Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  CHAPTER 21

  The Other Woman

  (I)

  PATRICK AND IRENE MARTINDALE LIVED in a peeling wooden house on a forested lot in the farming community of Darien, Connecticut. Remnants of late-winter snow clung to the trees. Climbing the gravel drive, he saw gray flash against brown and green as small animals, and sometimes large ones, darted across the road. He was surprised that the Martindales had agreed to see him so readily, and not only because they might not want to revisit the pain of loss. As Junie’s brother, Eddie was, obviously, a Negro, and it had not been his experience that the sort of Caucasians who lived in Connecticut mansions inclined warmly toward his people.

  Not that Patrick and Reenie were rich—this they made clear from the moment they wafted him into their dark, paneled home, pressing upon him a cigar and various liqueurs, as if meeting at a Manhattan men’s club—no, no, there had been a bit of money in the family, but old Uncle Deaver had wasted the fortune, except for the land, they explained gleefully, smiling at each other in approval of their own fiscal modesty. They were an oddly matched pair, he small and happily disapproving, she taller and fuller of figure and in some murky way joyfully unsatisfied. But they took pains to assure Eddie that they were on his side, without ever asking what side he might be on. He was black, and so they knew. They spoke of the South with a fury proposing that slavery had ended just yesterday; and of Emmett Till with a fervor that suggested they had witnessed his mutilation. They could scarcely conceal their delight at hosting a Negro in their home, and Eddie suspected that within half a day all of their neighbors would know, because the Martindales were the sort of couple who would make sure of it.

  “Our Sharon hated racism, old man,” Patrick explained, who had a way of speaking to a spot several feet over your head. For Saturday in the country, he wore a heavy sweater and workingman’s pants splattered with paint, but his untutored hands were soft and pale. During the week, he did something clever on Wall Street, but only part-time. “She hated racism,” he repeated. “Battled it everywhere. That’s why she and Junie were such good friends.”

  Reenie picked up the theme. “Our Sharon hated racism, and your Junie hated racism”—the cadence made the words a nursery rhyme—“and they planned to fight oppression everywhere.”

  “With the tools of law,” said Patrick. “They only ever intended to sue people.”

  “Or whatever else they had to do to win the fight,” said Reenie, with her oddly spaced emphases. A floral dress hung tentatively from her body like an unfinished display. It was only midafternoon, but Eddie had a shrewd notion that the Martindales had been drinking for a long while before he arrived; and he doubted that their shared inebriation was something special they were putting on for him. Maybe it had started when they lost Sharon.

  Patrick corrected his wife with a fond smile. “But only within the law,” he murmured.

  “Of course, dear,” said Reenie, looking away.

  They sat in Uncle Deaver’s gun room, surrounded by glass cases and open cabinets chockablock with weaponry. Eddie had the threadbare sofa, Sharon’s parents an adjacent pair of sagging easy chairs with a low blond wood table between. Behind Patrick’s head hung a Japanese sword, a souvenir from the war. Behind Reenie was a framed flintlock pistol, together with a little brass plate attesting its provenance. As the conversation danced across every topic except the one Eddie wanted to raise, it dawned on him that his hosts had chosen the venue for a reason.

  “I don’t know why you people put up with it,” said Reenie, as her fervent husband, now bounding around the room, drew the conversation once more to civil rights.

  “Talk about the case for armed revolution,” said Patrick. “If I were colored, I’d carry a gun everywhere. I’d shoot the white man for sport.”

  “And the white woman,” added Reenie, as if afraid of being left out.

  Her husband shot her an affectionate look. She beamed back at him. They linked hands for a moment as he passed behind her. Eddie was looking at the gun cabinet, wondering what his hosts would do if he asked for a loaner, maybe to go out and shoot the white man with. He was starting to suspect that a teeming rage lay beneath the couple’s surface amity.

  “You need to top that up, old man,” said Patrick, pointing to Eddie’s nearly untouched snifter.

  Eddie dutifully held out the glass. “I’d like to hear about Junie, if I could.”

