W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound

by Honor Bound(Lit)

  "What does a Jew look like?"

  "Not like that," the old man said.

  Samuel found a place in the flow of traffic and drove the thirty yards to the marquee of the Monteleone. Clete opened the door and called to Ettinger. Ettinger was visibly surprised to see the car, but after a moment came quickly across the sidewalk.

  "We're only going around the comer, but why get wet?" Clete said, offering his hand. "David, I'm glad to meet you." Then he turned to the old man. "Grandfather, may I present Mr. David Ettinger? David, this is my grandfather, Mr. Cletus Marcus Howell."

  "How do you do?" the old man said.

  "How do you do?" Ettinger said, offering his hand.

  With a just-perceptible hesitation, the old man took it. Briefly.

  Then he picked up the microphone again. "Amaud's, Samuel," he ordered. "After you have found a place to park the car, go into the kitchen and tell them I would be obliged if they gave you something to eat."

  Clete saw Ettinger's eyebrow rise, and smiled at him.

  A waiter greeted them at the door to Arnaud's and led them through the crowded main dining area to a small private dining room. The waiter pulled aside the curtain on the doorway and bowed them in.

  The table had been set. There was an impressive array of crys-tal, silver, and starched napkins. A menu was at each place.

  "I took the liberty, Mr. Howell," the waiter said, removing the cover from a plate in the center of the table, "to have a few hors d'oeuvres prepared for you, while you decide."

  "The last time you did that," the old man said, "the remoulade sauce was disgraceful."

  "Indeed it was. The saucier was shot at dawn the next morning. We showed him no mercy, although he pleaded he was the sole support of his old mother. Can I bring you something from the bar?"

  Clete saw Ettinger smiling; the smile vanished when Ettinger noticed the old man turning toward him.

  "Mr. Ettinger?" the old man asked.

  "Not for me, thank you, Sir. I wouldn't want to anesthetize my tongue before eating in a place like this."

  The old man flashed Clete a triumphant smile.

  "Then may I suggest we have a quick look at the menu to see whether fish, fowl, or good red meat?"

  "May I ask that you order for me?" Ettinger said.

  "I would be happy to translate the menu for you," the old man said. "They do it in French only to humiliate their patrons."

  "I speak French, if your ordering for me would be an impo-sition," Ettinger said.

  "No imposition at all," the old man said. "What would you recommend tonight, Harold?"

  "I hesitate to recommend anything. You have been coming in here for thirty years, and I have yet to bring you anything that met your approval."

  "In that case, we will try to wash these hors d'oeuvres down with a bottle of Moet, the '39, if there's any left. And you will then go to the kitchen and tell the chef that we are hungry enough to eat anything that hasn't fallen on the floor."

  "There was some shrimp-and-oyster bisque a while back that didn't smell too badly."

  "We place ourselves in your somewhat less than knowledgeable hands," the old man said.

  "I am overwhelmed," the waiter said. "It is, in any case, good to see you, Mr. Frade. Didn't I hear you were in the Marines?"

  "It's good to see you too. I was in the Marines. I was just discharged."

  "Then welcome home."

  "Thank you."

  The waiter left.

  The old man turned to Ettinger. "For reasons I can't imagine, that man fancies himself the best waiter here; and by inference, the best in New Orleans."

  "It's probably his table-side manner," Ettinger said.

  The old man actually chuckled.

  "The problem with Argentina, Mr. Ettinger," Cletus Marcus Howell proclaimed, "is that it is a theocracy."

  He was leaning back in his chair, cradling a brandy snifter in his hand. The dinner had gone well. The food, as Clete knew it would be, had been superb.

  The shrimp-and-oyster bisque was followed by Filet de Boeuf a la Venison, a dish Ettinger had never previously encountered. When he admitted this, he thus offered the oid man the oppor-tunity to display his culinary knowledge as to its preparation.

  Ettinger seemed not only genuinely interested, but also showed himself to be quite familiar with the subtleties of haute cuisine. He mentioned to the old man, for instance, that the Moroccans made a similar dish; they substituted mutton for the beef, how-ever, while marinating it and otherwise cooking it like venison.

  He also showed a genuine and knowledgeable enthusiasm for the wine. By the time the brandy was served, the old man was almost beaming. And Clete was amusing himself with what was surely his grandfather's current opinion of Staff Sergeant Ettinger: Jew or not, that fellow is a gentleman.

  He was even daring to hope that the old man was in such a good mood he would not mention his daughter. Clete now real-ized, resignedly, that that was not to be.

  "A theocracy, Sir?" Ettinger asked.

  "A government which is controlled by a religion," the old man explained.

  "Such as Spain," Ettinger said.

