Rich Rewards (16 page)

“Thomas? But he’d never—” Fucking racist is what I was thinking, meaning Royce. But I didn’t talk like that to Tony; it might have scared him, I thought. “Stupid bastard” was all I said.

“I never saw a person look so sad as Caroline did,” mused Tony. “She is brought down.”

“She is. She really is.”

It was true; Caroline’s sadness went far beyond physical
pain. She must have known the person who beat her up, and if it wasn’t Whitey, who? I absolutely ruled out Thomas; he would no more have beat her up than Tony would. I asked him again, “Do you think it was someone she knew?”

He frowned. “It sure looks that way. But you know, it could be some guy was a friend of hers three years ago.”

Of course that was perfectly plausible, but I felt that Tony was holding back, not saying what he really thought, or not all of it. And as I looked at him, his smooth lovely brown face, I strongly felt that he too had immediately thought of Whitey, that he still did. Whitey
said
he was leaving for Alaska, that was all.

But I couldn’t ask Tony anything further about Whitey; I’m not sure why—maybe because I was so sure that he shared my suspicion, and the idea was so terrible. Also, conversation with Tony had never been easy; words made him nervous, I thought.

However, I couldn’t help saying, just then, “Tony, you are such a nice man.”

I shouldn’t have; he looked terribly sad, and he turned half away from me as he said, “No, I’m not so nice.”

The Christmas season, having begun badly, got worse, and worse.

On Christmas morning, Agatha telephoned to tell me that “Betty Smith” had been killed in the underpass of a freeway, her car forced into an abutment by another car on Christmas Eve, the night before. This happened near Fredericksburg, Virginia, which was where she was then living. An accident: it was being investigated, an attempt made to round up and question other motorists who were on the road that night, who might have noticed something—but how to investigate something that happened between two large blind machines, on a dark cold night of alternating rain and sleet?

In any case Betty Smith was dead. She was no longer contesting the General’s will, nor would her heirs, some distant cousins in Ohio; the lawyer had already made certain of that. The cousins, reached by phone, had said they “certainly didn’t want to get involved in anything like that.”

And so the sources of the General’s money could not be investigated.

It was a crazily warm day, that California Christmas. It was as hard to imagine dark and cold, rain, sleet as it was to believe that Betty Smith’s death was accidental. As Agatha
and I talked about it, I was strongly reminded of the week before, when I had talked to Tony after we went to see Caroline in the hospital. Neither Tony nor I had really believed that Whitey was in Alaska; we both believed he was the one who had beat up Caroline, which was what I still believed. And so too both Agatha and I had strong and unexpressed fears about the fate of Betty Smith.

All this proliferation of violence was as frightening as cancer statistics were, and as out of control; it was as though the wars of the Sixties had continued into the Seventies, on another, hidden level.

How much better it would have been if the General had simply done what he seemed to have promised, and left all his bloody money to Betty Smith, maybe just a few thousand to Agatha—enough for a nice trip or, more likely, a sizable gift to some charity—instead of this cumbersome inheritance, her unwieldy house.

Even Royce seemed somehow, maybe illogically, a part of her legacy: an idle, rich and handsome man, who seemed to breed violence all around him.

“Well,” I said to Agatha, over the phone, after we had discussed most of those things, “Merry Christmas.”

“Yes.” She made a small, despairing sound. “Uh—what are you doing today?”

I had been going over to Caroline’s for lunch, but it was a loose invitation—“Oh, come anytime.” She was out of the hospital, and she said that she felt great; she seemed almost to be pretending that nothing had happened, she had not been beat up, badly hurt.

Agatha’s taut voice told me that she very much wanted to see me, and so I said, “Nothing, really. Why don’t I come over?”

“Oh, I’d like that a lot. Actually, Royce was coming for lunch, but now he can’t.”

“Okay, swell, I’ll be there in an hour or so.”

I called Caroline, who said, almost exactly as I had imagined she would, “Okay, no sweat. Why don’t you pretend it’s dinner instead, and come by about six? Thomas and I are just sitting around.”

“Good, terrific. I’ll bring some wine.”

