Spearfield's Daughter (67 page)

He had lost some hair and gained some weight since he had gone up in the world. The underworld, that is; he was still a long way under the surface in Kansas City's social world.
The Independent,
the city's social magazine, would not have run his name even if he had murdered ten of the top socialites. He had the sleek look of a successful businessman, which indeed he was; he was regional director of laundry for the Mob in Chicago. That he laundered money rather than clothes or linen was neither here nor there in his view. He had a nice tolerance of his own attitudes.

He was on his putting green as the housemaid brought two men out of the house. He finished his putt, put the ball in the hole and looked up with the grimace of his lips that he mistakenly thought was his smile. “So what'd you learn?”

The bigger of the two men took off his hat, the brim of which he had pulled down over his face like an old-time movie gangster. He was a police detective from over the border in Kansas and he always tried to hide his face when he called on gangsters. He amused Tony Rossano, but he was the best informer on Rossano's pay-roll.

“
This guy you told me about, his name's Border. Tom Border. He made a lotta dough as a writer. A book writer,” he explained, as if Rossano might confine his reading to race-books. “But he's a newspaper guy, too. He used to work for the
New York Courier.
Maybe he still does, I couldn't check on that. But I will,” he added when he saw Rossano's look.

“Where's he staying?”

“The Raphael. He seems to know K.C. pretty good.”

Rossano looked at the other man. He was shorter than the detective but probably weighed more. He was bald and wore no hat and his big red face had the friendly politician's look of a cardinal from one of the richer dioceses. He was the only Irishman who worked for Rossano and, as such, invaluable. An Irish ear to the ground in Kansas City politics was as necessary as having an inside line to the White House in Kennedy's day. He was a practising Catholic and, with the new liberalism in the Church, didn't have to go to confession each Saturday to confess his sins, which were many.

“He knows where to go to ask the questions.” He had a deep rumbling voice, in contrast to the detective's, which was only slightly lower than a high squeak. “He's been getting answers, too. I think he's working for that New York paper, Tony.”

Rossano had a mind like a filing cabinet; he kept a mental dossier on everyone who had crossed him since he was twelve years old and fighting the other kids on East Missouri in Little Italy. “I know the dame who's editor of that paper. She was a pain in the ass.”

“They all are,” said the Irishman, but didn't say whether he meant editors or dames.

“What you gonna do?” said the detective.

“Depends what he writes, if he writes anything,” said Rossano. “The men up in Chicago—” Then he stopped. He liked to think, and he liked those who worked for him to think, that he didn't have to concern himself with the opinions of others.

“Can I make a suggestion, Tony? I don't think anything oughta happen to him, not in K.C. The KCPD weren't very happy about what happened to that other newspaper guy from the
Courier.
They know who put out the contract, they told me that. They told me they even knew who the hit guy was, but they couldn't pin it on him. Something happens to this guy Border in this town, the shit's gonna hit the fan, Tony.”

“
Well, we'll see if he writes anything. I might sue him for libel.” He thought he smiled, but neither of the men noticed it. “Any rate, one thing about a hit man, he'll travel anywhere if the price is right. Even to New York.”

The Irishman polished the top of his head with a ham of a hand. “Wouldn't it be nice if we all lived and let live?”

“You'd be out of a job,” said Rossano and went back to his putting. Golf was the ideal game. You were only playing yourself and, if you watched yourself, no bastard could cheat you.

V

After a week in Kansas City, Tom went down home to Friendship for a couple of days. After the muck he had dug up in K.C., the dogwood and redbud were soft-focus commercials for spring, now on the road up from the south. Goddam, he thought, I even think in city images now. He had almost forgotten what life could be like here in the quiet countryside. He sat on the front porch and watched the ducks and geese heading north again, drawing their dark lines across the pale blue sky. He went down to the big pond beyond the orchards and saw the mallards taking time out on the water still dark from winter and he marvelled again, as he had as a boy, at the colour in the birds' heads and necks. At night he heard the great horned owl over by the main barn, sounding like an echo of the bird he had heard in his youth.

“Do you ever miss all this?” his father said to him on the last day of his visit.

He picked at the Maltese cross of the dogwood blossom in his hand. “I'm ashamed to say, Pop, I never really think about it. I think about you and Mom, but never this—” He gestured at the countryside, the landscape of his boyhood. “I should. This is what made me, generations of the families, yours and Mom's, living here.”

“Will you ever come back?” Clem Border stroked the coat of his favourite dog, a crossbred setter. He had lost the knack of talking to his son and he was glad of the dog to distract him. He watched Tom out of the corner of his eye, remarking how the boy he had been close to had changed to this man who was a near-stranger. The change had all taken place in the last few years, since his marriage to Simone.

“Maybe some day. When I'm your age.” He grinned at his father. “You'll still be here, even then.”

“I guess so. The Borders have always been a long-living family.” He looked carefully at the dog
for
ticks, though he knew it had none. “Your mother and I were sorry you and Simone broke up.”

“It was one of those things, Pop. She's married again, or about to be.”

“What about you?”

“Marry again? I don't know. There's another girl—” He told his father about Cleo, but it was a thumbnail sketch; for some reason he was afraid that his parents would be prejudiced against her. “We've spent ten years dodging each other.”

“I was down in Australia during the war. World War Two.” It hurt him to have to identify the wars; he had thought his would be the last. “They're a tight-fisted lot, the Aussies. Short arms and deep pockets. Even their girls thought so.”

“Cleo is generous.” She was in her love-making; but how would he know if she was generous in everything else? Ten years, and he was only at the beginning of really knowing her. “I think you'd like her, Pop.”

“She's important, though, isn't she? In her job, I mean.”

“Women have come out of the kitchen.”

“Yeah, I been reading about that,” his father said with a grin.

