Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (29 page)

           
“That’s fine, that’s fine,” Eddie
told him, crouching like a linebacker on a must-pass play, peering into the
black box of the camera. “Just lift your head a little into the sunlight.
There,
that’s got it.”

           
Smiling, Eddie took the extruded
print from the front of the camera and tucked it away in his shirt pocket.

 
          
“Is
that it, then?” the driver asked, reaching for the door handle. Then he stopped
himself, saying, “No, you were going to do me another.”

 
          
“For
your mum,” Eddie agreed. “Let’s just wait and see how this one comes out.”

 
          
“Wonderful
machines, those cameras,” the driver said. “Takes all the guesswork out. Snap
your picture, just like that you know what you’ve got.”

 
          
“Oh,
I know what I’ve got,” Eddie told him. Taking the picture from his shirt
pocket, he saw that the ambers and sepias were beginning to rise, that the
picture was going to be good and clear and identifiable. “Oh, that’s nice,” he
said, and put the picture away again.

 
          
“Could
I have a look, then?” the driver asked, stepping closer.

 
          
“Let’s
take the other one,” Eddie said. Shifting the camera to his left hand, he took
one step forward and drove a mean hard right fist into the driver’s body, just
above the belt and just below the rib cage. Then he stepped back, put the
Polaroid to his eye, and snapped an excellent photo of a man not breathing.

 
          
“Hnghnghnghnghng”
said the driver, mouth
open wide, arms folded across stomach.

 
          
“Now,
don’t you throw up on hotel property,” Eddie told him, and tucked the second
photo into the breast pocket of the fellow’s dark blue jacket. “For your mum,”
he said. “Down in
Florida
, wasn’t it?”

 
          
“Hhhhhhhhhhhhh,”
said the driver.

 
          
“Our
manager here,” Eddie explained, “that’s Mr. Ferguson, he does everything he can
to keep his guests comfortable and happy. So he phoned up to
Boston
, to the limo company, and he asked about
their driver, and it turns out you ain’t him.”

 
          
The
driver, having remembered how to breathe, breathed. His face became less
purple, his eyes less distended, his posture less pain-wracked. “That was,” he
said, still gasping, “an unnecessarily cruel act.”

 
          
Eddie
nodded, agreeing with that appraisal. “Think what I’d do if I got mad,” he
said.

 
          
“Die
of apoplexy, I hope.” The driver’s voice stuttered and rasped.

 
          
“Don’t
count on it.” Eddie pointed, away from the hotel. “Out to the public highway,
bo. Leg it.”

 
          
“May
I at least call a taxi?”

 
          
“From
somewhere,” Eddie said. “Not from here. All you can do from here is leave. And
don’t come back.”

 
          
“Oh,
not to fret,” the driver assured him. He’d regained some of his jauntiness
along with the ability to breathe. “I won’t be back. Someone will, but not me.
What I will do, I believe, is go to Green’s Hotel, and give myself a drink.”

 
          
Ida
said, “Jack tells
me you
got this.
Took it away from Cartwright.”

 
          
“He
did?” Pleased, Sara smiled at Ida for possibly the first time in her life. They
were seated near one another in the command center living room of the house in
Oak Bluffs, late that same afternoon, several hours after arrival on the
island. A routine had already been established, controllable chaos wrestled
from pure chaos, and several of the staff were now lounging about—never very
far from the phones—waiting for whatever would happen next. Surprised and
pleased that Jack would go out of his way to give her credit for their being
there, Sara said, “It was just luck, really.”

 
          
“You
hooked a telephone girl,” Ida said, nodding. “On your own.”

 
          
“I
was just mad at Phyllis, mosdy,” Sara told her. “I got mad enough, I guess, to
really start
thinking
.”

 
          
“You
doing anything else on your own?”

 
          
She’s
jealous of me! Sara thought, with a lit- de thrill, looking into Ida’s icy
eyes. She knows I’m competition. And I am, doggone it, I really am! “No,
nothing else,” she answered, “not right now. But if I think of something, I’ll
land running.”

 
          
Ida
nodded slowly, absorbing and accepting the challenge. “You came along pretty
fast,” she said.

 
          
“I
guess I did.” Sara smiled again, very happy about herself. When this wedding is
over, she thought, Jack will just have to give me a couple of days off, he’ll
have to, I’m so close to home, I’ll go over to Great Barrington and see Mom,
and tell her . . .

 
          
Sara’s
smile slowly faded to a look of puzzlement instead, as Ida looked away, picking
up a pen and starting to make tiny precise notes to herself. Sara frowned, as
she tried to figure out just exacdy how to tell her mother about these
triumphs. How to make them sound . . . heroic. Brilliant. Fun.

 
          
Maybe,
she thought, maybe you just have to be there.

