Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (23 page)

 
          
Correspondence:
A few letters over the years from worried-sounding women, a few letters— none
recent—from army friends, two old letters from a counselor in Tulsa telling
Taggart his basic problem was low self-esteem, and a notice dated July 8th of
this year from Shamrock Liquor Stores saying that James Taggart had won the one
hundred dollar third prize in the Lucky Shamrock Drawing; he should present
this letter by July 31st at the Shamrock Liquor Store Outlet where he’d filled
out his entry, to receive his check.

 
          
Address
book, mostly empty: bank, movie houses, take-out restaurants, Carol Bridges, a
few local people who are probably co-workers, two neighbors, and a Jack Taggart
in
Hagerstown
,
Maryland
. No evidence of longterm ongoing friendships with people in other parts
of the country.

 
          
Unpaid
bills and magazines and other mail from the three weeks since he left,
including a notice from Shamrock Liquor Stores that he has only until July 31st
to pick up his one hundred dollar check. Which was yesterday.

 
          
Why
hadn’t he ever picked up his hundred dollars? The first notice was dated the
Thursday before he’d disappeared, so he’d probably received it on the Saturday
and would have planned to bring it to the liquor store the next time he went
shopping there. Why hadn’t he?

 
          
For
the first time, Sara considered the possibility that Taggart hadn’t disappeared
on purpose. Either he’d been bribed so lavishly that Shamrock’s hundred dollars
no longer mattered, or he’d been forced to leave.

 
          
Was
Jimmy Taggart dead?

 
          
The
thought was a long time coming, mostly because Sara didn’t want to think it. To
begin with, that way lay melodrama, and she had enough of
that
at work. But there were also the implications, if in fact
Jimmy Taggart really and truly was dead.

 
          
What’s
going on here, she wondered, feeling the emptiness of the dark apartment all
around her. The silence behind her head, the dark silence in the apartment’s
other rooms, had a muffled quality, as though something were being concealed.
But what?

 
          
Does
Taggart’s disappearance have something to do with the dead man beside the road?
And if it does, what does that mean for
me?
Taggart only heard about the dead man; I was there, I saw him.

 
          
There
has to be another explanation. It’s been three weeks, nothing else has
happened. If Jimmy Taggart . . . disappeared, died, whatever ... because of
what I told him, that wouldn’t have been the end of it. Something else would
have happened, but nothing has happened. The lost license number doesn’t count,
that’s not an event. Nothing has happened.

 
          
Nothing
is
going
to happen.

 
          
All
right, all right.
Is
there another
explanation? If there is, by golly, let’s find it. It was still not yet
nine-thirty at night; Sara dialed the number of the Jack Taggart in
Hagerstown
,
Maryland
. After three rings a gravelly voice said, “Yes?”

 
          
“Mr.
Taggart? Jack Taggart?”

 
          
“That’s
right.”

 
          
“I’m
looking for a Mr. James Taggart.”

 
          
“Oh,
Christ,” said the voice, sounding disgusted. “What’s he done now?”

 
          
“Nothing,”
Sara said. “I’m just looking for him. Do you know where he is?”

 
          
“No,
I don’t, and I don’t want to,” the voice said, and hung up.

 
          
Monday
afternoon, the second of August.
Massa
’s office was parked on four at the moment,
doors open to Harsch’s larger and more dramatic room, with its desert views.
While Massa leaned back in his chair, feet up on his desk as he occasionally
sucked on a bottle of beer, Jacob Harsch paced slowly and methodically along an
invisible and slightly bowed line between Massa’s desk in the former elevator
and his own desk in his own room. Seated on the sofa to Massa’s left, legs
casually crossed but pad and (black) pencil alertly at the ready, was Boy
Cartwright, smiling like the school snitch in the principal’s office.

           
They had been talking, these three,
but then a silence had fallen, broken by the glug of Massa’s beer, the faint
brush of Harsch’s black shoes on the gray carpet, the creak and twitch of Boy’s
smile.
Tonk
, said the beer bottle
when it kissed the desk top.
Grugg
,
gergg, gug-gug-guggle,
said
Massa
’s stomach. “If we only knew
when ”
said
Massa
.

