Spy Hook (16 page)

I had arrived in the New World and was as bemused as Columbus. In this part of the world it was already spring, the air was warm and the sky was that pale shade of blue that portends a steep rise in temperature. The noisy downtown streets were crowded with black roaring Porsches and white Rolls-Royce convertibles, shouting kids rattled round on roller skates and pretty girls preened in sun-tops and shorts.

Up the ramp. On the Freeway that stretches across the city, the anarchy of the busy streets ended. Apart from some kids racing past in a dented pickup, restrained drivers observed lane discipline and moved at a steady pace. The wind roared through the jeep's open sides and threatened to blow me from my seat. I huddled down to shelter behind the windscreen. Buddy turned the music louder and looked at me and grinned.

'Funiculi,' sung Buddy between chewing. 'Funicula.'

Once clear of the 'international airport', its manana-minded airline staff and its hard-eyed bureaucrats, Southern California reaches out to its visitors. The warmth of the sun, the sight of the San Gabriel mountains, dry winds from the desert, the bitter herbal smells of the brushwood flowers, the orange poppies in the bright green landscape that has not yet suffered the cruel heat of summer; at this time of year all these things urge me to stay for ever.

Racing along the road that is slung roof-high above the city, there was a view of the whole of Los Angeles from the ocean to the mountains. Clusters of tall buildings at Century City, and more at Broadway, dominated a town of modest little suburban houses squeezed between pools and palms. Soon Buddy took an off-ramp and cut across town to pick up the Pacific Coast Highway and go north following the signs that point the way to Santa Barbara and eventually San Francisco. At Malibu the traffic thinned, and we sped past an ever more varied selection of elaborate and eccentric beach houses: until houses, and even seafood restaurants, ended and the road followed the very edge of the continent. Here the Pacific Ocean relentlessly assaulted the seashore. Huge green breakers exploded into lacy foam and a mist of water vapour, and roared so loudly that the noise of them could be heard above the sound of the jeep's engine, and that of the music.

Buddy took the gum from his mouth and pitched it out on to the road. 'They told me you'd ask questions,' he confided.

'No,' I said.

'And they said I shouldn't tell you anything.'

'It's working out just fine,' I said.

He nodded, and dodged round a big articulated truck marked Budweiser, before flattening the gas pedal against the floor and showing me what speed his jeep would do.

We passed the place where agile figures dangling from hang-gliders threw themselves off the high cliffs and did figure of eights above the highway and the Pacific Ocean before landing on the narrow strip of beach that provided their only chance of survival. We passed the offshore oil-rigs, standing like anchored aircraft carriers in the mist. By the time we turned off the Pacific Coast Highway into a narrow 'Seven mile canyon' we were well past the county line and into Ventura. And I was getting hungry.

It was a private road, narrow and pot-holed. On the corner a tall wooden post was nailed with half a dozen signs in varying degrees of deterioration: 'Schuster Ranch', 'Greentops quarter-horse Stud – no visits', 'Ogarkov', 'D and M Bishop', 'Rattlesnake Computer Labs' and 'Highacres'. As the jeep climbed up the dirt road into the canyon I wondered which of those establishments we were going to. But as we passed all the mailboxes on the roadside it became clear that we were heading up to some unmarked property nearer the summit.

We were about three miles up the canyon, and high enough to get glimpses of the ocean far below us, when we came to gates in a high chain-link fence that stretched on either side as far as I could see. Alongside the gate a sign said, ' La Buona Nova. Private Property. Beware guard dogs.' Buddy steered the jeep to within reaching distance of a small box on a metal post. He pressed a red button and spoke into the box. 'Hi there! It's Buddy with the visitor. Open up will yuh?'

With a hesitant, jerky motion, and a loud grinding of hidden mechanical devices, the gates slowly opened. From the box a tinny voice said, 'Hang in to see the gates click shut, Buddy. Last week's rain seems to have gotten to them.'

We drove inside and Buddy did as he'd been told. I could see no buildings anywhere but I had the feeling that we were being kept under observation by whoever the tinny voice belonged to. 'Keep your hands inside the car,' Buddy advised. 'Those darn dogs run free in this outer compound.'

