Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (27 page)

 
          
“Just
a few more minutes, sir,” the installer said, from the floor. “They’re bringing
the lines in from the road now.”

 
          
And
even as he spoke, there was a tremendous
crash
,
and plaster dust drifted down onto the people and the food and the phones and
everything else, and when Jack looked up there was now a metal pipe sticking
down through the ceiling, and out of the metal pipe was emerging telephone
line. “There it is now,” the installer said.

 
          
“So
I see.”

 
          
“We
were told a rush job,” the installer said, finally getting up off his knees.
“Otherwise, your lines wouldn’t be so noticeable.”

 
          
“Ah.”

 
          
Ida,
her nailing of the map to the wall completed to her satisfaction, made her way
through the mob to Jack and said, “You like the place?”

 
          
“It’s
so
much
like home,” Jack told her, “I
keep looking for old Shep, the faithful hound.”

 
          
“He’s
around here somewhere,” Ida said, frowning at the installers all over the floor.

 
          
The
front door opened and a man with a moustache stuck his head in to shout,
“Telly!”

 
          
“Kojak?”
cried a photographer, reaching for her cameras. “Where?”

 
          
“Television,
madam,” said the newcomer
frostily.

 
          
“A
passing fad,” Jack told him.

 
          
“The
rental television that was
ordered,
sir,” the man explained.

 
          
Jack
looked around his overcrowded realm. “Oh, really?”

 
          
Ida
said, “That goes in the next room.”

 
          
“Thank
God,” Jack said.

 
          
“Thank
you,
madam,” the rental television
man said, and disappeared, only to reappear leading a tiny Oriental man
carrying a huge television set on his back. Wires trailed from the television
set down the Oriental man’s legs and along the floor. The rental man, the
Oriental man and the television set moved on into the next room as Sara came
out of that room, looking dazed, holding a slender manuscript rolled into a
tube in her right hand, and smiling imperfecdy at a roly-poly whitehaired
smiling saindy man who looked like Santa Claus disguised in a minister’s suit.
“Well, Reverend,” Sara was saying, “it’s a fresh approach.”

 
          
“Thank
you
very
much,” the reverend said,
with an angelic smile.

 
          
“I’ll
see it gets prominent placement in the paper,” Sara promised him, gesturing
with the tubular manuscript.

 
          
“Oh,
that would be nice,” the reverend said, and pressed his clean pink pudgy hands
together.

 
          
“With
the same photo of you that we use for the interview.”

 
          
“Oh,
a photo!” The reverend’s smile had a halo of pleasure around it; but then he
became more serious, with an obvious effort, saying, “But that can’t be till
after
the wedding, you know.”

 
          
“No,
of course not,” Sara agreed.

 
          
“Mr.
Mercer wants the whole affair kept absolutely private.”

 
          
“Of
course.”

 
          
“He
would be
quite
upset,” the reverend
went on, with an impish little grin, “if he even knew I was here, talking to
you.”

 
          
“I’m
sure he would,” Sara said.

 
          
“So
I’d best run along,” the reverend said, with a little bobbing bow. “Thank you
again.”

 
          
“Thank
you
, Reverend,” Sara said.

 
          
Sara
saw the reverend out, her own smile holding till she’d shut the door, when it
got all wrinkly around the edges. Turning, she waded through the rising tide of
rentals and reporters to Jack, and handed him the roll of manuscript. “The
Irish question solved,” she announced.

 
          
He
handed it back, his expression dubious. “Can you give me a summary?”

 
          
She
looked at the manuscript, which she thought she’d given away. “Well,” she said,
“it’s not too coherent ...”

 
          
“Good.”

           
“... but it
seems
to suggest that all the Protestants in
Northern Ireland
should be relocated.”

           
“Where?”

           
“Mars,” Sara said.

           
Jack nodded thoughtfully, looking at
nothing in particular. “I see,” he said.

 
          
“To
work in the mines there,” Sara explained.

           
“Uh huh, uh huh.” Jack nodded some
more. “You know,” he said, “
Massa
might actually like that.”

           
“That’s what I thought, too,” Sara
agreed, and all twelve black telephones began wildly ringing. Everybody stopped
doing everything to stare. RRIYYYINNG!!! said the phones, in unison. They took
a deep breath to say it again, and in that interval the head installer beamed
proudly at Jack and said, “All set, sir.”

