American Quartet (19 page)

“Soon maybe the left as well,” Remington showed his teeth, masking the sting. There was a sign in this somewhere, he told himself, certain the woman would respond. The odd tension between them quickened his interest.

“What’s a woman to give?” she asked.

“The matter hasn’t come up,” Bruce said, grinning stupidly. A slight thickening of his speech revealed that he had taken one drink too many.

“It will,” she said firmly.

“A good woman can work wonders,” Remington said.

“You mean an ambitious woman,” Fiona responded quickly. Remington wondered whom she was really addressing.

“Behind every great man is a woman,” Bruce said, clasping her arm. “I hope this one will go the route.”

“You could do worse,” Remington said.

“I have,” Bruce giggled.

A female guest distracted him suddenly, tapping his shoulder. He turned and grimaced. It was Louise Padgett. She hadn’t been invited and he was surprised to see her. “We’ll talk later,” he said smoothly. It was meant for Fiona and he was certain that she understood.

“I came anyway,” Louise said, obviously drunk. Her makeup was smeared, her face puffed and distorted.

“I read about your party in the papers.”

“You look wonderful, Louise,” he said, determined to placate her. He had discarded her, never answering her calls. She had only been an instrument. Didn’t she know that?

Louise took a glass of champagne from a silver tray, tossed it off and took another one.

“You threw me away like a piece of meat.”

“Not here.”

“Where then?” she sneered.

Guests crowded in. The noise level increased. Remington nodded, shaking hands.

“Prince Charming,” Louise snickered, spilling some champagne on her gown.

She finished her champagne and leaned on the wall for support. He took the glass from her, grasped her arm and led her through the crowd, smiling as he maneuvered her through the corridors, into the kitchen.

“A bit under the weather,” he whispered to Mrs. Ramirez.

“I’ll help.”

He signaled her away.

“It’s all right,” he said, dragging her along. He managed to get her to the back stairs and, half-lifting her, steered her into his bedroom, locked the door and pushed her on the bed. She fell with a half bounce and lay there like a discarded puppet.

Her eyes were open. She looked at the carved eagle and dissolved into hysterical laughter.

“Drunken slut.” He hadn’t expected her to comprehend, but she turned her bloated face toward him, squinting, struggling to focus her eyes.

“Gimme a drink,” she blurted, her lips dribbling saliva. He felt a wave of nausea.

“I’ll get somebody to drive you home.”

“Drink,” she cried. “Fuggin’ bastard. Use people. All alike. Like him. Somebitch. Stick it in, then spit on me. I’m a human been, you fuggin’ bastard.”

She tried to rise on one elbow, fell, then, grabbing a bedpost, lifted herself.

“Ish not fair,” she whimpered.

“All right,” he said, flashing a forced smile, moving toward her, touching her cheek. His hand recoiled. “Just stay quiet.”

He ran down the stairs, found a glass and took a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket and brought it back to the bedroom. She was still sitting where he had left her.

“See.” He held up the bottle of champagne. “Nothing but the best.” She took the glass he offered her with a shaking hand, she drank unsteadily, the liquid slopping down her chin. He poured more.

“Drink up.” He tipped the glass for her, watching her swallow repeatedly. Her eyes glazed over and she dropped the glass on her lap. The stain spread over the satin material of her gown and she looked at him dumbly, barely able to raise her head. Pushing her gently, he laid her on her side. She had passed out.

Relieved, he let himself out, locking the door from the outside. Breathing deeply, composing himself, he walked slowly downstairs into the crowd and made his host’s rounds.

The drunken woman was a brief annoyance. After she slept it off, she would be mortified and embarrassed. Now, he sensed, the true tests were coming. Would he measure up? He would be given doubts to overcome. He would be rendered vulnerable. He would have to be alert. All his inner resources would be questioned. His courage as well. Obstacles would be placed in his path. He would have to take risks.

At that moment he saw Bruce’s girl friend. She was sitting alone on the floor of his Rustic Room, eating from a plate balanced on her lap. One of a group clustered around a television set, she watched the election night activities. The President was getting out of his limousine, waving to a crowd, making an appearance at the last Inaugural ball, one of ten. The announcer was commenting on his ebullience, his lack of fatigue after such a frenetic day. In the camera’s eye, the President plunged into the crowd, shaking hands, wearing his well-honed grin. The phalanx of Secret Servicemen were obviously having a difficult time, jostled by the surging crowd. But the President was undaunted, displaying himself, an offering for their adoration. He was the President, the American leader, the father.

