7191 (10 page)

Janice heard his final words dribble off into a deep yawn. He was edging off into unconsciousness. ‘Bill?’ ‘Hmmm?’

‘How are you going to handle this, Bill?’ ‘Depends,’ Bill mumbled, half asleep. ‘I’ll talk to Harold Yates tomorrow. Whatever this guy is, psychotic or extortionist, Harry’ll know what to do.’ Another yawn, followed by a barely audible ‘Night…’

‘Good night,’ Janice said, and thought to herself: But what if he’s neither?

For a long time, sleep eluded her.

The storm had passed over the city, leaving a clear, cold night in its wake. Tomorrow would be a beautiful autumn day.

And so it was.

Crisp, cold, bracing, a pollution-defeating gift from the northern reaches of Canada.

Bill and Ivy lucked in on a cruising cab at the corner of Sixty-seventh Street. As they drove down the broad, slushy avenue towards the Ethical Culture School, a fine spray of mud freckled the cab’s windows, drawing a sombre grey curtain across the vivid day. Ivy loved cabbing it to school, even though the ride took less than a minute. It lent a note of elegance to the start of her day.

Watching her bright and smiling morning face - open, innocent, trusting - Bill felt a quick constriction in his chest. How utterly vulnerable she was. How helpless. How dependent and needful of his care and protection.

He watched Ivy half turn at the big double doors, smile and wave him a kiss, then enter the school building. He waited a few seconds to make sure she was safely inside before giving the cabdriver his office address. Bill knew Hoover wouldn’t be there this morning. Now that he had made his move, had his foot in their door, his Sherlock Holmes days were over, Bill thought with a grim smile. Exit Hercule Poirot.

The cab skidded slightly as it took the sharp left down Fifty-seventh Street and barely missed sideswiping a standing bus. Bill hardly registered the event. His mind was on Hoover.

He’d talk to Harry. Harry would know. Harry was his link to all legal remedies. Meanwhile, there was one wheel he could put into motion: the part about Hoover’s child’s death occurring at the precise moment of Ivy’s birth could be checked out. Either Pittsburgh or Harrisburg newspapers would have covered the accident, if true, or the state police would have a report on file. He’d ask Darlene to start checking immediately.

By the time the cab deposited Bill outside the sterile black monolith that contained his office he was like a boxer waiting for the bell to sound - primed, tense, and ready for action.

The first punishing jolt occurred just outside his office when Don Goetz signalled to him from the opposite end of the hallway and slowly approached wearing the face of doom.

‘Jack Belaver had a coronary last night,’ he glumly informed Bill.

‘How is he?’ Bill stammered, quickly evaluating the myriad significances of this stunning piece of news.

‘He’ll live, they say. But he’ll be out of action three months, at least’

Jack Belaver was senior vice president at Simmons and handled its largest accounts, the most impressive being Carletori Industries, a diversified giant whose corporate fingers reached into every nook and cranny of the electronics industry. Its account represented a tidy two and a half million per annum to Simmons. Its yearly sales convention would start this coming Thursday on the beach at Waikiki. Jack Belaver played a key role in prepping and staging the sales show. Simmons could ill afford to lose Jack at this critical juncture.

‘The old man would like to see you,’ Don said in the same subdued voice.

Sure, Bill thought, knowing damn well why.

‘Okay,’ he said aloud, and entered his office, whereupon he received his second jolt of the morning.

Sitting at Darlene’s desk was a sec-temp replacement, a swarthy girl with stubby figure and eyes that were slightly crossed behind thick tortoiseshell glasses. Darlene, she told him nasally, was at home with the flu. Wow! He was really fielding them this morning.

Her name was Abby, and she couldn’t quite get the drift of what Bill was asking her to do - couldn’t understand what newspapers he wanted contacted and what accident he wanted verified.

Bill made legible notes on a yellow legal pad and hoped.

Stepping out of Pel Simmons’ office an hour later, Bill had the hunched-over, totally drained look of a man carrying a hod of bricks. Not only had Pel asked him to sub for Jack Belaver on the Hawaiian adventure, but he had instructed him to stop off in Seattle on the way back and look in on another of Jack’s accounts, DeVille Shipping, which was_making funny noises of late.

