The Deed (25 page)

It took them most of that hour, but by the end a family tree of index cards had flowered across his apartment wall, with the Haansvoort direct line down the center and spouses and siblings tailing off to the sides and down like the arms of a wilting cactus.

When all the cards were up, Jason and Amanda sat back on the couch to survey their work.

“We are in
such
good shape,” said Amanda.

“Aye, lass,” said Jason. “Not one hundred percent there, but we’re pretty close.” He felt energized by her exhilaration.

Amanda pointed at the last name—“Robert Haansvoort, born 1902”—without speaking.

“My great-grandfather,” he told her confidently. “My great-grandma remembers him, obviously. I can fill it out from there on down.”

“Cool,” she replied, shifting her attention to the top. “We need a card for Pieter, the original benefactor,” said Amanda, “and one for his son, also Pieter.”

“How do you know that?” said Jason.

“Oral tradition,” she replied, “confirmed with a ship’s log from Amsterdam. I had a copy faxed over from the Rijksmuseum. Our legend says Nahoti bore him a son—which must be true, of course, because your last name survived—and that she named him Pieter, because her husband had already died before his son was born.”

“Perfect,” he said confidently. “So that just leaves this little nightmare,” he continued, stabbing a conspicuous hole three cards down from the top.

Amanda nodded; they’d both been avoiding this one. It was worse than a mere gap of information—what little evidence they had seemed to thwart any possibility of connection. Just above the break, Richard and Abigail had borne three children, Mark, Louisa, and John, in the waning years of the seventeenth century. Then came the gap; the next card down was William, born in 1750, fifty-one years later. There was clearly a generation missing…but which child had continued the line? They discussed the options. Louisa was out, as her children would have taken her husband’s last name. Mark had died fighting pirates in the Caribbean in his early twenties, old enough to have kids, but there was no record of it. And John and his wife had only a girl, Mary, who died at fourteen.

“Either Mark fathered a son before he went to sea…” said Amanda.

“…or John and his wife had a son, too,” Jason continued. “How do we know he only had the girl?”

“The gravestone called her their only child. Remember?”

“Maybe they had another one after she died,” suggested Jason. “Empty-nest syndrome. You wouldn’t go back and change a gravestone.”

Amanda nodded. “Here’s something else. It may just be a coincidence, but this missing link occurs at exactly the same time your relatives stopped being buried in the old graveyard. Remember? Mary’s stone was the oldest one in the outside yard.”

“That’s right,” he said appreciatively. “Good call.”

Together they stared at the wall. “What child is this?” he mused, tapping the empty space. Everything seemed to hinge on the answer.

“You okay with us not figuring it out tonight?” wondered Jason as she poked her head back into the sweater, momentarily revealing that enticing swath of torso again.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Amanda reassured him. “I’ve still got to get out to Long Island tonight, remember? Speaking of which, you want a ride to Brooklyn? It couldn’t be more on the way.”

He shook his head. “Thanks…I’m being picked up by a limo, apparently.”

She smiled. “Must be nice.”

“Tell your mom I said hi,” he said wryly.

“At least I have something to tell her, finally,” she said at the door. “Hey…can I show her the book?”

The quick innocence of the question moved him; only through an intense effort was he able to keep his head from nodding stupidly of its own accord. But this seemed a little much to ask.

“Ooh,” he said, with ill-disguised discomfort. “Really?”

“Well, you have to admit, it’d be a damn good visual aid for proving you are who we think you are,” she replied, then continued in a slightly hurt tone. “Jason—you do trust me, I hope.”

“Of course I trust you,” he said dismissively. “It’s just…well, this thing’s my only heirloom.”

But even as the words left his lips, Jason knew he was going to give it to her, and that Amanda probably knew it, too, because that was the way the world worked. The only question was how long he’d be able to drag it out before coming around.

Jason sat alone, bellied up to Barleycorn’s old oaken bar just off the main floor with a small crowd of other patrons, sipping an icy martini and trying to get a bead on the place. Already it was clear that this joint lay a few bills north of Jason’s usual standard of living, but it seemed quite agreeable so far. The beefy, smoky stench of the place had him fired for a memorable dinner, which it would be indeed if this aperitif were any judge, this absurdly delicious martini, smooth as sin, colder than a witch’s tit.

