Eye Contact

by Michael Craft

  All along, Manning has suspected some connection between Zarnik’s ruse and Nolan’s murder; then on Sunday afternoon, he discovered a dossier linking Nolan and Carl Creighton; and now Roxanne has revealed some apparent connection between Creighton, the CFC, and Zarnik. It suddenly seems that the common thread in this mystery may be none other than Carl Creighton.

  Out of the blue, Manning asks Roxanne, “Do you happen to know if Carl was ever a student at the University of Chicago?”

  Though puzzled by the question, she answers, “Yes, as a matter of fact, he was an undergrad there. It’s the ‘Harvard of the Midwest,’ you know—nothing but the best for Carl.” With her empty glass, she toasts Carl’s alma mater.

  As Manning ponders all this, the conversation lapses. The boat has been drifting for some time now, and they are closer to the far shore than to the lodge, though still well out of earshot. Thinking, peering vacantly over the water, Manning notices a glint of chrome through the woods. He hadn’t realized there’s a back road that circles the bay, veering toward the shore here and there. Near one of the old piers, there’s a van parked among the trees. Its driver, a fisherman, has hauled his gear onto the pier, where he sits lazily in the early-afternoon sun, rod and reel in hand, line dangling in the water. Arrayed around him on the pier are a couple of tackle boxes, maybe a lunch basket, and an open umbrella.

  David breaks the lull. He asks whoever will answer, “Let’s suppose, for the sake of discussion, that Carl does play ball with the Crusade. I can understand how that might alarm Roxanne—they’re so totally bogus—but how does that involve Zarnik?”

  Roxanne tells him, “I never claimed to have any answers, but I’m certain that something weird is in the works, and I thought that Mark would appreciate the tip.”

  “Indeed I do,” Manning assures her, mustering a smile to mask his deeper concerns, one of which is his growing hunger. “Before taking on the mysteries of the cosmos, why don’t we have lunch?”

  Roxanne and David need no convincing. It’s nearly one-thirty, not only time to eat, but time to lighten their discussion and enjoy each other’s company. As they set about unpacking their meal and arranging it on the center table, they exchange idle pleasantries about the food, the boat, their plans for the holiday weekend. Roxanne must have truly charmed the caterer—the table is crowded with salads, pastas, huge chilled shrimp, a platter of sliced chicken breasts. They pick and scoop from the serving dishes at will, assembling plates to their own liking, drizzling them with an assortment of sauces.

  Roxanne refills her glass of iced tea from a carafe within reach of her chaise. The bottle of Far Niente is chilling in an ice bucket at Manning’s side, where David cannot reach it. As a not-so-subtle hint that the wineglasses are empty, David wets his fingertip and rubs it around the rim of his glass, causing it to chime again, far more loudly than before—he’s perfected his technique. So reverberant is the piercing, harmonic sound, Roxanne quits her fork and applauds with shouts of “Bravo!” Laughing, Manning turns to reach for the wine, and as he does so, his peripheral vision detects movement on the shore. He glimpses sideways just in time to see the fisherman drop his rod into the bay, grabbing at his ears with both hands.

  Manning leans over the table, signaling with a wag of his fingers that Roxanne and David should do likewise. With their faces only inches apart, he says to them in a voice that is barely a whisper, “You see that fisherman over there with the umbrella? He’s no fisherman, and that’s no umbrella—it’s some sort of listening device. He’s heard every word we’ve said.”

  Sweating and panting, jacket draped over his arm, Arlen Farber ducks into the shade of the canopy stretching taut from the polished new facade of the Gethsemane Arms Hotel. A glance at his watch tells him that it’s not quite three—thank God, he has a couple of minutes to put himself together.

  Shrugging into his jacket, he passes between two doormen who stand at attention with tacky foil-tipped spears. They wear centurion guard outfits, complete with sandals, skirts, breastplates, and brushy-topped helmets. One of the guys is really buffed and fits the role to a tee (he looks like Ben-Hur), but the other guard, who’s short and black with skinny legs, doesn’t quite fill the bill (in fact, he’s a dead ringer for Marvin the Martian in those Bugs Bunny cartoons). They’re both ridiculous, of course, but Arlen Farber has neither the time to notice nor the inclination to sneer. They’re actors doing a job, drawing a check, just as he is.