‘Sorry to load this on you, Bill, but with a backstop like Don, you’re the only man who’s sparable.’

‘Sure, Pel,’ Bill said. ‘I’ll plan to leave on Friday.’

‘Make it Thursday. You’ll need the time there to brief up.’

Back in his own office, his message sheet told him that Hoover had called twice during his absence. Sinking wearily into the Eames recliner, Bill heaved a sigh of profound hopelessness and softly uttered, ‘Shit.’ A box of paper clips was close at hand. Singly and with studied deliberation, he extracted them one by one and shied them across at the Motherwell, aiming at the black deltoid shape in the centre. Of all the rotten luck. Of all the rotten times to be leaving town. How would he break the news to Janice? She was in semi-shock as it was. Oh, by the way, honey, I’m going to Hawaii for a week, how does that grab ya? Probably send her over the edge…

Unless! Unless!

Yes, why the hell not? They’d all go. They could take Ivy out of school for a week and fly to Hawaii as a family. The trip would do them all good. He’d be on the company’s expense account. They could manage the rest of the money. It would, of course, be unique, a man in his position, taking his wife and child on a ball-buster of this kind, but hell! The alternative of leaving them alone and unguarded …

His spirits buoyed by pleasant thoughts of sun, surf, and safety for all of them, Bill quickly rose and walked across to the Motherwell, reclaiming the paper clips scattered over the sofa and floor. When Abby stuck her head into the room, she found Bill down on his knees, picking ‘things’ out of the carpet.

‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered, ‘but I flashed…’

‘What is it?’ Bill said sternly.

‘Mr Hoover is on the line.’

‘I’m at a meeting and won’t be back till late this afternoon.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Wait,’ Bill ordered, as she was about to duck out. ‘What about the Pittsburgh newspapers?’

‘They’re checking. They’ll call back later, collect.’

‘Okay. Call Mr Harold Yates, that’s y-a-t-e-s, you’ll find it in the Rolodex, and ask him if he’s free for lunch.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Abby gulped and disappeared.

Harry, as it turned out, was in court and wouldn’t be able to see Bill until three o’clock, please confirm. Bill did, then put in a call to Janice through the Des Artistes house line. Janice answered after a great number of rings, and Bill listened as Dominick announced him.

‘Anything new there?’ Bill asked.

‘No,’ Janice said.

‘Any phone calls?’

‘A couple, on the other line. But I didn’t answer them.’

‘Good.’

Bill was about to tell her of their impending trip to Hawaii when Janice suddenly remembered: ‘A package came.’

‘A what?’

‘A package. Mario brought it up a few minutes after the mail. It was delivered by hand.’

Well, what’s in it?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t opened it.’

Bill paused a moment, then quietly asked, ‘Why not, Janice?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I’m afraid.’

‘All right.’ Bill softly sighed. ‘Why don’t you open it now?’

‘Just a minute.’

The light on Bill’s number two line flashed, then stopped, remaining alight, as Abby took the call at her desk. In a moment, it went dark. Hoover again, Bill surmised, knowing that Abby would hardly have hung up that quickly were it anyone else.

The sound of paper tearing preceded Janice’s voice. ‘It’s books. Four of them.’

Who from?’

‘I suppose from Mr Hoover. They seem to be religious books. Very old. One is called The Annotated Koran. Then there’s the Upanishads - I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it right - A Modern Translation. There’s also a diary.’

‘Is there a letter? A note or something?’

‘There’s an envelope in Dialogues on Metem … psychosis, by J. G. von Herder…’ Again the sound of paper tearing as Janice opened the envelope. ‘It’s from Hoover, a list of page references for each book, handwritten and signed, ‘Sincerely yours, E. Hoover.”

‘Okay,’ Bill said after, careful consideration. ‘Keep them. They may be useful as evidence.’

‘Has he called there?’

‘Yeah, a couple of times, but I’m not taking his calls till I’ve spoken to Harry Yates.’

There was a pause.

‘Bill?’ There was a childlike tremor in her voice.

‘Yes, honey?’

‘Will he be at school when I pick up Ivy?’

‘No. He wasn’t there this morning.’

‘What if he is?’

‘If he annoys you, call a cop.’

‘Oh, God,’ she whispered in a choked voice.

