Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (24 page)

 
          
“No
way,” Johnny told her, an edge in his voice. “The press would be all over us
like bedbugs. We’re going to be someplace not connected with us at all, have a
good private ceremony, just our closest friends, no circus, no cheapness. Thank
God for
Martha’s
Vineyard
!”

 
          
“Johnny!”
she exclaimed, with a quick look toward the groundsman. Even though she knew
she was just picking up Johnny’s paranoia, she couldn’t keep herself from
saying, “We’re not alone!”

           
“Don’t worry,” he said. “He doesn’t
speak a word of English, I have it absolutely guaranteed by Henry Reed.”

 
          
“He
might know
Martha’s
Vineyard
,” Felicia
said doubtfully.

 
          
“Not
a chance,” Johnny said, waving the idea away. “Come on, let’s do some laps.”

 
          
So
they swam together in the pool, two of the beautiful people in sparkling
sunshine, making rainbows as the water splashed all about them. The new
groundsman continued to work for another half hour, then pottered off, out to
his messy rattly truck, where he put his tools away, cleaned his hands,
activated the electric gate blocking the driveway as Mr. Mercer had demonstrated,
and drove away. His little truck jaunted all the way out the four-mile-long
dead-end road, then turned right and came to a stop at a gas station where the
groundsman climbed from behind the wheel, went to the pay phone in the comer
and made a long distance call to another part of Florida, where Boy Cartwright
languidly picked up his flashing phone and said, “Are you there?” a Britishism
he’d retained through all these years in exile because he knew the Americans
hated it.

 
          
“Istu
mintacko kuminish,” said the groundsman.

 
          
“Ah,
my little brown friend,” Boy said, sitting up straighter at his desk. “Stendoko
mirik?”

           
The groundsman nodded. “Dako maku,”
he said, “chinchun mookako
Martha’s Vineyard
.”

           
“Ahhhh,” said Boy. “Moko chicku
watto.” When he hung up he was smiling.

 
          
Sara
was learning so
much
about
Massachusetts
, and none of it worth a good goddamn. For
instance, Massachusetts, forty-fifth of the states in size—it lost most of
itself in 1819 when Maine was separated off and became its own state—is also
one of only four American states officially designated a commonwealth, the
other three being Kentucky, Pennsylania and Virginia. But, since “commonwealth”
is merely an old-fashioned word that actually means “state,” so what? I mean,
so
what?

 
          
This
was the kind of thing Sara was learning, along with the potential venality and
gullibility of certain functionaries and employees and residents within the
state, along with much information about the tourist attractions and scenic
wonders therein, and absolutely
everything
about
Massachusetts
marriage law. But what she wasn’t finding
out, no matter how hard she tried, was
where
in that great and glorious state—motto:
Erne
petit placidam sub libertate quietem
, or, “By the sword we seek peace, but only
under liberty”—did the Mercers-to-be intend to become the Mercers-that- were?
And
when
would that happy event take place?
And
where
would they be staying in
Massachusetts
, either on the wedding night or the
prewedding night, whichever turned out to be more newsworthy? And in just what
manner—religious, civil, large, small—did they intend to be wed?

 
          
Today
was Tuesday, August the third, and in the last four working days Sara had been,
on the phone, everything from Felicia Nelson’s pregnant sister to the
Atlanta-based offices of the
National
Disease
Control
Center
. And
never
in all her life —which is to say, in the three weeks and two days she had been
an employee of the
Weekly Galaxy
—had
she run up against so thoroughly
blank
a blank wall as in this case. Her entire attention was tuned to this problem,
so thoroughly that she could do nothing with her evenings but talk to Phyllis
about potential further schemes and stratagems. She was even
dreaming
about it, coming up with
wonderful ideas from her subconscious that turned out the next day to be of
absolutely no help whatever. And once again the question of Taggart, the
missing guard, with no further incidents to fuel her interest, had faded away.
His remaining papers lay ignored in the back of her closet.

 
          
Today,
Sara almost didn’t take time for lunch, but Phyllis insisted. “You have to
eat,
silly,” she said.

 
          
“But
what if Boy gets there first?”

 
          
“Oh,
what if he does?” Phyllis said, shocking Sara. “Honestly, Sara, I never thought
you'd
get caught up in it like this.
A month from now, what will any of this matter?”

           
“Something
will matter.”

 
          
“But
it won’t,” Phyllis said, laughing at her in surprise. “It’s not as though we’re
uncovering Watergate, for heaven’s sake. The
subject
is a TV star getting
married
,
and honestly, dear, that is not earth-shattering. Now, come to lunch.”

 
          
So
she went to lunch, with Phyllis, in the commissary, but all through the meal
she kept thinking of calls she could be making, and could barely pay attention
to Phyllis’s blithe conversation at all except for when Phyllis said, “Of
course, one nice thing if our team does get the assignment, we’ll all get to
travel away from
here
for a while.”

 
          
“Yes,”
Sara said fiercely, “but
when?”

 
          
“Oh,
eat your pie,” Phyllis said.

 
          
But
she couldn’t eat her pie. She gulped down her coffee, abandoned her pie,
hurried back up to Editorial, and when she saw the white light flashing on her
phone she felt only irritation that an incoming call would delay her getting
back to work.

 
          
More
than delay, though; the game was over. “Forget it,” Jack’s voice said in her
ear.

 
          
She
knew what he meant, of course, but tried not to know. “Jack? What do you mean?”

 
          
“Ohly
ohly in free,” he said, “come on home.
Massa
just gave the Mercer wedding to Boy.”

         
  
“No! Why?”

           
“
Massa
has spoken,” Jack’s grimly calm voice said.
“It has become Boy’s exclusive. We may be called on for some sidebars.”

