Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  Jimmy, an elderly man, in charge of the stables for nearly forty years, was standing by the open stable door, holding his battered hat in one hand and a wadded-up handkerchief in the other. With the handkerchief, he was distractedly wiping first the inside rim of the hat and then the back of his neck, over and over. None of the other boys was anywhere in sight, though Evelyn could sense several pairs of eyes watching from just under cover. From the stable came a continuous rush of confused and nervous sounds, stamping and neighing; the animals in there were agitated, and were not being seen to.

  Evelyn approached Jimmy first, as being more likely to give rational answers to her questions, but before she could ask anything he volunteered an answer she didn’t particularly care about, saying, “It was Laker he shot, Miss. Shot him dead. Came in crying, waving that gun around, shouting things, shot Laker right direct in the head. The boys went—”

  “What was he shouting?” They were both speaking in guarded tones; quite clearly Evelyn could hear the rasp of BJ’s sobbing.

  “Nothing you could make out, Miss,” Jimmy said. “Just what you might call gibberish. Then he shot Laker, and stopped where he was for a minute, looking at what he’d done. And then he came out here and sat down, and I called you.”

  “Is Laker still in there?”

  “Yes, Miss. We haven’t done a thing, I just went round the corner to the office and phoned you.”

  “That’s why the other horses are so upset. Get Laker out of there. Have the boys take him out the other way.”

  “Yes, Miss.” But he didn’t move yet, expecting further orders.

  Evelyn looked again over at BJ. The sobbing seemed to be gradually less, but he hadn’t changed his position. She wondered about going over to take the gun away from him, but decided not to. He was quiet now, and it might upset him to have someone try to disarm him. She wondered briefly what it was all about, why he’d done such an incomprehensible thing, but it wasn’t a useful question at this point and she cast it to one side.

  Jimmy was still waiting. She turned back to him and said, “This hasn’t happened. As far as the boys are concerned, as far as talking to anyone about this, it hasn’t happened.”

  “The boys don’t carry tales, Miss.”

  She doubted a blanket statement like that could possibly be true, but she didn’t argue the point. She said, “I don’t, simply mean in town, Jimmy, I mean here, too. They’re not to tell anyone up at the house, and that includes Mr. Lockridge.”

  “Oh, I see, Miss,” Jimmy said, nodding. “You don’t want him to know about his son.”

  “That’s right,” she said, improvising. “It wouldn’t be good for him at his age. That’s why I don’t want any talking about this at all, because I wouldn’t want it to get to Mr. Lockridge.”

  “I’ll be sure the boys understand that, Miss.”

  “Good. Have them take care of Laker, and calm the other horses.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  “And they’d better stay out of sight of the yard for a while.”

  Was there a ghost of a smile on Jimmy’s face? All he said was, “Yes, Miss, they will.”

  “I’ll use your phone.”

  “Yes, Miss, of course.”

  He made a hospitable gesture toward his office with his hat, accompanied by a small movement that might have been meant as a bow. Evelyn nodded, and turned away, going down the clapboard wall to the office entrance and inside, amid the smells of leather and horse and earth. She called the house and had Greg brought to the phone, and told him, “There’s a problem down at the stables. I don’t want anyone there to know about it. There really isn’t time to explain everything now. But could you come down here?”

  “Of course.”

  “Make some excuse to Audrey. And if Bradford gets back before we’re done down here, I don’t want him to know there’s any trouble.”

  “Audrey can handle that.” Greg sounded very different now, quick and competent and serious. “I’ll be right down,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  She went back outside. BJ had changed position slightly now; he had stopped crying, and his left arm was now down away from his face, his hand resting on the tan ground between his legs. He was gazing at nothing, his expression stricken. His right hand was still in the same place as before, the gun resting on his open fingers.