 
          
“Well,
sir,” Boy said, with that light and airy display of omniscience-now which was
his trademark, and which was mostly the effect of his diet of Valium and
champagne, “it must be soon, mustn’t it? They do have the license and so on.”
“There’s also,” Harsch said, pacing by, “the question of
where.
Massachusetts
is a fairly large place.”

 
          
“We
have our people, sir,” Boy said, mostly to
Massa
, “following them everywhere. They’ll lead
us to the place, as soon as they’re ready.”
Massa
’s hand caressed last Friday’s
Galaxy
, lying faceup on his desk,
containing the story of the meeting and romance between John Michael Mercer and
his little Miss Nobody. “Real nice story, there,”
Massa
said, a sentimental curl passing over his
eyebrows. “How they met, and all.” “I was quite touched by it,” Boy said. It
was his policy never to denigrate a competitor unless there was a clear and
unequivocal immediate gain to be made; thus his reputation for fairness and
acumen among those where it mattered, like
Massa
and Harsch, a reputation that made his
occasional slurs and slices doubly potent.

           
Massa said, “Suppose Jack Ingersoll
has the where and when?”

 
          
“No,”
Boy said, and permitted himself a faint smile. “I have a . . .
friend
on Jack’s team. What he knows, I
know.”

 
          
Massa
grinned; he loved intrigue, except against
himself, and encouraged it among the staff.

 
          
Harsch,
returning among them like Halley’s Comet, said, “Whatever the date and place
turn out to be, the point is to be ready.”

 
          
“Oh,
but of course,” Boy said to Harsch’s back, as the
Galaxy
*s number-two man receded again into his own office.

 
          
“Jake’s
right,”
Massa
said, turning serious, putting his feet on
the floor, replacing them with his elbows on the desk. “What it comes down to
is: What’s our story?”

 
          
Surprised,
Boy spread his hands and said, “John Michael Mercer gets married.”

 
          
Harsch,
circling back, said, “That’s the door, that’s not the house.”

 
          
“That’s
right,”
Massa
said, nodding, shaking the beer bottle.
“It’s the door, not the house.”

 
          
“Yes,
of course,” Boy said. He drew a little door on his pad, almost got lost in the
reverie of a complex doorknob, and pulled himself back to the mundane plane by
his shirttail. “We must enter the house,” he said, extending Harsch’s metaphor
as far as he dared.

           
Massa
said,
“Who
is he marrying? Is that our story?”

 
          
Now
that they were talking again, the orbit of Harsch’s pacing had contracted, so
he could remain a part of the conversation. Drifting left and right, but never
very far away, he said, “Who is Mercer marrying. A nobody from nowhere.”

 
          
“Maybe
that’s
our story,”
Massa
said, while Boy looked alert, ready to
agree whenever a decision was reached.

 
          
Not
yet, though. “She’s a bore, Bruno,” Harsch said, and kept moving.

 
          
“All
right, then,”
Massa
said, accepting that.
“Why
is
he marrying? What do his friends think? What does the network think? Is there a
story in any of that?”

 
          
Massa
was now staring straight at Boy, who felt
constrained to answer. “We’re working those angles, of course, sir,” he said.
“So far, not much of interest.”

 
          
“Then
Mercer
is the story,”
Massa
said, and spread his hands. “Why not?”

 
          
“Interesting,”
Harsch said, while through his brave expression Boy looked scared.

 
          
“The
exclusive interview with John Michael Mercer!”
Massa
announced, and read the headline off a
giant marquee: “Why I Finally Decided to Tie the Knot!”

 
          
“Ah,
yes,” Boy said. All on its own, his pencil drew a great X on the door.

 
          
“You
can do it, Boy,”
Massa
said. “If anyone can.”

           
“Ah, yes,” Boy said, and made his
sunniest smile. “Yes, indeed.”

 
          
Near
the barricaded finish of a four-mile-long dead-end road running parallel to the
beach between bay and ocean, within the city limits of Palm Beach, an avenue
flanked on both sides by increasingly large and well-protected waterfront
houses, a small side road choked by encroaching pine trees was marked with official
city signs reading,
one way—do not
enter.
But this was a He, since the road was in fact an entrance as well as
an exit, and the only entrance/exit by land to the compound containing the home
of John Michael Mercer, star of TV’s
Breakpoint.