 
          
Jack
said, “What’s—”

 
          
RRIYYYINNG!!!

 
          
Jack
said, “What’s
this?”

 
          
“Your
phones,” the installer said. “All—” RRIYYYINNG!!!

           
People started answering phones just
to stop the ringing, picking up the receivers and putting them back down again.
“Not bells!” Jack cried. “Li—!” RIIINNG!!

           
“What?” asked the installer.

 
          
“Lights!”
Jack shouted at him. “Not be—”
RING!

           
“What?” asked the installer.

 
          
“Look
on your order sheet!” Jack yelled.
(Ring.)

 
          
“Lights
on the phones! How are we
supposed to know which is which? How are we supposed to
think
around here?”

 
          
“Oh,”
the installer said, as another installer came over with a clipboard, showed it
to the first installer, and pointed at something. The two installers muttered
together, looking like men trying to figure out a way to blame somebody else
and not succeeding.

 
          
“Jack?”
asked Sara.

 
          
He
raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes?”

 
          
Sara
spread her hands to encompass it all, the phones, the installers, the rented
tables, the map nailed to the wall, the caterer’s men and their food, the
television rental man and his faithful Oriental companion just now leaving, the
reporters and photographers and stringers, the filing cabinets, themselves. “Why?”
she asked.

 
          
He
shook his head. “Why what?”

 
          
“We
have such nice hotel rooms,” she said. “Why did Ida have to come on ahead to
find a private house? Why do we have all this
stuff
here? Why
are
we in
this dump in the first place?”

 
          
“No
hotel switchboard, for one,” Jack told her. “No nosy guests. No other media
climbing all over our exclusives.” Holding his closed hand to his cheek to
simulate a phone call, he said brightly, “Hi, this is Jack Ingersoll of
Newsweek.
Sure you can call me back,
I’ll give you my number.”

 
          
Sara
said, “Do we really need that much security? I mean, who really
cares
, besides us?”

 
          
“The
world cares, my darling,” Jack assured her. “Everyone else pretends to be more
sophisticated than that, to
really
care about international arms control, but when it comes right down to it,
they’ll all be here. The newsmagazines, the gossip magazines, the fan
magazines, the networks, cable news, the wire services, the entertainment
editors of every newspaper in the
United States
with a travel budget,
everybody ”

 
          
“But
we’re the only ones who know about the wedding,” Sara said.

 
          
“Today,”
Jack said. “This is Thursday, the wedding’s Sunday, we probably have a twenty-
four-hour jump on the rest of the world.
We
have first pick of the rental cars and motel rooms and photo labs, and first
shot at bribing the bellboys and ministers, but no later than tomorrow the
locusts will descend. Believe me.”

 
          
Sara
couldn’t help grinning. “And John Michael Mercer,” she said, “thinks he’s going
to be all alone.”

 
          
Security.
Secrecy. Privacy. A
Breakpoint
production assistant made the two first-class
Miami
-New York American Airline reservations in
false names, then phoned American’s security twenty minutes before flight time
to reveal who would actually be using those tickets. The limousine service
between
Kennedy
Airport
in
Queens
and
Teterboro
Airport
over in
New Jersey
was arranged for by an assistant in John
Michael Mercer’s accountant’s office in
New York
, who also reserved the chartered plane from
Teterboro to
Martha’s
Vineyard
, paying
for it with a credit card with her own name on it. A private car and driver had
been ordered to drive down from Boston and across the ferry to the island, an
arrangement made by the network’s New York office, so that when John Michael
Mercer and Felicia Nelson landed at the Vineyard Friday afternoon the car was
waiting for them, driven by a deferential man with a black chauffeur’s cap, a
funny accent, and a large nose. “ ’Ere we are, sir,” he said, with a sweeping
gesture. “ ’Ere we are, madam. Your chariot awaits.”

           
“Are you English?” Mercer asked,
getting into the rear of the black stretch Caddy.

 
          
“Australian
sir,” Bob Sangster told him. “I’m just a simple Aussie.”

 
          
As
they left the airport, the driver expertly steering them out to
West Tisbury Road
and turning east, Mercer said, “So far, so
good.”