“Isn’t it dangerous?” someone asked. Remington saw the picture through a film of mist. Below him, he heard Fiona say:

“Yes, it’s dangerous. Any crackpot with a weapon can do him in.”

“Then why expose himself?” another man asked. He was a lobbyist for an important arms manufacturer, a heavy-set man with a plate piled high with food.

“He is the President,” Remington said with passion.

“We’ve had enough dead Presidents,” the man said. “That’s not his job.”

“A child also needs a father,” Remington said sharply.

“I agree,” Fiona said. “He wants the job. He takes his chances. Anyone with the will could do him in.”

“Or with a gun,” Remington said. Again the words came in a rush, without prior warning. He knew that he was merely a spokesman, a conduit.

“They’d have to be crazy. A psychopath.”

“Not necessarily,” Remington said. Again by rote. The woman turned to him and eyed him curiously. He felt her careful observation, the sense of exhibitionism in himself. See me, he commanded silently. Can you really see me?

“Nobody in their right mind could possibly want to shoot the President of the United States.”

“Right is relative,” he said. She was silent for a moment, turning back to watch the television screen. The President was moving through the crowds. The Secret Service had reorganized its phalanx and the President and his wife were moving toward the stage, still waving, still smiling.

“I suppose,” she said, “a person could construct his own logical motivation, even though it may be logical only to himself. I’ve seen it a number of times in my work.”

With a struggle, the lobbyist mumbled something and got to his feet, moving away. Remington squatted beside her.

“Seen what?” he asked.

“A murderer who will calmly explain his crime in terms of either its necessity to himself or to the victim. There is very little remorse in such a perpetrator.”

“Remorse?”

“Like there was no human connection between the murderer and his victim. Strangers coming together to illustrate a point.”

“But suppose the point is essential?”

“Oh, they all believe that.”

“Does it happen often?”

“Frequently.”

Her answers did not miss a beat. Nor did his questions. This, too, is necessary, he thought. The risk. The test. He moved closer to the woman. Her fork played with her food.

“But if there’s no connection? How do you apprehend the killer?”

The woman laid her fork on the plate. He knew he had engaged her. That was essential to the test.

“We don’t. Sometimes we have to wait until the pattern reemerges. The MO, modus operandi. Or the killer makes a mistake.”

“And suppose he doesn’t make a mistake?”

The woman shrugged. There was a long pause. Her thoughts seemed to have turned inward. That sniper case, he wanted to say. But he held off, feeling the pulsating energy of the question between them, trying to will it out of her.

“There are always open cases like that in my business,” she said. The trembling began deep inside of him.

“I read something recently,” he said, barely able to form the words. “A sniper.”

Her eyelids fluttered and a tiny tremor showed in her cheek.

“As the English say . . . a baffling mystery.”

“How so?”

“No apparent motive.” He felt her hesitation. “He seemed to have worked it out with some careful logic. The Library of Congress. Why there? And he left three cartridge cases.”

“From what kind of gun?” He paused, his hand sweeping toward his gun cases. “I know guns.”

She looked at him strangely, following the arc of his gesture.

“Italian, I think. Man something.”

“Mannlicher-Carcano. Very common.”

“They always are.”

He could not detect the slightest hesitation. The age gap seemed like a deep ravine, impassable. Seventeen years ago she must have been in her middle teens. Time had blunted the real meaning. Again, the message was clear, the necessity of his mission underlined. They must not forget. Never! Her ignorance was appalling. It was all there for them to find. He had provided them with a road map.

“Someday, I suppose you’ll find your assassin,” he said, standing up.

“Someday,” she said, but her expression showed no conviction.

He left her there watching the President present the obligatory clichés to the ball crowd. In a little while, those guests who had attended this last ball would roll in. The house was crowded almost beyond its capacity, the noise level deafening. He decided to check out the food situation in the kitchen.

“We have enough, Mrs. Ramirez?”

“Plenty.”

“Good.”

“And the lady?” She reminded him.

