Sleeping Beauty (79 page)

Their eyes met across the desk for a long minute. The thought of confronting Vince clanged within Charles like a terrifying alarm. No one confronted Vince; he confronted others. He confronted the world, and always won. Charles could not imagine facing him, accusing him, demanding from him a check for . . . good God, Charles thought, this is insane.

But Anne was there, her eyes steady on his. And he knew he owed this to her, even more than to himself. It was time he chose his daughter over his brother; it was twenty-five years overdue. I can do it, he thought. For Anne, for myself,
for the family. Maybe I couldn't do it before, but I'm not alone now. I have Anne, and the rest of them are behind me; they'll be with me from now on. Whatever happened to me before, everything is different now. . . .
Now.

The word was like a starting gun in a race. Briskly, making sure he had no time to change his mind, Charles walked to a closet in the corner and took out his overcoat. He pulled it on, and buttoned it, and took his hat and gloves from the shelf. “We'll catch the next plane for Washington.” He held out his hand. “I want you to see it happen,” he said.

*   *   *

Vince had just returned from Denver for the opening session of Congress. He was alone; Clara had stayed behind for another week. His butler had unpacked and put everything away; he had showered and had had a Scotch and soda, and he was in his bedroom, dressing for dinner, a second drink near at hand, when the doorman called to say Charles Chatham was in the lobby.

“Well, Charles,” he said, striding into the living room as the butler opened the front door. But it was not Charles who came in; it was Anne. Vince stopped short, his eyebrows drawn together, his thoughts racing from possibility to possibility as Charles followed her into the room.

“Vince,” said Charles. He did not hold out his hand. He eyed Vince's tuxedo, his shirt open at the top, his tie dangling around the collar, and he felt, as he frequently did with Vince, that he had intruded in his busy life. “I'm sorry for the short notice; we just came in from Chicago. I don't think . . . I hope this won't take too long.”

“I hope not,” Vince said shortly, but he did not say he was going out and they could see him tomorrow. He had to know what they wanted, why Anne was here, why Charles was nervous. “Well?” he said. “What is it you want?”

“May we sit down?” Anne asked quietly, and Vince felt a muscle in his throat begin to throb at the ease with which she had exposed him in his rudeness instead of standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, as he had intended.

He led the way past deep chairs and couches to a game
table near the curved windows overlooking the harbor. “A drink?” he asked briefly, gesturing toward a stocked sideboard.

“No, thank you,” said Anne. Charles shook his head. Vince poured a Scotch and soda and sat down, one ankle resting on his knee, his chair away from the table and tilted back, balancing on two legs. He looked at Charles, and waited.

“We've been talking to Keith,” Charles said.

Vince's head jerked up. His eyes were hooded, but his voice was smooth and only faintly curious. “Keith?”

“Your nephew. Who the hell else would I mean?” Charles took a breath. He was feeling stronger. There was something in Vince he had never seen before that made him think of an animal about to be cornered: not really worried, yet, but alert and prepared to retreat. “I'll tell you, Vince, too much has been going on lately. It's hard to believe that one family could be in the middle of so many catastrophes. There was that business with the highway to Deerstream. We had a senator on our side and he was on the right committee at the right time, but with all that, we lost it. And there's the EPA investigation in Tamarack, bad for the town and the company and the family, especially the incredible publicity it's had, and it just hit like a ton of bricks even though we had a senator on our side. And there was the pollution of the reservoir in Tamarack, bad for the town and the company and the family. And there was the gondola accident in Tamarack, terrible for the town and the company and the family. And then there was the offer to buy The Tamarack Company, when no one had been trying to sell. There was just too much going on, and after a while it got too hard to believe it was all coincidence. So we've been talking to people to try to track down what happened, and when and how. We talked to Keith. And to Zeke Ruddle, you know him, of course, the senator from Utah. And to Bud Kantor, I'm sure you know him; he's with the EPA.”

Charles drew back at the flare of rage in Vince's eyes. He looked down at his hands, white knuckled, hidden in his lap,
because he was confused whenever he looked at Vince. Vince's blond beauty was as pure and angelic as it had been when they were boys, his figure as trim, his hair as thick. Nothing seemed to touch him. Invulnerable Vince, Charles thought, and recalled that he had heard he was going to run for the presidency.

