Fain turned back to his daughter. "What is this fascination you have for the underside of rocks? My only son, hobnobbing with the slugs and dregs of New York. My only daughter, aiding and abetting every Bolshie on the East Coast. It's shocking. I don't know what else to call it. Shocking." He shook his head, breathing heavily, and stared at the floor.
Amanda's face had turned a deep red. In a low voice she murmured, "We've got to pay them the money now, Dad. They'll kill him if we don't."
Fain let her have an incredulous grimace. "Nobody's going to kill anybody." He picked up the telephone. "That's why we have police."
Amanda pounced on the phone cradle with both hands. "No! Why won't you take me seriously, for once in your life?"
Fain turned to Geoff. "Does she know what she's talking about?"
"They're not just schoolyard bullies, sir. I think the possibility exists that they'll follow through on their threats."
"Only a possibility?"
"Well—more than that, sir," answered Geoff quietly.
"Oh, never mind!" Amanda interrupted. "Come on, Geoff. I'll get the money myself!"
Her father gave her a withering look and took his seat again behind his desk. "And just where do you plan to lay your hands on that kind of money?" he demanded.
"I have some cash. I'll borrow against the Village studio. If I have to, I'll sell my car—"
"Oh, for crissake. I knew it was a mistake to liquidate those trust funds. Nothing should be in your name. Nothing! You have no more business sense than Marie Antoinette! Damn it to hell! I can see it now. Thirty percent interest compounded weekly." He took out a sheet of the shipyard's stationery and scribbled a note on it in his large, ungainly scrawl. He held it out to Amanda. "Take this to the payroll office. They'll get you what you need."
"Thank you, Dad," said Amanda softly. "I know this is hard for you to accept."
"You're wrong, girl. I'm not accepting it. Please don't go yet—or you, Geoff. I have a little more business to wrap up." From a lower drawer he took out a legal form. "This is a promissory note," he explained, penning in the blanks as he spoke. "The total includes the yard bill—six men, two months—and of course the initial investment in the freighter. Give it to my—to Dave. Tell him he can come back to his job and his family when he's ready to start paying it. Until then I don't want to know he exists."
He handed the note to Geoff. "One call, and we're nearly done." He dialed the operator and was put through immediately. "Mark? It's time to change the will. No, no, I've put it off long enough. When is good for you? Fine. I'll be there."
Halfway through the call Geoff had stood up. He'd had enough of being a bit player in the Fain Theatre of Melodrama. Fain called him back as he was closing the office door behind him.
With cool deliberation Fain took a cigar from its humidor. "I hate like hell to do this, Geoff, but I'm going to have to let you go. I can't have my help fraternizing with Bolshies and bootleggers. You can pick up your money at the payroll office with Amanda."
"Dad! You're being outrageous!" cried his daughter.
"It's your shipyard, Mr. Fain," said Geoff quietly, and he left.
Geoff was nearly at the payroll office when Amanda caught up to him. "I'm sorry about that scene in there," she said, out of breath.
"Scene? What scene? It looked like business as usual to me."
"Well, it wasn't. My father's not that heartless. But he's been under a lot of strain lately."
"Which you, of course, have nothing to do with." Geoff picked up his stride.
"Will you slow down?" she demanded.
He stopped. The simple truth was, he was embarrassed: for her, for her brother, about his absurd dismissal, everything. Each of them was at fault, and yet no one was at fault. It was what his own father would call a deucedly awkward situation. Geoff's gut response was to walk away from it. And yet here he was, face to face with the most awkward part of the situation.
The wind was lifting Amanda's bobbed hair and whipping it across her cheek. Her face was flushed with anger and—he hoped to God—embarrassment of her own. As always when she was animated, her dark eyes got darker—like a cat's, before it springs. The wind flattened her crepe dress, of some damnably flattering shade of mauve, against her body, distracting him as usual, making it hard for him to concentrate on what she was saying.
"I said, do you plan to take this to the end, or not?"
