Beggarman, Thief (25 page)

Wesley nodded soberly. “Maybe it’s lucky Kraler’s kid is in Vietnam. Who knows what he’d do for me if I had to eat dinner every night with him?”

“There have been second sons before your father,” Rudolph said, “in worse families, and they didn’t go around trying to destroy everything they touched. I don’t like to say this, Wesley, but until the day of our mother’s funeral, I believed that your father was born with an
affinity
for destruction, an affinity that gave him great pleasure. Destruction of all kinds. Including self-destruction.”

“It sure turned out that way,” Wesley said bitterly, “didn’t it?”

“What he did that night in Cannes,” Rudolph said, “was admirable. By his lights. And to tell the truth, by my lights, too. You mustn’t forget that.”

“I’ll try not to forget it,” Wesley said. “But it’s not easy. Waste, that’s what I think it really was. Crazy
macho
waste.”

Rudolph sighed. “I think we’ve told you everything we could for now, as honestly as we could. We’ll save the anecdotes for another time. You must be tired. I’ll send you a list of names of people you might want to talk to who’ll perhaps be more helpful than we’ve been. Finish your dinner and then I’ll ride you over to the YMCA.”

“No need,” Wesley said shortly. “I can walk through the park.”

“Nobody walks through the park in New York at night alone,” Gretchen said.

Wesley stared at her coldly. “
I
do,” he said.

Christ, Rudolph thought, as he watched the boy finish the last bit of his steak, he looks and sounds just like his father. God help him.

CHAPTER 4

Rudolph stood on the sidewalk in the morning sunlight with Enid and her nurse, waiting for Johnny Heath and his wife to come by in their Lincoln Continental and pick Enid and himself up for the trip to Mon-tauk. The nurse had a suitcase with her. She was off for her family in New Jersey for the week. Somehow, Rudolph thought idly, children’s nurses never seemed to have families who lived in the same state in which they worked. Enid was carrying some schoolbooks and her homework to do over the holiday. The nurse had packed a bag for her. He had a small overnight bag with his shaving kit, pajamas and a clean shirt.

The night before, after they had said good-bye to Wesley, Rudolph had walked Gretchen to her apartment. He had invited her to come with him and the Heaths to Montauk. She had looked at him strangely and he remembered that she had once had an affair with Heath. “You want a lot of witnesses present when you see your ex-wife, don’t you?” she had said.

He hadn’t really thought about this, but as she said it, he recognized the truth of what she had said. Jean had visited him once, with the burly masseuse she had hired as her companion in Reno, and the meeting had been an uncomfortable one, although Jean had been sober, reasonable, subdued, even when she had played with Enid. She was leading the quiet life, she said, in a small house she had bought for herself at Mon-tauk. Mexico had not worked out. It was a drinking man’s climate, she had decided, too raw for her nerves. She was completely dried out, she had said, with a tiny smile, and had even begun to take photographs again. She hadn’t tried to place them in any magazines. She was just doing it for herself, proud of the fact that her hands were steady again. Once more, except for the heavy presence of the masseuse, she was so much the woman he had married and loved for so long—shining of hair, her delicate, pink-tinted complexion healthy and youthful—that he started wondering uncomfortably all over again if he had done the right thing in consenting to the divorce. Pity was mixed in his feeling, but pity for himself, too. When she had called a few days ago to ask if she could have Enid for a week, he could not say no.

He had no fears for Enid, but feared for himself, if he and Jean had to spend any time alone in what she described as a cosy small house filled with the sound of an uncosy large ocean. She had invited him to stay in the guest room, but he had made a reservation at a nearby motel. As an afterthought, he had invited the Heaths. He didn’t want to be tempted by an evening in front of a blazing fire in a silent house, lulled by the sound of the sea, to go back to domesticity. Let the past belong to the past. Hence the Heaths. Hence Gretchen’s sharp question.

“I don’t need any witnesses,” he said. “Johnny and I have a lot of things to talk about and I hate to have to go to his office.”

