scott free

by Unknown Author

  “I’ll go back and check on Len while you cancel your date, Mario.” Jack was surprised at himself for the sense of exhilaration he felt. He vowed to captain this crisis for Len’s sake, and for the sake of Len’s only

  child. But who would ever have imagined this astounding turn of events? For the first time in so long he thought of buying a new notebook and jotting down ideas that had been coming to him.

  Scotti had a habit of reading two or three books at the same time, one upstairs in her room, one in the downstairs, one at work. Away from them, she forgot their plots and characters, but immediately when she picked one up again, all of it flooded back. It was the same with the Allen Institute in Manhattan, and the Metamorphs. As soon as she walked inside the faces became familiar. Their stories did, too.

  Every post-op was given a Full Circle party. That day the box luncheon was in Elliot Kidd’s honor. Scotti had come in from East Hampton expressly to talk with Elliot’s surgeon, Ernest Leogrande. He was to have flown in from Denver before a snowstorm in the Midwest grounded his plane. Leogrande never referred to the operations as “surgical changes.” Instead, he called them “surgical confirmations.”

  Scotti decided to attend Kidd’s party, anyway.

  Two huge, blown-up photographs dominated the decor: one of a frowning seven-year-old girl dressed as a cowboy, her hands grabbing play guns in holsters at her hips, ELEANOR KIDD printed underneath. The other a picture of the new Elliot Kidd, after male-hormone injections, two mastectomies, a hysterectomy, and surgical creation of male genitalia. He was photographed on the job, a carpenter with rolled-up sleeves and muscular arms, long legs in jeans and boots, holding a hammer, grinning.

  Elliot’s fiancee was there with Dr. Virginia Loeper, who had sponsored him. She hadn’t changed much since Scott had first seen her on campus. She dressed in the same conservative, tailored way, wore bright red lipstick, her gray curly hair short and thinning, her name tag announcing her PhD, her connection with NYU and Lanier Labs.

  Loeper grabbed Scotti’s arm with one of her large, square hands and said, “I heard you’re a friend of the Bernsteins. How are they?” Neither the hormones nor the speech therapy had made a dent in the professor’s tone. Her voice was still unmistakably masculine. With some, that was the case.

  “Max is my best friend,” Scotti said.

  “Before he came here he was working at the Regis School.”

  “Yes, we both were.” Scotti knew that Loeper was famous at the prep school—or infamous, depending on the viewpoint. She watched while a group of pre-ops called out to Elliot’s fiancee.

  “Remember when Max had his Full Circle?” Ginny Loeper asked Scotti. “Dr. Leogrande was his surgeon.”

  “I hope to have him, too,” Scotti said. “I didn’t know you were friends with Max and Helen. Do you remember Nell Slack?”

  “I adore Nell,” said Dr. Loeper.

  “She came into this bar where Max and Helen and I were—this joint, really it was a joint, in Hampton Bays, and there we all were together.” “What fun!”

  “We didn’t even speak. I don’t know Nell that well, and neidier do Max and Helen. We weren’t sure we should speak. I don’t know if she read us or not. She was with a man we didn’t know.”

  “I wonder what she’s doing now,” Dr. Loeper said. “I hope she’s not back with Jimmy Rainbow.”

  “That’s not his name. He has the same last name as my favorite poet. Yeats.”

  Ginny Loeper smiled at Scotti. “I love Yeats, too. . . . Nell’s taste in men was always atrocious! I used to tell her that even in heaven she’d find

  Mr. Wrong. And she was such a caring person, always doing good works, with cancer patients, with us. Her jobs always benefited the community in some way.”

  “Was it community service?” Scotti asked.

  “Who told you that?”

  “No one. I heard she’d come from a halfway house, and that’s often part of the deal.”

  “I don’t care if it was community service. She was good at it. Ask anyone here.”

  “I’m curious because we both live in East Hampton,” Scotti said. “Oh, how grand!”

  “That’s the reputation we have but it doesn’t apply to most of us. I’m still saving for my surgery.”

  “What do you do in East Hampton?”

