Dirty White

by Brian Freemantle

  “I think lemonade would be OK,” she said.

  “Lemonade’s fine.”

  She came around from the security of the kitchen area and handed him the glass; he couldn’t feel the sun’s heat from her any longer.

  “I’ll have to call Brennan; we must get Batty and Jones down to look at the offices and make the final decision.”

  “Yes,” he said. The thought of the others arriving—like sharing a beach—seemed intrusive. “The air conditioning is on high. Careful you don’t catch cold.”

  “I’m OK.”

  “Sure?”

  “Don’t fuss.”

  She seemed to become aware that they were standing too close together and moved away.

  “I’ll call Eastham, too,” he said, hurrying for neutral territory. “See if I can visit before it becomes busy.”

  “How long might that be? Before we become busy, I mean?”

  “There’s no knowing,” said Farr. Suddenly wondering if there was a point to the question, he said, “You got somewhere you want to go, first?”

  She smiled at him. “No.” She wasn’t wearing any makeup and her face and legs were shiny with sun oil.

  “So here’s to us,” he said, raising the lemonade glass.

  “Here’s to us,” she responded.

  “Don’t get mad.”

  “About what?”

  “Just don’t get mad.”

  She looked at him curiously, face serious. “I don’t make any promises when I don’t know what I’m promising.”

  “It’s harmless.”

  “Still no.”

  “Honestly.”

  “Still no.”

  “We’re celebrating, right?”

  “Right,” she agreed, still doubtful.

  He took the coral jewelry box from his pocket and handed it to her. “Celebration,” he said.

  Harriet didn’t open it at first; and glanced down only fleetingly at the box. She remained instead looking directly at him holding the container in such a way as to suggest that she hadn’t actually accepted it. “Why?” she asked.

  “Celebration, like I said.”

  “I heard what you said.”

  “That’s what it is …” Anxious to ease the tightness between them Farr said, “I bought it on my American Express card; it didn’t come out of operating funds. We don’t stand a chance of getting caught in one of Mann’s auditing inquiries.”

  She allowed the smile, briefly rewarding his effort. “I thought we reached an understanding?”

  “We did,” agreed Farr. “What’s this got to do with it?”

  “Nothing?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  She opened it at last and remained looking down at the pinned and arranged set longer than he expected she would. When she finally looked up, she said, quiet-voiced, “They’re beautiful. Thank you.” Abruptly, she shivered.

  “I told you about getting cold. Shall I turn the air conditioning down?”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t that sort of cold.”

  “You going to try them on?”

  “Of course, I’m sorry.”

  Farr realized that he hadn’t known whether or not she had pierced ears and was glad that she had. She had trouble with the necklace and accepted his offer of help. He carefully stood apart from her, ensuring that his hands didn’t come into any contact with the back of her neck, only the clasp itself.

  “Thank you.” She moved away the moment it was secured to the small mirror against the far wall. “They’re beautiful,” she said, without turning to him. “They look very nice.”

  “I’m glad you like them.”

  She turned back into the room. “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she said awkwardly.

  She looked little-girl lost and Farr wanted to reach out and pull her to him—actually, for the briefest, passing moment, considering it. But he didn’t. The silence between them solidified. Then he said, “I’m glad I did.”

  Suddenly reminded—and suddenly busy—she said, “I made salad for lunch. And chilled soup.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Maybe I should change?” She contemplated the short top.

  “It’s very cool in here,” he agreed, wanting to help her.

  “I’ll be a minute.”

  Farr remained where he was, watching her enter the bedroom and firmly close the door behind her. Without thought, he went to the window, gazing out at the furrowed water, silvered by the sun, popping at the shingle. Far out to sea an unknown cruise liner approached on its bus-stop tour of the Caribbean, heading toward unseen Georgetown just beyond the headland. Farr wondered how many more black-coral necklaces and matching earrings Passman’s would sell before the day was out. He heard her reenter the room. By the time he turned, she had regained the redoubt of the kitchen and was smiling at him across the breakfast-bar barrier. She had cleansed her face, so that it was no longer shiny with oil and perspiration, and combed her hair, straining it back from her face into a chignon behind. The style showed off the necklaces and the earrings, which, he supposed, was deliberate.

