Greenwich

by Howard Fast

  “Christie, it’s Abel Hunt.”

  Recognition dawned, and Christina began to weep. Abel bent over and gently raised her to her feet. “Can you walk?”

  She nodded.

  Abel wiped the mixture of blood and tears from her face. She tried to say something but her voice failed.

  “Don’t try to talk now, honey. Let me get you into the car and we’ll take you home.” Abel put her in the front seat, next to him, strapped on the seat belt, and drove on to Chickahominy. By the time they parked in front of the Manelli house, Abel had most of the story, and he said to Christina, “Joe and I are going in with you. That’s best because Frank is going to blow his top. I know Frank.”

  “Please, do I have to tell them?”

  “No other way, Christie. You’re hurt, and they have to know why. I’d like to kill that little bastard, but I’m not Frank and I react differently.”

  “Dad will kill him.”

  “That’s, why we’re going in with you.”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “No, it’s not your fault, and don’t get off on that track.” He rang the doorbell, placing himself in front of Christina. Joe stood beside him, whispering, “Should I sit in the car?”

  “Stay with me,” Abel said.

  Joe put his sweater over Christina’s shoulders. She was shivering, in spite of the warmth of the evening. Connie Manelli opened the door and, not immediately aware of Christina, blocked by Abel’s huge bulk, greeted them with a smile. “Abel, what a surprise.”

  “Now take it easy, Connie. I got Christina here—she’s all right. Bruised, but all right, so don’t scream or shout.”

  He stepped aside, and Connie saw Christina, dropped her jaw, and then folded her weeping daughter into her arms.

  From inside the house, Frank’s voice, “Connie, what’s going on out there?”

  Abel walked into the house and into the kitchen. Frank and his wife had been playing rummy, and the cards were spread out on the kitchen table. In another room, the television was on.

  “Abel,” Frank said, “what’s up?” And then, hearing sounds, “What the hell’s going on out there?”

  “Now you just take it easy,” Abel said, blocking Frank’s movement toward the front door. “Christie’s with me. She’s hurt a bit, but all right. I want you to take it easy.”

  Now Constance entered the kitchen with Christina, and Joe behind them.

  “Hello, Daddy,” Christina managed to say. “I’m all right. Please don’t get angry.”

  “What happened? Tell me what happened.”

  “Sit down!” Abel said firmly. “Sit down and I’ll tell you what happened. Connie, take her into the bathroom.”

  “Will someone tell me what the hell is going on!”

  “Take her into the bathroom, Connie. You sit there,” he told Frank, “and listen to me. She had a date with Dickie Castle.”

  “What! Dickie Castle! I’ll kill that little son of a bitch!”

  Frank Junior and Dorothy came into the kitchen to see what the shouting was about, and Frank yelled, “Get out of here, both of you. Go watch television, and stay out of here.”

  “Now listen, Frank,” Abel said firmly. “Joe and me, we were driving back from Castle’s place, and we saw Christie by the road. We picked her up and brought her home. Her story is that she had a date with Dickie. He took her to a movie and made some moves, but she brushed him off. Then he told her he was taking her to dinner at La Cre-maillere, and he made some more moves and she said, Take me home, and a struggle started and she got out of the car and fell against one of those high stone walls and cut her face. Maybe her arm is broken or dislocated. Anyway, it’s painful and you’d better take her to the hospital.”

  Through his teeth, Frank whispered, “Did he rape her?”

  “No! And I mean no!”

  “I swear to God I’ll kill that little bastard!” He got out of the chair. “I’m going out there and I’m going to beat that little bastard until—”

  Pushing him back into the chair, Abel said, “You are not, or you’ll have to do it over my dead body. You’ll talk to that poor kid and then you’ll take her to the hospital. And I’m going with you because I love you and thank God I don’t have an Italian temper. After that, we go to the cops, both of us—or do I have to tie you to this chair? Jesus God, this is nothing. He didn’t rape her, and she learned something. But if you beat up that boy or kill him, your life’s over. What do your kids do then? What does Connie do? What does Christie do? You touch that boy, and you got a lawsuit you’ll be paying for the rest of your life. Now, are you going to act sane or not?”

