Fortune's Hand (37 page)

“That would be great, but not in this heat.”

“First decent weather, then. Tell him to watch out. I still play a hard game.”

“I'll tell him.”

When they stood to leave, Robb complimented her on her dress. “That's a beautiful color. What do you call it?”

“Mango. I've never eaten a mango, have you?”

“Once, and I hated it. Not that I'm fussy. I ate rattlesnake meat once, and I liked that.”

“Phew!” Julie said, laughing.

Keep the mood high, he thought, as they parted. I couldn't bear her pity.

Suddenly it was September, still hot as usual, but with a difference; the leaves, no longer lush, were dusty, no birds sang, and some were even starting for more southerly places. Robb, too, would have to find another place. In his lethargy, he had postponed the effort, but now with the house soon to be foreclosed, he would have to make one. For even if some miracle were to
rescue me I would certainly not stay here, he thought as he went up the driveway.

Eddy's car was parked in front of the door. And not being in the mood for a visit, he wondered rather irritably what on earth Eddy could want.

“I've got news for you,” Eddy said. He had removed his tie, and in his rumpled, sweaty summer suit, he did not look like Eddy. “And it's not especially good. Very, very interesting, but not good.”

“What's new about that? Well, come on in and tell me.” They sat down in the library. “You look knocked out. Pour yourself a drink over there. Or should I?”

“Neither.” Eddy sank into a chair. “Neither. You know what? Dick Devlin has got the Midas touch after all.”

“Explain, please.”

“You won't believe it. Do you want all the details, the legal history, or short and sweet?”

“Short and sweet.”

“Okay. Dick Devlin has found himself an angel. It happened last week, but I just learned about it today. Dick and I aren't as thick as we used to be.” Eddy paused as if reflecting sadly on the mutability of man. “Well, it seems that he's gone after—or more likely they've gone after him—a syndicate, most of them from Southeast Asia, who've got billions to the millions Dick Devlin used to have. They're going to pay off all he owes, get him and the properties on their feet again, and go into partnership. So, Devlin rides again. Pretty neat, isn't it?”

“Strange … What about you and me and the rest of the small-fry? Don't we benefit, too?”

“We would if they wanted us to. But we're too small to bother with. We're left with our own notes to pay off.”

There was nothing to say. Scanning the room again as if some sign or some clue were possibly hidden there, Robb saw only that the wastebasket was overflowing, and that Ellen had finally and by arrangement come here to remove her grandmother's embroidered chair.

“I thought I knew Devlin like the back of my hand,” Eddy said. “But he's too clever for me, and I'm the first to admit it. He's got irons in the fire—by God, I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a political deal behind all this. Why else would those guys want him? Because he knows everybody, and he'll sell everybody if he has to.”

Eddy stood up and pounded on the desktop. “By God, if he should ever get elected, he'd sell the whole damn country! Mark my words!”

“Calm down, Eddy. You'll have a heart attack,” Robb said.

“How the hell can you sit there and take a thing like this on the chin so calmly?”

“I'm not calm. I'm just knocked out.”

“Wait till the papers get hold of this. I'm waiting for Rufus Max's column any day now.”

“Julie's boyfriend is his assistant.”

“Well, I'll be on their side this time. I'm not usually fond of muckraker fanatics.”

“Rufus Max is a very decent person. Otherwise Andrew wouldn't work for him. I'm positive of that.”

“You know who's going to be in big trouble? Poor Glover. The Danforth Bank made the goddamndest stupid loans without collateral, or with phoney collateral—you wouldn't believe. He'll get a two-year sentence at the least when they're through with him. And Devlin will get no years.” With a harsh laugh, Eddy finished.

Robb's fatigue was about to overwhelm him. He could think only of the bed upstairs, the darkness, and the quiet.

“How's the money situation?” asked Eddy.

“Not far from an empty tank.”

“Things will pick up, Robb. They always do.”

“I know.”

“I'm running around trying to borrow. Flying to New York tomorrow. If I have any luck, I'll share with you.”

