Necessity (12 page)

Stop it. You haven't got any sisters. Your mother was a housewife and your father was a plumber and you grew up in Phoenix and Chicago, and they died twelve years ago in a four-car pileup. You have no family. For Ellen's sake—remember that.

“Does Mike ever see his mother?”

“He tried to. For a while. I never put restrictions on it. But it got so he couldn't stand seeing her boozed up. He writes to her now and then. In a letter you can pretend nothing's wrong.”

She takes his empty glass inside and mixes him another bourbon and water.

On the kitchen wall hangs a ristra of red tongue-searing chili peppers. There aren't any curtains. It is unabashedly a man's kitchen.

She's still unnerved from this afternoon—the reporter's wallow in mob-style murder. She feels jumpy. Things keep blundering around inside her, hitting taut cords.

Through the kitchen window she watches him step back from the barbecue and clench his eyes against the smoke.

It's silly to be coy with him. What's the sense in delaying any longer? He's not going to be a pushover for soft lights and bedtime games. Whatever his answer would be then, it'll be the same now. Get it over with.

She's rehearsed it long enough: the story in detail. It's part truth, part fabrication. There ought not to be any questions that can take her by surprise. There's no excuse for procrastination except fear; and she's got to set fear aside out of concern for Ellen and the deadline, less than a month now, that hangs over her like a boulder perched on the lip of a cliff.

At the edge of the flagstones there's a patch of mint. She breaks off a sprig; rinses it with the garden hose and pokes it down amid the ice cubes in his drink.

He tastes it and shows his approval.

She moves to one side to get out of the smoke; the wind keeps pushing it around. She senses he is aware of the sexual tension. She reclaims her own glass from the redwood table and thinks about another drink.

But that would just postpone it. And let's not forget the rules of the new game: never drink enough to make the head fuzzy or the tongue loose.

Come on. It's Ellen's future you're farting around with. Blurt it out.

She says: “I had a motivation for learning to fly. It wasn't just for fun.”

“No?”

“There's something I need to do and it requires an airplane.”

Her abrupt determination seems to amuse him. “Smuggling wheelbarrows?”

“What?”

“Sorry. Old joke. Go ahead.”

She takes a breath. “I've got a daughter—fourteen months old. I'm having a custody fight with her father.”

“Must be painful.” An upward glance: the concern is genuine. “Sorry to hear it.”

She tries to decide how to phrase it. Prompting her, he says, “Your little girl got something to do with learning to fly a plane?”

“I wanted to be my own air rescue service. My daughter's.”

“You're serious now.”

“The son of a bitch has got my kid, Charlie. I want to get her back.”

28
The steaks are seared; she watches Charlie crank the grill higher so they will cook more slowly. She can't decipher his expression. All he says is, “Go on.”

“Last year we separated and I moved out here. I thought I'd get settled and then go back and collect Wendy. As soon as I'd established California residency I filed for divorce here. But then I found out he'd filed at the same time—back in New York.”

“And?”

Now more lies: “There've been custody hearings in both states. California says I get the child. New York says he gets custody.”

“He's got possession of the kid?”

“For the moment.”

He pokes the steaks with a long fork. Fat dripping on the coals has started a fire and he sprays it with water from a hand-pump bottle that used to contain window cleanser. Out here he's startlingly different from what's he like at the airport or in the plane. His domesticity seems wildly out of place.

She says, “It's not altogether selfishness on my part. He's not a fit father. She can't stay with him. She just can't.”

“Well—you're talking about kidnapping now.”

“She's my own daughter. My child!”

“Love, I'm talking about the law.”

“It's kidnapping in New York—it's honoring a court order in California. Depends where you're standing.”

“Forget the legalities. The baby's in New York with her old man? Then—possession being nine points of the law and all—you're talking about kidnapping. You get caught, that's what they'll arrest you for.”

“I know that.”

“I think you belong on a funny farm.” But he says it with gentle humor. “What kind of guy is the father?”

“You won't get an objective opinion from me.”