The lift of her chin, her flashing eyes—he didn't know whether to slap her silly or take her in his arms and cover her body with kisses. She seemed so totally oblivious of him as a man; it infuriated him. From the day he'd met her, she'd treated him as a handy instrument, an extension of her money, a means to an end. Maybe she counted on his British civility. Maybe she thought he was hanging around, eyeing her inheritance. Whatever the reason, she didn't seem to reckon on the word "no."
"Are you coming with me to pay them off or not?" she repeated.
"I will pay them off. Or you will pay them off. We will not both pay them off."
"Are you saying that you expect me to hand you over a suitcase with thirty-five thousand dollars cash in it?"
"I'll give you a receipt."
"Very funny. We'll go together."
"Together? Amanda. Read my lips." He grabbed her shoulders and brought his face within inches of hers, mocking the way she had of getting her cousin's attention. "No."
She winced—whether from the nearness of him or from the intensity of his grip, he couldn't tell. In a very small voice she said, "I guess I'll go myself, then."
"The hell you will," he shouted, contradicting himself. "What kind of addle-head are you? They'll feed you to the pigeons—or worse! It's not as if you wear underclothes!" Amazed at his own vehemence, he released her with a frustrated shake. In a slightly steadier voice he added, "After we've got the money, you will rejoin your brother at the Elm Tree Cottages. And wait. I'll let you know when it's over."
The stunned look on her face was similar to the one he'd seen in her father half an hour before. Maybe she wasn't a changeling after all. Geoff wondered what in his little speech shocked her most, but he didn't have time to speculate. The sooner he got this whole sorry episode over with, the better.
Amanda fell back in beside him, almost skipping to keep up. "How do I know these guys won't take the money and then come back after David for more?"
"How do you know I won't take the money and reshingle the roof of the servants' quarters at Seton Place? Come, come, Amanda. These thugs are at least as honest as I am," he said dryly. "Where's your sense of trust?" Now that he thought about it, where was her sense of trust? For a girl who had everything, she seemed pretty damned insecure. Maybe living in a big city like New York did that to her; Londoners tended to be a jumpy lot, too. Aloud he said, "Tsk, tsk," for no other reason than to see her eyes flash like a leaping cat's.
Flash they did. "Trust!" she cried. "That's easy for you to say—you have nothing to protect, no one to care for. You won't let yourself be put in a position where you have to trust."
She was good at that kind of probing accusation, he thought, angered. Naturally he refused to respond, thereby proving she was right. Tough. If he wanted to bare his soul, he'd rather write an agony aunt.
Together they went to the payroll office, where a cashier's check was drawn for them. Amanda stayed with Geoff as far as the bank. When they came out Geoff had a death-grip on a cheap leather briefcase and Amanda was scanning up and down the street like an armed guard.
"For pity's sake, woman, why not just announce it with a bullhorn?"
"All right, all right. I'm going. I'll see you back at the cottage. But Geoff—" she began in a threatening voice.
He sighed. "What, Amanda?"
"Don't you dare—don't you dare do anything stupid."
"Go home, Amanda."
She turned, reluctantly, and headed for her car. The look on her face stayed with him as he loaded the suitcase into his own car and aimed it at New York. What
a look: one part pathos, one part envy, one part suspicion, one part unfathomable womanhood. A look like that could keep you puzzling over it through a whole winter of cold nights.
****
Traffic was horrible and Geoff was late; the park had begun to thin out. He made his way quickly to the rendezvous point, afraid that Vinnie and Dominic had given up on him. They were still there—pacing, growling, hungry; but waiting. Vinnie took a seat on the bench; so did Geoff. Dominic stayed on his toes. The suitcase was handed over to Vinnie, who opened it discreetly and fanned through the money inside. No one spoke while he counted.
After a while Vinnie said, "Okay. Looks good. You drive a damn hard bargain, Mr. Seton. The boss tells me this deal is going down hard with his business associates."
"The shipping industry is a volatile one, Vinnie," Geoff answered blandly.
"Vola ... yeah." Vinnie stood up. "I guess this concludes the negotiations." He held out his hand to Geoff who took it. "I said something yesterday about having your head," Vinnie said with a shrug and a grin. "So I exaggerated. You understand."
"Sure. A tactical ploy," Geoff agreed.
