Music for Chameleons (15 page)

(Jake’s voice jolted to a stop, and as though it were a correlated action, his foot hit the brake pedal: the car skidded, swerved, straightened; we drove on. I knew what had happened. He had remembered, as I was remembering, Addie’s pathetic complaint: “… Quinn will have to fill my coffin first.” I tried to hold my tongue; it rebelled.)

TC:
But that means—

JAKE:
Better turn on my headlights.

TC:
That means Addie is going to die.

JAKE:
Hell, no! I just knew you were going to say that! (He slapped a flattened palm against the steering wheel) I’ve built a wall around Addie. I gave her a .38 Detective Special, and taught her how to use it. She can put a bullet between a man’s eyes at a hundred yards. She’s learned enough karate to split a plank with
one hand-chop. Addie’s smart; she won’t be tricked. And I’m here. I’m watching her. I’m watching Quinn, too. So are other people.

(Strong emotion, fears edging toward terror, can demolish the logic of even so logical a man as Jake Pepper—whose precautions had not saved Clem Anderson. I wasn’t prepared to argue the point with him, not in his present irrational humor; but why, since he assumed Oliver Jaeger was doomed, was he so certain Addie was not? That she would be spared? For if Quinn stayed true to his design, then absolutely he would have to dispatch Addie, remove her from the scene before he could start the last step of his task by addressing a package to his second cousin and staunch defender, the local postmaster.)

TC:
I know Addie’s been around the world. But I think it’s time she went again.

JAKE
(truculently): She can’t leave here. Not now.

TC:
Oh? She doesn’t strike me as suicidal.

JAKE:
Well, for one thing, school. School’s not out till June.

TC:
Jake! My God! How can you talk about
school
?

(Dim though the light was, I could discern his ashamed expression; at the same time, he jutted his jaw.)

JAKE:
We’ve discussed it. Talked about her and Marylee taking a long cruise. But she doesn’t want to go anywhere. She said: “The shark needs bait. If we’re going to hook the shark, then the bait has to be available.”

TC:
So Addie is a stakeout? A goat waiting for the tiger to pounce?

JAKE:
Hold on. I’m not sure I like the way you put that.

TC:
Then how would you put it?

JAKE:
(Silence)

TC:
(Silence)

JAKE:
Quinn has Addie in his thoughts, he does indeed. He means to keep his promise. And that’s when we’ll nail him: in the attempt. Catch him when the curtain is up and all the lights are on. There’s some risk, sure; but we have to take it. Because—well, to be goddamned honest, it’s probably the only damn chance we’re gonna get.

(I leaned my head against the window: saw Addie’s pretty throat as she threw back her head and drank the dazzling red wine in one delicious swallow. I felt weak, feeble; and disgusted with Jake.)

TC:
I like Addie. She’s real; and yet there’s mystery. I wonder why she never married.

JAKE:
Keep this under your hat. Addie’s going to marry me.

TC
(my mental-eye was still elsewhere; still, in fact, watching Addie drink her wine): When?

JAKE:
Next summer. When I get my vacation. We haven’t told anybody. Except Marylee. So now do you understand? Addie’s
safe;
I won’t let anything happen to her; I love her; I’m going to marry her.

(Next summer: a lifetime away. The full moon, higher, whiter now, and celebrated by coyotes, rolled across the snow-gleaming prairies. Clumps of cattle stood in the cold snowy fields, bunched together for warmth. Some stood in pairs. I noticed two spotted calves huddled side by side, lending each other comfort, protection: like Jake, like Addie.)

TC:
Well, congratulations. That’s wonderful. I know you’ll both be very happy.

SOON AN IMPRESSIVE BARBED-WIRE FENCE
, like the high fences of a concentration camp, bordered both sides of the highway; it marked the beginnings of the B.Q. Ranch: ten
thousand acres, or thereabouts. I lowered the window, and accepted a rush of icy air, sharp with the scent of new snow and old sweet hay. “Here we go,” said Jake as we left the highway and drove through wooden swung-open gates. At the entrance, our headlights caught a handsomely lettered sign:
B.Q. Ranch/R. H. Quinn/Proprietor
. A pair of crossed tomahawks was painted underneath the proprietor’s name; one wondered whether it was the ranch’s logo or the family crest. Either way, an ominous set of tomahawks seemed suitable.

