Within a few minutes Young drove up in his vintage Rolls-Royce. Though he’d been retired for a number of years, he still moved like one of his own battleships, with a complete confidence that the way ahead was clear, and if the seas got rough the stabilizers were in operational order. His thick white hair was kept in the Annapolis crew cut of his youth, so that from a distance he looked like a bald man who’d been caught in a light flurry of snow.
He parked the Rolls-Royce in the No Parking zone outside the front door where his daughters were waiting with Ellen.
“Now, girls, what’s this Ellen tells me about your fighting? Surely you’re old enough to know better.”
“She knows better,” Juliet said. “She’s older than I am.”
“Only two years,” Cordelia said.
“Which means you were talking and walking when I was born.”
“Well, I wasn’t learning not to fight.”
“You should have been. Here you are all grown up and you haven’t learned yet.”
“Dear me,” the Admiral said mildly. “Are you really all grown up, Cordelia?”
“You should know. Mrs. Young sent you a cable when I was born. You were in Hong Kong.”
“I don’t recall that it was Hong Kong.”
“It was. She tried to get there but she had to stop off in Manila to have me. There were a lot of rats around the hospital.”
“So one more wouldn’t matter.” Juliet laughed so hard at her own joke that her head, with its short brown hair, shook like a mop and she almost lost her balance.
“You mustn’t tease your sister, Juliet,” Admiral Young said mildly. “It’s unkind.”
“Well, she’s unkinder than I am, she’s had two more years of practice. I’ve got to catch up. It’s only fair I should have a chance to catch up.”
“Nobody has a guarantee that life will be fair, girls. We’re lucky to get justice, let alone mercy.”
“Oh, Pops, don’t start throwing that bull at us,” Cordelia said.
“Save it for the ensigns,” Juliet added.
“Or second looies.”
“We’re your daughters.”
“Serves you right, too.”
“We’re your fault.”
“Think about it, Pops. If you hadn’t—”
“But you did.”
“So here we are.”
And there they were, a problem not covered in the Navy rule book, yet to a certain extent a product of it.
They’d been brought up all over the world.
At the language academy in Geneva they learned enough French and Italian to order a meal and summon a taxi or policeman. They attended finishing schools in London, Rome and Paris, with no visible results
except to the teachers. At the music academy in Austria, during the periods set aside for Cordelia to practice the violin and Juliet the flute, they listened to Elvis Presley records in the basement and went to old Hollywood movies dubbed in German. At the American school in Singapore most of their time was spent tearing through the streets in a jeep, Cordelia having learned to drive somewhere between Sydney and Tokyo. The effect of this cosmopolitan background had been not to make them more sophisticated and at ease with people but to isolate them. While the real world expanded around them their personal world grew smaller and tighter. No matter who was present on social occasions, they talked to or at each other, as if they were surrounded by foreigners, interchangeable and of no importance. They had become immune to people as beekeepers do to stings.
“I never really liked this club,” Cordelia said. “Did you?”
Juliet pursed her lips as though she were pondering the subject. There was no need to ponder, of course. If Cordelia didn’t like the club, neither did she. “Never. Never ever.”
“Let’s go home.”
“We’d better say goodbye to Ellen.”
“Why?”
“Noblesse oblige.”
“That’s French. I don’t recognize French rules in the U.S.A.”
“Pops is giving us an executive look.”
“Oh, all right. Goodbye, Ellen.”
“Goodbye, Ellen.”
“Goodbye, girls,” Ellen said.
Nearly everyone called them girls. Cordelia was thirty-five, Juliet thirty-three.
From his carefully chosen position on the terrace Van Eyck had an unobstructed view of what was happening at the entrance to the club. With a kind of detached loathing he watched his brother-in-law, Admiral Young, drive off in the Rolls-Royce with the two girls.
Van Eyck had strong feelings about the military and for a number of years he’d been working out plans for bringing it under control. His ideas, though varying in emphasis from time to time, remained basically the same. Salaries must be immediately and drastically reduced, especially at the upper levels. Pensions should begin no earlier than age seventy and continue only for a prudent and reasonable time. The brass should not be encouraged to live longer than necessary at taxpayers’ expense. Wars should be confined to countries with unpronounceable names and severe climates—the former would prevent television and newsmen from mentioning them, the latter would keep foreign correspondents to a minimum.
Most important of all, uniforms were to be abolished or simplified, with no more fancy hats or tailored jackets with gold braid and rows of ribbons.
If it hadn’t been for the uniform, his sister Iris wouldn’t have looked twice at Cooper Young. It was the second look that did it. Until then Iris was a nice intelligent girl, expected to marry a nice intelligent man who would put her fortune to good use and sire three or four sons to carry on with it. Instead she fell for a uniform, gave birth to two half-witted daughters and became a sour, sick old woman. Poor Iris. The crowning irony was that the Admiral retired and now wore his uniform only once a year at the Regimental Ball. Van Eyck didn’t enjoy music or dancing, and he certainly didn’t spend money lightly, but he never missed a Regimental Ball. Each one produced a yearly renewal of his anger against the military.
