By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  When Jim Fain got in he pointed to Geoff's "in" box, grinned, and said, "That's your punishment. I hope you aren't making plans to kip out for another race."

  "If I were going to do it, today would be the day," admitted Geoff, feeling deprived. The fact is, however, that he'd resolved not to go. He was on someone's payroll now, and Amanda had managed to make him feel guilty about behaving like a dilettante. She'd also made him feel guilty about having stolen a perfectly good job from some unsuspecting proletarian. Amanda had a way with guilt the way some women had a way with floral arrangements.

  "You Brits will never accept the fact that we took the Cup from you and we aim on keeping it," said Fain, chomping on a cigar.

  "Hell, we Brits have never accepted your independence from us," Geoff answered with a good-natured scowl, and he returned to the business of making American ships look irresistible to British merchants.

  As it turned out, Jim Fain was right about America keeping the Cup—at least for one more day. Resolute beat Shamrock, although just barely. If the race course had been a mile longer, Lipton would have had his Auld Mug at last; his yacht had been overtaking the American boat at a steady clip, much to the horror of the New York Yacht Club and to the rip-roaring delight of a good portion of the spectator fleet. Geoff read every paper he could find the next day, noting that there was something for each side to cheer about; Sir Tom had the advantage, two races to one; and the Americans had a kind of skittish momentum going for them. The next race would be fantastic, and Geoff seriously considered walking out on the shipyard to go to it.

  The problem was Amanda. Jim Fain had let drop that Amanda and her cousin had accepted Sir Tom's standing invitation to view the contests from aboard the Victoria. During the second race Geoff and Amanda had managed to argue right through the start and ignore one another and just about everything else at the finish. Together they wouldn't do. He could try to wrangle an invitation aboard another yacht, but all in all, it seemed easier to read about it in his rooms. Amanda was right: he was a cynic, and a lazy one at that.

  Resolute won the fourth race. There was a thunder squall, and a wind shift, and the Shamrock was outsailed, pure and simple. The conditions were maddening, as Geoff well knew from his own racing experience. His sympathies were one hundred percent with Lipton, but in his heart he knew that the momentum had shifted and that the tension among the afterguard and crew of Lipton's big green boat must be great. Amanda was still following the races from aboard Sir Tom's yacht; and Jim Fain had allowed himself to be reconciled to his daughter partly so that he could get the scoop from her firsthand and pass it on to his restive new employee. No one seemed to find the situation ironic except Geoff.

  On the twenty-fourth of July a clear, hard southwester set in at about thirty knots. Shamrock weather. She was a big boat, and a heavy boat, and she needed to be driven hard. She'd been towed across the Atlantic and had survived the tremendous strain a boat endures in such circumstances. Lipton believed in her completely. The trouble was, neither his crew nor his afterguard (who were, after all, the ones sailing the boat) shared his confidence. When the New York Yacht Club ran up signal flags asking whether each side was willing to postpone the racing because of the dangerous conditions, both sides agreed readily.

  And there ended Sir Tom's one, last, best chance to lift the Auld Mug and carry it back across the Atlantic in triumph.

  ****

  Late at night on the twenty-seventh of July, the day of Resolute's third and final victory, Mrs. Streep banged on the door of Geoff's room, rousing him from sleep. He opened the door and squinted bleary-eyed into a torrent of distress.

  "It's a young lady says she's Amanda, Mr. Seton. Well, I'm sure I never heard of such a thing, telephoning at half past midnight, but she's very insistent," whispered the elderly widow. She wrapped her heavy wool robe more tightly around her, as if she were standing on tundra instead of on an Oriental runner in the hall of a cozy house in July. "She doesn't say why. She just insists," she added in an injured tone.

  "Sounds like Amanda, all right," muttered Geoff as he belted his own robe and slipped past his fretting landlady on his way to the downstairs landing. "I'm awfully sorry about this. I can't imagine how she got hold of your number."

  "Good heavens! Is she dangerous, are you saying?" asked Mrs. Streep, padding down the stairs hard on his heels.

  "No, no, not that. Just a little high-strung. Sometimes she overreacts."

