Angel

by Nicholas Guild

  The watch was attached to a massive flat-weave chain, also gold and purchased in 1922 by James Kinkaid Jr. from Honeyman & Lowe in New York—the receipt was among his private papers, in the basement. At the other end of the chain was a small, flat, folding cigar knife acquired at the same time and more for decoration than use. There was also a small key with a cylindrical shank and a hollow oval bow through which it was attached to the chain by a clip. The key was nickel-plated and altogether about an inch and a quarter long.

  It was a puzzler. Kinkaid did not remember when he had first noticed it, or if it had ever occurred to him before to wonder why his father would carry it around with him. It was obviously not of recent manufacture, but there was nothing about it to excite a sentimental interest. Doubtless every old house in New England had accumulated drawers full of such keys.

  The obvious inference was that there was a lock somewhere that James Kinkaid III had wished never to be opened by anyone except himself.

  The elder Kinkaid had not been a man to lose the distinction between convenience and esthetics. In his office the books he actually used, such as Webster’s Pocket Dictionary, an edition of Roget and Bartlett’s Guide to Contract Law, were between a pair of marble blocks on a narrow table directly behind his desk. In the normal course of the day he had hardly had occasion to notice their existence, but if he wanted one of them all he had had to do was reach behind him and pick it up.

  The bookcase on the opposite wall was another matter. It was dark oak and a beautiful piece of Victorian decorative art—the carving was all scrollwork and climbing vines—and the books in the upper section, behind beveled glass doors, were apparently valued for their bindings, which were stamped leather, rather than for their contents. To these Mr. Kinkaid Senior had merely to raise his eyes to receive whatever mysterious comfort they provided, for they were never read or even taken down from their shelves. They remained inviolate, for the key to the bookcase had been lost years ago.

  Or had it? Mr. Kinkaid’s son took from his pocket the key he had removed from his father’s watch chain and inserted it into the lock. It fit perfectly. He turned it counterclockwise and heard the little square latch pull back with a snap. The book case door slipped open soundlessly on its hinges.

  There was nothing inside except books, the same ones he had been admiring through the glass all his life. Kinkaid slid one of them off the shelf and opened it. The pages were divided into two columns of dense, black type. He read a few lines and discovered them to be a summary of the defense’s closing argument in a mail fraud case, circa 1946. Whatever secret his father had been protecting, it wasn’t here. He shut the book and put it back.

  The covers of the volumes stuck slightly to one another, a sure sign no one had had them out in years. He picked up another, flipped through the pages, put it back, and then started going through them in order. There really was nothing.

  For a moment he stood in front of the open book case feeling baffled and foolish, wondering what was the matter with him that he went around making mysteries out of every trifle. Then he remembered the bottom cabinet.

  A gentleman does not always want the whole of his library on display. Only the upper part of the book case was enclosed in glass; underneath, to about halfway up one’s thighs, the doors were heavy wood, so that any intruder would have needed an axe to break them open. They were closed in the middle by a lock that was the duplicate of the one above.

  Inside Kinkaid found a metal file box about ten inches deep, the sort intended to protect its contents from fire but little else.

  And inside the file box, along with some half-dozen antique keys bound together by a narrow black ribbon, were about thirty manila folders, each with its tab labeled and dated: Wyman - 1960, Wyman - 1961, and so on up to 1989.

  It was a name he knew almost as well as his own. The Wymans, who had possessed a vast fortune derived from the textile industry, had been a power in this county and even beyond since the end of the last century, and the Kinkaids had been enjoying a share of their legal work for almost as long. The first James Kinkaid had even served a term in the state legislature under the patronage of the Wyman family. That patronage, in its many forms, had been granted early and was not forgotten by the generations that followed.

  It gave Kinkaid an unpleasant turn to see the name. One of his earliest memories was of being taken out to be presented to Judge Wyman, the last of the male line, dead for twenty-five years now and as hard-faced an old sinner as he ever hoped to see. To a five-year-old boy the Wymans were the stuff of dreams and of nightmares. The family had never been lucky for him, and to this hour they occupied a back room of his soul which he visited rarely and only with vast reluctance.

  But all of that was ancient history. It had been nearly six years since young James Kinkaid, still in law school, had accompanied his father to the funeral of Isabelle Wyman, the Dowager Empress who had died at the age of seventy-nine without leaving an heir. The estate had been parceled out among a few distant relatives, living far away, and a handful of eccentric charities. The real family, the family that had mattered so much for so long, was extinct. Beyond the files, which should have been gathering dust down in the basement, and a great white elephant of a house about two miles outside of town, there was hardly anything left to mark their passage through the world.

  Thus there were now two things that James Kinkaid III had died leaving unexplained: a list of names and the reason he had kept the records of this long-concluded business locked up in his office. It remained to be proved that there was any connection between the two. A man’s life may have many shadows thrown across it. He may have many separate sins to conceal.

  Or perhaps concealment had not been the point. After all, the office was equipped with a shredder. If the Wyman files contained something he had wanted to keep hidden forever, what would have prevented him from simply destroying them?

