The Blue Death

by Joan Brady

  ‘How the hell would I know?’

  ‘He’s not here?’

  ‘You jackals will just have to feed on somebody else while you wait.’

  ‘Oh, Helen!’

  ‘What about you, Jimmy?’ Helen said, turning to him. ‘Don’t you want to show me you can stick a knife in too?’

  Helen’s tongue was as acid as her grandmother’s. For Jimmy, that only added to the allure. She’d inherited her grandmother’s fine-featured beauty, but her eyes were the same intense green as her father’s, dark outline around the iris too. Her father had been blind. The pathos of the similarity moved Jimmy deeply. His own eyes misted over, and his mind struggled against mooncalf phrases like ‘the fragile bravery of springtime bloom’. Just looking at her caused him acute physical pain.

  He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, frowned, then turned towards the buffet in the dining room without a word.

  His face said it all. Donna watched his back retreat from her; he’d live the rest of his life making an ass of himself over Helen. Nobody could doubt it. That wasn’t the only threat to his security of mind either. Jimmy had always had more than a streak of the con man in him, but bedding Donna just to dig into Becky’s weaknesses was too crude. It hadn’t fooled Donna. If he actually followed through with what she figured he had in mind, he was going to be in trouble.

  She relished the prospect.

  Becky Freyl’s table was always special. She created the menus herself, and this time her selection included a whole loin of pork, a platter of smoked salmon, sliced Chateaubriand in a rich wine sauce. There were salads and asparagus, a vegetable pâté, strawberries, cakes, champagne.

  Donna joined Jimmy as he was filling his plate. She gave him a warm smile and began filling her plate too. A crowd gathered around them as they ate. He couldn’t say he was used to celebrity yet, but six months of it was enough to let him know that he wasn’t going to tire of it quickly, and there wasn’t anything like it to ease the pain of Helen’s marriage. The other guests laughed at his jokes even though he knew they weren’t as funny as all that. He made a delicate reference to Becky’s wheelchair and the vagaries of an old lady’s memory. They stayed with him: a promising sign. He led them step by step – another reference to Becky’s frailty, a snippet of insider information – to the future he was planning for Springfield. The platters on the table began to empty.

  He told them that he knew they saw the problems he faced. Who could miss them? Today’s monsoon-like storms would continue to alternate with the kind of drought that the town had just experienced. All the forecasts said so. Fresh water was getting scarcer and more expensive every year. On top of that, he’d inherited a city in debt like so many cities all over the world. He’d studied environmental reports and financial balance sheets, talked to experts in town planning, city finance, water supply and global warming.

  All this was true.

  He said he’d come reluctantly – very reluctantly – to the conclusion that selling off public utilities to a private corporation was the only solution that would approach these problems: get money in city coffers without taking it out of people’s pockets and ensure that Springfield always had an abundant water supply.

  This wasn’t, well, strictly true.

  Worse, it was an open defiance of Becky as well as a direct U-turn on his campaign promises.

  Jimmy’s predecessor had been a Republican who’d proposed selling off Springfield’s water utility towards the end of his term. As soon as he did, Jimmy seized his own chance. Democrat? Republican? What’s the difference? Jimmy had become a Democrat for the simple reason that Becky was as staunch a Democrat as they come, and she was where the power lay. The morality of water rights interested him even less, but in Illinois, Democratic party policy opposed privatizing public utilities. So he took Becky to lunch, made her laugh, told her he’d run for mayor expressly to defeat the measure. He knew he could win if she backed him. He also knew that she’d really enjoy the challenge of designing a campaign that could beat an unbeatable Republican.

  ‘You have little leverage, Jimmy,’ she’d said to him. People had grown used to the incumbent, the face, the voice, the manner. ‘You’ll have to use fear.’ That’s when she’d taught him the techniques he intended to use on her tonight to get her support.

