19 Purchase Street (63 page)

A long pause but the tape was not over.

“I've really thought this one out, Gainer, believe me. Now, all it has to do is come off the way I see it. Incidentally, this tape, as it's being played is also being erased. Kiss Leslie for me and try to thank me for the fucking.”

“Thank you,” Gainer muttered bitterly.

They left Chapin's apartment, and when they were out on the street it occurred to Gainer that they had no safe place to go. Surely not his apartment, and no, not Leslie's either.

Leslie waved down a taxi, told the driver to take them to the Mayfair Regent on Sixty-fifth Street west of Park.

Gainer didn't ask why there, just went along with it. On the way Leslie explained that Rodger kept a suite at the Mayfair Regent for whenever he had an unexpected onset of lavender friends on hand and felt they were worthy of such a place. Also, at Rodger's favor, some deeply closeted senators and such had trysted there. Leslie herself had been in the suite only once and no, certainly not for that. It had been an afternoon three or four years ago when she was having high tea in the hotel's lounge and spilled some on a St. Laurent white linen suit that was one of her favorites at the time. She'd gone up to the suite to try and save it.

Gainer hadn't been in that hotel since he was nine. It was, for a while, like the Pierre and the Sherry Netherland, one of those where he'd sit in the lobby to watch and listen. As he recalled, the Mayfair Regent, or the Mayfair House as it had been known then, was the smallest and uppitiest of all his sitting places. He seldom went there that the bell captain or the manager or someone hadn't asked whose young man he was. No hotel in the city gave off more of an air of insular self-sufficiency. People needed it instead of the other way around. Especially widows who preferred it over their Westbury estates because it was one of the only places left where they could confidently wear large diamonds at any hour and meet whomever they wanted in privacy.

High in Gainer's memories of the Mayfair Regent was the bony old lady with blue hair who had taken him into the lounge to sit with her on a banquette and have hot chocolate from a silver server. Such thick chocolate, it was like drinking a melted Hershey bar. The old lady didn't say more than a dozen words to him. She stared at him with her eyes that looked coated with yellow plastic and she grunted when he, trying to please, told her he liked the way her powder smelled. Before she signed the check and left him sitting there, he got the feeling that she didn't really like him, that she regarded him as a competitor for some unknown reason.

Now here he was returning to the Mayfair Regent, aware of the censuring glance from the doorman and the way others of the white-gloved staff in the lobby stationed themselves around in case they were required to jump him. He and Leslie were quite a couple, of course, caked as they were with plaster dust and whatever else they'd picked up in their escape. Numerous proper people in proper dress were passing through the lobby at that moment on their way to dinner, probably at Le Cirque or La Grenouille or some such.

Leslie ignored everyone, raised her chin and tone to an imperious level. “Keys to the Pickering suite, please.”

The accommodations clerk with impeccable sideburns and cuticles raised his chin and tone right back at her.

“I am Mrs. Pickering,” Leslie informed, her eyes daring the clerk to disbelieve her.

Moments later, on the way up in the elevator, Leslie sneaked her hand around and gave the right cheek of Gainer's rump a squeeze. “Don't fret, lover,” she told him.

“I'm not.”

She wished he'd take a squeeze of hers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

H
INE'S
rage was catatonic.

If he said anything he would scream. If he moved he would go for their throats.

The security men who had returned to Number 19 empty-handed had just made their report and stood there awaiting the consequences. They had, of course, put the blame on Sweet.

It took some five minutes for Hine to be able to speak. Calmly then, in a normal tone, he told the security men to go back to Ellis Island and clean up the mess, sack up and do away with the dead and when that was done to search the place thoroughly for the money. They were not to discuss what had occurred with anyone, not even talk about it among themselves. Just do as told.

The security men left, not really understanding why there had been no reprimand.

Hine closed and bolted the doors to his study.

