The Edge of Doom (15 page)

Kate had expected Jay to object to this analysis, which in fact she thought a bit oversimplified, but he made no objection, just kept silent.

“Tell me what you want me to do,” he then said to Reed.

So Reed explained the plan, while Kate went into the kitchen to make some coffee. Doing this, as she had more often in the last few days than in most of the rest of her life, she was reminded of the English always fixing tea. Although lately, it occurred to her, in contemporary English novels, they served coffee instead. Kate returned to the maid’s room to find Reed, his Irish hat on his head, walking and moving as much as was possible in the confined space while Jay watched him and tried to follow his movements. Kate put the tray with the coffee down on the cot and left them to it.

But later that night, she asked Reed why the police in the local precinct and upstate should agree to take Jay into custody, or pretend to.

“You forget how long I was an assistant D.A.,” Reed said. “One makes connections, one gets to know people, one asks and returns favors.”

“It seems a pretty big favor to me,” Kate said.

“It is. It’s a pretty big problem we’re facing; don’t you think so?”

Kate didn’t bother to answer, but she pondered, not for the first time, what all this was costing Reed; what it would cost him in the future.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Look, with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removed ground.

Early the next morning—early at least in the light of Kate’s usual day—she and Jay and Banny set out, Jay being, to all appearances, Reed. Kate took his arm, and found herself tempted to discuss this identification of her father with her husband with as many Freudian and Lacanian references as she could muster. But she resisted. Jay, seemingly beyond speech, concentrated on imitating Reed’s walk and wearing Reed’s Irish hat, efforts which obviously consumed all of his energies. Except that he had mentioned, as they set out, his wish that this walk might be not a performance but a regular father-daughter excursion, there was only silence from Jay.

Kate, graveled for lack of matter, turned to Shakespeare. “Do you know
The Winter’s Tale
?” she asked Jay.

“No,” he said. “Tell me about it.”

“Somehow your appearance in my life reminded me of
The Winter’s Tale—
although our ages are all wrong, and the plot hardly applies. Still, there are echoes.”

“Tell me.”

“There is this king, Leontes, who is being visited by his boyhood friend, Polixenes, now king of somewhere else. Leontes is a fortunate man: he has a wonderful wife, a small son, another child expected, and this long visit from his friend. Oh, dear. Have you ever thought about how hard it is to tell the plot of a Shakespeare play? His plots are almost as tumultuous as opera plots, but with him it’s the language that gets you; with operas I guess it’s the music.”

Kate was aware that she was chatting on, not making too much sense. The park was full of cars (permitted before ten) and rampant off-the-leash dogs (permitted before nine), along with dogless people hurrying to offices. Kate found it hard to imagine that anyone was watching them.

“Go on with the plot,” Jay said.

“For no reason anyone can fathom, Leontes decides his friend and wife are having an affair. He expels his wife from the court; he may even order her to be killed. His son, meanwhile, has died of sorrow; his wife has given birth to a daughter supposed to be Polixenes’ (it was a long visit); he orders the baby to be killed also; the friend makes a hasty exit. They send to the Delphic oracle, who says Leontes was all wrong; his friend and his wife never dallied with one another. Twenty years pass. The son of the friend, Polixenes, meets Perdita, the not-killed daughter who lives with her supposed father, a shepherd. They fall in love and make their way back to the court. The wife, Hermione, turns out not to have died but to have been preserved by means that would be invaluable to the cosmetic industry if they could bottle it; the friend’s son replaces the lost son, the daughter lives. I know it sounds mad, but the language is heavenly. As to the plot, I haven’t a clue why it comes to mind. Except that a lost daughter is found. She is, however, seventeen or so and gorgeous.”

“Also, there is a lot of sudden, but lasting anger.”

“Yes, that too.”

Kate fastened Banny’s leash to her collar, and they made their way out of the park and toward the street.

“I left something out,” Kate said. “And it’s important. The traduced wife, Hermione, had a good friend, Paulina, who has defended her and stood by her all those years. She is rewarded at the play’s end with a new husband, since her first one has been killed in Polixenes’ service: he famously exits ‘pursued by bear.’ Pauline says she will, like an old turtle—I think she means turtledove—go off to lament her lost husband. But Leontes simply gives her another husband. All the loose ends must be tied up for the finale, if it’s a comedy. Shakespeare was unusually good on women’s friendships, most of the time.”

“You say that the play makes you think of me, of us?”