“Granted. Tell me about him.” He's taking the steaks off the fire.

“On the surface very charming.”

“He'd have to be, to get you to marry him.”

He's not looking at her just then and she wonders how he means the remark to be taken. Is it the casual flattery of a man on the make or a compliment meant sincerely?

“He's dangerous.” Then abruptly she stops, feeling awkward. She didn't mean to put it that way. It seems to reveal too much. She doesn't want to scare him off.

She continues quickly: “He can be unpleasant.”

“Yeah, well we all can be unpleasant.” He's plucking potatoes and corn on the cob out of the coals, using the long barbecue fork to peel the foil off them.

“What's his name?”

“Bert. Albert. Some of his friends call him Al.”

“Albert what? Hartman?”

“Of course,” she lies.

Is it her imagination or did he notice her instant's hesitation?

His face gives nothing away. His eyes are squinted against the smoke. “We're about ready here.” With deliberate care he breaks the leaves off the corncobs and removes the silk. He slides the potatoes deftly off the fork onto the plates and when she carries them inside there's a corner of her troubled mind that appreciates the precision with which he effects all these little accomplishments: he only
looks
disorderly.

He shakes up a decanter. “Salad dressing. My recipe. English mustard in it—hope you don't mind.”

And he actually holds her chair for her.

When he sits down opposite her she's grateful to him for not lighting the candles. That would be carrying it too far.

She says, “Wendy's not in the city. They're at our—his summer house in the Adirondacks. Outside Fort Keene.”

“That in New York State?”

“Yes. Near Lake Placid.”

“Mountain cabin?”

“You could call it that. It's got twelve rooms.”

He gives her a sharp sidewise look and pours the wine—something red from a California vineyard. She tastes it and it makes her tongue tingle pleasantly. Must be careful—ration herself to one glass.

She says, “They'll be going back to Manhattan on Labor Day. So I've got a deadline and it's less than four weeks away.”

Now she lets him see her distress. It is genuine enough. “Doesn't look as if I'm going to be an accomplished pilot by then, does it.”

“No.”

It provokes her quick smile. “One thing about you, Charlie, you certainly don't believe in polite lies.”

“I try not to lie to my friends, honey bun.”

He hasn't started to eat yet. He points with his fork toward her plate. Not until after she begins to eat does he pick up his knife. He's a strange fossil, she's thinking. The last of his breed.

He asks, “What makes Labor Day the deadline?”

“In the city I wouldn't have a chance of getting near her. We live—they live in a condominium with its own private elevator. One apartment per floor. It's a top-security building. Guards all over the place. Even the doormen are private police. And you can be sure they've been warned about me.”

“But you think you can get out of this house in the country. Even with her father right there?”

“I know how to do that. Things are more casual at Fort Keene and anyway he's not always there. Sometimes he commutes to the city during the week.”

“I've got to tell you something,” Charlie says. “This isn't exactly the dinnertime conversation I had in mind for tonight.”

He ruminates on a mouthful and reaches for his wine and otherwise busies himself with actions that fail to conceal how industriously he's employing the time to absorb and to think. From his expression there is no way to tell how he feels about what she's told him.

Eventually he says, “Why an airplane? What's wrong with a car?”

“There's a seventeen-mile road in to the house. It's not a private drive—there are other houses—but it's the only road and it takes at least forty minutes to get out to the highway. He'd have the police on it before that—he'd just telephone.”

“Cut the phone wires.”

“Wouldn't help. He's got CB radios in the cars.”

“Those can be disabled.”

“I suppose they can. But there are always three or four cars in the lean-to and around the driveway. It would be hard to bash in all those radios without being noticed. They can see the driveway from the house.”

“You've worked it out, haven't you.”

“I've tried to.”

He's cutting a piece of steak; scowling at it. He sits for a moment with knife and fork poised over the plate and she has the feeling he's making a decision but in the end he only asks another question:

“Three or four cars. What are you guys—the Kennedys of Hyannisport? How many people around the kid?”

