The Pariot GAme

by George V. Higgins

  “No,” he said, “this is a singing telegram from your ever-solicitous government, which wishes none of its loyal citizens ever to be lonely ever again.”

  “You must’ve driven like a bat out of hell,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “If they pulled me over, I was going to identify myself as one of those crack federal agents, the elite of law enforcement in all the world. In hot pursuit of somebody. Frederika Thomas. Suspicion of singing with felonious intent. Our motto: ‘We make the Mounties look sick—they only get their man; we get his fucking brother-in-law and a couple of the guys from his bowling team as well, even if they didn’t do anything. We also get our women, by God. Especially if they didn’t do anything. Adds spice to their otherwise dull gray lives.’ ”

  “I’ll be right out,” she said. “Just toweling my hair dry. You had any dinner?”

  “No,” he said, “and I don’t want any, either. I haven’t had any loving, either. That I do want. I want a good old drink and some good old loving.”

  She came out of the bathroom with a towel turbaned around her hair. She wore a pale gold short bathrobe. She was short, about five three. She had well-proportioned legs and she had a good figure, but she was sturdy. “So help me,” she said, “you’d better not say it.”

  “But you do,” he said. “I can’t help it. Every time I see you, I think of a palomino Shetland pony. From the time I was six until I was close to twenty and finally realized I was far too big to ride her—”

  “—And you were certainly right about that, big boy,” she said. “My back’s damned near broken. Female superior on all occasions from now on. Don’t care how excited you get.”

  “—I pestered my parents for a palomino Shetland like the Monahans’ ‘Christmas.’ God she was pretty. Small, but beautiful. Willing. Sweet-tempered, lively. Just like you.”

  “I realize it’s supposed to be a compliment,” Freddie said, going into the kitchen and switching on the light, “but I really don’t feature being compared to a horse. Bourbon and water?”

  “No,” he said. “Too hot. Thank God for central air conditioning you can regulate yourselves. And damn Jimmy Carter for his goddamned eighty-degree bullshit about Federal Buildings. That asshole have anything to say today? Anything new, I mean.”

  “No,” she said. “Oh hell, I don’t know. I got home too late for the six o’clock news and I haven’t read the paper yet either. How the hell do I know? What do you want?”

  “We got any rum?” he said. “Rum and tonic. Some lime.”

  “Yassuh, yassuh, massa,” she said. “Comin’ right up, massa.”

  “Oops,” he said. He walked down the hallway to the kitchen and embraced her from behind. The top of her head barely came over the top of his belt. “Hi, honey,” he said, “I’m home. You somewhere around here, honey? Say something, so I can find you.”

  “You clown,” she said, laughing. “At least you could take those damned shitkickers off, so I’d come to your breastbone.” He turned her loose. She turned around and stretched up her hands toward his neck. He took her waist in both hands and lifted her to his eye level. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him. He hugged her around the waist. She initiated the kiss, her feet dangling a foot from the floor. After a long minute, he slowly released her, and she slid to the floor.

  “We must look like a pair of fools when we go out,” she said, laughing. “People must think I’m your mascot or something. ‘Huh, big guy like that, think he’d at least get himself a great Dane or something. The hell’s he want with that Chihuahua?’ ‘Very simple, sir,’ ” she said, deepening her voice, “ ‘when my little lady here gits tard, an’ her little ole dawgies starts to gitting sore there, y’all know? Wal, I jes’ picks her raht up by the scruff the neck and I puts her in mah pocket there, and she jes’ rides along as comf’t’ble as you please, head stickin’ out and them bright little eyes a-lookin’ the whole world raht over. Thet’s why.’ ”

  “You don’t sound like you had a bad day,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said, turning to the counter to prepare the drink. “Shows you how deceitful I can be, because I sure damned right well did.”

  “Care to tell me what happened?” he said.

  “Make a deal with you,” she said. “I’ll go first, but only on the condition that you come clean when I finish and tell me everything that went haywire on your farm today too.”

  “I was going to enforce that agreement even if it wasn’t made,” he said.

  “I’m not going in tomorrow,” she said. “When I got home from the office, I had a phone call. As a result, I’m going to stay here in the morning and lie on the roof in the sun.”