 
          
Over
by the side window, next to the big Vineyard map crucified to the wall by Ida,
Jack stood, looking out. Turning, he waved a pair of binoculars toward Sara,
calling, “Comere. Take a look at this.”

 
          
Sara
rose and threaded her way through the room. When she reached him, Jack handed her
the binoculars, pointed out the window, and said, “Take a look.”

 
          
Straight
ahead, outside the window, were some pine trees and shrubs, and beyond them
faint indications of another house. At an angle to the right, beyond the last
trees, some distance away, Nantucket Sound could be seen, the arm of the
Adantic
Ocean
hugging this island on the east.

 
          
Looking
out in that direction, adjusting the binoculars for her own vision, Sara found
herself looking at a beautiful white yacht, at least forty feet long, with
royal blue trim and bits of gleaming honey-colored woodwork. The ship was lying
offshore, in fact was moving very slowly southward along the coast, the late
afternoon sun lying on it from this direction like a coat of lacquer,
heightening its elegance and beauty, making it stand out from its surroundings
like a perfect slide of itself. “That’s beautiful,” Sara murmured, gazing at
the ship, holding the binoculars close against her eyes. “I wonder whose it
is.”

 
          
“Ours,”
Jack said.

 
          
Sara
slowly lowered the binoculars and turned to look at him. She knew him well
enough by now to know he didn’t joke, or at least he didn’t joke in any normal
and expected way. “Ours?” she echoed.

 
          
“Not
to keep,” he told her. “Just to give away.”

 
          
“I
didn’t know we were that nice. Who are we—”

 
          
She
was interrupted by Don Grove, sounding more terrified than pessimistic this
time, as he called from across the room, “Jack! It’s Mr. DeMassi!”

 
          
“Come
along and listen,” Jack suggested, grinning.

 
          
Sara
followed him over to where Don Grove sat, holding up the telephone receiver as
though it were a poisonous snake he’d been lucky enough to pick up just behind
its jaws, so it couldn’t get at him, but had no idea how to put down. “Mr.
DeMassi,” he whispered, as Jack took the phone.

 
          
“Thank
you, Don.” Holding the phone to his ear, Jack took a folded sheet of paper from
his pocket as he said, “Mr. DeMassi? Good afternoon, sir. Yes, sir,
everything’s under control. I have the text of the telegram right here and”— he
looked quickly at his watch—“Mercer should be reading it just about five
minutes from now.” The word that
Massa
himself was on the phone from
Florida
had spread immediately through the
building, and people were gathering around Jack as though he were an accident
victim; with the same morbid fascination and unstated relief that it hadn’t
happened to them. They all, Sara included, watched and listened in total
silence as Jack shook open the folded sheet of paper in his hand and said,
“Yes, sir, here it is here. Shall I read it? Yes, sir.” Clearing his throat,
holding the paper up in the air, Jack read, “ ‘John Michael Mercer, Katama Bay
Country Club,
Martha’s
Vineyard
. Dear
John Michael Mercer. All of
America
is thrilled and delighted at the news of
your impending marriage to Ms. Felicia Nelson of
Whittier
,
California
, and
Miami
,
Florida
. Knowing how important privacy is for you
at this major turning point in your life, the
Weekly Galaxy
wishes to give you, all expenses paid, two weeks on
the first-class yacht,
Princess Pat
,
which you can at this moment see outside your window.’ ” Sara, mouth hanging
open, turned to stare out the window—she couldn’t see the Sound at all from
here—then stared at Jack again.

 
          
“
‘You may travel,’ ” Jack was saying, continuing to read from the sheet of
paper, “ ‘anywhere in the world you wish on this yacht, safe and secure from
all interruption. In this brief period before your nuptials, the
Weekly Galaxy
would be proud to present
to the American people your thoughts at this important milestone in your life.’
”

 
          
My
gosh, Sara thought, my
gosh!
We can
do
that?
This organization,
my
organization, we have that much
money, that much power, that much determination? The last tiny shred of
nostalgia for the poor old, fusty old, ineffective old
Courier- Observer
fell away from Sara’s brain at that point like
dead ash days after the fire.

 
          
“
‘Our discreet interviewer’,” Jack was saying, continuing to read into the
phone, “ ‘will be available at your convenience. With warmest wishes and
sincere congratulations, John R. Ingersoll, Senior Editor,
Weekly Galaxy
.’ And I put this address, Mr. DeMassi, so he’ll know
we’re really here.”

 
          
We’re
really here, Sara thought. She was so excited she kept bobbing up and down on
the balls of her feet.

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” Jack was saying, smiling at the phone. “I’ll be right here, sir, and I’ll
relay the information to you the instant we get Mercer’s answer.”

 
          
“No,”
John Michael Mercer said, and slammed the door.