  “Junie was such a sweetheart,” said Patrick, eyeing his wife, but this time she dropped her eyes. “We adored her.”

  “Adored her,” confirmed Reenie, studying the rug.

  “Sharon adored her, too.” Loping around the room again. “Always said she was the smartest Negro she’d ever met.”

  “Negress,” said Reenie.

  “Colored girl,” suggested her husband, as a compromise.

  “They need a new word,” said Reenie.

  Patrick pointed at Eddie. “You need a new word,” he proclaimed.

  “They adored each other,” Reenie explained, hugging herself with thin arms. “They were wonderful friends. They planned to be together forever. They’d been reading Foucault about the body—”

  “Mr. Wesley won’t have heard of Foucault,” cautioned Patrick, not quite sotto voce.

  “One of the wives was talking about him the other night at the club,” Reenie persisted. “Not about you, Mr. Wesley.” A shy smile. “About Foucault. How he’s a Platonist. Or not a Platonist. One of them.” A brief furrowing of the brow before Reenie decided that she was above worrying about right answers. “Foucault says the body is a battleground. It changes. It’s a concept, not a thing.”

  This was how they lived together, Eddie realized. Mumbling importantly about people they barely knew and philosophies they would never attempt, then heading down to the club for a bite. What kind of daughter might they have produced? And how on earth had Sharon and Junie become best friends?

  Eddie said, “When the girls disappeared—”

  “Ran away,” said Reenie, promptly.

  “Or were kidnapped,” added her husband with a frown.

  Everybody waited. Eddie tried again. “After the car was found—”

  But Patrick and Reenie were the sort who showed how much they liked you by carrying on their own conversation in your hearing. “Never really thought it made sense, old man,” said Patrick. “The car locked up like that. Not what a murderer would do, is it? Wondered whether it might have been locked up after the crime, actually.”

  “By the kidnappers,” Reenie breathed. “If there were kidnappers.”

  “To make it look like they ran away,” said her husband.

  “Or else they really did,” said his wife.

  Eddie felt as if he had forgotten to switch on his brain this morning. “What I really wondered was whether you had a theory about—well, say they did run away. Say the disappearance was voluntary, and not a kidnapping.” A glance at Patrick, already primed to object. “This is just a theory. But suppose they did. If Sharon decided to run away, I was wondering where she might go. Whom she might contact. Whether there are people to whom she would turn for help.”

  “She would do anything for the revolution,” Reenie assured him, and poured herself a fresh tot.

  “She would never run away and not tell us,” said Patrick, flatly. “We told the police, for all that they cared. She had no secrets, old man. Not from us. We’re not just her parents. We’re her friends.” Waving importantly at his glass, a signal to his wife to fill it. “It was a crime, pure and simple. It was a crime, and they refuse to catch the criminals, because of Junie.”

  “And Sharon,” added Reenie. Eddie waited for more, but evidently there was none.

  “Still,” Eddie persisted, “if she did decide, hypothetically, to, say, help the revolution”—this for Reenie—“by going underground, for instance. I’m wondering where she would have gone.”

  “You’d have to ask Ferdinand,” said Reenie.

  “It would never happen,�
�� said Patrick. “And Ferdinand was over long ago.”

  Eddie had the wit not to interpose a question.

  “Her boyfriend,” said Reenie.

  “He was never her boyfriend,” said Patrick, his old-boy calm now a fierce restraint. “Colored boy.”

  “He was a Marxist.”

  “They barely knew each other.”

  “He’s at Columbia now.”

  Patrick rounded on her, the revolution temporarily on hold. “They had nothing to do with each other! They never did! The fool boy was just one of her phases!” Back to Eddie. “We don’t know if the boy is at Columbia or anyplace else. We don’t know anything about him.” He seemed to be waiting for Eddie to write this down. Perhaps they thought he was official: one of Hoover’s, say. “Ferdinand had dangerous ideas. Sharon wasn’t the kind of girl to be attracted to his kind of ideas.”

  Eddie asked, “What was Ferdinand’s last name?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Patrick, jumping in before his wife could speak. “He was just a friend. Not even a friend. She barely knew him.”