  Frank nodded.

  “Give her a few hugs and a kiss, and then we’ll take her to the hospital—agreed?”

  Frank nodded again, and Abel said to Joe, “Drive home, Joey, and tell Mom what I’m into, not to worry. And tell her not to talk about it, and you keep your mouth shut, too. I don’t want this all over the neighborhood.”

  Twelve

  Muffy was the first to leave the dinner party at the Castles’. Richard Castle took her to the door, asking her to stay a bit longer, being that it was only nine-thirty, to which she replied, “Richard, did you really expect me to sit there with that old schoolteacher and that fat nun? What could I say to them, except that it must be a great pleasure to be a nun and eat yourself silly. No, thank you.”

  “How long will your husband be away?”

  “God knows. He’s buying or selling something in Brazil or Switzerland.”

  “Then let’s get together sometime. Lunch in New York—maybe my place at the Carlyle. We could eat in the room, and who knows what else?”

  “Call me.” She lit a cigarette as she spoke, puffed, and smiled at it, satisfied. “I’ve been dying for one, and by the way, that cigar-at-the-table notion of yours is way out. Not done, Richard, except in British films.”

  “Those Cuban Cohibas cost me over twenty-five dollars, a shot.”

  “Call me, Richard.”

  In the living room, the stout nun and Mary Greene did have something to say to each other, and in contrast to Muffy, Sally was an appreciative audience. “I do like Harold and I love his wife, Ruth,” Mary said, “but I am more than confused by his ideas about assassination. I’ve read everything else of his, and they were all run-of-the-mill best-sellers. You know, he sent a copy of his manuscript to Herb, but I haven’t gotten to it. This notion of collective guilt—may I ask you what you really think of it, Pat?”

  Pat shook her head. “I just don’t know. A number of Catholic writers have speculated about it, and of course both the Berrigan brothers have edged toward it.”

  “It’s a terrible thought. Back in December of 1984, there was an explosion at the Union Carbide plant in India, and eight—I don’t know now, maybe twelve—thousand people died. The release of some deadly gas killed all those people.”

  “I remember it,” Sister Brody said. “We prayed for them.”

  “We owned some Union Carbide stock, just a hundred shares, and we sold it immediately. And there was a night, a few days later,” Mary went on, “after a day of Christmas shopping, that I lay awake all night thinking of that awful thing and the shares of Union Carbide stock we had owned, and I went to mass that morning and then I had to face the kids in school—I had a class of eight-year-olds that semester, and I looked at their bright clean faces—well, it took me time to get over it, and then tonight.”

  Sally listened and wondered why she knew nothing about this. She was living on the West Coast in 1984, with a previous husband. There was a whole world she had never ventured into.

  “Didn’t you talk to anyone?” Sister Brody asked.

  “I talked to Herb. He said I was overemotional. I remember him bringing up the subject of the Holocaust. His argument was that there was no such thing as collective guilt, and that owning shares in a company, any company, did not make one responsible for the company’s actions.”

  “I can understand that,”
Pat agreed. “We have taken gifts from companies whose practices are deplorable.”

  “But truly, what do you think?”

  “Truly? Well, truly, I don’t know what I think. I take refuge in prayer.”

  Sally, speaking for the first time, recalling that before they were married, Richard had been an Assistant Secretary of State for Central America, asked, “Could you tell me what happened in El Salvador? I’m so ignorant—I don’t even know where it is or what it is.”

  Both women were taken aback by the simple innocence of the question, and Mary Greene realized that no other woman she knew would ask a question like that. Sister Brody responded to it without noticeable hesitation:

  “El Salvador is a tiny country in Central America. Back between 1979 and 1992 there was a struggle of the poor farmers, who had no land to speak of, against the large landholders, who owned almost all of the good land and ruled with terror. I was there then, for several years. I am ashamed to say that our government armed and trained so-called death squads, murder squads if you ask me, to enforce the large landowner’s rule with terror. These murder squads raped and killed a group of nuns and lay workers, and then murdered a Catholic bishop on the altar and six Jesuit priests. They killed over 70,000 other good people, but the murder of the nuns and priests made more headlines.”

