Beggarman, Thief (41 page)

“Yeah.”

“Well, she’s finally got everything squared away. She starts shooting in about a month. For some reason,” Rudolph said lightly, “she thinks you’re a beautiful young man.…”

“Oh, come on,” Wesley said uneasily.

“Whatever. There’s no accounting for tastes,” Rudolph said. “Anyway, she thinks you might be just what she needs for a certain part and she’d like to try you out.”

“Me?” Wesley said incredulously. “In the movies?”

“I’m no judge,” Rudolph said, “but Gretchen knows a great deal about pictures. If she thinks so …”

Wesley shook his head. “I’d like to see Gretchen again,” he said, “but I won’t do anything like that. I have a lot of things I have to do and I don’t want to waste my time. I also don’t want people walking up to me in the street and saying I recognize your face, Mr. Jordache.”

“Those would be my sentiments, too,” Rudolph said, “but I think it would be more polite to listen to Gretchen first before you say no. Anyway, they wouldn’t say Mr. Jordache. In the movies they change everybody’s name, especially if it’s one like Jordache. They’d tell you nobody would know how to pronounce it.”

“That mightn’t be such a bad idea,” Wesley said. “Changing my name, I mean. And not just for the movies.”

Rudolph stared soberly at his nephew. It was a strange thing for the boy to say. He half understood it, but it troubled him, he wasn’t sure quite why. Time to change the subject, he thought. “Tell me,” he said, “what have you been doing?”

“I left home,” Wesley said.

“You told me on the phone.”

“By invitation,” Wesley said. “I didn’t tell you that.”

“No.”

“My mother,” Wesley said. “I guess you could say we just didn’t get along. I don’t blame her. We don’t belong in the same house together. In the same world, maybe … Has she been bugging you about me—about the warrant and all that?”

“That’s all been arranged,” Rudolph said.

“I suppose by you.” Wesley sounded almost accusing.

“The less said about it the better,” Rudolph said lightly. “Incidentally, where
have
you been all this time?”

“A lot of places,” Wesley said, evasively. “In and out of New York a few times …”

“You didn’t let me know.” Rudolph tried not to sound aggrieved.

“You have troubles enough of your own.”

“I might have helped.”

Wesley grinned. “Maybe I was saving you for when I really needed help.” Then he became grave. “I was lucky. I found a friend. A good friend.”

“You look well,” Rudolph said. “Almost prosperous. That’s a nice suit you’re wearing.…” It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps Wesley had been taken in by somebody who was using him for some shady undertaking, picking up poor girls at the bus terminal and turning them over to pimps or acting as a courier for a drug dealer. Since his beating, New York had taken on a new and sinister aura for him, a hunting ground where all were victims and no one safe. And a young, inexperienced boy wandering penniless around New York …“I hope you’re not into something illegal.”

Wesley laughed. “No,” he said. “At least not yet. It’s somebody up at
Time
Magazine. A lady. She helped me when I came to New York looking up the dope on my father. I thought maybe she could help me with finding some other people who knew him. Addresses, things like that. They seem to know everything about everybody up there. I guess she was sorry for me. Anyway, my hunch was right. She put me on a lot of trails.”

“Did she buy you that suit?”

“She loaned me the money,” Wesley said defensively. “And she picked out the suit—a couple of other things.”

“How old is she?” Rudolph had a vision of an ancient spinster, preying on country youth, and was disturbed by the thought.

“A couple of years more than me.”

Rudolph smiled. “I guess anything under thirty is okay,” he said.

“She’s got a long way to go to thirty.”

“Are you having an affair with her?” Rudolph asked. “Excuse me for being blunt.”

Wesley didn’t seem hurt by the question. “No,” he said. “I sleep on her couch. She calls me Cousin.”

“I’d like to meet the young lady.”

“You’ll like her. She’s awfully nice,” Wesley said. “She really did some digging around for me.”

“Whom did you talk to?” Rudolph asked curiously.

“Four or five people, here and there,” Wesley said. “Some good, some bad. I’d rather keep it all to myself, if you don’t mind. I still have some thinking to do about it—see if I can figure out what it all means.”