  “She adored—” Reenie began, but a look from her husband silenced her.

  “If Sharon needed help,” Patrick declared, “she’d have come to us.” He scowled at the flintlock. “Us. Her parents. Not some boy she barely knew who wanted to burn everything down.”

  Eddie said, “I thought you were in favor of the revolution.”

  Patrick seemed ready to tear his thin hair. “That boy didn’t care about the revolution. He wasn’t a Marxist. He wasn’t anything. He just hated.”

  “Hated who? Hated what?”

  “The world. The people in it.”

  “Poor boy,” said Reenie, sipping. “Patrick couldn’t stand him.”

  “I barely knew him, woman! It was Sharon who couldn’t stand him!”

  But Reenie, finger wagging, had the final word: “It’s not that Ferdinand wasn’t for the revolution. He just wasn’t very practical about it. He tried to burn down our house—”

  “Don’t you dare repeat that!” Patrick snapped, but it was unclear which of them he was addressing.

  “This was after Sharon dumped him.” Reenie’s glittering green eyes were focused into the past. “I suppose he thought we put her up to it, poor boy. Still, burning the house wasn’t a very nice way to show he loved her, now, was it?”

  “Did you report the fire to the police?” asked Eddie.

  “He was drunk,” said Patrick, rolling his eyes. “He made a mistake. We all make mistakes. Me. You.” He glanced again at Reenie as if expecting her to argue the point. “Things happen. It had nothing to do with Sharon. She couldn’t have dumped him, because they never dated. And besides”—it occurred to Eddie that Patrick was offering far too many excuses—“he didn’t really do much damage. You would hardly call it a fire. Forget about it.” He straightened, smiled, recovered his poise. “Thanks so much for dropping in, Mr. Wesley. Oh, but drive carefully, old man. The police out here are fine people, but some of them have as much racial sensitivity as the worst Southern—”

  “Sharon was in the house when he burned it,” Reenie interrupted. “Poor boy,” she said again. “He used to say the only thing to do was blow everything up and start over.”

  (II)

  MAYBE, Eddie told himself, driving back toward civilization, and sanity, all the while watching for stray cops as Patrick had advised. Maybe not. Maybe Sharon and Junie had been kidnapped after all. Maybe they had been murdered. Maybe they had run off together to explore the radical alternative. Maybe the Martindales were bonkers. Eddie supposed that losing your only child could do that.

  Still, he now had a piece of a name and a possible affiliation: Ferdinand, a Negro, who used to be at Harvard, or at least in or around Boston, and had moved on to Columbia.

  He even had a candidate. Every road led in the same direction.

  CHAPTER 22

  A Royal Audience

  (I)

  THE GOLDEN BOY of Harlem was Perry Mount. He was a year younger than Eddie, and of royal lineage, as such things were measured, on both sides. His late father, Burton, had been a surgeon who lectured at Columbia Medical School and, on the side, guessed correctly which blocks of Harlem were moving in which economic direction, and invested accordingly. His late mother, Trina, had in her day run half the civic groups in Harlem and, in her spare time, become the first Negro woman to serve on the New York City Council. Eddie had known Perry since the old days, when the families had summered together on Martha’s Vineyard, and the children had sat together in the backyard, reading Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream aloud because Wesley Senior trusted only the King James Bible and William Shakespeare, and despised most things written since. Perry had been a chubby boy, with thick glasses and fingers all smeary from the Baby Ruth bars that seemed to serve as breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but he could fix the gears on your bicycle and put your electric trains back together. He had not been widely liked because he had not been widely likable. They had to let him play with them because the families were friends. Otherwise they would have stayed clear, for the Perry of those days was a brooding, suspicious child, swift to find insult in your tone of voice, ever ready to drop his candy bar and fight.