 
          
It
was
4:45
, nearly
the end of the working day at the
Weekly
Galaxy
. Mary Kate Scudder, the only member of the Jack Ingersoll team still
in Florida, holding the fort, typed a letter to her sister, a WAF at Landsruhe
Air Base in West Germany, “Not much news from here,” she had just written, when
a general stir made her look up.

 
          
There
was a flurry of activity all about her in Editorial, people rising, moving with
startled expressions in the direction of the elevator bank. Something was going
on over there, something disturbing. People trotted toward that disturbance,
alarmed, calling out to one another, but still obeying the black lines on the
floor, still quartering this way and that through the maze. Abandoning her
sister, Mary Kate rose and called to a staffer rushing by this squaricle,
“What’s up?”

 
          
“
Massa
’s stuck between floors!”

 
          
And
Jack is missing this, Mary Kate thought, not without some satisfaction, as she
joined the flow, hurrying over to the elevators, where a pair of sweating
editors struggled vainly with the door facing the conference table. As Mary
Kate arrived, so did an officious janitor, jangling a handful of keys above his
head like a symbolic gesture in some religious service, and crying, “Don’t
break the door! Don’t break the door!

 
          
The
janitor forced himself through the gathering crowd, Mary Kate slithering along
in his wake in order to assure herself a good view, and the futile editors
stood back, brows damp and hands filthy. The janitor dropped to one knee and
inserted a long narrow key into a small round hole near the bottom comer of the
door. The
click
was clearly audible
to Mary Kate above the excited hubbub of the crowd. The janitor stood, and the
elevator doors slid back to reveal only the top third of
Massa
’s office, with its roof and machinery and
cables above. Looking down past the janitor’s elbow, Mary Kate could see
Massa
down in there, red-faced, staring upward,
standing on top of his desk and hopping up and down in his agitation. “Don’t
worry, Mr. DeMassi,” the janitor called. “We got Maintenance on the way!”

 
          
But
the stuck elevator didn’t seem to be what was agitating
Massa
. Ignoring the janitor, still hopping up and
down on his desk, kicking over papers and empty beer bottles and framed
testimonials from service organizations,
Massa
yelled, “Get me Boy! Get me Boy
Cartwright!”

 
          
The
janitor, bewildered, stepped back as Boy pushed himself through the crowd and
dropped to one knee at the edge of the floor, the better to look down into the
office. He looked, in that position, like one of the viler vassals of one of
the baser barons of the Age of Chivalry. “Yes, sir,

 
          
Mr.
DeMassi,” he called down to his liege. “Did you want me to help you up, sir?”

 
          
“I
got it, Boy!”
Massa
yelled, waving his fists above his head. “I got the John Michael Mercer
story!”

 
          
Boy
looked pleased, but puzzled. “The interview, sir? You have that?”

 
          
“He
won’t
give
us an interview!”
Massa
roared. “The son of a bitch! If he won’t
take the goddamn yacht, there’s no
way
to get to him!”

 
          
“No,
sir,” Boy agreed. “Looks like no one up there can get to him.”

 
          
You
snake in the grass, Mary Kate thought, I wonder if I could just accidentally
step on your hand while you’re down there.

 
          
But
Massa
was saying,
“No
one could get to that ungrateful son of a bitch, Boy! We need a
different story, and I’ve got it!”

 
          
“Yes,
sir?” Boy asked, alert and eager.

 
          
“The
wedding album!”
Massa
cried, dancing on his desk like Rumpelstiltskin when nobody could guess
his name. “The wedding pictures are the story!”

 
          
“Yes,
sir!” cried Boy. Still on one knee, he waved his own fists around in imitation
of his master.

 
          
“Go
up there, Boy!”
Massa
shouted, while Mary Kate stared in shock. “Go up there and get me those
pictures!”

 
          
“Yes,
sir/”

 
          
“If
anybody can do it, Boy,
you
can!”

 
          
“Yes,
sir!”

 
          
Boy
was up and away. Mary Kate, still in shock, stared down at Massa, wondering if
she dared speak up for Jack, knowing in her heart it would be much too
dangerous, seeing Massa look around himself, frowning at the position of his
office in relation to the floor, frowning at his own feet on his desk. “What
is
this?” he demanded, just now noticing
the fix he was in. “Get me
out
of
here!”

 
          
“Yes,
sir!” cried the janitor. “Here comes Maintenance now!”

 
          
And
as Maintenance came, Mary Kate left, running across Editorial, this way and
that through the black lines, the shortest route to the Ingersoll squaricle
where she flung herself on the phone and called the house in Oak Bluffs, on
Martha’s Vineyard
.

 
          
Jack
was out, nobody knew exactly where. Don Grove was the one who answered. He took
Mary Kate’s message, and it didn’t decrease his pessimism one little bit.