He decided he had best look in on her. He found the right key and opened the door. He had left a small light on in a corner of the room. It was still on, offering a puddle of yellow illumination, bathing the rest of the room in shadows. Below the swooping eagle the ruffled bed was empty. He looked around the floor. Nothing. Then, he saw that the bathroom door was closed.

He put his ear to the door, heard sounds, but they were hard to distinguish. A kind of hoarse breathing, he decided, hesitating briefly. He rapped on the door with his knuckles.

“Louise,” he called discreetly. There was no answer. Louder. “Louise!” He listened, then rapped again. He tried the knob. It was locked from the inside.

“This is nonsense, Louise. If you don’t open up, I’m going to break the door down.”

There was no answer. Moving back, he tensed his legs and rushed the door with the flat of his shoed foot, hitting it squarely above the knob. The jamb cracked and the door swung open.

In the shadowy yellow light, he saw her body on the floor. At first, he thought she was asleep. Animal-like sounds came from her throat. But when he switched on the light, he saw the blood. She lay in a pool of it, and it spread under his shoes, over the tiles. He knelt beside her and some of her blood smeared his white shirtfront. Locked in one hand was his silver-plated revolver. He pushed her inert body away as if it were rancid with disease and would contaminate him.

FIONA
listened to the presidential platitudes with feigned interest. She had no desire for conversation or Washington small talk. Bruce rolled in it like a pig in swill. The whole scene, she decided, was like a giant convention even if the name tags were invisible.

Also, she was OD’d on people asking her: “And what do you do?”

“Eat chocolates,” she sometimes said, covering the put-down with a smile. “No, seriously,” the interrogator would respond. Sometimes she said: “I’m Congressman Rosen’s broad.”

“I guess you can’t type then,” was an occasional rejoinder.

“You’ve got to learn to mix,” Bruce would admonish, catching her bored look as she pretended to study a painting or a book or, like now, stared blankly at the television tube. She saw him approach, bracing herself for another rebuke. But before he reached her, another image caught her eye. Remington was motioning her from one end of the huge room, darting in and out of the shadows like a jack-in-the-box.

“Me?” she mimed, then sensed Remington’s urgency. Bruce followed her.

“Where are . . .” Bruce began, then stopped short at the pale figure of Remington. They followed him as he raced up the back stairs. Remington did not look back, hesitating only as he opened a bedroom door.

Once they were inside, Remington locked the door, partially shutting out the cacophony below. She had barely time to assess the jumble of images, the many mirrors, the huge bed with the spread-winged carved eagle hovering above, the bloody footsteps along the carpet. In the bathroom, her investigatory eye took over. The woman groaned. She was still alive. Inspecting the body, Fiona discovered the large open wound in the woman’s upper left arm. The shot had been oblique, making a deep furrow in the flesh.

“Lucky bitch,” she said, looking up at the pale, anxious faces.

“A belt,” she ordered. Remington produced a leather belt, which she wrapped around the flabby upper arm above the wound, pulling it tightly. Blood gushed over her gown. Ignoring it, she tore a towel from the rack and applied pressure directly to the wound. The woman, obviously a novice at the suicide game, had shot herself in the upper arm. She probably had had no serious intent. She opened the woman’s fingers and shook the gun to the floor.

Bending over, she listened to the woman’s heart and felt the pulse of the uninjured arm. From her color it was apparent that she had lost a lot of blood.

“Don’t touch anything,” she commanded. Bruce turned away with a dry heave and Remington backed out into the bedroom, his shoes leaving additional bloody footprints on the carpet. Neither of them said anything.

She worked over the prostrate form for nearly half an hour, loosening and tightening the tourniquet periodically and keeping the wound staunched with the towel. She could hear low voices in the other room.

“Is the ambulance here yet?” she called. She watched the woman’s face. She made a pillow with another towel, and placed the woman’s head gently on it. Then she stood up.

“Will she be all right?” Bruce asked. He stood back in the bedroom, looking queasy.

“She needs to be stitched up, but I think we caught her in time.” She glanced at her watch, bent down and loosened the tourniquet again. The blood still oozed from the wound, but it had slowed. She tightened the tourniquet again.

“She may also need a transfusion. Maybe there’s a doctor downstairs?”

“Are you crazy?” Bruce looked at her as if he meant it.

“Crazy?”

“We can’t tell people about this.” Then, more gently: “I don’t have to explain, do I, Fi?” He came close to her and grabbed her shoulders.