Van Eyck took up his pen and a sheet of the paper Ellen had given him.
Secretary of Defense, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
Sir:
Overspend is overkill. Explore the following ways to cut your preposterous budget:
Reduce salaries.
Begin pensions later, terminate sooner.
Dispense with all uniforms.
Eliminate commissaries and personnel, R & R stations, free transportation to and from battles.
Avoid wars. If this is impossible, put them on a paying basis with T. V. and publishing rights, et cetera.
Reform, retrench or resign, sir.
John Q. Public
Van Eyck reread the letter, making only one change. He underlined dispense with all uniforms and added an exclamation point. Once uniforms were abolished, the other reforms would automatically occur sooner or later.
He heard someone yell fire but he didn’t bother looking around. If there was, in fact, a fire, it seemed silly to yell about it instead of calling the fire department.
There was, in fact, a fire.
Little Frederic Quinn, acting on the advice of his older brother, Harold, who was taking the advice of his best friend, Bingo Firenze, whose uncle was a hit man for the Mafia, always carried a packet of matches even though he had given up smoking when he was seven. Bingo had figured it out. Fire was the best attention-getter in the world and no matter where you were something was flammable, not merely the more obvious things like paper and wood, but stuff like Grady’s polyester warm-up suit hanging on a hook in the first-aid room. It took nearly all the matches in the packet before the warm-up suit finally ignited.
“Ha ha, Grady,” Frederic said just before he passed out from smoke inhalation.
In the excitement following the discovery of
the fire nobody could find the key to the first-aid room. Grady tried to pick the lock with a nail file. When that failed, the engineer pried the door open with a hatchet and put out the fire by tossing Grady’s warm-up suit into the pool.
Frederic was given artificial respiration, and in a few minutes he was conscious again and coughing up the pizza, doughnuts and potato chips he’d had for breakfast.
Miranda Shaw knelt beside him and pressed a wet towel to his forehead. “Poor child, what happened? Are you all right?”
“I want a chocolate malted cherry Coke.”
“A glass of milk would be more—”
“I want a chocolate malted cherry Coke.”
“Of course, dear. Stay quiet and someone will bring you one. How did the fire start?”
“I don’t know,” Frederic said. “I got amnesty.”
“What’s that?”
“I can’t remember.”
“The little bastard set it himself,” Grady said. “And I’m going to kick his butt in as soon as his pulse is normal. Give me the rest of the matches, Frederic.”
“What matches? I don’t remember any matches. I got amnesty.”
“You’re going to need amnesty, kid, if you don’t hand over the evidence.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” Miranda repeated. “Why would a child want a lawyer?”
“I’m pleading not guilty and taking the Fifth.”
“A fifth of what, dear? I don’t understand.”
“Hey, Grady, this is a far-out chick.”
Miranda stood up, looking helplessly at Grady and holding the wet towel at arm’s length as if it had turned into a snake. “He seems to be acting so strangely. Do you suppose he could be delirious?”
“No, ma’am. He always acts like this.”
“When I get my lawyer,” Frederic said, “I’m going to sue you both for libel.”
Miranda’s silk robe was stained with smoke as well as the remains of Frederic’s breakfast, and the flower had fallen out of her hair. Grady picked it up. Some of the petals came loose in his hand and drifted down onto the tile floor. He hadn’t realized until then that the flower was genuine and perishable. He thought of the baby duck that had died in his hands and all the soft delicate things that shouldn’t be touched.
“I’m sorry,” Grady said. “I didn’t mean to wreck it like that.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I thought the thing was—oh, plastic or something you can’t wreck.”
“Forget about it, please. It simply happened.”
“Like the fire,” Frederic said. “Honest to God, Grady, one minute I was sitting there doing my transcendental meditation and the next minute I was surrounded by leaping flames.”
“There were no leaping flames.”
“I saw leaping flames. I must have been delirious.”
“No flames, no delirium. Just a little creep with some matches, and a smoldering warm-up suit which will cost the club twenty-five bucks to replace. A new door lock will bring the tab to two hundred, and cleaning and painting, fifty extra. Maybe I should add ten bucks for my medical services. I saved your life.”
“Who asked you to?”
“Nobody. People were on their knees begging me to let you croak. But I have a kind heart.”
“Yeah? Well, bring me a chocolate malted cherry Coke, double whipped cream.”
“Get it yourself,” Grady said.
“I can’t.”
“Try.”
“I bet you want me to split so you can come on with the chick. Well, ha ha, I’m not going.”
“You just changed your mind, Frederic.” Grady grabbed him under the arms and jerked him to his feet. “Ha ha, you’re going.”
“All right, I’m going, I’m going. Only don’t pull any of the mucho macho stuff till I get back, will you? It’s time I started my education. The kids depend on me for info.”