The road was narrow, and lined with leafless trees, dark except for a rare glitter of animal-eyes among the silhouetted branches. We crossed a wooden bridge that rumbled under our weight, and I heard the sound of water, deep-toned liquid tumblings, and I knew it must be Blue River, but I couldn’t see it, for it was hidden by trees and snowdrifts; as we continued along the road, the sound followed, for the river was running beside us, occasionally eerily quiet, then abruptly bubbling with the broken music of waterfalls, cascades.

The road widened. Sprinklings of electric light pierced the trees. A beautiful boy, a child with bouncing yellow hair and riding a horse bareback, waved at us. We passed a row of bungalows, lamplit and vibrating with the racket of television voices: the homes of ranch hands. Ahead, standing in distinguished isolation, was the main house, Mr. Quinn’s house. It was a large white clapboard two-storied structure with a covered veranda running its full length; it seemed abandoned, for all the windows were dark.

Jake honked the car horn. At once, like a fanfare of welcoming trumpets, a blaze of floodlights swept the veranda; lamps bloomed in downstairs windows. The front door opened; a man stepped out and waited to greet us.

My first introduction to the owner of the B.Q. Ranch failed to resolve the question of why Jake had not wanted Addie to
describe him to me. Although he wasn’t a man who would pass unnoticed, his appearance was not excessively unusual; and yet the sight of him startled me:
I knew Mr. Quinn
. I was positive, I would have sworn on my own heartbeat that somehow, and undoubtedly long ago, I had encountered Robert Hawley Quinn, and that together we had, in fact, shared an alarming experience, an adventure so disturbing, memory had kindly submerged it.

He sported expensive high-heel boots, but even without them the man measured over six feet, and if he had stood straight, instead of assuming a stooped, slope-shouldered posture, he would have presented a fine tall figure. He had long simianlike arms; the hands dangled to his knees, and the fingers were long, capable, oddly aristocratic. I recalled a Rachmaninoff concert; Rachmaninoff’s hands were like Quinn’s. Quinn’s face was broad but gaunt, hollow-cheeked, weather-coarsened—the face of a medieval peasant, the man behind the plow with all the woes of the world lashed to his back. But Quinn was no dumb, sadly burdened peasant. He wore thin wire-rimmed glasses, and these professorial spectacles, and the grey eyes looming behind their thick lenses, betrayed him: his eyes were alert, suspicious, intelligent, merry with malice, complacently superior. He had a hospitable, fraudulently genial laugh and voice. But he was not a fraud. He was an idealist, an achiever; he set himself tasks, and his tasks were his cross, his religion, his identity; no, not a fraud—a fanatic; and presently, while we were still gathered on the veranda, my sunken memory surfaced: I remembered where and in what form I had met Mr. Quinn before.

He extended one of his long hands toward Jake; his other hand plowed through a rough white-and-grey mane worn pioneer-style—a length not popular with his fellow ranchers: men who looked as though they visited the barber every Saturday for a close clip and a talcum shampoo. Tufts of grey hair
sprouted from his nostrils and his ears. I noticed his belt buckle; it was decorated with two crossed tomahawks made of gold and red enamel.

QUINN:
Hey, Jake. I told Juanita, I said honey, that rascal’s gonna chicken out. Account of the snow.

JAKE:
You call this
snow
?

QUINN:
Just pullin’ your leg, Jake. (To me) You oughta see the snow we do get! Back in 1952 we had a whole week when the only way I could get out of the house was to climb through the attic window. Lost seven hundred head of cattle, all my Santa Gertrudis. Ha ha! Oh, I tell you that was a time. Well, sir, you play chess?

TC:
Rather the way I speak French.
Un peu
.

QUINN
(cackling, slapping his thighs with spurious mirth): Yeah, I know. You’re the city slicker come to skin us country boys. I’ll bet you could play me and Jake at the same time and beat us blindfolded.

