Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Hello,” she said. “Sorry I’m late.” She was concentrating too completely on her own expression to be very aware of his, other than to see that he was smiling.

  “A man is supposed to wait for a good-looking girl,” he said, and in some curious way he sounded surprised. That oddity in his tone distracted her from herself, and she looked at him more closely, and saw that he was surprised. He was looking at her with pleasure, which was nice, but also with surprise, which wasn’t so nice. Had he thought she was a frump? True, he’d never seen her dressed for an evening out before, but did she really look that bad in her daytime clothes? The idea was disturbing.

  He held out an elbow for her, saying, “Shall we go?”

  “Yes, of course.” She took his arm, trying to keep away from her face the frown that would have most accurately reflected her thoughts.

  They were stopped near the front door by one of the Secret Service men—a new one, they kept changing all the time—who said, specifically to Evelyn, “Excuse me, Miss. Were you going out?”

  Evelyn was grateful that Robert answered, not allowing the man’s boorishness to define their relationship. “Yes, we were. Something wrong?”

  The man glanced at them both, doubtful now to whom to report, and Evelyn saw that while she had been thinking of herself as a woman with an escort the Secret Service man had thought of her only as a member of the family he was here to protect. She was pleased at having attained at least ambivalence in his anonymous mind, and doubly grateful to Robert for having accomplished it.

  The man finally said, to the space between them, while his glance kept flicking back and forth, “Just a little trouble at the gate. Only be a minute.”

  Trouble, at the gate? She was about to blurt out a question—one that he wouldn’t have answered in any event—and stopped herself just barely in time. Let Robert talk. Let Robert talk.

  Robert did, and asked a more sensible question than she would have: “Are we permitted to leave the house?”

  The man had at last shifted his frame of reference, and now answered Robert directly. “Not for just a moment or two, sir. I’m waiting to be called now.”

  “We’ll be in the parlor,” Robert told him, and nodded toward the room they’d just left. “That one.”

  “Yes, sir.” The man did a half-salute—Evelyn nearly giggled—and hurried away.

  They went back into the parlor, and Evelyn said, “I wonder what it could be.”

  “Tourists, I suppose,” Robert said. “Wandered up the wrong road.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be that. We get tourists from time to time, especially in the summer like this, but there’s never any trouble about them. They get turned back at the gate without the Secret Service men having to do anything. In fact, they’ve never had to do anything at all before this.”

  “They wouldn’t be pulling a practice alert, would they?”

  “Bradford would never stand for it.” She went over to the nearest window and looked out at the gravel drive. It was just sunset, the shadow of the sundial stretching impossibly long across the grass to the right. The window faced northward, and far away the Tuscarora and Blue mountains stood in bright sunlight against the blue sky, as though up there the clocks still read no later than three-thirty. The contrast with the shadowed wood-surrounded drive made it seem even darker here, eerily and unnaturally so.

  Robert came over behind her and said, “It can’t be much of anything. No one with violent intentions would bother trying to come through the gate. You don’t have the whole estate fenced in, do you?”

  “No. When Bradford was President they used to patrol all around the perimeter whenever he was here, but they don’t do that any more. There’s never been any need.”

  They heard a distant phone ring, and Robert said, “There’s our reprieve now.”

  “Let’s hope so,” she said, and turned around, and he was very close. They stood at the edge of something, on the brink, and then Robert took a step backward and smiled a little artificially. But he thought of kissing me, she told herself. He hadn’t done it, but he’d contemplated it.

  They drifted together to the doorway, in time to see the Secret Service man hurrying up the stairs. “Going up to tell Bradford something,” Evelyn said.

  “I wish they’d tell us something,” Robert said. “I admit I’m getting a little curious.”

  “If only I’d been ready on time, we would have avoided all this.”

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about that, and if you’d been ready when I got here we probably would have arrived at the gate just as the trouble was starting. We’re better off this way.”

  “But at least we’d know what was going on.”

  They heard footsteps on the stairs again, and Robert said, “Excuse me.” He stepped past her through the doorway, and intercepted the Secret Service man at the foot of the stairs. The Secret Service man was in a hurry, but Robert was insistent. Evelyn couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she saw him tap his watch at one point, and saw the Secret Service man reluctantly nod. Then he started away, and Robert called to Evelyn, “Be back in a minute,” before hurrying after him.

  Why did she have the feeling she would never see him again? The world seemed suddenly darkly lit with melodrama, like summer lightning far away when the nearer air is still and silent. She would stand in this doorway while a final darkness settled on the world, the house crumbled room by room around her, starting with the farthest corner and decaying swiftly and irrevocably in this direction, and Bradford would be gone, Robert would be gone, there would be one last fading cry from Dinah, anonymous rushings just around all the corners, and finally silence. Silence. The crack/rustle of one last falling brick. Silence.

  Robert came back. “It’s set, goilie,” he said. “We crash out right now.”

  She laughed, though that ridiculous mood was still on her, and clung to his arm as though she expected the floor to drop away at any second. He looked at her in surprise and said, “Were you scared by all this?”