 
          
“That
isn’t
fair!”

 
          
“I
don’t believe fairness was a significant factor in the decision,” he said.
“Come over to Mary Kate to get your new assignment.”

 
          
“All
right.”

 
          
“And
while you’re here ...”

 
          
“Yes?”

 
          
“Don’t
sympathize,” said the cold calm voice.

 
          
As
Jack dropped the phone onto its receiver, Ida entered the squaricle, wearing
her fresh
New
York
pale. “Phyllis Perkinson,” she said.

 
          
“She
works for us,” Jack said, “and she works for
Trend.”

 
          
Ida
nodded. “She does.”

 
          
“And
what is she doing for
Trend
, Ida?”

 
          
‘“Us,”
Ida said. From her shoulder bag she took half a dozen audio cassettes and
dropped them on Jack’s desk. “She is doing a
Galaxy
on the
Galaxy”
she
said.

 
          
In
the periphery of his vision, Sara arrived and spoke quietly with Mary Kate.
Jack’s attention was focused on Ida, very very very exclusively. Breathing,
nearly whispering, he said, “An expose? Of
us?”

 
          
“On
those tapes,” Ida said, “we got you claiming to be the State Department. We got
Sara claiming to be a rape victim, an arthritis victim and an
extraterrestrial’s common-law wife. We got Binx explaining all about how the
Brits and Aussies work here without the green card. We got
Massa
talking about John Michael Mercer and the
beer and potato chip diet.”

 
          
Wide-eyed,
Jack said, “She’s got
Massa
?”

           
“She’s got Harsch doing his
hatchetman.” Gesturing at the tapes, she said, “What you got there is nine
hours of high crimes and misdemeanors.”

           
Jack spread his hands over the
tapes. “Are there other copies?”

           
“No. I left him blanks.” Smiling
like a polar bear, Ida said, “I’d like to be at that editorial conference, when
he plays them. He’s been keeping them at home for safekeeping.”

 
          
“Oh,
yes?”

           
“In the same bedside drawer with the
condoms.” Sara, having accepted a wad of papers from Mary Kate, was on her way
back to her station. Watching her work her way through the black lines, Jack
said, “What about Sara? She a part of it?”

 
          
“No.
This is all the Perkinson.”

           
“If this gets out,” Jack said, “even
if we’ve killed it, if this gets out, I am a nonperson. She’s on
my
team. Never trust a woman, Ida.”

 
          
“I
never do,” Ida said, and Mary Kate said, “Binx just called.”

           
“He isn’t talking to me, for some
reason,” Jack said.

           
“He didn’t want to talk to you,”
Mary Kate said. “He just wanted to let me know, he’s been called up to Harsch’s
office.”

 
          
“Oh,”
Jack said, paying insufficient attention, his mind still turning over the
Phyllis Perkinson problem. “Boy must have this,” he said.

           
“The spy,” agreed Ida.

 
          
“He
found out— Some way, he found out she was a spy for
Trend
, and turned her, and made her a spy for him.”

 
          
“We’ll
never prove it,” Ida said. “I’d love to, even
Massa
wouldn’t be able to stomach somebody who
lets a spy stay here so she can spy for
him
,
but you know as well as I do Cartwright’s too good, he’ll never leave a
footprint.”

 
          
“But
he can’t blow the story on us either,” Jack said, “not without showing his own
knowledge. So we’re safe from Boy, if we can only blow Perkinson out of the
water without the reason getting known.”

 
          
“Or
leave her in and neutralize her,” Ida suggested.

 
          
“Here?
Everybody here talks, Ida, they talk all the time. Information is our most
important product.”

 
          
“She
could have a fall and break her leg,” Ida suggested.

 
          
“Two
or three months in the hospital?” Jack considered the idea. “The only problem
is, things like that tend to backfire, and then the situation’s worse than it was
be—” He stopped, frowned at Mary Kate, and said, “Harsch called Binx to come up
to his office?”

 
          
“That’s
what he said,” Mary Kate agreed.

 
          
“What
day is it?”

 
          
“Tuesday,”
Mary Kate said.

           
Jack looked across the room toward
Binx’s empty squaricle. “That poor bastard,” he said.

 
          
Binx
was back in his squaricle, packing his personal possessions into a briefcase
and a shopping bag, under the impersonal gaze of a brown-uniformed guard
maintaining a discreet distance, when Jack came in and said, “Jesus Christ,
Binx.” “Crucified in
Jerusalem
,” Binx responded. “Rumored to be a faggot.”

 
          
Jack
stuck his hands in his back trouser pockets and walked around and around inside
the squaricle. “Shit, Binx,” he said. “We’ve been friends.”

           
“Memories I’ll treasure always,”
Binx said.

           
“What
I’m
sorry for,” Jack said, “is stealing your life for the Mercer
piece. I was scrambling, you know?”

           
“Water over the grave,” Binx said,
“not to worry. I probably would have done the same thing.”

 
          
Jack
stood still and considered him. “Well, no,” he said. “No, you wouldn’t, Binx.”

 
          
‘“Why
do you say that?”

           
“Because I haven’t been fired,” Jack
said, and hurried on, saying, “Do you have any ideas?”

           
“Oh, thousands,” Binx said. “Carbon
monoxide, mostly.” With a nod toward the guard, he said, “You know, mosdy, when
people get the push and the guard shows up, other people don’t come around. They
don’t want the contamination.”

           
“Fuck that, pal,” Jack said. ‘Til be
your friend as long as you want me.”

 
          
“No
ulterior motive?”

 
          
“Like
what? Buy your thesaurus cheap? Listen, seriously, Binx, do you have any other
job ideas lined up?”