  “I guess the others will come down quite soon, now that it’s all set up?” she said.

  “When will you call?”

  “This afternoon, I suppose.”

  “Won’t they think this is funny?”

  “What?”

  “Us in the same house?”

  “They’ll learn soon enough that nothing is funny,” she said. “We need cover. Occupying the same house stops any outsider trying to get involved with me. And removes the need for you to appear like any normal man and seek company elsewhere. It’s practical.”

  “As long as they see it as just practical.”

  She laughed at him openly. “Worried about your reputation, Mr. Farr?”

  He laughed back at her. “No, yours.”

  “My problem,” she said. After a pause, she went on, “Although I haven’t done too well with it so far, have I?”

  Farr ignored the invitation to self-pity. “So you don’t want any different arrangements?”

  “Not unless you do,” she said. “There’s something else, too.”

  “What?”

  “This way I’m protected, against the others.”

  “Do you think you need protection?”

  “I don’t know. I think Mann could become a nuisance.”

  “This wasn’t a role I had foreseen for myself,” he said.

  Harriet immediately became serious. She half moved, as if to reach across the narrow divide for his hand, and then held back. “That was selfish of me and I’m sorry. If you want to move out, then of course you must. Bloody selfish.”

  “I don’t want to move out.”

  “There’s something I want to say before the others come. I think you’ve been fabulous. Not just the way you’ve set things up so quickly. To me, too.”

  “I’ve enjoyed being with you,” said Farr. “All the time.”

  “I’ve enjoyed being with you, too …” She fingered the necklace. “I appreciate it—all of it.”

  Farr completed the gesture she had been unable to make, feeling across the minuscule dining area for her hand. She let him take it, leaving it lifeless under his touch. Embarrassed, he withdrew. “Sorry,” he said. “I forgot I said I wouldn’t do that.”

  She smiled at him sadly. “It’s still too soon,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t, but it’s still far too soon.”

  He was about to reply when the telephone shrilled. It was still rare for them to get any calls and they both jumped. Farr answered it, because he was actually in the lounge. It was a short, clipped conversation, because there was not a lot to say. Farr thanked Halpern and said he’d make arrangements to come up right away; he wasn’t sure of the flights, but thought he could possibly make it late that night or certainly early the following morning, depending on the connections.

  “What is it?” said Harriet, coming out int
o the main room.

  “Howard’s made a run for it,” said Farr. “They thought they could relax security and he’s made a run for it.”

  It wasn’t working, not as Gomez intended—the final part, that was. The shipping arrangements were perfect. Despite Gomez’s distrust of the man, Navarra fully supplied the first transaction, providing a total of five hundred and eighty-five kilos, all of which reached Scarletti’s distribution network without any difficulty. Scarletti paid promptly as arranged, so by the end of the first month, the agreement showed Gomez a personal profit of four million dollars. Moving it on—putting it to work, which was as important as everything else—was the problem. Advised by the urbane New York lawyer, Gomez opened safe deposit accounts in five Manhattan banks and had to rent additional boxes at three of them to accommodate the growing bulk of the money. Keeping it static annoyed him and he was worried by the need for frequent trips to New York, although he remained confident that no agency established any sort of make upon him. To minimize the risk he had Ramos, the only one he could trust, make a collection run. Gomez naturally saw Lang on every visit he made, not bothering to conceal his impatience. By the fourth meeting, that impatience had become anger.

  “This isn’t what I wanted; what was agreed to.”

  “As high yield as possible, but this isn’t risk money. Nothing bizarre, just because it’s got a high return,” quoted the lawyer verbatim.

  “Just that,” said Gomez. “Which doesn’t mean dead money locked up in cash boxes.”

  “I’m well aware of what it means and what it doesn’t mean,” said Lang calmly. “Do you want an investment that’s solid and productive or something we’ve got to cut and run from?”