  “I’m a part-time insurance investigator,” Scotti said. “A part-time textbook editor, and I was a librarian until I became a victim of downsizing.” “I thought I’d lost all track of Nell Slack. Is she married to this Yeats?” “Liam Yeats. I don’t think so. I never took TIPS so I never knew her.” Elliot Kidd walked to the podium, ready to address the gathering. Male ops called it “the Bar Mitzvah speech.”

  “Today,” Elliot began with a small smile tipping his lips. “I am a man.” Applause. “Thanks to Dr. Leogrande, who can’t be with us because of inclement weather somewhere near St. Louis.” Groans. “And thanks to all of you, for your support.”

  Ginny Loeper whispered to Scotti, “Only a laborer can afford Leogrande. At least you’re trying, Scotti, not like the pair in front of us.” She meant two flashy MTFs in front of them. They were old friends of Elliot’s who had gone through every stage but the final one. They had no intention of having their penises removed, priding themselves on belonging to the group called Chicks With Dicks. They were heavily made-up and perfumed, in dresses and expensive Manolo Blahniks; a lot of the Metamorphs resented them.

  Scotti didn’t give a damn. She was always glad to be back among the Metamorphs. Whatever one was: a pre-op, a post-op, a Chick With a Dick, she was herself there.

  Going home on the jitney, she finally gave up trying to read the Rose Tremain book recommended by the Ashawagh Hall Writers’ Workshop leader. It was one of the most intelligent novels she had ever read about a male becoming a female. But it was growing dark, making it impossible to see by the dim overhead light.

  That night Mario was reading at the workshop. Afterward, Scotti was going for drinks with him. He was good company, probably as lonely as she often was. Already she felt protective of him, and wary of Nell Slack after the frosty response from Dr. Loeper when Scotti tried to find out more about her. It was an unspoken Metamorph rule that you didn’t pry, didn’t ask leading questions about anyone’s personal life. You were discreet about what was offered and you let it end there. Too many had too much to lose.

  In any other circumstance, Scotti might have told Mario the litde she knew about Nell Slack, but there was no way she could tell him how she knew. If she were to pass it off as gossip she’d heard at the library, it might be interpreted by Mario the wrong way: vicious hearsay she was eager to spread. And for what reason? A bitchy delight in tearing down a woman he was attracted to? Or a jealous reaction because Scotti was interested in him, too? She was better off not mentioning anything about Nell to him. But aside from wishing she’d found out more for Mario’s sake, there was her own curiosity about Nell Slack.

  Why had Nell Slack been so interested in photographing Mario? Why was she so careful about not letting Mario see her with Liam Yeats?

  Maybe she was as fascinated with Mario as he believed. Maybe Yeats was another Mr. Wrong—the jealous type, perhaps, and Nell Slack didn’t want him to know how she felt about Mario. But that didn’t explain why she would bring him to the bowling alley, where she knew Mario would be, and why Yeats would wait in the bar while she talked with Mario . . . why they would leave together, his arm around her so possessively?

  Did she have a child? Who were the horse books for?

  Scotti wondered, if Jessica ran Nell Slack’s name through her computer, would there be a record of her? Jessica could locate anyone who had ever been involved in an insurance scam, and sometimes she could bring up names of embezzlers, larcenists, criminals who had done time for offenses that had nothing to do with insurance.

  As the jitney approached East Hampton, Scotti put the package from FAO Schwarz on her lap so she wouldn’t forget it. She had found
Fortune Fanny there, and bought the bizarre litde doll for Emma. She had not had time for them to gift-wrap it. The doll was white-faced, with dark purple hair and bright red eyes. When you pinched its bottom, its mouth popped open and a robotic voice said, “You are in for a big surprise!”

  That was all Emma needed to hear! She’d had her fill of surprises. But the clerk had assured Scotti there were thirteen other “fortunes” programmed into Fanny. That particular one would not come up again right away.

  Scotti decided to take the doll along on her date, amuse Mario, see what his fortune was, and get some kind of take on the tone of the other forecasts, before she gave it to her daughter.

  Scotti was relieved to have someplace to go after the workshop. Sometimes Delroy Davenport dropped by evenings. Whatever compelled him to spend so much time with her mother, Scotti was not able to figure out, but she had lost some of the anxiety he had caused her to feel in die beginning.