  But that Perry was gone. The new Perry, a Harvard degree in hand, was tall and lean, with gray eyes and a pencil mustache. Perry sported gaudy bow ties and vested suits, entirely aware of his role as Sugar Hill’s most eligible bachelor, and playing it to the hilt. Perry was at Columbia, doing additional graduate work in languages, but the work must not have been terribly challenging, because Eddie ran into him frequently at the salons, always with a different woman on his arm. It was Perry who had tried and failed to calm Eddie down the night of Aurelia’s engagement party; and Perry, too, who had danced with Junie at Aurelia’s wedding, and, evidently, kept in touch thereafter.

  Eddie got along with Perry Mount. Eddie admired him and, occasionally, envied him. But Eddie never really liked him, perhaps because he sensed behind the clever eyes and charming words a constant calculation, as if he expected you every moment to prove afresh your worth to him. He sensed it now, as Perry sat listening, the two men in a deli on Broadway near the Columbia campus. It had taken him a month to arrange the meeting. It was March of 1959, his sister had been missing for almost two years, and Eddie had the sense that time was running out.

  You knew her well, Eddie was saying, his tone polite.

  You stayed in touch with her all the time she was at Harvard Law—maybe wooing her, maybe more.

  You knew Philmont Castle, and talked to her about him.

  You must ache almost as much as the family does.

  What was my sister up to? Eddie was really screaming, only in a placid tone. And where is she now?

  When Eddie was done, Perry stirred his tea. He asked for tea all the time in the salons, perhaps wanting you to know he had spent an undergraduate year and two years since in Asia. When he received his master’s degree this spring, he would be going to work at the State Department. Harlem—their Harlem—was proud of Perry, but of course wanted him to marry first. Perry sat thinking, the gray eyes giving nothing away. The mercurial personality Eddie remembered from the years on the Vineyard was gone. This was a man who pondered and planned—the very opposite of Eddie himself.

  “I’m looking for her,” Perry finally said. “I don’t know who did this, but I’m not going to let them get away with it.”

  Eddie said nothing.

  “I don’t like the fact that you’re looking, too. You’re getting in my way, Eddie. You’re causing trouble. People are crawling under rocks, people I need out in the open, where I can find them.” He lifted the spoon, pointing. “You’re her brother. You’re famous. There’s no way you can look for her quietly. You should leave it to me.”

  About to be very cross, Eddie imagined Junie’s hand on his, urging a calm response. “You’re sure she’s alive, then.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth.” Test
y after all. “I have no idea if she’s alive, Eddie. But I’m trying to find out, and you’re making my work harder.”

  “What is it that you imagine you can do that I cannot?”

  “I know you think you have connections, Eddie. I also know you’ve pretty much used them up. Joe Kennedy was a one-off, and look at you. Now he’s got you working for his son. Big propaganda victory for JFK, huh?” The spoon pointed again, while Eddie, very surprised, wondered how much Perry knew—and how. “You’re out of people to ask for help. I’m not.”

  “Then let us work together.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Perry. I know part of it. I want the rest.” The golden boy went on stirring his tea. “Remember the night we performed The Tempest? Junie was Miranda. You were her suitor, the one her father threw in jail. Ferdinand.” Still the gray eyes watched and waited. Eddie could not tell if Perry was amused, impressed, or bored stiff. “You were Sharon Martindale’s boyfriend. You preached about the radical alternative. Now, tell me the truth, Perry.”

  A cocky smile. Perry liked being one up. “About Junie? You couldn’t take it.”

  “Try me.”

  “No. Leave it alone.”

  Eddie sat back, confused. What was he missing here? What accounted for the hostility? And then, in the watchful, angry eyes, he saw the younger Perry peeking out, the teenager once so possessive of Junie, whom, after they did The Tempest, he insisted on calling Miranda.

  Perry knew about the baby.

  And was furious not to be the father.

  “You loved her,” Eddie breathed. “You still love her. This is jealousy. My God, Perry. You’re jealous.”

  “It’s less than jealousy and more than love,” said Perry, still hot. “Junie was my fiancée.”

  (II)

  THEY STROLLED ALONG College Walk, in the shadow of the Low Library. Young white men stared. Negroes were no longer unheard of on Ivy League campuses, but neither were they common, so if you happened to spot one the odds were good that he did not belong.