Lucky Bastard (43 page)

“Yes. She—”

“Never mind. I'm filing for divorce tomorrow.”

“Cindy, please don't.”

“Merriwether Street will be my lawyer.”

“Cindy, for God's sake!”

“Talk to my lawyer. Now get out of here.”

Danny gave her the most devastated look Cindy had ever seen on a human face.

He said, “I wish I had died over there.”

“Me too,” Cindy said.

Danny turned to go. Limping. As if he were slipping back into the past, she saw him again as he once had been, an angel in bed, a god on the playing field. She saw him wounded, in despair, then rising back up into his sweet nature; she had always been able to imagine the explosion of the phosphorus grenade as if she had been there herself. The first time they had made love, afterward she had smelled him burning. She had never loved him physically, not with the same part of her heart, after he came back to her ruined by fire. She saw the child she had destroyed, and as if from above, just as she supposed Danny would see it on Judgment Day, she saw in all its details the drunken, spiteful sin she had committed with Jack and knew that that was the real cause of everything because it had killed her capacity to love.

For the first time Cindy noticed that he was fully dressed—shirt, tie, suit. He took his house keys from his pocket and laid them on the table.

Cindy said, “Wait. I have no right to do this.”

Danny said, “No right?”

Cindy's chin trembled. She shook her head, unable to speak. The dam broke. She wept like an injured child. Danny comforted her, with the same result he had achieved with the last brokenhearted woman he had taken into his arms without a sexual thought in his head.

His body was a stranger to Cindy's. Morgan had changed him. That morning, after Danny left for work, Cindy moved out of their split-level home and into her mother's vast empty house in Tannery Falls. She set up an office in her father's old den, communicating with her secretary by telephone and driving the two hours to Columbus when she needed to see a client. By prearrangement, Danny was always absent when she visited the offices of Miller, Adams & Miller.

7
Most of what I have just imparted to you was reported to me by Morgan, good soldier that she was. She left some things out (the revolver, her slip of the Marxist tongue in that “white trash” stuff), but by the time she related her version of the Feydeau farce, I had already seen and heard most of what transpired in her secret room, thanks to cameras and listening devices installed without her knowledge by the Georgian.

Some of the rest came to me bit by bit and much later, but it did not require the mental architecture of Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski to deduce the larger picture. Nothing set in motion by the devil in the flesh ever happens for the first time. But oh, the irony, the irony. Morgan had feared that Jack's sex life would ruin our great operation and so prevent the forces of good from taking over the world. And now her own vengeful mindless bitchy fucking had placed it in such jeopardy that I was at a loss for a remedy. I was not even sure who the guilty party might be. Was all this Jack's fault, as Morgan argued? Or was it Peter's for imposing stupid rules, or mine for breaking those rules out of the worst and, in a handler of agents, the least forgivable of motives—human sympathy? What, after all, did I know about sexual madness? I had spent my life going to peep shows.

I said to Morgan, “You have changed the entry code, I assume?”

“Yes.”

“To what? ‘Stupidity' spelled backwards?”

She flushed: Unsuspected freckles appeared like a faint rash. “No. Our wedding anniversary. Jack will never remember that.” She paused as if apologizing for the witticism; this was not the time or place. No doubt this showed in my stern and frozen face. She said, “You are angry with me.”

“No. I am thinking of Janós Kádár.”

“Why, for God's sake?”

“Because I don't know whether to have you shot or circumcised.”

Morgan blinked; a trembling hand flew to her mouth. For all she knew, these really were the alternatives. Sauce for the goose. The revolution punished everyone sooner or later; that was its beauty.

She said, “I will terminate the affair with Danny.”

“Why? Do you want to lose control of him, too?”

She did not answer. She was frightened. I was pleased that this was so. In being kind to her I had let out of the cell a bad part of her. It must be put back inside.

“Cindy is your problem, not Danny,” I said. “You've made an enemy for life. A highly intelligent enemy. An enemy who has the power to destroy you in an instant. At any moment.”

