The Pariot GAme (19 page)

“Jenny didn’t mind that,” Freddie said. “Kind of heady, actually, fourteen-year-old girl, gets on the plane in her Calvins with her backpack and her carry-on bag. Thoughtful businessmen suppressing lewd thoughts and helping her with her hanging bag. Gets off the plane, all alone, so mature, there’s the limo driver holding up the sign: Miss Thomas. She doesn’t know those businessmen understand all about summer visitation. She thinks they think she’s a child star, off to shoot another sequence on location.

“Arthur took her to lunch at the Plaza. Chauffeur delivered her luggage to the condo on Sutton Place. Arthur gave her his charge cards at Bloomie’s and Saks. Arthur gave her five hundred dollars to spend at Pappagallo and Gucci, because Arthur doesn’t have accounts at those stores. Arthur gave her Miss Manning, his secretary’s secretary, Gail. Gail is about twenty, but Arthur’s secretary, Kathy, has been training her very carefully, and Gail after a year or two is now almost as stylish as Kathy. Arthur doesn’t like dowdy secretaries. Arthur went back to the office to wrap up some more last-minute details.

“Gail and Jenny went shopping. Jenny went through about eighteen hundred of Arthur’s after-tax income on the charge accounts. ‘I didn’t spend any of the cash except eight dollars when me and Gail had drinks at the Tavern-on-the-Green,’ she told me, quite breathlessly. ‘Gail and I,’ I said. ‘What exactly did you have to drink, Jenny?’ ‘Same as Gail,’ she said, ‘white wine spritzer. Gail ordered them. She said they’re very refreshing on a hot day after shopping.’ ”

“Oh boy,” Riordan said.

“Well,” Freddie said, “now let’s be reasonable here. We let her have a glass of wine with dinner with us. If a glass of wine with dinner here isn’t going to hurt her, a glass of wine after shopping in New York isn’t going to hurt her either.”

“No,” Riordan said, “but a four-dollar glass of wine at the Tavern-on-the-Green is by sure sweet Jesus going to hurt us, when she comes back here and decides she’d prefer to have her dinner wine served to her by the sommelier in the Ritz dining room every night, perhaps a Médoc with the meat and a Sancerre with the boneless chicken course.”

“The chauffeur picked them up at the Tavern,” she said. “He handled all the packages, the new bathing suits …”

“I just can’t wait to see those,” he said.

“You just remember,” Freddie said, “that I’m a practicing counselor, and I’ve read all that stuff about how Mummy lets her new boyfriend move into the house and the next thing she knows he’s bothering her adolescent daughter by her first marriage. One false move out of you and I’ll have the law on ye, Jocko. And then of course there was the Ralph Lauren suit and all manner of other stuff. Chauffeur took care of all of it.”

“Who is it that’s supposed to have this visitation with her anyway?” Riordan said. “Some time I want to see that custody agreement where it says that Arthur Thomas’s chauffeur shall be entitled to the uninterrupted visitations of Jennifer Thomas each summer, until she shall have attained the age of eighteen years. That how she got to Maine? Chauffeur took a wrong turn on FDR Drive? That’s kidnapping.”

“That’s his way, pork chop,” Freddie said. “That’s Arthur’s way of showing affection.”

“By not showing any,” Riordan said. “Cocksucker.”

“Peter,” she said, laughing. “I do believe you’re getting protective.”

“Bullshit,” Riordan said. “What did Arthur do that night, have Gail tuck her in and the chauffeur kiss her good night while he cleaned up a few more details at the office?”

“He was very nice,” Freddie said. “He came home to shower and change for dinner. His maid ran a bath for Jenny and put some kind of nifty bath salts in it. ‘Mummy,’ she said, it was heavenly. Just like being in champagne.’ ”

“ ‘Mummy,’ ” he said. “ ‘Mummy,’ for Christ sake? What happened to ‘Hey, Fred’? And what is this pervert doing, making her wash with Lawrence Welk in the tub with her?”

“After the bath,” Freddie said, “they had white wine on the terrace and watched the skyline for a while.”

“Gail and the chauffeur and the maid and Arthur, no doubt,” Riordan said. “What’d they do, put on blackface and stage a minstrel skit for the kid?”

“Just Jenny and her father,” Freddie said. “Then they got all gussied up. She wore her new white suit and he looked very distinguished in his gray silk, and the limo picked them up and took them to the Four Seasons for a pretheater dinner in the Pool Room. They were going to see
Sugar Babies.
”

“Oh my God,” he said, “you would think a man who has got that kind of cash to throw around would at least want to contribute an occasional dollar or two for the support of his kid.”