  Inside the doors, a cavernous lobby yawns before him, with huge tiers of marble stairs descending from the street level to the main reception room. The new air-conditioning system is not yet fully tweaked, and Farber is momentarily stunned by a chill that convulses his body. Strains of harp music waft through the space and echo from the stone walls. He needs to find a men’s room.

  Walking through a door marked Brethren (he didn’t see the ladies’ room and can’t imagine what they’d call it), he’s relieved that there’s no attendant. He’s never liked the idea of having someone wait for you, running water while you pee. Besides, he needs to be alone for a minute. He stands before the urinal, urinating, studying his face in the gold-framed mirror that hangs there. His eyes don’t look so great—he should have gone a tad easier on the Jack Daniel’s, but it’s easy to get carried away with Bette Davis. Zipping up, he crosses to the sink, splashes water on his face, and studies his face again. He musses his hair, looking instantly more absentminded. He chortles at the transformation, then calms himself, breathing deeply, and closes his eyes. Focusing inward, he thinks the thoughts of an Eastern European astrophysicist, entering the mind of a fusty genius. Arlen Farber opens his eyes. The man staring back from the mirror is Pavo Zarnik.

  Leaving the men’s room, Professor Zarnik crosses the lobby toward a bank of elevators, where there’s an enshrined reproduction of a Raphael painting in which a spaced-out John the Baptist (he looks like he’s high on something other than religion) points up. Zarnik gets into the first elevator, marked Chariot One, and presses the top button, marked Golgotha Suite. When his chariot arrives at Golgotha, the doors open, not with the expected ding, but with a tinny, digitized harp flourish. All this hokum would be laughable if Zarnik were to ponder it, but his mind is occupied instead with the uncertainties of the meeting to which he has been summoned.

  A nicely dressed young lady awaits him in the hall. “Good afternoon, Professor Zarnik.” She has a charming southern twang. “So nice of you to come see us on such a dreadful hot day. Can I getcha lemonade to take into your meetin’ with the board?”

  He’d prefer a julep. “Thank you, my dear. So kind of you to offer.”

  She fetches the lemonade, then leads him into the conference room, which is actually the dining room of the hotel’s finest suite. Around a big oval mahogany table sit perhaps a dozen men, no women. This is the governing board of the Christian Family Crusade, the organization’s Council of Elders. They stand as Zarnik enters, and one of the board members, a portly man in a slick black suit, introduces himself as Elder Burlington Buchman (though he’s not very old—fifty, tops), instructing Zarnik to be seated in the empty chair at one end of the table. His tone is humorless. His manner and accent lack the charm of the lady with the lemonade, whom he dismisses as soon as Zarnik sits.

  Buchman seems to be in charge of the meeting. He brusquely introduces the others at the table, who nod and grunt as their names are called. Most have titles of “Elder” or “Deacon.” There’s an archdeacon in the bunch, and Zarnik thinks he caught a subdeacon. But one of the men, sitting across from Zarnik at the opposite end of the oval, has no title; he is simply Mr. Creighton.

  Zarnik doesn’t know that the man is a lawyer, aged forty-nine. He doesn’t know that Carl Creighton has an aggressive edge that he often vents on racquetball courts as well as in courtrooms—today Carl Creighton gives no hint of that vitality and drive, watching the proceedings with a fixed, empty expression. Though seated, he is obviously an inch or two taller than six feet. His body
looks ten years younger than his years, but his hair has the opposite effect. Prematurely gray even in college, it is now pure white, and Zarnik wonders if it has been bleached.

  “Well,” Buchman drawls, “enough of the niceties. Do y’understand why we’ve had to call you here, Professor?”

  “Actually, no,” Zarnik answers. He removes his fingers from the glass of lemonade and dabs the cold condensation on his cheeks. “I would be grateful for some explanation.”

  Buchman defers to another board member, Elder Phipps, a shrunken old figure in a bad suit. Phipps doesn’t mince words. “You’ve been dabblin’ in some queer science, Professor. You’ve been preachin’ heresy. You’ve been raisin’ hackles.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Dr. Smarty-Pants. God created the universe in six days. On the seventh day, He rested. And now you come alone preachin’ this poo about a so-called ‘tenth planet.’ What the hell is that, Professor?”

