The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (25 page)

She began to shake a little. She stared at the bottles lined up neatly on the glass shelf behind the bar.
Ten little Indians
, she thought.
Ten little Indians, all in a row, and if from them one should go …

And that little trick of his—tapping the edge of his martini glass with his fingernail. That had really given her a shock. Coincidence? Yes. What else could it be? But, my God,
what
a coincidence. Jeff had done it all the time. It was a habit he could never break, and after a while it had driven her crazy. “Jeff, darling, you’re doing it again. Tap, tap. Will you stop it, please?” And then he would smile, saying, “I’m sorry, papoose, I wasn’t thinking.” Papoose. He’d call her that every once in a while. And then she would say, “It’s very annoying, you know.” And he would laugh and say, “Maybe I ought to learn to drink my booze from paper cups.”

She thought of that night at the lake now, as she had thought of it a million times. They had been drinking martinis—Beefeaters, very dry, the way he liked them. She saw him now, so clearly, standing in front of her stark naked, laughing at her accusations,
laughing
at them, holding his glass and tapping it with his fingernail and that big thing of his, the swollen red-tipped penis standing straight out from his groin; she remembered his face, the eyes cold and evil over the smile, remembered his putting down the glass and beginning to walk toward her …

Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod, I need a drink.

How long has it been? A month? How many Cokes and club sodas and ginger ales since she had had the last one? How many cases of Tab and Diet-Rite had she consumed? How many cups of coffee? And still that endless craving. Day upon day, letting her imagination go, thinking of the taste, the feel of it as it slid down her throat and warmed her insides and her soul itself with comfort
and strength, and, above all, release. Numbing her memory, so that she could forget, even for a little while.

But I promised Ann. I promised Dr. Harvey. I promised Ola. I promised myself. And I don’t want to go back to that place. I never want to see that damned room again, and walk in the gardens with some nurse, and drink all that fruit juice, and take all those pills, and sweat in that steam room. I don’t want to go back there, ever….

She thought of what lay in the bottom of her bureau drawer upstairs. The gun Jeff had brought back from the war long ago. He had loved guns. They had walked into the fields, and he had taught her how it worked. She hated the sight and feel of it, but she had gone along to please him. She had watched him shoot a small animal with it. She didn’t remember what kind of animal it was now. She
did
remember the hole in the head, the mass of dripping blood and brains.

No
, she thought with a shudder.
Oh, no, no
.

The bottle beckoned to her. Curiously, it was one particular bottle. There were others on the shelf, but it was the bottle of Beefeater gin, the one she had just used to make Peter Proud’s martini, that pulled her. The same gin she and Jeff had used that night in
their
martinis.

She held the bottle in her hand, caressed it. She loved the feel of it. It was sensuous, phallic, almost sexy. She unscrewed the cap. From this opening pours strength and power and calm and comfort and oblivion. Here in this bottle, if for only a little while, you can hide yourself. You can hide yourself where nobody can touch you, or even find you.

“Mrs. Chapin.”

She turned. Ola, her colored maid, was standing in the doorway, staring accusingly. “You don’t want to do that.

“I have to, Ola,”

“But you promised Ann …

“I know, I know. But I need one. Just one …”

“Mrs. Chapin, why don’t you just put it away? Dinner’s ready. Got a roast beef rare, just the way you like it. I’ll make you some black coffee. After that, you can take your pill and watch some television and …”

“Goddamn it, Ola!” She almost wept. “I need it. Don’t you understand? I
need
it!”

“You don’t need it at all, Mrs. Chapin. It’s just in the mind. You been off it for a long time now. Why start it all over again?”

“Get out of here, Ola. Will you get the hell out of here?”

“What about dinner?”

“I’ll be in for dinner. I’m just going to have one. Only one. I swear it. Now, please. Get out of here!”

Ola shrugged and left. Marcia Chapin tilted the bottle and poured the gin into the glass. She did not even bother with the vermouth, or with the ice. She drank it down straight, her eyes closed in ecstasy.

