The Road to Omaha (6 page)

“I’m in total agreement. What can we do—what can
I
do?”

“At the risk of presuming on the privilege of privacy, and I do so only out of affection and professional concern of the highest regard, what can you tell me about your son that might shed light on his increasingly enigmatic behavior? I assure you that whatever is said between us will remain in the strictest confidence—as it were, a lawyer-client relationship, although I would never presume to be your attorney of choice.”

“Dear Mr. Pinkus, a number of years ago
I
could never presume to approach you to
be
my attorney of choice. Had I felt that I was capable of paying your fee, I might have salvaged large sums of money owed my husband’s estate after his death.”

“Oh …?”

“Lansing Devereaux steered a great many of his colleagues into immensely lucrative situations with the understanding of reasonable participation after their venture capital was recouped. Once he died, only a few honored those agreements, a precious few.”

“Agreements?
Written
agreements?”

“Lansing was not the most precise person when it came
to specifics. However, there were minutes of meetings, synopses of business conversations, that sort of thing.”

“You have copies of these?”

“Of course. I was told they were worthless.”

“Your son, Samuel, confirmed that judgment?”

“I’ve never shown him those papers and I never will.… He had a rather painful adolescence in some regards, no doubt character building, but why open healed wounds?”

“One day we may go back to those ‘worthless’ papers, Mrs. Devereaux, but at the moment let’s return—to the moment. What happened to your son in the army? Have you any idea?”

“He had a ‘rather good show,’ as the British say. He was a legal officer both here and overseas and, I’m told, did outstanding work in the Far East. When he was discharged, he was an adjutant in the office of the Inspector General with the temporary rank of major. You don’t do much better than that.”

“The Far East?” said Aaron, his antennae picking up a nuance. “What did he do in the Far East?”

“China, of course. You probably wouldn’t remember because his contribution was ‘played down,’ as they say politically, but he negotiated the release of that crazy American general in Beijing, the one who shot the … private parts … off a venerated statue in the Forbidden City.”

“
‘Madman’ MacKenzie Hawkins
?”

“Yes, I believe that was his name.”

“The most certifiable lunatic of the lunatic
fringe
? The gorilla’s guerilla who almost plunged the entire planet into World War
Three
? Sam represented
him
?”

“Yes. In China. Apparently he did a fine job.”

Aaron swallowed several times before he found his voice again. “Your son never mentioned any of this to me,” he said barely audibly.

“Well, Mr. Pinkus, you know the military. So much is hush-hush, as I understand it.”

“Hush-hush, mush-mush,” mumbled Boston’s celebrated attorney, in his voice a Talmudic prayer. “Tell me, Mrs. Devereaux, did Sammy—”

“Sam or Samuel, Mr. Pinkus.”

“Yes, of course.… Did Sam ever mention this General Hawkins to you after his separation from the army?”

“Not with that title or that name, and never when he was entirely sober.… I should explain that before he was discharged and came back to Boston, somewhat later than we expected, I should add—”

“Don’t add to me, Mrs. Devereaux. Explain to the deli that supplied fifty pounds of lox why he never showed up.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s insignificant. What were you saying?”

“Well, a colonel in the Inspector General’s office phoned me and told me that Sam had been put through ‘pressure-point-max’ in China. When I asked him what that meant, he became rather abusive and said that as a ‘decent army wife’ I should understand. And when I explained that I wasn’t Sam’s wife but his mother, that very abusive man said something to the effect that he ‘figured the clown was a little weird,’ and told me that I should expect a couple of months of mood swings and conceivably some heavy drinking.”

“What did you say to that?”

“I wasn’t married to Lansing Devereaux without learning a few things, Mr. Pinkus. I know damned well that when a man gets broiled because the pressures become too much, it’s a reasonable petcock to let off steam. Those Janie-come-lately liberated females should give a little in that department. The man still has to keep the lion from invading the cave; that hasn’t changed, and biologically it shouldn’t. He’s the poor fool who has to take the heat—physically, morally, and legally.”

“I’m beginning to see where Sam gets his acumen.”

“Then you’d be wrong, Aaron—may I call you Aaron?”

“With the greatest of my pleasure … Eleanor.”

“You see, ‘acumen’ or perception or whatever you want to call it can only be useful if there’s imagination first. That’s what my Lansing had, only the macho times restricted my supplying a stronger balance, the supplemental caution, if you like.”

“You’re a remarkable woman … Eleanor.”