 
          
“This
is a beautiful place,” Felicia said, this being her first time on the island.

 
          
“And
private,” Mercer said, relishing the word, stretching his long legs out in the
roomy car, relaxing. “And secluded. And remote.”

 
          
“Sir?”
said the Australian driver.

 
          
Mercer
looked at the face in the rearview mirror. The eyes in that face were firmly
fixed on the well-traveled road. “Yeah?”

 
          
“I
don’t mean to intrude, sir,” the driver said, with a little stiffening of the
shoulders to indicate the distance he knew he was expected to keep, “but if at
some point you wouldn’t mind to give me just a little autograph for my
daughter, it would be the thrill of her life.”

 
          
“Of
course,” Mercer said, smiling, while Felicia squeezed his hand. “What’s her
name?”

 
          
“Fiona,”
the driver said. “She’s your biggest fan.”

 
          
“Is
she?”

 
          
“But
we all are, sir, if truth be told. The whole family, we wouldn’t miss a thing
you do. Not just
Breakpoint
, you know,
but everything. That blind rodeo rider in the movie for television,
Study in Courage
was it? That was
beautiful, sir, if you don’t mind. Beautiful.”

 
          
“I
am
proud of that one,” Mercer agreed,
nodding in manly acknowledgment.

 
          
“Not
to intrude, sir.”

 
          
“Not
at all, not at all.”

 
          
Of
the exclusive hostels on
Martha’s Vineyard
, the Katama Bay Country Club is perhaps the most exclusive, limiting
its clientele almost totally to the friends and guests of island residents.
Over the years, these friends and guests have included a full range of the
famous, from politicians to rock singers, from Pulitzer playwrights to movie
stars, and as a result, the management and staff of
Katama
Bay
have had long practice at developing the
style and substance of their relationship with the media. To journalists of
print and picture alike, as well as the putative biographers and other camp
followers, the face
Katama
Bay
turned was unfailingly polite, and
unfailingly unforthcoming. Never to be rude, yet never to give them a goddamn
thing, that was the unstated motto of
Katama
Bay
, always honored.

 
          
Even
in the presence of the
Weekly Galaxy.
The
manager, a smooth sleek man named
Ferguson
, looked at the card this fellow had given
him—John R. Ingersoll,
Weekly Galaxy
—moved
it delicately between his fingers as though unobtrusively looking for slime,
and with perfect politeness said, “Just how may we be of assistance, Mr.
Ingersoll?”

 
          
“Well,
I doubt you read the
Galaxy,
Mr.
Ferguson,” Ingersoll said, with an understanding smile.
Ferguson
bowed, admitting the charge, and Ingersoll
went on, “Probably very few people on this entire island read the
Galaxy.
A place like this—the Vineyard,
Katama
Bay
—this is a fantasy world to our readership.”

 
          
Faintly
surprised at Ingersoll’s frankness, wondering what deviousness it concealed,
Ferguson
said, “I suppose that must be true.”

 
          
“A
part of the
Galaxy’s
appeal,”
Ingersoll said, “is that we take our readers, in fantasy, into places like
Katama
Bay
that they’ll never see in real life.”

           
“You want to do a piece on the
hotel, is that it?”

           
With another self-deprecating smile,
Ingersoll said, “I realize it won’t be the kind of publicity that can do you
any real
good,
but it can’t harm you
either, and of course we would clear all text and pictures with you for
approval before going to print.”

 
          
They
know about Mercer,
Ferguson
thought, nodding thoughtfully, turning Ingersoll’s card over and over
in his hand, between his long fingers. “No personalities, in other words,” he
said.

 
          
Ingersoll
gave the alert look of a man who didn’t understand the question: “I beg your
pardon?”

 
          
“No
. . . stars, or famous names. Just the hotel itself?”

 
          
“Oh,
of
course!
^”
Ingersoll
beamed with happy relief, clearly seeing that the only possible objection had
now been surmounted. Dropping his right hand into his jacket pocket in order to
take an insouciant stance, confident, smiling, he said, “We wouldn’t dream of
bothering
any
of your guests. You’d
set the ground rules, and we would absolutely abide by them.” In taking his hand
from his pocket, to make an all-inclusive gesture, Ingersoll pulled from the
pocket, as though accidentally, a thick banded wad of money, which fell with a
padded sound to the terra-cotta tile floor of the lobby. “Woops!” Ingersoll
cried, and stooped at once to pick it up.