When she opened them again, she saw Jeff. He was in every picture on the wall. Jeff laughing at her, Jeff with his arm around her waist, Jeff and she running into the sea. Suddenly she began to weep a little and filled her glass again.

Jeff, Jeff, you beautiful, sexy son of a bitch, why did you do what you did?

And, dear God, why did
I
do what I did?

They had dinner at an Italian restaurant in the center of town. Later, when he took her home, they stood in the doorway for a moment. She turned her face toward him, inviting him with her mouth. He put his arm around her. He felt her body strain against him. For a moment he blended tightly with her. Her red, moist, half-open mouth was close to his. He knew that the touch of it, the taste of it, would make it impossible not to go further. Or at least not to try.

Then the same guilty, queasy feeling came to him suddenly. Thinking of who she was, and who he really was. Taboo. He put
his hand gently on her face, turned it, and kissed her on the cheek. When he released her, he could see that she was surprised. The violet eyes were puzzled. Not hurt, just confused.

“Thank you, darling,” she said. “That was very sweet. Goodnight.”

She closed the door. He stood there, hating himself, feeling like a fool.

When he got back to the hotel, there was a message from Hall Bentley. Please call back.

He knew he couldn’t put Bentley off forever. Sooner or later he’d have to break it to the parapsychologist. He decided he might as well do it now.

When he’d finished, there was a long silence at the other end. Then:

“My God, you’ve done it. You’ve found out.”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Scared?”

“I guess so.”

“I don’t blame you. I’m just as scared as you are. I never believed it would come as far as this. I never really believed it. So X equals Jeff Chapin, and Jeff Chapin equals Peter Proud.”

“Yes.”

“You know that, and I know that. Now the job is to prove it to everyone else. So, let’s get down to tactics and strategy. First things first. Suppose I fly to Riverside tomorrow. We’ll set up an appointment with Marcia Chapin, get what she says on tape. I’ve already told you the procedure we’ll use. I’ll bring copies of the tapes I already have. They’re duplicates, of course, of the originals in the vaults. I’m keeping those for the die-hard skeptics. We won’t make the mistake Morey Bernstein made with Bridey Murphy. He released the story first to a single newspaper. We’ll want a much wider impact from the beginning, a worldwide impact. Maybe we
ought to hire a public relations firm. They’ll know how to arrange everything—television, press interviews….”

“Hold it, Hall.”

“Yes?”

“I’m not ready for all this yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to wait awhile.”

“What for?”

“Let’s just say I have my reasons. Personal reasons.” There was a long silence. Then: “Pete, whatever they are, I have to respect them. But we can’t afford to wait. We don’t dare.”

“Why not?”

“Well, being human and vulnerable, you could die. You could get hit by a car tonight, or by a heart attack tomorrow. I’ll admit the chances are heavily against it, but there’s always the possibility. If you do, the proof goes down the drain with you. I might add that Marcia Chapin is also mortal and she could die, too. Which also would play hell with this whole thing. You must see the urgency of all this …”

“All right. But I still want to wait. There are still a lot of things here I want to find out, in my own way, by myself …”

Bentley was suddenly irritated. “For God’s sake, Pete, what are we talking about here? This is no time to play games. You’ve got something to tell the whole damned world. It’s the most important thing the human race has heard since the beginning of time. Your personal reasons just aren’t important …”

“They are to me.”

“Look, why don’t I just fly east …”

“No.”

There was a long pause at the other end of the line. Then Bentley said, “All right. I guess I’m not the doctor here; you are. The question is,
when?
When do we take off the lid?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Okay,” said Bentley. He sounded grim. “But make it soon, Pete. Very soon.”

He said goodbye and hung up. He hadn’t been lying to Bentley. The moment they broke the news to the public, all hell would break loose. Much of what he wanted to know would be buried under an avalanche of sensationalism, perhaps lost to him forever. He wanted to know who he really had been, that is, who Jeff Chapin really had been. And Marcia. He wanted to know what had happened between them.
Why
she had done what she did.

And then, of course, there was Ann.

The fact was, he was beginning to have second thoughts about this whole damned business. He had given no hint of this to Bentley, of course. But the parapsychologist already knew he was dragging his feet. But he had to have time. He had to think.