It oughtta be,
he reminded himself,
for eight bucks.
But that was only the ghost of prudence. Drinks were free tonight, even this preliminary tie loosener, as Nick had made clear when he’d called, unavoidably delayed as usual, to urge Jason to head on over without him. That was Nick: reliably unreliable.

He watched the tuxedoed bartender shave ice into a scotch as if carving a figurine, his client a bald, jowly tycoon either mesmerized by the process or already too sauced to look away. The place was lousy with testosterone, from the stately waiters who strolled impassively by to the suited Wall Street regulars in various states of repose.

As Jason sat and sipped his second drink, he felt his tension physically unraveling. Amanda and her quest were already a memory, left outside the door; his job—his old job, he gently reminded himself—a half-remembered dream. God
damn
this was a good martini. Jason slid gently down, down the inside of the glass, the silky fluid slowing his fall to a dreamlike trickle, until he bumped silently against the bottom of the triangle, legs sticking awkwardly up the far side, the olive curled up like a cat in his lap.

He managed to conjure up Amanda’s face, then lost it again. The New Yorker in him, all ruthless efficiency, wanted to use this waiting time productively, to work at solving the nagging genealogical puzzle that would put them on the road to eating at places like this every night. But screw it. He sipped the martini again, losing its chill as the cone of clarity shrank toward its apex, and tried to picture Amanda naked. But the image that arose in his mind composed itself from memory, not fantasy: sex on a pool table with a now-forgotten girl back in his old eating club at college, a passable sexual experience amplified to
Penthouse
Forum heights by its perfect anecdotal setting.

“Welcome, fellow Beefeater,” said a sudden voice to his left. He turned slowly to find Nick there, a grinning gargoyle perched on the stool next to him as if he’d been there all along, hair slicked back in a hundred parallel ebony streaks, a seesaw of wedgy little sunglasses balanced across his nose.

“What’s up, buddy?” Jason smiled, clambering back to reality.

They exchanged small talk for a moment or two, then Nick checked his watch. “We should go up—the guys are probably upstairs already. I just wanna grab a drink. What kind of gin is that?” he wondered, indicating his friend’s nearly empty glass.

Jason shrugged. “Ya got me.”

Nick stared at him for a moment before speaking. “Jason, no well drinks tonight, you got it? These assholes are here to blow an enormous wad of dough on me, so you’d better start helping me.
Capiche?
”

Jason laughed. “Yeah, I
capiche.
”

Nick nodded sagely. “Okay then. Let’s try the Sapphire,” he suggested, snapping a finger in the direction of the bartender. “
That’s
a martini.”

Kyle and Louis, their hosts for the night, were indeed upstairs, in a paneled private room, reached after a long and disorienting trek through the interior of the club, across parqueted dining rooms, past bars and rest rooms, up two half flights of stairs that bookended a golden little cigar lounge.

“Are women even allowed up here?” wondered Jason as they crested the last landing, shouldering their way through a small crowd of tuxedoed gents apparently just off the
Titanic.

Nick shrugged. “Strippers are women.”

At last Jason and Nick reached a warm oaken chamber, fitted with a table and four chairs and a small sitting area in front of a quietly roaring miniature fireplace; the head of an eight-point buck projecting over the hearth provided the room’s only decoration. Fatigued and discombobulated, and scraping the bottom of his martini, Jason was elated at the room’s promise of total relaxation.

Kyle, an Aryan classic with patrician good looks and the height to back it up, stood half a head taller than his partner. Louis was stocky and square-shouldered, a textbook tug-of-war anchor; as he and his partner stood to exchange greetings with Jason and Nick, Louis unleashed exactly the booming voice his beast chest implied. He quickly proved excitable and demonstrative to the breaking point, infusing the most trivial statement with curious import. Their jackets were already on the backs of their chairs, and they extended right hands in greeting, drinks sloshing around in their lefts.

“Oh, brother,” said Louis, hearing that Jason had been waiting downstairs. “I wish we’d known—you could have come up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” urged Jason.

“Crossed wires,” said Nick definitively, putting an end to the conversation with an easy abruptness that reminded Jason that his friend was the client, and that these two would be picking up the tab. It was an exhilarating prospect, an evening of being wined and dined like a four-star client, and getting to watch Nick perform into the bargain.

“You guys get a waiter yet?” said Nick.

“I’m on it,” said Kyle, reaching behind him to press a small buzzer on the wall behind him. “The garçon button,” he said proudly.

