Blacklist (33 page)

CHAPTER 41

Charity Begins at Home

You’re a determined young woman, aren’t you, Ms. Warshawski?” Geraldine Graham was sitting in the chair under her mother’s portrait, the remains of her supper on a tray on the piecrust table.

“It gets me places brains and brawn won’t take me,” I agreed.

When I’d reached Anodyne Park at six-thirty, Lisa had told the guard not to admit me. I didn’t waste time on argument, but drove back around to Coverdale Lane. It was dark now, but I quickly found the entrance to the culvert under the road. I shone my flashlight around-it didn’t look to me as though Bobby had organized an exploration of the area yet.

I was still in jeans and running shoes; hunched over, my back aching from the need to stoop, I stomped through Benji’s and my footprints, trying not to obliterate the wheel tracks from the golf cart. When I got to the juniper bush on the Anodyne Park side, I stretched myself thankfully. I tried to clean the muck from my shoes, but when I got inside Geraldine’s building, I took them off: no point adding mud to my other iniquities in Lisa’s eyes.

Getting inside Geraldine’s building didn’t require any special skill, just the time-honored method of pressing apartment bells until someone buzzed me in. An old person in Chicago would have been more cautious,

but they were a trusting bunch in Anodyne Park, at least trusting in their guard at the gate.

At Geraldine Graham’s own front door, Lisa answered my insistent ring. She was so startled she didn’t react at all for a second. By the time she decided to slam the door in my face, I had given her a genial “good evening,” dropped my shoes outside the door, and moved past her into the hallway. I could hear Ms. Graham calling from the living room, demanding to know who was at the door.

I went in to greet her, and had the satisfaction of hearing her admonish Lisa for trying to keep me out: I was there at Geraldine’s request, to tell her what had happened at Larchmont on Friday night. When I’d run through enough of the highlights-including my interrogation by the FBI-to satisfy her, I finally turned to my own agenda.

“I know we had an appointment for tomorrow afternoon,” I said, “but I had Edwards Bayard with me this afternoon and he told me an odd tale.” “Edwards? I suppose he came out here because of the girl.”

“Among other things. Do you know, I actually found him in Olin Taverner’s apartment Thursday night? He had broken in, trying to find some secret papers that Taverner had promised him.”

“How extraordinary. And did he find the papers?” She did a good job, keeping a tone of light interest in her flutey voice, but her hands had clenched at her sides.

“No.” I waited for her hands to relax before adding, “but he did tell me about a letter he found from your mother to Calvin Bayard.”

“And I suppose you drove out here to tell me about it?” Her hands tightened again, but she still managed to keep her voice steady.

“Your mother wrote Calvin about depredations he was committing against her household, and a demand for restitution-or she would take action.”

The light bouncing from her heavy glasses made it impossible for me to see Geraldine’s eyes. “Mother thought she was a law unto herself. She defined theft according to her own canons.”

“And?” I prompted, when she fell silent again.

“I wrote a check for Calvin to one of his pet charities. It was a group Mother disapproved of, because it provided assistance to indigent Negroes

who needed legal assistance.” She gave one of her involuntary glances at the full-length portrait behind her. “I was fortyfive years old, but she still thought it within her rights to examine my bank statement when it arrived each month. I didn’t realize she was doing it until she confronted me over this check; for once I held my ground with her. I should have realized she would next turn to Calvin.”

“She had such strong anti-black prejudices?” I was bewildered. Geraldine Graham gave a tight little smile. “She had such strong feelings against her will being thwarted that I imagine she lost sight of the original issue.

“She threatened Mr. Bayard with reprisals. What would those have been?” “Mother owned shares in Bayard Publishing. She was always threatening to sell them to Olin, who was her nephew, or to will them to him, whenever Calvin published something she thought was risqu&. It was a hollow threat-she disapproved of Olin’s sexual proclivities far more than she did of Calvin’s daring authors. How odd it seems that Calvin’s authors were once considered daring, now that every sexual act is described in such detail that they all become merely boring. Not to mention how they appear in films. Men like Armand Pelletier, who were glamorized for their bold language, have become passe.”