We continued up the dirt road, always climbing and leaving hairpins of dust on the trail behind us. Then suddenly, around a spur, another chain fence came into view. There was another gate and a small hut.

Inside this second perimeter fence there were three figures. At first they looked like a man with his two children, but when I got closer I could see it was a huge man with two Mexicans. They were guards. The white man had his belt slung under a big gut. He wore a stetson, starched khakis, high boots and had a shield-shaped gold badge on his shirt. In his hand he held a small transceiver. The Mexicans wore dark brown shirts and one of them had a shotgun. Like the chainlink fence, the men looked fresh and well cared for. One of the Mexicans opened the gate and the big man waved us through.

It was still another mile or more to where a cluster of low pink stucco buildings with red-tiled roofs sat tight just below the summit of the hill. The buildings were of indeterminate age, and designed in the style that Californians call Spanish. Passing a couple of mud-spattered Japanese pickups, Buddy parked the jeep in a cool barnlike building which already held an old Cadillac Seville and a Lamborghini. Buddy put on his stetson, looked at himself in the wing mirror to adjust the brim, and then took my bags. With my jacket over my arm, and sweating in the afternoon heat, I followed him. The main buildings were two storeys high and provided views westwards to the ocean. On the east side they sheltered a wide patio of patterned tiles and a pool about twenty-five yards along. The pool was blue and limpid, with just enough breeze from the ocean to dimple the surface of the water. There was no one to be seen except in the pool, where a slim middle-aged woman was swimming in the gentle dog-paddle style that ensures that your eye make-up doesn't get splashed. At the side of the pool where she'd been sitting there was a big pink towel, bottles of sun-oil and other cosmetics, a brush and comb and a hand-mirror. Leaning against the chair there was a half-completed watercolour painting of bougainvillaea flowers. Beside it there was a large paint box and a jar of brushes.

'Hello, Buddy,' called the lady in the pool without interrupting her swim. 'What's the traffic like? Hi there, Mr Samson. Welcome to La Buona Nova. '

Without slowing his pace Buddy called, 'We came up the PCH, Mrs O'Raffety, but if you're going to town, go through the canyon.' He swivelled his head for long enough to give her one of his sly, gap-toothed smiles. I waved to her and said thanks but had to hurry to follow him.

He went up two steps to an arcaded passageway which provided shady access to, and held chairs and tables for, three guest suites that occupied one side of the building. One of the outdoor tables still had the remains of breakfast: a vacuum coffee pot, a glass jug of juice and expensive-looking tableware of a sort that Gloria would have liked. Buddy opened the door and led the way into the last suite. It was decorated in a theme of pink and white. On the walls there were three framed landscape paintings, amateurish watercolours of local scenes that I was inclined to authenticate as O'Raffety originals.

'Mrs O'Raffety is my mother-in-law,' Buddy explained without being asked. 'She's sixty years old. She owns this whole setup.' He put the bags down and opening the door of the huge green and white tiled bathroom said, 'This is your suite. Switch the air to the way you want it.' He indicated a control panel on the wall. 'You've got time for a swim before lunch. Swim suits in the closet and a slew of towels in the other room.'

'Lunch? Isn't it a bit late for lunch?' The afternoon had almost gone.

'I guess, but Mrs O' Raffety eats any time. She said she'd wait for you.'

'That's very nice of her,' I said.

The large brown-tinted windows gave a view of the patio area. Mrs O'Raffety was still swimming slowly down the pool. There was a look of stem determination on her face. I watched her as she reached the deep end and steered round majestically, like the Queen Elizabeth coming in to Southampton. I could see her more clearly from here. The swimming produced a look of concentration on her face so that, despite the trim figure, and the Beverly Hills beauty treatments, she looked every bit of her sixty years. 'It's quite a place,' I said, realizing that some such response was expected from me.

'She'd get three million dollars – maybe more – if she wanted to sell. There's all that land.'

'And is she going to sell?' I said, hoping to find out more about my mysterious hostess, and why I had been brought here.

'Mrs O'Raffety? She'll never sell. She's got all the money she needs.'

'Do you live here too?' I asked. I was trying to guess at his position in the household.