“It hasn't spoiled her,” he said doggedly. “You'll like her.”

“We liked Simone.”

Dear Christ, Tom thought, make it work between Cleo and me! There were so many people to be convinced. He shut his mind against the thought of whether he, too, had to be convinced.

He went back to New York that afternoon and straight to the
Courier's
office. He typed a few notes for his story, waited around and then took Cleo home to her apartment and bed. They were hungry for each other; there was no discussion of Jack or of Tony Rossano. In the car taking them uptown she did say, “Things went okay with you?”

“Yes. The same with you?”

She nodded. It was enough; discussion could wait. It was next morning before they talked about Jack, and not at all about Rossano; crime and its power were not important for the moment. She said, “He took it badly. No temper or anything like that, just as if I'd kicked him in the stomach. I took it badly, too.”

It had been more than a matter of conscience. One doesn't live with a person, or anyway half-
live,
without his becoming part of oneself. Almost against her will she had found herself remembering moments with him; part of the perspective was that she remembered no moments at all with Alain. Jack had been part of her life; Alain never had. The trouble with Jack had been that he had been only part of her life; not her whole life, as Tom would be. She screwed that last thought firmly into her mind, securing it against any doubts that might arise.

“He's gone back to London?” Tom said. “I guess I should feel sorry for him, but I don't. He had you all those years when I didn't.”

“Not all the time. I was pretty lonely sometimes, especially when I'd think about Simone being lucky enough to have you. Incidentally, Alain and Simone are due back tomorrow. They were married in Paris last Thursday. Claudine, I gather, is furious. She wanted a royal wedding. Well, semi-royal.”

“I better send them a present. All three of us are still supposed to be good friends. Maybe you and I could send them a joint gift.”

“I don't really think that would be a good idea.” Men, even this one she loved so dearly, so often did not know when to leave well enough alone. “I'll send them a best wishes card. They can tear it up if they're offended.”

“Simone won't be. She's a sweet girl.”

“Thanks for telling me.” But she kissed him to show she understood his lack of tact. He mistook it for generosity on her part.

Cleo was in seventh heaven (Was there an eighth or ninth? She had never felt so happy) to have Tom so close to her, to no longer have any barrier between them. But at the
Courier
she kept him at a distance; he worked for her but only through Carl Fishburg or Joe Hamlyn. It was Carl who brought Tom's Kansas City story to the news conference table.

“Tom's done a good job. But there's no angle we can hang it on, nothing that's gonna make the readers sit up and take notice. I don't think New Yorkers are going to get too excited about the fact that Tony Rossano runs Kansas City for the benefit of Sebastiano Giuffre and his Family in Chicago. Maybe Tom's been away from New York too long. People here could care less about what happens in the rest of the USA.”

“Righto, spike the story—we may be able to use it if something breaks in the future. What else
have
you got?”

“The Mayor says the city's going broke again—”

Cleo had no regrets about spiking Tom's story. He might be upset, but she hoped he would not complain to her. Life was never meant to be easy for lovers who worked together. Especially when one was the boss of the other.

Tom did complain to Carl Fishburg, but shut up at once when Carl told him who had spiked the story. He did not mention his complaint to Cleo, but he wondered if she was going to go out of her way to show him no favouritism. He began to see difficulties ahead as a newspaperman.

At the end of that week there was a board meeting. When Cleo walked into the boardroom she was surprised, and at once on guard, to see Alain and Roger there. Alain was standing by a window, leaning on his stick; it seemed to her that he had put on some weight and some years. The college boy that had lingered in him was gone now.

She walked up to him. “Congratulations, Alain. I hope you and your wife will be very happy.”

“Thank you. We got your card.” He was not cool and distant, but neither was he all smiles and good cheer. “I hear you've become famous while I've been away.
Meet the Press,
the Johnny Carson show—it must be like London when you lived there.”

“Not quite.”

“No. I understand Lord Cruze isn't around any more.”

She smiled, knowing now exactly where he stood, right on her toes. “You sound like your mother, did you know that? The same intonation—”

At that moment his mother called the meeting to order. With all the intonation of an empress she said, “You will have observed the presence of my son and my brother. They are here to be formally introduced. I am putting the motion, seconded by Stanley Beaton, that two more board posts be created. I nominate Alain Roux and Roger Brisson to be the new directors.”

“Just like that,” said Jerry Kibler. “No agenda notice, nothing. No offence, Roger. But Claudine—you made that sound like a military government edict. I read AMGOT notices like that on village walls in Italy during the war.”

“I'm delighted to hear the military could be so lucid and to the point. I'd always thought they
were
exactly the opposite,” said Claudine. “No offence, Roger.”

“Everyone is busy not offending me,” said Roger. “Would you prefer that Alain and I retired?”

“There's no need for that,” said Stanley Beaton. He looked a trifle embarrassed and harassed, as if he had only just learned the motion he was seconding. “I think the voting will show you are elected.” He glanced at Claudine, then held up his hand. It looked more like a salute to her than a voting gesture.

Everyone but Cleo and Jerry Kibler held up their hands, though Stephen Jensen held up his only after some hesitation. Claudine looked at Cleo, but then addressed herself to Jerry. “You object? Why?”

“This isn't US Steel, it's a small newspaper company. Why do we need so many directors?”

“Alain will eventually succeed me and I think it will be good for the company that he gets practical experience before he does take over from me.” When Alain had suggested that he be put on the board she had not been enthusiastic; blood was thicker than water, but she did not want her authority watered down. She had, however, never denied him anything he really wanted and she had recognized that he had set his heart on having some authority on the
Courier.
Cleo was the reason, of course; as soon as she realized that, she agreed to nominate him. Cleo, it seemed, had lately begun to look on the
Courier
as
her
paper. “We must look to the future.”