“What?” Louise asked. “What? Are you following any of this, George?”
“Following? Shit, Lulu honey, he’s leading the goddamn band.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “Nothing like this is in the black buzz,” Messenger said. “I mean this isn’t the way they’re talking on the Rialto. What they’re saying up there is much milder. ‘Offered to resign’ is the worst of it.”
“What are they saying?”
“Well, it’s a joke really. It started when it got out that Max and Ruth had taken their car away from the front of his house.”
“Yes,” Mills said.
“Max and Ruth? You’re crazy. You actually think they were invited?”
“No,” George Mills said.
“They’d have been thrown out. They’d have called the cops on them if they dared crash that dinner party. And don’t tell me they helped serve. They don’t have uniforms. Even if they did, do you think the chancellor would let them? Run a downer on his guest by having those two characters get close enough to pass out actual food? People who live in a fucking jalopy, a beat-up, stale-aired old clunker that probably looked used when it came off the goddamn assembly line? Who take baths in the rest room sinks of gas stations? Moochers with freeload cookie crumbs in their scalp and bits of old poetry-reading cheese stuck to the creases of their clothing? With Gallo like mouthwash on their breath? Jesus, George, they’d be lucky if they got as far as the back door for a handout.”
“That’s right,” George said.
Messenger was stunned. “Is that what you think? Jesus, is
that
what you think?”
“Is what what he thinks?” Louise said.
“Your husband just said they were in the kitchen eating above-their-station leftovers when it happened. He says the chancellor’s residence is so huge that they had to have been shouting loud enough for Max and Ruth to hear every word all the way in the back of the house. He says that whatever it was they heard must have been so damning it scared even them off, that they just climbed into their house and drove it away and never returned.”
“He said that?”
“That’s right,” Mills said. “Yes,” he said, and turned back to George, “but how would they even know about that dinner party?”
George Mills smiled at him.
“All right,” Messenger said, “so he was dressed to kill, so he had on his best bib and tucker. All right, so it was the dinner party hour when they saw him come out of his front door and get into his car. All right, so they followed him. That still doesn’t explain what he was supposed to have done.”
“You never told me what they say he’s done.”
“Well they don’t
know,
” Messenger said. “The usual stuff when a dean offers his resignation.”
“Is told to resign.”
“You said ‘asked.’ ”
“You said ‘disgrace.’ ”
“All right, all right. That he’s made some mistakes, been highhanded with tenure, let good people get away, worked the buddy system, kept people on that he likes, allowed salary discrepancies between favored and unfavored departments to get out of hand, not been aggressive enough raiding other schools, made too many enemies.”
“Has he done these things?”
“I don’t know. Some. Any dean does some. It’s not an easy job. Sam’s record is as good as most. He’s only been in the job a year. He wouldn’t have had time to do all of them.”
“He lost his wife,” Mills said. “They’re gentlemen. They wouldn’t have been shouting if he had.”
“They’re princes of industry,” Messenger said. “Soft-spoken guys.”
“That’s right,” Mills said. “They’d have had to be outraged.”
“It was the last week of August for God’s sake. A mild, beautiful night.”
“That’s right.”
“He wouldn’t have had a topcoat with him. He wouldn’t have had a raincoat. So what did he put it in? Tell me that.”
George Mills looked disgusted.
“I wish someone would tell me what’s going on,” Louise said.
“Damn it, Lulu,” Messenger said, “haven’t you heard a word he’s been saying? Your husband thinks Sam is a thief.”
“He likes souvenirs.”
“What do you suppose it was?”
“I don’t know. Houses like that,” Mills said dreamily, “it could be almost anything. Something with the university’s crest, I suppose. A slim gold lighter. A pen. A letter opener. A paperweight or ashtray. Sugar tongs. Stationery even. Anything.”
“And Claunch fingered him?”
“He never took his eyes off him,” George Mills said. “He counted his drinks. He toted up the hors d’uvres he ate.”
“That’s right,” Messenger said.
“He hates him.”
“That’s right.”
“Tell me about the will, Cornell.”
