Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel (31 page)

Twenty minutes passed. I took an ice tray from the freezer and cracked it apart in the sink. I filled two glasses with sun tea and inserted sprigs of mint in the ice and lemon slices on the edge of the glass. I could hear no sound from upstairs. “Lunch is ready!” I called.

There was no response.

I dried my hands on a dish towel and gazed out the window at the sun spangling inside the trees. I saw my neighbor’s vintage automobile parked on an unpaved driveway, just the other side of our unfenced yard. For a second, the year was 1934 again and I was looking at the stolen vehicle driven by Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. I’m hard put to explain why I would associate that particular moment with the arrival in our lives of the Barrow gang. I think it was because I had never understood them, or perhaps I had never understood what they represented. Some considered them nothing more than pathological killers. Grandfather believed they were lionized by J. Edgar Hoover for political reasons. Others saw them as products of their times. I guess I believed they were all three.

But why would I dwell upon them now? The answer was simple. Something far more wicked than a group of semiliterate, small-town bank robbers was wrapping its tentacles around Rosita and me and also Linda Gail and Hershel Pine. Worse, the people trying to hurt us were using the law to do it.

Rosita was sitting on the bed, wearing only her skirt and bra. The cardboard mailer was on the floor. She had opened it with a pair of scissors that lay beside her. A ten-by-twelve-inch black-and-white glossy photograph rested on her knees. Her eyes were wet when she turned and looked at me. She picked up the photo with her left hand and held it in the air, waiting for me to take it.

“What is it?” I said.

“It’s self-explanatory.”

Even as my fingers touched the edge of the photograph, I knew what it showed. Or at least I thought I did. I saw Linda Gail propped on top of her lover, her breasts bare, her face gone weak with orgasm. It was the same photo Harlan McFey had shown me, except the bottom half of his copy had been torn off. “This is a trick photograph,” I said.

“That’s not you putting the blocks to her? That’s the term for it, isn’t it?”

“That’s my face. I suspect someone photographed me at a distance and superimposed one negative on another.”

“I can see the scar on your chest. That’s the shrapnel wound you received at Saint-Lô.”

“Somebody photographed me at a beach or at a swimming pool. Don’t buy into this, Rosita.”

“I’ve been too kind,” she said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Linda Gail is not the eater of the apple. She’s the serpent in the Garden, but she’s too stupid to know it. Her selfishness and vanity and ambition are at the center of all this. She’s manipulative and treacherous. I hate her.”

“This isn’t like you, Rosita.”

“Stop it. If they sent this picture to me, who else do you think they’ve sent it to?”

I stared at her. In my mind’s eye, I saw Hershel opening a mailer similar to the one on the floor and pulling a ten-by-twelve glossy from it. I went downstairs and called our office in Baton Rouge. The phone rang a long time before the secretary picked up, out of breath. She was an elderly lady who had graduated from Millsaps College in Mississippi. “I’m sorry. I just went outside to get a delivery,” she said.

“Where’s Hershel?” I said.

“He left late yesterday for Houston. He was planning to go back today, but he said he had everything tied up here, so he was leaving a day early.”

“Was he all right, Miss LeBlanc?”

“He seemed quite happy. Is something wrong?”

“Not at all. You said you just had a delivery?”

“Yes, a beautiful bouquet of flowers. They’re from Mrs. Pine. The card is tied on the vase. I couldn’t quite help seeing what’s on it. I hope Mr. Pine won’t be mad at me.”

“What does it say?”

“You’re sure it will be all right for me to do that?”

“Yes, it’s fine, Miss LeBlanc.”

“It says, ‘I just signed a contract made in heaven. Love, your Louisiana sweetheart.’ Isn’t that wonderful?”

“I’m sure it is,” I said. “Have there been any other deliveries or important mail I should know about?”

“None that I can think of.”

“I ordered a phonograph record from the Blue Bird Company. Did you receive a package that might have a record inside it?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m so happy for Mr. and Mrs. Pine. They’re such a fine young couple.”

I eased the receiver back into the cradle, hardly aware of what I was doing.

I dialed the office downtown. Hershel had not checked in. I asked the secretary about special deliveries we might have received, or packages that might contain a phonograph record. There had been none. I called Hershel’s house in River Oaks.