“I see,” Gretchen had said, unconvincingly, and had changed the subject. “What’s your opinion about the boy. Wesley?”

“He’s a thoughtful young man,” Rudolph said. “Maybe too—well—interior. How he turns out all depends on if he can survive his mother and her husband until he’s eighteen.”

“He’s a beautiful young man,” Gretchen said. “Don’t you think so?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“It’s a marvelous face for the movies,” Gretchen said. “The tough bones, the sweet smile, the moral weight, to be fancy about it, the tenderness in the eyes.”

“Maybe you’re more perceptive than I am,” was all that Rudolph had answered.

“Or more vulnerable.” She smiled.

“You sounded on the phone as though there was something you wanted to talk to me about,” he said. “Are you in trouble?”

“No more than usual.” She smiled again. “I’ll tell you about it when you get back to town.”

He had kissed her good night in front of her apartment house and watched her go into the lighted lobby, guarded by a doorman. She looked trim, capable, desirable, able to take care of herself. Occasionally, he thought. Only occasionally.

The Lincoln Continental drove up, Johnny Heath at the wheel, his wife Elaine beside him. The nurse kissed Enid good-bye. “You’re going to be a good little girl, aren’t you, miss?” the nurse said.

“No,” said Enid, “I’m going to be a horrid little girl.” She chortled.

Rudolph laughed and the nurse looked at him reprovingly. “Sorry, Anna,” he said, straightening his face.

Elaine Heath got out of the front of the car and helped establish Enid in the rear with her. She was a tall, exquisitely groomed woman, with hard, intelligent eyes, fitting wife to a man who was a partner in one of the most successful firms on Wall Street. The Heaths had no children.

He got in beside Johnny. Enid waved at the nurse standing with her bag on the sidewalk and they drove off. “Hi, ho,” Johnny said, at the wheel, “on to the orgies of Montauk, to the lobsters and the nude clambakes on the white beaches.” His face was soft and round, his eyes deceptively mild, his hands on the wheel pale, with only the smallest suggestion of fat, his paunch just a tiny hint of things to come under his checked sports jacket. He drove aggressively and well. Other drivers were forced to respect Johnny Heath’s right of way, as other lawyers had to respect his tenacity and purpose in a boardroom or before the bench. Rudolph did not see Johnny often; after the Heaths’ marriage they had drifted apart somewhat, and each time Rudolph saw his old friend after a lapse of months, he thought, with no regret, I might have looked like that, too.

Behind him he heard the child prattling happily. He heard Elaine whispering into her ear, making Enid laugh. To look at her, one would think that Elaine would dread embracing a child, fear that her handsome tweed suit would be wrinkled or dirtied. When Rudolph turned around he saw that Enid was mussing Elaine’s perfectly set hair and that Elaine was smiling happily. You never could tell about anybody, Rudolph thought as he turned back and watched the road. They were crossing the Triborough Bridge and New York stretched alongside the river, towers, glass, smoke, the old, enormous, impossible engine glittering in the morning springtime sun. Only at certain moments, moments like this one, when he saw the city as a great, challenging entity, its harsh, imperial beauty falling into a cohesive pattern, did he feel any of the thrill, the satisfaction of belonging, that had moved him daily when he was younger.

Down below, on the swiftly moving river, a small yacht chugged bravely against the current. Perhaps, he thought, this summer I will board the
Clothilde
and set sail for Italy. Might as well get some use out of the boat. They had been on course once for Portofino but had never reached it. Dispel ghosts. Get Jeanne somehow to escape her husband and children for two weeks and make love at twelve knots and in a softer climate, drink cold local wine out of a carafe at cafés along the Ligurian shore. I must not allow myself just to become a used-up old man.
Fantasia Italiana.

He shook himself out of his reverie. “Johnny,” he said, “you told me over the phone that you wanted to talk to me. What about?”

“I have a client,” Johnny said; “actually it’s a dead client, whose estate has to be settled.” Johnny, Rudolph thought maliciously, makes more money out of the dead than a cityful of undertakers. Lawyers. “The heirs are squabbling,” Johnny said, “as heirs will. You know all about that.”