  “You don’t have to ask me a question like that.”

  “And you don’t have to become impatient and challenge me. We’ll move when it’s right. When it’s safe and profitable and right. Which is how we safeguard what you’ve got and make it grow, as you want it to.”

  “When?” persisted Gomez.

  “Soon,” promised Lang. “Very soon now.”

  It was too slow, thought Gomez. Maybe he’d made a mistake in not using José Rivera, like he’d always done. He’d make contact as soon as he got back to Colombia.

  12

  Howard sat balled up in the customary fetal position but no longer was he rocking back and forth, and there were other, more marked differences: his face and hands and arms weren’t greased with sweat and his hair appeared to be freshly washed, and no smell permeated the room.

  “So I fucked it,” announced the boy.

  “What do you think you fucked?” said Farr, refusing the invitation to outrage at the defiant obscenity.

  “Getting out, what else?”

  “I would have thought you would have fucked it by getting out,” said Farr.

  Howard looked at him, shaking his head in exaggerated contempt. “They wouldn’t have caught me.”

  “They did catch you, stupid!”

  “Hadn’t got time to get clear.”

  “So they caught you!” persisted Farr. “So you didn’t make it and you couldn’t have made it. And what would you have done if you had?”

  “Made out OK.”

  “How, to feed your habit? Stealing? Pimping maybe, persuading some girl as much a mess as yourself that she could earn enough for both of you on her back with her legs spread out?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s your ambition? To be a thief? Or a pimp?”

  There was a shrug. “Maybe.”

  The attitude—a mix of apathy and insolence—was as calculated to upset him as the use of the word fuck, Farr decided. He said sneeringly, “And you couldn’t even succeed in that, could you? They caught you, just two hours after the big breakout, doing something stupid and obvious like hanging around the Greyhound bus center waiting for the Boston departure. Thieves and pimps are smart some of the time, streetwise for a while. You don’t even qualify to be a thief and a pimp, do you, Howard?”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Say it,” demanded Farr.

  Howard frowned at him. “Say what?”

  “Go on,” urged Farr. “Show me what a great big hard guy you are. Keep saying fuck until I become convinced.”

  The boy looked away, hands white as they gripped around his legs. “Son of a bitch!”

  “An extensive vocabulary!” said Farr, riding his son. “Bet you know some more: words that are really going to shock me. Going to try for them!”

  “Why don’t you fuck off?”

  “Why don’t you grow up? Why don’t you accept that you’ve fucked up—it’s your word, so let’s use it—and you’re back among people trying to help you, and that you can’t get out; you tried it and you failed, and if you try again you’ll eventually be caught and the judge who didn’t think much of you anyway is going to send you away for a long time.”

  “That supposed to frighten me?”

  “It frightens me. For you,” said Farr.

  “I’ll get by OK.”

  “But you can’t, Howard,” said Farr. “You’re a failure. The original big no-no. You couldn’t be a student, because it was too hard for you when you actually had to work. So you tried to become the big-time dealer and you couldn’t do that either, so you got caught. You tried to break out of here and you couldn’t manage that either. You can’t get by. You can’t do anything. You know your only ability? The only thing you’re good at.’ Being a failure …” Farr stopped holding up his hand. “Wrong expression,” he said. “We’re talking tough-guy language, aren’t we? You’re only good at fucking up …” Farr made a circle from his thumb and forefinger. “The original Mr. No-no,” he repeated.

  “You all through?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a pain in the ass.”

  “You’re a pain in the ass, Howard. You’re the stupid little prick who’s so frightened of growing up that he’s got to block out the nasty fairies by pumping shit into his arm or shit up his nose, who thinks the way to solve everything is by running away.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “So why’d you bother?”

  “Bother about what?”

  “To come.”

  “Because it isn’t a bother. Because you’re my son. Because, unlike you, I don’t run away, just because something is unpleasant.”

  Howard unwrapped his legs, freeing his hands, and gave a slow, mocking round of applause.