“Then I will deal with the problem.”

“How? With castor beans and sulfuric acid?”

A startled look. Was I making a serious proposal? Or, worse, was I ridiculing her greatest triumph as a secret agent?

Morgan did not answer my question, but her eyes did not waver. Her silence said,
If that is what you want, yes, certainly, I will mix some up and. pour it in her ear
.

It was not what I wanted. Then or now. I said, “No. Do not even think of doing something that cannot be explained. Do you think she has not written all this down, given the facts in a sealed envelope to this Merriwether Street?”

“Anything is possible,” Morgan said, recovering her old self. “But what do you propose? I can hardly ask her to let bygones be bygones.”

“You have certain information about her.”

“If you mean fornication with Jack, I'd say the shock value of that little episode has been overtaken by events, thanks to me. At this point she'd probably thank me for telling Danny.”

“And its disclosure would also injure Jack, perhaps fatally.”

“If a little boyish rape is all of a sudden a disqualification for the presidency, yes.”

“Then what do
you
propose?”

Morgan told me. She had thought the whole thing out. If anything in this business could be called perfect in its conception, her plan would have merited use of the word. But then, I had thought the same of some of her earlier schemes that had entangled us in unforeseen consequences. Nevertheless, for want of a better idea, I gave my approval.

8
Like a deadfall, Morgan's plan, primitive in its method, required infinitely subtle camouflage to guarantee its success. It evolved slowly, cautiously, over many weeks. Morgan studied Cindy as a savage might have studied a bear, observing its movements, memorizing every detail of its familiar ground. If a leaf was turned, a stone displaced, they must be returned to the precise spot from which they'd been taken. No scent but the bear's could linger. The slightest change in its world would put the bear off, awaken its senses, turn the hunted into the hunter.

Every Tuesday, Cindy drove down to Columbus from Tannery Falls to spend a day in the office. One Tuesday in summer, a slow season for attorneys in a political town, her last appointment of the day was with a man who told her that he had just moved into town. He explained that he was in the computer business, had just sold his company in Indiana, and now wanted to form an Ohio corporation to develop and sell sophisticated software.

“How did you happen to come to me?” Cindy asked.

“I made inquiries. You seem to be the kind of firm I need—small enough to remember who I am when I call, large enough and connected enough to get things done.”

A straight answer. No attempt at charm. Articulate. Serious, even brusque. He felt no apparent need to smile unless he was amused. He was well dressed: excellent woolen suit and tie, custom shirt of Sea Island cotton, English shoes. No cologne; Cindy gagged on English Leather. Blond, easy-moving. Handsome in a rough, masculine way. He reminded Cindy of the pre–
Dr. Strangelove
Sterling Hayden. If he noticed Cindy's looks, he gave no sign. He handed her a typed sheet with the particulars of the company he wished to create.

“All right,” Cindy said. “We'll draw up the papers.”

“I'd like to get it done as soon as possible.”

“How about next Tuesday?”

“Should be all right.”

“Two o'clock?”

He looked at a pocket diary. “Can't. Would five be possible?”

“No. Is six too late?”

“No.” He smiled for the first time—strong, slightly crooked teeth, no fancy orthodontia—and held her eyes for a moment longer than the business at hand required.

Flirtation? Cindy was not sure. She had not looked for the signs of it in years. She did not smile back. “It won't take much of your time.”

That evening she went to dinner with some of her Republican friends, a long-standing engagement. They spent the evening ridiculing Jack Adams's presidential aspirations. It was too late afterward to drive back to Tannery Falls—it was dangerous for a woman to be alone in a car on lonely roads after dark—so Cindy spent the night in a hotel.

When she came downstairs in the morning, there was her new client, buying
The Wall Street Journal at
the newsstand. It was natural enough that he should be there—he was looking for a place to live in Ohio, and had flown in from Indianapolis. He saw her through the glass, waved but did not grin, and then came out, making no haste. Instead of walking on, she waited for him; she didn't know why.