  Did you mean for me to find this stuff, Dad?

  Then he remembered the time. If he wasn’t in the dining room when Julia brought in his salad plate she would come looking for him, and he didn’t want her to find him in his father’s office. That would only bring on another flood of tears.

  After dinner he went upstairs to his room and waited until he was sure Julia had finished cleaning up the dishes and would be safely absorbed with her television programs—he had checked the newspaper and there was a Richard Widmark movie on Channel 11, so she would not be heard from again tonight. Then he went downstairs to the office.

  On the way he passed by Molly’s desk and picked up his telephone messages. One of them was from a real estate company in Stamford.

  They had a buyer for the Wyman house.

  7

  For two whole days, forty-eight consecutive hours, Lucille had somehow managed to avoid goading her husband into an argument. They had even made love, for the first time in what felt like months, and on her initiative. It wasn’t half bad either.

  Lucille had probably been faking—she really wasn’t much of an animal in bed and, anyway, it’s only in the movies people make that much noise coming—but the remarkable thing was that she had gone to the trouble. George wondered if she wasn’t beginning to suspect something.

  But what could she suspect, after all? Four lunches in a row at the Baker’s Basket don’t constitute proof of anything, even if Lucille knew—even if the waitress was starting to look at him like he was the main course. So far things hadn’t gotten further than unsatisfied lust and a little conversational foreplay.

  God, she was a piece of work. Blonde, firm-fleshed, and so pretty she didn’t look quite real. Too good to be true.

  And that was the problem.

  Her nametag said “Annie,” which was the sort of name you’d expect a waitress to have, but waitresses were usually either high-school girls or frumpy divorcees. Annie wore her uniform like a disguise.

  She lived in an apartment building eight blocks from work. George knew because on the afternoon of his day
off he had gone over to the shopping center about a half-hour before it closed and then followed her home.

  Except for employees, the place was deserted when she came out of the restaurant, a blue, soft-sided duffle bag hanging from her shoulder by a strap. From the other side of the plaza and careful to stay behind her, George watched her as she took the escalator down to the third floor and then ducked into a ladies’ rest room.

  That was where she almost got past him because when she came out she had changed out of her uniform and was wearing a crisp, bone-white suit that looked like it had probably cost about $600 off the rack at Nieman Marcus. She had even let her hair down so that it reached to the small of her back. He had seen her come out and was staring in something close to awe before he even realized it was the same woman.

  She had walked home. Atlanta wasn’t a very safe place for a woman after dark, but she didn’t seem the least little bit skittish. God damn, she was ready for anything.

  The apartment building had a plate-glass front door and a marble lobby the size of a tennis court—not the sort of address you can afford out of the earnings from waiting on tables.

  She didn’t wear any rings, but George began to worry that she might have a sugar daddy or something. After all, somebody had to be paying for all that.

  Then he had gone home to get the vamp treatment from Lucille, who caught him in just the right mood. He had damn near bounced her off the ceiling.

  But Lucille’s Theda Bara act didn’t wear well and by the time she headed for the bathroom he was already tired of it. She was her old bitchy self again at breakfast, so he was glad he had a job to go to.

  “You want to hear about the daily special?”

  It was about a quarter to two and the lunch crowd was starting to thin out. George had taken a booth in the corner, away from the windows that faced out into the shopping center.

  Annie was standing so close that the hem of her dress was brushing against his knee. He was beginning to get a hard-on.

  “You mean to tell me all the good stuff ‘s not on the menu?”

  “I just thought you’d like something special,” she answered, with a knowing little smile that tugged at the corners of her beautiful mouth.

  That afternoon George had an incredible run of luck. Along with a half dozen pairs of running shoes and a couple of sweatbands, he actually sold five bicycles, one of them a Trek 8000 which, even on special, went for $699. There was also a brisk trade in women’s exercise tights.

  It was a sign from above. Tonight, before he went home, he would make his move on Annie.

  . . . . .

  He was actually rather slight of build, not at all like his original. There was no real physical resemblance. But he had the same athletic gestures. It was the way he had of rolling his shoulders and throwing out his chest, as if expecting you to admire his physique, that had doomed him.

  The woman who was listed on the restaurant employment records as “Anna Dexter” was on her long break after the lunch-hour rush, which in fact lasted from noon to a little after two-thirty. Most of the other waitresses used the opportunity to get something to eat themselves, and the tiny cloak room where they retreated to rest their feet or puff some tobacco through their lungs was crowded with women precariously balancing plates of food on their knees.

  “Is that how you keep your figure, Annie?”

  Patsy Barledge, the baby among them, who at eighteen was as chubby as a cupid and would weigh a hundred and sixty pounds before she was out of her twenties, gestured with a dirty fork toward the glass of ice tea the other woman was holding by the rim.

  “It helps. Besides, I get sick of the smell.”

  “That’s right,” Clara Price joined in, through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “It’s bad enough to serve this shit all day—you don’t have to eat it!”