The first thing I noticed about Agatha was that she had started smoking again. I was shocked: as young women we had both been heavy smokers, beginning with sneaked cigarettes in the basement of St. Margaret’s. Then about ten years ago we had simultaneously given it up. At that time we used to exchange notes about how tough it was, what a hard time we were having without nicotine, and later we talked about how rewarding it was not to smoke, how strong-minded we both were. So it was a considerable shock to see Agatha walking around her small apartment smoking.

She said, “I know, I feel terrible about it. But things just got so difficult, complicated. And Royce smokes all the time.”

“Still—”

“Daphne, please don’t scold me. I’m going to give it up again next week.”

That day I don’t believe Agatha sat down, in anything resembling a state of repose, for the whole time I was there. She walked, she smoked, she fussed at preparing lunch, she spoke in fragments. I had never seen her so nervous—so unstrung, actually—and it was deeply upsetting.

We mainly talked about two people, about Betty Smith and then about Royce, but the sequence was always confused, and more confusing when Ruth came into it too.

“I just feel so sorry for her,” Agatha said, and at first I did not get the identity of “her.” “He said the newest wrinkle was some suggestion that she’d been drinking. Some office
party, Christmas Eve.” Then “her” meant Betty Smith, and “he” was the lawyer. Oh. “You know, even if she had been drinking, that doesn’t mean that someone didn’t shove her off the road.”

“Of course not. But, Agatha, just because she was suing the estate doesn’t mean that someone
did
shove her off the road.” But actually I did not believe what I was saying for a minute: I was sure that the General, even dead, generated and perpetuated violence.

Agatha did not believe me either, but she was too distracted to argue. She said, “I’m so torn. In a way I really wanted there to be an investigation. If they’d really been able to find out where he got all his money, we’d know a lot, I think.” And then, “Oh, Lord, I’m forgetting lunch.” She rushed out of the room.

I too had very much wanted to find out how the General got so rich. I had even been afraid that it would turn out to be something relatively harmless, like clever investments. It would have been so deeply satisfying to have the General, though dead, publicly denounced as having been involved in the murder of Allende, in Chile, or involved in Korean bribery; having been an influence in the sale of arms to some big oil country. I fully believed—I still do—that his money came from one or several of those or similar sources. And now there was the probably innocent victim Betty Smith as dead as the General was.

I tried—again—to imagine in what terms anyone would tell someone else to get rid of a person, to see that Betty Smith had an “accident.” But I could not imagine it, despite all my years of TV and movies and mysteries. I could not find the words for the actual conversation, which after all may not have really happened. But I am sure it did, and I wish I knew just what they said—not to mention who was saying it.

The lunch that Agatha had made convinced me, as nothing else could have, of the extent of her mania for Royce. She has always been a non-cook, not even trying very hard. But that day, that Christmas, she had made: oysters Rockefeller (on another day we might have laughed at the irony in that, the General having had at least two Rockefeller pals, about which he boasted), tournedos Rossini, artichoke hearts and endive salad. For dessert, some peaches with a raspberry sauce. “Royce really loves elaborate food,” said Agatha unnecessarily.

Our conversation at lunch was mainly about food, not surprisingly: my compliments were interspersed with Agatha’s running in and out of the kitchen.

She was in fact so nervous, so anxiety-fraught that she was virtually unreachable; my small attempted jokes fell flat, although they were in our usual language, our old private irony. I felt as though I were a new guest—or perhaps someone visiting a sick friend.

Over coffee we discussed Ruth’s breakdown, its chief manifestation seeming to be her obdurate insistence that Royce come back, that they be married again. She often called him in the middle of the night, Royce told Agatha, and then she would carry on like a crazy person, screams and threats, long senseless monologues. “Royce says he thinks a lot of it is acting—she’s trying to make him think she’s crazy, so he’ll have to do something about her,” Agatha said. “But as I told him, beyond a certain point pretending to be crazy and being crazy are pretty much the same thing.”

I agreed, but at that moment I was really thinking about Royce and Stacy; I was wondering how much he saw of her, if at all. For example, today: was Royce really taking care of Ruth, or could he be with Stacy?

With her coffee Agatha was smoking again, and I began to be aware of certain uncomfortable physical symptoms: a
curious agitation in my chest, a flutter in my eyelids, a muscle in one arm that twitched. I wondered if I could be allergic to smoke, although that seemed unlikely; all Derek’s heavy smoking had produced no such symptoms, and I had spent a lot of time, perforce, with other smokers.

