“This is a tough guy,” said Sims Lord, reporting back.
“Harrison Burns a tough guy? That’s a laugh,” said Jerry, laughing disagreeably. “We all used to think he was a little light in the loafers, if you want to know the truth.”
“I don’t mean tough, like tough in the boxing ring, Jerry. I mean a tougher kind of tough, like integrity tough.”
“Did you read him what the charges would be against him?” asked Gerald.
“I did. He already knew.”
“And?”
“I don’t think he cares. I think he’s prepared to take the consequences. I think he wants to clear his life of this. I think having him here to the house with the entire family might have been a terrible mistake. I think it might have reawakened his sleeping demons. That is what he called them, his demons. That is why he swims. He said it is the only time he feels at peace.”
“Fuck his demons. What’s the bottom line, Sims?” asked Jerry.
“I think this man is becoming increasingly a loose cannon in your lives.”
“Fatty Malloy sent me a newspaper clipping, Pa,” said Jerry. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of Sims until I had talked to you.”
“About what?” asked Gerald.
“From the Scarborough Hill paper.”
“About what?”
“It says, ‘Police see progress in Utley case, but won’t offer details.’ ”
“I thought that story was over and out seventeen years ago.”
“It says since Mrs. Utley offered her fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest, several things have come to light,” said Jerry.
“Bullshit,” said Gerald. “That’s a totally bullshit item, meant to scare. That’s all. Nobody knows anything, except us and Harrison.”
They looked at each other at the mention of Harrison’s name.
“That’s what I mean,” said Jerry.
“Where is he?” asked Gerald.
“He’s swimming.”
“He’s always swimming.”
“What are we going to do, Pa?” asked Jerry.
Gerald rose and walked to the window and looked out at the sea. “You handle it, Jerry. Do whatever you have to do. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be told. Understand? I don’t want to know anything.”
Jerry and Johnny Fuselli sat in the front seat of Constant’s red Ferrari Testarossa. The windshield was shattered from the accident. The grille and the left fender were badly damaged.
“Do you like this car?” asked Jerry.
“Oh, man, it’s my dream car,” said Johnny Fuselli. “How he could have fucked it up like this is beyond me. If I had a car like this, a Testarossa—I even like the sound of the name—I would be kissin’ its ass, morning, noon, and night.”
“It’s yours,” said Jerry.
“You’re kiddin’ me.”
“No. It’s yours. Pa said to give it to you. We’ll pay for all the repairs. There’s a guy in Southampton who repairs—”
“Have you asked Constant about this?” asked Johnny.
“He’d like you to have it, too,” said Jerry.
“Have you asked him? I mean, I don’t want to get my heart set on it, and then when he gets out of the hospital, he decides he wants it back, and then I got to give it up, after I fell in love with it.”
“Pa’s ordered him a new one.”
“Oh,” said Johnny. He thought for a moment. “What’s the catch?”
“There’s something I want you to do,” said Jerry.
“I figured that.”
“I’ll drive back to the city with you,” said Kitt.
“I guess I’m not getting the helicopter treatment on the way home,” said Harrison.
“There’s plenty of cars,” she said. “I have to play bridge at Sonny and Thelma’s. I promised Ma. We’ll go after that. All right? About six?”
“I don’t want any marks on him,” said Jerry. “It’s a drowning, no more.”
“The guy’s a great swimmer,” said Johnny Fuselli. “He can swim for hours. He can swim for miles. I watched him with the binoculars yesterday.”
“He’s a great swimmer who drowns,” said Jerry, quietly. “You wear a wet suit. You wear a mask. You swim out behind him. Wait until he’s past the beach club. Wait until he’s past the public beach. He won’t see you. He’s looking ahead of him. You go underwater. You swim under him. You grab his arm. Or his leg. And you pull him under. And hold him under.”
“And he’s supposed to think it’s a shark? Come on, Jerry.”
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks,” said Jerry. “The guy’s a danger, to you as well as us, you know.”
“Hey, listen, Jerry, this is not exactly in my line of work,” said Johnny. “I mean, let’s be totally practical here. For a secondhand Testarossa that’s just been wrapped around a telephone pole on the Montauk Highway, it’s not what you call an even deal.”