“Why was Lisa so determined I shouldn’t talk to you about this?” I refused to be diverted. “She accused me of working for the newspapers, trying to dig up old dirt.”

“That’s right, madam.” Lisa popped into the room from her self-appointed listening post. “I remember well what Mrs. Drummond went through when Mr. MacKenzie passed, the work to keep-“

“That will do, Lisa. Miss Victoria is trying to find out who killed the Negro writer in our pond. She has no prurient interest in my affairs and we have nothing to hide from her.”

The last phrase was uttered like a warning, like a way of saying, our hand is so much quicker than her eye, that you can speak of everything, except the elephant in the drawing room which she can’t see. Lisa muttered something that might have been an apology. She retreated to the edge of the carpet, but she didn’t leave the room.

“No one seemed to think I might mourn MacKenzie when he died, but

his death marked the end of many things for me,” Geraldine added for me. “To my mother, his death was one more inconvenience he had caused her: odd, when you consider that my marriage to him was her idea. Hers and MacKenzie’s father’s. Mr. Blair Graham was one of my father’s business associates, and everyone thought that marriage would settle both MacKenzie and me down, turning him from the temptations of New York City and me from those of Chicago when we started our own nursery. Children are supposed to be a woman’s greatest joy, after all. How strange that Mother would tell me that so often when I brought her no joy at all. Except perhaps the joy of exercising her will over mine.”

“Your mother didn’t think Darraugh should mourn his father’s death, either?” As always happened in talking to Geraldine, I had to struggle to keep on the subject, or to remember what the subject was. “Was that why Darraugh ran away from school when your husband died?”

Geraldine’s hands began to pleat the stiff fabric of her skirt. “My mother was still alive when Darraugh’s son was born. She took his naming the boy `MacKenzie’ as a personal insult, rather than a tribute to a well-loved parent. She thought Darraugh ought to name the boy Matthew for my father. Or even call him after her own father. Virgil Fabian Taverner-he was named during the Victorian fashion for all things Roman. Be that as it may, Mother rewrote her will a few days after MacKenzie’s baptism. None of the boy’s charms, and my grandson has always had most winning ways, could persuade Mother not to punish Darraugh through his son.”

“I know young MacKenzie; he does have a lot of charm. What was the charity your mother took such exception to?”

She didn’t understand what I was talking about at first. When I reminded her that she had written a check to one of Calvin Bayard’s charities, she again stiffened, but said, “How strange that I can’t remember. At the time it seemed of consuming importance-my action, Mother’s intrusiveness. And yet, the memory has vanished like some long-since plucked fruit.”

“It wasn’t the Committee for Social Thought and Justice? Renee Bayard said that was one that your cousin Olin was particularly determined to prove a Communist front.”

She shook her head again. “Young woman, you must be now the age I was then. Everything seems fresh and clear in your mind’s eye, but if you

live to my great age, you will find that the past becomes such a broad landscape that many memories, even precious ones, get hidden under leaves and hillocks. You will have to excuse me now. Conversation fatigues me as it didn’t formerly.”

I got up to leave; Lisa smiled in triumph.

“You’re very kind to have taken the time. How did Mr. Bayard come to be involved with Mr. Llewellyn to the extent of providing the money he needed to start his own publishing firm?” I asked.

“I was never involved in the business life of New Solway’s businessmen. When I was a young woman, we were supposed to be decorative, not to have heads for great affairs.”

I shook off Lisa’s arm as she tried to steer me to the door. “Did Mr. Llewellyn support the same charity that you did?”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t know, young woman. It’s possible. But it was all a long time ago, in another country.”

Ms. Graham often dotted her speech with what sounded like quotations that I didn’t recognize. I knew this one. As I put my shoes on in the building’s foyer, I could even supply the missing second part of it: besides, the wench is dead.

I didn’t think Geraldine had forgotten anything: the name of the charity, why her mother had objected so strongly or even how Calvin Bayard came to support Llewellyn. But for whatever reason, Geraldine thought the person she’d been in those days was dead. Her mother had triumphed-her mother’s portrait hung over her head day after day to remind her.