'I have a beautiful home: three bedrooms, pool, Jacuzzi, everything. We passed it on the way up here: the place with the big palm trees.'

'Oh, yes,' I said, although I hadn't noticed such a place.

'My marriage went wrong,' he said. 'Charly – that's Mrs O'Raffety's daughter – left me. She married a movie actor we met at a benefit dinner. He never seemed to get the right kind of parts, so they went to live in Florida. They have a lovely home just outside Palm Beach.' He said it without rancour – or any emotion – as a man might talk of people he'd only read about in the gossip columns.

'But you stayed with Mrs O'Raffety?'

'Well, I had to stay,' said Buddy. 'I'm Mrs O'Raffety's attorney. I handle things for her.'

'Oh, yes, of course.'

'You have your swim, Mr Samson. The water's kept at eighty degrees. Mrs O'Raffety has to swim on account of her bad back, but she can't abide cold water.' He stared through the window to watch her swimming. There was a fixed expression on his face that could have been concern for her.

'And who is Mr O'Raffety?' I said.

'Who is Mr O'Raffety?' Buddy was puzzled by my question.

'Yes. Who is Mr O'Raffety? What does he do for a living?'

Buddy's face relaxed. 'Oh, I get you,' he said. 'What does he do for a living. Well, Shaun O'Raffety was Mrs O'Raffety's hairdresser: L.A…a fancy place on Rodeo Drive.' Buddy rubbed his face. 'Way back before my time, of course. It didn't last long. She gave him the money to buy a bar in Boston. She hasn't seen him in ten years but sometimes I have to go and get him out of trouble.'

'Trouble?'

'Money trouble. Women trouble. Tax return trouble. Bookies or fist-fights in the bar so that the cops get mad. Never anything bad. Old Shaun is an Irishman. No real harm in him. He just can't choose carefully enough: not his clients, his friends or his women.'

'Except in the case of Mrs O'Raffety,' I said.

For a moment I thought Buddy was going to take offence, but he contained himself and said, 'Yeah. Except in the case of Mrs O'Raffety.' The smile was noticeably absent.

'Since you're Mrs O'Raffety's attorney, Buddy, perhaps you could explain why I've been brought here.'

He looked at me as if trying to help, trying to guess the answer. 'Socializing isn't my bag,' said Buddy. He was silent for a few moments, as if regretting telling me about his employer and mother-in-law. Then he said, 'Mrs O'Raffety has a social secretary to handle the invites: weekend guests and cocktails and dinner parties and suchlike.'

'But just between the two of us, Buddy, I've never even heard of Mrs O'Raffety.'

'Then maybe you are here to visit one of Mrs O'Raffety's permanent guests. Do you know Mr Rensselaer? He lives in the house with the big bougainvillaea.'

'Bret Rensselaer?'

'That's correct.'

'He's dead.'

'No sir.'

Everyone knew Bret was dead. If Frank Harrington said he was dead; he was dead. Frank was always right about things like that. Bret died of gunshot wounds resulting from a gun-battle in Berlin nearly three years ago. I was only a couple of yards away. I saw him fall; I heard him scream. 'Bret Rensselaer,' I said carefully. 'About sixty years old. Blond hair. Tall. Thin.'

'You've got him. White hair now but that's him all right. He's been sick. Real bad. An auto accident somewhere in Europe. Mrs O'Raffety brought him here. She had that guest house remodelled and fixed up a beautiful room with equipment where he could do his special exercises and stuff. He could hardly walk when he first arrived. One or other of the therapy nurses comes up here every day, even Sunday.' He looked at the expression on my face. 'You knew him in Europe, maybe?'

'I knew him very well,' I said.

'Isn't that something.' Buddy Breukink nodded. 'Yeah, he's some kind of distant relation to Mrs O'Raffety. Old Cy Rensselaer – the famous one they named the automobile for – was Mrs O'Rafferty's grandfather.'

'I see.' So Bret Rensselaer really was still alive and they'd brought me all this way to see him. Why?

We ate lunch very late. Mrs Helena O'Raffety didn't eat much. Perhaps she'd had lots of other lunches earlier in the day. But she kept her salad scared, moving it around the huge pink plate like a cop harassing a drunk.

