“He has a good face,” Paula said. “It’s a strong face. It’s almost ugly, and yet it’s almost handsome.”
“He’s been in Houston since January. Six months. But I wouldn’t say he’s exactly putting his roots down,” Fergasson said.
Tom Brower closed his eyes. He sighed. “So what’s the next step? That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”
“You’ve never mentioned your plans to me, Mr. Brower. If it’s of any help to you, I tried to ascertain what Thelma Carr knew of his background. She knew that Sidney had an older brother named George, but they are estranged and Sid did not know or care where his brother was, or what he was doing, or whether he was
alive or dead. She knows he is orphaned. She knows his childhood was … unpleasant. She believes he came from Youngstown, Ohio. Perhaps it is fortunate she does not know of your existence, because after Shanley disappeared, some friends or employees of Wain made certain she told them everything she knew. When he disappeared he took his personal papers and records with him. She had never looked at them.”
“How does she feel toward him now?” Paula asked.
Fergasson looked at her and with a slight hesitation and faint change of expression managed to convey the impression he thought questions from outsiders impertinent. “I think it seems rather far away to her, Miss Lettinger. She’s lived a great deal since he left. And, even in the beginning, I don’t think she was a very sensitive or perceptive person. She talked to me because I was paying for her time, and when she ran out of answers, the money would run out. It was that simple.”
“Will she tell Jerry Wain someone was asking about Sid?” Brower asked.
“Probably. I represented myself as an insurance adjustor making the final interview before closing the file on the explosion which crippled the mechanic. She had no reason to doubt that. I wanted to find Shanley, I told her, so I could have a terminal interview with him, too. She would not admit that Wain could have had anything to do with the bomb, naturally.”
“I want to talk to both my grandsons,” Brower said. “I want to talk to Sid first. George can wait. We know how to get in touch with him at any time. But how do we get him here?”
“He might not remember you at all, sir. And if he did, he might not believe you are alive. He might think it’s some sort of a trick. It would be expensive, but possible, to just take him and bring him here. But it might easily go wrong. I have the impression he might be difficult to handle.”
“I wonder if he would remember this house? He was here for almost two weeks once. It was the only time I ever saw him. He was four years old, and he was a strange, troubled, wary child—with good reason of course.”
“If I may make one comment, sir.”
“Of course.”
“I’m assuming it’s your intention to … provide for your grandsons. If so, sooner or later, there’ll be publicity, because it is a rather large estate. Such publicity might easily endanger your grandson.”
“Mr. Fergasson, you are worth even more than the generous fee your agency is charging me.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Turn your expense sheets in to young Randolph for approval and payment.”
“I took that liberty early this afternoon, Mr. Brower.”
“I’m suddenly very tired, Mr. Fergasson. I shall nap and then I shall do some thinking. Please stay at the Inn again tonight, and Miss Lettinger will be in touch with you in the morning.”
After Paula saw him to the door, she came back to Tom Brower’s bedside. His eyes were closed. He looked as frail and dry as a twist of parchment. His narrow chest lifted with his slow shallow breathing. Thinking him asleep, she wondered if she should leave him in that position, or risk awakening him by lowering the head of the bed.
“The young one is the better of the two,” Brower said firmly.
“Is he?”
“You read all the reports on George. Could you imagine George making that gesture of sending the check to the injured mechanic’s wife?” His eyes were keen as he looked up at her.
“I guess not. No.”
“Sidney—what a dreadful name—is the one worth saving.”
She looked at him steadily, gravely. “But who are we saving, Tom, actually? Wouldn’t it be you?”
“You’re too young to know that much, my dear.”
“I’m young enough to wish I didn’t. Let’s leave it at that. And past time for your shot, by ten minutes. Dr. Marriner will stop by at six, so it’s not worth napping until after he goes.”
“I’m not tired, except of Adam Fergasson. He has a unique ability to depress me, even when he brings good news. Bring me the boy’s picture again. Leave it here on the table where I can look at it.”
She fixed the hypodermic, shot the withered, insensate hip, took pulse, temperature and blood pressure and marked her chart.