“Hello?” he said.

“How you doin’?” I said.

“Everything is great, except I overslept.”

“That’s good. You need some extra sleep.”

“I just got off the phone with Linda Gail. Wait till you hear this. She got a five-year contract with Warner Brothers. She’s going to star in a movie about the French Underground. My little Linda Gail is an actual movie star.”

“That’s something, isn’t it?” I said.

“All those worries I had, they didn’t mean anything, did they?”

“I guess not.”

“She’s flying in tonight. Let’s go out on the town.”

“We’ve had some trouble, Hershel,” I said. I told him what had happened to Rosita.

“Who’s this cop?” he asked.

“He’s not important. It’s the people who hired him we have to nail.”

“In the meantime, this guy needs to be taken off at the neck.”

“That’s what they want.”

“You think this bastard is working for Dalton Wiseheart?”

“That’d be my bet.”

“I feel awful about this, Weldon. I wish I’d been there.”

“Let me call you later.”

“Tell Rosita we’re all on her side. Linda Gail will tell her the same thing.”

“I’ll tell her, Hershel. You and Linda Gail take care.”

“It’s y’all I’m worried about, not us,” he replied. “Don’t do anything without including us in. We got us an agreement on that? We’ll always be Rosita’s friends. We’ll back your play, whatever it is, Loot.”

I went back upstairs. Rosita had finished dressing but had not put on any makeup. “You don’t look well,” she said.

I sat in a chair by the window and told her of my conversation with Hershel.

“He has no idea what’s going on, does he?”

“None at all.”

“Why didn’t the people who sent us the photo also send one to Hershel?”

“You already know why,” I said.

“They didn’t want to use all the knives in the set. They want you to live with the knowledge that at any given moment they can destroy Hershel’s marriage. They also want to make you party to the deception of your best friend.”

“That’s exactly what they’re doing.”

“Maybe you should tell Hershel and show him the photo.”

“The photo of Linda Gail looks like it was taken in a motel. In all probability, it was taken the night she got drunk and allowed herself to be seduced by Jack Valentine. Should I tell Hershel that?”

“I think we have to let go of Linda Gail. Her choices are always about herself. She won’t change. She seems incapable of understanding how much injury she’s done.”

I couldn’t argue with that logic.“I’m going to destroy this photograph,” I said.

“They have others.”

“Good,” I said. “One day I’ll catch up with the people who took them. When I do, I won’t feel any qualms. They’ll get the reward they’ve earned.”

“I don’t want you to talk about killing again.”

“What do you think I did in the war?”

“The war is over.”

“It’s never over. You enlist and you fight it for the rest of your life. I’m going to make these people pay for what they’ve done. There’s a difference between justice and vengeance.”

She walked toward me and placed her hand on my forehead, as though checking to see if I had a fever. “Don’t you ever start thinking like that,” she said. “Don’t compromise yourself because of scum like these people. Do you hear me, Weldon?”

That was Rosita Lowenstein in full-frontal attack mode. It was a state of mind I had learned not to challenge. I put my arms around her, crossing them behind her back. I could smell the fragrance in her hair and the heat in her skin. I looked her in the eye. “Straight shooters always win,” I said.

She buried her face in my neck, her fingers kneading my arms, her bare feet standing on the tops of my shoes. I swore I would get every one of them, one at a time or all at once; it didn’t matter.

I
KNEW I COULD
not get close to Dalton Wiseheart on my own. But maybe there was another way into his inner circle, I told myself. He might have an enemy who would be only too glad to help undermine the outer wall of the fortress. Wiseheart had made a remark about his daughter-in-law, Clara. What was it? She was a different kettle of fish? I wondered in what way.

While Rosita took a nap, I drove to the far end of River Oaks, where Roy and Clara Wiseheart lived amid a level of Greco-Roman glory that Nero would have envied. Her name had been Harrington before she married. Her family had made its money in rice and cotton in the early part of the century, then doubled its wealth during the Great War by growing beans for the government and investing the profits in the demand for explosives. Unlike many of their peers, the Harringtons were reclusive and generated no mystique about their personal lives. They were rich and gold-plated against the minuscule concerns of ordinary people, and that was all that mattered. What else did anyone need to know?

