The Edge of Doom (18 page)

Kate did not look at Jay; she did not want to see his face. Instead, she turned slightly more toward Charles and said, “Please go on. I can’t sit on this stool forever, and I don’t mind telling you that I may just get down off it and walk away. If you or Fred decides to shoot me, that’s what you’ll have to do. And then you can shoot Jay, too. I’m quite serious, so please, let’s get to the end of this story.”

Her only motive was to divert Charles’ attention away from Jay. But even as she spoke these threatening words, it occurred to her that they were not entirely untruthful. She straightened her back and lifted her feet from the rungs of the stool; she moved them about, even stretched them out. In doing so, she was reminded of sitting across from the cot in the maid’s room with her feet stretched out between Jay and Reed. But she must not think of Reed; for some reason her lucidity and dignity depended on not thinking about Reed. “Do get on with it,” she said again.

“The woman I had married also moved in the same circles as the Fanslers, which is why the Fanslers had been at my wedding. Maybe, I had thought, I could make my wife my partner in this scheme and not have to tackle Mr. Fansler. But it didn’t take me long to realize that my wife, while she would no doubt be happy to take part in anything exciting, illegal, and dangerous, had all the self-discipline of a rutting ram. Ours, I’m afraid, was one of those alliances based on lust and the refusal to discover before marriage anything fundamental about our spouse-to-be. As I’ve said, we didn’t stay together long.

“So it was back to Mr. Fansler I had to go. I went to see him in his office, probably the same sort of office where Jay went to call upon your brother Laurence. Oh, yes, I knew all Jay’s movements; once I’d identified you I had no problem following our boy every step of the way. Back then, however, when I was approaching Mr. Fansler, I think the poor man probably thought I’d come to beg for a job, or, anyway, his help in finding one. Once I sat down and began talking, of course, he was sadly disabused of such a speculation. I told him what I wanted, and what the price was.”

“You told him,” Kate exclaimed. “You told him Jay was my father and all the rest of it?”

“Yes, I did, my dear. He went white, absolutely white. I thought he was going to pass out, to tell you the truth, and I’d got out of my chair and moved over to him, but he waved me away. I poured him a glass of water—there was a carafe with glasses on a nearby table, it was that kind of office—but he just kept shaking his head. Then he said: ‘Get out!’ to me. He shouted it, and rose from his chair behind his desk. He swayed a minute, but held on to the desk, and then shouted again for me to get out and never come back. And then I understood.”

“What?” Kate said, all pretense at indifference abandoned.

“I realized he thought I had told him about Jay just for the hell of it, for the fun of upsetting him and making trouble; I could see that’s what he thought. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ I said. ‘I may be a crook; I am a crook, but I’m not a mean, slimy bastard. I told you about Jay and your wife and your supposed daughter because I want something in exchange for not telling the world.’

“Well, then he began to see. He called me a blackmailer and used every despicable name he could come up with, and then shouted at me again to get out.

“ ‘But what about my proposition?’ I asked. ‘Shall I tell the world, or will you do what I ask? It’s not very difficult, and I won’t ask for information very often. I don’t want to risk my own reputation, never mind yours.’ Of course, he didn’t yet know what information I was after. Probably he thought something financial, insider-trading, that sort of thing. I didn’t sense that he could take in much more, so I said I was leaving. I put my card down on his desk. ‘Call me when you want to discuss this further,’ I said. ‘I won’t do anything in the meantime, but don’t keep me waiting too long.’ And I left.”

“So he knew,” Kate said. “All along, he knew.”

“Yes, my dear Kate, he knew almost from the beginning of your life. He certainly knew.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

Kate was stunned for a moment into immobility. Then, as though she were somewhere else, as though she were altogether unaware of her surroundings, she leapt from the stool onto her feet to stand facing Jay.

“You might have told me that minor fact,” she said. “With all your storytelling, all your accounts of never-diminishing passionate love, you might have included the fact that my father knew all along. Didn’t it strike you that that was a rather, shall we say,
momentous
fact, something of significance?”

