Collateral Damage

by Michael Bowen

  “How did Shepherd père die?” Michaelson asked abruptly.

  “Suicide. Inoperable stomach cancer. Put his affairs carefully in order and blew his brains out. Thorough investigation by competent cops. No evidence of foul play. Next question.”

  “Do you suppose that when he was traveling regularly on business to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union he made an occasional report stateside to one of those junior analysts you were just disparaging?”

  “Oh, quit trying to make some two-bit hustling businessman into George Smiley,” Phillips snapped bitchily. “It’s tiresome and you’re far too intelligent to believe it.”

  “Who said anything about George Smiley?” Michaelson asked amiably. “I know he wasn’t picking up microfilm at newspaper kiosks or lingering in cafes waiting for agents in place. But like any number of public-spirited business-people and academics who traveled behind the Iron Curtain, he might very well have made trip reports: whether there was fresh fruit for sale on the street, whether the hotel clerks were cheerful or sullen—the kind of everyday stuff that junior analysts cut their teeth on.”

  “I can’t help you with that. Langley and I haven’t been on speaking terms since the mid-seventies.”

  “Well,” Michaelson said, “if I were to start speculating on CIA interest in Calvert Manor, I’d start there.”

  “You’re not thinking dispassionately,” Phillips said. “You have an ego investment in an implausible theory and you don’t like giving it up.”

  “I’m no longer being paid to think dispassionately,” Michaelson said. “I can indulge personal likes and dislikes—and one thing I don’t like is being used and lied to by someone from whom I have a right to expect better.”

  “It’s a growth experience, Richard.”

  “So is a tumor. I’m not amused.”

  “Well, as we used to say in Vietnam,” Phillips sighed with an elaborate shrug, “‘fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.’”

  Michaelson and Marjorie stood up. Before either could come up with a snappy exit line, a vociferous commotion from the TV end of the room drew their attention. Blocking the television were Project, unmistakable even in the low light, and a stringy-haired man in his mid-twenties.

  “I’m not paying till the fat lady sings,” the man yelped. “There’s eighty-three seconds left. Do you have any idea how many points an NBA team can score in eighty-three seconds?”

  Project apparently did have quite detailed notions on this topic, for he immediately began to rattle off statistical data of impressive depth and pertinence. This proved to be more than his interlocutor could bear.

  “Can the bullshit, you dumbass jock faggot,” he began.

  He did not continue. His choice of words was maladroit on several counts—count one being that he had to look up to spit them in Project’s face. He didn’t need to look up to see Project’s left fist, which hit him in the solar plexus. The punch lifted him off the floor and propelled him about four feet across the room, where his now-descending body smashed an end table before landing on the floor amidst two years’ copies of Architectural Digest.

  “Praww-ject,” Willie drawled in a nagging singsong, shaking his head and wagging his index finger in reprimand, “you’ve been a naughty homo.”

  Phillips, Michaelson, and Marjorie made their way over to the sprawled figure to confirm that he wasn’t actually dead. As they came within convenient viewing distance, Marjorie still didn’t recognize him, for she had never seen him before. She had no trouble, however, remembering when she had last seen the words silk-screened on the hot-pink T-shirt he was wearing: pretty girls smoking cigarettes.

  Chapter Eight

  You know,” Marjorie said to Michaelson as they walked through sharp, clear, windless cold up Calvert Manor’s driveway on Monday, “that’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone in Dockers work pants actually doing manual labor.”

  She was referring to Demarest, who was shoveling snow from the slightly pitched roof over Calvert Manor’s verandah—if you can use a term as robust as “shoveling” to describe gingerly nudging clumps of snow toward the roof edge until gravity took over.

  “Doing his bit, I suppose,” Michaelson said.

  Phillips’ people were already there. Willie Gilchrist had dropped by on Phillips’ behalf with Project in his wake—“just to make sure that nothing happens except on the telephone,” as he was explaining to Wilcox, Catherine, Cindy, and C-Sharp when Marjorie and Michaelson stepped through the front door. This sounded a bit arch to Marjorie until she reflected that she had come to the house on Patrice Helmsing’s behalf for basically the same reason.

