Outerbridge Reach (51 page)

“We don't know what he knows. Obviously he reads English. Anyway, his ship's at sea. En route to La Guaíra.”

“Is your phone secure?”

“Negative.”

“Fucking mess,” said Harry sadly. “Tell Duffy to call me.”

In the small hours of the morning, Duffy called. He sounded less than sober.

“Sit on it,” Harry told him. “Understand?”

“Harry, what else would I do?”

“We have to do something about Strickland.”

“It's up to her, Harry.”

“Quite right,” Harry said.

He had taken to spending some of his insomniac nights at Shadows. The place had grown on him. Through the heavy lancet window, half obscured by ivy, he could see the moonlight on the Hudson and the great brooding shape of Storm King Mountain against the luminous night sky. In one corner of the oak-paneled room stood his reading chair attended by a Tiffany lamp. His books lined the wall beside it. There was a fire in the grate. That evening he had been reading a history of the Venetian republic.

The ironies, Harry thought, might be satisfying had he been a bitter man. He tried not to be one. The last measure of Matty Hylan's perfidy had come to light: banks purchased with junk bonds making loans secured by worthless boats. Cooked books, forged storage receipts. He himself had survived it all. Every division of the Hylan Corporation he directly controlled had weathered the crisis. No allegations of dishonesty had been proved against him. Sunday supplements and the slick yuppie press had run his most unflattering pictures, sinisterly lit from below. They had mocked his good causes, his cultural pretensions and his diction. Even his dead wife's memory had amused them. In the end, they had proved nothing against him. His attorneys were reviewing areas of defamation.

The truth was they had wanted him dead. They had wanted him smashed to a pulp on the sidewalk like his old friend Sam, disgraced and out the window. They had wanted to jerk off and moralize over his corpse and turn his life's work to laughter.

In the end, all his most jaundiced suspicions had been confirmed, all his trust confounded. False friends and
Schadenfreude,
cheerful lies and bad intentions had all been made plain. The time of reckoning was at hand, when the foxes would have their portion and the common laughers their reward. There was a last laugh available for him, if he wanted it.

But laughs were easily come by, Harry thought. What he had wanted for once was not to laugh. To be reduced to reverence, to be worthily impressed, to be edified even, by something human. And now this.

In the firelight of his riverine fortress, Harry shook his head over the Brownes. So elegant, so intelligent, and finally a pair of flakes. It had been naive of him to fall for the old white-shoe routine, but of course he had always been a sucker for it.

His lost regard for Anne embarrassed him. He could imagine her laughing at him. Indeed, considering her background, he could imagine the worst. He knew her father well. Hardly a surprise that Jack's daughter turned out to be a superannuated, angel-eyed colleen with a round behind and heels to go with it. As disillusionments went, it was survivable.

Enough to make a just man fall back on religion, Thorne considered. His old friend Sam had been a scholar, betrayed by books, confused by explanations. Of course there was more to faith than commentary and explication.

Punishment had come to her. You had to wonder about the scene down in Brazil. The new widow, her husband dead and disgraced, her stuttering boyfriend, the clever prick. Some godforsaken equatorial port. What would he talk her into? He might have a promising film there if he could finance it.

Of course a film was not desirable. It reflected badly. Moreover she should realize that the relief fund he had established when
Nona
was found was no longer viable. No one wanted to contribute to the relicts of a chiseler. He might provide something for her himself, privately, if the film was dropped. If she had the self-respect to ease herself from sight. On the other hand, she might realize that, properly advised, she could do well from a film, if she was whore enough to profit from her own family's humiliation. It remained to be seen.

The idea of putting something aside for her appealed to him. Lest they should dare imagine, he thought, that he, vain suitor of excellence, hoped to profit by their argosies, their fancy dancing. When the dawn colored the sky above the mountain, he got up and went to bed.

T
HE HOTEL
stood beside a river called the Cachoeira; her window commanded the squalor of the port. Police klaxons, exhaust fumes and the fragrance of hibiscus drifted up from the streets.