So far he knew very little about Jeff Chapin. All he had were the sketchy facts outlined in Chapin’s obituary. He had pumped Ann about her father, but there was a point beyond which he did not dare to go. She would want to know why he was so interested, and obviously he could not tell her. Also, it was clear that she really didn’t know too much about her father, beyond what Marcia had told her. And all he had gotten from Marcia was an impression that Jeff Chapin was a loving husband, and that she mourned him still. The photographs on the wall of the den attested to that. He would have to inquire elsewhere. It would take time as well as luck. Jeff Chapin had been dead for years. Probably he’d have to put together the portrait of the man he once was from bits and pieces. Try to find a contemporary of Chapin’s somewhere. Someone who really knew him.

An idea came to him. He phoned the club and scheduled another game with Walker. He and the pro volleyed awhile, then played two hard sets. A small crowd gathered, attracted by this expert duel, and applauded frequently. The sun was warm, and when they finished, both men were sweating profusely. He won the first set, Walker the second.

Afterward, he invited Walker onto the patio for a drink. Obliquely drawing Walker out, he learned that a man named Dennis Reeves had been the assistant pro under Chapin. After Chapin had gone to war, Reeves had succeeded him. He was now retired and, with his wife, ran a small sports shop downtown called Tennis, Anyone?

He knew he had to have some kind of approach to Reeves. Otherwise, the man would want to know why he was so interested in Jeff Chapin. He decided on a subterfuge. It was pretty thin, but it was the best he could come up with.

The ex-pro was a man in his early sixties, with a red face and snow-white hair. He had a red-veined, bulbous nose and watery blue eyes. An athlete once, but now gone to unhealthy fat. Everything about him said he liked to drink.

“You see, Mr. Reeves, my father lived here in Riverside a long time ago. Moved to California and never returned. Jeff Chapin was a boyhood friend of his. They were very close as kids. I’m here on business, and my father asked me to look up Chapin and say hello, find out what became of him….”

“You’d be wasting your time, Mr. Proud. Jeff’s been dead for years.”

“Yes, I know that now. But I know my father would be curious. As to the kind of man he was, what happened to him. I wonder if you could give me some idea.”

“Who told you about me?”

“Ken Walker at Green Hills. He said you were an assistant pro under Chapin. Said you probably knew him pretty well …”

“As well as anybody. And better than most.”

“Could you tell me something about him?”

Reeves’s face tightened. “I could. But I hate to speak ill of the dead.”

“If you’ve got a few minutes, I’d appreciate it if you’d fill me in. Maybe we could talk over a drink.”

Reeves responded immediately to this suggestion. He instructed his wife to take care of the shop, that he would be back shortly. They went to a bar and cocktail lounge two doors down the street.

Reeves looked at him over a bourbon on the rocks. “Since you ask, let me give it to you straight. The Jeff Chapin I knew was a no-good son of a bitch,”

“Yes?”

“Now that I got
that
off my chest, do you still want me to go on?”

“Please.”

“Maybe he was a good kid when he was a friend of your father’s. But he didn’t grow up that way. I didn’t know too much about him before he came to the club. But he was a kind of local celebrity around here as a jock. He played some baseball and football, I understand, but tennis was his game. He was a natural with a racket. Plenty of power, and a big serve. He came from a poor family, lived in the Bridge Avenue district somewhere. Your father would probably know where.”

“Yes. It was Almont Street.”

“Right. Anyway, as I said, he came from a poor family. Or call it lower middle class. Blue collar. His father was a welder at the Standard Valve Company. Now, a kid like this doesn’t learn tennis at a private club. He learns it at the public courts, like Pancho Gonzalez. Anyway, he got very good at it. Won a few big tournaments in and around New England, qualified for the National Public Parks Championship, and so forth. He was supposed to be an amateur. But the truth was, he was always hustling.”

“Hustling?”

“Making bets on the side. For money. Suckering his opponents, giving them a game or even two, making believe his game was off. Then he would beat them into the ground.”

“When did all this happen?”