“Another brandy, Aaron?”

“Why not? I’m a student in the presence of a teacher of things I have never really considered. I may go home to my wife and fall on my knees.”

“Don’t overplay it. We like to believe we’re manipulators.”

“Back to your son,” said Pinkus, sipping his brandy in two swallows rather than one. “You say he didn’t refer to General Hawkins by name or by title, but you implied that he
did
allude to him … when not necessarily sober, which is perfectly understandable. What did he say?”

“He’d ramble on about ‘the Hawk,’ that’s what he called him,” mused Eleanor softly, her head arched back in the brocaded sofa. “Sam said he was a legitimate hero, a military genius abandoned by the very people who once praised him as their spokesman, their idol, but who fled from him the moment he became an embarrassment. An embarrassment despite the fact that in his actions he was fulfilling their fantasies, their dreams. But he was doing it for real, and that terrified them, because, again, they knew that their fantasies, if acted upon, might lead to disaster. Like most fanatics who’ve never been in a real fight, they find embarrassment and death unattractive.”

“And
Sam
?”

“He claimed he never agreed with the Hawk, never wanted to be associated with him, but was somehow forced to—how I don’t know. Sometimes when he just wanted to talk, he’d make up incredible stories, pure nonsense, like meeting hired killers at night on a golf course—he actually named a country club on Long Island.”

“Long Island, as in New York?”

“Yes. And how he negotiated contracts worth a great deal of money with British traitors in London’s Belgrave Square and with former Nazis on chicken farms in Germany … even Arab sheiks in the desert who were actually slumlords in Tel Aviv and wouldn’t permit Egypt’s army to shell their properties during the Yom Kippur war.
Insane
stories, Aaron, I tell you they were—
are
—totally mad.”

“Totally mad,” repeated Pinkus quietly, weakly, a knot
forming in his stomach. “You say, ‘are’? He still tells these crazy stories?”

“Not as much as he used to, but yes, when he’s terribly distressed or has had that extra martini he didn’t need, and wanders down from his lair.”

“His lair, like in cave, perhaps?”

“That’s what he calls it, his ‘château’s lair.’ ”

“ ‘Château,’ like in a very big house or a castle?”

“Yes, he even speaks now and then of a great château in Zermatt, Switzerland, and of his ‘Lady Anne’ and ‘Uncle Zio’—pure unadulterated fantasies! I believe the word is ‘nuts.’ ”

“I sincerely hope so,” mumbled Pinkus.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, nothing. Does Samuel spend much time in his ‘lair,’ Eleanor?”

“He never leaves it except for an occasional dinner with me. It’s actually the east wing of the house, shut off from the rest of us with its own entrance and facilities—two bedrooms, office, kitchen—the usual amenities. Even his own cleaning service—oddly enough, they’re Muslims.”

“His own apartment, really.”

“Yes, and he thinks he has the only keys—”

“But he doesn’t?” asked Aaron quickly.

“Good heavens, no. The insurance people insisted that Cora and I should have access. Cora stole his key ring one morning and had duplicates made.… Aaron
Pinkus
!” Eleanor Devereaux looked into the attorney’s deep-set eyes and saw the message in them. “Do you really think we might learn something by … by going through the château’s lair? Isn’t that illegal?”

“You’re his mother, my dear lady, and you’re justifiably concerned about his current state of mind. That’s a calling beyond any law. However, before you make that decision, one or two more questions.… This house, this grand old house, has had many splendid things done to it over the past years. From the outside alone, I judged the expenditures to be in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars. Now, seeing the inside, I’d have to place the figure at many times that. Where did the money come from? Did Sam tell you?”

“Well, not in so many words; that is, not precisely.… He said that while he was in Europe on this very secret mission after his discharge, he invested in some works of art, newly discovered religious artifacts actually, and in a matter of months the market exploded and he did enormously well.”

“I see,” said Pinkus, the knot in his stomach tightening, but nothing clear, only the rumbling of distant thunder in his mind. “Religious artifacts.… And this ‘Lady Anne’ you say he talked about. What
did
he say?”

“It was all pure rubbish. In my son’s delusions, or deliriums, if you will, this Lady Anne, this fantasy of his that he calls the perpetual love of his existence on earth, left him and ran away with a Pope.”

“Oh, dear God of Abraham,” whispered Pinkus, reaching for his teacup.