  “All right,” Wilcox said briskly after rapid-fire amenities. “If everyone’s here, we have less than ten minutes to get in place before the conference operator puts the call through.”

  Ten minutes struck Michaelson as more than ample for five people to find telephones in a house abundantly equipped with them, but this was reckoned without the nuanced choreography Wilcox apparently had in mind. She began passing around photocopied pages, which turned out to be annotated floor plans for Calvert Manor’s first and second levels. Michaelson had seen seating charts for White House dinners that were less complicated.

  “All right,” Wilcox said. Again. “Ms. Randolph, I’d appreciate it if you’d use the telephone in the first-floor den. That’s in the rear of the house. Mr. Gilchrist, you and, um, your friend are on the kitchen phone.”

  “Is this a black thing?” Willie trilled. After Wilcox gasped and a stricken expression washed across her face, Willie rolled his eyes theatrically over a wicked grin. “Joke, breeders. Hide the stuffed peppers, Project’s in the kitchen with Willie.”

  “Okay,” Wilcox said, breathing again. “All right. I’ll be in the study at the rear of the second floor. Cindy, I have you down for your own bedroom, is that all right?”

  “Sure,” Cindy answered languidly. “I’m easy to please. Hi, Preston, nice pants.”

  Everyone glanced at Demarest, who, face flushed and a little damp, had just returned from his adventures on the porch roof. Catherine grabbed a cloth and sprang for the path he trod from the stairs, but Marjorie couldn’t see any stains or water marks for her to wipe up. That didn’t keep Catherine from dabbing a bit at the floor.

  “All right,” Wilcox insisted. “Where were we? Okay, Catherine. You wanted to be in the master bedroom, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Catherine answered from her knees where she was rubbing a cloth over bone-dry parquet. “Preston has spread the repair and rehab records out in there, and I’d just as soon not move them.”

  “That’s fine, sis,” Cindy interjected in the same blase tone as before. “Just as long as Preston isn’t in there with you—or in your own bedroom by himself.”

  “That’s a bit Victorian, isn’t it?” Catherine asked mildly.

  “Bullshit,” Cindy said cheerfully. “C-Sharp and company won’t be with me, and there’s no reason for Preston to be with you. He isn’t in the will, he isn’t in the bidding, and until he makes an honest woman of you, he isn’t in the family. He doesn’t have anything to say about what happens to this house, so he doesn’t have any business being in on this conference call. I think Preston should be down here with C-Sharp.”

  “What a bore,” Demarest said, shrugging. Then, looking at Wilcox, he asked, “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re being a spoiled brat,” Willie said to Cindy. “You ought to be spanked.”

  “I really should,” Cindy conceded with mock earnestness. “But Mom doesn’t have the energy and C-Sharp doesn’t have the imagination. And you don’t look like you’re up to it.”

  “On that particular topic I’m afraid I have nothing to contribute,” Michaelson interjected after the ensuing silence approached an uncomfortable ten seconds. “My parents were liberals and I never had a posting to London.” />
  “Honestly, Cindy,” Catherine pleaded, “can’t you skip the attitude for two hours?”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Demarest said brusquely as he extended a protective arm toward Catherine. “It’s not worth an uproar. Besides, I suppose that Cindy technically has a point. But how about if I use one of the guest bedrooms—the front one, without a phone? Would that be okay with everyone?”

  “Sure,” Cindy said. “The wallpaper there goes with your socks, and there’s plenty of light for you to read Esquire by.”

  “All right,” Wilcox said, vastly relieved as she checked her watch again. “The people involved in the bidding are set. I don’t care where the rest of you go, just stay off the phones.”

  “There’s a buffet set up in the dining room,” Catherine said, gesturing toward petit fours and sandwiches on crustless bread.

  “Jesus Christ,” Cindy said.