“No, no, I'll manage. Just take care of yourself.”

“Okay, we won't argue.”

At the front door, Eddy turned to look back. “We've come a long way together. Don't forget it,” he said.

“I won't forget.”

As if he could.

In the rear yard there was a flagstone terrace with a table and chairs, where Philip and Ellen took their breakfast outdoors in fine weather. By now they had their fixed routine: He brought in the newspaper, made the coffee, and carried the tray, while she prepared the cereal or the eggs.

“How does this feel to you?” he asked her one morning.

“Natural and good. Sometimes rather shocking, too. I don't easily recognize myself.”

“A truthful answer. But now that you have the certificate in the drawer and the ring on your finger, you're feeling more natural and less shocked.” He smiled. “Isn't that it?”

“Of course, being me. May I tell you something?”

“Darling Ellen, you may tell me anything you want.”

She paused for a moment, warming both hands around the coffee cup. The quiver of leaves high in the beech tree aroused a memory of the yard back at home, the original home. Something must have happened in sight of that tree, some words or event so deeply buried as to be now forgotten except for their sting, and she said soberly, “Even if I had never known you, I don't believe I would have had any choice. I know I said that if it hadn't been for his women, I would have stayed. But I think now that in the end, I would have had to go. The way things turned out between Robb and me—well, I think of it as a long slide downhill. You go faster and faster and can't stop until you bump into something hard at the bottom. Something hard, like a stone wall.”

She stood up and went to the rose bed, where the fall blooms were still in flower. There she knelt and looked up toward the sky.

“What on earth are you doing?” called Philip.

“Come look. See where that branch is outlined
against the blue, the absolute, dark rose against that absolute blue?”

“Yes, it's a marvelous contrast.”

“Once when I was a child and very short, I'm sure, I remember standing in our yard and seeing just this, roses and sky. Do you know what I thought then? That I would always, no matter how long I lived, remember it. And I have remembered it, as you see. I shall remember this day, too, Philip. I know I will.”

He was smiling at her happiness when the telephone rang on the porch and she ran to answer it.

“Mom,” Julie said, “such a strange thing happened. I met Eddy Morse on the street last night. He was terribly upset. He didn't want—he was embarrassed to ask you because of Philip, but he wondered whether you had any money to lend Dad. He says Dad needs help badly.”

“What money? What does he mean?”

“He means an awful lot. Millions, the way he talked. I had no idea Dad was in trouble, in debt. Did you?”

“Well, yes, he had mentioned something a while back, but when things happened between us—” Hesitating to say more, she stopped; yet she knew that she must learn to speak openly to Julie. And she went on, “After we separated, I naturally didn't hear any details, although he did tell me once he was worried.”

“The way Eddy speaks, it sounded like disaster. Oh, poor Dad! Poor Dad!”

“Maybe it's not so bad. Eddy always exaggerates.”

“No, he was very specific. There's some deal that that man Devlin is in, with some East Asian billionaire.
It's too complicated for me, but also quite plausible, I should think.”

With half a mind, Ellen listened to the complicated story. The other half of her mind was filled with lamentation:
Oh, it's not that I'm so smart about things like this. I know very well I'm not, but I had an instinct
.

“Eddy knows I don't have money like that,” she said. “If I could help, I honestly would, Julie, but it's absurd to think I could. What I have from your grandparents would be worth pennies. I'm sorry.”

After a few minutes more, she went outside to Philip. There was a sad weight in her chest as she related Julie's message. And suddenly, she thought of something.

“What if I were to go to Devlin and ask him to include Robb? What would it cost him? Next to nothing.”

“You'd go up to the lion's mouth?”

“Don't joke. I'm serious. You can't throw all those years away without caring or giving a damn.”

“You can't, but people do every day.”

If he were not in need, about to lose everything as Julie said, I would not attempt to help him. I would remember all the bad, sad things and would be free to ignore him. But she could almost hear her father's voice, the stern, sometimes harsh voice of Wilson Grant, admonishing: You don't desert a man when he's down no matter what he's done. You can let him know what you think of him, but you don't desert him.

