Man Who Loved God (25 page)

It was a banking convention in Florida that transformed the relationship of Jack and Barbara. Jack Fradet was empowered to select Adams delegates for this convention. Among those selected was Al Ulrich. Jack went no further than that. He also did hot go to the convention.

It worked. Barbara invited Jack to dinner in the Ulrich condo apartment. He enjoyed dinner and again went no further than that.

Eventually she seduced him according to the plan he had cleverly composed.

Of all the men who had romanced her, the best lover of all was Jack Fradet. No one, including Marilyn Fradet, would have believed that. His services during foreplay made it virtually impossible for Barbara not to reach climax. Afterward, all he required was a brief, releasing orgasm for himself.

Now, with this in mind, she felt somewhat callous in summoning him here tonight, to the very apartment where it had all begun for them. But this was the hand dealt her by fate; she had drawn cards and she would play that hand.

A knock at the door. He never rang the bell. She didn’t have to check the time; it would be precisely seven o’clock. That’s the way Jack was.

She wore a modest housecoat. She could no more envision Jack ripping off her clothing than she could imagine Marty Whitston turning away from a lovely, near naked woman.

Barbara opened the door. There he was, wearing that slight, enigmatic smile. She ushered him in and took his coat and hat. It wasn’t cold, or even chill outside—but Jack always protected himself and his health. Jack could quote statistics on catching cold in early autumn.

They sat facing each other, neither speaking.

“Thanks for coming,” Barbara said finally. “This is about my note—at the party.”

The smile didn’t change. “Things have changed since then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Al. You feared he would blow the roof off. He’s gone. If we were in a novel, I’d say Al’s death was a deus ex machina and highly unrealistic. But since we’re in real life, I have to look at it as a major coincidence.”

Barbara rose and got two cups of coffee. She didn’t need to ask: Jack nearly lived on coffee. She wondered that he ever slept. “Maybe a coincidence, maybe not,” she said as she placed their cups on the small table that separated them.

“‘Maybe not’?” He took a sip and compressed his lips in appreciation. It was out of character for one so gorgeous, but Barbara was a marvelous cook.

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that as careful a person as Al was, that he would be killed by a kid who needed money for dope?”

“This is excellent coffee, Barbara. What’s so odd about that? It happens all the time. We live on the downtown riverfront. Things here are about as safe as anywhere.

“As far as that goes, the branch Al left was in comparably safe territory. He volunteered for the new branch. He stepped from the safety of a pantry shelf to a heated frying pan, as it were. Which is not to say that anyone anywhere in this country is really safe.

“But, Barbara dear, all of those people, as Al did, have just begun working in a risky area of this city. What if there were a residency restriction? What if someone in authority required the people who work in that neighborhood to live there too? Like they do the police and firefighters. You think we’d be able to even plan on opening a branch in a neighborhood like that?

“No, my dear, Al’s death certainly is tragic, but not a complete surprise. Nor do I think it at all odd that a dope addict would kill to feed his habit. It would be nice if all addicts had jobs so they could afford to buy the drug of their choice. But eventually and inevitably, drugs incapacitate the user to the degree where he can’t hold down a job. But he has to have dope and he’ll do anything to get it—even commit murder.

“So, no, dear, I do not think it odd that our addict goes to a bank to get some money for his addiction. After all, banks are all about money. That he was not thinking all that clearly fits nicely in the whole picture. The error may very well be in our decision to open there.”

Barbara’s eyes widened. “You mean you think that branch never should have been planned, let alone opened?”

“Tom and I had words on the subject.” All hint of a smile had vanished. “But …” He shrugged. “It was not my place to make that final decision. Actually, I think we’re moving away from serving our faithful and long-standing customers. As I say, we’ve had words. We know each other’s thinking in the matter. But Tom is still the boss.

“However, just between the two of us, I think Al was a fool to accept, let alone volunteer, for the job.”

It was Barbara’s turn to smile. “You don’t think he did it from some altruistic motive, do you, Jack?”

“Not for a moment.” Jack shook his head vigorously.

“Then why?”