“It has become my specialty,” Rudolph said.

“To avoid litigation,” Johnny went on, “there’s a part of the estate that’s up for sale at a very decent, low price. It’s a big ranch out in Nevada. The usual income tax benefits. I don’t have to tell you about
that.”

“No,” Rudolph said.

“You’re not doing anything in New York,” Johnny said. “You don’t look good, you certainly don’t seem happy, I don’t know what the hell you do with yourself day after day.”

“I play the piano,” Rudolph said.

“I haven’t seen your name recently on the posters outside Carnegie Hall.”

“Keep looking,” Rudolph said.

“You’re just sinking into decay here,” Johnny said. “You’re not in action anymore. Christ, nobody even sees you at any of the parties these days.”

“How’re the parties in Nevada?”

“Jamborees,” Johnny said defensively. “It’s one of the fastest-growing states in the union. People’re becoming millionaires by the dozen. Just to show you I’m not kidding, if you say yes, I’ll go in for half with you—arrange the mortgages, help you find people to run it. I’m not just being altruistic, old buddy, I could use a place to hide from time to time myself. And I could also use a little tax shelter in the golden West. I haven’t seen the place myself, but I’ve seen the books. It’s viable. With some smart additional investment, a lot more than viable. There’s a great big house there that with a little fixing up would be a dream. And there’s no better place to bring up kids—no pollution, no drugs, a hundred miles away from the nearest city. And politics are nicely controlled there; it’s a sweet, tight operation—you could move into it like a fish in water. And they never heard of Whitby, New York. Anyway, that’s all forgotten by now, even in Whitby, even with that goddamn article in
Time.
In ten years you could wind up being senator. Are you listening to me, Rudy?”

“Of course.” Actually, he hadn’t been listening too closely for the last few seconds. What Johnny had said about its being a place to bring up kids had intrigued him. He had Enid to think of, of course, but there were also Wesley and Billy. Flesh and blood. He worried for them. Billy was a drifter—even as a boy in school he had been cynical, without ambition, a sardonic dropout from society. Wesley, as far as Rudolph could tell, had no particular talents, and whatever education he might receive was unlikely to improve his chances for an honorable life. On a modern ranch, with its eternal problems of drought, flood and fertility and the newer necessity for shrewd handling of machinery, employees, the marketplace, there would be plenty of work for the two of them to keep them out of trouble. And eventually they’d have families of their own. And there was always the possibility that he’d marry again—why not?—and have more children. “The dream of the patriarch,” he said aloud.

“What was that?” Johnny asked, puzzled.

“Nothing, I was talking to myself. Seeing myself surrounded by my flocks and my progeny.”

“It isn’t as though you’d be stuck in the wilderness,” Johnny said, mistaking the intention of what Rudolph had said, believing it to be ironic. “There’s a landing strip on the property. You could have your own plane.”

“The American dream,” Rudolph said. “A landing strip on the property.”

“Well, what’s wrong with the American dream?” Johnny demanded. “Mobility isn’t a venal sin. You could be in Reno or San Francisco in an hour whenever you wanted. What do you think? It’s not like retiring, though it has a lot of its advantages. It’s getting into action again—a new kind of action.…”

“I’ll think about it,” Rudolph said.

“Why don’t you plan—why don’t we
both
plan—to fly out there next week and take a look?” Johnny said. “That can’t do any harm, can it? And it’d give me a good excuse to get away from the damned office. Hell, even if it turned out to be worthless, it’d be a vacation. You can bring your piano along.”

Heavy irony, Rudolph thought. He knew that Johnny considered his having retired a kind of whimsical aberration, a vastly premature symptom of the male menopause. When Johnny retired it would be to the cemetery. They had come up together, they had made a great deal of money together, they had never cheated each other, they understood each other, and Rudolph knew that Johnny felt that as an act and seal of their friendship he had to get Rudolph moving again.