  Zarnik is stunned. The man questioning him is such a ludicrous caricature, he wants to laugh. He wants to ask, Is this a joke or what? But he remembers his instruction—Play along and don’t rile them. He explains, “The tenets of modern astronomy were established by Copernicus nearly five hundred years ago. The theory of a solar system was convincingly argued—”

  Elder Phipps interrupts. “Can you show me any of that hooey in the Bah-ble?”

  “Of course not,” Zarnik tells him. “The Bible is an ancient book. Even the New Testament is two thousand years old.”

  “I rest my case,” Phipps says smugly, crossing his arms.

  “Do you suggest that the Bible was written as the culmination, the end-all, of human discovery and learning?”

  “I don’t ‘suggest’ anything, sir—I know it.”

  A murmur rises from around the table. Phrases like “You tell’m” and “Praise Jesus” and “Amen, brother” pop like balloons over the heads of the faithful.

  Zarnik says, “Clearly, then, we disagree. What do you expect me to tell you? One cannot contradict fact, can one?”

  “What arrogance!” says Phipps, puffing up his chest. “Facts be damned. ‘I am the way,’ our Lord Himself told us. ‘I am the way, the truth, and the light.’” Phipps grabs a pile of newspapers from the center of the table, poking with an arthritic finger at Zarnik’s front-page stories, at the congratulatory ads from the mayor’s office. “We have no need for your heathen, foreign science, riling up good, wholesome Americans with your blasphemous tales of godless worlds.” Seething, he flings the papers in disgust. They glide across the waxed mahogany table, coming to rest in a disarrayed heap in front of Elder Buchman.

  Sensing that Elder Phipps has perhaps overplayed the CFC position, Buchman adopts a conciliatory tone and, shoving the sleeves of his jacket halfway up his stocky forearms, leans forward on his elbows to tell Zarnik, “I hope you’ll forgive my esteemed colleague’s testy manner, but y’see, these are issues that cut to the very core of our Bah-ble-based beliefs. It don’t help none, either, that you’ve posed this challenge so quickly after arrivin’ here in our country.” Buchman cocks his head and smiles. It’s a false smile, toothy and menacing.

  Zarnik isn’t cowed, now that he sees so clearly what he’s dealing with. He sips his lemonade (daintily, hoping it will further annoy the elders) and tells Buchman, “I was always taught in my homeland that America prides herself as—how do you say?—the great melting pot. And yet, there are those who now espouse the concept of ‘America for Americans.’ It strikes me that such an isolationist attitude contradicts this great nation’s heritage. In the final analysis, are we not all, every one of us at this table, an immigrant people?” The elders visibly bristle at such a suggestion. Zarnik adds, “Then again, I am a foreigner, so I may be a smidge fuzzy on this issue.”

  Buchman condescends to explain, “The immigration policies of the past, though noble in theory, simply don’t apply to these present times, Professor. When our country was founded, it was a vast, untamed wilderness, in need of manpower from whatever corners of the earth to settle its new frontiers, to conquer its savage natives, and to spread the word of Jesus. With God’s blessin’, those goals have long been met, and our nation now faces a moral obligation to be a little more—shall we say?—selective in its policy toward outsiders. F’rinstance, I’m sure y’understand that it’s simply not in our interest to admit fast-breedin’ Hispanics, Muslims of any stripe, or the AIDS-infested. What’s more—”

  “Mr. Buchman,” Zarnik interrupts him, standing, “mind your words, lest you be branded a hypocrite.” The Council of Elders gasps as one. “Surely I need not preach to an assembly so devout as yours, but this discussion reminds me of a fable that is the heritage of my own homeland. It is a scrap of our history, far older than yours, that teaches a lesson in tolerance. May I share it with you?” Zarnik smiles.

  Clearly, Elder Buchman wasn’t expecting such a question. Hesitating, he looks to the other elders, who in turn exchange uncertain glances—but it’s Buchman’s call. Slowly, he leans toward Zarnik, the bare skin of his forearms squeaking on the polished table. Something in his steely stare tells Zarnik there is no interest in his parable of tolerance. Buchman’s mouth opens to comment. “When hell freezes ovah.”