  “That’s another failure.”

  “What the hell are you talking about now?”

  “Cynicism,” said Farr. “You’re lousy at it.”

  “You really don’t like me, do you?”

  “At the moment it’s difficult,” said the broker. “Very difficult. And it’s not liking anyway. It’s love. At the moment I despise you. I feel sick, physically sick, knowing what you’ve done and how pitiful you are, when you talk. Ashamed, too. Very ashamed. Because I know I haven’t done enough and because I think that, had I tried harder, then maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t have become the shitty mess that you are now. But none of it is stopping me loving you. When you were a baby and helpless, I wiped your ass and dried your nose and sat with you until you went to sleep. Because you were a baby and helpless. Which is what I think you are now. A baby, who doesn’t know any better.”

  “I’d say that was chapter three or perhaps chapter four of the Family Psychology Manual: the bit under the heading ‘Bringing the Recalcitrant Son to his Senses,’” said Howard.

  “Jesus, what an asshole you are!” said Farr. “You sit crunched up like a scene out of about a hundred French movies. The whole thing’s a charade, an attention getter! And your dialogue’s the same! You haven’t said anything original since I came into the room.”

  “Some of your lines have been pretty corny, too.”

  “OK, so they’re corny! At least they’re sincere. Yours are bullshit, straight from some script you thoug
ht was good at the time.”

  “At the risk of it actually sounding like a film script, just where is this getting us?”

  “Nowhere,” said Farr. “Just like the treatment and the help you’re receiving here is getting nowhere. Because we’re still going through the film-script macho shit.”

  “So if it’s getting nowhere, why stay? Like I said before, why not fuck off?”

  “Because, like I said before, I don’t run away from something just because it looks difficult. That’s your way.”

  Howard unfolded himself elaborately, stretching out on his bunk. “So! What do we talk about? How about the future of the world?”

  “What’s the future of your world?”

  The boy turned his head sideways quickly. “Sharp, Dad! Very sharp!”

  “Cop out, asshole! Cop out! Answer the question!”

  The boy’s head jerked back—so that he didn’t have to look at his father—as quickly as it had come around when he thought he had a point to score. “You’ve done the conscience number, Dad. You’ve interrupted a busy work schedule and done the boring shuttle run to show me that you care and, if it helps a little, OK, I’m grateful for your interest. But we haven’t got anything to say to each other like we haven’t had for a long time. So why don’t we call it a day?”

  Farr couldn’t see any purpose in remaining either but he refused to leave on terms of dismissal: when he left, he wanted it to be his decision. Was that right? He wished he’d had more time with Halpern, had more guidance. But then he hadn’t been able to anticipate how bad this encounter would be. “Run! run! run!” he taunted.

  Still staring up at the ceiling, Howard said, “I can’t understand what the fuck you’re trying to prove.”

  “I’m not trying to prove anything,” said Farr. “I am trying to tell you something. I’m trying to tell you how much you’ve hurt me and how disappointed I am, but most of all how frightened I am. I am frightened, Howard. Frightened to fuck. I guessed you were going to run; said so. Said that I didn’t think you wanted to be cured—which is what frightens me most. Because I don’t understand. I don’t understand how a kid with all the advantages you’ve had does dope to the extent that you’ve done. I can understand the curiosity and the experimentation. Like everyone gets drunk. But they don’t stay drunk, not all the time. I can’t understand why you need to speedball and freebase, like I couldn’t understand it if you became an alcoholic. No one can enjoy being an addict, like you’re an addict. You’ve got a chance that a lot of kids haven’t. A chance to kick the habit and go straight. Yet you don’t want to know! That’s what I can’t comprehend: why, having been helped out of the hole, you’re so determined to jump back in. So tell me! I know I haven’t been as close to you as I should have been—we’ve been through that—but …” Farr’s face tightened at the artificial way in which Howard was keeping his eyes closed, as if he were asleep. “So, tell me,” he repeated. “Tell me the reasons for doing what you’re doing.”