“Jesus, George,” Messenger said, “I have some loyalties here. I—”
And
that’s
when Mills chose to play his China card. He stormed out of the house.
Leaving Louise and Messenger staring after him on the couch next to each other.
Because it wasn’t a will she signed in Mexico but an
inter vivos
trust. Because she’d left no will. Because if she had there’d have been an instrument for the widower to set aside, renounce, by simply filing a paper, a paper, not even anything fine-sounding as an instrument. He could have written it on a scratch pad, on the back of his marriage license, and been awarded his widower’s aliquot third. It was that
inter vivos
trust. Because if she left no will and had had the grace or just simple good conjugal sportsmanship to die intestate he wouldn’t even have had to trouble himself about the scratch pad. Half the hereditament would have come to him by sheer right of descent and succession. Half, not a third. It was the numbers, it was the arithmetic.
Cornell figured Sam figured it had to be enmity. She was essentially a lazy woman. Cornell figured Sam figured she was jealous of his health. Hadn’t it been held up to him on more than one occasion not that he was free of cancer while she carried hers to term like some malignant pregnancy, but that he’d been sane the whole eleven years she’d been nuts? So it
had
to be enmity. She was lazy. Intestacy wouldn’t have caused her to lift a finger. But there were those numbers to deal with, the difference between that half and that third she was screwing him out of by lifting the finger, by painfully crabbing all her suffering fingers around the uncongenial Mexican motel pen and laboriously writing out the
inter vivos
trust that either her father or brother—Cornell figured Sam figured—had dictated to her over the phone and that left everything to the girls with Harry as trustee, and that she had to be at pains just to get the handwriting right, probably working from actual memory to recall the once free-flowing cursive, the idiosyncratic flights and loops of her own signature.
“I feel sorry for the guy,” Cornell told Mills on the telephone. (He hadn’t seen him since the night George had walked out of his home leaving Messenger alone with his wife.)
“Yes?”
“She put him through hoops. The hoops were on fire. There were prenuptial agreements, did you know that?”
“Prenuptial agreements,” George Mills said evenly.
“He didn’t have a pot to piss in. What was he? Some poor graduate student. Maybe he had a typewriter and a ream of paper to do his assignments on. Maybe he had a few dollars’ worth of dictionaries and a handful of those composition manuals and examination copies they hand out to TA’s to look over.
“The poor bastard was marrying big bucks. I told you. There were prenuptial agreements. He had to sign to go the distance. If the marriage broke up before they got through the first fifteen years he wouldn’t get a penny. He was on probation, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yes,” George Mills said.
“They were married seventeen years,” Messenger said. “She did him anyway.”
“Yes,” George Mills said. He sounded distant even to himself. “What does he have to do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“To fight it. To break the trust.”
“I don’t know, George. I’m no lawyer.”
“Victor’s a lawyer,” George Mills said. “Find out. Call me back.”
“He says he’s got three ways to go,” Messenger said when he called back the next day. “If he can prove fraud, undue influence or mental incapacity.”
“There was no undue influence,” George Mills said.
“No,” Messenger said slyly, “but there may have been fraud.”
“I don’t see it,” Mills said.
“The prenuptial agreement, the numbers. If she left everything to the girls in a will he could set aside, he’d have taken a third, half if she left no will at all. He thinks it could be fraud because she didn’t leave him
anything
to set aside. Not a bad will or a nonwill either. There was malice and intent. He served more than his time, those fifteen-year articles of apprenticeship. Those fifteen-year articles of apprenticeship and then some. He was entitled to his expectations.”
“Thank you for your trouble,” he said. “She was crazy,” George Mills said flatly.
“It’s good I’m enhanced,” Messenger said. “I don’t owe you shit. I never fucked your wife.”
“I know that,” George Mills said. “All you ever did was want to.”
Messenger called again instead of coming over.
“You might as well have all the facts,” he said.
“Yes?” George Mills said.
“Grant’s dead.”
“Mr. Glazer?” Mills said.
“Who’s this?”
“George Mills,” George Mills said.
“What is it?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“Yes?”