 
          
The
first shot woke Sara, startling and frightening her but leaving her bewildered,
aware only of the after-sound of breaking glass, not sure what she’d heard that
had brought her up from sleep. Jack shifted sluggishly beside her—the news
about Boy’s imminent arrival had caused him to drink just a teeny bit too much
at dinner—his arm moving heavily on her rib cage.
What?
she thought, but drowsily, eyes half open, brain not yet
really at work.

 
          
But
then came the fusillade, and snapped them both back into the world, sitting
bolt upright together in the darkness. A thunder of shots, closely spaced,
intermixed with more chitters of falling glass, and then silence, a silence
full of round silent implosions, sharp silent junctures, furry silent menace,
and the drifting scent of gunpowder. “Wha—?” started Sara, but Jack clapped a
hand over her mouth, his breath in her ear whispering, “Sshhhhhhh . . .”

 
          
Distant
noises, people shouting, doors banging. Sara and Jack clung together, her arms
around him, his right arm around her, left hand cupped to her mouth. Moving her
head under that hand, she looked to her right, to the dim red glow of numbers
from the clock-radio provided by the inn and bolted to the bedside table:
3:07
a.m.

 
          
They
were in Jack’s bed. They might have been next door in Sara’s bed, but the teeny
bit too much Jack had taken to drink had caused him, when they’d returned to
the inn tonight, to totter directly toward his own room, so Sara had followed,
through the connecting door, and their comforting of one another over the bad
news of Boy’s resurgence into their lives had led to one thing and another, all
in this room, in this bed, as slowly solace became sleep. And so here they
still were, four hours later, when the night was blown apart with gunshots.

 
          
Sara
moved her head again, freeing her mouth from his grasp. Softer than soft, she
murmured toward his ear in the darkness, “Revolution? Starting in
Martha’s Vineyard
?”

 
          
His
lips touched her ear. His warm breath whispered, “It was in your room.”

 
          
She
stiffened, holding him tighter, feeling chilled. The connecting door still
stood open. Was the person with the gun still in there?

 
          
A
sudden banging sounded at the hall door in that room, and a male voice called,
“Miss Joslyn! Miss Joslyn!”

 
          
“Wait
here,” Jack whispered, and disengaged himself from her, and slid out of bed.
She heard him pulling on trousers, and could just make out his form crossing
past the drapes over the sliding glass door. Then he opened the hall door of
this room, leaned cautiously out, and called to someone outside, “Down here.”

 
          
Light-spill
from the hall, passing Jack, gendy illuminated this room. Sara threw a fearful
glance toward the doorway to her own room, the blackness in there still total.
Nothing seemed to move in there. While Jack and one or more other voices
murmured in the hall, she found on the floor the jeans and shirt she’d
discarded just a few hours ago, and pulled them on.

 
          
“Just
a minute, let me see,” Jack said firmly, and shut the door over what seemed to
be protests. As Sara stood, Jack came running around the bed, grabbing her arm,
whispering rapidly as he propelled her toward the frightening darkness of her
room, “You were in the bathroom when it happened.”

 
          
She
didn’t want to go into that black rectangle. Pulling back, she whispered, “No!
Jack!”

 
          
Glaring
at her, a stranger, he pointed fiercely downward, at the floor of his own room,
rasping, “You weren’t in
here!
You
were in the bathroom. You’re afraid to come out.”

 
          
Then
she caught his meaning at last, and allowed him to drag her into the darkness
and through it to the bathroom, switching on the harsh fluorescents in there—a
frightened backward look showed her the surface of her bed all puffed and tom,
like a scale model of a mountain range—and then she was in the bathroom alone,
the door shut, turning the lock with shaky fingers. She leaned against her robe
hanging on the back of the door, its terry-cloth softness her only comfort.

 
          
Of
course
she couldn’t have been in
Jack’s room. If Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion, how much more must a
staffer on the
Weekly Galaxy.
The
follies and foibles they reported on must not be shown to exist in their own
lives. If she were alive now only because she’d been in Jack’s bed rather than
her own,
Massa
would fire them both in the morning.

 
          
She
could hear Jack out there, talking to someone he’d let into her room from the
hall. “She isn’t here,” his voice said, sounding honestly puzzled. “Unless
she’s in the bathroom.”

 
          
Another
voice approached this door, saying, “Let’s see. Miss Joslyn?”
Rap rap rap
against the door, vibrating
against the cheek she’d pressed to her robe. “Are you in there?”

 
          
Jack’s
voice, awed, said, “Look at that bed. Somebody emptied a gun into it. Look,
through the window here, fired right through the glass door.”

 
          
The
doorknob rattled.
Rap rap rap
came
the knocking again. “Miss Joslyn? Are you all right?” It was true. She
was
afraid to come out.