“Don't you see it?” Strickland demanded. He was drenched in sweat because there had been a power outage. Thunder sounded over the deep green peaks to the north. “It's an incredible story!”

“What is that to me?” she asked. “What good is it to Maggie?”

“The story here is more important than a couple of people.”

“In your world maybe. Not where I live.”

“Look,” he insisted, “it's a way of coming to terms with it.”

“I don't want your advice on coming to terms.”

“You talk as though it were none of my business.”

“It isn't,” she said. “Not really. It's not you going through it.” He stood in the open balcony doorway mopping his brow.

“I want to be here for you.”

She simply put up her hand and turned away, cutting off his words, blocking out the sight of him.

“You're wrong,” he insisted softly. “You'll regret it all your life if we don't finish this.”

Clear-eyed, she looked out at the gray sky.

“My responsibility is to my daughter. It's my job to protect her now.”

“It is not your responsibility to stage a cover-up. It's not your responsibility to lie.”

“I did this to her,” Anne said. “I caused it all to be. I lost her her father, letting him go.”

“Anne, that's utterly crazy.”

“He was sick at heart. I talked him into being a goddam hero instead of helping him cope. I played around.”

Strickland rolled his eyes heavenward and smote his brow.

“I think God punished me,” she said.

“What are you? Some shawlie in the hills of fucking Skibbereen? Get straight.”

“I can't give her her father back,” Anne said. “But I can keep the world from making him a figure of contempt.”

“This is wrongheaded,” Strickland told her. “Look, the world will find out. You know it and I know it.” He smiled grimly. “I mean, it's too good to conceal. A thing like this will surface.”

“I know how it would look in your hands.”

“You talk as though I were your enemy.”

“You were
his
enemy. Don't say you weren't.”

“I was in a state. Involving you.” He stood back and folded his arms as though surprised. “That's true enough.”

“You mocked him. You encouraged him to try and explain his dreams.”

“I told him not to go,” Strickland said. It had just occurred to him. “I bet that's more than you did.”

“Did you?”

“I did. In the boat at South Street. I got a feeling.”

“Well you're right,” she said. The dreadful night before his departure came back to her. He would not have gone if she had only spoken up. “It's more than I did.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“Sorry.”

“Oh, it's all right,” she said. “I know how cruel you can be. That's why I can't let you go ahead.”

“I suppose,” he said, “I suppose I have to infer from this conversation that things are over between us.”

She looked away.

“Sorry to hear it,” Strickland said. “But that's life, right?” He looked out over the tin roofs toward the mangrove banks of the river. “So I won't say anything about what you might owe
me.”
He walked over to where she stood and put his palms together.

“Let me explain something to you, Anne. It may look to you as though Owen is a figure of contempt. You may think that the world will despise his memory and that my film will somehow further that.” He shook his head and showed her his bleak smile. “You're so wrong! Can't you understand? What he did—it's what everybody does.”

She looked at the ceiling and folded her arms. “No, I can't understand, Ron. I can't follow your reasoning. I never could.”

“Everybody trims, Anne. Everybody fakes it. Of course they do. We all try for the reach. Believe me, I've been putting the movers and doers on film all my life. They're all fakes, one way or another. It's the c . . .” He fought for the word. “Condition.” Strickland grew encouraged from her look.

“In a way he was a true hero, Anne. Not as some hyped-up overachiever but as an ordinary man. He reduced his problems with life to that diagram—the sky, the ocean. For Christ's sake, don't you see it?”

“It was a simple lie!” she shouted. “He would have lied to us.”

“I have a feeling you're wrong,” Strickland said. “I think he would have told you everything.”

“I wouldn't have accepted it,” she said. “I wouldn't!”

“My dear Anne. Of course you would have. You would have forgiven him.”

“Do you really have so high an opinion of him now?” she asked coldly. “You didn't used to.”

“I don't have to see you go back to him now,” Strickland said, “so I'm on the level.”

She bit her lip and looked away. Strickland sat down on the bed and watched her.