  “A phone call,” he said, as she handed him a drink.

  “Yup,” Freddie said. “Funny, but disruptive in a way.”

  Riordan sat down on the couch. For a while he did not say anything. He swallowed some of the rum and tonic. He cleared his throat. “Look,” he said, “I would like to make a request, okay? I can’t say my day was much of a success. I am grateful for that, because the day I succeed in this case, that clown Bolling down there at the Seat of Government will probably send me out to destroy the KGB. All I had to do today was put up with a bunch of amateur detectives who’re so eager to ingratiate themselves with the Feds that they’re falling all over each other telling me things that I read in the paper yesterday. I’ve got a guy up at the State House who apparently’s spent his entire adult life worrying about going to the penitentiary himself, and now he’s cozying up to me like I was his long-lost brother. Maybe he helps me, maybe he doesn’t, but boy can he talk. And then Bolling called, also chatty.

  “Anyway,” Riordan said, “I didn’t get anything done today, but I’m still kind of tired and I can’t stand any sudden shocks. So let’s sort of treat this telephone call like we were going into a cold swimming pool, okay? Very gradually, so I don’t get cramps in my legs.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “This was, no doubt,” he said, “a long-distance telephone call.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Was it prepaid?” he said.

  “No,” she said, “it was collect.”

  “It originated in Manhattan, area two-one-two,” he said.

  “No,” she said, “it originated from Camden, Maine. I don’t know what the area code is for Camden. Two-oh-seven?”

  “Camden,” Riordan said. “It wasn’t from Jennifer Thomas, who is vacationing with her father, Attorney Arthur Thomas, of Gatskill, Campbell, Foye and Several Other Guys, Two-fifty-two Park Avenue?”

  “It was from Jenny,” Freddie said. “She spent one night in the wonders of summer evenings in Manhattan, with her doting father who had scheduled his vacation for the month in order to spend it with his daughter.”

  “But not in Manhattan,” Riordan said.

  “That was the original plan, the way I understood it,” Freddie said. “But then, what does a foul-mouthed broad like me know about planning, huh? Somebody tells me what the schedule is, I’m gullible and I believe it. Arthur did take his vacation. Jenny did fly down on the shuttle. He did have the limo meet her at LaGuardia. He wasn’t able to be there himself, of course, wrapping up some last-minute details and so forth. You know how it is when you’re leaving the office for a month. So much to do, and everything. Busy, busy, busy.

  “Jenny didn’t mind that,” Freddie said. “Kind of heady, actually, fourteen-year-old girl, gets on the plane in her Calvins with her backpack and her carry-on bag. Thoughtful businessmen suppressing lewd thoughts and helping her with her hanging bag. Gets off the plane, all alone, so mature, there’s the limo driver holding up the sign: Miss Thomas. She doesn’t know those businessmen understand all about summer visitation. She thinks they think she’s a child star, off to shoot another sequence on location.

  “Arthur took her to lunch at the Plaza. Chauffeur delivered her luggage to the condo on Sutton Place. Arthur gave her his charge cards at Bloomie’s and
Saks. Arthur gave her five hundred dollars to spend at Pappagallo and Gucci, because Arthur doesn’t have accounts at those stores. Arthur gave her Miss Manning, his secretary’s secretary, Gail. Gail is about twenty, but Arthur’s secretary, Kathy, has been training her very carefully, and Gail after a year or two is now almost as stylish as Kathy. Arthur doesn’t like dowdy secretaries. Arthur went back to the office to wrap up some more last-minute details.

  “Gail and Jenny went shopping. Jenny went through about eighteen hundred of Arthur’s after-tax income on the charge accounts. ‘I didn’t spend any of the cash except eight dollars when me and Gail had drinks at the Tavern-on-the-Green,’ she told me, quite breathlessly. ‘Gail and I,’ I said. ‘What exactly did you have to drink, Jenny?’ ‘Same as Gail,’ she said, ‘white wine spritzer. Gail ordered them. She said they’re very refreshing on a hot day after shopping.’ ”

  “Oh boy,” Riordan said.

  “Well,” Freddie said, “now let’s be reasonable here. We let her have a glass of wine with dinner with us. If a glass of wine with dinner here isn’t going to hurt her, a glass of wine after shopping in New York isn’t going to hurt her either.”

