blame it on.”

Peter lay quite still. “What was the question, exactly?”

“What
happened
, Peter—the day you first had the dream?”

There was a long silence, and then Peter shook his head. “I don't know, doctor. I really don't know.”

Martin smiled at the old woman peering through the doorway. “Yes?” she asked timidly.

He slipped a discreet, printed card beneath the chain. “I was hoping to speak with you a moment.”

As she read the card her shyness became bewilderment. “This is the Krantz residence,” she explained.

Martin kept smiling at her dog. “I know.”

Peter Carey stepped from the cab toward the entrance to Van Dreelen & Carey. He stopped suddenly, and turned toward the Public Library …

In a dark room filled with microfiche and yellowed newspapers, he sat with three newspaper indexes open to the same heading: “Charles Carey, 1920–1959.”

For the first time, Peter Carey read the newspaper stories of his parents' death.

In the middle of the
Daily News
account, he stopped abruptly.

With the steps of an automaton, he went to a Xerox machine, and copied the article. Then he tucked the clipping in the breast pocket of his coat, and walked to Van Dreelen & Carey.

His assistant, a recent Hotchkiss graduate with two last names, looked up from her desk beside the door. “Your meeting's in a half hour.”

“Has George Benevides called?”

“No.”

“Hold my other calls.”

Carey closed the door behind him, and sat.

The office, filled with the accumulations of the senior editor he had become, seemed a stranger's: the stack of half-edited manuscripts, the unreviewed contracts and pink slips of unreturned phone calls, all must belong to someone else …

He unfolded the article.

The
Times
had reported the facts of the accident and sketched the lives of Charles and Alicia Carey. But the
Daily News
had taken a different tack:

While both parents were burned beyond recognition, six-year-old Peter was miraculously pitched from the car and then pulled by his uncle from within feet of its exploding wreckage. Greenwich police found the boy hysterical but virtually unharmed, clutching a stuffed toy elephant …

Peter Carey closed his eyes.

Strong arms pulled him from Bethesda Fountain; an oar slapped in water; a voice called after him as he ran toward the tunnel. He had watched the seals from Charles Carey's shoulders, smiled at his father's laughter as they named his new stuffed elephant …

“
It's too dark down there for elephants, Daddy
…”

The sliver of memory vanished.

Walking to his window, Carey stared out at the faceless glass of high-rises, dull smoke in winter. There was a knock; his assistant warily poked her head inside. He turned, demanding, “Benevides?”

She shook her head. “Barth.”

When Peter Carey entered the conference room and sat next to Ruth, she saw that the haunted look peculiar to his recent mornings had worsened, as if his fate had been settled years ago, or would be settled in some terrible future. It was strange, Ruth reflected; last evening, when she heard this same vagueness in her brother's voice, she first thought not of Peter but of her grandmother, face still young and eyes bright, babbling in the Russian she had not used since childhood. Yet Peter's stare at Barth had that same effect of vagrant memory, as if he were trying to fix this man in some other time or place.

Quickly, Ruth looked back to Barth.

His eyes, with their hard, myopic look of self-obsession, glared back at Peter. Between them, at the head of the conference table, Phillip Carey seemed almost fragile.

Peter said flatly, “You must be Clayton Barth.”

“And you must be John Peter Carey.” Barth's show of teeth vanished. “The second.”

Peter's eyes glinted. “For these purposes, the
only
. Phillip suggests you wish to own my firm.”

Barth's nod was curt. “Your uncle feels that Van Dreelen and Carey needs new management and money. I'm willing to provide them.”

Peter looked down at his folded hands until Ruth felt tension in his very stillness, saw strain in the bodies of the two men watching him. This insight annoyed her: she had learned to read men's silences and gestures from a childhood fear of her father's moods …

“What are your terms?” Peter asked abruptly.

Ruth sensed Barth relaxing at this return to the familiar. “I have a proposal, summarizing our offer.” He slid a typed document halfway across the table, so that Peter would have to reach for it. “As you can see by reading it, you are to receive eight million dollars and the position of my editor-in-chief.” Barth's smile became a stretching of lips. “Go ahead—take it.”

Slowly, Peter Carey reached for the letter.

As he read, Barth's peculiar agate eyes appeared never to blink. “Quite generous.” Peter's voice seemed so flat that it held the barest trace of irony. “If I might ask, what has caused this kindness to descend on us?”

“The firm has a distinguished history.” Beneath Barth's forced smile, his stare gauged Peter. “In fact, thirty years ago, John Carey was the subject of my senior thesis …”

Peter's eyes widened slightly. “Not John D. Rockefeller?” His voice was cool; only Ruth could feel his withheld anger. “What made you pick Grandfather?”

For the first time, Barth hesitated. “Black Jack Carey was a colorful man.”

“I mean, you've no publishing background of which I'm aware.”

Barth flushed. “I started in computers.”

“Then I have to worry about that. My grandfather built this business by knowing it.”

“And I've made billions in the most competitive business there is. There's simply no comparison …”

“I agree,” Peter cut in. “I've watched conglomerates swallow publishers and then screw up trying to project profits on first novels. And in the end, more often than I'd like, they sell its wreckage to still another corporation.” Much more softly, he finished, “I can't let that happen here.”