  “All right,” Wilcox said, her voice tinged with aggravation. “Remember, I’m recording the call and someone’s writing me a big check when it’s over, so let’s get it right. Let’s go.”

  They dispersed to their assigned places. An AT&T conference operator rang through on schedule and verified that everyone was ready: Avery Phillips at Fletcher Park; Patrice Helmsing in Detroit; Alison Shepherd in Palm Beach, California; and Willie, Marjorie, Wilcox, Cindy, and Cathy on extensions at Calvert Manor.

  “All right,” Wilcox said over the phone. “This will go more smoothly if you will please remember to identify yourselves when you speak, so that we all know who’s talking and the tape’s clear.”

  Marjorie heard a chorus of obedient assents. She glanced over at Michaelson, who had opened a slim volume of Peter Robinson’s poetry and seemed settled in for a long siege.

  “Very well,” Wilcox said, dispensing for once with her standard exordium. “Tape is running. It’s now 3:03 p.m., Eastern Standard Time. At this time we have a formal, written offer from Avery Phillips for two million six hundred thousand dollars for house, grounds, and mobiliers antiques. No financing condition, otherwise standard contingencies. Good through five p.m. local time today.”

  “What are we waiting for?” a female voice asked.

  “Identify yourself please.”

  “Alison Shepherd. What are we waiting for? Let’s take it.”

  “Catherine Shepherd,” a voice said. “What are mobiliers antiques?”

  “Movable furnishings more than one hundred years old, associated with the house but not physically attached.”

  “Catherine, still. We don’t have anything like that, do we?”

  “Alison Shepherd. Of course you don’t. Let’s go.”

  “This is Wilcox. As of ten o’clock this morning, we also have a formal, written offer from Patrice Helmsing. That offer is for two million six hundred twenty thousand dollars. House and grounds. Same contingencies.”

  “I’ll match it.”

  “Identify—”

  “Phillips,” the intervening speaker snapped. “I’ll match the money, and drop all contingencies. Two point six two at closing for a warranty deed and a bill of sale for the nonexistent antiques. Certified check or wire transfer.”

  “Hello? Everyone? This is Cindy.”

  “What is it, Cindy?” Wilcox asked.

  “What’s this contingency stuff? Can someone just run through that for me once?”

  Marjorie threw her head back in silent exasperation while at least two voices contributed telephonic blasphemy to the proceedings. Wilcox began to explain title insurance, vested remainders, ground rent, mortgages, and adverse possession.

  Michaelson glanced at Marjorie’s rapidly glazing expression. He returned to Robinson, absorbing one more poem over the space of five minutes or so. Then he looked back at Marjorie, who hadn’t spoken a syllable in the interval. Holding his hands a hopeful four inches apart, he raised his eyebrows questioningly. Marjorie shook her head and pinned the receiver to her shoulder with her cheek so that she could show Michaelson a full arm span.

  Michaelson marked his place in the book, stood up, and left the room. He was a step and a half into the kitchen when Project spotted him and tapped Willie’s shoulder.

  “Whatsisname, Margie’s boyfriend, on a stroll,” Michaelson heard Willie say into the phone.

  He didn’t hear Phillips’ response, but Marjorie reported it later: “If he heads upstairs, have Project stay with him.”

  Michaelson didn’t go upstairs. He looked into the living room to verify that C-Sharp and friends were busy littering it with scraps from the dining-room collation. Then, shrugging for Willie’s benefit, he started down the basement stairs.

  He sought the basement not because he was bored to distraction, although he was, but because of Abraham Lincoln’s classic argument about proving conspiracy by inference. You see a well-built house that four carpenters have worked on, Lincoln said—the door snug in its jamb, the nails countersunk in the boards, the windows tight in their frames—and you reasonably infer that it’s not happen-stance, that the four carpenters got together beforehand on what they were going to do.

  The situation at Calvert Manor today seemed to Michaelson as cunningly contrived as any product of the joiner’s art. Pieces put into place as neatly as dovetailed tongue and groove, fitted as precisely as mortise and tenon.