How had she spent her days back then, while Mrs. Drummond ran Larchmont? Maybe she’d thrown herself into motherhood and amateur dramatics, or county politics. Marriage had been supposed to settle both her and MacKenzie Graham. I remembered again the articles describing her return from Europe in the early thirties, looking “interestingly thin.” She’d slept around, gotten pregnant, gone to Switzerland for an abortion? And MacKenzie? What form had his New York City peccadilloes taken?

Even with thirteen bedrooms to wander through, how had Geraldine endured all those years with her mother and a husband with whom she had nothing in common? What had she been mourning, when she said she mourned MacKenzie’s death?

CHAPTER 42

Silence Is-?

Lotty couldn’t give me as much comfort as I wanted. Over a bowl of lentil soup, I recounted the details of my last several days, trying to puzzle out the complicated relations of New Solway.

When I finished, she asked, “Where does that Egyptian boy fit in?” “He doesn’t. Except I think he could tell me how Whitby got into the pond.” I described the layout of the Larchmont attic to her and my imagined picture of Benjamin Sadawi standing on a chair, watching for Catherine.

Lotty pushed her reading glasses up into her hair. “So you do know where he is, Victoria.”

I flushed, but nodded.

“And is that why you’re concealing his whereabouts? Because you want to get information out of him? If he’s a terrorist, you should turn him over to the authorities.”

“If I knew he was a terrorist, I’d turn him over in a heartbeat.” “And you’re the best judge of whether he is?”

I got up from the couch and walked over to the window, where I could see the lake glistening when car lights hit it. “It’s the trouble with these times, Lotty. We don’t know who to trust. But an attorney general who

thinks that calico cats are a sign of the devil doesn’t inspire me with greater confidence than I have in my own judgment.”

“Your judgment on this isn’t backed up by any experience or expertise. You’ve never worked with Arab militants, so you don’t know how or what to look for to say whether he is one or not. You certainly don’t speak Arabic, so you can’t even talk to him.”

I turned to look at her. “Lotty, do you think every Arab in this country should be interned?”

“Of course not. You know I loathe stereotyping of any kind. But this morning’s paper ran a story about the mosque this youth attends. The antiJewish rhetoric there runs high.” She sighed and looked down at her hands. “It seems to run high these days in London and Paris as well. Nothing has changed since my childhood. All over Europe and the Middle East, instead of blaming terrorists for our current woes, people are blaming the Jews. Even some poet in New Jersey is chanting that tired old litany. So I’d like to make sure this particular Arab boy doesn’t want to see me dead before I applaud you for hiding him.”

I pulled savagely on the cord for her blinds. “I understand: it’s what makes everything so difficult these days. What if I cut Benjamin loose and he kills someone like you-someone beloved, who’s saving lives, not a party to his quarrel with the universe? What if I turn him over to the authorities and they send him to a prison, remote from anyone he knows, where he can be gang-raped by the adult male population? If he’s not already a terrorist, that seems guaranteed to turn him into one.”

She nodded, her face pinched with worry. “So what are you doing to resolve this dilemma?”

“I’ve left him with Father Lou. He’s sorted out a lot of gangbangers in his day, maybe he can sort this kid out, too.”

“I hope for everyone’s sake you’re right about this, Victoria. I’m worried about, oh, everything, but also your own safety. You could get badly hurt yourself, you know. Not even necessarily by this boy, but by some gunhappy policeman like the ones who shot the Bayard child. Is this Egyptian boy’s health and safety really worth the risk to your own life?” Her mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “Why am I even asking that question?

You’re like your own dogs-once you have a bone in your teeth, you won’t let it go.”

We talked of easier matters for a time, but at ten she told me she was due in the OR at six, and that I should go home. And try to be careful. She smiled at me, but her eyes were sad.

Lotty’s somber words haunted my sleep, filling it with dreams where I caused disasters in which she died and Morrell stood in the entrance to a cave, shaking his head at me before turning his back and disappearing from sight. A little after four-thirty, I picked myself out of bed. It was better to stumble gritty-eyed through the day than get another hour of such tormented sleep.