So she stood in Richard Devlin's office and made her plea. He had not invited her to sit down. From behind
his littered desk, he examined her as he had done before in a livelier time and place.

When she had finished, he asked her why she was interested in Robb's affairs. “I understand that you're remarried,” he said.

“That's true, but that has nothing to do with this.”

“No? Interesting. Very interesting. Yes, MacDaniel's a nice enough guy, I recall. I never knew him very well. But ‘nice' has no connection with business. That's just common sense, isn't it?”

This was hard to gainsay, yet she persisted. “Do you remember when you wanted Robb to buy that house because his name would attract other buyers to the development? Well, he's the same man now, with the same good name.”

“We're talking about money, not names.”

“Well, money, then. You have these people taking over—surely Robb's fraction would make no difference. He made an investment along with the rest of you. If you would help him out, he would pay you back steadily out of his earnings at law. True, it would take time, but of course he would pay with interest—”

“My answer is still no.” As if he had pasted it there, the sardonic smile never left Devlin's face. “Whatever made you think it wouldn't be?”

“Frankly,” she said, “because of the Richard and Olivia Devlin Living Center. I hoped that a man who can do that can perhaps help a good person who needs it badly.”

Devlin stood up. The strange smile was still there,
framing his square, yellow teeth. “Damned if there's another woman in the world like you. For sheer gumption, I take my hat off to you, a woman who with a snap of her fingers could have any man she wants.”

And again he examined Ellen from her shoes to her face, which was flushed and warm; it was as if her clothing had suddenly become transparent and she was exposed to him.

His fingers drummed on the desk. He sighed, and speaking slowly, with ponderous emphasis, said, “If you had been, or would be, a little more friendly to me, I would perhaps reconsider. Actually, I think I might do you the favor you want.”

She looked back at him without replying, allowing her eyes to speak for her.

Robb, you never belonged among these people
.

Then she walked out.

Hunched on the sofa in a quilted bathrobe, Julie was shivering.

“A glass of wine would warm you up better than that cup of tea,” Andrew said.

“No, I need to think clearly. The damn landlord should put the heat on.”

“What, in September?”

“Well, it's damp. It's been raining all day.”

“It's your nerves, Julie.”

That was true. She had been bickering with him for the last half hour. She ought not to take out her distress on him, and she apologized.

“I'm sorry, Andy. I just don't know what to think.
I'm trying. I told you my mother tried, too. I know some people go bankrupt and still walk around with their heads high, but my father's not one of them. I can't begin to tell you how sad this is.”

“I think I can put myself in his place, and I'm sorry. You know I like your father. I admire him.”

“And now there's this other crazy thing that Mom just told me. Dad's old friend Eddy—Uncle Eddy, I call him—says he heard there are going to be names in the papers, names of people who owe the Danforth Bank. Do you mean to tell me that every time a person owes money to a bank or to a department store or anybody, it gets into the newspaper?”

“No, of course not. But this is more complicated. When a bank's being investigated—”

“Yes, I can understand the East Asian billionaire, the Devlin people, all that clandestine, backdoor business, but—”

“There are circumstances,” Andrew said, interrupting.

His voice was exceptionally gentle. She had a sense that he had something to tell her and was reluctant to do it.

“You sound vague,” she said.

“All right, I might as well say it. In fact, that's why I came over as late as this tonight. It's already in the paper, Julie. Well, more or less, anyway. Here's tomorrow morning's edition, out at midnight.”

Julie bent toward the lamp and scanned the front-page column under the name of Rufus Max. Toward the end, she read: “On the long list of loans under investigation,
is the name of a well-known, younger lawyer in this city, a partner in one of the state's oldest, most prestigious firms. Respected for his eloquence in the courtroom and his sympathy toward human-rights causes, some of which have attracted national attention, he faces bankruptcy, chiefly through his indebtedness to the Danforth Bank.”