  "Precisely. And, as in Spain, that religion is Roman Catholi-cism," the old man said. "Now, don't misunderstand me. There is not a prejudiced bone in my body, and I have tried to pass my tolerance for other people's religious convictions on to my son, and especially my grandson. As a matter of fact, I have a number of Roman Catholic friends, including, to put a point on it, the Archbishop of New Orleans. Weather permitting, for twenty-odd years, every other Thursday, I took his money at the Metairie Country Club."

  "You are speaking of theocracy," Ettinger said.

  "Indeed. You are, I understand, Spanish?"

  "I am now an American citizen," Ettinger said carefully. "I formerly held German citizenship. I am of Spanish heritage."

  "You know Spain?"

  "I lived there."

  "Then you will feel right at home in Argentina. The most outrageous things are done there in the name of Christianity, which of course there means Roman Catholicism."

  "I see."

  "It doesn't happen here," the old man said. "Archbishop Noonan is as fine a gentleman as they come. But, of course, that is because our Constitution wisely forbids a state religion."

  "I understand"

  "The Roman Catholic theocracy in Argentina murdered my daughter, Cletus's mother," the old man said.

  "Grandfather, do we have to get into this?"

  "I think I should," the old man said.

  "You are embarrassing our guest," Clete said.

  "I don't see why he should be embarrassed. He's a Jew, as I understand it. To him this is a neutral matter. Why should he be embarrassed if I tell him what he will find when you reach Ar-gentina?" He sat up and leaned across the table. "Am I embar-rassing you, Mr. Ettinger?"

  "No, Sir."

  "My daughter married an Argentinean, Mr. Ettinger. Cletus's father is an Argentinean. Did you know that?"

  "Colonel Graham mentioned something about Lieutenant Frade having been born there, Sir."

  "Jorge Guillermo Frade is his name," the old man said. He pronounced it in Spanish-Horgay Goool-yermo Frah-day-each syllable reflecting his loathing. "Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day is, among other things, a cattleman."

  "Is that so?" Ettinger asked.

  "I really wish you would stop this, Grandfather," Clete said.

  "Mr. Ettinger and the other fellow who's going with you," the old man said, "the Italian, have a right to know this story, Cletus. Please don't interrupt me again."

  Clete sensed Ettinger's eyes on him, and looked at him. The eyes seemed to say, I understand. Let him finish. There's no way he can be stopped. Clete saw also in Ettinger's eyes both sym-pathy for him, and pity for the old man.

  "As I was saying, Mr. Ettinger," the old man went on. "Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day is a cattleman. My son James Fitzhugh Howell, Cletus's uncle, was a cattleman. When Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day hea
ved onto the scene, he was courting the lady who later became Mrs. Howell. Her family are cattlemen. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day came to this country to do busi-ness with my daughter-in-law's father. She wasn't yet then my daughter-in-law, but I presume you're following me?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "My son was at the Williamson ranch-my daughter-in-law's maiden name was Williamson-when Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day came there to buy some breeding stock from Mr. Williamson. Handsome fella, charming. I'll give him that, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day is handsome and charming. Spoke fluent English, with just, enough of an accent to make the ladies flush. Like Charles Boyer, if you take my meaning."

  " 'Come wiss me to zee Casbah,' " Ettinger replied, in a very creditable mimicry of one of the actor's most famous lines.

  "Exactly, exactly!" the old man said, and then went on. "And they were about the same age, so my son asked Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day to come to New Orleans, to see the city. He came, and I opened my house to him. And I was the one, may God forgive me, who introduced him to my daughter. She wasn't even through college, had a year to go at Rice. And Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day just swept that child off her feet.

  "When he came to me and asked for her hand, I told him she was too young, and that I could not in good conscience offer my blessing until she'd finished her education."

  "I understand your position," Ettinger said. "Any father would feel that way."

  "My wife, may she rest in peace, had passed on when my daughter was fourteen. They called it 'consumption' then; now they call it 'tuberculosis.' "

  "So you were both father and mother to your children," Et-tinger said.

  "You could say that, Mr. Ettinger, yes," the old man went on. "And so did Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day understand my po-sition. Or so he said. So he went back to Argentina, and I thought-I've never believed that absence makes the heart grow fonder. And I concluded that would be the end of it. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day would find some suitable young woman down mere, and my daughter would find some suitable suitor here.

  "Well, I'm an oilman, Mr. Ettinger... Did Cletus mention that?"

  "Colonel Graham did, Sir."

  "I thought perhaps he might have," the old man said. "Any-way, I'm an oilman, and the first thing oilmen learn is that the more you know about people you're going to deal with, the better off you are. So I had a friend of mine with the foreign department of the National City Bank of New York City-when we first went into Venezuela, he was very helpful, and together we did all right down there-make some discreet inquiries about this fellow Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day down in Argentina. He reported back to me that he came from a fine family, which was highly regarded down there, and that they were, economically speaking, quite comfortable. To put a point on that, they have an estancia, what we call a ranch, that's just slightly larger than the State of Rhode Island."

  "Very impressive," Ettinger said.