  "I don't like this, I don't like this at all. You seemed like such a nice young man, and you came well recommended ... the phone is not really for my boarders, you know … a widow alone, with emergencies to face ... I do need it ... but this ... well, I never thought of hysterical young females ... really, I cannot sanction—"

  "I quite agree with you, Mrs. Streep. It won't happen again." He picked up the receiver from the mahogany corner-stand and stared at Mrs. Streep's rag-tied hair, trying to pretend that she wasn't within spitting distance of his conversation. "This is Geoffrey Seton," he answered.

  The voice was by no means hysterical, but it was coiled tight, ready to spring. "Geoff! I need your help, and I need it now, no questions asked. It's life or death, I mean it, so don't toy. Yes or no?"

  "I—" He let out a silly, irrelevant laugh, convinced that Mrs. Streep's ears were angling like a cat's at the sound of Amanda's voice. He gave his landlady the most do-you-mind smile in his bag of looks and turned his back on her. "I understand. What can I do?"

  "There's a row of overnight cottages off Route 1 just east of Guilford called Oak Leaf Cottages—or maybe it's Maple Leaf, I don't remember. Go to cottage six. It's dark, the numbers don't show, but the one you want is between two tall trees."

  "Oak trees."

  "Or maple. Cut it out. This is serious. I'll be inside. Don't go to the registry desk."

  "Sure. I'll get there as soon as I can. Bye." He hung up and Mrs. Streep rounded on him, confident that she was entitled at least to a small piece of the pie.

  "What's wrong? Is it serious?"

  "Oh, not really, Mrs. Streep. Just a little, ah, mishap. A branch of an oak tree split off and fell across the young lady's garage and she'd like my help in clearing away the entrance," he lied.

  "At twelve-thirty in the morning?" said the woman pointedly. "Can't she park on the curb for the night?"

  "Well, that's just it, you see. The automobile is inside the garage and her keys are inside the automobile, so she can't get in her house." This made absolutely no sense to Geoff, but Mrs. Streep bought it, so he kept right on going, up the stairs and into a pair of trousers and a shooting jacket he favored for the mild months. He had several hundred dollars banked under the mattress tick; he agonized briefly over whether to take it along, then stuffed the whole wad into the inside pocket of his leather-shouldered jacket.

  In two minutes he was on the road again. He'd done more driving in America in a couple of weeks than he'd managed in England in a couple of years. No one had any respect for distance over here; he was becoming like everyone else. Geoff made excellent time to Guilford and what turned out to be the Elm Tree Cottages. He found number six, parked in front of it, and knocked on the door. The lights were out, there was no answer; he thought he must have dreamt the whole strange thing. He knocked again.

  The door opened; he was grabbed by a lapel and hauled inside, cursing. A light went on. Amanda stood in front of him, biting her lip in tension, her breath coming short and fast. Behind her, in a corner chair near a beat-up bureau, slumped her brother David. He was hurt: a large circle of blood gone black stained the shoulder of his shirt. The area had been bandaged; David looked more frightened than in pain. Geoff had seen the look before, on men who'd had close encounters in combat.

  "Looks like you've been in a dust-up, old man," said Geoff quietly, surveying the arm from the recent sprained wrist to the wrapped shoulder. "At least it wasn't your good arm. Knife or gun?"

  David looked at his sister as any defendant does to his lawyer. Hi
s eyes said, "Can I answer that?"

  Amanda took over. "The bullet grazed his shoulder as he was running away. He's fast, or he'd be dead. His friends don't fool around." She let out an explosive, exasperated sigh. "David, you are such an ass."

  "I thought you were on my side," her brother mumbled.

  "Only in the sense that I'm not on their side, you idiot. This is going to kill Mother, and Dad's going to kill you. And me too, for getting involved in this. Not to mention Geoffrey," she added, without looking at Geoff.

  He wondered whether that was an invitation to join the conversation. "What, exactly, is the nature of my involvement?" he asked dryly.

  "I wish you wouldn't use that tone with me," said Amanda, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it in a fury. "You know it sets my teeth on edge."