“Pete,” she said, “we both know who’s to blame for that. I am. I didn’t want him making another brittle little Gloria Vanderbilt copy out of that kid. But I also wanted out of that marriage, and I wanted out fast. He could’ve tied me up in court for years, with his money and his connections. He offered me the deal. If he was going to pay, then he was going to have custody. If I wanted custody, then I would have to pay. I took the deal. It was the best one available, and I’m convinced I was right.”

“He’s bribing her,” Riordan said. “He may call it ‘polishing,’
or ‘showing her a side of life’ she doesn’t see with you, but a kid that age is impressionable. He’s trying to buy her. I don’t like it a bit.”

“You think Jenny can be bought?” Freddie said.

“I don’t think she’d go for it if she knew what it was,” he said, “but she’s still only fourteen. You can turn a kid’s head.”

“Uh-huh,” Freddie said, “okay. Now, this is the part in the story of the Garden of Eden where the snake slithers in to inquire politely whether anyone would like a nice piece of fruit. So listen up.

“They stopped on the way to the Four Seasons, at another co-op building on Fifth Avenue. There Arthur called for Mrs. Felicia Cannon Weatherbee.”

“Unlikely name for a snake,” Riordan said. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize it, right off the bat. Could this be one of those New York socialites?”

“Indeed,” Freddie said. “Felicia has had a most unfortunate time with her first marriage. Jay Weatherbee is such a bore, you know. They’re legally separated and she’s going through with the divorce.”

“Represented, no doubt, by Gatskill, Campbell and Nearly Everybody Else.”

“Goodness, no,” Freddie said. “That would be
tacky.
She has Roy Cohn. She and Arthur didn’t meet professionally. They’ve been friends for simply
years.
Ever since dancing school, for Christ sake. The Knickerbocker Greys parades.

“Arthur, of course, is a carbon copy of Jay. In every respect but one, I guess. Jay tended to be high-strung. He was always disobeying her wishes and going out drinking with his men friends. Why, I understand that one night he just up and refused to escort her to a Beverly Sills appearance at the Lincoln Center, which made her very upset.”

“Is there, ah, something fragile about Jay?” Riordan said.

“Queer as green horses,” Freddie said. “Jay’s got more
boyfriends than Marilyn Monroe could claim in her prime. Arthur is a man who has faults, but there is one thing to be said for him: He is resolutely and exclusively heterosexual. He is also a total stuffed shirt, and Felicia will have no trouble getting him to observe all of the social proprieties. Hell, he thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt even when he’s getting laid. When I was married to him, I always expected him to complete the conjugal act by shouting ‘Bully’ as he dropped off to sleep.

“Felicia joined them for dinner and the theater. This was not at all what Jennifer had had in mind. She thought she was Daddy’s date for the evening, and here was this Felicia cropping up like an abscessed tooth.

“They had a lovely dinner,” Freddie said. “Then back into the limo and off to the show, and after the show to the Café Carlyle to hear Bobby Short. Then they dropped Felicia off and returned to Arthur’s pad, and that’s when Jennifer began to suspect that maybe Arthur hadn’t had the maid lay in the bath salts especially for Jennifer’s visit. Because it was painfully obvious to Jennifer that dropping Felicia off at her residence was a departure from Daddy’s usual evening routine with Felicia. One which Felicia did not like a bit.

“Now,” Freddie said, “keeping in mind that Jenny ain’t stupid, and also keeping in mind that she’s been living with a rat-ass detective in the same house with her for going on three years, you can probably guess what happens next.”

“She tossed the joint while Daddy was snoring away,” Riordan said, “and found feminine undergarments and other evidence suggesting that Daddy did not always sleep alone.”

“Crass, crass,” Freddie said. “It’s a good thing Jenny didn’t hear you say that. She would say, ‘Dammit, Pete, don’t be such an absolute dink.’ Or whatever this week’s word is.

“No,” Freddie said, “she conducted an interrogation. She’s learned a lot from you. The apparently harmless question.
The casual aside that the suspect immediately denies, thus proving his guilt. All that stuff. They sat on the terrace and she bubbled like the bath water at Arthur and asked him if they could go to another play the next night, and could they have dinner at Twenty-one the night after that. Which of course flushed him out at once. He had to tell her it’d be hard to do, because they weren’t going to be in New York. He had reservations on a flight to Maine at noon the next day. After all, he spends all his time in the city. When he takes his vacation, he wants to go somewhere else. Get away from the things and the people he sees every day. Have some family time. Go to see his mother and father, up in Maine.”