  "The next thing I know, a couple of months later, I get a telephone call from a fellow staying at the Roosevelt Hotel. Says he's a friend of the family of Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day, and could we have lunch. I forget his name, but he was a gentle-man. Charming fellow. I was halfway through having lunch with him-I had him out to the Metairie Country Club-before I re-alized that what he was doing was checking me out, to see if my daughter was suitable for Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day, not some Yankee gold digger after Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day's daddy's money.

  "Well, I didn't take offense, because I understood. There was nothing wrong with doing that. But I called him on it, and told him we could probably save some time by me letting him know I was dead set against any marriage, but just to put my cards faceup on the table, I wasn't exactly walking around with holes in my shoes either.

  "Then he told me-he was my kind of man, that fellow; I wish to God I could remember his name-that they weren't exactly thrilled down there either that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day was determined to marry a foreigner, but there wasn't much that could be done about it.

  "So I told him sure there was, all that had to happen was to have Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day's daddy tell him, and mean it, that if he married the foreign girl he could go find himself a job someplace, 'because the money tree would be cut off at the roots.' I remember using those exact words.

  "And then he told me that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day's daddy was about to pass on. Had kidney trouble, as I recall, and once the daddy was gone, there would be no control over him. And then we sat there in the bar drinking Sazeracs...

  "I'll tell you a secret about New Orleans, Mr. Ettinger. If you're ever doing business in this town and the fellow offers you a Sazerac, turn him down. They sneak up on people; you could sell them the Mississippi River after they've had four of them."

  "I'll remember that," Ettinger said. "Thank you."

  "Anyway, I believed what this fellow was saying, so we sat there trying to salvage something from a bad situation. Well, after a while, it didn't look too bad. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day couldn't marry while his father was dying. And they have some sort of Roman Catholic rule that the period of mourning is one year. So we had whatever time it took for Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day's daddy to die, plus a year, during which time he would work at his end, and I would work here, to simply kill the whole idea of the two of them marrying. When I drove him back to his hotel, I remember feeling a little better about the whole thing. With a little bit of luck, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day's daddy would last a lot longer than anyone thought.

  "Two weeks later he died. When my daughter heard about it, she wanted to go down there; and I had a hell of a time con-vincing her that before she could do that, the daddy would be a long time in his grave, and that it was unseemly, anyhow. They weren't formally engaged.

  "A month after he put his daddy in the ground, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day showed up here with an engagement ring in his pocket. And then I realized that I had lost, my precious daughter was going to marry Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day whether or not I liked it, and there was nothing I could do about it but put on a smile and act like I liked it.

  "The first time this theocracy business came up was when my daughter came to me and said she wanted me to know she was going to take instruction in the Roman Catholic Church. Now, as I told you, I have nothing whatever against the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop here is a close personal friend. But I asked her why she wanted to do that-she was raised Episcopal, and theologically, there's not a hell of a difference between the two. And she said that for her marriage to be recognized down there, she had to get married in a Roman Catholic Church, and she couldn't do that unless she was confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church, and that her Episcopalian confirmation didn't count.

  "So I called my friend the Archbishop, and he told me that was so, she couldn't get married unless she was confirmed as a Catholic, but that I shouldn't get so upset, it wasn't as if she was going to become a Holy Roller or a Jew... no offense, Mr. Et-tinger..."

  "None taken, Mr. Howell," Ettinger said.

  "... certainly none was intended. And the Archbishop said he would personally take care of my daughter, and that if I liked, he would perform the marriage himself, to let her new in-laws un-derstand that our family was held in a certain regard by the Ro-man Catholic Church here."

  "That was very gracious of him," Ettinger said.

  "So that's the way it happened. A month before the official one-year mourning period was up, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day showed up in New Orleans. I put him up in an apartment we have here in the Quarter... Cletus used to take girls there when he was at Tulane; he thought I didn't know, and I never said anything; did the same thing myself when I was in college... and we started making arrangements for the marriage.

  "It was one hell of a wedding, I'll tell you that. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day must have a hundred and two kinfolk, and I think every one of them showed up, all the way from Argentina. They were married by the Archbishop in what they call a High Nuptial Mass in the Cathedral of St. Louis, wh
ich is also right here in the Quarter.

  "I gave her away, and she was a most beautiful bride, Mr. Ettinger, so beautiful and so happy. I even went along with that dowry custom of theirs, not that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day needed it. I gave her twenty-four-point-five percent of Howell Petroleum (Venezuela).

  Am I going too fast for you, Mr. Et-tinger?"

  "I didn't quite understand that last. I don't mean to seem too inquisitive."

  "Not at all. I think it's important, with you going down there, that you understand the situation as fully as possible. I owned one hundred percent of Howell Petroleum (Venezuela). I wanted to keep control, of course, so I had to have fifty-one percent. I had two children. That left forty-nine percent for them. Half of forty-nine percent is twenty-four-point-five percent. You understand?"