“Not really. But there are certain echoes. Since we are not actors, we have let fifty years, rather than twenty, pass.”

Jay seemed inclined to speak, and then did not.

“Oh, well,” Kate said, “there’s one thing to be said for Shakespeare’s plots and opera plots: telling them certainly takes time. We’re almost at the police station.”

“Do you know what Reed plans after this little charade we’ve been performing; after I am safely in the arms of the police?”

“No; I’m not sure he does. But perhaps one day we will sit again, as we sat in Laurence’s club, and by the sailing pond, and simply converse.”

“The thing about Leontes in the play,” Jay said, “is that he was a king and could make all things come right. I can’t imagine what Shakespeare would do with our plot; I only hope Reed will do something beneficent.”

The three of them, Kate, Jay, Banny, walked into the police station. The man at the desk seemed, rather to Kate’s surprise, to know who they were and why they were there. (Kate, though she was rather ashamed of it, had no great opinion of the police.) She and Banny left before she could get involved in any conversations with anyone: Reed’s instructions; she waved goodbye to Jay. Walking home on the busy streets, she and Banny met with no incident whatever.

At home, Kate greeted Clara. Clara did not mention the maid’s room, and before their usual exchange could get underway, the telephone rang. Kate answered; it was Leslie.

“I was just thinking of you,” Kate said.

“Really? And why was that?”

“I was thinking of Paulina in
The Winter’s Tale
.”

“I’m an artist, Kate, not a literary type. Paulina is, I’m to gather, a good friend.”

“Yes. Like Rosalind and Celia. All right, never mind. It’s been a frantic few days. I shall tell you about it soon. Meanwhile, I’m neither here nor there.”

“Still brooding about the effects of your new discovery about your father?”

“I haven’t had much time to brood. I’m hoping you’ll be able to give me many hours to talk about all this, and to figure out what I feel about it all. I, who always know what I feel, haven’t a clue.”

“That means the clue is so obvious you’ve overlooked it. I’ll clear the decks for you anytime you’re ready. Am I to meet the proud new father?”

“Perhaps. Somehow I doubt it.”

“Why? Am I insufficiently presentable?”

“I doubt he’ll be around to be presented. But one day, who knows?”

And Kate went on to ask about Leslie’s life and work; these were always fraught with tension and the stuff of spellbinding narration. When Kate had said goodbye to Leslie and hung up, she went in search of Clara, who was just beginning one of her thorough jobs on the bedroom. Having greeted Clara, Kate decided to risk a soft knock on the maid’s room door.

But even as she approached the door, Reed emerged through it. “Is Clara in the bedroom?” he asked.

Kate nodded.

“Good,” Reed said. And he walked out to the entrance hall, opened and noisily shut their front door and shouted: “I got away unexpectedly early. Is Clara here? I’ll try not to get in her way. I’m just going to say hello to Clara.” And he vanished toward the bedroom.

Kate went back into the kitchen to make more coffee. These early mornings are getting to me, she thought, and no amount of caffeine can make up for too-early risings. Reed joined her in a few minutes. Once the coffee was ready, they repaired to the living room, always the last room Clara cleaned on her weekly visits.

“I take it it all went well,” Reed said.

“Very well. I didn’t even have to go far enough into the police station to explain Banny. Now will you please tell me your next move—that is, if you have any idea what it is.”

“At least Jay is safe for now and out of here; do give me credit for that.”

“Consider yourself credited. How long will the police keep him?”

At that moment the house phone sounded. Puzzled, for one hardly expects visitors in the middle of the morning, and unanticipated visitors were hardly likely to appear at any time, Reed went to answer it.

“It’s your brother Laurence,” he said, returning to the living room.

“Laurence!” Kate exclaimed, as though Reed had announced a camel driver with beast in tow. “Laurence has never been here, I don’t think.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been here,” Laurence said, echoing her, when Reed had opened the door to him. “I’ve never set foot in this place.”

“It’s not that you weren’t welcome at any time,” Kate said. “But we don’t give parties, you and I don’t meet that often, and when we do it’s usually under your auspices.”

“I see,” Laurence said. He evidently had more immediate issues on his mind. “I’ve been pushing contacts, calling in chips, making demands, you know, on behalf of your . . . finding out about Jay. And I’ll tell you what I have decided; I don’t believe he was ever in the Witness Protection Program.”

Kate stared at her brother. “What do you mean? Do you think he’s lied about the whole thing?”