He took three deep breaths, reminded himself that the matter was by no means closed. Not that he believed the money would be turned up out on Ellis. That was merely a loose end, meant more than anything as something to put those security incompetents through. No, Gainer and the Pickering woman had the money. At that moment they were somewhere sitting on the billion—laughing their asses off. But they'd be found, and the money with them.

Quick and quiet was how it would have to be. Any day now he expected someone selected by Boston to arrive and relieve him of his status as Temporary Custodian. He'd have to step back and be no better off than he was with Darrow, an underling. That Horridge was still in the house was encouraging, though. As long as Horridge remained at Number 19 the situation was not resolved.

But heaven help him if Horridge got wind of any brash effort to recover the money. Such as yesterday's fiasco. Horridge had told Hine in no uncertain terms that he was there to see things were normalized rather than more stirred up. He had also said how pleased he was that Hine too was concentrating his efforts toward that objective.

Horridge would never know.

Although Sweet had almost fucked up everything.

No more F. Hugh Sweet.

Hine felt little sorrow, considerable relief.

He glanced out a window. Saw Horridge was where he would have predicted Horridge would be. Quite a ways from the house out on the lawn beneath a huge copper beech. Horridge had had a pair of wicker chairs and an ottoman and table taken out to that spot, and it was where, with a decanter of port and several volumes of Emerson, he spent most of every afternoon.

Hine thought it would be in his own best interest if he went out to him. Truth was, he found Horridge almost unendurably boring. The man acted as though he was Jesus Christ in a vest.

Horridge removed his legs from the ottoman when he saw Hine approaching, and when Hine was close enough he gave him his only smile, which was mostly with his lower lip and jaw. He offered Hine a port, put aside his Emerson and poured precisely.

“Sorry to hear about your friend,” Horridge said.

It took Hine an instant to realize he meant Sweet. Hine nodded and revised his eyes to communicate grief.

“I heard it on this morning's radio news.”

“I didn't want to concern you with it.”

“Nonsense. What was his name?”

“Sweet.”

“It really hurts when one loses an old school chum like that.”

Hine was sure he had never told Horridge how far back he went with Sweet. It might be a good sign that someone on Horridge's level had been interested enough to look into him that closely.

“Why on earth was he speedboating at night?” Horridge asked.

“As I understand it he developed engine trouble earlier on and when it got dark the boat washed into the ferry slip.”

“I suppose that would explain it. Does he have family?”

“I spoke with them this morning,” Hine lied.

Silence apparently closed that subject.

Hine almost placed his glass on a yellow pad on the table, realized just in time Horridge had been using it to jot down some Emerson quotes.

“How is The Balance Room coming?” Horridge asked.

“The roof is completely repaired now, of course, and so is the ceiling.”

“What about that new back-up alarm you were telling me about?”

“It was installed the day before yesterday.”

“Working dependably?”

“It certainly seems to be.”

“Would you stake yourself on it?”

“I most certainly would.”

The back-up alarm was one that detected any change in the volume of solid substances within the room.

Horridge looked off down the slope, as though seeing ahead. When he brought his attention around to Hine again, he said, “You know, Hine, I'm impressed with the way you've taken charge.”

“Thank you.”

“Despite Darrow's catastrophe it's been business as usual—because of you.”

Hine managed a modest shrug.

“With any kind of boost from the right direction, I believe you could take over here as permanent Custodian.”

“Boost?”

“It wouldn't take much really. A little something more in your favor to put it over.”

Hine's eyes asked Horridge for it.

Horridge read them, told him: “I've already leaned in your direction as far as I can. I'm not High Board, you know.”

Hine thanked him again.

“Lois,” Horridge said.

“What about Lois?”

“She wouldn't happen to be pregnant, would she?”

“Why do you ask?”

“That might be just about boost enough.”

“Well, she's not.”

“You are trying, I assume.”

Nosy old fuck, Hine thought, but said brightly: “Doing my best.”