“You see, don’t you? The media would suck it up like a sponge. If it’s not necessary . . . I mean, can we somehow avoid it?” His eyes pleaded, a look she knew well. “I don’t want to hurt the woman.” He looked at Remington, who was white as a sheet. “If we can possibly avoid it, Fi.”

“You mean not report it, as well? A gunshot wound? I can’t do that,” she said firmly. “I’m a cop. I’m here at the scene of an attempted suicide. This is a gunshot. It should be reported.”

“Dammit, Fi. You know how to fix it. If the woman’s okay, then what’s the harm?”

“She has a mouth,” Fiona said.

“She was drunk.” His eyes continued to plead. “We owe this to Tad.” Remington watched them impassively; his normally pink glow had turned to chilling gray. She wondered if he was in shock.

“If you could . . .” he began meekly, hesitant as he studied her.

“Why put him through the mud? And me, as well? And everybody downstairs? In a way, we’re lucky she didn’t do the job right.”

“Would you have asked me then?”

“Of course not. You know me better than that.”

“Do I?”

“What’s the harm? If it doesn’t hurt her.”

To avoid a decision, she went back to minister to the woman, loosening the tourniquet again. The blood was coagulating, oozing gently now and the woman’s color had improved. When she touched her, the woman opened her eyes and groaned.

“It’s all right,” Fiona said, brushing the hair back from the woman’s forehead. Tears spilled out of the edges of her eyelids.

“Poor bitch,” Fiona muttered. “Us both.”

She saw Bruce’s face in the mirror, his eyes begging, frightened.

“It’s not like I’m asking you to rob a church,” he pleaded again. “It’s hardly more than a little white lie.”

“She really has to be sewn up. It could open up again.” Being pragmatic helped postpone her decision. He came closer and opened his arms in a wide embrace, clasping her.

“We don’t need this kind of problem, Fi.” His arms soothed her. “Why be a purist? What harm would it do?”

“She needs a doctor,” Fiona said, insinuating herself out of his embrace. “Whoever he is, he has to report it as well.” It felt better to shift the responsibility.

“I owe him this, Fi,” he said firmly, shooting a glance at Remington, who remained silent.

“You want me to get the doctor?”

“You know how these things work. It’s not my line.”

“You know what you’re asking?”

“For crying out loud, Fi. What does it matter? It’s not a lifetime career.”

She wanted to protest, but the woman’s groans grew louder. She felt cornered, beyond choice. Remington’s eyes probed her. She saw something sardonic in them and wondered why he was not pleading his own cause. How clever, she thought. He owned Bruce now.

“Come on, Fi. Please.” Bruce said, in panic.

The groans grew louder and she ran into the bathroom again. The woman was struggling at the edge of consciousness, feeling the pain now, the drunken stupor fading.

“Just lie still,” Fiona ordered. She felt contempt for the woman for putting her in this position. Lifting her arm gently, she looked beneath the towel again. The blood still oozed, but lightly now.

“You want to die?” She shot the words into the woman’s ear.

“No.”

“Then for crying out loud, lie still.”

“Please.” It was Bruce’s voice again, persistent, whining. Fiona went to the bedroom telephone and with shaking fingers dialed Dr. Benton’s number.

After three rings Dr. Benton answered, his voice hoarse and smoky, filled with sleep.

“I have no right to ask you . . .” she began.

He was at the back door in less than half an hour. She led him up the back stairs. Bruce had stayed with the woman while Remington rejoined his guests. Many were now saying their farewells. When she arrived with Benton, the woman was still on the bathroom floor. They had thrown a blanket over her. The room was a mess with bloodstained footprints crisscrossing the carpet.

“In here,” she directed as Bruce stepped aside. Benton immediately began checking the wound after surveying the woman’s vital signs. He took her pulse, listened to her heartbeat and checked her blood pressure. Without a word, he removed the toweling from the wound, looked at it, removed the belt, loosened now, and disinfected the wound. Then he stuck a hypodermic needle in her arm. The woman grimaced but did not scream. Deftly he closed the wound, using ten stitches in tiny loops. He loaded another hypodermic needle and punched it into the uninjured arm.

“Sedative,” he said. He was impassive, businesslike. She was not used to seeing him with a live patient.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” Fiona said as he repacked his surgical instruments.