“Not exactly. I think he did go into hiding; he did change his name to whatever it is—Smith or something. He did marry a woman under that name. Maybe he was hiding out, but not under the Witness Protection Program. I knew the guy was a phony the minute I laid eyes on him.”

This was hardly true, but Kate decided not to make a point of it. She turned toward Reed, who was nodding.

“What are
you
nodding about?” she asked him. For reasons she could not have explained, she felt suddenly irritable and annoyed with both men.

“I’m not exactly surprised you think that,” Reed said. “But I suspect it’s because not even your influence could penetrate the secrets of the Witness Protection Program. Please don’t take it personally,” he added as Laurence looked offended. He gestured toward Laurence, trying to calm him. “I’ve been working on the other end, trying to discover if he ever stole a painting, or helped to steal one, and if he ever testified against someone who was convicted of murder.”

Kate rose to her feet about to explode with anger.

“I didn’t mention it,” he said to Kate, “because I couldn’t learn anything conclusive, and I didn’t want you to have to confront suspicions that were without foundations. I thought it was enough discovering your father at this time of life.”

“I see,” Kate said, scarcely containing her anger. “Since I was coping with this familial shock, I couldn’t be allowed to face up to anything else?”

“That’s not exactly right.”

“I see. And are we to be honored with a clear explanation, or have you undertaken this investigation purely as a solo performance?”

Laurence looked from one of them to the other as though he had suddenly found himself in a different place than he had supposed. “Kate, my dear,” he began, but Reed held out a silencing hand.

“I can’t hope to convince you of my motives,” Reed said to Kate, “but I can at least explain them. I could not be certain, I simply could not be certain that my reasons for these investigations were more than irrational fears, petty resentments, and a rather terrifying sense of being out of control. I don’t know whether I was more fearful of upsetting you for no reason, or worse, for my own shameful reasons, or having all my suspicions disproved and looking a fool and nasty into the bargain. I don’t think my decision not to tell you what I was up to was a wise or defensible one, and I was going to tell you all about it just when Laurence arrived.”

A sarcastic remark, doubting this, rose to Kate’s lips, but she repressed it; she had never felt this violently angry with Reed before, and some sense of caution came to her aid.

“I’ve behaved like an idiot,” Reed said. “And the worst part of it is I don’t really know why. But it wasn’t to betray you or go behind your back, however it looks.”

Laurence waited out a short silence, and then asked if they might get back to talking about Jay. “He’s obviously a liar; he could have lied about most of his story. Were you able to find out anything?” he asked Reed.

“Only negatively. My investigator couldn’t find evidence of a minor robbery in a small museum in San Francisco nearly fifty years ago. That doesn’t prove much. I did discover that the number of paintings that have been done on Shakespearean subjects is vast; vaster than vast. The chance of finding if a particular subject had been painted, and when, and by whom, is negligible, at least for anyone provided with less than a year off and a small fortune.”

“And the murder and the witness and all that?” Laurence asked before Kate could say anything, not that she appeared ready to speak.

“Negative again. The guys I know at the FBI, now or before, are willing to tell me a certain amount. But when it comes to paroled killers, there are, I regret to say, far too many of them to sort through; parole boards work in waves, and there are other influences on the question of pardons. In short, I have nothing substantive to report.”

“How about less-than-substantive?” Kate asked, knowing her man, at least in this regard, and the exactness of his words.

Reed nodded at her. “Right you are,” he said. “I’ve talked to him a good bit in the last few days . . .”

At this Laurence started to rise to his feet, ready to demand an explanation.

“We’ll explain it later,” Kate said. “He was here; he’s not here any longer; he not here now,” she repeated since Laurence seemed about to have a fit. “Go on,” she said to Reed. Laurence subsided, his mouth still open.

“Conversing with Jay,” Reed went on, “getting a sense of him, I came to the conclusion that whatever the truth of his stories, two assertions of his were undeniable: that he had loved Kate’s mother—and yours, of course, Laurence—and that he would not willingly have put Kate in danger. That does not mean that he may not have put her in danger without intending to, but I am certain he would not intentionally expose her to peril or risk her life. Therefore, he was either pretending to hide out in order to be near her, or he had got himself and her into an unforeseeable trap. What I did manage to do was to get him out of here without danger to himself if he was in danger, and thus without danger to Kate. Actually, I had come to believe that his stories were fabricated, that he wasn’t in danger, but that I couldn’t, yet, confront him with this. I needed proof.”

Reed told Laurence of the plans he had made for Jay, and that these plans had been successfully carried out.