(We followed him down a wide high hallway into an immense room, a cathedral stuffed with huge heavy Spanish furniture, armoires and chairs and tables and baroque mirrors commensurate with their spacious surroundings. The floor was covered with brick-red Mexican tiles and dotted with Navajo rugs. An entire wall had been composed from blocks of irregularly cut granite, and this granite cavelike wall housed a fireplace big enough to roast a brace of oxen; in consequence, the dainty fire ensconced there seemed as insignificant as a twig in a forest.

But the person seated near the hearth was not insignificant. Quinn introduced me to her: “My wife, Juanita.” She nodded, but was not to be distracted from the
television screen confronting her: the set was working with the sound turned off—she was watching the zany ditherings of muted images, some visually boisterous game show. The chair in which she sat may well have once decorated the throne room of an Iberian castle; she shared it with a shivering little Chihuahua dog and a yellow guitar, which lay across her lap.

Jake and our host settled themselves at a table furnished with a splendid ebony-and-ivory chess set. I observed the start of a game, listened to their easygoing badinage, and it was strange: Addie was right, they seemed real buddies, two peas in a pod. But eventually I wandered back to the fireplace, determined to further explore the quiet Juanita. I sat near her on the hearth and searched for some topic to start a conversation. The guitar? The quivering Chihuahua, now jealously yapping at me?)

JUANITA QUINN:
Pepe! You stupid mosquito!

TC:
Don’t bother. I like dogs.

(She looked at me. Her hair, center-parted and too black to be true, was slicked to her narrow skull. Her face was like a fist: tiny features tightly bunched together. Her head was too big for her body—she wasn’t fat, but she weighed more than she should, and most of the overweight was distributed between her bosom and her belly. But she had slender, nicely shaped legs, and she was wearing a pair of very prettily beaded Indian moccasins. The mosquito yap-yapped, but now she ignored him. The television regained her attention.)

I was just wondering: why do you watch without the sound?

(Her bored onyx eyes returned to me. I repeated the question.)

JUANITA QUINN:
Do you drink tequila?

TC:
Well, there’s a little dump in Palm Springs where they make fantastic Margaritas.

JUANITA QUINN:
A man drinks tequila straight. No lime. No salt. Straight. Would you like some?

TC:
Sure.

JUANITA QUINN:
So would I. Alas, we have none. We can’t keep it in the house. If we did, I would drink it; my liver would dry up …

(She snapped her fingers, signifying disaster. Then she touched the yellow guitar, strummed the strings, developed a tune, a tricky, unfamiliar melody that for a moment she happily hummed and played. When she stopped, her face retied itself into a knot.)

I used to drink every night. Every night I drank a bottle of tequila and went to bed and slept like a baby. I was never sick a day; I looked good, I felt good, I slept well. No more. Now I have one cold after the other, headaches, arthritis; and I can’t sleep a wink. All because the doctor said I had to stop drinking tequila. But don’t jump to conclusions. I’m not a drunk. You can take all the wine and whiskey in the world and dump it down the Grand Canyon. It’s only that I like tequila. The dark yellow kind. I like that best. (She pointed at the television set) You asked why I have the sound off. The only time I have the sound on is to hear the weather report. Otherwise, I just watch and imagine what’s being said. If I actually listen, it puts me right to sleep. But just imagining keeps me awake. And I have to stay awake—at least till midnight. Otherwise, I’d never get any sleep at all. Where do you live?

TC:
New York, mostly.

JUANITA QUINN:
We used to go to New York every year or two. The Rainbow Room: now there’s a view. But it wouldn’t be
any fun now. Nothing is. My husband says you’re an old friend of Jake Pepper’s.

TC:
I’ve known him ten years.

JUANITA QUINN:
Why does he suppose my husband has any connection with this thing?

TC:
Thing?

JUANITA QUINN
(amazed): You
must
have heard about it. Well, why does Jake Pepper think my husband’s involved?

TC:
Does
Jake think your husband’s involved?

JUANITA QUINN:
That’s what some people say. My sister told me—

TC:
But what do you think?

JUANITA QUINN
(lifting her Chihuahua and cuddling him against her bosom): I feel sorry for Jake. He must be lonely. And he’s mistaken; there’s nothing here. It all ought to be forgotten. He ought to go home. (Eyes closed; utterly weary) Ah well, who knows?
Or
cares? Not I. Not I, said the Spider to the Fly. Not I.