  Wilcox and Cindy between them had managed to isolate the participants in the call from each other, and keep Demarest where he couldn’t provide support or encouragement to Catherine. If Marjorie was right that Catherine would favor a residential sale, her isolation would help Phillips.

  Michaelson reached the basement and began to wander through it. The colder air refreshed him. Things began to seem clearer.

  Cindy and Wilcox might each help Phillips if they wanted to minimize the risk that Catherine’s sentimentality would keep them from extracting the highest possible price for the property. Which was entirely possible. Demarest might tamely go along if he were a dimwit. Also possible. And no sense quibbling that only a few thousand dollars each could be at stake. Rich people debased themselves every day over petty amounts.

  All of that, however, Michaelson reflected, still doesn’t tell us why. What made Calvert Manor worth this kind of trouble to Phillips? Why did Phillips think he could sell this place at a profit when it had sat dormant on the market for months priced at less than he would now have to pay? Why, in other words, had Michaelson been used? What (if anything) did it have to do with Jim Halliburton’s ruined mind and Michaelson’s share of responsibility for it?

  Michaelson didn’t really expect to find the answer in the basement of Calvert Manor. When he did find it, though, he suspected it would have more to do with the Shepherd family than with the home they lived in. He was down here to get a sense of that family, to feel himself the eerie tension Marjorie had mentioned when she described Cathy’s reversion to preadolescence.

  Marjorie’s directions had been clear, and he quickly came to the room where Catherine had stood in the corner. It struck him immediately as more than a forgotten childhood venue. As his gaze ranged over the juvenilia that filled the room, in fact, he decided that “forgotten” was exactly the wrong word. On the contrary, it seemed more like a museum exhibit, each detail gotten painstakingly right. The memorial of a dead childhood, frozen morbidly in time like the bedroom of a dead child.

  Perhaps it was because of this reflection that the row of spiral notebooks next to the three-ring binders on the shelf above the desk seemed out of place the second time he looked at them. At least the ones nearer the end did. They looked newer and less timeworn than they should have. He had come down here to feel rather than to search, but the anomaly piqued his curiosity. He pulled down the last notebook.

  He could still read “Revco $2.89” on a price tag stuck to its back. Would Catherine have continued to study in this room even when she was a junior or senior in high
school? Unlikely. Assume she had, though, and $2.89 still struck Michaelson as a bit pricey for eight or nine years in the past.

  He flicked the notebook’s pages until he came to the last one with writing. Neatly handwritten in its top margin was last Thursday’s date—the day of the corner episode. Filling the lines below was a sentence written and rewritten repeatedly:

  i must not break my word after i have given it.

  i must not break my word after i have given it.

  i must not break my word after i have given it.

  The reproachful self-admonition appeared twenty times on that page and an equal number on the four preceding pages, each with the same date.

  He flipped to the front of the notebook. The first page was dated in September of the previous year—a little over six months ago. The repeated sentence on that page was shorter:

  i must not be self-centered.

  “Just a misdemeanor, apparently,” Michaelson reflected aloud as he counted only twenty-five iterations.

  With growing fascination, Michaelson went page by page through the notebook.

  October 2nd: i must not be petulant. Written fifty times.

  October 19th: i must offer only constructive criticism. Written one hundred times.

  November 1st: i must not lose my temper over minor matters. One hundred times.

  November 11th: i must not be unduly critical of others’ efforts. One hundred times.

  November 16th: i must not forget appointments. Fifty times.

  December 4th: i must not waste time in frivolous pursuits. Twenty-five times.

  And on and on. At least twice a month, sometimes twice a week. In the oddly captivating procession of self-inflicted chastisements, one in particular caught Michaelson’s attention. Dated February 3, a little over five weeks before, it read:

  i must be more considerate of the feelings of

  people who care about me.

  Stretching with grinding monotony over the fronts and backs of ten solid pages, the sentence was written five hundred times.