  Evelyn chewed her lower lip. The truth was, she was very frightened, and didn’t want to be involved in this. Whatever had happened to BJ, he was surely not rational now, and the irrational terrified Evelyn, it always had. One never knew what an irrational reaction was going to be. If she went over to him, would he recognize her as a friend, a relative, a woman, someone who meant him no harm? Or would his mind see something entirely different, something she couldn’t guess at? And would it see something he would want to kill? If he raised the gun and fired, it would be the mistaken notion in his head he would be shooting at, but it would be Evelyn he would hit.

  But the gun had to be taken away from him, and some attempt had to be made to talk to him, contact him. The situation couldn’t be left this way indefinitely.

  If he shoots Greg, she thought, I’ll never forgive myself. And how could I go up to the house and break the news to Audrey?

  It was that last thought that decided her, and she moved abruptly out from the doorway into the sunlight. She slowed at once, but kept moving forward, not walking directly toward BJ but moving in a kind of arc, like a golf ball following the slope of the green toward the cup. She moved more and more slowly, the closer she got to him, but he paid no attention to her, he didn’t even seem to be aware of her presence.

  She reached him, stopped in front of him and just to his right. Slowly, she bent her knees and squatted in front of him. More slowly, as though reaching for a dozing rattlesnake, she reached her hand out toward the gun. Her fingers closed on the barrel, she took a breath and held it, she closed her eyes, opened them again, and flipped the gun up from his hand as though it were a spatula and she was flipping pancakes. He started when the gun left his fingers, his eyes widened as though something had frightened him, but he still didn’t look at her, and she continued the spatula movement, lifting the gun up into the air, the weight of it surprising, the metal warm to her fingers, and when she had it at shoulder height she flipped it sideways with a snap of her wrist so that it spun through the air like a boomerang, landing a dozen feet away and sliding another foot in a sudden puff of dry dirt.

  Evelyn breathed again. She put one hand on the ground in front of her for balance and said, “BJ.”

  No response.

  “BJ, it’s Evelyn.”

  Still nothing. She spoke to him, quietly, reassuringly, and nothing happened on his face or in his eyes. He stared away at nothingness to her right. His frightened reaction when she’d taken the gun away was the last change she saw him make.

  She glanced over her shoulder, and saw Greg trotting down the path from the house. Giving up the attempt at communication, she got to her feet, backed away, went over to get the gun where it was lying in the dirt, and carried it off to put it on the desk in the office. She came out again, and Greg was just arriving, puffing slightly, looking from her to BJ sitting on the ground. “What the heck is going on?”

  “Something’s happened to BJ, something mental. He came into the stables and shot one of the horses. I have no idea why.”

  “Good God!”

  “Then he came out here, and he’s just sitting, he won’t respond when I talk to him or anything. I took the gun away from him, he didn’t fight me for it.”

  “We’d better take him up to the house,” Greg said.

  “There’s another problem,” she said, and looked around to be sure none of the boys was anywhere close. “We’ve been having . . . trouble with Bradford,” she said.

  “This Bradford?”

  “No.” She nodded toward the house. “Bradford. He had a stroke, and it’s affected his mind, and there’s a problem. I don’t know
if this is connected or not, I don’t see how it could be. But I don’t want Bradford to know about it. There are things we have to hide from Bradford, and if he finds out about this it might lead him to other things.”

  “This goddam place is an iceberg,” Greg said. “Nine-tenths below the surface. What’s going on around here?”

  “You call your father,” she said. “Tell him about BJ, what the situation is now. Ask him what we should do.”

  “He knows about Bradford?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I’ll explain the whole thing when there’s more time.”

  “Right,” Greg said, and started for the office when a black Renault suddenly turned into the yard and stopped. He glanced at the car and at Evelyn: “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, as both doors opened and two Chinese got out, both wearing black shirts and slacks. Then she saw that one of them was the man she’d seen that night, so that meant they weren’t Chinese, they were from Vietnam and they worked for Wellington.

  They both looked expressionlessly at BJ, and then walked over to Evelyn and Greg. Ignoring Greg, one of them handed a folded slip of paper to Evelyn, who opened it and saw:

  WELLINGTON 202 992-7149

  Greg said, “What is it?”