 
          
Ferguson
’s faint sense of amusement abrupdy left
him, and he became very angry. Nothing changed on his face. He waited till
Ingersoll had straightened again, and stuffed the money back into his pocket,
and was once again meeting
Ferguson
’s eye. Then, as Ingersoll was just about to say something else,
Ferguson
said, very quietly,

 
          
“Mr.
Ingersoll, if you have some idea of offering me that cash, do let me assure you
I have any number of bellmen who would be pleased to tear you limb from limb.”

 
          
Ingersoll
looked shocked, stunned. “What?” he cried. “A bribe? From the
Galaxy?”

 
          
Turning
his head,
Ferguson
caught the eye of Eddie, the
dark-green-uniformed doorman on duty at this moment. Eddie, in response to that
glance, strode rapidly across the quiet lobby from the door, saying, “Yes,
sir?”

 
          
Ferguson
gestured at Ingersoll with the hand holding
the fellow’s card. “This,” he said, “is Mr. John Ingersoll of the
Weekly Galaxy
.”

 
          
Eddie
turned a fish eye on Ingersoll. “Yes, sir?”

           
“He’s just leaving now,”
Ferguson
said, “but if he comes back . . . hurt
him.”

           
“Yes, sir,” said Eddie.

 
          
“Goodbye,
Mr. Ingersoll,”
Ferguson
said.

 
          
“I
hope someday, Mr. Ferguson,” Ingersoll said, “you’ll know just how deeply
you’ve wronged me.” But
Ferguson
was finished with Ingersoll; leaving the fellow to Eddie, he went off
to concern himself with hotel business.

           
“Goodbye,” Eddie said.

 
          
Ingersoll
gave Eddie an irritated look. “Don’t play tough guy, okay?”

 
          
“I
was eleven years a cop in
Boston
,” Eddie said. “I used to tell people the same thing. Don’t play tough
guy. Not unless you really know the part.”

 
          
Ingersoll
considered Eddie briefly, then turned his head, looking around the large
discreet lobby. Eddie, following the guy’s thought processes as though they
were a schematic printed on his forehead, said, “Not a one of us. You won’t
find one employee in this whole place to give you the time of day.”

 
          
Ingersoll
turned back, and gave Eddie a pitying smile. “Now
there ”
he said, “you’re wrong.”

 
          
The
man from the
Weekly Galaxy
went out
the front entrance of the Katama Bay Country Club under his own steam, and
walked around the curving entrance driveway toward his waiting maroon Chevette,
just as a long black stretch Cadillac arrived, purring in around the curve
toward the entrance. The driver of the Cadillac, involved in deferential but
friendly conversation with his passengers, and the man from the
Galaxy
walking away from his rout and
defeat, didn’t so much as glance at one another. The man from the
Galaxy
did smile, though, when he saw
the florist’s delivery van turning in at the hotel entrance; he it was who had
composed the effusive greeting to Mr. Mercer and Ms. Nelson accompanying the
six dozen roses that were about to be delivered to the happy couple.

 
          
Welcome,
John and Felicia! May all go well with thee!

           
“No,” Mercer said, and hung up the
phone.

 
          
“What
was that, Johnny?”

           
“Nothing,” Mercer said, and prowled
the large sitting room saying, “What do you think of it?”

 
          
“The
place? It’s beautiful.”

 
          
And
it was. At the very end of the curving brick path through trellises of climbing
vines and flowers, this separate little shingled structure managed to combine
all the charm of the eighteenth century with all the comforts of the twentieth.
In addition to the large and pleasantly beige sitting room, there were two cosy
bedrooms, each with its own bath, one including an indoor-outdoor hot tub. The
front of the cottage was all small- paned windows and gray shingles, but the
rear was open, with sheets of plate glass commanding the view from
Chappaquiddick on the left to
Norton
Point
on the right and the
Atlantic
beyond. Sliding glass doors led out to a
brick patio and a narrow brick path down to their own private bit of beach.