'I'm a European,' she said. She'd been explaining that she was, at heart, quite unlike her native Californian friends and acquaintances. 'When I was very young I always said that one day I'd buy a little apartment in Berlin, but when I got there, it seemed such a sad place. And so dirty. Everything I wore got sooty. So I never got around to it.' She sighed and this time speared a segment of peeled tomato and ate it.

'It gets cold in Berlin,' I told her. I looked at the sun glittering on the blue water of the pool beside us and the brightly coloured tropical flowers. I smelled the wild sage, breathed the clean air off the ocean and watched the hawks slowly circling high above us. We were a long way from Berlin.

'Is that right?' she said exhibiting only mild interest. 'I've only been twice; both times in the fall. I always take vacations in the fall. It stays warm and the resorts are not so crowded.' As if to offset the simplicity of her blue cotton beach dress she wore lots of jewellery: a gold chain necklace, half a dozen rings and a gold watch with diamonds around the face. Now she touched the rings on her fingers, twisting them as if they were uncomfortable, or perhaps to make sure they were all still there.

From the garage at the back there was the sudden sound of the Wrangler being started and gunned impatiently. I'd got used to Buddy Breukink's manner by now and I recognized his touch. Varoom, varoom, varoom, went the engine. Mrs O'Raffety looked up to the sky with a pained expression. It wouldn't require an overdeveloped imagination to see suppressed rage in just about everything that Buddy did.

'They quarrelled about the education of my little grandson Peter.' No need for her to say who she was talking about. 'Buddy has his own ideas but my daughter wants him brought up in the Jewish faith.' She drank some iced tea.

I was fully occupied with the elaborate 'lobster salad' that had been put before me. Every salad vegetable I'd ever heard of- from Shütaki mushrooms to lotus root – made a decorative jardiniere for half a dozen baby lobster tails in rich mayonnaise. On a separate pink plate there was a hot baked potato heaped with sour cream and garnished with small pieces of crispy bacon. Salads in California are not designed for weight-loss. I looked up from my plate. Mrs O'Raffety was looking at me quizzically. She waited until I nodded.

'It's solely a question of the female line,' she explained, prodding at a radish that rolled over and escaped. 'My mother was a Jew, so I am a Jew. Therefore my daughter is a Jew and so her son is a Jew. Buddy just can't seem to understand that.'

'Perhaps,' I ventured, 'it's difficult to reconcile with a mother-in-law named O'Raffety.'

She looked at me with a stern expression I'd noticed when she was swimming. Her eyes were glacial blue. 'Maybe it is,' she conceded. 'Maybe it is. Mind you, I'm not strict. We don't eat kosher. You can't with Mexican kitchen staff.'

'And where is your little grandson now?'

'In Florida. Last week Buddy was taking lunch with a private detective. I'm frightened he's got some plan to take the child away somewhere.'

'Kidnap him?'

'Buddy gets emotional.'

'But he's a lawyer.'

'Even lawyers get emotional,' she said, dismissing the subject without entirely condemning such emotion. As the sound of Buddy's jeep receded she went back to the subject of being European. 'I was born in Berlin,' she told me. 'I have relatives in Berlin. Maybe one day I'll seek them out. But then I ask myself: who needs more relatives.' She toyed with a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, and a gold lighter, as if trying to resist temptation.

'You came to America as a child?'

She nodded. 'But lost the language. A few years back I started taking German lessons, but I just couldn't seem to get the hang of it. All those bothersome verbs…' She laughed. 'More wine?'

'Thank you.'

She plucked the bottle from the bucket. 'A friend of mine – not far from here – makes it. His Chablis is excellent, the rose is good – wonderful colour – but the red doesn't quite come off so I keep to the French reds.' She poured the remainder of the wine into my glass. She called all white wines Chablis; everyone in California seemed to do that.

'What about you, Mrs O'Raffety?' I said. She never invited me to call her by her first name and I noticed that even her son-in-law addressed her in that same formal way, so she must have liked being Mrs O'Raffety. She had, I suppose, paid enough for the privilege.

'I take only half a glass. Chablis affects the joints you know, it's the uric acid.'