Miranda leaned against the wall, watching Frederic skip down the corridor toward the snack bar. Her braid was half-unraveled and her face had already started to sunburn.
“He’s a very strange little boy,” she repeated. “I find it difficult to understand what he’s talking about, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“What did he mean when he called me a chick?”
“A girl.”
“A girl.” Involuntarily she reached up and touched her face, as if to cover the tiny scars left by the last knife. “How nice. Though I’m afraid it’s not very accurate.”
“Accurate enough.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Sure I am, lady. But that’s the way you want it.
“Let me get this straight, Ellen.” Mr. Henderson closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips very tightly together. This was supposed to set up a magnetic current which had soothing and curative powers. “The door to the first-aid room has been burned.”
“Yes, Mr. Henderson.”
“Perhaps you mean singed or scorched, requiring a few touches of paint here and there?”
“Burned,” Ellen said. “Also, the lock’s broken.”
“I don’t understand, it doesn’t make sense, how such peculiar things happen to me.”
“Frederic Quinn was playing with matches.”
“In the first-aid room?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Grady had locked him in there to teach him not to plug toilets.”
“And while he was being taught not to plug toilets he was learning how to set fire to things.”
“He already knew. Last year it was a bunch of towels on the beach. He was cremating a dead gull.”
Henderson loosened his fingers, which were beginning to ache. No magnetic current had manifested itself, certainly not one that was soothing or curative. He felt the same vague pervasive dissatisfaction. A little here, a little there, life was letting him down. There were plus factors—he had a pleasant apartment and a job with some prestige, his ex-wife had given up her alimony by remarrying, he picked an occasional long shot at the track—but the minuses were increasing. The long shots were getting longer and the neighbors complained about his new stereo system. There were aggravations at work, members with overdue bar bills, Van Eyck’s anonymous letters, and Frederic’s parents, whose passionate quarrels and no less passionate reconciliations—Frederic, Harold, Foster, April and Caroline—posed daily and debilitating problems.
“Obviously Grady showed poor judgment in locking the boy up,” Henderson said. “He should have sent him to me.”
“He sent him to you last week. You sent him back. You told him he should handle situations like that by himself. How can you blame him?”
“Easy. I didn’t lock the little bastard in a closet.”
“I heard you give Grady orders to use his own judgment in the future. Well, the future arrived and he did. Maybe the results weren’t too good, but he tried.”
“You are becoming,” Henderson said, “increasingly transparent. Do you know what I mean, Ellen?”
“No.”
“Let us have a moment’s silence while you think about it.”
Henderson’s office was decorated with pictures of airplanes left over from an aeronautical engineers’ convention. Henderson had hung them himself. He had no interest in planes or engines of any kind. But he liked the pictures because they were non-human. He didn’t have to wonder what the expression in an eye meant, or what a mouth might have been on the verge of saying, or what a pair of ears had heard. Nobody had to wonder what an airplane had done or was going to do next. It went up and came down again.
“Transparent as glass,” Henderson said. “I have been in, what you might call, the people business for twenty-five years. I know them. So let me give you some advic
e, Ellen. Don’t waste your time on Grady. He has no character, no staying power. Not much of a future, in fact, unless he hits it lucky, and that’s a longer shot than any I’ve ever hit on.”
“Why are you telling me? I don’t—”
“You do. All the girls do. Getting a crush on the lifeguard is part of growing up. But you’re already grown up . . . Ah well, I suppose it’s too late, isn’t it? Advice usually is.”
In the parking lot south of the club Miranda couldn’t get her car started, and she sent one of the gardeners to bring someone out to help her.
The car, a gift from Neville on her last birthday, bore special license plates, U R 52, and it was as black and cumbersome as the joke itself. She hated it and intended to get rid of it at the first opportunity. But like the house and furniture of the condominium in Palm Springs, the car was considered part of the estate and couldn’t be sold until Neville’s will was probated. “You will be provided with a small widow’s allowance,” Smedler, the lawyer, had said. “In the meantime everything must be kept intact. Shall I explain to you what frozen assets are, Mrs. Shaw?”
“No, thank you, Mr. Smedler. I know . . . ” She knew very well. Hers had been frozen for years.
Grady came out the back door of the club, barefooted but wearing jeans over his swim trunks and a T-shirt with a picture of a surfer printed on it. He seemed surprised to see her. Perhaps this was where his girlfriends waited for him and he was expecting one of them. Or two or a dozen.
“Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Shaw.” He smiled, showing teeth that were small and even but not very clean. “The gardener told me some lady wanted to see me. He was right, You are some lady.”
“I didn’t want to—to see you.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“I mean, not personally. It’s simply that I can’t start this engine.”
The car was parked in full sun, and its black paint and black leather upholstery had absorbed the heat and turned the interior into a furnace. “I really wanted a light-colored car, Neville, they’re so much cooler.” — “Black has more dignity, Miranda.”
The Murder of Miranda Page 3