  “No,” Riordan said, “but a four-dollar glass of wine at the Tavern-on-the-Green is by sure sweet Jesus going to hurt us, when she comes back here and decides she’d prefer to have her dinner wine served to her by the sommelier in the Ritz dining room every night, perhaps a Médoc with the meat and a Sancerre with the boneless chicken course.”

  “The chauffeur picked them up at the Tavern,” she said. “He handled all the packages, the new bathing suits …”

  “I just can’t wait to see those,” he said.

  “You just remember,” Freddie said, “that I’m a practicing counselor, and I’ve read all that stuff about how Mummy lets her new boyfriend move into the house and the next thing she knows he’s bothering her adolescent daughter by her first marriage. One false move out of you and I’ll have the law on ye, Jocko. And then of course there was the Ralph Lauren suit and all manner of other stuff. Chauffeur took care of all of it.”

  “Who is it that’s supposed to have this visitation with her anyway?” Riordan said. “Some time I want to see that custody agreement where it says that Arthur Thomas’s chauffeur shall be entitled to the uninterrupted visitations of Jennifer Thomas each summer, until she shall have attained the age of eighteen years. That how she got to Maine? Chauffeur took a wrong turn on FDR Drive? That’s kidnapping.”

  “That’s his way, pork chop,” Freddie said. “That’s Arthur’s way of showing affection.”

  “By not showing any,” Riordan said. “Cocksucker.”

  “Peter,” she said, laughing. “I do believe you’re getting protective.”

  “Bullshit,” Riordan said. “What did Arthur do that night, have Gail tuck her in and the chauffeur kiss her good night while he cleaned up a few more details at the office?”

  “He was very nice,” Freddie said. “He came home to shower and change for dinner. His maid ran a bath for Jenny and put some kind of nifty bath salts in it. ‘Mummy,’ she said, it was heavenly. Just like being in champagne.’ ”

  “ ‘Mummy,’ ” he said. “ ‘Mummy,’ for Christ sake? What happened to ‘Hey, Fred’? And what is this pervert doing, making her wash with Lawrence Welk in the tub with her?”

  “After the bath,” Freddie said, “they had white wine on the terrace and watched the skyline for a while.”

  “Gail and the chauffeur and the maid and Arthur, no doubt,” Riordan said. “What’d they do, put on blackface and stage a minstrel skit for the kid?”

  “Just Jenny and her father,” Freddie said. “Then they got all gussied up. She wore her new white suit and he looked very distinguished in his gray silk, and the limo picked them up and took them to the Four Seasons for a pretheater dinner in the Pool Room. They were going to see Sugar Babies.”

  “Oh my God,” he said, “you would think a man who has got that kind of cash to throw around would at least want to contribute an occasional dollar or two for the support of his kid.”

  “Pete,” she said, “we both know who’s to blame for that. I am. I didn’t want him making another brittle little Gloria Vanderbilt copy out of that kid. But I also wanted out of that marriage, and I wanted out fast. He could’ve tied me up in court for years, with his money and his connections. He offered me the deal. If he was going to pay, then he was going to have custody. If I wanted custody, then I would have to pay. I took the deal. It was the best one available, and I’m convinced I was right.”

  “He’s bribing her,” Riordan said. “He may call it ‘polishing,’ or ‘showing her a side of life’ she doesn’t see with you, but a kid that age is impressionable. He’s trying to buy her. I don’t like it a bit.”

  “You think Jenny can be bought?” Freddie said.

  “I don’t think she’d go for it if she knew what it was,” he said, “but she’s still only fourteen. You can turn a kid’s head.”

  “Uh-huh,” Freddie said, “okay. Now, this is the part in the story of the Garden of Eden where the snake slithers in to inquire politely whether anyone would like a nice piece of fruit. So listen up.

  “They stopped on the way to the Four Seasons, at another co-op building on Fifth Avenue. There Arthur called for Mrs. Felicia Cannon Weatherbee.”

  “Unlikely name for a snake,” Riordan said. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize it, right off the bat. Could this be one of those New York socialites?”

  “Indeed,” Freddie said. “Felicia has had a most unfortunate time with her first marriage. Jay Weatherbee is such a bore, you know. They’re legally separated and she’s going through with the divorce.”

