by Ross Thomas
The center’s neighbor was the Watergate cooperative apartment complex where prices started at $44,000 for a one-bedroom unit and shot up to $150,000 for a three-bedroom affair with a wood-burning fireplace and a view of the river. I tried to remember whether I knew anyone who lived there, but decided that I didn’t although a future client might turn up in the place someday if the burglary rate continued to fulfill its early promise.
The driver started to snake the Cadillac through a series of switchbacks and crossovers and underneath what seemed to be an elevated highway of some kind. He made a right turn and about three blocks later I knew we were in Georgetown because I recognized the Rive Gauche, a pretty good restaurant where I’d once had some excellent snails.
If Washington has a ghetto, I suppose it’s Georgetown. Although anyone can live there, you’d probably feel more comfortable about it if you were rich or white, preferably both. Its narrow streets are lined with some fine old trees and some skinny houses all shouldered up together that are rather old, too, or try to look that way. If you’d bought one when Kennedy came in you could probably sell it now and double your money.
The young also live in Georgetown. The bright, quick, upwardly mobile young, and they give it a false sense of informality. Its real rulers are the rich, quiet, powerful families who eat politics three times a day and hunger for more. The rich and powerful also give Georgetown its hoity-toity air that makes a lot of its residents reluctant to be seen lugging home a six-pack of beer. Not quite forty years ago a large chunk of Georgetown was black slum so there may be hope for Harlem after all.
We turned right on N Street and two or three blocks later the driver stopped in front of a three-story house built of bricks that were painted white. The house was almost flush with the sidewalk as were its neighbors. The houses in that block were jammed up against each other. They were all brick and painted either gray or white and their lines were faintly federal, I think.
“Didn’t John Kennedy live on this street when he was a senator?” I said.
“A block or so on down,” Procane said and then told the driver to be back at ten that night. He led the way up the seven steps to the small porch, took out a key, and unlocked the door.
“That you, Mistah Procane?” It was a woman’s voice calling from somewhere in the rear of the house. He called back that it was and then turned to me. “My housekeeper, Mrs. Williams. She came down from New York yesterday to get the place ready.”
A black woman of about fifty-five dressed in a white uniform came into the entrance hall and started collecting our coats. Procane introduced her to me and she said, how do, and started hanging the coats up in a closet.
“How many you gonna be for dinner?” she said.
“Just the four of us,” Procane said and led the way into the living room. It had a huge chandelier that must have been a hundred years old because it used real candles instead of electric lights. There was a worn oriental rug on the floor that was probably as old as the chandelier and maybe even more expensive. The furniture was low with curving, spindly legs and I wondered whether people were that much shorter in the late eighteenth century. On the walls were some oil portraits, darkened by age, and above the mantel was a large mirror with a gilt frame. I didn’t see any ashtrays.
The housekeeper followed us into the room and told Procane, “I spect y’all be wantin some coffee,” and Procane said yes, coffee would be fine. She nodded and headed back toward the kitchen, going through a formal dining room that was separated from the living room by a set of richly molded sliding doors. There was a long, narrow table of dark burnished wood in the dining room, some chairs that to me looked more frail than delicate, and another chandelier that had to depend on candles.
“Well, Mr. St. Ives, how do you like it?” Procane said.
“Is this the hideout?”
He smiled. “Why, yes, I suppose it could be called that.”
“Is it yours?”
He shook his head. “No, I’ve merely leased it for six months. The lease has two more months to run. I’ve been coming down here at least once a week for the past four months, usually to give small dinners for several key congressmen and senators. Lobbying really.”
“For what?”
“I chose one of the conservation measures. It gave me an excuse for renting the house and I actually became quite interested in this particular bill. Did you realize that we’re slaughtering our wildlife at a simply appalling rate?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I may even have done some good.”
“And when you weren’t lobbying, you were planning,” I said.
“Every detail.”
“It’s rather elaborate.”
“But necessary.”
“Wouldn’t a motel be just as good?” I said and crossed my legs. The armless chair that I was sitting in creaked. It was upholstered in a worn, mauve-colored fabric that might have been royal purple a hundred years ago. Its back had the shape of a flattened light bulb.
“Not if something goes wrong,” Procane said.
“For instance?”
“If the police are brought in. They might check motels. They don’t check private residences on N Street.”
“You told the driver to be back at ten tonight. That means it’s going to happen before ten. Can I ask when?”
“At precisely nine,” Procane said.
“Can I ask where?”
Procane seemed to think about that for a moment. “Yes, I think I can tell you that now. At a drive-in movie.”
“That’s where the buy will take place?”
“Yes.”
“Drive-in movies are good,” I said. “I’ve used them three or four times.”
“I can see how they would be in your line of work,” Procane said. “Moving around at a drive-in movie is nothing unusual. People are always going to the refreshment stand. Cars arrive and depart at any time. It’s dark, which offers some concealment. And it’s usually fairly crowded, which offers some safety.”