Before Jay answered her, if indeed he meant to answer her, Fred and Charles were on their feet and, one on each side, lifted her back onto her stool. Kate could not believe she was being manhandled, but the force of their hands on her arms woke her to the actuality of the situation. Fred had his gun out and was looking at Charles for orders. Charles, having loosened his grip on Kate, and having waved Fred back to his stool, looked at Kate for a long moment and asked: “May I continue?”

But Kate was not feeling as docile as she had been. “I don’t know how long we’ve been here, attending to your monologue about your life adventures,” she said, her tone dry, “but Reed is not going to sit home wondering what’s become of me for many more hours, I can promise you that. And if that means that Fred here is going to shoot me, I’m not sure that wouldn’t be preferable to perching on this stool listening to your narcissistic rendition.”

“I understand that you’re upset by my revelation about your father—that is, your Fansler father, but try to contain yourself in patience a little longer. We haven’t been here as long as you suppose. And there isn’t much more to tell. But I do insist that Jay here attend to every word.”

“Did my Fansler father play your game then?” Kate asked. She hoped Charles thought this was asked to hurry him along, but in fact she found that she had an urgent need to know the answer.

“Yes, he did, being a sensible man who responded in a sensible way. After all, I wasn’t asking him to set me up for regular thieving from his associates and friends. We’d never have got away with it. No, we decided to go after one or two real gems, the second after an interval of some years, needless to say.”

“He arranged for you to steal the valuable paintings of his friends?” Kate wanted to be quite sure she had this straight, had the exact truth of the matter.

“Perhaps I better remind you how the system works, or worked then. It probably still does, in fact. You steal the painting, you keep it nice and safe, and then you offer to give it back for ransom. Ransom is usually ten percent of the market price, in that neighborhood anyway. So if a painting is worth ten million, it is returned for one million cash, no questions asked. Yes, you’re right, it is kidnapping, but the victim doesn’t suffer, and the owner of the painting suffers only in his pocketbook. Insurance companies are glad to get off at that price, and no one pursues the robber, let alone his informer. Nice and neat, isn’t it? Of course, insurance rates go up so everyone suffers to that extent, but most of them can afford it or they wouldn’t have bought the picture in the first place.”

“I can’t believe it,” Kate said. But even as she spoke, she realized all that she had been willing to believe about Fansler business methods, about the ways in which the very wealthy acted and were treated in America. Why was helping Charles to steal pictures that he knew would be returned so different? The bigger question, after all, was why he had not told anyone about his daughter’s parentage.

Charles was back to reading her thoughts. “I often wondered whether he told your mother he knew about Jay, but I finally determined that he had said nothing. Was it because he feared to be shamed in the eyes of the world, or because he loved her, in spite of it all, and was glad that she had remained in his home as his wife?”

Kate turned to Jay. She had become quite expert at shifting herself around on the stool. “Remember that movie you keep talking about, the one where the man says he will love the woman all his life,” she asked Jay. Jay did not respond. “Do you remember how the movie ended?”

When Jay did not answer her question, Charles waved his gun. “Answer the lady,” he said, “or I’ll let Fred here put a bullet in a not-fatal place. He’s itching to shoot that gun, I do assure you. He’s tired of sitting there doing nothing. Answer the lady nicely now.”

“It ended at the railroad station,” Jay said. “She went off on the train.”

“That’s how the lovers parted, not how the movie ended,” Kate said.

“Might I know what movie we’re talking about here?” Charles asked.

“Brief Encounter,”
Kate said. “And the movie ends as it began, with the woman sitting at home with her husband; she is remembering the love affair from its beginning, in all its detail. The movie is a flashback. And at the end, her husband says to her, as though he had guessed what she had been, ‘Thank you for coming back to me.’ That’s how the movie ended. Funny that you didn’t remember that. Perhaps if you had remembered it you would have been less in a rage with Papa Fansler.”