Vince smiled, so sweetly that Charles thought he must have been wrong about rage. “You've been so busy,” Vince said softly. “I thought you were concentrating on saving Dad's company, and instead you've been running around, interviewing people in Washington and Tamarack. Or maybe you're not the one who's been doing it. Who's this ‘we' you're talking about?”

“I didn't believe it at first,” Charles said somberly. “We've been so close, and I've admired and trusted you—God, there's never been a time when I didn't admire you and trust you—and I couldn't believe you'd do anything to hurt me. All those times you told me you were doing everything you could to help me, help the company, help all of us—”

“And I was,” Vince said. “How could you think anything else? I worked on that highway for months, but I couldn't get it moving; every damned farmer up there and his uncle had a different idea on where it should go. When Zeke came to me, what could I say? I'd tried everything I knew. And Bud Kantor came to me, even though he's pretty low on the totem pole around there and should have gone through channels, but he was worried about Tamarack and he knew my family was running it and he thought I'd be sympathetic. And I was. You know damn well there isn't anything I care about as much as the health of that town, in fact anything this family does—”

“That's a lie. All of it.” Charles was pale, and he was squeezing his words out through clenched teeth. If he had stopped to think that he was calling Vince a liar, he might have fled. But he kept pushing out the words, glancing at Vince and then away and then back again. “I told you, I didn't believe it at first. But after a while I kept remembering
one thing. It's probably a little thing to you; you may not even remember it. It was a walk we took one night after dinner, along the C and O canal. There was a little kid who came up—sprang at us, I guess you could say—wanting money. Not a lot; five dollars, I think; maybe ten. And you started to beat the hell out of him. It was the damndest thing; I couldn't believe it was you. That was the night Dad had his stroke. I flew to Tamarack and forgot what had happened. But now I can't stop thinking about it. Because there's that side of you that can beat up a little kid. And beat up your family.”

“Charles, Charles,” Vince chided gently. “You don't mean any of that.” He brought his chair down and leaned forward. “This isn't the Charles I know, making such wild accusations. Someone's turned you against me; you're hardly even looking at me! Charles, we've had some rough times in our family, but we've never let outsiders poison our feelings toward each other. My God, what would Dad say if he could hear you? Accusing me as if I'm some kind of monster out to ruin you. He couldn't stand it if he knew—”

“Leave Dad out of this! Christ, Vince, you've betrayed everything he ever cared about; he would have kicked you out ten times over if he'd known about all this. And who the hell is the outsider? This is our family I'm talking about; everything we've done has been inside the family. You wanted to know who ‘we' are?
All of us who belong in this family.
If anybody's an outsider, it's you.”

For a split second, the room was silent. Then Vince flung himself around, facing Anne. “You fucking bitch,” he rasped. “You put him up to this.”

“Shut up!” Charles shot to his feet and towered over Vince. “You don't talk that way to my daughter! You did enough to her when she was a baby! If you want to go after anybody, go after me! I'm telling you what
I
think, not what anybody else thinks or says. Look at me, damn you; I'm talking to you! I want to talk about the deals you cut with Zeke Ruddle. And Bud Kantor. And the dynamite that started the slide above the drainage ditch in Tamarack. And
the gondola accident. The piece of wood Keith jammed into the grip
on the car Anne and Leo were riding in,
and the bolt he took out and planted at Josh Durant's house. I want to talk about—”

“I don't know what the fuck you're talking about!” Vince's voice had risen to match Charles'. He stood up, facing him, his fury increasing because he was not tall enough to have his eyes level with Charles'. “You didn't get any of that from Keith! He didn't tell you a goddam thing because there isn't anything—”

“You don't know what he told us. Do you really trust him? Do you think you know what he'd say, how much he'd say, no matter who's asking the questions?”

“You son of a bitch—!”

“Is there anything you need, Senator?” the butler asked. He stood in the doorway, his face perfectly bland.