I drove over to St. Remigio’s for early Mass, taking a roundabout route through the early morning streets until I was sure that no one was on my tail. I slipped into the Lady Chapel about halfway through the lessons, read in Spanish by a stocky woman who was the school nurse. A handful of neighborhood women were there, and a sleepy boy, a student at the school, was serving.

After the service, Father Lou beckoned me into his study. Benji was doing all right, a bit nervous about being in Christian hands, but he’d loved going to the gym yesterday afternoon and had started a workout on the equipment. And still had nothing to say about what, if anything, he’d seen from his attic window the night Marcus Whitby was killed.

“Don’t know how well this is going to work. I put him in the fourth grade, he can read enough English for that, he’ll improve fast if he stays. Told the kids he was African-the truth, and keeps them from thinking he’s an enemy. But they’re teasing him for being in the kiddie class, so his pride is hurt. Explained to him and them what real strength is: not beating someone in the ring, beating your own devils at their game. Only weak people take part in mobs. Never know how much of a lecture like that gets through to them.”

I nodded. “The mosque he goes to, yesterday’s papers said they carry literature on how Zionism is responsible for the World Trade Center, and Jews make Purim cakes out of Muslim children’s blood. I hate to think I’m protecting someone who wants to kill my friends.”

He grunted. “Best I can tell you is, I grew up in the Catholic Church

hearing same kinds of stories. Jews killed Jesus, made matzo out of Christian babies’ blood. Grew up, learned different, learned better, hope this kid can do the same. How’s the girl?”

“Healing nicely. She’ll come home from the hospital today. To a showdown between her father and her grandmother. The father has the legal rights, but my money is on Granny … Can I talk to Benji for a minute?”

Father Lou looked at his clock. “Should be in the kitchen. Seems able to look after himself. I think he’s a good boy. Shy, but eager to respond to people.”

I walked down the unlit hallways to the kitchen, where Benji was washing dishes in the old zinc sink. He looked up nervously at my entrance, but relaxed when he recognized me.

I put a piece of bread in the toaster. “I saw Catherine yesterday. She’s doing well: she got hit in the upper arm but not badly, and they’re sending her home from the hospital today.”

“That is very well, that news. You telling her where I am?”

I nodded. “She’ll be in touch when she knows it won’t put you in any danger for her to visit you. Benji-what do you want to do in the long run, if we can sort out your problems? Do you want to stay in Chicago, or go back to Cairo?”

He started drying the plates he’d washed, carefully, as if they were Sevres china instead of industrial pottery. “Sort out my problems? You are saying what? End my problems?”

“Yes. Solve them.”

“For my family, is good I am here. I send money and my sisters and my littlest brother, they go to school, they study. For me, always hiding is no good. Is unhealthy, is-” He made an expressive gesture, comprehending humiliation and anger. “And also when I hiding I cannot working. Cannot work. I cannot work when I am hiding always. This Christian priest is what you saying, he is good man, and he is helping with learning English, but still I cannot work, I cannot go mosque, I cannot see my people.”

“So I need to figure out how to let you stay here but keep you out of the FBI’s clutches.” I spread butter on the toast. “Benji, last Sunday a man died in the pond behind Larchmont Hall-the house where Catherine hid you, you know its name is `Larchmont Hall,’ right? I think someone put

this man in the pond; I think someone killed this man. When you were watching for Catherine, what did you see?”

“Nothing. I seeing nothing.” He dropped the plate he was holding. It landed with a bang on the tiles, breaking into large jagged chunks.

I knelt to gather up the pieces, but squatted on my haunches to look up at him. “Why are you afraid to tell me what you saw? I got you away from the police. You saw how much trouble I took to keep you safe. Why do you think I would hurt you now?”

“I seeing nothing. I poor, I not a-a professor, but I know what be happening. I seeing someone, you telling police, they saying, ah, Egyptian boy, he terrorist, he killer. I seeing someone, and they killing me next. No, I seeing no person.” He flung the dish towel onto the kitchen table and fled into the interior of the rectory.