The housekeeper came in carrying a tray that held a silver coffee service and four cups and saucers. Procane thanked her and then nodded at Janet Whistler who poured and served the coffee. Nobody wanted cream and no one took any sugar except me.
We sat there in that stiff living room of the house on N Street at four o’clock in the afternoon, drinking coffee like four strangers who had been named to a committee that was supposed to do something that we weren’t quite sure that we really wanted done. So we sipped our coffee and talked about how good it was and about the weather and about the room’s furnishings and whether antiques were a good investment.
Then we were silent for a while, as if all possible topics had been exhausted, except the one that we had met to talk about but no one wanted to be the one who brought it up. The silence went on for four or five minutes until I said, “What happens to those other guys?”
“What other guys?” Procane said.
“He means the ones who’re going to try to steal the million and blame it on us,” Wiedstein said.
“I was wondering when you were going to bring them up,” Janet Whistler said.
“Now that I have, what happens to them?”
“It depends,” Procane said.
“On what?”
“On whether they follow the plan that they stole from me.”
“What if they don’t?”
Procane shook his head. “If they don’t,” he said, “I will probably feel quite sorry for them.”
19
THERE WERE PORK CHOPS for dinner, double-cut ones with ruffled white pants so that you wouldn’t get your hands greasy when you picked them up and gnawed at the meat close to the bone, which everyone did except Janet Whistler who didn’t seem to be too hungry.
There were also mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, and a salad and I ate everything that was set before me, including two pieces of apple pie, not forgetting to compliment Mrs. Williams on her cooking. She shook her head
and said, “I don’t think that crust was too good.”
There hadn’t been much conversation at dinner either and there was even less afterward. We had coffee in the living room again. And since there didn’t seem to be anything that we wanted to talk about Miles Wiedstein went upstairs and came back down with a small, portable Sony television set. He plugged it in and we listened to Walter Cronkite skim over the news.
When Cronkite said, “And that’s the way it is, Wednesday, November the third,” Miles Wiedstein turned the set off before Cronkite could tell us what year it was.
“Well,” Procane said, rising, “the world seems no worse than usual—nor better either.” He looked at his watch. “It’s now seven-thirty. We will leave here promptly at eight-twenty. I suggest that we retire for the next forty-five minutes to collect our thoughts and, if possible, relax.” He looked at me. “Mr. Wiedstein will show you your room.”
“This way,” Wiedstein said. I followed him into the hall and up a flight of carpeted stairs. “That one there,” he said, pointing to a door. “We share a bath. If you hear me throwing up, don’t pay any attention. I always throw up before one of these things.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have eaten.”
He shook his head. “I like to throw up. It gives me something to do. It doesn’t mean I’m sick. Not really sick.”
My room had a canopied bed, a bureau, a dresser, two chairs, and a chaise longue. I went through the drawers but they were empty. So was the closet. The two windows were decorated with pale yellow curtains. Their shades were down. I raised one of the shades and saw that I had a view of N Street. It was dark outside. I lowered the shade and stretched out on the bed, staring up at the canopy. I heard some footsteps in the hall. A door closed. Then another one. I shut my eyes and kept them that way, even when I heard my hall door open. I heard movement in the room and someone breathing, but I kept my eyes closed. At the sound of a zipper being unzipped I opened my eyes. It was Janet Whistler and she was half out of her gray pantsuit, the top half. She had nothing on underneath it.
“Move over,” she said, stepping out of her pants. I moved over. She eased herself onto the bed next to me and started working on my tie. “You don’t have to do anything,” she said. “I don’t want you to do anything.”
“I don’t mind doing something,” I said, putting an arm around her. “It gives me a sense of participation.”
“No,” she said, now working on my shirt buttons. “I want it to last.”
“I can cooperate along those lines, too. We’ve got forty minutes or so.”
She started unfastening my belt. “That’s how long it’s got to last. Forty minutes.”
“Why?”
“Because it keeps me from thinking. I don’t want to think. Not until it really starts.”
All of my clothes were off now and we lay on the bed, our arms around each other. I started to say something, to pay her some compliment probably, maybe about how pretty she was, but she shook her head and said, “Don’t talk. I don’t want to talk. I just want to do everything as though it were the last time ever. For both of us.”
She was able to pretend that better than I. There was something frantic about her tongue and hands. Her tongue went exploring, darting into every opening and crevice that she could find. Her nails raked my buttocks and my back again and I had to bite my lip to keep from yelling. But to bite my lip I had to close my mouth and she didn’t like that. She wanted it open so that my tongue could be where she thought it should be.
It went like that for what seemed to me a long time although I didn’t keep track. And then I was inside her and she began to make small little moans as she writhed and clamped at me and crosshatched my back with her fingernails. “Now hurt me,” she said, almost choking on the words, “I want you to hurt me bad.” So I hurt her, but not bad, even though she’d wanted me to, and I felt the spasms start in her belly, once, twice, three times, and I quit worrying about her and started delighting in myself and then it started to be over and then it was and we lay there breathing hard and listening to Wiedstein throw up in the bathroom.
