Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  The situation couldn’t last much longer, and her birthday only hammered home the truth of that. Some more stable, long-term solution had to be found. Evelyn knew that already some members of the family hoped that Bradford would merely die and thus solve the problem for them, and today for the first time she saw that she herself could eventually come to the same way of thinking. To actively want Bradford dead would be horrible, but the impulse was already within her, and unless something happened soon to change the situation it would have to eventually surface.

  She said as much to Howard that evening, as the two of them rode in his Mercedes toward Chambersburg to meet Robert. He listened soberly, driving with both hands high on the steering wheel, and said, “I know what you mean. We’re all of us turning nasty, I can feel it. And right now, the farther we get away from the estate the better I feel.”

  “I know. Isn’t that awful?”

  “Something has to be done,” he said, “and I can’t even get the bastards together to talk about it. We’ll all snap like BJ, and Brad will be the last one walking around loose.”

  “I wonder if he’ll ever be all right again,” she said, meaning BJ, and Howard only shrugged. She had phoned James Fanshaw Sunday evening, from Robert’s place, and he did exist, he was Wellington’s brother-in-law and Meredith Fanshaw’s nephew, and he had already arranged for BJ to go to a sanitarium on Long Island. He had also contacted the Army, to let them know where BJ was.

  Robert had had to explain to her, Sunday night, how Wellington, down in Washington, had known so fast about BJ. Obviously his Vietnamese had continued using the Chinese equipment to tap Bradford’s phones, including interior calls, and had heard Jimmy’s call to her. They must have some direct line to Wellington’s office, and they’d passed the word to him at once, and he’d told them what to do. Once again, the speed and the prior planning of the professional.

  She remained pleased at having spoken so bluntly to Wellington, but at the same time was now embarrassed at the memory of it. Hadn’t she, really, attacked him for just those qualities that made him indispensable? If the family was going to use him because of those traits, it didn’t seem right to simultaneously attack him for their possession.

  She thought of talking to Howard about that, but decided not to; she didn’t feel like poking any of the aching teeth right now, and they traveled most of the way to Chambersburg in silence.

  Robert’s building, as grubby as ever, had taken on a warm patina by now in her mind. What few pleasant memories she was storing up these days had mostly to do with this seedy rundown building, its creaking stairs, that familiar door at the third floor rear, and the shabby one-room apartment within.

  Tonight, Howard didn’t knock. He pushed open the door, and Evelyn frowned to see that the room was in darkness. Had Robert gone out to the store or something? Had something happened?

  Howard was facing her, and hadn’t noticed the darkness. “After you,” he said, with a tiny bow.

  She moved forward, telling herself not to be silly, and fumbled for the light switch beside the door as she crossed the threshold. Then a hand pressed into the middle of her back, she was shoved forward, the door slammed, and for one open-mouthed second she was in total darkness.

  Then the lights came on, and everybody shouted, “Surprise!”

  A surprise party? At a time like this? For God’s sake!

  Robert. Howard. Uncle Joe and Aunt Margaret. Greg and Audrey. All smiling, all pleased with themselves. And how could she show them she was furious, she thought they were stupid and thoughtless and shallow? To do a thing like this, when everything was so tense, when that second of darkness would be bound to terrify her . . . But she couldn’t let them know any of that, of course, she had to clutch at her shattered nerves and try to smile and act pleased, because they had meant well. But she could have punched their happy faces.

  There were presents on the bed, in wrapping paper. Joke presents, like a paperweight, and nice presents, like a deerskin jacket, an original from Paris. And there were drinks, and the others all continued pleased with themselves, and it was impossible to go on being angry.

  A little later, it occurred to her that she’d managed to find fault with both ends of the spectrum today. Bradford had forgotten her birthday, and she’d objected to that. Robert and Howard and the others had remembered it, and tried to make it normal and happy and memorable, and be darned if she hadn’t objected to that, too. The combination of that thought and a few scotch and waters lifted her spirits considerably.