"But I do owe you one," Vinnie added, still holding Geoff's hand in his. His grip tightened and his left fist rocketed into Geoff's stomach, buckling him over, sending his breath whistling from his body. Geoff groaned; a color kaleidoscope played on the inside of his eyelids as he struggled to keep his balance.
"That's it! Stop right where you are!" The voice was loud, clear, and Amanda's.
Vinnie turned around; Geoff opened his eyes; Dominic came down off his toes.
"Who the hell are you?" growled Vinnie to Amanda, who was standing there holding a gun with both hands for all it was worth.
"Oh, Christ," muttered Geoff, fighting back the nausea from the blow. Just what he needed: a vigilante. "Amanda, not now."
"You know this dame? What does she think, she's a cop?"
"Never mind who I am," Amanda said with the same bravado as before. "Just hand over the suitcase and then beat it."
Geoff saw Vinnie and Dominic exchange glances. Dominic's fist was balled in his jacket pocket. The question was, what was it balled around? "Amanda, they're entitled to the money."
"Too bad. They should have said thank you and walked away nicely when they had the chance. Are you hurt?"
"Who is she?" Vinnie repeated.
"That was very good of you, defending my honor," said Geoff to Amanda, "but we were working it out between us." He began to approach her, cautiously, with the design of lifting the gun from her hands. The one thing he knew about Amanda was that he knew nothing about how her mind worked. He kept his voice calm, but inside he was seething. Not to mention, he didn't feel particularly safe walking the line between Amanda's wobbly grip and Dominic's balled-up fist.
"You're in my way, Geoff!" she cried in an agony of tension.
"Don't you think I know that?" he snapped. Immediately he brought himself under control. "Now listen to me, darling. The money belongs to these men. Give me the gun, and I'm sure they'll understand that you just got caught up a little in events. Please, Amanda. I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want me to get hurt." He held out his hand.
Her grip wobbled, wobbled some more, and dropped. He took the gun from her, slowly, and turned to the racketeers. With a reassuring smile at Dominic he said, "Women! They'll do the damnedest things to protect their men."
"Huh!" Vinnie's grunt was surprised. "She's your—"
"Oh, yes," Geoff said, intercepting. "For quite some time now."
"You got weir-rd taste, Mister Seton."
Geoff smiled. Thinly.
Vinnie turned to Dominic. "Let's go."
Geoff took Amanda by the arm and held her while the two men hurried off into the dusk. "I ought to chain you to the nearest tree and leave you there," he muttered between his teeth. After the men were out of sight he dragged her to the edge of a nearby pond, hauled back his free arm, and let fly with the gun, which landed with a heavy splash thirty yards from the shore. Then he turned to her.
"That was the most asinine performance I've ever seen," he said in a voice shaking with anger. "If you're going to sound like a gangster's moll, at least learn to hold a gun like one. You could have damn well killed me, shaking over the trigger like that!"
"I know it," she mumbled. "I don't—"
"Whose gun was that, anyway?" he demanded, grimacing at the memory.
"D-David's .... I t-took it from him ...."
"To do what? Shoot yourself in the foot?"
"I—I thought it might get rough ...."
"Well, it very nearly did, now, didn't it? My God! I can't believe you're that—"
"Stupid. Say it," she said, trembling.
"All right. Stupid."
But calling her names wasn't nearly enough. He had a raging need to set the record straight with her—with her kind—once and for all before he fled to the sanity of Hampshire County. He knew she was frightened, was almost in shock, from the encounter. But he had to speak his piece.
"I don't know if it's you," he said, "or your family, or this country, but something's out of control on this side of the Atlantic. You're all spoiled by your own success—and you definitely have too much money. You're like children with too many toys. They're all around you; you don't even see them, except to pick up and throw at one another—to hurt one another with. You don't mean it, maybe, but that's what happens. Maybe you're just looking for attention—"
"I don't want attention," she said quickly. "I'm fed up with—everyone."
"Then go sit in a corner for a while until your mood changes. Read a book, hum a tune, learn to play the saxophone. Just stop running around hurling bricks at everything that doesn't please you."
"I see. You want me to be like you. To cover my head and hide."