“Plus fifty thousand dollars,” said Jerry.
“That’s what I told the girl who was in the car with Constant she’d get,” said Johnny. “Plus her hospital bills.”
“Sixty thousand,” said Jerry.
“Pa, I want everyone out of the house this afternoon,” said Jerry. “I’ve made arrangements through Sims for you and Des and Sandro to play golf at the National. Be there at two. Don’t get home before five. Or later.”
“The National, huh?” said Gerald, impressed. “Wait till Webster Pryde sees us at the National. I wish Constant weren’t in the hospital. Then I’d have the whole crowd there.”
“Have Sims buy you some drinks when you finish.”
“What’s this all about, Jerry?”
“Just do it, Pa. I don’t want anyone in the house this afternoon, except Bridey and the maids,” said Jerry. “Maureen and Freddy are going over to Quogue to visit some girl she was at Sacred Heart with.”
“Where’s your mother going to be?”
“Ma and Charlotte and Kitt are going to play bridge at Sonny and Thelma’s.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to see the Madonna movie in the village.”
“You saw the Madonna movie in your own house last night.”
“I’m seeing it again. I don’t want anyone in this house except the maids this afternoon.”
Each day of his visit, Harrison swam a greater distance in the cold water. He entered the water on the beach at the end of the road where the Bradley house stood. He swam out two hundred yards offshore until he was well beyond the waves and kelp. Then he turned and swam in a northerly direction. He concentrated on a goal. The first day he swam three miles. The second day he swam four miles. That day he turned in a northerly direction, planning to swim five miles. From the shore he was only a small head in the water. Then he was nearly out of sight. Even with strong binoculars, he was difficult to pick up in the rolling sea. He was never in a hurry. His pace was steady. His stroke was unvarying. His feet were in perfect accord with his strokes. His speed never changed. After a half hour, the process of swimming became automatic to him. He did it without focusing on what he was doing. He concentrated all his energy into the center of his forehead. Oh, yes, oh, yes, he thought as a total calm came over him. He felt peace. He felt nirvana. He felt supreme.
Suddenly, from below, from beneath the surface, Harrison’s right foot was grabbed from behind in a viselike grip. He snapped from his reverie, and chills of fear passed through his body. Trying to swim forward, he felt himself being pulled from behind. In an instant, Johnny Fuselli locked the foot beneath his arm and with both his hands grasped Harrison’s legs above the knee as hard as he could and pulled him down beneath the surface. He released one hand from the leg and grabbed Harrison’s hair and held his head under the water. Harrison kicked furiously with his left foot. His heel connected with Fuselli’s face, and the water became clouded with blood. Fuselli let go of Harrison’s body.
On the surface, gasping for breath, both men vomited wat
er from their lungs. Exhausted, they lay on their backs trying to regain their breath.
“I didn’t take you for a killer, Johnny,” said Harrison. “A remover of records, yes. A buyer-off of witnesses. A dumper of garbage bags, filled with evidence, but not a killer.”
“You would have been my first,” said Johnny.
“Look what I’ve spared you,” said Harrison. “There better not be any sharks around, or we’re both going to be goners, with all this blood.”
“You broke my nose,” said Johnny. He was having difficulty breathing. He put his hand to his heart. “You got some kick for a drowning man.”
“Who put you up to this? Gerald or Jerry?”
“Be careful of Jerry. He’s the one who’s out to get you.”
“You fucked up your assignment, didn’t you?”
“My heart was never in it,” said Johnny.
“Jerry’s going to be one freaked-out Bradley when he sees me walk in that house.”
“I think I’m having a heart attack,” said Johnny, sick and exhausted, his arms flailing, he choked and coughed.
“Johnny, I can’t drag you in. I would if I could, but I can’t. That fight tired me out. I don’t even know if I’m going to make it myself.”
“I’m too old for this line of work. I was going to be forty-six tomorrow. Once, I thought I was going to make the Olympic team.”
“Sorry I broke your nose.”
“Harrison, listen to me. You’re a nice guy.”
“Johnny, there’s something I’ve got to know. You’re the only one who can tell me. And I’ve got to know, John. Please.”
“What?”
“The garbage bag.”
“Huh?”