'I didn't know that.'

The bottle dripping from the ice water, had made her fingers wet. Fastidiously she dried her hands on a pink towel before touching the cigarettes again. 'You're easy to talk to,' she said, looking at me through narrowed eyes as if my appearance might explain it. 'Did anyone ever tell you that? It's a gift being a good listener. You listen but show no curiosity; I suppose that's the secret.'

'Perhaps it is,' I said.

'You can't imagine how excited Bret was to hear you were actually coming.'

'I'm looking forward to seeing him again.'

'He's with the physiotherapist right now. Miss a session and he's set back a week: that's what the doctor says, and he's right. I know. All my life I've suffered with this darn disc of mine.' She touched her back as if remembering the pain.

When I finished the lobster salad a servant magically appeared to remove the plates to a side-table: mine totally cleaned and Mrs O'Raffety's still laden with food.

'Do you mind if I smoke, Mr Samson?'

The Mexican servant – a muscular middle-aged man with the tight skin and passive face of the Indian – waited for her orders. There was not only a dignity about him, there was an element of repressed strength, like a fierce dog that was awaiting the order to spring.

I felt like inviting Mrs O'Raffety to call me Bernard, but she was the sort of woman who might decline such an invitation. 'It's your home,' I told her.

'And my lungs. Yes, that's what Buddy tells me.' She gave a throaty little laugh and tugged a cigarette from the pack on the table. The servant bent over and lit it for her. 'Now Mr Samson: fresh strawberries? Raspberries? Cook's home-made blueberry pie? What else is there, Luis?' There was something disconcerting about the way that California 's menus defied the strictures of the seasons. 'The pies are just gorgeous,' she added but didn't ask for any.

When I'd decided upon blueberry pie and icecream, and the silent Luis had departed to get it, Mrs O'Raffety said, 'You'll notice the change in him. Bret, I mean, he's not the man he used to be.' She looked at the burning tip of her cigarette. 'He'll want to tell you how tough he is, of course. Men are like that, I know. But don't encourage him to do anything stupid, will you?'

'What sort of stupid thing is he likely to do?'

'The physician has him on drugs up here.' She held her hand up to her head. 'And he has to rest in the afternoon too. He's sick.'

'The surgeons in Berlin didn't expect him to survive,' I said. 'He's lucky to have you to look after him, Mrs O'Raffety.'

'What else could I do? The hospital bills were piling up, and Bret had some lousy British insurance scheme that didn't even cover the cost of his room.' She smoked her cigarette. 'I got Buddy to try getting more money from them but you know what insurance companies are like.'

'You were the good Samaritan,' I said.

'Who else did he have who would take him? And I was related to him in a crazy roundabout way. Not kin. My grandfather married Bret's widowed mother. She changed the children's names to Rensselaer. Bret's real name was Turner.'

'He was married,' I said.

'Do you know his wife?' She flicked ash into the ashtray.

'No.'

'I contacted her. I wrote and told her Bret was on the point of death. No reply. She never even sent a get-well card.' Mrs O'Raffety inhaled deeply and blew smoke in a manner that displayed her contempt. She reminded me of Cindy Matthews just for a moment. They were both women who knew what they wanted.

'Perhaps she'd moved house,' I suggested.

'Buddy got someone on to that. She cashes her alimony check every month without fail. She got my letter all right. She's taken all the money from him and doesn't give a damn. How can a woman behave that way?' She drank iced tea and waited while a huge portion of blueberry pie with icecream and whipped cream was put on the table for me. Then she said, 'Bret and I were kids together. I was crazy about him. I guess I always figured we'd be married. Then one day he went downtown and joined the Navy. I waited for him. Waited and waited and waited. The war ended but he never came back.'

'Never came back?'

'Never came back to live hereabouts. London, Berlin. I got letters and cards from him. Long letters sometimes but the letters never said the one thing I wanted to hear.'

I started eating my pie.

'You didn't think you were going to hear the confessions of a lonely old lady. Well, I don't know what got me started. You knowing Bret, I suppose. The only other acquaintance Bret and I have in common is that bitch of a wife of his.'

'So you know her?' She had spoken of her distantly, as if she existed only as a spender of Bret's money.

