I Come as a Theif (22 page)

Lee frowned. "The children too?"

"The children too. That, however, is only a suggestion. It is not part of my condition."

She had not been prepared for the pitch of her father's resentment. Just as a neat housekeeper, forever emptying a single ash from an ashtray into a wastebasket lined with a plastic bag, would abominate a man who tossed his ashes on the rug, so did Pieter abominate the son-in-law who strewed the Bogardus life with crowd-attracting, derision-attracting filth.

"I guess he's not as bad as you think," she muttered.

Her father exploded. "What is there to be said in his behalf? What did we ever ask of him? Did we object to his shabby background and poor prospects? Was there any necessity for him to turn to crime? And when he
did
turn to it, did he have to muck it up so that he was not only caught but his family jeopardized? Oh, Lee, my dear child, you must face the fact that this man is not only totally egocentric, totally dishonest, but totally incompetent. He's a menace! We've got to have the courage of our convictions."

"But what are my convictions?" Lee looked hopelessly up at William Maxwell Evarts denouncing the iniquities of a graduated tax. "I don't really resent Tony's taking that bribe. Of course, I think he was a bloody idiot, but that's another matter. What I really resent is his turning into somebody different from the man I married. I used to get along by loving Tony. He didn't have to do anything much in return. He could worry about his lame ducks and fuss over his dreary parents and even go to bed with women whom he fancied that would somehow help. Because I, too, was a kind of lame duck. And as long as I was that, I would always own a small part of him. But then he had to go and take that bit away!"

Her father blinked at her, having taken little of this in. "Well, there you are, my dear. I don't think we're so very far apart."

Were they not? As she met his eyes, she felt the full impact of this second rejection. For had she not always taken it for granted that in the long run she was bound to prevail in any argument with her parents about her own welfare? Now she was brought up to a tight halt before the humiliating fact that her father's anger at Tony was greater than his love of her.

"We may be together, Daddy, but what good does that do me? Any decision about the future is a matter for the children."

"You don't mean you'd go back to him!"

"I might if I thought it were the right thing for Eric and Isabel." She paused, shocked by the hostility in those eyes. Did
he
feel rejected, too? "Oh, Daddy, why must you hate Tony so?"

"How can I not hate him? A man who talks about Christ in the Down Town Association!"

Lee found what relief she could in the one and only laugh that the morning had offered her. "Well, that
is
going pretty far, I admit."

***

Later that afternoon she called on Tony's parents. It was a family conference. Tony's sister Susan had come up from her office to meet her, and even his brother Philip was there, looking a strange caricature of Tony, wide and soft and greasy haired, with the bland, blue look of sustained bad temper. Tony's father, George, much deteriorated, watched a Western on television in the corner with the sound turned off.

"I know this will surprise you all," Dorothy Lowder was saying. "A reporter from the
News
is coming in to see me. He wants to hear my version of why Tony did what he did. I said I'd be proud to see him!"

"Oh, Mother, don't you think we should leave that kind of thing to Lee?"

"I do not, Susan." Dorothy looked defiantly at her daughter-in-law, who transferred her own gaze to the carpet. "Lee has chosen to be silent during this whole tragedy. She even went into hiding. All that is her affair, and I do not presume to criticize. But Tony's mother has a part of him, too. And I want to make it clear to all the world that I stand behind Tony to the very end. That I regard him as a hero."

"A hero!" Philip exclaimed with a hoot of jeering laughter. "Oh, Mom, come off it!"

"I do, Philip. I don't know how Tony became involved with these criminal types, but I have a strong suspicion that it may have been with the knowledge of the police."

"You mean that he was an informer from the start?" Philip cried sarcastically. "It seems rather tough that they'd convict him for it. Isn't that carrying their realism a bit far?"

"The police may have betrayed him, Philip."

Philip turned to Susan with a face pinched with exasperation. "Can favoritism go further?" he cried. "All my life I'm made to play second fiddle to Tony, and even now that he's a crook, he's still a hero."

"Well, I think he
is
a hero," Susan snapped, hurrying to repudiate her would-be ally. "I think he's a hero in the way he's taken the whole thing. He has given us all an unforgettable example of how to behave in adversity."