“We of the High Church of England can’t really accept that connection, Aaron. Henry the Eighth aside, the apostasy of any pontiff’s infallibility simply doesn’t wash. He’s a reasonable, if somewhat pretentious, symbol, but not a scratch more.”

“I think it’s time you made your decision, dear Eleanor,” said Pinkus, swallowing the rest of his brandy, wishing the spreading pain in his stomach would go away. “To glance over the château’s lair, I mean.”

“You really think it might help us?”

“I’m not sure what I think, but I
am
sure that we’d better.”

“Come along, then.” Lady Devereaux rose from the couch, a touch unsteadily, and gestured toward the double doors. “The keys are in a flower pot in the foyer. ‘Flower pot in the foyer,’ that’s a hell of a mouthful, isn’t it? Try it backwards, Aaron.”

“Foyer, flowerflot, flowernot, floyer,” attempted Pinkus, getting to his feet, not entirely sure where they were.

They approached the thick, heavy door of Samuel Lansing Devereaux’s château’s lair, and Sam’s mother inserted the key with the gentle assistance of the man who was now her attorney of choice. They entered the sanctum sanctorum, walking down a narrow corridor that opened onto a wider hallway, the rays of the afternoon sun streaming
through an imposing, seemingly impenetrable glass-paneled door on the left, which was the apartment’s separate entrance. They turned right, and the first open door they came to revealed a darkened room; the Venetian blinds were securely down and closed.

“What’s in here?” asked Aaron.

“I believe it’s his office,” replied Eleanor, blinking. “I haven’t been up here since I can’t remember when—probably when the construction was finished and Sam showed me through.”

“Let’s take a look. Do you know where the lights are?”

“The switch is usually on the wall.” It was, and three floor lamps lit up the three visible walls of a large pine-paneled office. The walls themselves, however, could barely be seen, as they were covered with framed photographs and, contrarily, Scotch-taped newspaper articles, many askew as if hastily, perhaps angrily, stuck to the surfaces between the profusion of photographs. “This place is a bloody mess!” exclaimed the mother of the inhabitant. “I’ll insist he clean it up!”

“I wouldn’t even consider it,” remarked Pinkus, approaching the nearest newspaper clippings on the left wall. In the main, they depicted a white-habited nun dispensing food and clothing to indigent people—white, black, and Hispanic—in various parts of the world,
SISTER ANNE THE BENEVOLENT CARRIES HER MESSAGE TO ALL POINTS OF THE GLOBE
, cried one headline over a photograph of a slum in Rio de Janeiro, the mountain crucifix seen clearly in the upper distance of that jet-set city. The other clippings were a variation of the same theme—photos of a markedly attractive nun in Africa, Asia, Central America, and the leper islands in the Pacific,
SISTER ANNE, SISTER OF CHARITY, SISTER OF HOPE
and, finally,
ANNE THE BENEVOLENT, A CANDIDATE FOR SAINTHOOD
?

Aaron, putting on his steel-rimmed glasses, studied the photographs. They were all taken at some extravagant retreat reeking of edelweiss, the Alps generally in the background, the subjects in the photographs happy and carefree, the enjoyment of life lighting up their faces. Several were instantly recognizable: a somewhat younger Sam Devereaux; the tall, aggressive figure of the maniac general,
‘Madman’ MacKenzie Hawkins; an ash-blond woman in shorts and a halter—voluptuous, indeed, and unmistakably Anne the Benevolent; and a fourth figure, a stout, smiling, jovial fellow in a short chef’s apron that barely concealed his lederhosen. Who
was
he? The face was familiar but—no,
no, NO
!

“The God of Abraham has deserted us,” whispered Aaron Pinkus, trembling.

“What in the name of the Celtics are you talking about?” asked Eleanor Devereaux.

“You probably wouldn’t remember, because it meant nothing to you,” answered Aaron rapidly, unsteadily, a distinct quaver in his soft voice. “But a number of years ago the Vatican was in disarray—financial disarray. Monies were flowing out of its treasury in … in megabuckets, supporting causes so unlikely as third-rate opera companies and carnivals and houses throughout Europe to rehabilitate prostitutes, all manner of
insanities
. The people thought the Pope had gone
crazy
, that he was, as they say,
pazzo
! Then, just before the Eternal City’s complete collapse, which would have resulted in panic throughout the investment world, everything suddenly returned to normal. The Pontiff was back in control, his old self! The media everywhere said it was like he had been
two people
—one
pazzo
, the other the fine good man they all knew and loved.”