“May I get on with my tale? I’m beginning to feel like the ancient mariner,” Charles said. Kate waved a hand to say: go on. Charles spoke.

“Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, before Papa Fansler and I had managed to kidnap our paintings, our friend Jay here was involved in stealing a painting. Maybe you’ve heard about that?” It was a question; Kate nodded in response.

“I thought so. What he probably didn’t tell was that it was he who brought me in on the job. He and the guy whose picture it was couldn’t have robbed a newspaper from a blind vendor. We pulled it off exactly as planned. I frightened the two innocents by carrying a gun, but I didn’t expect to use it; I was just making sure that I didn’t run into trouble with no means of protecting myself. It all came off easy as could be, however, and that was that. Move up twenty years more or less. Can you do that Kate?”

“I’m with you,” Kate said.

“I wish you had been. I was involved in a big heist at a museum, much bigger than anything I attempted before, and one of the guards decided to be a hero. That screwed the whole thing up. We didn’t get the pictures, and the guard was shot and killed. Who by? I don’t know, but it wasn’t me. I know that for certain, because I didn’t fire my gun. The police took us all in, the museum got involved, the insurance company got involved, the security people got involved. There was a lot of publicity and outcry, and someone had to take the fall. It probably would have been one of my associates—a trigger-happy fellow like Fred here—except that our friend Jay offered to testify that he knew me to have a gun, to have committed art theft, and to be a likely suspect. He was a respected young architect, the best of witnesses. They believed him. They also promised to put him in the Witness Protection Program, even though I would be in jail, having been given a twenty-five to life sentence. It’s always supposed that the convicted felon may have associates on the outside who will take revenge on the man who testified against their comrade. That’s likelier with the Mafia and such, but it happens. Why did our Jay want to hide out, change his name, his place to live, all of it? Maybe he wanted a new life; maybe he wanted to punish himself for having been such a naughty boy with your mother. Your guess is as good as mine. You can imagine the rest. I said if I ever got out I would find him and kill him. I didn’t know he would make it so easy by quitting Witness Protection and doing the one thing that would assure my catching up with him—that is, of course, going to look for you.”

“But what can you gain by killing him now?” Kate asked. “Or by killing me, too? Reed knows about this rendezvous; you’ve won really. You’ve found us both. You’ve made us sit on stools and listen to you and grow thirsty and damned cramped and uncomfortable. Why not just let us go? I’ll give you my word not to pursue you, which you probably won’t believe, but what could I accuse you of if I did go after you, which I promise not to do? I doubt that anyone would believe the story of what went on in this abandoned ice cream parlor.”

“Yatter away,” Charles said. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m not going to kill Jay. At our time of life, what’s the point? I want to stagger out of here free, just as you suggest, and I do believe you that you won’t go after me or persuade your husband to go after me, or your brothers either. I don’t think they know that your father knew, by the way, in case you were wondering.”

“I was,” Kate said.

“No. He had to keep it altogether to himself. No one was to know but him, me, and Jay, and Jay wasn’t to know that Fansler knew, but that I couldn’t agree with. I told him I was going to tell Jay, but that no one else would ever know—and until this moment, I have kept my word.”

“Is that why Jay testified against you?” Kate asked. “Because you told my Fansler father the truth.”

“Got it in one,” Charles said. “You are smart, I’ll agree to that any day. I’m sure you’d have been just as smart with your Fansler father’s genes, but in a different way. Maybe you’d have cornered the market instead of lecturing about literature. Yes, Jay was crazy with anger when I told him I’d told Fansler who the father of his daughter was. I don’t know why it infuriated him so powerfully. I suspect that Fansler’s knowing made it a dirty secret instead of a beautiful romantic secret, but maybe I’m getting literary from talking to you so long.”