"I'm sorry I don't go in for that kind of cant," Philip sneered. "And I fail to see how you and Mother survive with your heads in that cloud of goo. If Tony's a hero, it's because he's been honest. Because he's dared to take a calculated risk for his own advancement. Oh, sure, he lost. In his game you've got to win. Now all the hypocrites and bureaucrats can point the finger of shame at him. But not his kid brother.
I
recognize the honest man in the striped suit. The only suit an honest man can wear in our putrid society."

"Oh, Philip, shut up!" his mother exclaimed indignantly. "Everything you say is just for effect."

Lee saw that they had all been exhilarated by Tony's fate. Their lives resembled some drought-stricken land, with dried-up creeks and empty ponds, with acres of cracked, hard mud under a darkening sky torn by intermittent rumbles of an ineffective thunder. And then, at last, the rain so long and vainly promised had come in the form of Tony's crime and punishment and had drenched the countryside and filled all the cracks and crannies with its life-reviving deluge. Dorothy, Philip and Susan had rim out of the caves of their boredom and now raised their bare arms to the tempest, giggling and crying and splashing themselves.

Lee rose to go. "I'm glad you're all sticking by Tony," she said in a flat voice. "It will make it easier if I decide to divorce him."

"Lee!" Dorothy shrieked. "You can't!"

"Oh, why do you pretend to care, Mrs. Lowder? You'll have him all to yourself. He can live with you when he gets out."

"Lee, that's a rotten thing to say to Mother!" Susan exclaimed with sudden filial fervor.

"Oh, can't you all see I don't
care!
" Lee strode past the three of them, silent now before her unexpected violence, to speak to her father-in-law. He looked up at her with a vacant smile.

"Tony and Phil are just alike," he said in a reedy voice. "And just like their maternal grandfather."

"And you," Lee whispered in a sudden fit of disgust, "are the worst of all!"

But she was not to escape so easily. Despite her rebuff Dorothy Lowder followed her daughter-in-law doggedly out to the hall and pleaded with her to come into her bedroom for a private talk.

"Oh, Lee, they all hate me," she wailed, as soon as they were alone there. "Everyone but Tony detests me. You do. Oh, don't deny it! You always have. Why shouldn't you? What have I done to make you feel otherwise? But, don't you see, one can be a selfish, self-centered, obstinate old woman with nothing ahead but the grave and still want to be something better? Philip is so awful. He thinks anyone's a fool who tries to be better than they are. He sneers and jeers and thinks there's some kind of virtue in that. But where has it got him? And who is he to be so sure there's no place to get? Why should I be more convinced by Philip than by what I think myself?"

As Lee took in the ravaged look of those haunted pale eyes, she wondered if she could take on this problem, too. "But there's no reason," she assured Dorothy in a kinder tone. "No reason at all. Phil is a terrible ass. Everyone knows that."

"He is, isn't he?" Dorothy agreed eagerly, as if her second son had received a compliment. "Sometimes I think he and Susan are actually afraid I might have some satisfaction in life that I don't deserve."

"Don't deserve?"

"Well, they blame me, of course, because they're not happy. They don't want me to be happy, either. It's only natural. And, God knows, I haven't been happy. But there's no reason I shouldn't find
something
in life, is there?"

"Like what?" Lee wondered if Mrs. Lowder, for once, might not actually be trying to communicate a thought rather than an emotion.

"Like peace of mind. Or hope. Or faith."

"Faith?"

"Faith in God." The big worried eyes rolled and blinked and seemed not to see Lee. "Faith in God who punished my son for what he did and made him do what he's now doing."

Lee stared fixedly at her mother-in-law as she felt herself chilly all over. For Dorothy Lowder seemed to have forgotten that she was talking to her son's wife. She was completely obsessed with herself and her own problems, as usual, but there was now a marked difference. She was no longer interested in Lee's approval or pity, nor in the impression, good or bad, that she made on her. She was still taken up with Dorothy Lowder, of course, but now she was taken up with Dorothy Lowder and God. Even with Dorothy Lowder, a handful of dust, and God.

"Tony told you that?"

"Of course, he told me that. Just the way he told you that." Dorothy seemed suddenly peevish. "He came to see me the day before his trial started. Oh, he didn't put it that way, no. But that's the way it came across to me. Of course, you don't believe a word of it."

"But I can believe that you do."

"Can you?" Dorothy looked the least bit hopeful. "Can you, Lee? Without thinking me a fool?"