  She seemed to be taking on everyone simultaneously: her brother; Geoff; her parents; the other guys, whoever they were. She was pacing back and forth, her head bowed over her arms held akimbo, her cigarette held carelessly between the fingers of one hand. She sent smoke whistling through her nostrils toward the worn-out flooring. Geoff half expected the boards to burst into flame. Perhaps because of the hour, perhaps because of her mood, she was back to wearing very little under the simple, clinging shift that moved in time to her body. Geoff tried to put the thought out of his mind as he waited for her to say her piece.

  "All right," she said at last. "This is how it is: my brother the entrepreneur chartered a freighter to some less-than-top-drawer types who planned to use it to run some booze. Fine. We all have to make a living as best we can. But the boat wasn't seaworthy, and it sank like a stone when it ran into heavy weather in the Bay of Fundy. All the cargo was lost. No problem there, either, if you believe in poetic justice."

  She took a deep, deep drag on her cigarette, and her words tumbled out smoldering. "The only fly in the ointment is that the gang managed to scramble into a lifeboat, make their way back ashore and down the coast, show up in my brother's New York office a little salty but none the worse for wear—and demand their money back. They're businessmen too, after all. But unlike my brother, they do tend to back up their promises with action. David eluded them for a little while, but they flushed him out of his rabbit hole and, perhaps as a friendly warning, shot a little piece out of his shoulder as he sprinted across their path."

  She found an ashtray and ground her cigarette into shreds. "I think that about covers it, don't you, David?" she asked coldly.

  "Except that your version flatters me too much," he muttered sarcastically; but his spirit was broken completely. By calling her in to help, he had plea-bargained away his dignity.

  It was harder for Geoff to fathom Amanda's rage. Was it a mother's anger after a child has brushed close to danger? Was she furious because she stood to lose favor with her father? Did she care either way?

  "So. You want me to—" He was damned if he knew what she wanted him to do. He sure as hell wasn't going to pay for the loss himself.

  "I want you to negotiate with the thugs, of course," said Amanda crisply. "They won't take me seriously. We don't dare go to my father until we get a figure. Dad says you're a born diplomat. Let's see."

  "You are rather good at this gauntlet business, aren't you?" he asked, amused. "Thanks awfully for ringing me up, Amanda. I don't know when I've been more flattered. But smugglers, guns, payoffs—" He got up from the small bed on which he'd been sitting during her proposition. "That's not really my cup of tea."

  "What is your cup of tea, then, besides tea?" she demanded, grabbing his arm. "God, what are you, a machine? What does it take to move you? We need you, Geoff. My brother needs you. I'll go with you if you're—"

  "Afraid? I think I could handle it—"

  "Could, would, should—will you or won't you? Please, Geoff."

  She was frightened, really frightened, that he'd say no. The "please" was not so much a request as it was a command, but he chose to ignore the spirit of her request and respond to the letter of it. One way or another, the word "please" had lighted, like a pretty butterfly, on Amanda Fain's lips. "All right. I'll do it."

  Chapter 10

  Central Park was at its most lively. It was midday, and the paths were filled with boys and dogs and hoops. Pretty stenographers walked arm in arm with other pretty stenographers, or if they were lucky, with male clerks from down the hall. Young salesgirls, on half-hour liberty from the lingerie counters of department stores, flirted efficiently with marauding bucks let loose from stockrooms. Toddlers three and four and five years old hurled scraps of bread at ducks and pigeons and squirrels, while their bored governesses chafed at their lack of freedom and resolved to learn to type.

  Geoffrey Seton took up his position on a bench near the Central Park Gardens and waited. He would have preferred to be stood up, but at the appointed hour, there they were: two men in dark suits and bowler hats, looking uncomfortable at Geoff's choice of a reception room. One of them sat down next to him; the other stayed on his toes, so to speak.

  "You Seton?" asked the hefty mass beside him.

  "Me Seton," replied Geoff without a trace of a smile.

  "I'm Vinnie. I don't like doing business in the park, Mr. Seton. Too many little kids around."

  "You don't like children?"

  "Don't get wise. What's your stake in this? You related to that crook?"

  "I work for the crook's father," said Geoff.

  "—who'd better know more about ships than his asshole son," growled the mobster. "I don't swim so good, see? Without Dominic over there ... I don't swim, know what I mean? I never got the knack. Some guys float like water lilies. I think maybe I'm built too solid for that."