  It turned out that Greg and Audrey were staying at a motel just outside town, that Greg had now joined Robert as a part of the stand-by force, and that Audrey desperately wanted some assignment, something to make her feel that she too was a useful part of all this.

  Most of the talk avoided the central subject, though, as everyone made an obvious effort to keep the evening light and cheerful. Evelyn did manage one brief discussion with Joe about BJ and James Fanshaw; Joe had talked with Fanshaw on the phone Sunday night, and had met him in New York yesterday, and had filled him in on the whole Bradford situation. Fanshaw had agreed with Holt’s prognosis that Bradford would never return to his original mental state, and had suggested that BJ’s shooting of a horse had been his way to keep from shooting his father. BJ seemed to be suffering a severe case of blighted hero worship. The father who had always been perfect was no longer perfect; the son whose own life had been affected in not entirely beneficial ways by living in the shadow of that perfect father had been unable at this point to accept his father’s fallibility; he had come to the house to destroy the imperfect father, had been driven by too many conflicting desires and inhibitions, and had shot the horse as a way to draw attention to himself and force someone else to take over the reins of his life; at which point he had stopped communicating with the outside world entirely and was now in a state of catatonia in the Long Island sanitarium. “Fanshaw,” Joe said, “seems like a good man. I wish I’d known about him before, he’ll probably be very useful.”

  They were off that subject, and onto the subject of skiing in the Canadian Laurentians, when the knock sounded at the door a little before eleven. They at once all became silent, and watched Robert go to the door and open it.

  The landlady stood there, peeking curiously past Robert’s shoulder as she said, “Telephone for you, Mr. Pratt.”

  “Right,” Robert said. The phone was in the hall, down on the first floor. “Be right back,” Robert said, and went out, shutting the door.

  Joe and Howard both made small attempts at conversation while they waited, but it was impossible. This is how easy a happy mood can be killed now, Evelyn thought, and waited, listening to the silence.

  At last Robert came back, looking depressed and in a vague way startled. “That was Sterling,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “At nine-thirty this evening Elizabeth died, of a heart attack.”

  8

  WELLINGTON, READING THE DOSSIER on his family that he was not supposed to know existed and that his superiors were not supposed to know he had access to, came across the information that his daughter, Deborah, now seventeen, was no longer a virgin. It had occurred nine days ago on Monday, the twenty-ninth of October, while Wellington had been at Bradford’s estate, replacing the Chinese with his own men and incidentally cooling out Howard and Robert. The defloration had been accomplished by a young man named Lister, on the living room floor of his home in Chevy Chase, his parents being out for the evening. Lister’s high school yearbook photograph was attached; Wellington, looking at it with cold hatred, vaguely recognized it as a face he’d seen a few times around the house. But he took so little interest in the house and the doings of the people there, he had always taken so little interest, that he couldn’t say now for certain whether he and Lister had ever actually exchanged words in any sort of conversation.

  He closed the dossier. He never dipped into it without regretting it, but knowing it was there made it impossible not to dip in. Li
ke having a chance to know the future, when even if one suspects he will only learn the grim details of his own imminent death he cannot stop himself from looking.

  This was one of the particularly bad times. Not as bad as the first of Carol’s affairs, nothing again would ever be that brutal, but close. And this was no way for a man to learn such a thing about his daughter, it was vile and crude and nasty. As well as pointless; what had Deborah’s introduction to sex to do with Wellington’s reliability?

  The worst of it was that he could never respond to the things he learned in here. The dossier did not exist, so he could not know its contents, so he would have no reason to take action. Not against any of Carol’s four lovers over the years. And now, neither against Lister nor for Deborah. Nor for himself. Again like one who knows the immutable future, he had total knowledge but it never changed anything. He was a spectator to his own life, aware of it all but helpless, like a ghost who can be neither seen nor heard. He hung above the life he lived, in agony but unable to move, impaled on this dossier like a butterfly run through with a pin.

  The phone on his desk rang: the unmarked line. He answered, and the familiar voice said, “If you have a moment.”

  “Of course.”