“Do you think you know your father any better now?”

“Not really,” Wesley said soberly. “I knew in general he got into an awful lot of trouble when he was young. I just picked up a few facts about the
kinds
of trouble. Maybe I admire him more for turning out the way he did after a start like that—I don’t know. What I do know is that I
remember
him better. I was afraid I would start to forget him and I didn’t want that. This way,” he said earnestly, “he’s with me all the time. Inside my head, sort of, almost as if he’s there talking to me, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I do,” Rudolph said. “Now—what did you really come for—?” With a little laugh, “Aside from lunch.”

Wesley hesitated. “I came to ask you for a favor,” he said, staring down at the table. “Two favors, actually.”

“What are they?”

“I want to go back to Europe. I want to see Kate and her kid. And Bunny. And Billy Abbott. I’d like to see how the other son in the family survived. And a couple of other people around Antibes. I’m not at home in America, somehow. I haven’t had a good day since I came here.” His voice was too passionate to make it sound like a complaint. “Maybe that’ll pass, but it hasn’t yet. You once told me that the lawyer in Antibes said he thought in a year or so he could arrange for me to be let back into France. I was wondering if you could write him and … well, see what he can do.”

Rudolph stood up and paced slowly toward the fireplace. “I’m going to be blunt again, Wesley,” he said. “Have you told me your real reasons for wanting to go to Europe or—” He stopped.

“Or what?” Wesley asked.

“Or are you thinking of looking up the man your father had the fight with?”

Wesley didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, “The thought may have crossed my mind.”

“That would be foolish, Wesley,” Rudolph said. “Very foolish. And very dangerous.”

“I promise to be careful,” Wesley said.

“I hope I don’t have the occasion to remind you of your promise,” Rudolph said. “Now, what’s the other favor?”

“This is harder,” Wesley said. Now he stared out to sea. “It’s about money. I won’t be eighteen for another year, when I get my share of the inheritance. I thought if it didn’t press you too hard, you’d lend me say a thousand dollars and I’d pay you back on my eighteenth birthday.…”

“It’s not the money,” Rudolph said, although he couldn’t help thinking that somehow money was involved in almost every decision he had ever made—in paying Wesley’s mother off to get a divorce, in helping Gretchen start in her new profession, in achieving his own reconciliation with Wesley’s father, in his move to where he was living now, on the shores of the Atlantic, because of the few dollars and change in his pocket when he was ambushed by the two men in the hallway of his house in New York. Even in getting Wesley out of jail because the wily old lawyer in Antibes could be paid his handsome fee in the numbered account in Switzerland. “No, it’s not the money,” he repeated. “It’s your future I’m thinking about.”

“I’m thinking about my future, too,” Wesley said bitterly. “I want to be in France on my eighteenth birthday, when I have to register for the draft. I don’t want my future to be a grave in Vietnam.”

“That could be arranged, too, without leaving America,” Rudolph said, going over to the boy and standing at his side and looking out with him at the sea. “I wrote you about the Merchant Marine Academy …”

“I remember,” Wesley said. “It sounded like a good deal.”

“How are you in mathematics? That’s important for getting accepted.”

“Pretty good,” Wesley said. “It comes easy to me.”

“That’s fine,” Rudolph said. “But you have to be a high-school graduate. And be recommended by a congressman. I’m sure I could manage
that.
And …” He was struck by a sudden idea. “You could come here and live with me—it’s not a bad place to live, is it?”

“No. It’s great.”

“Frankly, I’d like it very much. I think you’d be able to say that you finally had some good days in America. You could finish high school here. That is, if your aunt doesn’t make a movie star out of you.…”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“By the time you got out of the academy, the war is bound to be over. It has to end sometime.”

“Who says?” Wesley said.

“History,” said Rudolph.

“I haven’t read that particular book,” Wesley said sardonically.

“I’ll find it for you. You don’t have to make up your mind right away. Meanwhile I’ll write the lawyer. Is that fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” Wesley said.