  Geoff nodded sagely. "That would be my opinion as well."

  "Yeah. So I wasn't so happy when the boat sank out from under me. My boss ain't too thrilled about losing a load of, shall we say, precious cargo, either."

  "That's where insurance is nice," remarked Geoff with the kind of bland look that made Amanda crazy. "You've heard of Lloyd's, of course. I can only recommend, dear chap, that next time—"

  "Hey!" Vinnie's fist came down like a ten-pound ham on Geoff's knee. "I'm not foolin' here. We want a refund. Now, Mr. Seton. You're a businessman. You can understand that." He gave Geoff's leg a viciously playful shake.

  Geoff considered the possibility that he now had a fractured thigh, then dismissed it. The pain wasn't quite that bad. All in all, the meeting was going rather well, considering he was negotiating with a rhinoceros. "Business is business," he agreed with a thin, controlled smile. "How much?"

  Vinnie rubbed his chin thoughtfully; even his stubble sounded strong. "Let's see: the lost cargo; the charter fee; coupla new suits; some pain and agony—we figure fifty g's. But hey, get it to us tomorrow, the next day? Forty-five."

  "Thousand dollars? Good God. That's a bloody ransom."

  "Aay, what's this talk about a ransom? We let the squirt get away, didn't we? But I'll tell you what—we can round him up again easy," he added in a menacing tone.

  "Happy hunting, in that case. David doesn't have that kind of money." Geoff stood up. "Give my best to the family."

  Vinnie looked blank for a moment, then grinned and said, "Sure, sure. The family. I get it. Hey, and while we're at it, here's a little message for the Fains. Dommy, tell 'im."

  Dominic reached into his pocket—Geoff's heart rate shot up—and pulled out a beautifully made slingshot. From his other pocket he extracted a small round stone.

  "Dommy's from the old country, a farm boy," explained Vinnie. "He was in charge of pest control."

  Dominic drew his sling on a flock of pigeons feeding nearby and announced, "The little one, way back." He let go and there was an explosion of wings in flight. When the air cleared Geoff saw what was left—a small lump of feathers and blood.

  Geoff was glad he'd left Amanda behind; he might not have been able to restrain her. He sat back down on the bench. "Twenty-five. That's twice as much as the booze is worth."
<
br />   "Did you say something?" Vinnie stuck his finger in his ear and wriggled it. "Must be the water in my ears."

  "Jim Fain doesn't have your sense of humor. His son has worn his patience thin. I think he may be ready to cut his losses," Geoff said with a shrug.

  "Yeah? That's not the only thing that's gonna get cut," Vinnie answered, patting Geoff's thigh again with his ham-fist.

  "I wish you wouldn't do that," said Geoff as he laid his own hand over the mobster's wrist and squeezed. "People might begin to talk." It was an old Army maneuver: Vinnie's fingers went limp; he sucked in his breath in pain. Geoff lifted Vinnie's hand from his thigh and dropped it in the big man's lap. "Thirty thousand. That's all I'm empowered to offer."

  "Thirty-five, you dumb shit. And your head."

  Geoff laughed pleasantly. "I'll see what I can do." He stood up, looked around, tugged at his vest, and said, "Bury the carcass, Dominic. You don't want a thousand pigeons bringing vengeance down on your head."

  ****

  "Thirty-five thousand dollars? Thirty-five thousand fricking dollars?" Geoff may have saved Jim Fain fifteen thousand dollars over that, but Fain wasn't exactly falling on his knees in gratitude. There was some question, in fact, whether he might not throw Amanda and Geoff bodily out of his office. "Where is that moron?" Fain roared. "I want him here. I want him keelhauled!"

  "I know it sounds like a lot, Dad, but it could have been even worse," said Amand, trying to soothe. "They could've killed David. They might still—"

  "Don't get my hopes up, goddammit! What is it with you two? Why should I be cursed with a matching set of prodigals? Where do you get it? We've given you every opportunity that money can buy—good schools, a good home, a swimming pool for crissake, never mind two studios and enough equipment to start a foundry—and you throw it all back in our faces. Hold on, there, Geoff, you can stay for this."