  She’d designed his campaign to concentrate on the dangerous irresponsibility of commercial businesses: services and safety – always first out of an industry spokesman’s mouth – always bottom priority on the balance sheet. She’d coupled that threat with the imminent threat of terrorist attack on public utilities. Jimmy had gloried in all of it, and the terrorist stuff had turned out to be easy; work on the control room for Springfield’s water supply was almost finished despite the slurs in the Journal-Register.

  Privatization was more problematic.

  His view of it took its abrupt about-face during a long lunch with an industry representative. A week later he’d banked a substantial sum – an ‘enterprise inducement’ the representative had called it – in carefully laundered investments.

  As for Becky, he couldn’t really see her objection. Why would somebody that rich care about the price of water? Or about toeing a party line? But he knew he’d never get her to change her mind in private. She liked consistency and despite the bonds between them, she didn’t like him enough to abandon it without asking questions he wasn’t prepared to answer, questions that might even touch on things like ‘enterprise inducements’. Presenting his change of heart to her was what he’d practised in front of the mirror before he left for this party, and he was confident that in the presence of her guests she’d give way if he presented it to her exactly as he’d rehearsed it.

  ‘Jimmy’s been invited to the White House,’ Donna said as she replenished the salmon on her plate.

  ‘Really?’ said one guest. ‘To discuss privatization?’

  ‘For a reception?’ asked another.

  ‘Dinner,’ said Donna.

  Jimmy gave her a quizzical glance. ‘Hey, Donna, isn’t a reception enough? Even for a novelist?’

  ‘Dinner? Jesus. Will you get to meet the President?’

  ‘You mean, will he get to meet me?’ Jimmy said.

  The guests burst into laughter. One of the men slapped him on the back: ‘That’s our Jimmy.’

  ‘I bet they seat you right beside him,’ said Donna.

  Jimmy winked at her, and she smiled back. The invitation was for a reception; he would be one of many hundreds. But Donna’s exaggeration was the kind of joke they’d enjoyed in the early days. The only trouble with it was that Becky could skewer him with it; he was about to diffuse the threat by letting the others in on it when a silence fell over the room. All eyes were on the man who’d just come into it; he wore a bedraggled tuxedo, muddied right up to the knees.

  ‘Jesus Christ, David,’ Jimmy said. ‘How the hell can you be late to your own wedding reception?’

  3

  SPRINGFIELD: A heartbeat later

  David Marion had grown up behind the thirty-foot high walls of South Hams state prison, sent there at the age of fifteen for the murder of two men: life without the possibility of parole. The only reason he stood here in Becky’s living room was that her son Hugh, Helen’s father, had organized his release on the basis of a technicality.

  Hugh had taught him in prison before that and taught him well, taking him from grade school all the way through a bachelor’s degree; in those days, prisoners could still study under the University of Chicago’s extension department. When David got out, Hugh went to work with the same zeal, fighting to civilize his protégé, make him into somebody Springfield could accept. In that, the failure had been total. Except for Helen of course. The rest of Springfield expected remorse, humility, gratitude in ex-convicts, especially in one so extraordinarily blessed as to have entrée to their circle. David showed them none. Not for Hugh’s largesse nor for the tolerance it required from them. They saw hatred in his eyes. They
saw contempt. They sensed something feral, predatory, held back by only the thinnest of threads.

  Hugh had died three years ago. Everyone here assumed David was responsible – they’d openly accused him of it – just as they assumed he was responsible for every other suspicious death in town, every mugging, every theft. They’d also assumed Hugh’s death would rid them of this ill-bred imposition on their society.

  Helen’s marriage had come as a terrible shock.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Jimmy demanded of him now.

  ‘Wading in the Mississippi,’ David said. Hugh had gone to Harrow and Oxford. Among other things, he’d taught David grammar; along with it, David had picked up the faint English accent that Hugh Freyl had never been able to rid himself of.

  ‘Why would you do a dumb thing like that?’

  ‘I like big rivers.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d show up at all,’ Helen said. ‘You must be starving, and this lot have eaten everything in sight.’