“No,” snapped Vince. “And don't bother us again.” He waited until the butler had withdrawn, as silently as he had come, then he turned to Charles, calmer, a small, puzzled frown between his eyes. “If Keith told you any of that, what does it have to do with me? It sounds like a kid trying to be James Bond. I didn't think Keith was like that. Dynamite? Why would Keith talk about dynamite? And wood jammed in a—what? A grip, you said? And a missing bolt? And something else; the car Anne and Leo were in. That's a little sly, isn't it, Charles? Are you implying Anne and Leo were targeted? You've gotten quite dramatic. But I can't help you; I don't have any idea what you're talking about. And I can't believe Keith has such flights of fantasy. I hardly ever talk to him, but when I do, he seems to me to be a fine young man, not the kind to make up stories that could hurt other people. In fact, you don't know a damn thing.” He took a few steps away from Charles, and turned back, almost carelessly. “You've been making up a bunch of fairy tales that don't have a goddam thing to do with me, and I'm tired of listening to you. We don't have anything to talk about, Charles. I'm terribly disappointed in you; I thought we were as close as brothers could be, but—”

“This is a list of the days Keith called you in the past six months in Denver and Washington and Miami, with the length of each telephone call,” Charles said, taking a slip of paper from his pocket and laying it on the table. “If you've been close to anyone lately, it's been him.”

There was a pause. Vince glanced at the paper but did not move to pick it up. “That's a lawyer's trick, isn't it? To spy on people and keep track of their phone calls. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, should I, Charles? You never did have a mind of your own. You used to bend every which way, depending on whatever I said; now you've switched to somebody new to tell you what to think.”

Charles drew in his breath. It had been true for too long. He glanced at Anne. She had not moved the whole time; she had kept her eyes on him. Now she smiled at him, very calmly, very softly, just for him. She would not let him or Vince know how Vince's voice made her cringe within herself, the bile rising in her throat, her head so tight with remnants of fear and shame she thought it would burst. But this time she was not helpless; this time she had a life of her own, and she burned with a pure flame of anger and contempt. Vince would not dominate her, ever again, and if she had anything to do with it, he would not dominate Charles, either.

“As a matter of fact, it
was
my idea,” she reminded Charles. “But everything else we've done has involved all of us at different times. Nobody can get far without teamwork. And respect.”

“Keep out of this,” Vince spat, but he saw that Charles was smiling, no longer wavering, and he turned back to him, to try to get him off-balance again. “Look, Charles, what are you accusing me of? Keeping in touch with my nephew? What about all the times I called you, or you called me, so we could keep in touch?” He waited, but Charles said nothing. Vince let out his breath in an angry burst. He walked the length of the room and stood beside the foyer leading to the front door. “Get out, both of you. We don't have anything to talk about. I don't know what the hell you
expected me to say; I don't give a damn. I want you out of here. Now.”

“I want sixty million dollars from you,” Charles said loudly, to cover the uncertainty that kept welling up in him. They had no proof of anything; Keith had not told them anything. But he had gone too far to stop. “I've canceled the sale of The Tamarack Company and I need the money at Chatham Development.”

Stunned, Vince stared at him. “You canceled the sale? You couldn't have.”

“I'm the president of the parent company. I signed the letter of intent. And I tore it up this morning. Beloit already knows about it. I've returned his earnest money. It's over.”

“No.” Still stunned, Vince shook his head. “It was a deal. It was set.”

“Not anymore. I need that money, Vince. I'm serious. I need it and I need it right away.”

“You're out of your mind. You killed that sale . . . no, you didn't; I'm going to see that it goes through. You made a deal and you'll goddam well stick to it. But you tried to kill it, and now you're crying for money and you think I'll give it to you.
Sixty million dollars?
You're out of your mind. I wouldn't give you a penny! You invade my house and throw a bunch of accusations at me as if I'm some kind of criminal; you scream at me like a fishwife; you accuse me of attempted murder, for Christ's sake, and tell me I'm an
outsider
in my own family, and then you want money from me! Sixty million dollars! For Christ's sake, you're insane. You're both insane; she thought of this, didn't she? Lawyers are used to blackmail; they do it all the time. Well, not me! You don't blackmail me, you bastard; you aren't getting a fucking thing from me,
ever!
Is that clear? Don't you ever come whining to me again about your problems because we are through! You and your little bitch; you're—”