“I suppose he knew there’d have to be some sort of reward at the end of the stick.”

“What do you suppose that would be?”

“A choice of the next assignment, I suppose. Maybe a choice of a prime branch. There are lots of things working here. Leave Al where he is and, in time, when the right manager retires or dies, Al moves up. But that’s all guesswork. That’s up on Tom’s level. He created the monster; he’ll have to deal with it.

“But why do you ask? You have an idea?”

“How about an executive vice presidency?”

Jack paused with his cup half raised. Then he began to laugh. He laughed so hard he had to set the cup down again. “There are only three, you know, Barbara,” he said when he could control his laughter.

“Then one of you would have to leave, wouldn’t you?”

“Al an executive VP? That’s rich. None of us is anyplace close to retirement. And even if it happened,
I
certainly wouldn’t be the one to be replaced. Not in this world of business.” A curious look of amusement appeared on his face. “Wait a minute … wait a minute. You couldn’t … oh, this is rich! I’ll bet you were figuring that one of us … me?” He began to chuckle. “You think that I hired that young man to kill Al so my job would be safe. Good lord, what an active imagination you have, my dear.”

While he enjoyed what he seemed to think was a hilarious notion, Barbara fumed.

Practically the same reaction as Martin’s. Either both men were completely innocent of complicity in the murder of her husband, or they deserved some sort of award for their performances.

However, even if Jack had had nothing to do with murder, still there could be something unsavory in his vice presidential dealings. Perhaps Jack was involved in some hanky-panky that would lend itself to a little blackmail.

She waited until he stopped chortling. “That idea didn’t originate with me, you know.” Actually, to her knowledge, the only other person who shared the suspicion that one of the vice presidents could be behind the death of Al Ulrich was Father Zachary Tully. And the priest was nowhere near as convinced as she.

“Oh?”

“No. But it got me to thinking ….”

Jack shook his head, condescendingly. Suddenly she was furious. Why in hell did he have to be so damned smug? Well, she’d fix his wagon!

“Yes. I did. I did think a lot. Oh, not about you and me. No, Jack, I thought about you and the bank. That precious bank that you’re all so crazy about. And I started digging, and I asked some questions—” For the first time she seemed to have his undivided attention. Good! Let Mr. Smartypants Knowitall stew in his own smug juice. “Oh, don’t worry; I was very careful; nobody could possibly connect you with any of my questions. But you know, Al has always talked about his work … and believe it or not, I’ve always listened. And I can put two and two together. And guess what, Jack: it came up four!”

He just looked at her, waiting.

“Yes, sweetie, I know what you’ve been doing.” Actually, she didn’t know a thing, but she was so teed off at his supercilious attitude that she plowed on. “You’ve been building yourself one helluva golden parachute, haven’t you? So that if or when you were bounced out of your position—replaced by Al—you’d land softly and sweetly and have a pile for as many rainy days as might come along. And just imagine what would happen if Tom Adams found out—”

Suddenly, his entire demeanor changed. His expression became feral. She’d seen this look before. Animals, especially small animals, when literally cornered, fix their adversary with such a gaze, seeming to say, “Okay, you’ve put me in an inescapable situation. Now it’s you or I—and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you are not the winner.”

A shiver passed through Barbara’s body. Had her trial balloon touched reality? For the first time she had reason to question this inquisition.

Had she hit paydirt? What if Jack really was playing fast and loose with the bank’s finances? What might he do to silence her—or anyone who might guess at the truth?

With evident resolve, Jack once more pulled a veil over his expression. He was his erstwhile enigmatic self. “Barbara,” he said at length, “that’s a pretty serious charge. But because there’s no truth to it whatever, I know this allegation is your brainchild and yours alone. You’re bluffing—why, I don’t know—but” —he smiled sardonically—” you’d make a rotten poker player, my dear. And” —he leaned toward her—“just in case you’ve a mind to try to make trouble, let me tell you: this cockamamie accusation had better not leave this apartment.”

Barbara stared at him, speechless.