“That still doesn’t get us to Camden,” Riordan said. “I thought his parents had a summer place in Rockland.”

“Patience,” Freddie said. “Jennifer didn’t go for that shit, not in the slightest. For one thing, she does not like her paternal grandparents.”

“He makes her call him Grampy,” Riordan said.

“Right,” Freddie said. “And he tells her how he’s going to send her to Vassar. ‘But, Mother, he talks like I won’t have any choice. It’ll be like he was sending me to prison or something. He never asks me what I think. He just sits there and tells me how I’ll be meeting all the boys from Yale and Princeton, and I’ll get married and raise a nice family, and every summer we’ll all come up to Rockland and go swimming and play tennis and do all those things he did when he was a boy. Yuck.’

“So,” Freddie said, “Jennifer explained tactfully to Arthur that she was not interested in going to Maine, because she wouldn’t have anything to do there. She would much rather stay in New York. That was when Arthur changed the subject to something less dangerous. He chose Felicia. He asked Jenny what she thought of Felicia.

“Jennifer was tactful,” Freddie said. “Jennifer said she
really didn’t know Felicia very well, but that she seemed nice enough. Arthur pressed her.”

“Always a risky maneuver,” Riordan said. “You keep at Jennifer long enough asking her what she thinks, she is liable to tell you.”

“He did, and she did,” Freddie said.

“What’d she say?” Riordan said.

“She came right out and asked him if he was shacked up with Felicia. Which shocked him so much that he admitted she occasionally stayed overnight at his place. Jenny asked him if he intended to marry Felicia. He said it was very possible, which is as close as Arthur ever gets to committing himself to a course of action that he has every intention of following—he always hedges his bets. Then she hit him with the old one-two. Was Felicia perhaps going to accompany her and Daddy to Maine? Yes, as a matter of fact, Felicia was going to Maine with them. Where was Felicia going to stay? Grampy, you see, is very straitlaced, and does not approve of sexual intercourse, or even the appearance of it, between persons who are not married to each other. Felicia was going to meet some friends of theirs on a sailboat in Camden, and spend two or three weeks cruising the Maine coast. They might even sail to Nantucket. Hard to say. Jennifer asked Arthur if they meant Felicia and the people who were already on the boat. Yes, it did. Did it also mean Arthur? Well, ah, yes.

“Keep in mind also,” Freddie said, “that Jennifer has a mean streak to go with her suspicious mind. She nailed him. She jumped out of her chair, squealing with delight, the little minx, flung her arms around her darling daddy, and gushed all over him. Oh, that would be wonderful. Three weeks of sailing. She’d never been on a big boat like that. That would be excellent. Who were the other people going to be? Would she like them? Would they like her? Did any of them have kids her age? Any of them boys, maybe, a year or two older?
Would she have her own cabin? She was so grateful that he wasn’t leaving her with Grampy in Rockland. He knew she was bored at Grampy’s.”

“I think I know what comes next,” Riordan said.

“Right you are,” Freddie said.

“That poor kid,” Riordan said. “Jesus, what a shit he is. Get the kid and dump her so he can go off frolicking with his girlfriend. I must become a pillar of the community one of these days. Those bastards can get away with anything. Kicking a kid in the guts like that.”

“Oh, come on, Pete,” Freddie said. “This isn’t Little Nell we’re talking about here. She had the dirk in Daddy, but she wasn’t satisfied with stabbing him—she was going to twist it a few times. Jennifer has a very healthy sense of cruelty, you know. She knew very well he was going to dump her with Grampy and Grammy and go gallivanting off with Felicia. She couldn’t stop him, but she sure could make him feel like a piece of shit for doing it. And she did.

“Yesterday morning,” Freddie said, “Jennifer got up pretending to be hurt and sad, and made Arthur squirm some more. Finally he said he wouldn’t go with Felicia. He would stay in Rockland with her and Grampy and Grammy and Grammy’s blue hair. He admitted he’d been thoughtless. Maybe even somewhat selfish.

“More ammunition for Jenny. She put on this great display of courage and forced gaiety. Oh, no, she didn’t want to spoil his plans like that. He worked hard all year. He deserved to have his vacation too. She’d be perfectly happy with Grampy and Grammy in Rockland. Grampy could tell her about when he was growing up, and she could go to the auctions with Grammy. And see the museums, again. And maybe they would take her to the church clambake, or one of those seafood festivals. It’d be keen. And then when he got through sailing with Felicia, they would still have a whole week and maybe he could rent a car or borrow one of Grampy’s and
they could drive up to Quebec, just the two of them.”