Then, inadvertently, Agatha explained it: “I think she really is crazy,” Agatha said, of Ruth. “I know because I can feel myself catching it, through Royce. I read a paper about that recently, in one of the journals, about people who transmit extreme anxiety states without necessarily feeling it themselves. I’m catching what Ruth is feeling.”

As I was catching Agatha’s anxiety, I then understood; my symptoms were those of an anxiety state, not an allergy.

Agatha indeed looked somewhat feverish, patches of red on each cheek, high up, her eyes too bright. I felt so badly about her, and for her, and I knew that there was absolutely nothing I could do. And I wanted to leave, very much.

Just then, mercifully for both of us, the phone rang; we both knew that it would be Royce.

After the briefest of conversations Agatha came back, radiant. “He’s coming over.”

Then I could laugh at her. “Well, you really won’t mind if I leave?”

She laughed. “Well—”

We exchanged a quick kiss, and said Merry Christmas to each other, much in our old ironic way, and we parted on that note.

I had some time before going out to Caroline’s. Once home, I left the car and started out for a walk, a tour of Pacific Heights, on Christmas afternoon. The city—that expensive, northwestern part of it—had never looked more brilliantly beautiful, more dazzling, more unreal. The huge houses
were all so newly, cleanly painted, in bright pastels, each Victorian cornice shining and unshadowed. The lawns were a bright sharp green, unnatural and almost convincing. But it was Christmas, December 25th, the middle of the winter, the bottom of the year.

When I got to Caroline’s, out on Clement Street, I rang the bell, and when at first no one answered, I had a strong impulse just to leave—an impulse that later on I very much wished I had followed.

But then I heard Caroline’s voice. “Come on in, it’s not locked.”

I went in and there they were, Caroline and Thomas, both lolling across the mattress. Not getting up. I said hi, and went and sat down.

The room was a mess, the bed coverings disarrayed and dirty cups and glasses everywhere. From the west windows, some harsh final rays of the winter sunlight entered—no help at all.

Caroline and Thomas seemed to have been drinking for most of the afternoon, probably making love, falling asleep. They were not really drunk, but drink, along with their sexual exhaustion, put them at a certain remove from me. Conversationally they were very hard to reach, even had I been in a mood to make a stronger effort. As it was, everything I said sounded false and silly—“social,” even when it wasn’t. I asked Caroline how she was feeling, and I really wanted to know.

“Well, I’ve just never felt better in my life,” she said, and
in an unfriendly way she laughed. I understood that she wanted to pretend that no such thing as a beating had taken place, which was all right with me but a little difficult: there she sat, still badly bruised, although the bruises were lighter now and her hair was lively and clean and bright again. She was wearing the rough, many-shaded sweater which I had first seen her in, all those long weeks ago, at Stinson Beach.

Thomas looked very sleepy. His slant dark eyes were red, and he yawned a lot.

For every reason, then, I decided to make this visit as short as possible. God knows I wasn’t hungry, after Agatha’s mad repast.

In the meantime, by way of making conversation, which I seemed unable not to do, I asked Caroline if she had seen Tony over the holidays; he hadn’t been around my house for several days. And this turned out to be my second ill-chosen question.

Looking mean, Caroline told me, “He’s out hustling the Christmas tourists, I guess.”

Panhandling, did she mean? I thought this was unlikely, and I guess I looked uncertain.

“Standing around the Hilton with his pretty ass stuck out,” Caroline went on, more shockingly. But as soon as she said it, I knew; I felt entirely that what she said was true. And I thought, Ah, poor Tony, poor pretty Tony Brown.

Aching for him, I nevertheless asked, “He does that a lot?” I tried to sound much less concerned than I felt, but I doubt if I successfully hid much.

Seeming then to wake up, Thomas spoke thunderously: “
No
, not a lot. Jesus God, Caroline, you think it’s any of your business? What a mouth you got.” And then, as though he owed me an explanation, he said, “It’s just something that Tony got into, kind of a habit, like, overseas. There was always some old guys, some rich old officers in Tokyo, Hanoi,
fellows who really dug him. And Tony, he can’t say no to no one. It was more than wanting the loot, or the coke, whatever they gave him. But you know, he’s a really nice boy, Tony is. Just fucked up. Like who ain’t.”