A few minutes after Bill hung up the phone, he remembered he hadn’t told her about their Hawaiian fling. He considered calling her back, then decided against it. It would only add to

her state of confusion. He’d tell her tonight in bed.

*

The books, partially exposed in their torn wrappings, remained on the dining-room table the entire morning. Janice walked past them at least a dozen times but conscientiously refrained from noticing them. The little game was self-defeating, however, for at ten past two, after having loitered over her hair and clothing far too long to justify the simple expedition to the school and back, she still found herself with better than thirty-five minutes and nothing to do.

Fully dressed in coat, rain boots and white fake-fur hat, she fixed herself a cup of instant coffee and stood drinking it in the kitchen, the edge of the books, sliced by the frame of the doorway, just within range of her vision.

Standing above the stack of books, cup in hand, her fingers tracing the battered embossed cover of the one on top, she had no memory of having walked up to them, nor could she stop herself from turning back the cover and revealing a hardly legible inscription at the top of the frontispiece. Handwritten in a pale mauve ink was the inscription ‘R. A. Tyagi, ‘06’, and beneath it, in a brighter, bolder hand, ‘E. Hoover, ‘68.’ The book’s title, printed in a delicate floral design, was The Bhagavad-Gita - An English Translation. The publication date was: ‘1746 - London.’

Janice gently grasped a sheaf of the yellowed pages and allowed them to riffle slowly through her fingers, causing a small eruption of powdery dust to drift upward from the heart of the ancient volume. The pages seemed to fall in clumps, signifying the more studied portions of the text. At one such point, she read: ‘As a man, casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into others that are new…’

On another page, she read: ‘For certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve.’

Janice shut the book decisively and stepped away from the table, feeling very much a traitor for having so easily capitulated to the enemy. Bill was right. It was nonsense.

Janice picked up the pile of books and carried them to the hall closet, where, standing on a chair, she consigned them to a shadowy corner on the top shelf, next to several volumes of Bill’s more graphic pornography.

She joined the waiting mothers in front of the school, and at three o’clock sharp the bell rang and the exodus began. Less than five minutes later Ivy appeared at the double doors and smiled her way down the steps towards Janice. Hoover was nowhere to be seen. Bill had been right. No doubt, he was right about everything, Janice thought, her confidence in her husband’s judgement growing by leaps and bounds.

For the first time in nearly a week Janice found herself heading north at a leisurely pace instead of in a panic. Ivy chattered continually. Janice laughed unreservedly. It was like old times for both of them.

*

‘I don’t know if he’s an extortionist or a nut or let’s say he’s a man who believes this to be so. We’re talking about an area that a lot of people don’t know anything about…’ Harold Yates paused a moment to organize his thoughts and place them in their proper legal perspective.

Bill sat on the couch, adjacent to Harold’s Barca-Lounger, from which, in a semi-supine position, Harold conducted all his business. There was no desk in the office. A low cocktail table immediately to his right sufficed to accommodate two telephones, a cup of pencils, and several legal pads.

‘But regardless of whether he’s a … nut, as you say, whatever the definition of that is,’ Harold continued in a slow, pedantic manner, ‘regardless of whether he’s an extortionist, you’re really concerned about what you can do to protect your family from being bothered by this person. Now I have a question to ask you. Did he make any demand upon you?’

Bill considered carefully. ‘He didn’t come right out and make a demand, except to say that he wants to see us again and that we have to come to some kind of understanding.’ ‘What understanding? Does he want Ivy?’ ‘No. He said he doesn’t want to claim her or take her away, that he couldn’t legally, and in any case wouldn’t, since he knows what it is to lose someone you love. Don’t you see, Harry? It’s a pitch. We’re being primed for a shakedown.’

Harry mulled on this. ‘Is your question: What are your legal rights?’

‘My question is: How do I get him off our backs?’ ‘Well, when you say off your backs, if he continues to intrude on your privacy, in terms of following you wherever you go, calling you at home, asking to see members of your family, he has no legal right to do that. If the amount of attention he is paying your family is bothersome or a nuisance, you can go to court and apply for an injunction restraining him from haras—sing or annoying you and your family. If he violates that injunction, he is in contempt of court and will be punished by the court. Punishment for contempt of court is subject to imprisonment.’