  “I hate not knowing,” she said. “I just hate it.”

  “Well, we’re about to find out. Bradford is coming—you know, I don’t feel right calling him Bradford, but I don’t feel right calling him Lockridge, either.”

  “What did he tell you to call him?”

  “Brad. But that’s impossible.” He held the front door for her, and they went out to where his elderly yellow Jaguar crouched like a sleek cat with its head nestled between its paws. It really wasn’t dark out, a slice of sun still shone red to the west, it was about as bright now as an average overcast day.

  They got into the car, and as Robert drove around the circle and headed toward the gate she said, “What is Bradford going to do? You said he’s coming? Coming where?”

  “To the gate, apparently. I heard our friend talking on the phone. There’s somebody up here who wants to talk to Bra—to Bradford, I’ll get used to it. The Secret Service won’t let him come to the house, so I guess Bradford’s agreed to come out to the gate. There’s something about giving him a letter or something.”

  “But that’s so strange.”

  “Just the word I was looking for.”

  At the gate, it became stranger. The old gate guard was standing there with an incongruous—and probably useless—shotgun under his arm, and the second Secret Service man stood in the doorway of the guard shack holding in both hands what looked like some sort of machine gun, a skinny but deadly looking thing. The gate was closed. Just this side of it an empty black Chevrolet was parked off the gravel, being the car the Secret Service man had undoubtedly come here in from the house, and on the other side of the gate, also parked off the gravel, nestling against the tree trunks, was a black Mercedes-Benz limousine with a separate chauffeur’s compartment. A liveried chauffeur sat stolid at the wheel, and two indistinct figures sat in the rear of the car.

  The Secret Service man made no move when the Jaguar arrived, but the gate guard came
over to open the gate, calling various phrases to Evelyn all the while. He spoke heavily accented English which Evelyn could only on rare occasions decipher, and this time she only got the general idea that he meant to let her know everything was under control. In the topless Jaguar, it was impossible to avoid him, so she nodded and smiled all the time they were waiting for the gate to be fully opened.

  Robert drove very slowly through, and once they were past the still chattering guard Evelyn could turn at last and look at the Mercedes-Benz, on the left, looking at it past Robert’s profile.

  The chauffeur was Chinese. Both hands—gloved, in this heat—were high on the steering wheel. If it was possible to sit at attention, he was sitting at attention. He gave no sign of being aware of the yellow Jaguar grumbling by beneath his left elbow.

  There were two passengers. She looked in the limousine’s side windows as they went by, having to look up because the Jaguar was so much lower, and both passengers were looking back out at her. She met their eyes, and read nothing in them, expressionless eyes in aging expressionless faces. Chinese faces.

  Robert accelerated once they were past the limousine, and Evelyn twisted in her seat to look back down the straight narrow road flanked by trees, twilight now settling in, the static tableau back there, the silent limousine, the business-suited necktied man holding a machine gun in the doorway of the guard shack, the only movement being the old guard in his muddy high boots slowly closing the gates again, the shotgun drooping from the crook of his arm. Then the Jaguar nosed around a bend in the road, and tree trunks hid the view, and Evelyn faced forward again. “They were Chinese,” she said. “Chinese.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” Robert said.

  11

  HE HADN’T ASKED HER advice. She supposed he’d looked in some gasoline company’s travel guide for a good restaurant in this unpopulated corner of Pennsylvania, and the Virginia Grove Inn had probably sounded pretty good. It was also on a numbered highway, and less than twenty-five miles from Eustace, so he’d be likely to be able to find it without too much trouble. From his point of view it had undoubtedly seemed like the best bet. Unfortunately, Evelyn knew from sad experience that there were a total of three bearable restaurants in this part of the world, and the Virginia Grove Inn was none of them.

  More than the name was deceptive. The restaurant looked beautiful. Atop a hill up its own private road from the highway, the rambling two-story brick building had once been a private home and still implied a kind of Colonial hospitality. Night had settled fully by the time they arrived, but Evelyn knew that by day there was an impressive view down the valley toward Maryland between the Tuscarora and Blue mountains on one side and South Mountain on the other.

  The first crack in the image was the interior. Whatever the true original appearance of the inside of the house, it had all been stripped away and replaced by the cheapest and gaudiest of fake Colonial. The plastic has not been made that looks like pewter, and the attempts were just painful.

  “Ah!” Robert had said, on driving up the hill toward the floodlit building, but, “Hmmm,” he said now, as a stocky middle-aged woman in a Colonial mini-skirt led them to their table and left without lighting the candle.

  The room was large, and about half full, none of the patrons giving the appearance of being local residents but all looking to be passing-through tourists. This section of the state was pretty much a backwater, but the Gettysburg carnival was not too far away, and some Virginia Grove Inn billboards over there drew a share of flies to this side-street pot of honey.

  Robert looked around and said, “Have I made a mistake?”

  He was perceptive enough to deserve an honest answer, but she tried nevertheless to soften the blow. “Well, I haven’t been here for a while.”

  “How was it the last time you were here?”

  “Not very good,” she admitted.

  “Food? Service?”