“You know, his problem was really his honesty.” He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Some men would have faked it and spent the rest of their lives laughing. Not our Mr. Browne.”

He watched her for a moment, then shrugged.

“You should be proud of him. He wasn't a great sailor. But he was an honest man in the end. Annie,” he asked, facing her opaque scrutiny, “are you hearing me at all?”

“Yes,” she said, “I hear you.”

“I'll tell you something else, my love. My former love, in your case, although not in mine. I really am an artist. I mean to the extent that it means anything, if it means anything. I do try.”

“I suppose you do,” she said.

“This I swear to you, Anne.” Standing up, he raised his right hand. “Any audience that sees my film will understand what I've said. If you will let me work. If you will let me tell the story, I will compel them to understand. Now do you comprehend what I'm telling you?”

“Sure,” Anne said. “I get it. The square-up.”

T
HAT NIGHT
she slept on sedatives, awakening to her grief and crashing rain. It took her nearly an hour to notice that the old-fashioned, legal-size manila envelope that contained the log sheets was missing. Before calling anyone, she sat trying to imagine what had happened.

Strickland had a key to her room. The sliding bolt on the lock had sheared in half and could be opened by anyone with a key. She called Collins, the lawyer, and Duffy. As they sat in her room pondering what next to do, the town's electricity failed again, putting the air conditioning and the lights out of commission. Duffy opened the shutters.

“Some goddam nerve,” he was saying.

Anne paced the floor.

“I can't believe he did it,” she told them.

Later the hotel desk called to say that an envelope had been left for her. The envelope contained the logs, with a note from Strickland. She told Collins immediately, before reading the note.

“Anne,” it said, “I have a responsibility to Owen, to myself, to all the other people in the world—even to you and Maggie. This is one you ought not to win. Love R.”

She sat and reread it, blushing with rage. He had copied the logs in the hotel office. Later Collins determined that he had gone to the marina and taken all the exposed film he could find from the boat. Then he had flown to Salvador, Miami and home.

“That no-good son of a gun,” Duffy said.

“Of course,” Collins told them, “it was his film. He provided it to Mr. Browne.”

“It belonged to me,” she insisted. “To us. We could have gotten the Brazilians to hold it.”

“Ma'am,” Collins said, “I'd say he got the jump on us.”

That afternoon she engaged one of the taxis in front of the hotel to take her to the marina where the boat was being held. On the drive they passed a burning cane field and Indian cattle grazing under swarms of flies among ruined vines. The earth was blood red, the vegetation fleshy. Everything was death and fecundity. The taxi's radio played softly insinuating music.

A black Brazilian sailor in whites and spats patrolled the gate of the marina, carrying a carbine. He swung the metal barrier aside and motioned the taxi through unchallenged. They followed a winding asphalted road that led down to the water through groves of sea grape and coconut palms. Where it ended, two long docks stretched into the bay, lined with the pleasure boats of the rich. The air carried a scent of teak and suntan oil, but the day was stormy and there was no one in sight. Palm fronds tossed uneasily. The bare rigging of the moored boats whistled and jingled in the wind. She had the driver wait.

Nona
was off by herself, moored by the harbormaster's cabana at the north end of the marina. The sight of her caused Anne a swelling of grief because for a moment she was sure she would see Owen aboard. The boat's contours suggested his presence.

Drawing nearer, she saw that the mast was sagging badly. A litter of turnbuckles and wire lay across the cabintop. The sails hung slack and unsecured. She tossed her shoes on the dock and stepped aboard over the bow rail. The warm fiberglass deck underfoot increased her sense of moving in his traces.

She ran her hand along the salted surface of the mast, then leaned on a stay and looked out toward the open sea. The water, light green under a heavy gray hot sky, was flecked with dirty whitecaps. For a while, at first, she had indulged an unlikely hope that, having fallen overboard in some unsound mental state, he might be rescued. Now, in sight of this feverish green ocean, she felt certain he was dead. Months of solitude had impressed his living presence on the boat. That was what she had been feeling.