  He hung up. On the way out of the office he gave the dossier to his secretary, to return surreptitiously to the files. Of course, the surreptitiousness was unnecessary, since long ago she had reported him to their common superiors, but he was certain she behaved just as circumspectly as though she hadn’t. It was this farce of pretended ignorance, wonderful in its ubiquitousness, that eventually squeezed all the juice from life.

  There was no tape recording running today, when Wellington entered the office. The man at the desk looked up from a typewritten report he was reading and said, “Sit down.” After Wellington sat, he said, “Minor business first. We have approval for you to go ahead in Port au Prince.”

  Wellington lifted an eyebrow in mild surprise. “On the side of the angels for once.”

  “It won’t be angels who rush to fill that vacuum,” the other man said. “On the matter of your father, I submitted that plan of yours and we just got an approval.”

  “Good,” Wellington said. He showed no emotion.

  “I suppose you’re already aware of this, but I recommended it be denied. My own vote went for death.”

  “I thought it would,” Wellington said.

  “It’s simpler than your plan, it’s safer, it’s neater, and God knows it’s cheaper.”

  “The family will absorb part of the cost,” Wellington said.

  “You can’t be sure of that. You haven’t talked to them yet.”

  “They’ll do it.” Wellington nearly smiled. “We can have that meeting now,” he said. “That will please Howard.”

  “Was there any trouble stalling it?”

  “No. There were a few points where pressure could be applied.”

  The other man leaned back in his chair, brooding at Wellington. “Circumstances alter cases,” he said. “No one is unemotional after all. If it hadn’t been your father, you would have been the first to see the only sensible thing to do was kill him.”

  “Probably.”

  “If he wasn’t an ex-President, the President wouldn’t have gone along with a risky idea like yours.”

  “That could very well be.”

  The other man brooded a half-minute longer, then shook his head and sat forward once more. “The Chinese have been very unhappy about your intercept.”

  “I expected they would be. I thought they’d have tried something by now.”

  “They will. You lost an in-law last night.”

  That seemed to be a change of subject. Was it? Wellington nodded, saying, “Yes. My Aunt Elizabeth.”

  “Anything in it?”

  “No. It was a death from natural causes.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Completely. Her heart gave out.” Wellington shrugged slightly. “There are natural deaths in this world.”

  “Not so many. It turns out we have files on her. She goes back to the Dies Committee.”

  This time Wellington did smile. “A great deal of trouble,” he said. “A leftist from birth to death. I was very fond of her.”

  “Yes, I know. A part of your perverse streak. They intend to grab Lockridge at the funeral.”

  Wellington frowned. “How solid is that?”

  “Grade A, absolutely sure.” He picked up a manila envelope and tossed it onto Wellington’s side of the desk. “That’s what we have. Not very much yet. I’ll try to get more.”

  “The funeral’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “I know.”

  Wellington opened the envelope and read the recap of agents’ reports. The Chinese intended to kidnap Bradford in Lancashire on Friday, during the course of Elizabeth’s funeral.

  The other man waited till Wellington finished reading and looked up, and then said, “A question is now raised.”

  “Who stops them?”

  “Exactly. Do we reveal ourselves to your family? I would prefer not to. Could we manage an unobtrusive block without your family’s cooperation? Doubtful. Could we trust the family to protect Lockridge themselves? Risky.”

  “They’ll have to be told,” Wellington said. “About the grab, not about us. I’ll organize them, but we’ll keep a unit of our people in the background, just in case.”

  “You are taking on a dangerous responsibility.”

  “Your skirts will stay clean,” Wellington assured him. “Everyone is aware this is my baby.”

  “Just so you’re aware of it,” the other man said.

  ii

  RAISED GOLD LETTERING ON the broad oak-veneered doors read COLLINS, WELLINGTON, SMART, Attorneys-at-Law. Down the left hand door in more gold letters ran a ladder of names, not in alphabetical order. Fourth and fifth from the top were William Wellington and Walter Wellington. Third from the bottom was John Bloor.