  He just appeared, unannounced, taking a break from his duties at Le Reve. He brought along a brown paper bag that contained his knitting, prompting her mother to comment that the mark of a “real man” was the courage to indulge in unmanly behavior. Mrs. House was oblivious to the memory of once scolding Scott for surprising her with an Easter hat he had made for her. “You made it, Scott? What a strange, unattractive thing for a boy to do! You should have just bought me a corsage!”

  If it bothered Delroy that Scotti always excused herself soon after he arrived, he didn’t show it.

  The first time she had found him there, sitting in the kitchen with Baba on his lap, Scotti had been rude, cutting him off in mid-sentence to announce she had work to do. Later, her mother had complained about it, whining that there was no one as thoughtful as Delroy. She had raved over the small Ronson pocket lighter he’d left behind, saying it had belonged to his Aunt Sade, “and he knows you don’t smoke, but he pretended it was for us, because I think he was embarrassed to give me such a valuable present. Ronson lighters are from another time! They’re worth money!”

  Scotti did not mention her conversation with him in front of the library, when she had almost given in and smoked a cigarette, and he had promised that next time he’d have a lighter.

  Perversely, Myrna House had decided to give up smoking shortly after he left the lighter with them, but she took it to her room to put with her valuables.

  Although Delroy had switched his attention to Scotti’s mother, there was something annoying about hearing the two of them downstairs jabbering away. Occasionally Myrna House would let out a hoot, as though he had said something terribly funny, or terribly shocking—it was hard to know which—and the rapport they had obviously achieved sometimes made Scotti think they talked about her. One thing was certain: he had not told Myrna House about his first meeting with Scotti on Thanksgiving night.

  Scotti knew her mother well enough to know there was no way her mother could have kept that to herself. She would have had to chide Scotti, make some sarcastic reference to it.

  The whole situation did not set well with Scotti, but she told herself she was selfish, or paranoid or controlling, and maybe all three . . . Why wouldn’t she just be relieved to have them both off her hands for that small amount of time?

  When the jitney finally stopped in front of The Palm, in East Hampton, it was twenty minutes to seven. Her Saturn was parked across the street. She was ten minutes away from Ashawagh Hall, where her writing workshop met in the attic.

  The Lashers’ safe was not in the floor, or hidden behind a picture on the wall. It was a small room off Len’s study, much like a miniature bank vault. Nothing inside was insured.

  The IRS would not collect on anything there when Len’s estate was being settled.

  On one side of the room were tiers of steel boxes of various sizes, each one numbered. The Lucky We was the only jewelry in No. 27, which was the date of the day in May when Lara and Len had married. It was enclosed in a teak box inlaid with onyx.

  Jack had not seen the ring since Len had put it on Lara’s finger, in the latticed pavilion at the end of their garden, nearly eleven years ago.

  The flawless emerald was cut from a stone the size of a bird’s egg, once owned by a Mogul emperor, reset by Cartier in yellow gold with diamonds.

  Inside was the inscription: LUCKY WE. 1937.

  “I wear it only on very special occasions,” Lara said. “Last summer on our anniversary was the last time. This year, of course, we didn’t have our usual New Year’s Eve Day party.”

  “At least it’s here, and not in New York,” Jack said.

  “Len wanted me to have a copy made, but I said no. I’d no more want a replica of it than I’d want a stand-in for Len. Times he couldn’t get away to go somewhere, I wouldn’t call a walker. I wouldn’t go at all.”

  She put back the ring, closed the lid, and shoved the box into its slot. “If I have to lose it, now is the time.”

  “I don’t think it’ll be a permanent loss,” said Jack. “But why is now the time?”

  Lara shrugged. “Because nothing I lose matters once I lose Len. And with Deanie’s life in the balance, I couldn’t care less about it.”

  They left the safe, Lara dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex.

  It was six o’clock.

  Jack went into the kitchen for sandwiches the cook had prepared for them. Mario was upstairs with Len.

  There was no sign of Delroy; no word from him.