CHAPTER 6

As Billy was packing his bags to leave Brussels, he looked at the piece of paper. Honorable Discharge, he read. He smiled wryly as he slipped the document into a stiff envelope. Don’t believe everything you see in print.

The next piece of paper he put into the envelope was a letter from his father. His father was happy that he had decided wisely about the army and unhappy that he had decided not to come to Chicago, although he understood the attractions of Europe for a young man. Chicago could wait for a year or two. There was news about his mother, too. She was directing a picture. His father believed Billy should write and congratulate her. Of all things, his father added, one of the leading actors in the movie was Billy’s cousin, Wesley. A sullen boy, Wesley, at least in William Abbott’s opinion. The Jordaches took care of the Jordaches, his father wrote. A pity he, Billy, was not on better terms with his mother.

The next thing Billy put in his bag was a Spanish-English dictionary. A Belgian businessman with whom he had played tennis and who was involved in building a complex of bungalows and condominiums at a place called El Faro near Marbella, in Spain, with six tennis courts, had offered him a contract for a year as a tennis pro. The idea of Spain was attractive after Brussels and it was no contest against Chicago, and after all, the only thing he did well was play tennis and it was a clean and well-paying job, in the open air, so he had said yes. He could stand some sunshine. Beware the
señoritas,
his father had warned him.

The last piece of paper was undated and signed Heidi. It had been in an unstamped envelope that he had found in his mailbox the night before. “Had to depart suddenly because of the death of a friend. Understand you are not re-enlisting. Leave forwarding address, although I am sure I can find you. We have unfinished business to attend to.”

He did not smile as he read the letter and tore it into small pieces and flushed it down the toilet. He did not leave a forwarding address.

He took the train to Paris. He had sold his car. Monika knew it too well, make, year, license number. Who knew how many people had its description and might be looking for it on the roads of Europe?

He could buy a new car in France. He could afford it. There was a modest but sufficient legacy waiting for him in the vault in the bank on the corner of the Avenue Bosquet in the 7th arrondissement in Paris.

«  »

“Cut,” Gretchen said, and the day’s shooting was over and the hum of conversation suddenly started from the actors and crew members on the set. The scene had been shot in front of a dilapidated mansion that now had a false facade and a fake lawn leading to the street. In the scene Wesley and the girl who played his sister had a violent argument about the way Wesley was leading his life. It had taken all day to shoot. His Uncle Rudolph, who had come up for the day, was on the set, and although he had merely waved at Wesley, his presence had made Wesley a little more self-conscious than usual. But since he played the part of a boy who was supposed to be taciturn and unresponsive and the girl had to do most of the work, it had not mattered too much.

After the first few days, during which Wesley had been stiff and trying to hide his shyness about play-acting in front of so many people, he had caught on to what was wanted from him—his Aunt Gretchen had taken him aside and told him not to try to act—and had begun to enjoy the whole affair. Gretchen had told him he was doing very well, although she had said it in private, with nobody else around to hear her. But he had learned she was not a lady who lied.

He liked the atmosphere of the company. Most of the people were young and friendly, constantly joking, and anxious to be helpful. He had never had many friends who were near his own age, and it was relaxing not to be always on your best behavior just because you were with people who were a lot older than you.

Gretchen allowed him to use the name Wesley Jordan. After all, his father had used the name Jordan professionally before him, so he had half a claim to the title. Originally, he had allowed himself to be cajoled into taking the job mostly because he was getting three thousand dollars for a month’s work, which would mean he could pay Alice back what he owed her and wouldn’t have to depend on his uncle to get to Europe, but now he found himself eager to get on the set each morning, even when he wasn’t due for any scenes himself. The entire business fascinated him, the expertness of the camera, lighting and soundmen, the devotion of the actors, the calm but firm way in which his aunt ran everything. In her manner of handling people she reminded him of his father. According to Frances Miller, the girl who played his sister and who was only about twenty-two but had been in show business since the age of fourteen, not all movie sets were like that by a long shot. Hysteria and temper were more often than not the order of the day, and she’d told Wesley that she’d take Gretchen as a director any time over most of the men she had worked with.