  “This really happened?” Sally asked.

  “Yes, my dear. It really happened.”

  “But why the nuns and the priests?”

  “Because we worked with the poor, because we gave them food and established schools and taught them sanitation.”

  “But we’re a good country,” Sally pleaded. “We don’t do things like that.”

  Meanwhile, at the dinner table, the Cuban Cohibas had been smoked and the brandy sipped, and Sellig remembered that he had promised to join his wife at her hospital vigil and Professor Greene, increasingly guilty at this separation of the sexes, said that he, too, had to go and be up early the following morning. Castle did not object to an early end for the evening, but he said to Monsignor Donovan that he would like a few words with him alone. The Greenes and Sellig took their departures, and both Sister Brody and Sally appeared satisfied to spend another half hour in the living room.

  Sally couldn’t imagine what her husband might want with Monsignor Donovan, but since both asked for the favor of a conversation alone with goodwill and without rancor, she was reassured and delighted by the opportunity to talk more with Sister Brody.

  Castle suggested that he and Donovan retire to his study, where they would be more comfortable. He was proud of his study, which had been decorated by Maxine Dibble, recommended to him by George Lark, president of the North American Industrial Bank. He made a point of this to certain acquaintances, but decided that he would not mention it to the monsignor. Anyway, the study spoke for itself. On one wall were four Audubon prints, which he had purchased at auction when Mayor Koch decided to sell an original Audubon folio discovered in the basement of the New-York Historical Society. On another wall were a Renoir painting and a bookcase with shelves of books, leather bound, with classic titles, but which were not books at all but backings to cover a large safe. This, too, he refrained from mentioning. A bay window looked out on the garden, which the monsignor had been led through earlier in the day, and on the floor was an Aubusson rug, a very good copy of the original in the Mount Vernon home of George Washington. The walls were paneled in mahogany, and the room was furnished with an antique partners desk, a leather sofa, and three overstuffed chairs.

  Castle was pleased that Donovan admired the room, and he asked the monsignor to sit down and offered another humidor of Cohiba cigars.

  “Oh, no.” Donovan shook his head. “How on earth do you get them? No, I shouldn’t ask that.”

  “No secret, Monsignor. They’re sent to me from Washington. A congressman there—I won’t mention his name, of course—has an arrangement with one of the embassies in Washington.”

  The monsignor nodded. He was beginning to feel uneasy but decided that, considering the circumstances that brought him here and considering a dinner menu such as he rarely experienced, he could not object to a talk with this man.

  Castle apologized for lighting another cigar. “I talk better while I’m smoking, and this is the only place, except the dining room and my office, that I foul up. I turned half of the pool house into an office. I have an office in New York, but I can work just as well from here. I’m a very rich man, Monsignor, and I’d like to give you a check for your church for listening to my prattle.”

  He appeared entirely unaware of the maladroitness of his offer, and the monsignor, taking it as a matter of course in Castle’s milieu, was highly tempted to accept. Heaven knows, his church needed the money, but he had to refuse and remind Castle that as a guest he could not accept it.

  “I don’t know one damn thing about any religion,” Castle said. “My parents were Baptists, but we were too damn poor to have a car and get to church. That was another life. I was poor, now I’m a rich investment banker. I’m talking out of turn, but I have to talk, and I feel that I’m talking to you in confidence. I heard that you can talk to a Catholic priest in total confidence?”

  Donovan nodded. “Yes, if one is a Catholic and undertakes what we call confession. But you’re not Catholic, Mr. Castle, and while I can assure you that anything you say to me is confidential, I cannot say that it’s privileged—I mean in a legal sense.”