  Angry voices swell around the table as the elders and deacons add their own invective to Buchman’s ruling—Zarnik’s matinee has bombed in the Golgotha Suite. Everyone is talking, everyone is laughing, except Zarnik, of course, and the man at the opposite end of the table. Carl Creighton looks down at a folder spread open before him, in which he calmly jots a few notes.

  After dinner, Manning, Roxanne, and David stroll outdoors from the dining room, bracing themselves against a lake breeze. Roxanne says, “I told you the evenings were chilly.” She snuggles inside a fuzzy knee-length sweater styled like a topcoat with giant buttons and a shawl collar. The guys wear lightweight blazers—Manning’s is linen, David’s is silk—over knit shirts buttoned to the neck.

  The sun has not yet set. These are the longest days of the year, and they stretch even longer this far north. But the sky’s western glow ends abruptly at the massed pines, which appear black and solid, like a craggy-topped wall constructed to keep out the light. Crickets choir antiphonally from their hidden cricket lofts. Locusts whir. David yawns.

  Manning says, “I know it’s been a long day, and we were all a bit rattled by Maxwell Smart this afternoon. But it’s too early for bed—there’s still light in the sky—so why don’t we check out the Poop Deck?”

  David’s not so tired after all. Gesturing toward the front door of the boathouse, he suggests, “Cocktails, anyone?” The three switch directions and head for the lounge, where lights beckon and music thumps.

  Opening the door, entering, Manning sees in a flash that Roxanne wasn’t joking earlier when she said that the place caters to an older crowd. David is now easily the youngest person in the room—Roxanne and Manning are next. The other patrons stop gabbing for a moment to inspect the new arrivals, raise a few eyebrows, and drift back to their drinks. “‘I just called [cha cha cha] to say [cha cha cha] I luuuv you,’” croons a one-man act in a burgundy jacket. He has a rhythm machine cranked so loud the windows throb, a keyboard with more controls than a Univac, and hair dyed so black it’s blue. Manning and David stifle a laugh while Roxanne grins, I told you so. They cross the nautical-themed room and settle at a table alongside one of the windows overlooking the bay. Near their table, a ship’s wheel is mounted to the floor. David can’t resist—it’s too loud to talk anyway—and he excuses himself from the table to take command of the wheel.

  At last the rhythm machine seems to run out of steam. Cha cha chunk. There’s a smatter of applause. The musician acknowledges the crowd, shuffles his sheet music, and … thank God, it’s time for his break. Heading for the bar, he grabs a few bills from his tip jar, a snifter the size of a muskmelon.

  Now that conversation is possible, David scoots back to the table, aski
ng, “What can I get you from the bar?”

  Manning tells him, “Straight vodka on the rocks with a twist of orange peel—Japanese vodka if they have it.”

  Roxanne is tempted, but no. “Perrier’s fine, or whatever.”

  As David turns to go to the bar, Manning asks him, “Got your wallet?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just charge the drinks to the cabin,” Manning tells him, “but they’ll probably card you—in this crowd.”

  David and Roxanne laugh. Yes, David is young, but his blazer, glasses, and mature bearing give him the air of a gentleman. Roxanne tells him in a coddling tone, “If the man gives you any grief about the booze, sweetheart, have him talk to Mommy.” As David traipses off to the bar, Roxanne’s lips ripple with a smile.

  Noting the direction of Roxanne’s gaze, Manning tells her, “He’s a great kid.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “No, seriously. He’s a hard worker, smart, well mannered. …”

  “Don’t tell me—he cooks too.”

  Manning laughs. “I wouldn’t know. My point is: when my editor first assigned him as my ‘assistant’ last week, I thought he’d just get in the way. But I was wrong. He’s been a great help, and I enjoy his company.”

  Roxanne leans close over the table. Her tone is confidential. “I’ll bet you do.”

  “I mean, he’s … interesting. I haven’t really known anyone of his generation. They’ve got some different ideas.”

  Roxanne leans back in her chair. Examining her nails at arm’s length, she ponders aloud, “I wonder if he likes older women.”

  Now it’s Manning’s turn to be coy. He leans toward her. “Don’t bank on it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  With a know-nothing shrug, he again tells her, “You’ll have to ask David.”

  David reappears with their drinks. “Ask me what?”