Guilty Parties

by Thomas Gifford

  “I know, I know …”

  “You know?”

  “He told me he’d come back to New York for you.”

  “And you didn’t think of telling me?”

  “You don’t need me to be your keeper. That was between you and him, wasn’t it? He didn’t tell me he was going to try to rape you, if that’s what you mean. He said what he said and it wasn’t my place to interfere.” He smiled almost shyly through the candlelight and he might have been Harry of twenty years before. “You’re talking about hiding. You want to hide from me?”

  “I don’t know, Harry. My God, I don’t know what to say or think. What am I supposed to think? Men are such romantics! It’s infuriating! After all these years, you’re trying to tell me you’re in love with me all of a sudden—”

  “Always. I’ve always been in love with you. Jack just interrupted everything for a while.”

  “Quite a while, I’d say.”

  He nodded. “I’d have to agree with that. But I’ve never changed my mind—”

  “Venables said the same thing about you.” I remembered the conversation, Peter saying that Harry had spent all these years looking for another one of me. I remembered how crazy I’d thought it was.

  “Well, he was right.”

  “But why? Women don’t do that, women don’t love someone for twenty years, carrying a torch—I think you’re just under a lot of pressure and worn out and … I don’t know what. But you’re going to regret all this in the morning.”

  “I only regret Jack’s being a Ruffian.”

  “Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I should think it’s obvious. I couldn’t make my feelings known when you were married to a Ruffian.”

  “Now I’ve heard it all,” I exclaimed. “You didn’t do anything all this time—not because of Sally, mind you, your wife—but because Jack was a Ruffian? That’s the absolute end!”

  “Belle.” He sounded hurt but patient. “You just don’t understand. You’re not going to understand. But it’s all right.”

  “Well, that’s a relief!”

  “In any case, that’s the whole truth and now I’ve got to do what I must.”

  “How ominous-sounding.”

  “Well, it is ominous, in a way, I guess.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “When things have calmed down,” he said, measuring his words in the stillness, the rain dripping steadily, “I’m going to leave Sally.”

  “No,” I whispered, “you must not do that to her!”

  “And then I’m going to have to deal with you, Belle.”

  That was when I began to cry and Harry very gently put his arm around me and held me for a while. Then he got the car out of the garage at the corner and drove me home. His lips brushed my hair when he left me at the door, and that was all.

  IV

  The Last of the Ruffians

  Chapter Thirty-three

  THINGS, THEY SAY, LOOK DIFFERENT in the morning.

  Well, they’re right. The next morning things looked worse.

  It was hotter, over ninety by midmorning, and the humidity hung in the air like mist, not quite rain. Sally’s suicide attempt hadn’t been a bad dream, after all, and my conversation with Harry had been an oh-too-true nightmare. He really had said all those things, and try as I might, I couldn’t replay the talk in my mind and make it come out differently. No matter how difficult things may at times appear, I can usually come up with some kind of plan—certainly not a good plan in every case, but a plan. But the talk with Harry had me over a barrel.

  What could I do? Ignore it? Not easy to pretend it didn’t happen. So how to face it? Was he really going to tell Sally? Would he leave her? What if I told him to forget it, I wouldn’t be waiting for him? But he didn’t seem to expect that: he just sounded as if he were determined to change his life one step at a time. What kind of toll would it take on Sally? What kind of toll would it take on me? The whole thing made me dizzy, as if things were slipping, as the world spun off its axis.

  I’d always thought I’d been lucky to have one man in love with me. Suddenly I seemed to have two men in love with me, both apparently obsessive about it, neither one of them in the least interested in whatever my feelings might be. And a third who may not have loved me but came under the heading of Dead Sex Maniac. The funny thing was, they had all been friends for a quarter of a century.

  I tried to figure the odds on that. They had to be very long, indeed. Three old pals converging on the same woman after all those years. What in the world to make of it? And why did it have to be me?