  “I understand. I’m not religious, and when we moved here to Greenwich, I joined Christ Church—the big one on the Post Road next to the Jewish temple—because that’s where the people I knew belonged. I hate to say this and I don’t mean it as any put-down of religion, but that’s the way I am. I joined the Hill Crest Club because my friends belonged to it. It didn’t matter to me that it was ah Episcopal church, I mean Christ Church. I give them five thousand a year and I turn up with Sally and my son at Christmastime and Easter.”

  Donovan realized that there had to be a point to all this and he wondered where it was leading. He knew how unusual it was for a man in Castle’s position to talk like this, and he decided that the easiest answer to his question was to ask. “You want help, Mr. Castle. That appears obvious, if I may say so. What Can I do for you?”

  “Well, it’s a matter of public record, so it’s not a question of privileged information. During the Bush administration I was one of the Assistant Secretaries of State. My field was Central America.”

  “I still don’t fully understand. Are you referring to the dinner-table conversation?”

  “Sort of. I mean the business in El Salvador.”

  “Were you concerned in that?”

  “That’s just the trouble. I got you in here with the feeling that I could talk to you in a way that would be privileged. Then you tell me that’s not the case. Now I don’t know what to say.”

  The man had his hand out, and Donovan did not know what to put in it. There were so many bits and pieces mixed up in their conversation that the monsignor could not think of any way to sort them out: religion, guilt, murder possibly, or perhaps something less than murder that he could not grasp. Donovan had in his pocket sixteen dollars and change that had to last to his next paycheck. He was a man who had lived for years attempting not to be judgmental, and he was being asked for help by a man so far apart from him on the economic scale that there was almost no possible meeting ground; yet he lived by the belief that there was always a meeting ground.

  “I can’t allow you to tell me things in the manner of a confession. Do you believe in God, Mr. Castle?”

  “What?”

  Why such surprise? Donovan wondered. After all, he had sought out a priest to talk to, or perhaps not sought him out, but he had grasped the opportunity to talk when his wife brought one here.

  “I asked you whether you believed in God. That’s not such an unusual question for a priest to ask, very personal perhaps, but you did indicate to me that this was a very personal conversation.�
��

  Castle nodded but did not speak, and as the silence extended, the priest repeated the question, “Do you believe in God?”

  Forced to enter himself and examine himself, Richard Castle spoke very slowly. “The truth is, I never much thought about it.” Pause again. “That’s a hell of a thing to say, isn’t it? Nobody ever asked me that before.”

  “Never?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t you regard that as a bit strange?”

  An introspective exchange was something rare in Castle’s world. At this point he felt a sense of futility, but he was also unable to end the dialogue, partially because he did not want to surrender it. He wanted answers to questions he could not bring himself to ask.

  “No, I don’t think so, Monsignor. I grew up as a poor kid in the South. I suppose I took it for granted that a preacher talked about God, not anyone else. I lived with all sorts of people, and I lived different lives. I worked my way through college to a degree in business administration. I went to Washington and worked my way through law school. I’m sixty-three years old, and I got a lot of polish on the way up. But nobody ever asked me whether I believed in God. I mean on Wall Street”—he smiled slightly—“well, maybe some pray for the market to go up—but God … I’m trying to say something—I mean, you die. What happens then? I don’t know whether this makes any sense at all to you, but the only thing I ever thought seriously about was being rich. Now I’m rich enough. But God? You don’t ask that—nobody does.”

  “I asked you.”

  “You did. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “I’d also like to know what conclusion you come to, and when you come to it, whatever it is, I’d like to know. Perhaps we can talk again. You can find me at St. Matthew’s. It’s getting late now, and I’m afraid Sister Brody and I must go.”

  “One more thing. I wouldn’t say this to anyone else in the world, and maybe it’s because I’m sixty-three, and every time my heart skips a beat, I think that this is it. I’m not much damn good. I think I love my wife, but tonight, when my friend Muffy was leaving, I tried to make a date to see her in New York—”