'Nikki? Sure I know her. I knew what would happen to that marriage right from the start. Right from the moment she told me she was going to marry him. Sometimes I think she only went for him because she knew how much I would suffer.'

'Is she from around here?'

'Nikki Foster? Her folks had a shoe store in Santa Barbara. She was at school with me. She always was a little bitch.'

'How long did it last?'

'Eight long miserable years they lived together, or so I understand. I've never spoken to Bret about her and he never mentions her name.'

'And he had a brother.'

'Sheldon.' She gave an enigmatic little chuckle. 'Ever met him?'

'No,' I said.

'Big man in Washington DC. Big, big man. A nice enough guy but always on his way to somewhere better: know what I mean?'

'I know what you mean.'

She lowered her voice. 'And none of them seem to have any money. What did they do with all that Rensselaer money? That's what I'd like to know. Old Cy Rensselaer must have been sitting on a fortune when he died. Surely Bret couldn't have given so much of it to that awful woman. But if not, where did it go?'

I don't know what I was expecting but Bret Rensselaer, when I finally got to see him, looked far from fit and well. He was somewhere about sixty, a slim, tailored figure in white cotton slacks, white tee shirt and white gym shoes. It could have been the height of fashion but on his frail figure the outfit looked institutional. He smiled. He'd kept that tight-jawed smile and he'd kept his hair.

But now he'd aged. His cheeks were drawn and his face wrinkled. And yet something of that former youth had been replaced with distinction, as a film star might age and become a president. He was doing some gentle arm exercises when I entered the room. 'Bernard,' he called amiably. His exertions had made him a little out of breath. 'Sorry to be so elusive, Bernard, but there's no way they'll let me break this routine.' He always put the accent on the second half of my name, and hearing him say it in that low burring accent brought back memories. I looked around at this private gym. Someone had spent a lot of money on it: the upstairs had been ripped out to make a 'cathedral' ceiling, there were polished wood bars right across one wall, and a picture window in the other. The floor was wood blocks and the room was equipped with an exercise bicycle, a rowing machine and a big steel frame with a seat inside, and weights and pulleys, like some instrument of torture. Bret was inside it pulling and pushing levers. 'It's time I finished,' he said.

It was that moment of the late afternoon when nature comes to a complete standstill. Even up here on the hillside, there was no wind, not a leaf moved and no birds flew. The afternoon sun – now low and far away over the Pacific Ocean – gilded everything, and the air was heavy and suffocating. It was at this moment that sunlight coming through the big window painted Bret – and the machine that encaged him – gold, so that he looked like the statue of a remote, wrinkled and pagan god.

'I hear they're getting you ready for the Decathlon.'

Bret looked gratified by this silly compliment. He smiled the shy fleeting smile that he'd used on the best-shaped girls from the typing pool and rubbed his face. Three hours a day but it pays off. In just the last two months I'm really getting back into shape,' he said. He climbed out of his machine and wiped his forehead with a towel.

'Sounds grim.'

'And with an ex-Marine Corps medic to put you through it, it is grim,' said Bret with that proud masochistic relish that all men are prone to at times. 'I even went skiing.'

'Not bad!'

' Sun Valley. Just a weekend. Easy slopes: no black runs or double diamonds.' He shook my hand and gripped it tight. For a moment we stood looking at each other. Despite all our ups and downs I liked him and I suppose he knew that. Three years ago when he'd really been in trouble it was me he came to and for some stupid reason that I could not fathom I was proud of that. But Bret had spent too much of his life with the rich and powerful, and he'd developed the hard carapace that all such people use to hide their innermost feelings. He smiled as he let go of my hand and punched my arm gently. 'Jesus Christ! It's good to see you, Bernard. How is everything in the Department?'

'We're managing, but only just.'

'But Dicky never got Europe?'

'No.'

'Well, that's just as well. He's not ready for that one yet. How are you getting along with the Deputy? I hear he's kicking ass.' He indicated that I should sit down on the bench and I did so.

'We see a lot more of him,' I admitted.

'That's good. A Deputy with a knighthood hasn't got so much to work for,' said Bret. 'I suppose he wants to show he's keen.'