“Jesus,” I said, turned over, and started fumbling through my clothes for a cigarette.
“He always does that,” she said. “I always do this. This is better.”
“Who’s your usual partner?” I said, offering her a cigarette.
“It depends on where I am. Sometimes it’s just me.”
“That’s not much fun.”
“It depends on your imagination. Don’t worry, you’re not cutting out either Wiedstein or Procane.”
“I wasn’t worried.”
The bathroom door opened and Wiedstein stood there, looking a little pale. I’m not sure that he noticed we were naked. I don’t think he cared. He was sponging off his face with a wet cloth.
“You’d better get ready,” he said.
“Are you okay now?” Janet Whistler said, propping herself up on one elbow.
“I think it’s over. I thought my goddamned appendix was coming up.”
“What time is it?” she said.
He looked at his watch. I thought about covering myself with something, but decided that if it wasn’t bothering them, it shouldn’t bother me. “Eight-ten,” he said, turned, and closed the door behind him.
Janet Whistler turned toward me and stretched. “God, I feel better.”
“Why don’t you go in the bathroom and see if you can find something to put on my back,” I said. “I think I’m bleeding all over the counterpane.”
“Turn over.”
I turned over and she said. “How’d you ever do that?” I think she really didn’t know.
I sighed. “It’s something like stigmata except that I get it on my back every time I screw.”
“You mean I did that?”
“Didn’t anyone ever complain before?”
“No. Never. Really they didn’t.”
“Am I bleeding?”
“Not really. They’re just scratches, but I’ll put something on them.”
“Don’t bother,” I said, swinging my legs over the bed and reaching for my shirt.
“Did I do that before?” she asked. “I mean when we were up at your place?”
“Yes.”
“I never did it to anyone else. Honestly.”
“Maybe they were too polite to complain.”
“They weren’t that polite. Nobody is.”
“Forget it.”
“I think I know why I do it.”
“Why?”
“It’s like I told you before. You’re such a good fuck. But you know what you can do next time?”
“What?”
“You can buy me some gloves.”
Mrs. Williams fetched our coats from the hall closet and we shrugged into them in the living room and then stood around, a little awkwardly, like guests at a party that has lasted too long.
Procane turned to Mrs. Williams and said, “The car will be by for you at ten.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be back in New York some time tomorrow.”
“In time for lunch or dinner?”
“Dinner, I think.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you for coming down, Mrs. Williams, and for the fine dinner.”
“You welcome, Mr. Procane.”
He turned to us then and said, “We can go out through the back.”
We followed him through the dining room, a pantry, and the kitchen that had one of those large, commercial stoves that can cook for four or forty. There was also a big freezer, an outsized refrigerator, and two automatic dishwashers.
“They entertain a lot,” Procane said, apparently referring to the absent owners of the house. He opened a door that led outside and we went down a flight of wooden steps from a small porch into a back yard. Procane had switched on an outside light and I could see that the term back yard wasn’t quite grand enough for the small, carefully laid out informal garden that had cost somebody
a great deal of money and even more time. It was too dark to recognize the shrubs and bushes, and I’m not sure that I could have anyhow, but some of them were cozily wrapped up in burlap against the winter frost. There were five or six tall shade trees, nearly bare now, and curving in and out of the shrubs and the trees was a walk of white gravel that sparkled in the artificial light.
We followed the walk until we came to a brick garage. Procane used a key to unlock a door and we went inside. He turned on another light and it revealed two three- or four-year-old Chevrolet Impalas. One was black and the other was green. There was still space enough in the garage for a third car, a big one such as a Cadillac or an Imperial. There was even enough space for the long workbench that ran along one side of the garage and which had enough tools to put a shade-tree mechanic in business.
Procane moved over, inserted another key in a wall lock of some kind, pushed a button, and the garage’s overhead door rose smoothly. “We’ll take the green one, Mr. St. Ives,” he said and motioned for me to get in. He went around to the driver’s side. Wiedstein and Janet Whistler got in the black car, Wiedstein at the wheel.
Procane waited until Wiedstein backed out of the garage and started up the alley. Then he started our engine and we followed, turning left and then right on N Street and then left on Wisconsin Avenue and right again on M Street, which, along with Wisconsin, is one of the two main drags through Georgetown.
Wiedstein stayed in the left lane. He signaled for a left turn just before we got to Key Bridge, but had to wait for a red light. We waited, just behind him.
“What’s it going to be,” I said, “Maryland or Virginia?”
“Virginia,” Procane said. “Do you have a preference?”
“No.”
“Have you been in Virginia before?”
“I stopped at Bull Run once.”
“Was it interesting?”
“Sort of.”
The light turned green and we crossed the Potomac over the bridge that was named after the composer of our national anthem who, I’ve always suspected, had a tin ear. At the Virginia side of Key Bridge we turned right and about half a mile later edged on to the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