“Don't
lecture
me,” Barth shot back. “You sit here by inheritance …”

“By my father's death.” Now Peter's tone was almost gentle. “Over twenty years ago, when he was barely thirty-nine.”

“
Peter
.” Phillip's voice was strained. “This is simply morbid …”

Peter spoke through him. “By an accident,” he told Barth, “I hold my father's place. That place is not for sale, not to secure the Carey fortune, and not”—his voice grew softer yet—“to salve whatever curious needs
you
might have inherited.”

Barth bolted upright. “Damn you …”

“Peter, Peter.” Phillip Carey thrust a placating hand between them, to cut Barth off. “You've vented your emotions here, I think unfairly to Mr. Barth. You were quite young when Charles died …”

Peter turned on him. “And now you want me to forget him?”

“That's insane.”

“Is it?” Phillip half rose as Peter started toward him. “Then listen well: if you even
try
to sell my father's firm to this psychopath, I'll cut you off at the knees.”

Phillip's mouth fell open; Peter stopped abruptly, as if bewildered by his own outburst. His shoulders sagged. Turning, he dropped Barth's letter in a wastebasket, and left.

CHAPTER 7

Peter Carey sat watching the lights on his telephone dance with calls he would not take. There were two quick raps on the door; Ruth Levy peered inside to ask, “Are you all right?”

She gave him a deep, black look: did she seem so vulnerable to others, he wondered, or just to him? “Sorry,” he answered. “You shouldn't have had to sit through that.”

Ruth gave a dismissing shrug. “Barth deserved it. As for Phillip …” Ruth's eyes darted to the photograph, and then she caught herself. “Phil shouldn't be playing with someone like Barth.”

“He was right, though—I acted crazy.” Carey had felt out of control, as if stumbling in the fountain before his father caught him. The pounding started in the back of his neck.

The woman's long black hair spilled in his father's lap
…

“Want some aspirin?” Ruth was asking. “Tylenol, cocaine …”

Carey pointed to his desk drawer. “Thanks—I've got aspirin in here.”

The clippings said that Phillip saved him …

“Sure.” Ruth frowned as she reached for the door; Carey thought the effect was almost pretty.

“Ruthie.”

She turned; her glance was startled, expectant: for an instant she seemed a young woman.

“About the meeting,” Carey said. “I didn't want that to happen. I'm not sure why it did.”

Ruth gave him a last pensive look. “I know,” she said, and then closed the door behind her.

Phillip flung it open. “Are you receiving?” he asked. “Or is admission confined to Ruth?”

Peter slammed the drawer shut; oddly, Phillip remembered catching him with a flashlight under his blanket after bedtime, counting the baseball cards he had surprised him with at dinner. “I'm receiving anyone who knocks,” Peter said.

Phillip forced a placating smile; the cold response turned his memory to anger. “Look, Peter, I thought we'd better have a talk.”

The words sounded harsher than intended. Turning away, Peter answered woodenly, “My fault, Phil—I shouldn't have blown up.”

There was little heart in the apology. For a moment, Phillip wondered if he should have shown more outrage: Peter was no more a fool than Charles, and even less predictable. “It
was
quite ugly, Peter—but not, perhaps, beyond redemption. A simple apology to Barth …”

Peter's eyes snapped up. “No.”

“Peter,
look
at us.” Phillip shook his head. “This place has turned three generations of Careys into pit dogs. You made that point today, better than I ever could.”

“From which you conclude—what?”

Phillip shrugged. “What does it matter if the firm goes to Barth?”

Peter shook his head. “It does, though,” he said with weary finality. “It matters to me.”

Ungrateful bastard
, Phillip thought, and then felt guilty. “I'll tell Barth,” he answered crisply, and left.

Barth picked up his telephone.

Without preliminaries, Phillip Carey said, “There's nothing I can do with him.”

Barth twisted with outrage and frustration. “You're
frightened
…”

“I just don't wish to push him—not when he's this volatile. Nothing's worth that.”

“Not eight million dollars?”

“No.” Phillip paused. “Not even that.”

Instinctively, Barth probed what he could not yet define. “There
are
other means of persuasion.”

There was silence. “Are you threatening me, Barth?”

Phillip's voice was tight; Barth's own grew soft. “There's a key to every man, Phillip. Where do you keep yours?”

Phillip Carey slammed down the telephone.

Eyes narrow, Barth listened to the dial tone.

Peter Carey cocked the telephone to his ear. “Yeah, George.”

“First of all, don't do that again. If I'd wanted midnight calls, I'd have been a divorce lawyer.”

Carey felt too tired to snap back. “I hear you. What did you find out?”

“Your parents died a few weeks before Barth even founded his business. In 1959 the man had no money or resources to speak of, and was nowhere near Connecticut.” Benevides paused, asking pointedly, “I
did
catch your drift, didn't I?”

Carey stared at the wall. “Just forget it,” he said tonelessly, and hung up.

Clayton Barth heard a strange voice speak his thoughts: “You wish to humble Peter Carey?”

Barth stared at the telephone. “Who
is
this?”

The voice droned on. “You mishandled him this morning, and now you will never own John Carey's firm.”

For a crazy moment, Barth's fright became wonder: he could project his thoughts into the minds of others. “Look,” he snapped, “I don't talk to strangers on the telephone. If you're selling information …”