He seemed surprised that she was still there. “Hi. Had breakfast yet?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. Want some?”

She didn't, really. She was a coffee-and-juice girl, but something stirred and she said, “All right.”

He ate an omelet and talked about movies. He had seen all of Ronald Reagan's movies.

“That was a real icebreaker with Nancy,” he said.

Cindy was surprised that he would drop a name—that one especially. If she turned out to be a Democrat, he had lost all hope of winning her heart. She said, “You've met Mrs. Reagan?”

“At a fund-raiser. But I don't mind paying to talk about
Kings Row.
It shows what can happen when you date the wrong doctor's daughter.”

“Watch it.”

“You're one?”

“Yep.” Cindy grinned. “But there's good news. I'm a Republican.”

He laughed. She liked him. He seemed to be unaware of her beauty. She might have been another male for all the attention he paid to her, even though she attracted her usual looks of longing from strangers. It was the number of hellos she attracted from passersby that interested him.

“Looks like I've got a lawyer who knows her Columbus,” he said. “I meant to ask: Who's the other Miller in Miller, Adams and Miller?”

“My husband, Danny.”

“The football player?”

“A long time ago, yes. How did you know?”

“He beat us often enough. Amazing athlete. And the Adams is …”

“I thought you said you checked around.”

“I did. But I was told he was inactive.”

“He is.”

“Good.” He did not elaborate; he had already made it plain that he was a Republican. “I always thought your husband would wind up in the NFL.”

“Actually, it would have been baseball. He was drafted by the Indians. But he was wounded in Vietnam.”

“Oh shit! Not him.”

“What's that mean?”

“The waste. Sorry. Is he all right now?”

Cindy said, “He adjusted. We're not together anymore.” It was the first time she had uttered these words. What was there about this man?

He said, “That's funny. Neither are my wife and me. That's why I sold the company.”

“Ah.”

“If I ask you to dinner, can we not talk about that part of our lives?”

“Yes.”

They dined together that night, on bad food at an expensive restaurant. Cindy had a wonderful time. He talked about everything but himself, treated her like the intelligent woman she was, and then said good night in the lobby of the hotel and—she had no reason to think otherwise—went to his own room.

The next Tuesday, after executing the papers Cindy had drawn up, they dined again; same ending. He did not ask for her home number but called her at the office over the next couple of weeks to invite her to lunch, to dinner, to the theater. He revealed that he was a Vietnam veteran—no combat, he'd been a staff officer at Westmoreland's headquarters. He had a very slight speech impediment, neither a lisp nor a stammer; he had trouble with certain diphthongs. He seemed unaware of this; it was quite charming, quite nice.

At last he found an apartment in a huge new condominium. He asked her to stop by and see it, to give him an opinion of the decoration. He had ended up with a lot of dark wood and sectional furniture and lithographs of ships and waterfowl. Was it too Great Western?

“More Hyatt-esque,” Cindy said.

They were in the large, lavishly equipped master bathroom, last stop on the tour.

He said, “Would you like to be kissed?”

She was truly startled. “Kissed?” she said. “No, not—”

He interrupted. “Fine.”

“Let me finish,” Cindy said. “Not in the bathroom.”

She took his hand and led him into the bedroom. Moments later they were in bed.

After they'd finished he said, “I didn't think I could do that with anyone again. Be so happy afterward, I mean. May I tell you something?”

“Yes.”

“I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever met. I've wanted to tell you that from the first moment, but I was afraid I'd lose you if I did.”

Cindy said, “You're not so bad yourself.”

“Stay.”

“I can't. I have to go.”

“To get away from me or what?”

“Not to get away from you. Believe me.”

“Then I'll come with you.”

9
He drove her to Tannery Falls. He admired the old Victorian house, noticing all the right details. But Cindy thought something was wrong. The house felt different.