  How did Harry fit into the whole picture? His role—as confidant, dependable friend, husband of my closest friend, one of Jack’s fellow Ruffians and indeed the founder of the Ruffians—his role had changed completely. He had to be seen through an entirely different prism.

  If Harry thinks he loves me, I reasoned, and Jack and I break up, then Harry decides to go after me … and suddenly there’s Venables lobbing a monkey wrench into Harry’s plans, telling him—announcing to him, really—that he, Venables, has come back to New York for me! The egomania of it all left me dazed and infuriated—what could these men, the two of them, have been thinking of? What could have made them think they had any right, any chance with me whatsoever? God, I wanted to punch somebody!

  Back to my equation. Venables throws his monkey wrench. Now, if Harry is obsessive, as monomaniacal as he seemed last night, if he has bided his time for so many years and has finally gotten his opportunity, has decided to leave Sally, what might he do to Venables, who comes along and threatens to louse up what Harry’s waited for so patiently?

  Well, somebody killed Venables. Once he was dead, he didn’t pose a problem to Harry’s plans. If Jack didn’t do it, and I was sure he hadn’t, why not Harry?

  I’d wound up where I was last night, only I was calm now and didn’t have shock and barely controlled hysteria as an excuse.

  I was so shaken by all the twists and surprises that had leaped at me from the dark, I was beginning to think I was learning something, getting smart. Harry had been the last one to betray my trust and he’d done it by loving me. I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t cope with it … but I could resolve not to be fooled again by any of them.

  I prayed to all that’s holy that he wouldn’t be stupid or brutal enough to tell Sally now. What had he said? He was going to have to deal with me? I didn’t even want to imagine what that might mean.

  But I couldn’t stop chewing at the questions. Harry could have been enraged at Venables’ presumption about establishing something with me … after Harry had been not only my first lover but a close, close friend for all the years since our affair. If Venables had behaved to Harry with the arrogance he had with me, I could see a man killing him. And if Harry had killed Venables, it might explain his willingness to put the blame on Jack … which would also have gotten Jack absolutely out of my life. … No, I couldn’t believe it.

  Wait, correction. I couldn’t have believed it a few days before. Now I could believe almost anything.

  But Harry? Impossible. I’d known him forever. Of course, I’d also known Jack forever, and he’d turned into someone else. Harry might have too. He had been to Jack’s apartment. He would know how seldom Jack locked the door. He knew all about that damn shotgun …

  He could have walked me home after the opening at the gallery, then have gone to Jack’s and gotten the gun, knowing that Jack would have gone anywhere in the world but directly home that night.

  Suddenly I’d managed to throw a real scare into myself.

  Real life intruded for a moment when Carlyle Leverett called. He asked me if the cop Antonelli, who reminded him of “a maiden uncle of mine,” had been snooping around me and I said not since my first conversation with him. Apparently he’d visited Leverett twice, centering most of his questions on Jack but not skimping the rest of us, either. “Do you think he’s serious about Jack?” Leverett asked me.
<
br />   “I suppose. It would help if they could find the murder weapon, but from what I’ve heard, they haven’t.”

  “Frankly, I’m rather worried about Jack. Antonelli has something serious in his eyes, behind all the avuncular trappings. How is Jack? What do you think?”

  “I think Jack’s pretty fatalistic about it. They’ll either charge him or not. As for me, I had some doubts … but, no, I don’t think he did it. I’d bet on it.”

  “Oh, hell, I know he didn’t kill that asshole. Though I wouldn’t mind shaking the hand of the chappie who did. Helping to keep New York clean, in my opinion. No, I just hope to high heaven they can’t pin it on Jack … what a mess that would be! Well, another bit of news on a happier note. I’ve heretofore neglected to tell you the results of the opening and the purchases since … Brace yourself, my dear—”

  “Oh, Lord, don’t tell me everyone backed out and decided they were drunk when they had you put those little stickers up.”

  “Hardly. Forty-six thousand dollars thus far, dear girl.”

  “You’re joking! You must be! Oh, Carl …”

  “And we’re not done yet. You really are established. And I am now officially clamoring for more.”