  “Both.”

  “We could leave now,” he suggested.

  “No, don’t. The food wasn’t that bad last time, and if we’re not in a hurry what do we care how slow the service is?

  He looked around the room again, considering, and then nodded. “Done,” he said. “Next time, you pick the place.” And with a flourish, he lit the candle.

  iii

  WHEN AT LAST HE kissed her, her first thought was, I hate that rotten little Frenchman! But then he too faded, like the trouble with her hairdo and the unsatisfactory parting from Dinah and the mysterious interruption at the gate and the really dreadful food and service at the Virginia Grove Inn, any one of which could have spoiled the evening if it had been an evening that could be spoiled. But it was turning out not to be an evening that could be spoiled, which was astonishing and delightful enough in itself, and when at last, in the remotest corner of the floodlit Virginia Grove blacktop parking lot, he reached for her and kissed her, not even the Jaguar’s English reluctance to countenance romance stood in the way, though the shift lever did. But she ignored that too, and as he kissed her she felt all the stored-up tension she’d been toting (for so long it had come to seem a natural part of her) draining away out her knees and fingertips, and her lips became steadily softer.

  After the kiss they murmured together about nothing in particular, just words to fill the spaces until they would kiss again, and when she heard her own bemusement echoed in his voice—he too had expected nothing and had been surprised!—she laughed, from pleasure as much as amusement. He wanted to know what she was laughing at and she shook her head and said, “We’re funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “You almost didn’t take me out tonight.”

  He hesitated, but not for very long, and then smiled and said, “I didn’t think there was any reason to.”

  “I was better than nothing,” she said, laughing at them both.

  “A little,” he conceded, and kissed her again. He was more aggressive about it than Fred had ever been, which startled her this time and made her hesitant in her own reaction. He noticed, and broke off to look at her and say, “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” Her mind was full of Fred, in very confusing ways. She was remembering something she’d long ago put out of her mind, that her first reaction on hearing of his death had been to be angry at him, enraged, furious. And just before Christmas, too, she’d thought, as though he’d died on purpose and had deliberately chosen the most inconvenient time. Shock and grief had quickly buried that reaction and she hadn’t thought of it again until just this minute.

  “You’ve gone away,” Robert said. “Your mind is drifting.”

  “It was,” she admitted. “But it’s back now, I promise.” And when she saw he was still doubtful, she bracketed his face with her hands and kissed him back.

  And this time, at last, it was him, it was Robert Pratt she was aware of, nothing out of the past, no irrelevancies at all. The strange specificity of him, his being different from anyone else she’d ever kissed. He seemed bulkier, broader, and at the same time harder. And his smell was different, like . . . like a new book. Fred had always smelled of leather and soap, had felt taut and slender and controlled, had always been at arm’s-length no matter how close they—

  No more comparisons. No more past. She pressed against him, and when the kiss was over she rested her cheek on his scratchy shoulder. “My bear,” she whispered. (She knew she would feel self-conscious and silly later on for having said that, but it didn’t matter. It was the way she felt now.)

  “My bird,” he answered. His voice was gruff, as though he should have cleared his throat first.

  “Bird?” She sat back, delighted, to look at him and see if he’d really meant it. She thought of herself as a plainer, dowdier, more earthbound creature. A bird? Really?

  “A beautiful bird,” he said, and no matter how hard she looked she could see no guile in his eyes. He reached out and laid his palm against her cheek and ear, his fingers curving against the side of her head, and all at once she did feel
birdlike, delicate and fragile and precious, held in his large hand.

  He said, “What are you crying for?”

  “I’m not crying,” she said, though she knew full well she was. “It’s just a shower with the sun shining,” she said, and turned her face to kiss his palm.

  iv

  ALL WAS QUIET AT the gate. The old man was off-duty now, and a younger man shone his flashlight in Robert’s eyes, then saw Evelyn and shifted the light away with a quick apology. He walked briskly away to open the gate.

  Evelyn found herself growing nervous all over again. She was tempted to ask the guard what had finally happened this evening, but in the first place he more than likely wouldn’t know and in the second place the person with the answers would be Bradford.

  Robert said, “Well, I guess it all worked out all right. Doesn’t seem to be any excitement.”

  “I can’t wait to ask Bradford,” she said.

  “Will you call me and tell me?”

  “First thing in the morning,” she promised. “But it will turn out to be nothing at all.”

  “Tell me anyway,” he said. “I hate suspense.”

  “I will.”

  The gate was open. They drove through and headed for the house. When they got to it, there were only a few lights still burning. Evelyn said, “Good Lord, what time is it?”

  “Little after midnight.”

  They’d gone for a drive after dinner, and stopped for a while by an anonymous river bank—it was merely a quarter moon, not very good for seeing—and then dropped in at ‘their’ bar for a nightcap. Robert had claimed he wanted to see if the bartender remembered how much to charge for a vodka and tonic, but a different man had been working there tonight. (He’d charged the same as the other one, which displeased Robert.)

  “Bradford has probably gone to bed,” she said. “I won’t find out myself until tomorrow.”