“Why do I get the feeling you’ve been here before?” said Nick with a wry smile.

A waiter appeared at the door within moments, and was entrusted with drink orders. “And let’s get a pitcher of Sapphire martinis for my friend,” said Kyle, eyeing the drink in Jason’s hand.

Jason opened his mouth to protest, but stopped short, wondering how the hell Kyle had guessed the brand of gin, and the moment slipped away.

So they make pitchers of martinis,
he said to himself.
Wonder what happens when I drink one of those?

He suspected he was about to find out.

Most of the conversation left him, frankly, in the dust. Nick, Louis, and Kyle lived in a testosterone-drenched world where sports, business, new electronic gizmos, raunchy jokes, the fortunes of various international businesses, and tales of improbable sexual conquests combined in unthinkably complex combinations. He had the impression at first that the three were mutually trying to impress him at some rarefied expert level, but the conversational dance was so seamless and spontaneous that it quickly became clear this was their lingua franca. Unable to take more than a step or two into the maelstrom, he dutifully fielded the questions that were politely lobbed his way and accepted congratulations for quitting his job—a universal good, apparently. And he was otherwise ignored, which suited him fine, as he was beginning to suspect he didn’t live on the same planet as these guys anyway.

Louis and Kyle were currency traders; they worked for rival firms but were fraternity brothers who had gone to Brown together. Nick was apparently some kind of broker, a guy who put deals together between folks like Louis and Kyle. In the grand casino of Wall Street, which took bets on quarterly reports and corn futures rather than on the turn of a friendly card, Nick’s job seemed to be roughly equivalent to putting together high-stakes poker games. These two were the modern equivalent of foppish dandies itching to find The Game.

The waiter appeared again in the doorway, with an expectant look that led Jason to understand he’d been summoned.

“When the meat arrives, we’re going to need a bottle of the best scotch in the house,” said Kyle, with only a backward glance at the waiter.

“That would be our—”

“No, no,” said Kyle abruptly, waving off the details without looking up again. “Don’t spoil the surprise. Just bring it out.”

The waiter nodded, with a nervous, effeminate little chuckle. Jason felt embarrassed for the poor guy, being ordered about by brats at least fifteen years his junior. “Oh, and send the captain back, please,” Kyle continued as the waiter nodded and left.

“Ostentatious,” said Louis, grinning approvingly.

“That’s
all
we need—a fag waiter,” groused Kyle. “That’ll really make the evening complete. The fine aroma of dick breath.”

“Shut the fuck up,” said Louis, laughing.

“Kyle has some
issues,
” said Nick to Jason, trying to draw him in. But Jason only grinned noncommittally.

An overdressed maître d’ arrived moments later, or at least his head—bottle-brush hair and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache like a sea captain—popping around the corner of the doorway. “Everyone who orders a three-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch gets a personal visit,” he said, grinning, by way of introduction.

“Robert, thank God,” said Kyle, brightening at last. “Listen, we’ve got a first-timer here tonight,” he said, indicating Jason. “Tell Marco to put some elbow grease into it.”

“Sure thing, boss,” the captain replied.

“And one more thing,” said Kyle as the other turned to leave. “Would it be possible to get a different waiter?”

After the barest pause, the captain smiled and replied, “Not a problem, sir.”

“This guy goes into the men’s room,” said Louis, after a fifty-something waiter with the mannered poise of an Old World butler had taken their dinner order. “He’s taking a piss,” Louis continued, “about to whip it out, when he happens to look over at the guy next to him and he sees the guy’s got no arms. Big dirty army jacket, two flapping sleeves.”

Helping himself to another martini from the bottomless pitcher, now pearled with condensation, Jason smiled involuntarily. Clearly Louis was a veteran joke teller, the type of guy who warms up his own crowd, whose jokes you can’t get quite right the next day. He was flying high on a gin buzz; the amber lighting and tight space gave the room a cocoonlike feel, an effect only amplified whenever the door opened temporarily, letting in fresh drinks and a little background noise.

“So he’s trying not to stare,” Louis continued, “but he’s thinking, ‘How the hell’s this freak gonna even unzip?’ And sure enough, just as he’s finishing up, the guy with no arms turns to him and in the most pathetic voice you ever heard, says, ‘Hey, buddy—help me out, here, wouldja?’