Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (28 page)

 
          
Here
they would spend the next two nights. Today there was nothing much for them to
do but settle in, and have dinner this evening with friends who had a small
rental house over by Gay Head, at the other end of the island. Tomorrow was the
rehearsal at the church in Edgartown, and the next day, Sunday, the wedding.
Just under one hundred guests had been invited, most of them flying or driving
in for the day, a few staying on at the Vineyard. After the wedding, all would
return here to
Katama
Bay
, where the banquet room had been reserved
for the reception. Then, at seven on Sunday evening, just in time to fly off

 
          
into
the sunset—a touch Mercer liked—their chartered plane would take them away to
their honeymoon far down the coast on Hilton Head.

 
          
A
lovely plan, a lovely setting, lovely people, lovely church, lovely weather.
And only the press was vile.

 
          
The
main room in the
Galaxy
house in Oak
Bluffs no longer looked like the primary staging area for the evacuation of the
planet Earth. Order had been obtained; a noisy, sloppy, messy order, but order
nevertheless. All the installers and deliverers had departed, the rented
furniture had been arranged so as to leave twisty trails and pathways through
the room, and a sheet of acetate tacked over the map of the island nailed to
the wall was beginning to fill up with grease pencil remarks. The photographers
and all their equipment had been banished to one of the bedrooms upstairs, the
stringers were all out looking for local color, and most of the regular
reporters were off in search of employees—hotel employees, laundry employees,
utility employees, all kinds of employees—to suborn. The dozen telephones were
now distributed to key points around the room, and all featured lights that
flashed politely to indicate an incoming call. At one of these, Sara, seated on
a folding chair, elbows on the table, made an outgoing call, to but not through
the switchboard at the Katama Bay Country Club: “Ms. Nelson, please.”

 
          
“May
I ask who’s calling?” the switchboard person answered, already sounding snotty.

 
          
“This
is Ms. Blanchard of
Mademoiselle ”
Sara told her. “Our interviewer, Countess Marguerite Orvieto, would like to
make an appointment with Ms. Nelson at her earliest—”

 
          
“I’m
sorry, they’ve asked not—”

 
          
“I
beg your pardon?”

 
          
“Not
to be disturbed. Could they call
you back?”

           
“Of course they can,” Sara said.
“That was Ms. Blanchard of
Mademoiselle
,”
she repeated, then spelled both “Blanchard” and “Mademoiselle” and read the
number off her phone. “I’ll be here for the rest of the business day.”

 
          
“I’ll
pass the message on,” the cynical voice said in Sara’s ear, as Jack loped in
from the outer world, looking like a carnivore trapped in a produce market.

 
          
“Please
explain,” Sara said, shaking her head at Jack as he loped in her direction,
“that this is
Mademoiselle
calling,
and we do have a deadline.”

           
“I’ll pass the message on,” the
uninterested voice said, and the connection was broken.

           
Hanging up her phone, Sara said,
“They won’t call back.”

 
          
Jack
nodded. “Stonewalling us, eh?”

 
          
The
white light flashed on Sara’s phone. Raising a surprised eyebrow at Jack, Sara
picked up the receiver and said, “Ms. Blanchard here.”

 
          
A
hasty hushed whisper sounded in her ear: “Lemme talk to Jack Ingersoll.”

 
          
“Hold
on.” Sara extended the phone to Jack: “It’s a breather, for you.”

 
          
“Oh,
good.” Into the phone he said, “Tell me.” He nodded, listening hard. “TheyTe on
their way to Edgartown? Anybody mention a hotel? Good.” Hanging up, he looked
around the room, saying, “Where’s the Down Under Trio?”

 
          
“Well,
Bob Sangster’s still being Mercer’s driver.”

 
          
“They
haven’t scoped him yet?” Jack asked in surprise. “Beautiful.”

 
          
“I
think Louis and Harry are in the kitchen. No, here they are.”

 
          
Louis
and Harry, carrying coffee and Danish, strolled into the room, talking
Austriylian at each other. Jack called, “Men!” and they stopped their
conversation to look around in mild curiosity, not seeing any.

 
          
“Comere,
comere, comere,” Jack told them, and they came over, eyes full of mischief and
mouths full of Danish. Jack said, “Our friend at the airport just called, and
the world’s press has arrived.”

 
          
“Ah,”
said Harry Razza, patting his matinee idol hair.

 
          
“Stop
them,” Jack said.

 
          
“Duty
calls,” Louis B. Urbiton said. He shook his Styrofoam coffee cup, frowned at it
when he didn’t hear any ice tinkling, and handed the cup to Jack. “Ever ready,”
he announced, “ever willing, and ever able.”

 
          
“Good
men. Green’s Hotel in Edgartown was mentioned. When Bob’s cover gets blown,
I’ll send him along for reinforcements.”

 
          
“We’ll
hold the fort,” Harry said, and beamed at Sara. “As lovely as ever, Sara,” he
said.

 
          
“Thank
you.”