  “Represented, no doubt, by Gatskill, Campbell and Nearly Everybody Else.”

  “Goodness, no,” Freddie said. “That would be tacky. She has Roy Cohn. She and Arthur didn’t meet professionally. They’ve been friends for simply years. Ever since dancing school, for Christ sake. The Knickerbocker Greys parades.

  “Arthur, of course, is a carbon copy of Jay. In every respect but one, I guess. Jay tended to be high-strung. He was always disobeying her wishes and going out drinking with his men friends. Why, I understand that one night he just up and refused to escort her to a Beverly Sills appearance at the Lincoln Center, which made her very upset.”

  “Is there, ah, something fragile about Jay?” Riordan said.

  “Queer as green horses,” Freddie said. “Jay’s got more boyfriends than Marilyn Monroe could claim in her prime. Arthur is a man who has faults, but there is one thing to be said for him: He is resolutely and exclusively heterosexual. He is also a total stuffed shirt, and Felicia will have no trouble getting him to observe all of the social proprieties. Hell, he thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt even when he’s getting laid. When I was married to him, I always expected him to complete the conjugal act by shouting ‘Bully’ as he dropped off to sleep.

  “Felicia joined them for dinner and the theater. This was not at all what Jennifer had had in mind. She thought she was Daddy’s date for the evening, and here was this Felicia cropping up like an abscessed tooth.

  “They had a lovely dinner,” Freddie said. “Then back into the limo and off to the show, and after the show to the Café Carlyle to hear Bobby Short. Then they dropped Felicia off and returned to Arthur’s pad, and that’s when Jennifer began to suspect that maybe Arthur hadn’t had the maid lay in the bath salts especially for Jennifer’s visit. Because it was painfully obvious to Jennifer that dropping Felicia off at her residence was a departure from Daddy’s usual evening routine with Felicia. One which Felicia did not like a bit.

  “Now,” Freddie said, “keeping in mind that Jenny ain’t stupid, and also keeping in mind that she’s been living with a rat-ass detective in the same house with her for going on three years, you can probably guess what happens next.”

  “She tossed the joint while Daddy was snoring away,” Riordan said, “and found feminine undergarments and othe
r evidence suggesting that Daddy did not always sleep alone.”

  “Crass, crass,” Freddie said. “It’s a good thing Jenny didn’t hear you say that. She would say, ‘Dammit, Pete, don’t be such an absolute dink.’ Or whatever this week’s word is.

  “No,” Freddie said, “she conducted an interrogation. She’s learned a lot from you. The apparently harmless question. The casual aside that the suspect immediately denies, thus proving his guilt. All that stuff. They sat on the terrace and she bubbled like the bath water at Arthur and asked him if they could go to another play the next night, and could they have dinner at Twenty-one the night after that. Which of course flushed him out at once. He had to tell her it’d be hard to do, because they weren’t going to be in New York. He had reservations on a flight to Maine at noon the next day. After all, he spends all his time in the city. When he takes his vacation, he wants to go somewhere else. Get away from the things and the people he sees every day. Have some family time. Go to see his mother and father, up in Maine.”

  “That still doesn’t get us to Camden,” Riordan said. “I thought his parents had a summer place in Rockland.”

  “Patience,” Freddie said. “Jennifer didn’t go for that shit, not in the slightest. For one thing, she does not like her paternal grandparents.”

  “He makes her call him Grampy,” Riordan said.

  “Right,” Freddie said. “And he tells her how he’s going to send her to Vassar. ‘But, Mother, he talks like I won’t have any choice. It’ll be like he was sending me to prison or something. He never asks me what I think. He just sits there and tells me how I’ll be meeting all the boys from Yale and Princeton, and I’ll get married and raise a nice family, and every summer we’ll all come up to Rockland and go swimming and play tennis and do all those things he did when he was a boy. Yuck.’

  “So,” Freddie said, “Jennifer explained tactfully to Arthur that she was not interested in going to Maine, because she wouldn’t have anything to do there. She would much rather stay in New York. That was when Arthur changed the subject to something less dangerous. He chose Felicia. He asked Jenny what she thought of Felicia.