  “Ah. Well, we’ll see.”

  “It’s a seller’s market, let me remind you. Don’t be foolish now. Another show in January or February. Mark my words. This is no time to take a vacation, Belinda. I hate to be stern, but I’m being stern. We’ll talk next week. I’ll be cracking the whip, I assure you.”

  Once he’d hung up I skipped briefly around the loft thinking of the money, stopped and slumped over the wheel-of-fortune at the thought of fighting with him over moving on to a new series of paintings. I didn’t see how I could paint one more self-portrait, but I’d have to go carefully, work out one or two of the story paintings, and ease him into them. Tell him maybe I’d return to the others later. Ha! When I was ninety!

  I called Hacker. I had to tell him the way my mind had been working. It didn’t occur to me that doing so was an expression of precisely the kind of trust that had been blowing up with such regularity in my face. So I called him, but there was no answer. Dammit! I suddenly had to get hold of him. I didn’t want to wait. I called Mike Pierce and my instincts were good. He’d spoken with Harry and wanted to talk about Sally’s escapade of the night before—“Was it an accident like Harry said? Or … what?” Hearing the party line, I acknowledged that as far as I knew it was an accident, a case of somebody who’d been under a degree of sedation just forgetting how many pills she’d taken and taking a few too many. Mike didn’t sound as if he were absolutely convinced. But when I asked him if he knew where I might find Hacker, it turned out that he did. Or didn’t, rather. He’d had dinner with Hacker last night, who’d said he was going out of town to do some research for a few days. No, he didn’t say where he was going but he’d be back well within a week. Mike asked me if I was still angry about his thinking that things didn’t look so hot for Jack, and I said no, I understood how things must have looked to him. He, too, asked if I’d seen any more of Antonelli, and when I said no he seemed rather surprised. Apparently Antonelli was seeing the gentlemen in the case and writing off the ladies. In other words, he was presumably working on the same idea that I was—a friend of Venables must have killed him. Mike wanted to have dinner to talk things over.

  “There’s really something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” he said. “Now seems like a good time, all things considered.”

  “Oh-oh, that sounds like trouble,” I said.

  “Well, maybe. I don’t know. But it involves you and me and … gosh, it’s fairly complicated, Belinda. We’ll have to talk—”

  “I’ve got some things I have to do,” I said. “But I’ll call you. Give me a few days to get a couple things straightened out.”

  “Okay, but there is a kind of urgency.”

  “I’ll call you,” I said. “Really. I will.”

  I proceeded to take the bull by the horns and called Harry. He sounded much as ever when I asked him about Sally. “Oh, sure, Belle,” he said, “I picked her up this morning at the hospital. She’s feeling fine. Acts as if she doesn’t even fully remember what happened last night. Do you think maybe she did take an OD by accident?” He sounded vaguely hopeful.

  “You never know,” I said. “Maybe. Can I talk to her?”

  “She’s not here right now. But, listen, Belle, I want to see you, I’ve got to see you. After last night we really do have to talk. There are a lot of things I want to say to you, things I have to explain—”

  “Not now, not yet. Anything you’ve got to say to me can wait, it’s waited twenty years. Now, tell me where she is, Harry. Do you realize I haven’t spoken with her since Venables was killed? I didn’t even see her at the hospital. I miss her, Harry. I need to see her.”

  “Well, there’s a problem. She’s not here. She’s not in the city, I mean. You know what Schein said last night—so she went up to the cabin. It seemed like a good idea.”

  “She went up to the mountains? By herself?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “Listen to me. I couldn’t have stopped her if I’d wanted to. She was perfectly happy and absolutely determined. We didn’t have a fight, she wasn’t accusing me of anything, and I promise you, I didn’t say a word about last night.”

  “If you did, Harry, I’ll … I’ll …” I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d do.

  “You’ll be mad at me, I understand that, Belle. But I didn’t. It’s going to be good for her to get away. It’s quiet up there, it’s pretty, it’s maybe even cooler, she can swim—”

  “It’s crazy. She shouldn’t be alone. Schein would have a fit if he knew.”