  She laughed at this, hard enough to send her into a coughing fit. The gurgling in her lungs sounded like tar was being boiled inside them. At fifty, and so thin she looked desiccated, Clara had given up on food and a lot of other things.

  “I wish I could feel that way.”

  Patsy smiled at “Annie”. That name would do, although Anna Dexter had not existed four weeks ago and would soon vanish forever. She knew that Patsy admired her and yearned to be her friend, yet she felt nothing for the girl, not sympathy nor kindness nor even distaste. Patsy Barledge had no more reality for her than if she were an image projected on the wall.

  Yet Anna returned the smile. It would not do to seem at all out of the ordinary. She did not wish to leave any vivid memories behind her.

  This seemed to satisfy Patsy. “Well then, maybe I just won’t have dessert.” She stood up, holding her by now empty plate almost at arm’s length, as if to emphasize her resolve.

  “You’ll disappoint Julio. You know how vain he is about his bread pudding.”

  Patsy blushed deeply and was pursued out of the room by Clara’s wheezing laughter.

  “I caught them in the supply locker again this morning,” she said, shaking another cigarette out of the pack she carried in the pocket of her uniform, where the bulge it made was concealed behind an apron. “That girl ‘d better watch out or she’ll get him fired. The boss likes to think he got there first.”

  There was no reply, but apparently no reply was expected since Clara seemed absorbed in the ritual of lighting up—first the pungent sulfur flare of the match and then that first deep breath of smoke, as if her lungs had been deprived of nicotine for days. The silence was perfectly comfortable.

  It would be a relief to leave this place. No more living eight hours a day with the smell of food, no more jokes about Patsy’s romances, no more Anna Dexter, whose tastes in men ran to sporting goods salesmen. After tonight, no more George Tipton. She was quite sure it would be tonight. George didn’t seem the patient type.

  Her apartment was a sublet, contracted through an agency and paid for in advance. It was in a big building, full of young executive types who were always away, so there was no one who would think anything odd if her little studio remained vacant for the month before the regular tenant came home from his summer in Europe. The few personal items still there would fit comfortably into a shoulder bag. Her suitcase had been in a locker at the Atlanta airport for the last three days. All that remained was to see to George.

  He had followed her home last night. He had been so obvious about it that it was difficult to keep up the pretense that she hadn’t seen him. And at lunch today he was really primed. She was quite sure he would hang around the mall this evening until her shift ended. It wouldn’t take very much encouragement to get him to make a move.

  “I guess we better be getting back to it.”

  “Look at that,” Clara said, glaring out at the empty tables with evident disgust. “Not a soul. Some days it hardly pays to come to work.”

  . . . . .

  The early shift lasted until five-thirty in the evening, or whenever your last order was out the door. The girls who did the dinner crowd were already working their tables. It had been a slow day, so there was nothing to linger for.

  As she walked out of the restaurant, her shoulder bag riding beneath her left elbow, she allowed herself one quick scan over the runway crowd. He wasn’t anywhere in sight. That was all right, though. It was better, in fact, because she didn’t want anyone who knew her to see them together. The farther away from the Baker’s Basket the better.

  Still, she could feel her stomach tightening—what if she had been wrong about him? What if he was just a guy who liked to flirt with waitresses, another harmless tourist without the nerve?

  Deliberately repeating her routine of the day before, she took the escalator down to the ladies’ room on the third floor to change out of her uniform. She went into a toilet stall, locked the door behind her, and pulled a red rayon dress out of her bag. It wasn’t really her color, but men who wore white patent leather belts generally were not afflicted with much fashion sense and she wanted to stand out. Besi
des, clingy fabrics and shoulder pads would be right up George Tipton’s street.

  She took her time, combing out her hair and applying eyeliner, which she hardly ever used. She wanted to give George a chance to show up, and she wanted time to think.

  Because there was always the chance that he wouldn’t show. It might mean nothing—he might have had a dental appointment, or his car might have broken down—but it might also mean that he simply wasn’t ready. And once she had made contact every day was a risk. As the game went on it became more and more dangerous.

  She had to decide if George Tipton was worth it.

  She could always settle on another. She would locate him the way she had found this one. The phone books were full of them.

  But it might be months before she found someone as nearly perfect and, besides, in her mind this one had become the George Tipton, overlapping the original in so many ways that now she could hardly distinguish between them. The need was too strong. She would never be able to leave him behind.

  Thus, no matter what the risks, she would have to wait until this one fell into her net.

  As she smoothed on lip gloss with the tip of her middle finger she studied herself in the mirror to estimate the effect. She knew she was beautiful, but the knowledge was impersonal, without pride or pleasure. She considered the matter in purely tactical terms. She might have been trying to gauge the precise range of a weapon.

  All she needed was a few seconds. A word or two and a smile, and George Tipton would follow her anywhere, do anything she asked, never think of reasons or consequences. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. It would be so easy.

  If she just got the chance.

  And as she came back out and the door to the ladies’ room swung closed behind her, there he was, standing next to the down escalator. This time he wasn’t being coy. When he saw her he stepped out into the middle of the aisle, deliberately trying to attract her notice. He even managed a little wave.