"Oh, I promise you, Mrs. Lowder, I don't think you're a fool!"

And because she thought she was going to weep, she gave her mother-in-law a quick peck on the cheek. But out on the pavement of Central Park West she recovered herself and laughed bitterly at the thought that Mrs. Lowder, as usual, had managed to have the last word.

Tony must have heard the telephone several seconds before he awoke. In his dream there had been a battle, a battle that had been somehow glorious. He had been a newcomer to the high command, an officer of strange insignia, possessed of a mystic authority, a visored knight from some dark, exotic kingdom. But his advice had been listened to and his direction followed, and, the day won, the triumphant armies had acclaimed him, raising their shields and shouting. Why had he returned alone at night to the dark and windy battlefield to hear the shrieks of the dying, shrieks that turned the distant cries of victors into squeals over a won parlor game, shrieks that claimed the only reality for themselves and that grew louder and louder until they fused at last into a single deafening roar?

Tony switched on the light by his bed and stared in dazed alarm at the telephone. It seemed a living, threatening thing. Then his thoughts coalesced, and he picked up the receiver. As soon as he had half-whispered "Hello" he heard Lee's voice screeching at him.

"He's blind! Does that satisfy you? He's blind for life. Is that part of your crazy scheme?"

"Lee,
Lee!
Who's blind?"

"Eric, damn you!"

"Lee!"

Eric, poor, earnest, desperate, pedagogic Eric! Eric blind! What kind of madness was she talking? A huge picture of Eric sitting helpless, an open, unseen book in his lap, unrolled in blinding white over his mind. Tony found that he was standing in the middle of the bedroom. Another voice was speaking from the instrument that was still in his hand.

"Tony, this is Pieter Bogardus. Can you hear me? Lee is hysterical. Eric is going to be all right, but he may lose the sight of one eye."

"God! What happened?"

"He was struck on his way to the post office by a hit-and-run driver. He busted his wrist and two ribs and had a concussion. But the eye is the only dangerous thing. The left eye."

"Ill be right there. Where are you?"

"No, Tony, we don't want you. Eric is in a good hospital. He's getting the best of care. You can depend on me to see to that. Your being here would only make Lee worse, and it might increase the boy's danger. Right now he's got maximum police protection."

"Oh, you think...?"

"Of course, I think."

"Did anyone see the car?"

"They think it may have been a station wagon with some hippie types that was seen earlier, going very fast. But no doubt the Mafia can choose its mask."

Tony paused and listened to his heart beat in the silence. Then his mind became very clear. He saw that his father-in-law and Lee wanted it to be the Mafia. It helped them to hate him more.

"Is Eric conscious?"

"Just now he's sleeping."

"You've got to let me come."

"Tony, I know what I'm doing. You couldn't find us if you tried, and if you try, the police will pick you up. I give you my word that you will have a detailed report on Eric once a day. The next one will be tomorrow night at eight. Goodbye."

As Tony placed the receiver back in its cradle, the bell instantly rang again. It was Jack Eldon.

"I'm so sorry, Tony. My God, you must be going through hell."

"Do you think it was one of Lassatta's men?"

"I don't, but I suppose we can't be sure."

"You needn't worry. It will make no difference in my testimony."

"Oh, Tony, I didn't mean it that way." There was a pause in which Tony felt that a question was being framed. "Look, Tony, come on around, will you? Judith and I are both up, and we'd love to give you a drink. Don't be alone at a time like this."

To his own surprise, Tony heard himself accept.

As he walked, in a slow, dazed manner, the few blocks to the Eldons' apartment at Park Avenue, he wondered if he would ever be able to come to terms with this new agony. All his mind seemed lit up, like a drab empty auditorium suddenly illuminated at night by the same glaring image of Eric on an infinite screen. But there was nobody in that hall, not even Tony. The web of events that had emerged from the spiders stomach of his bribery had encompassed everybody and nobody. There was nothing as petty as fault. Tony stopped suddenly and moaned aloud in his pain. Something moved beside him, something he had startled. He whirled around and stared into the face of a black youth who had crept up behind him. Tony sprang at him in a sudden passion of excitement, but the man fled away. It was just as well. If ever he could have killed with pleasure, killed with his bare hands, it was then. The mugger had become in a flash the handy symbol of all the evil in the world.