 
          
“Come,
Harry,” Louis said, “there’s work to be done.”

 
          
Harry
winked at Sara, and the two Australians left, moving at what for them was a
fairly rapid pace. Sara said, “What was that all about?”

 
          
“We
have an employee out at the airport,” Jack told her, “who will tell us
interesting events. Two planeloads of press just reached the island.”

 
          
“And?”

 
          
“The
Down Under Trio—or the Down Under Duo, I guess—will stop them, hold them off
while we get our work done.”

 
          
Sara
shook her head. “I don’t get it. How do they do that?”

 
          
“Mostly,”
Jack said, “by getting everybody drunk.”

 
          
A
number of cabloads of press arrived at Green’s Hotel simultaneously. Both large
and garish by island standards, Green’s Hotel was the sort of place that would
have corporate rooms and suites reserved on a standby basis for the convenience
of executives passing through. Given the cat’s cradle of interlocking corporate
structure in today’s free-enterprise America, most of the media had access to
this mothball fleet of rooms in an emergency, and so it was to Green’s Hotel
that the nation’s press repaired when it became necessary for just a moment to
set aside thoughts of nuclear winter, municipal corruption, African famine,
rampant inflation, the eroding American industrial base, urban crime, racial
violence and presidential aspirations to turn their attentions to the wedding
of a TV star.

 
          
It
was probably this sense of momentary respite from the weighty problems of
nation, species and planet that made the assembled journalists seem so jovial
as they tumbled from their taxis and flooded into the lobby, cheering and
chortling and calling out to one another. Perhaps a score of them were there,
both male and female, gathered around the desk, calling out good-natured gibes
at the hardworking registration staff, when Harry Razza wandered aimlessly by,
drink in hand, amused smile on face, and viewed the rear elevation of his
fellows of the press. “
Chester
?” he called. “
Chester
, is that you? And Bullock, you old sod!”

 
          
A
couple of the reporters turned around, to see who and what this was, and then a
few more turned, and then a few more. “Why, it’s the Razzer,” said the one
who’d been called
Chester
. “What do you say, Harry?”

 
          
“Nobody’s
safe now,” a woman reporter said accurately, “with the
Galaxy
here.”

 
          
Harry
smiled upon his compeers, more and more of whom had diverted their attention
from the flustered hotel staff to his own person. Innocently, he said, “And
what news brings you all out, boys and girls?”

 
          
Laughing,
the reporter called Bullock said, “Forget it, Harry, we all know about John
Michael Mercer.”

 
          
With
a dismissive shake of his drink, Harry said, “Oh, that. There’s no story in
it.”

 
          
Hoots
and catcalls.

 
          
“No,
you’re welcome to it,” Harry told them. “He’s at the
Katama
Bay
right now with the girl. Felicia Nelson,
from
Whittier
,
California
. A registered nurse.”

 
          
The
woman reporter who’d announced the end of safety said, “A registered nurse? I
didn’t get that.”

 
          
“They
met in
Africa
, you know,” Harry said airily, throwing the
information away. “Come on in the bar, I’ll tell you all about it, some of the
other chaps are here.”

 
          
Bullock,
looking alert, looking like a man set to start memorizing things, said, “
Africa
? When was she in
Africa
?”

 
          
Unobtrusively
shepherding his charges toward The Nineteenth Hole (what else would you call
the bar in a tacky hotel called Green’s?), Harry said, “Oh, there’s nothing in
it, the whole thing’s a poor lame excuse for a story, but the editors don’t
care, do they? Send us out to the rubbish tips of the world. Then it’s up to
us
to prove them right. Come along, come
along, first round’s on me.”

 
          
“Ho
ho!” cried
Chester
. “Harry Razza’s buying!”

 
          
And
so they all receded into the bar, where Louis B. Urbiton was lying in wait.

 
          
Eddie
the bellman walked out the front entrance of the Katama Bay Country Club,
carrying a Polaroid camera. He walked stolidly and unhurriedly around the
curving drive to where the stretch limo was parked, engine off, windows open,
with its driver absorbed in a paperback of
Middlemarch.
Eddie tapped on the windshield. The driver immediately closed his book,
looked alert, reached for the ignition and gazed past Eddie for his charges
back by the entrance, but Eddie shook his head, waved his hand, and said, “No,
no, no, I just want to take your picture.”

 
          
The
driver leaned his head out the window, squinting in sunlight. “My picture?”

 
          
“For
the night man,” Eddie explained. “So he’ll know you’re the real driver, not a
ringer. Not somebody from one of those rags like the
Weekly Galaxy”

 
          
“Weekly Galaxy ”
echoed the driver,
musing, as though those were words in a foreign language. “Never heard of it.
I’m a simple Aussie myself.”

           
“If you’d just step out of the car
for a minute,” Eddie suggested, “so I can get a good clear shot.”

           
“Take two, mate,” the driver said,
cheerfully climbing from the car. “One to send home to me mum in
Sydney
. You want me right here, next to me
rickshaw?”