“So am I,” he muttered. He had pointedly ignored Bruce, as if he sensed the source of his involvement.

“I’m not going to report this,” Fiona said, her throat rasping.

“I know.” Dr. Benton kneeled beside the woman, felt her pulse again and inspected the closed wound. “She’ll be weak, but I think she’ll be fine. You’d best get her into the bed.”

“I can’t tell you . . .” Bruce began.

“Then don’t,” Dr. Benton said.

“Thank you,” Fiona said and helped him on with his coat.

“No more words,” the doctor said. “Maybe I needed it as well.” He seemed to be speaking to someone offstage. “She said I didn’t have the courage to take risks.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I know, Fiona. I know.”

She and Bruce lifted the woman onto the bed. Her gown had risen up, revealing a black garter belt ringed with ruffles, above a thick curly black patch of pubic hair. The sight inflamed Fiona, as if, somehow, they were both participating in a form of rape.

“The presidential box,” Bruce smirked. “Poor lady.”

“We are all poor ladies,” Fiona snapped. She pulled the woman’s gown over her nakedness and covered her with a satin comforter that lay folded at the foot of the large bed. She felt the same sense of violation.

“She’ll be fine,” Bruce said. “Come on, Fiona.” She shrugged him away. “That’s what this town is built on. Little favors.”

“Must you?”

He was silent after that and they went about the business of cleaning up. She dropped the bloodied towels in the hamper.

“It’s not like we’ve committed a murder,” he said. “You’re flagellating yourself needlessly, darling,” he said, after they had straightened the room. The bloodstains on the carpet had turned brown. “You’re taking it too seriously.”

“I’m just like the rest of you.”

Remington came back into the room. The color had returned to his face. He looked at the woman in the bed with distaste.

“She’ll be fine,” Bruce said. His debt had been paid in full. Remington looked at Fiona and smiled with obvious gratitude. She turned away disgusted.

“You never know when people will do wild things,” Remington said. “On the outside they appear normal, like you and me. Then poof. Something sets them off and everyone around them becomes . . .” He groped for words. “Innocent victims.”

“I think you can skip the lectures,” Fiona said. She was tightlipped and edgy.

“Even the innocent victims have a right to try and save themselves,” Bruce said, having regained his authority. “The news hens would have pecked away at everybody in this house.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Remington had turned to view the sleeping figure in his bed. “How the will of the assassin continues to play out its power? Like a fishing line with a hook buried in some monstrous fish who refuses to surrender.” She caught a note of admiration in his voice, a bizarre injection of another mood. His previous panic had disappeared. He seemed reflective now.

She also sensed the complete absence of compassion in the room. Perhaps at that precise moment, an hour or so ago, the woman had confronted her total insignificance, the weightlessness of her existence. A single, inadvertent puff of wind had given her life the only momentum it had ever had. The rest was apparently as passive and uninteresting as a blob of unformed clay.

She dared not wonder why the woman had decided to shoot herself in Remington’s house. Perhaps it was the inauguration, the recall of an earlier one, the memory of the one golden President standing hatless in the cold. In some respects, the house was an appropriate place, garnished as it was with memorabilia of the dead President. It was the most appropriate place of all.

Understanding the woman’s motive did not identify her own. Why the hell had she taken such an absurd risk and drawn Dr. Benton in as well? Bruce’s motives were clear as air. In his politician’s eyes, ambition powered a kind of brute force. She could taste it, feel it, smell it in him, and she hated and loved it at the same time. Did it inspire a sexual power as well? The image of a piston, oiled and pounding in perpetual movement, flashed across her mind. The symbolism was unnerving and a tingling shiver passed through her. She had been deliberately manipulated by her lover.

Was it possible she could be so slavish? Was it love, really, or some other compelling fascination, the loss of which could derange her like the poor anguished woman in Remington’s bed?

“I want to go home,” she said, turning, moving down the stairs. A few guests still lingered. The caterers were cleaning up. A drunk was asleep on a couch and the air was heavy with the smell of stale smoke, alcohol and overdone food still simmering in its silver trays. She found her coat on the rack and crossed the large living room to a still open but unattended bar, filling a tumbler with Scotch, which she half-emptied before Bruce joined her. She carried it with her to his car.