 
          
A
low sprawling white house done in modified Spanish style dominated this
compound. It was open on all sides to the breeze and to eye-filling views of
the ocean, the pool, the tennis court, the gardens. In the open, airy,
comfortable, beautiful main Hving room of this house, John Michael Mercer stood
and said, “I want them to suffer.”

 
          
“But
there’s really nothing to be gained by suing them, Johnny,” said the lawyer
seated on the couch.

 
          
“Oh,
yes, there is,” Mercer said. Earlier in the conversation, he had thrown the
Weekly Galaxy
on the floor, where it had
separated into several overlapping sections, on all of which he now stomped as
he paced back and forth in front of the low and comfortable sofa where the
lawyer and the lawyer’s attache case were seated.

           
“We know the way they work,” the
lawyer said, spreading his hands and shaking his head. “They’ll have backup for
that entire story.”

 
          
“There
isn’t a word of truth in it!”

 
          
“Of
course not. They—”

 
          
“All
that
crap
about mixed-up car keys,
and all that other
shit
, as though
we’re mental retards in some slapstick movie!”

 
          
“They’re
quoting a quote longtime friend unquote,” the lawyer said. “They’ll have
someone, you know, someone you’re acquainted with socially at some level or
another. For a few hundred dollars that person read off that ridiculous yam
into a tape recorder. If we sue they’ll produce the tape in court. If it’s
false, it isn’t
their
fault. They
accepted the friend’s word in good faith. You won’t be able to touch them, and
in fact they might very well have a valid countersuit, which wouldn’t be at all
pleasant.”

 
          
Mercer
stopped pacing to stand with both feet planted on multicolored segments of the
Galaxy
. Looming over the lawyer, he
said, “If we sue, they produce the tape. Then we
know
who the friend is.”

 
          
“Oh,
Johnny, what’s the point?” the lawyer asked. “It won’t be anybody close to you
or important to you. If you sue
him
,
or try to get even in some other way—”

 
          
“I
was thinking,” Mercer said, “of the death of a thousand cuts.”

 
          
“Legally
inadvisable,” the lawyer told him. “All you can do is demean yourself and raise
this anonymous pip-squeak into importance. Forget it, Johnny. Treat it as the
unimportant dreck it is.” Mercer frowned down at the paper beneath his feet. “I
can’t do anything,” he complained sofdy. “I hate these people, loathe and
despise and detest them, and I can’t do
anything
.
I’d like to express my opinion of this rag down here on the floor right here
and now, and I can’t even do
that,
because
I like the rug too much.”

 
          
Laughing,
the lawyer said, “That’s right, Johnny. As long as you keep your sense of
humor, they can’t beat you.”

 
          
“You
can get further,” Mercer said, “with a sense of humor and a gun.

 
          
Rising,
closing his attache case, the lawyer said, “You have money, success, fame and
the love of a good woman. And what do they have? Envy, viciousness and a
terminal case of small- timer’s disease. Bask in your comforts, Johnny, and
forget them.”

 
          
“I
guess, the next time I want legal advice,” Mercer said, walking with his lawyer
to the door, “I should call a psychiatrist.”

 
          
“Not
a bad idea,” the lawyer said, unruffled. They shook hands at the door, said a
few more inconclusive words, and then Mercer shut the door, walked back through
the house, looked out a window, and saw Felicia sunning herself in her bikini
on a chaise beside the pool. The wise man would join her.

 
          
Sunning
herself in her bikini on a chaise beside the pool, Felicia idly watched the new
groundsman work among the roses in the garden. A tiny gnarled Oriental man of
indeterminate age, he was just beginning today, and Felicia found a fascination
in watching the way he acquainted himself with the flowers, touching them
lightly, muttering to them, poking tentatively with fingertips around their
roots. Here was an honest son of toil, as brown and twisty as an old shrub
himself—though not exacdy an ornamental—and to Felicia it seemed the man was
letting the flowers grow used to
him
as
much as he was getting to know them.

 
          
Johnny
came out in his swimsuit and dark glasses, smiling in that tough self-confident
way that was second nature to him and was so much of the reason why the camera
loved his face. “Nice,” he said.

 
          
“Very
nice,” she agreed. “I’m ready for a day like this to go on forever.”

 
          
“I
meant you,” he said, grinning, sitting on the other chaise next to her.

 
          
“I
meant the day. And you, of course.” Looking around, sighing, she said, “But it
is too bad we can’t be married in this beautiful place.”