“Besides” —he sat back, relaxed—“there wasn’t the slightest possibility of my being let go. Al had little or no chance of supplanting any of us. And in the unlikely—extremely unlikely—event that it might have happened,
I
would most certainly not be the one displaced. Not now. Not ever.”

She had, it seemed, struck out again. Both Jack and Martin had been convincing in their innocence of any involvement in Al’s death.

As for bank misconduct, Jack’s mask had slipped—momentarily, but a slip nonetheless. Despite his words, her bluff had hit home: something was highly questionable about his dealings with Adams Bank. Yet she seemed somehow to have missed the target. Was she on the mark with her guess about the facts, but wrong about the motive? No way of knowing.

However, for all practical purposes, she could prove no charge against either Martin or Jack. She shrugged mentally. Two down. Two to go.

But first the little matter of paternity, and a generous support through the distant future for mother and child. She might not be able to pin Jack to the wall as far as his bank dealings were concerned, but he wasn’t going to weasel out of his paternal responsibility. Composing her thoughts and her face, she affected a sort of wry, little-girl sweetness, as if he had defeated her in a tennis match that she had known in advance she would lose because of course he was so much better at everything than she. “Care for more coffee, Jack?” she asked, every inch the gracious loser.

“Please.”

She poured for him. No more for herself. “We have only one more outstanding matter to be taken care of.”

“If this is what I think it is, I’m just surprised it wasn’t the primary, if not the only concern.”

“A matter of paternity, Jack. Al’s gone, so he won’t be kicking up a stink—and he certainly would have. But if everything comes out okay, in about seven or so months I’ll have a baby and you’ll have a son or a daughter. What do you intend to do about it? I don’t think either of us wants to go public with this. We don’t want a mess … at least I certainly don’t.”

She didn’t know what to make of his lively smile. “Well?”

“No. No, my dear, we do not want to go public and get into a mess.”

Why was he making such a production of this?

“I have taken the trouble of photostating the bill for a doctor’s services rendered a little more than three years ago.” He reached across the table and handed her a rectangular piece of paper.

It was an itemized bill for outpatient surgery.

She was flabbergasted. “A vasectomy!”

“That’s what it says. And that’s what it was.”

“I don’t understand.” And she did not. “You had a vasectomy before we ever got together! You were sterile before we—! Why did you bother going along with my insistence on using birth control? Why, for God’s sake, would you bother wearing a condom?”

He held out his cup. “Just one more cup, please, Barbara? One for the road.” The smile became a smirk. For that and his cocky attitude as he defeated her every effort to entangle him in any facet of this affair, she hated him. But she held any external manifestation in check.

She poured another cup of coffee and handed it to him. He sipped it and smiled a bit more genuinely.

“Why?” she repeated.

He tipped his head to one side as if considering how to phrase his response. “Why? No one does anything for one reason alone. Let’s see: why would I go along with your demand that we be super protected: you with spermicide, a diaphragm—maybe an IUD, for all I know; me with a condom; just about everything but rhythm—and, of course, the Pill?

“Well, it was amusing, that’s one. It enabled me to play a trump that you never knew I held—as I just did. That’s two. And it provided protection for me from any venereal disease if you were sexually active with anyone else.

“You see, Barbara, I bought your story that you and Al were not participating in conjugal life. It was just too bizarre not to be true.

“And, as it turns out, your sleeping around was exactly what was going on. That was borne out by your note. You are pregnant. That I believe. The father is not your husband. That I believe.

“But the father is not I. That I know for an indisputable fact.”

Barbara’s head hung. She seemed to be studying the floor. “Vasectomies aren’t always foolproof,” she said in a small voice.

He looked at her almost pityingly. “Mine is, I guarantee you. I have a semen test as part of my regular six-month checkup.” He shook his head. “No, my dear, that dog won’t hunt.”

He stood, and picked up his coat and hat. “I’ll just let myself out. Out of your apartment, and out of your life very probably.”

She didn’t move. She continued to stare at the floor as the door closed.

If she had looked at Jack as he departed, she would have seen that his smug demeanor had been replaced by one of dark determination.