There was a long silence. Kate studied Jay, the new, strange father she had found subtly attractive, the man whose appearance had been so exhilarating and troubling an event. What did she think of him now? That he was a man who had got stuck in a long-ago passion—like a fly in amber, Kate thought. Not an original analogy, God knew, but a fitting one. And finally he had left his hiding place, gone back to his profession, which he was good at, one had to grant him that, and gone in search of the only living evidence of his great love. But I won’t consent to be romantic evidence, Kate thought. I don’t want to serve as his redemption for having given false testimony. I think we had better part as though we had never met in Laurence’s club in the first place.

“Are you going to share your literary thoughts?” Charles asked.

“Yes, I am,” Kate said. “May I offer you this solution for your need of revenge; can I persuade you that it is as cruel and satisfactory as killing Jay would be?”

“Let’s hear it.”

“If this will satisfy you, I will promise never again to see, talk to, meet with, or in any way correspond with Jay. He will be out of my life and I altogether out of his. You have kidnapped his daughter instead of a painting. You’ve brought it off and driven Jay and me apart again; that is your ransom. Let that be enough revenge. Let Jay and me go, separately. You can drop him off wherever you like. Knowing how I feel, he will not try to get in touch with me again. I will walk out to my car, drive off, and that will be the end of it. I will tell no one but Reed what has happened; Reed, I can give you his word and mine, will tell no one. Is it a bargain?”

“Nicely put. And I even believe you. I’m even willing to let you convince me that Reed will take no action, and that you will pick up your life exactly as it was before Jay entered it some short time ago. But it doesn’t satisfy me. Sorry. I’ve had too many years to brood on this.”

Charles looked at Fred, who nodded and went outside, perhaps to keep watch, perhaps for some reason Kate could not understand. “I’m not going to kill Jay. You’re right about that. I’ve thought of something more suitable, some way to even things up between us. Did you notice that I limp?”

“No,” Kate said. “I’ve hardly seen you walk. Do you limp?”

Charles slid off his stool and paraded up and down in front of Kate. One leg dragged somewhat behind the other; it had to be raised with a special effort and then put down again. Charles had got rather good at this, so that he did not lurch as much as, Kate supposed, he had shortly after the injury.

“I see,” she said. “How did it happen?”

“In prison. Things like this happen in prison. I’ve had operations; I’m to have another. It’s easier with a cane, but I left it at home today.”

Kate knew what he was going to do. “Don’t,” she said. “It will serve no one; it will hardly satisfy you; it is evil; it will only do harm.” But she could tell he wasn’t listening.

“You go,” he said to Kate. “Walk out the door, wave to Fred, get into your car, and drive off. You can tell Reed what has happened, but I have your word it will go no further. Even it if does, of course, you can do nothing. Jay won’t talk, and there is no evidence. Fred and I will be certain there is no sign here of our presence, even if you should lead someone to this place. But I’m sure you won’t. I’m glad to have known you, Kate.”

He looked at her. He seemed to think of offering his hand, and decided against it. “Don’t blame yourself for anything. You have saved your father’s life, if not the intactness of his body. Always remember that. And do go and find him again one day soon. He needs you. He’s an old man, like me, though neither of us looks it. If I had a daughter, I would want to know her in my last years. Go.”

Kate hesitated. Sometimes it is possible to know exactly what can be done and what cannot be done. And yet, down from the stool, standing, she spoke once more. “As you know,” she said, looking straight at Charles, “I profess literature.” She paused, giving him time to tell her to shut up and go. He, too, paused and said nothing. Kate spoke.

“There is a sonnet of Shakespeare’s—no, I won’t offer you the whole sonnet, I don’t even remember more than the first two lines: ‘They that have power to hurt and will do none,/They do not do the thing they most do show.’ One can never know exactly what Shakespeare meant, but certainly he understands that revenge is a powerful emotion, but that once the power to take revenge is definitely yours, the proof of that power is that you no longer need to hurt. Which is the best revenge.”

She turned and went out. Fred stood outside and watched her walk up to her car. She did not turn to look back. Reed will never believe that I quoted Shakespeare, she thought. Who would believe it? But perhaps Reed would, after all, understand how words that demand to be uttered fly into the mind—anyway, into Kate’s mind.