I pulled into the driveway and walked across the lawn toward the porch and the massive three-story columns at the front of the house. I had no idea if anyone was home. Nor did I have a plan. During the drive from my house to the Wisehearts’, I had decided to approach whoever was home in the most honest fashion I could. If I was rebuffed, at least I wouldn’t have to resent myself.

I saw her in the side yard, weeding the garden on her knees. She was wearing cloth gloves and denim pants and a straw hat and a gray work jacket with big pockets for garden tools. “How are you, Miss Clara?” I said, lifting my hat.

“Roy is in Los Angeles, Mr. Holland,” she said.

The sunlight was not kind to Clara Wiseheart. The foundation on her skin was cracked, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes showing through like cat’s whiskers. I realized she was at least a decade older than her husband.

“May I talk to you?” I asked.

She inserted her weeding trowel in the dirt. “About what?”

“My wife was arrested on false charges. She was molested by the arresting officer.”

One of her eyes was smaller than the other, an intense blue, triangular in shape. “Why would you want to tell me about something like this?”

“Because I think Dalton Wiseheart is trying to injure us. Because I want to make him accountable for the evil deeds I think he’s done.”

She got to her feet and brushed off her knees. “Follow me.”

I walked behind her into the backyard. The swimming pool had been drained, and pine needles and oak leaves were stuck to the bottom and the sides like crustaceans. The air was cold in the shade and smelled of gas and herbicide and a moldy tarp carelessly piled against the pool house. The yard seemed marked by neglect and the onslaught of winter or, better said, the ephemeral nature of life and our inability to deal with it.

An old hand-crank record player had been set on a low brick wall that bordered an elevated flowerbed. It had a fluted horn on it and a record mounted on the turntable.

“Sit down,” she said.

The chair was hard and cold to the touch, the glass tabletop the same. She sat across from me, her triangular-shaped eye watery. She took a drink from a coffee cup that smelled of liqueur, her gaze never leaving my face. “Why would I be your confidante regarding the character deficiencies of Dalton Wiseheart?”

“I’m not asking that of you. I’m telling you of the harm I believe he’s done to an innocent woman. I want to talk to him. I want him to look me in the face and tell me he’s not responsible for hiring an evil man to commit sexual battery on my wife and put her in jail.”

“Dalton plays the role of an avuncular wheat farmer for journalists stupid enough to write about him. He has squandered millions buying professional baseball and football teams. He also spends huge sums trying to control an electorate that, in my opinion, shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Dalton is a bumbling idiot and should be treated as such.”

“Do you think he’s capable of paying a Houston police officer to hurt my wife?”

“I feel sorry for you,” she replied.

“Oh?”

“Is he ‘capable’ of hurting your wife? He’s capable of anything. He used to make his son beat him.”

“I don’t know if I heard you correctly.”

“When Roy didn’t fulfill his father’s expectations, Dalton would lie across the bed and make Roy whip him with a razor strop to demonstrate how much pain his son was causing him. You ask what he’s capable of? The answer is anything.”

“I see,” I replied, not knowing what to say.

“I doubt that. You’ve entered a world you have no knowledge of. You remind me of the man who was king because he had one eye in the kingdom of the blind. Isn’t that the kind of place where you grew up? A kingdom of blind people where the gentry have the astuteness of Cyclopes? It must be harrowing to find yourself in an environment where you’re never sure whether you should go to the front or the back door.”

“I’ve never had anyone say something like that to me,” I said, getting up to go. “This has been quite an experience.”

“Don’t put on self-righteous airs with me, Mr. Holland. You brought Mrs. Pine into our lives. I know my husband’s propensities. He has the appetites of an adolescent. When they wane, he comes back home, repentant and talking about tennis and his coin collection, just like a little boy. Next time he’ll be at it with the maid. She would be the logical step down from your business partner’s wife.”

I looked again at the hand-crank record player. Normally, I would have thought it was completely out of place. In this instance I did not. I had come to think of Roy and Clara Wiseheart as people who lived inside an inner sanctum where the difference between death and life was hardly noticeable; it was a place where the bizarre and the pathological were norms.