  The elevator opened onto this massive-doored entrance, flanked by leatherette sofas on one side and a receptionist’s desk on the other. Even more impressive than the doors were the receptionist—a stunning blonde—and the button-bedecked beige telephone switchboard on the desk in front of her.

  Wellington stepped from the elevator with Eugene White and Meredith Fanshaw, with whom he had flown up from Washington. In his usual manner, he hung back and allowed Eugene to deal with the receptionist, who had apparently recognized Meredith and would have preferred to do her talking to him.

  The law firm of Collins, Wellington, Smart had opened for business here in Boston nearly eighty years ago, the Wellington in the firm name having been the father of Bradford’s wife, Dinah, and the source of Wellington Lockridge’s first name. Bradford himself had worked here for seven years after getting his law degree from Harvard and before first running for Congress in the family’s home district in Pennsylvania.

  Unlike the common practice of law firms, Collins, Wellington, Smart had chosen not to change its name as old partners had died or retired and been replaced by new men. There was no longer anyone named Smart connected with the firm, though there were still several Collinses. The William and Walter Wellington listed on the door were grandsons of the founder Wellington, themselves now both men in their fifties. John Bloor, Robert Pratt’s former college roommate, married Walter Wellington’s daughter, Deborah, adding another intra-family entwining of the type that Wellington’s superior down in Washington took such proletarian offense to.

  The firm’s original offices had been in the second story of a four-story brownstone building near the Common, from which it had gradually expanded until, by the end of the Second World War, it had spread through the entire building. The firm also owned the building by then, having bought it in 1937 and redubbed it Collins House. A fine example of nineteenth-century Boston architecture, Collins House had been rich in dark woods and heavy fireplaces and tall narrow windows, high ceilings and intricate moldings and complex chandeliers, all elem
ents tending toward the encouragement of the concept of Collins, Wellington, Smart as a settled and reliable old legal firm.

  But progress is inexorable. The time had finally come when Collins House stood in the path of urban renewal, when the wiring was hopelessly inadequate for modern office machinery and air-conditioning, and when even some of the older partners were casting envious glances at the new forty-story chrome and glass ant farms being constructed all over New England by insurance companies who didn’t know what else to do with their money. After a great deal of wrangling between the traditionalists and the modernists the move, eleven years ago, was finally made, and as Collins House fell to the wrecker’s ball the firm of Collins, Wellington, Smart moved into the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh floors of the Alliance Assurance Building on the other side of the Common. Some of the old mantelpieces and pier glasses had been carried over from Collins House and now appeared in odd corners of various offices, like the Ghost of Elegance Past.

  The change of locale for this second family meeting had been Wellington’s only significant defeat so far in this affair, and even so it was a defeat he didn’t particularly mind. Eugene White had been prepared to set up the second meeting in the same place in Washington, but Howard had raised an objection that no one had been successfully able to argue against, pointing out that although a dozen fairly important individuals might be able to meet once in official Washington on unofficial business without attracting much attention, they would never be able to do it twice. Particularly with the expanded attendance list this time. If everyone showed up—and they should—they would be nineteen strong.

  Of the ten who had been at the original meeting, eight would be present today, being all but BJ, now hospitalized, and Sterling, staying home today because of Elizabeth’s death. (A lucky break, that, in a way; it would be hard to tell how Sterling would react to the suggestion Wellington was going to make.) The other eleven included William and Walter Wellington and John Bloor, the three family members with the law firm; Sterling’s other son, Edward, here from his diplomatic post in Paris for the funeral; Walter Wellington’s twenty-one-year-old son, Thomas, and his New York stockbroker cousin, Mortimer; Joe Holt’s son Gregory; James Fanshaw, the psychiatrist; John Bloor’s father, a Cleveland banker, Edward Bloor; and another pair of banking Bloors, these from Baltimore, Albert Sr. and Albert Jr. The only reasonably safe location outside Washington for these nineteen men to meet was the motion picture screening room in the twenty-sixth floor offices of Collins, Wellington, Smart.