  “I’m supposed to call Wellington.” At the total confusion on his face, she almost laughed, then realized the laughter would be hysteria and forced it back. “You’re right about the iceberg,” she said. “This is more of the underwater part. I’d better call Wellington.”

  She went into the office and dialed the number, and it rang fifteen times. She was about to give up and dial again when it was suddenly answered by a woman saying, “Seven one four nine.”

  “Wellington Lockridge, please.”

  “Who is calling, please?”

  “Evelyn Canby.”

  “One moment, please.”

  It was less time than that. Wellington came on at once, saying, “The first thing is, keep Bradford from finding out.”

  “I’m perfectly capable, Wellington,” she said. She’d been doing well, beautifully well, and she knew it, and Wellington’s manner was offensive to her. “I don’t know how much you know about—”

  “BJ. I know what he did.”

  “All right. I’ve already made sure the boys in the stable won’t do any talking. I have Greg Holt with me, and we’re about to call his father and see what we should—”

  “No, my men will take care of BJ, they’ll take him off your hands.”

  Glancing out the open doorway, Evelyn saw the two Vietnamese continuing to stand there, BJ continuing to sit in the middle of the yard. She said, “Why? Where are they going to take him?”

  “What difference does it make? Away. You don’t want Bradford to stumble across—”

  “No,” she said. “We’ll do it my way. BJ is not going to be carried off by any of your men.”

  “Evelyn, don’t be hysterical. The best solution—”

  “I’m not hysterical. I’m telling you what isn’t going to happen.”

  “There’s no point to this,” he said. He sounded irritated.

  “Wellington,” she said, “I don’t like you, and I don’t trust you, and I am not going to have BJ taken away to some mysterious destination by—”

  “He is my brother, Evelyn. Give me credit for some humanity.”

  “Why should I? I’ve never seen it appear.”

  “Evelyn, obviously BJ has had some sort of mental breakdown. He needs to be taken care of, he needs psychiatric care.”

  “Where?”

  “I have a connection to a sanitarium where—”

  “No. No place like that. I mean it, Wellington.”

  “. . . All right. James Fanshaw. Will that satisfy you?”

  “I don’t know who he is.”

  “My brother-in-law. Meredith Fanshaw’s nephew. He’s within the family, Evelyn, I know how much that means to you.”

  “There’s no need to be sar—”

  “You’re right. James Fanshaw is a psychiatrist in New York. I’ll have BJ taken to wherever he recommends, and have Fanshaw handle him personally. All right? I’ll call him now and tell him the situation, as much as I can over the phone. You can call him yourself afterwards, and check up on me.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Let me speak to one of my men.”

  “Yes. Hold on.”

  She put the receiver down on the desk and went outside. “He wants to talk to you.”

  The Vietnamese nodded, and one went inside while the other kept watching BJ, who hadn’t moved. Evelyn heard the one inside say, into the phone, “Pham dây.” Then, after a pause, “Không.” Another pause, and, “Tôi sê dùng máy diên thoai nào?” And finally, “Tôt lam. Chào ông.” And he hung up.

  Evelyn could feel Greg staring at her, hopelessly lost. Glancing at him, she patted the air in a small sign to let him know she would explain everything later.

  The Vietnamese who had talked on the phone came out of the office carrying BJ’s gun. He held it up by the barrel, showing it to Evelyn, and gave a friendly smile, which amazed her. With his other hand, he waggled a finger back and forth, as in disapproval, and very slowly said, “Bad. Bad.”

  It took her a few seconds to realize the word was in English, and then she was flustered, understanding that the man was attempting to make a small joke, to help her relax. Her returning smile was far too sunny, and she said, “Oh, yes, it’s very bad. Yes, you’re right, I hate guns.”