  At just that moment, two caterers entered with fully replenished platters. Amusement softened the planes of David’s face. ‘You tell too many lies,’ he said.

  ‘The best food is always in the kitchen. Come with me.’ She took his hand. ‘You look wonderfully tousled. Was it warm?’

  ‘Was what warm?’

  ‘The Mississippi.’

  ‘Very warm.’

  ‘Did you wade far?’

  ‘Intent on rescuing me, are you?’ Black hair, black eyes, a scar that ran down the cheek and in under the chin. The eyes always had the slightly swollen look of a child awakened from sleep. A very American face despite the accent.

  ‘You think I can?’ Helen asked him. She’d never been in love before.

  ‘Nobody else is going to try.’

  ‘My dear friends’ – she turned away from David to face the guests – ‘I trust you will excuse us for a moment. We have important business to attend to.’

  The room burst into an excited babble as soon as the two of them disappeared from it.

  Out in the kitchen, in the midst of a flurry of caterers, Lillian Draper washed platters and bowls in a sink full of soapy water. For thirty years, Lillian had been Becky’s maid and companion. She was much, much more to Helen. As far back as Helen could remember, Lillian had been the mainstay of her life. It had always been Lillian’s warmth she craved, not her parents’. It was Lillian she’d run to with a scraped knee and cried out for when she woke with nightmares.

  Lillian’s approval was the only approval that really mattered to her. ‘We’ve come out to get your blessing.’ Helen embraced her, kissed her cheeks.

  Lillian laughed. ‘You got it months ago. What you all doing in here with me now?’

  ‘Running away.’

  ‘Think you can hide behind my skirts, huh?’

  ‘You’re not threatening to turn us out, are you? Poor David’s starving.’

  Lillian eyed David’s sodden tux. ‘Try some of that pumpkin salad afore they take it out.’

  ‘Any good?’ David asked.

  ‘I made it myself.’

  He took a plate and spooned some salad onto it. Lillian dried her hands on her apron, opened Becky’s vast refrigerator, took out a Budweiser.

  ‘Beer?’ he said. Beer was the only alcohol he really liked, and he liked it in the can.

  ‘I knew Miz Freyl wasn’t going to order none, so I brought a couple from my house. A bridegroom ought to get what he wants to drink at his own wedding party.’

  ‘That what you said to her?’

  ‘She don’t scare me.’ Lillian opened the Budweiser and handed it to him.

  He took it from her, then ate a bite of the pumpkin salad, nodded appreciatively. ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘How’s who doing?’

  David took a swig of the beer. ‘I hate it when smart people act stupid.’

  ‘Little Andy done time before.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  Lillian had her own children to tend to as well as Helen. She had seven of them, and she’d fought hard for them all. Little Andy was the youngest, bright, rebellious, charming – and right now serving five years in David’s alma mater, South Hams. South Hams had been a ‘State Prison’ when David entered it. It’d become a ‘State Penitentiary’ about halfway through his sentence. Only days after he left it, the state sold it to a private corporation. There’d been many changes, including its label; these days it was the South Hams State Correctional Facility. Little Andy had ended up in it for hacking into the university’s financial records. Among other things, he’d shifted the state legislature’s appropriations for combating sexually transmitted diseases among students into an account that belonged to a local whorehouse. The university was not amused.

  ‘Oh, David’ – Lillian’s intake of breath was uneven – ‘I really don’t know how he’s doing. He’s always been trouble, but mostly he don’t seem worried about telling me what’s wrong. Kinda likes it. Figures he can shock me. This time? He won’t tell me nothing. But he don’t look well. He got bags under his eyes, and his eyes is bloodshot. He’s all skinny and kind of twitchy.’

  ‘You think he’s on drugs or something?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Miss Helen, I ain’t sure what to think.’

  David finished off the salad in a few bites. ‘I could ask some questions,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘When you visiting next?’

  ‘A week from Sunday.’

  ‘Pick me up on your way.’