“There's the housekeeper and her husband. He's sort of all-around caretaker and handyman, gardener, mechanic, so forth. And my husband's hired a practical nurse—a nanny to look after Wendy. And most all the time he'll have two or three of his partners and business associates there. They play cards and spend half the day doing business on the telephones. They like to hunt, even out of season,” she adds pointedly.

“I guess you're telling me old Albert ain't poor.”

“He's in the construction business.”

“Yeah. What does he build? Skyscrapers?”

“Sometimes.”

“And he and his buddies like to hunt. So there are guns around the place.”

“Yes.”

“You haven't gone so far as to say it's an armed camp, honeybunch, but would that be a fair conclusion?”

“No.” Try to calm him down now. “It's not a fortified stronghold, Charlie, it's just a big rustic summer house. All wood—varnished, not painted. Mostly cedar. Big picture windows—a lot of glass. There's a cathedral ceiling in the living room, open beams, I guess it's forty feet high at the peak. You could seat eight people at a table inside the fireplace if you wanted to—I've never seen a fireplace that big anywhere else. The house is huge but it's not a fortress.”

“How do you expect to get in and get Wendy out?”

“I know how.”

“That's reassuring,” he says a bit drily. “What about an airstrip? Something to land on.”

“There are two or three places.”

“All of a sudden you're being evasive.”

“I think I've already told you too much. Maybe it's the wine,” she lies.

“Come on. You want me to fly the airplane for you. Don't you.” He starts to chuckle. “Why not quit beating around the bush?”

“Oh dear. Am I that transparent?”

“I wish you wouldn't bat the big blue eyes at me. It just makes my heart go all pitty-pat.”

She puts the corncob down and cleans her fingers on the napkin. Without raising her eyes she says, “I'm sorry I've turned your romantic dinner into a business meeting. Sometimes my timing's not very good.”

This time he doesn't smile; he doesn't let her off the hook. He says: “I expect it's time I asked what's in it for me.”

By leaping ahead of her he has taken her by surprise and as she watches him gnaw corn she reassembles her thoughts and chooses her words:

“It's become painfully obvious I can't fly the plane myself. I suppose I could try—but I don't want to put my child's life in that kind of danger. So it looks as if I can't do this without you, Charlie, and I guess that means you can pretty much name your own price.”

“And lead us not into the valley of temptation,” he murmurs. “You like some more wine?”

“No, thank you.”

The steak is blood red. He shaves it in slivers to eat it, she notices; no big hunky mouthfuls for him. He likes to savor what he's eating. She's practically finished and he's hardly started.

He says, “Special occasions like this, I get the meat at a little Italian butcher shop in Encino.”

“It's very good. Everything's delicious. You'd make somebody a terrific wife.”

“Yes ma'am.”

She says, “How much is fair, Charlie? What would you say to five thousand dollars?”

“Probably not enough. On the other hand ten thousand sounds like too much. Why don't we say seventy-five hundred?”

There's an interval during which she is acutely conscious of the bashing of a pulse behind her eyes. She finally dares to say, “You mean you'll do it?”

“Sure, my sweet love. Why not. I haven't had a good silly adventure all week.”

His grin is at once reckless and mysterious. He lifts his wine glass in toast. “To Wendy. Her very good health.”

She drinks to that. To Wendy Hartman A/K/A Ellen LaCasse. She can smell the baby now: she has a tactile memory of tiny fingers clutching her own: she hears the burble of Ellen's laugh and the strident demand of her outcries. She can see the wonderful smile that crumples the little blue eyes into happy wedges. She can feel her child's warmth.

29
Driving away she feels by turns elated and confused: uneasy, at intervals, because too often Charlie seems to have that ability to take her by surprise—as he did ten minutes ago when, dishes washed and cognac swirled and lights turned down, he took the glass out of her hand and kissed her as she had not been kissed in longer than she could remember—flicking tongue and hard body pressure—and then lifted her to her feet and steered her toward the door.