  “Goddammit,” Harry exploded, “she’s still my wife and I was not about to argue with her, okay? You’re going to have to accept that. And if you don’t like it, Belle, you can go up there and keep her company. And anyway, her being gone will give you and me a chance to talk. You owe me some time, Belle—”

  “I owe you absolutely nothing,” I shouted at him. “Last night you betrayed the trust I’ve always put in you. You have needlessly complicated your own life, and mine too, to say nothing of poor Sally’s.”

  “The hell with poor Sally! What about poor Harry? I love you! Now I want to talk to you about it. I put myself on the line last night, I’m risking a lot, you can’t say you won’t talk to me! What’s the matter with you, anyway? There’s so much past between us, so much we’ve got to deal with. I’ve got to see you, I’m going to go right around the bend if I can’t hold you, Belle—”

  “All right,” I said tiredly, my anger waning: just one more person I couldn’t trust. “All right. But I can’t do it now. Let me call you in a couple days—”

  “Don’t leave me hanging too long, Belle. I’m warning you … please, for all our sakes, please. Think of the past, Belle—”

  “I am, Harry.” He was warning me. Harry was warning me and his voice sent a ripple of fear along my spine. He sounded like someone else, not the Harry I’d always known. Suddenly I wanted to stay out of his way. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking of, the past.”

  When I finally got off the phone, I went to the closet and dragged out an overnight bag and started throwing clothes at it. I checked to make sure I had my credit cards and counted out my cash. Luckily there was a couple hundred dollars so I wouldn’t have to stop at the cash machine, which was virtually always out of commission.

  All the answers lay in the past. What had Hacker said? We’re all just the sums of our pasts?

  There was only one thing left to do. Only one thing I could think of anyway. Hacker had chosen to disappear. Jack had his hands full with Antonelli and his own psyche losing one wheel at a time. Mike had just faded into the woodwork and I didn’t think I wanted to hear what he had to tell me. Harry was simply impossible and I couldn’t get away from the fact that he was scaring me almost every time he opened his mouth. And Sally was off doing God only knew wha
t in their Adirondacks cabin.

  So I was finally alone. At last.

  I was alone with only one place to go.

  The past. I was going back. …

  Chapter Thirty-four

  I WAS FAST BUT I wasn’t fast enough. I was heading along at top speed, wanting to get through the doorway into the past. I was packed, I’d run around giving the flowers and plants drinks, unplugging the fan, when the elevator began its racket and I heard voices. Naturally the door downstairs was open and someone had come in. I was set with a million excuses but I let them all die when I saw my guests.

  Antonelli and Mike Pierce came in looking faintly discomfited to be together. Antonelli said: “Mr. Pierce and I happened to arrive simultaneously, Mrs. Stuart. I saw no reason why he shouldn’t join us. What I have to say may also have some meaning to him. Do you have a moment? It is rather important.”

  He was smiling his principal’s smile and I had the feeling that somebody had been caught smoking in the john. Or worse. He had a flower in the buttonhole of his gray suit and I could smell his after-shave. Old Spice, just like my grandfather’s. I told them to come in. Mike didn’t explain his presence beyond raising his eyes at me and mouthing something I couldn’t decipher. Antonelli looked around the loft and nodded approvingly.

  “A lovely setting for a painter,” he said softly. “By the way, I did manage to stop by Mr. Leverett’s gallery and had a very nice guided tour of your work. Most impressive, absolutely delightful. I fully intend to bring my daughter down to see it—your focus, the concentration on detail, is amazing, Mrs. Stuart. The sense of proportion, the shadings …” He had spotted the wheel-of-fortune in the corner, stood surveying it from its base to the top of the wheel itself. “May I?” I nodded and he gave it a spin. Mike looked at me, shrugged his shoulders. Antonelli watched the wheel spin but didn’t wait for it to stop. He turned around. “But, to business, Mrs. Stuart.”