  ‘David, you sure about that?’ She took his plate from him.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be? Nice ride in the country.’ He gave her a wry glance. ‘Get me away from this town for a couple of hours.’

  She smiled. ‘About ten o’clock? Now go on you all. Go on out to your party. Shoo, both of you.’

  On their own, the elite of Springfield were just plain scared of David, but in groups – as they were tonight – they felt comfortably in control. While he and Helen were in the kitchen, plays on the name David Marion made the rounds of the party. Marion Federal Penitentiary was the harshest maximum security prison in the country, and David’s prison career had begun with a brief stay there. Then there was Maid Marion of Sherwood Forest. Even better was Marion Donovan, who’d invented disposable diapers in Indiana. Or Marion Davies, Hearst’s gold-digging girlfriend, especially since the Freyls were by far the richest family in this very rich capital city.

  At a normal gathering, these conjunctions wouldn’t cause much of a ripple. But at tonight’s wedding reception they bound the guests in a Masonic brotherhood, and it was a brotherhood Jimmy knew he could exploit if he needed it. Their initial response to his project encouraged him; as soon as David and Helen’s re-appearance put a stop to the mockery, he steered the group around him back to the virtues of privately owned water utilities.

  They picked up themes and industry buzz words as he introduced them, got quite excited about it, started talking over one another.

  ‘. such a sensible investment . ’

  ‘. efficiency and cost effectiveness . ’

  ‘. the money we’ll save!’

  ‘We need new solutions,’ Jimmy was saying. ‘We can’t move ahead without—’

  ‘Negotiating already, are you, Jimmy?’ Becky’s wheelchair wasn’t altogether silent, but Jimmy had been so wrapped up in his adoring audience that he’d missed it. The alarm on his face told Becky all she needed to know.

  ‘Negotiating?’ Jimmy said. How in hell had she learned about that? Were there no secrets he could keep from her?

  ‘He says privatization is the wave of the future,’ said Donna, sensing combat ahead.

  ‘So is crime in cyberspace,’ Becky snapped.

  What was it about the woman that turned grown men into naughty schoolboys? Despite himself, Jimmy lowered his eyes. ‘We got some pretty complex problems here, Becky.’ He launched into what he’d been rehearsing in front of the mirror. ‘Sometimes senior citizen
s don’t quite understand—’

  ‘The problem is exceedingly simple.’ Becky’s interruption was sulphuric. ‘You promised people one thing, and suddenly you veer off toward the opposite without so much as a warning shot.’

  ‘He’s been invited to the White House to discuss it,’ one of the guests chimed in. ‘He’s going to have dinner with the President.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks,’ Becky said.

  ‘Oh, God, that was a joke,’ said Jimmy irritably. ‘A reception is an enormous honour, enough for anybody.’ But he could feel his support slipping, and he knew he had to unite the others or lose the edge he’d gained.

  ‘Hey, David,’ he said, giving his half-moon glasses a twirl, ‘you got an opinion about this? Going to tell us what you think?’

  David and Helen stood beside a bank of windows, rain beating down hard against the glass. David was easily the tallest man in the room; his edgy belligerence created an area of calm around her. They were deep in conversation, and the small gestures – tilt of head, movement of shoulders – revealed a physical intensity so palpable that to watch was to trespass.

  ‘Hey, David!’ Jimmy repeated with a laugh. ‘I’m talking to you.’

  David dragged his gaze away from Helen. He still had the beer can in his hand. ‘What do I think about what?’

  ‘Putting out bids for Springfield Power and Light.’

  ‘That the electric company?’

  ‘The water’s what interests us at the moment.’ Jimmy gave his glasses another twirl.

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Well, I have to admit that I can’t think of a more boring subject to have an opinion on – at least not offhand.’

  ‘This isn’t about water,’ Becky said. The sulphur hadn’t left her voice. ‘It’s about abuse of power.’

  David crushed the beer can in his hand, flicked it into a waste-paper basket a few feet away and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  Then he turned his back and walked out of the room.