  Jack had slipped Valium into Len’s soup. He was asleep now, after an angry reaction to news they invented: Deanie had been allowed to have a sleepover that night.

  Lara had told Len that it had come about unexpectedly, while she picked Deanie up at Invictus. She told him they had run into Elaine Candle in the parking lot. Elaine said she had been trying to call Lara, but Lara had not had a chance to get back to her.

  All the Invictus students were gathering at the Candles’ to watch a DVD on Mexico, have dinner on trays, and stay over. Mario would pick them up the next morning and take them to school.

  Len believed Lara. Why wouldn’t he? But he made it clear that he didn’t like it, even though Lara had imagined he’d feel glad that Deanie was going there. It had been a bone of contention between them. Len had always felt bad that Lara made Elaine and little Candace pay for something Edward Candle had done. But Lara had remained adamant. At the time she felt lawyers and money would get Edward off, that ultimately the whole business would be forgotten. Lara wanted to show Candle that she and Len were not going to forget it, or forgive it, ever.

  Until the Valium began working, Len’s face was a cloud. He gave Lara dirty looks and waved her out of the room.

  Lara knew that since he had so little autonomy, what he could control he did not like relinquishing. He did not like giving up the planned story time, when Deanie read to him. It was one of the few “traditions” they could continue to enjoy.

  Another thing that bothered Len was Delroy’s absence. Where was he? Why was Mario there in his place?

  We will contact you this evening, Mr. Lasher. After eight. Please be available.

  Nothing was written about how Len would be contacted. Lara had presumed it would be by telephone. So that Mario could attempt his imitation of Len, Lara had arranged for Mrs. Metcalf to come. A practical nurse, she had cared for Len often, mostly overnight.

  While Jack and Lara ate tuna-fish sandwiches in the library, Jack said he had something to tell her.

  For a few weeks Jack had been loaning Delroy the keys to the estate Jeep, which the gardener used or the cook did, to do errands. Now it seemed Delroy had met some woman in Springs he was seeing, using the bicycle Jack had given him. When the snow made it impossible for Delroy to bike there, Jack had felt pity for him and let him take the Jeep there, too.

  At first Lara took it calmly, but by the time they had scarfed down the sandwiches she was red-faced with anger.

  “What woman in Springs?”

  Jack shrugged.

  “What does it
matter?” he said. “He’ll be back.”

  “You don’t know the woman’s name?”

  “Why would I know her name?”

  “Or where she lives?” Lara’s voice rose.

  “Lara, cool it! There’s enough aggravation without worrying about Delroy’s love life. And you’ve let him take that Jeep before.”

  “I’m not worrying about his love life, or the Jeep! I’m worrying about the fact that he’s not here at the same time Deanie’s not here! Do you get it?”

  Jack was holding half a Fig Newton. He said, “Oh, come on, Lara,” but he didn’t eat the other half of the cookie. He stood there with it in one hand, staring at Lara, letting what she’d just said register.

  The possibility of Delroy having something to do with the kidnapping had just popped into Lara’s head, but as soon as it did, both Jack and Lara were shocked at the thought.

  Jack said, “Delroy’s not smart enough to pull off something like this.” “Maybe the woman in Springs is, Jack.”

  He finished the Fig Newton and stood there shaking his head, mumbling to himself, “Jesus H. Christ!”

  “Delroy knows everything, too,” said Lara. “He knows about the Lucky We. I don’t know why, but Len told him where the safe was, how to get into it, everything.”

  Jack said, “If there was a fire here, or anything like that, Len didn’t want a family member risking his life for something in the safe. . . . And Len has always, always trusted Delroy. I trust him, too, Lara.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Why do you trust him? What do we know about him? What did we ever know about him?”

  Silence.

  Then, “Zilch!” Jack admitted.

  When Delroy heard the seven cuckoos from the clock in Myrna House’s kitchen, he slapped his hand to his mouth. He had already missed Mr. Lasher’s evening bath dme.

  Mrs. House said, “You’re not worried about the time, are you?” not waiting for his answer. “Maybe they should worry about you for a change. They just take you for granted down at Le Reve, if you ask me.”