The impregnating of Lois was important to Hine's future. Unlike most High Board families the Whitcrofts were a sparse line, and a child from their Lois would be especially valued. It would irrevocably hyphenate Hine to them. Recently, at various times, he had come within a word of suggesting to Lois that they physically cooperate. He was afraid, however, that once she had been in such intimacy she would make more of it than he was willing to bear. Out of spite, she would do it. It was impossible for him not to associate in his imagination what might happen with Lois with what had happened with the whore in New Haven. When he was eighteen. When the expanding erotic sensations he felt from being bare against the whore and having his private self in the grip of her hole were overcome by nausea and he had shriveled inside her and thought she'd laugh and he'd paid her fifty dollars extra for having thrown up in her hair.

His reaction then was not an isolated one but rather the emergence of a deep-grained phobia. He gave in to it. Shaped his sexual and social requirements to accommodate it, accepted it as a part of him like a graft. He did not want to touch anyone. Female or male. He did not want
anyone
touching him. A kiss on the mouth was enough to turn his stomach.

Only his ambition married Lois Whitcroft.

Her Whitcroft pride kept them married. Besides, as it turned out, and as she said, she enjoyed all the different ceilings she was seeing while lying on her back.

Early on he approached her with the suggestion of artificial insemination. It was, he reasoned, not really that much removed from the natural way. Lois wouldn't have it. She told him if he wanted so much to get her with child he'd have to get it up and in.

That left Hine with the hope that she'd make a slip with someone else. What luck for him if in the heat of one of her many promiscuities she forgot to take her pill or do whatever she did to prevent. He kept track of Lois's periods on a calendar, and each month when she was due he investigated the contents of her bathroom wastebasket. So far she'd been as regular as the moon, but if it did happen that she became pregnant Hine was prepared to put her in shackles to keep her from running to an abortionist. The only thing about it that concerned Hine was the chance of his taking credit for Lois's big-bellied condition and then having the child pop out half-black or -Oriental or who knew what.

“Another spot of port?” Horridge offered.

“No thanks. I have to see to tomorrow's carries. It was one of Sweet's responsibilities.”

“We'll get you a new assistant,” Horridge promised with a note of sympathy. He swung his legs up onto the hassock. The laces of his white casual shoes were undone. He returned to Emerson.

Hine went back into the house and up to The Balance Room. He saw that twelve million was correctly distributed and packed into five well-traveled pieces of luggage. The word
boost
remained foremost in his mind. How right he'd been, he thought. So right it hurt. If his scheme with Gainer had gone as planned, the money recovered with no apparent hassle, he'd already have the boost Horridge said he needed. Christ, how he despised Gainer and the Pickering woman.

The Pickering woman …

Hine changed his shirt and tie, put on a fresh pair of woolen socks and a different pair of shoes. He always felt better in fresh socks. He considered wearing a hat, a dark brown fedora, tried it on with a jaunty tilt but decided against it and had to rebrush his hair into place.

He went down and out to his Porsche 928. Drove north on nonstop Route 684 for eight miles and got off on the local road that was Route 172. From there he needed a Westchester County road atlas. He knew the address he wanted, had looked into that quite a while ago merely as a matter of having it in case it was needed. He located it on map 8, marked it with a red-felt-tipped pen and then determined and marked the most direct way to it.

The roads turned out to be more winding and narrow than the map showed, but it took him only ten minutes of slow driving to get there. He pulled the car over next to the rock wall of the place, let it idle while he decided whether or not this really was what he should do.

Ambition and expediency could not be talked out of it.

He turned the car into the drive, followed the drive through the grove of old, well-cared-for trees. Up to the house. A Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit was parked in the turn-around. Hine parked his Porsche next to it. From the look of it the Rolls could have been bought that very day. Hine ran his hand along its side and did not pick up any dust. On his way to the entrance of the house he took the time to take in the perfect placements of the flat granite stones that made up the walk, the ivy sheared so evenly along the sides and so gleaming-green in its bed it looked as though every leaf had been separately polished. Not a finger smudge on the large brass Colonial door handle.