  The Vietnamese nodded and smiled, and put BJ’s gun away in his hip pocket. Then he grew serious again, glanced at his companion, and the two of them went over to BJ. They bent over him, one on each side, and Evelyn could hear them murmuring to him, but whether it was English or Vietnamese she couldn’t tell. In either case, there was no response from BJ, so after a minute they took him under the arms, gently lifted him to his feet, and walked him away to their car. He went without protest. At the car, they opened the passenger door and one of them clambered into the small seat in the back, sitting sideways with his feet up. The other urged BJ into the passenger seat in front, then closed the door and walked around to get behind the wheel. He waved through the windshield at Evelyn, who found herself waving back, and then backed the Renault in a tight U-turn and drove it on out of the yard.

  Greg said, “I’m going to be a very old man before you get done explaining all this.”

  “You’re probably right,” Evelyn said, smiling at him. For some reason, she felt rather good, much better than she’d felt all week. She supposed it was the release of tension through action, however pointless and incomprehensible the action might be. And it was also a relief to have finally spoken out to Wellington, and not only that, but to make him back down!

  “Start soon,” Greg said, meaning the explanation.

  “Right. On the way back to the house.”

  They walked slowly, but they still had to pause for a minute by the slanted sundial for Evelyn to finish the explanation. Greg said, “This started the day I was married.”

  “That’s when I told your father, yes. It started a week before that, when Bradford first asked me to go with him.”

  Greg turned to look up at the house. “Bradford Lockridge,” he said. “My God, it seems impossible. It doesn’t seem right. He’s supposed to be safe from rotten things like that.”

  “When you see him—”

  “Oh, sure! I won’t let on.”

  “Good.”

  “I won’t tell Audrey till after we leave, so she won’t have to pretend.”

  “Fine,” Evelyn said, and the front door of the house opened, and Bradford was standing there.

  Greg’s face lit up in a sunny untroubled uncomplicated smile. “Bradford!” he called. “I could hardly wait to see you! Have you seen Audrey? Isn’t she beautiful?” He went striding toward the house, chipper, happy, seeming very very young, and Evelyn followed.

  iii

  ALL DAY
LONG, SHE had labored under the feeling she’d been cheated somehow, she was the victim of something unfair. Today, Tuesday, the sixth of November, was her twenty-seventh birthday. She should be cheerful today, she should be surrounded by people anxious to make a special occasion out of her day, she should have no problems to distract her mind.

  It was unfair, and because life was being unfair Evelyn too became unfair. She shouted at Dinah three times before lunch, in each case puffing some tiny misdemeanor all out of proportion, so that in the afternoon Dinah stayed silently and mournfully out of the way, and Evelyn walked around with a load of guilt on top of everything else.

  Bradford had forgotten her birthday, that was another thing, for the first time in her life. Whether it was because of the uncertain memory given him by his illness or the steadily increasing irritation he obviously felt at the delay in leaving here she didn’t know, nor did it really matter. Her life was being taken from her, that was her feeling, in small mean chunks, and today she found herself very resentful of Bradford for imposing this responsibility on her. Normally she understood that the responsibility was her own decision, that if she was in the role (stock in so much of fiction and so much of life) of the younger person who has sacrificed herself to the care of someone older, she had done it herself, and gladly, without Bradford’s request or desire. But today that awareness was only annoying, and to be thrust aside; she wanted to blame someone, and she didn’t want the someone to be herself.

  An additional source of trouble was Howard, whose rage with the rest of the family was increasing day by day. There was no one he could really get at among the malingerers, but his fury had to find release somewhere, and more and more he was letting it out at Bradford, costumed as irritation over Bradford’s abandonment of The Coming of Winter. It was natural and to be expected that he would prod Bradford on the subject, and it was probably true that he did feel annoyed by it, but the pressure of his more generalized rancor was forcing him to be harsher with Bradford than he’d ever been before. Bradford seemed unaware of him at times, at other times remained haughty and aloof, but every once in a while lashed back with un-Bradford-like viciousness, accusing Howard of being a coat-tail rider, attacking him with small-minded nastiness.