"Sure, why not? Give the Western world a break. There's been a war. We all worked hard. Everyone's tired, Amanda. Don't you ever get tired?"
"Not while there's work to be done," she said stubbornly. "Not while there's unfairness."
She was rubbing her arm where he'd grabbed her, completely unaware, Geoff was certain, that he was the source of her pain. That was the thing about her: she was at war with mankind in general, but she never seemed to hold a grudge against any one individual person. Probably she couldn't sit still long enough. He was wasting his breath; she'd never change.
"Well, then, this must be goodbye," he said at last. "I'll be off for Hampshire by the end of the week."
Even in the near-dark, he saw her body tense up with surprise. It gave him a nice little rush: at last, he'd caught the brat off balance.
"But what about your rooms? What about your car?"
"By the week. By the month."
"I see. How practical of you."
"I only meant to stay two weeks."
"For the races?"
"What else?"
"To be honest, I thought you were ... shopping."
"For?"
"Oh, a fortune, whatever. A wife."
He chuckled pleasantly. "The thought never occurred to me. Where did you hear that?"
They were nearly at her Daniels now. "A friend of mine was on the same liner that you took over here. You know how shipboard gossip is."
Oh my God in heaven. Lotsy. "Really? Small world. What was her name?"
"Elizabeth."
He resumed breathing.
"That's her real name. But she goes by her nickname."
Oh my God in heaven. Lotsy. Amanda was torturing him, obviously. She knew he'd behaved like a rutting antelope his last night at sea. This was it. This was her final vengeance for what she perceived as his high-hat superiority over the last several weeks. She was going to rub his nose in a pool of his own semen.
"Well?" he insisted, abandoning all attempts to seem blasé. "Are you going to tell me her nickname?"
Every streetlamp in New York, every star in the universe could have gone out just then: he would still be able to see,
with metrical precision, the exact slant of Amanda's lips as she smiled and said, "I don't think I should tell you. It would be betraying a confidence, wouldn't it?"
"That's, of course, for you to decide," he replied through gritted teeth. "Sooner or later I'll probably find out." But during the intervening months, years—perhaps the rest of his life—he wouldn't be able to think of this parting, in this park, with this woman, without having something inside of him retract in pain.
"So," she said with a sharp intake of breath. "Good-bye? It's been—" She laughed softly, scanning for the word. "Swell?"
"Peculiar," he answered without thinking.
"Gee," she said, grimacing. "You sure know how to leave a girl feeling good all over."
Lotsy again? He tried to meet the innuendo head on. "It's my specialty," he said with a kind of grim strength. "Good-bye, Amanda."
She compressed her lips—brave, defiant, twisted into a smile—and stepped into her limited edition, Reading-made Daniels Speedster.
The last thing he noticed as the car slipped away into the night was that the fender was still crumpled.
Chapter 11
The rain fell softly at first, and Geoff was grateful for that. But before long the quiet, reassuring hush turned to a steady hiss, and then a tiresome drumming. The September sky lowered. The wind picked up, the rain slanted in; Geoff got up from his desk to pull the paned door tight. The first thunderclap caught him by surprise. He jumped, then let out a soft curse, despising himself for acting like a schoolboy. Since the war he'd had no tolerance for loud noises: a recent fireworks display had left him in a shaking depression that lasted for hours afterward.
He stared through the glass doors at the tree-lined grounds. In a couple of months, when the leaves were down, he'd be able to see the ongoing construction clearly: an insufferably quaint country house being built for a London brewer to his own design. The owner knew as much about architecture as Geoff knew about brewing lager. Even worse, the brewer would soon own a hundred picturesque acres—the Setons' last hundred acres—to the south and east of Seton Place. If Sir Walter agreed to the offer—he'd be a fool to refuse it—the last buffer zone between Seton Hall and the hoi polloi would have fallen. No more stream, no more trout, no more cattails for his mother to carry home. The brewer would have acquired his very own tenant farmer and could strut about like a feudal lord. Meanwhile the tenant, faced with an inevitable rent increase, would slide even more deeply into the farming depression that pervaded Britain.
By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda Page 11