“It’s my back, sir. I’m afraid what might happen to it this winter.”
“Yes?”
“If that job in buildings and grounds is still open, I wouldn’t be out in the weather.”
“I’m not sure it’s available,” Sam Glazer said.
“That’s too bad,” Mills said. “Oh, Mr. Glazer?”
“What?”
“That senior partner called. After I spoke to you last? But I’m doing just what you said.”
“Oh?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good.”
“I’m keeping an open mind.”
“Look,” Sam Glazer said, “I want to be frank.”
“Sure,” George Mills said, “me too. Absolutely.”
“I’d be looking around for something else if I were you.”
“I’m hanging in there,” Mills said, hoarsely rushing the message into the mouthpiece. But at the other end the line had already gone dead.
He decided he would go in person. He wore his suit, the one he had worn to the funeral. He was going to take a hat he could hold in his hands but decided that would be too much. A receptionist passed his name in and in five minutes a young man Mills had never seen came out to greet him. The young man walked briskly over to where George was seated on the edge of a deep leather couch and stuck out his hand. Mills started to rise, but by pushing his handshake at him the young man managed to keep George off balance and shoved him further back into the couch.
“Good to meet you, sir,” the young man said. “What can I do for you?” George Mills realized that the kid meant for him to state his business there in the outer office. He hesitated and the young man’s smile became even wider. He’s going to sit down next to me, George Mills thought. That’s what happened. The young lawyer leaned toward him and lowered his voice. “They’ve painted my office,” he said. “It’s a relief to get away from those fumes for a minute.” Mills smelled cologne. The receptionist smiled.
“I asked to see your boss,” George Mills said. “My business is with your boss.”
“Hey, pal, give me a break,” the kid said. “Harvard ’80, editor of the
Law Review,
two summers clerking at the Supreme Court. Why do you want to make me feel so bad? Don’t you think I can handle it?” The receptionist was grinning.
“This isn’t a law thing,” George Mills said. “It’s about a car.”
The young man looked at the receptionist, who shook her head.
“This is the automobile department,” the kid said.
“Give him a message,” Mills said, speaking past the young man to the receptionist huskily. “Tell him the price of the Buick Special is negotiable.”
“I’ll let him know that, George,” the receptionist said.
“Tell him,” and now he was standing, “tell him I just heard about the terrible tragedy and …”
“The terrible tragedy, George?” the receptionist said.
“Grant’s death,” George Mills said.
The receptionist and the guy exchanged puzzled looks.
“Ask him to extend my condolences to the Claunches, and to tell Mr. Claunch Sr. that if there’s anything I can do …” But he couldn’t finish. He walked past the snotnose kid and the girl at the desk and out the suite into the hall.
It was a good building but not a new one. An operator was still required to drive the elevator. He wore a uniform like a doorman’s but much more subtle. He called George “sir” and greeted many of the passengers personally as they got on at their floors. About George’s age, his name was George too, and several passengers passed the time of day with him while they descended.
“How’s it going, George?” a tall gentleman said. “Your wife’s cold any better?”
“She’s fine, Mr. Brooks.”
“Get that yard work done this weekend?”
“No ma’am, Miss Livingston,” the elevator operator said. “My brother-in-law never brought my mower back.”
“How were those seats, George?”
“Considerably better than the Cardinals, Judge.”
The judge chuckled. “I think I can get two more for you for the Dallas game.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“George, if you see Mr. Reynolds would you hand him this for me? The mailman left it in our office by mistake.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Kafken.” They were at the lobby floor. “All you folks have a fine lunch now, hear?” the elevator operator said. “Anything wrong, sir?” he asked the sobbing George Mills.
“Allergies,” Mills said, and blew his grief and envy into his handkerchief.
He called Claunch directly. He didn’t beat around the bush. He asked if the lawyers had passed on his message.
“What message was that?”
Mills told him.
“Oh, that message.” The old man laughed.
He was just wondering, Mills said, if Mr. Claunch was pressed for good, loyal help at the compound till he could find a suitable replacement for Grant.
“Someone to play with the trains?”