Thomas Brower put the picture aside and said, “I was sixty-two. It was in the autumn. Jane Weese was a young woman then. She had come to work for me the previous year. Neither of us knew how to entertain a scared child. My dear, go into the living room to the cabinet in the corner beyond the fireplace and see if you can find a small pink box with a carved animal on the lid. It should be on the top shelf.”
She returned with it. “This is beautiful work. Is the animal a badger?”
“I’ve always thought so. It’s pink jade, Chinese, very old. Brought back by one of the whalers and traders in the family, from my mother’s side, Gloucester stock. I think it might be valuable. I remember a visitor getting very excited about it long ago, but I’ve never had it appraised.” He handed it back to her. “It’s nice to hold, isn’t it? The little boy fell in love with it. I gave him two new dimes to carry around in it. I gave him the box also. But after his father took him away again, Jane found the box under his pillow. Perhaps I should have sent it to him. I knew where they were at that time. But later I didn’t know. I think he must have mourned the loss of it.”
“Of course you mean it is the thing he would be most likely to remember.”
“You are very quick, Paula.”
“You’d send it to him now?”
“What other things would a boy remember? The closest he and I ever got was one warm afternoon in the garden. He was such a remote child, so ready for a blow at any time. That apple tree down in the far corner was old even then. I boosted him up onto that low limb. Has it fallen?”
“It’s still there.”
“He might remember that. A picture of it. You could take it. And the way the house looks from the road in front, far enough away so you can see the fence. He thought the fence meant it was a jail.”
“Poor little guy.”
“And then you could take the box and the pictures to
Houston and show them to him, my dear. They could be your credentials.”
Her dark eyes went round. “You can’t be serious!”
“You have worked over four hundred days without a day off, Miss Lettinger.”
“I don’t feel abused.”
“A change won’t hurt you.”
“Who will take care of you?”
“Marriner will arrange a replacement for a few days. He’ll find some officious biddy who’ll irritate me beyond reason, but I’ll endure it because I know it will be in a good cause. And no man with a drop of Brower blood in him could look at you and think you were trying to trick him. Can you imagine sending Fergasson down there with the pink box?”
“He’d do it well.”
“You can do it better. I don’t want that boy scared away. There’s less chance if you go.”
“I might scare him away, Tom.”
“Be careful, my dear. Be careful, but don’t take too long. These past two weeks have been pretty good. Too good, maybe. Bring him back with you.”
She looked thoughtful. “This is Tuesday. With the best of luck I could leave Thursday. If Jud comes here, he should arrive a week from Thursday, if he comes directly here from Dannemora.” She looked at the pink jade box. “It should be time enough.” She looked at him with an almost petulant expression. “But I don’t
know
how to do things like this. It … it scares me, Tom.”
“Because you’ve been making your world smaller and smaller? I have to, you know. Because you want walls around yourself, Paula? Because you got hurt out there?”
“Please, I …”
“You haven’t wanted any time off. Who is the invalid around here?”
“I’ve been happy here, Tom.”
“Happy?”
“Contented, then.”
“A condition, my dear, your paternal grandmother would have thought despicable. She was a hundred and ten percent alive. I just heard the flatulence of Ward Marriner’s little red car in the driveway, so you’d better go let him in.”
She put the pink box on one of the library shelves, made a face at him and left the room. He picked up the picture of his grandson again. But instead of looking at the picture, he found himself looking at the hand which held it, the ancient hand, a tremulous pallor of lumps and twigs, of spots and stiffness. In that moment it seemed monstrous to him that time should work such a merciless decay. This frail claw had struck blows, hauled lines, lifted weights, caressed the heated sweetness of women long since dead.
He looked through the window, past the wall and the maples to hills turning blue in the shadows of the early evening sunlight. He felt all the weight of a thousand inexpressible regrets, and was afraid he would weep.
“Still with us, you improbable old fraud?” Ward Marriner boomed. “When I retire, I’ll look in on you from time to time.”
“I’m still here in spite of all the miracles of modern medicine,” Tom Brower said tartly. “And you won’t live long enough to retire. You’re too fat. There’s a pretty picture. A fat doctor. Like a bald barber. How do you get in and out of that silly little red automobile?”
“Put this under your tongue, Thomas, and be still.”
“Look at the chart, idiot. She took it less than a half hour ago.”
“Hmmm. So she did.”
Sid Wells awoke from an aching dream, his sweat chill in the air-conditioned silence, a memory of his own voice hanging in the room, saying, “Thelma.” The dream was gone before he could grasp it, leaving him with a metallic taste, a residue of panic and flight. His phone was ringing. He sat up on the edge of his bed and answered it. It was Scobie, phoning from the lot.
“Sid? Sid, we got a sure thing on that Saab if we pull it down to nine and a half.”
“Was Bimmer in this morning?”
“When we opened up, yes.”
“So did you ask him?”
“Burnsie did.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said it was up to you. The way I see it, Sid, we’ve had it a long time, you know. I mean you can get sick of looking at something, you keep it around long enough.”
“Have you got the card there?”
“Right in front of me, Sid. We allowed eleven bills on it against a Chrysler that went at twenty-two five, and we got three bills out of the Chrysler including the shop order on it. The shop debited us sixty dollars on the Saab. So what that would be …”
“It would be taking two hundred and ten off what we cleared on the Chrysler, which brings us below percentage on both of them, Scobie.”
“But this is clean, Sid. Cash on the line.”
“What do we have to have to make percentage on both?”
“One thousand seventy-five.”
“Two months ago, Scobie, you would have apologized and figured it out and called me back.”
“I guess that’s right. Maybe I’m learning.”
“Kid, you can pull it down to an even thousand, and we’ll put the plates on it, but that’s as low as it goes. Can you deal?”
“I can sure try, Sid. Thanks. I wake you up or anything?”
“I was up. After ten isn’t it?”
“A woman was here looking for you. I told her you come on at noon today.”
“Buying?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so somehow. One thing I noticed, she’s driving a rental.”
“What does she look like?”
“Not bad. Not bad at all. Medium tall brunette, knocking thirty, stacked pretty good, no wedding ring, talks Yankee, well-dressed. A nice smile, Sid. She didn’t give a name. Burnsie asked her. She just said she’d be back is all.”
“Scobie, was she a little on the … on the rough side?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. More like a lady, Sid.”
“Thanks, kid.”
He hung up. He took a long shower. As he showered and shaved and dressed he thought of all the things he always thought of whenever something happened which could not be immediately explained. Were they still looking? Maybe not actively, but Wain would never give up. Not with two kinds of pride at stake, the deadened face and two failures on the record. And he reviewed his preparations, looking for a flaw. All proof of his actual identity was in a safety deposit box in a bank in Jessup, Georgia. A detailed search of this motel unit would turn up nothing to tie him to Sidney Shanley of Jacksonville. He always wore the same belt, with a concealed zipper compartment containing the lock box key and two thousand dollars, half in fifties, half in hundreds. He could walk away at any time, leaving behind the car, the clothes, the innocuous belongings of Sid Wells, stroll away, take a bus, take a plane, find a new place, establish a new identity, find work in any city in the country doing the same thing, selling cars to the people. Used cars. Be ready to wander, or be ready to die. He sensed that one day he might lose patience with his own solution to that dilemma. Life, under that discipline, had limited merit.
But for now it was the lesser of the two evils. Stay wary and stay alive, for the meager pleasures of the loner, food and drink, books and walks and climate, the infrequent girl who also wants to avoid emotional involvement.
He arrived at the lot a little before noon. Scobie had unloaded the Saab and was delighted with himself even though, by taking the deal below percentage, he had shorted himself slightly on his commission, and shorted Sid in a very small way on his override as lot manager. Vern Burns was working on a small rancher. Scobie said he doubted Vern and the rancher had said over ten words apiece in the last half hour. They were leaning against the tailgate of the pickup the rancher was thinking of buying, staring out at the hustle of traffic on Almeda. Joselito was working his way along the front line, rubbing the dust from the specials under the striped canopy. A yellow T-Bird turned slowly on the big tilted wheel. The pennants hung limply in the airless heat of July. Inside the sales shack, bright as a fragment of Mondrian, the window conditioner rattled busily. Scobie reported all that Bimmer had said. Sid listened, standing and looking out the picture window, his arms folded.