“The garbage bag that was in the trunk of Bridey’s car on the day Winifred Utley was murdered.”
“I don’t know.”
“Johnny, you drove her car, a Pontiac, and dumped the bag, the bag with the baseball bat and the bloody clothes that Constant wore when he killed Winifred Utley. Where did you dump the bag? Tell me, tell me. Please, Johnny. These guys, your great friends, the Bradleys, they were turning you into a murderer, Johnny. And if you’d been caught, you would have taken the rap, not them. Where did you dump the garbage bag, Johnny? Don’t go under, Johnny. Tell me. It could be your salvation. Don’t go under. Don’t, Johnny.”
13
It was six o’clock. Charlotte, carrying white peonies from Grace’s garden, had gone to the Southampton Hospital to visit Constant. “Oh, he’s so much better, really,” she replied to a reporter’s query. “That accident wasn’t a bit serious. A few scratches, a few stitches. More of an inconvenience, really. He’s so anxious to get on with the campaign in Connecticut. Yes, aren’t these lovely peonies. They’re from my mother-in-law’s garden.”
“When will we be able to see him?” asked the reporter.
“Soon, I think. He should be getting out in a day or so. It wasn’t a bit serious.”
Since Constant’s accident on the Montauk Highway, Charlotte had been dutiful in her hospital visits to her husband. She arrived each day, gifts in hand, and spoke charmingly to one persistent reporter who waited each day for news, always engaging her in conversation. She did not know that the reporter was named Gus Bailey. She did not know that Gus Bailey had once firmly believed that a cover-up had taken place in the investigation of the murder of Winifred Utley years back in Scarborough Hill. She did not know that because of his persistence Gus Bailey had lost his job at the Scarborough Hill Times, which had mysteriously been bought and closed down. She did not know that Gus Bailey had moved away and resided for sixteen years in Los Angeles. She did not know that her husband had once been questioned during the investigation of the murder of Winifred Utley. She did not even know that there had been such a person as Winifred Utley.
The fact that Constant had been drunk and that he had had in the car with him a woman named Wanda Symanski, who had been transferred to a hospital in Garden City, had not appeared in the newspapers. Inside, in Constant’s room, Charlotte sat each time for fifteen minutes before returning to her car. In those fifteen minutes, she rarely spoke to her husband unless there was a nurse or doctor in the room. Instead, she watched the news on television or read a magazine until the appropriate time for a hospital visit was over.
The rest of the family had returned from their various afternoon pursuits. Drinks were being passed in the loggia.
“Any calls, Bridey?” asked Jerry, when he returned from the movies.
“No, sir,” said Bridey.
“Any callers?” he asked.
“No. Were you expecting someone?”
“No, no. Just curious.”
“Did you see Harrison, Bridey?” asked Kitt.
“No, Miss Kitt. I haven’t seen him since he went out to go swimming at about two,” said Bridey.
“Surely, he should be back by now,” said Kitt. She glanced at her watch.
“Jerry, you didn’t go to see that disgusting movie again? I don’t believe it,” said Maureen. “Freddy and I walked out on it last night.”
“Father Bill said that the Vatican asked Catholics not to see her concerts in Italy,” said Grace.
“That only sold more tickets, Ma,” said Jerry. “How was the golf, Pa?”
“The senator was the big winner today,” said Gerald, making an expansive gesture toward Sandro. He and his son were playing backgammon. “I wish you could have seen our friend from next door, Mr. Webster Pryde. He was in a foursome playing just behind us. Then, on the fourth hole, some charming lady recognized Sandro and insisted on getting his autograph. And then she wanted him to meet her husband, and we had to wait until his golf cart caught up with us, and all the time Webster was waiting to play. He was furious. It did my heart good.”
“I guess I’m in the wrong business,” said Des. “No one asks doctors for their autographs. You have to be a movie star or a senator, I guess.”
“If you’d listened to your old man way back when, you’d have them lined up getting your autograph,” said Gerald. “I wanted all my boys to be in politics.”
“Oh, Pa, don’t start that again,” said Des.
“I don’t understand why Harrison isn’t back,” said Kitt. “It’s not possible to swim this long. You can’t swim for four hours.”
“Maybe he went to visit Constant in the hospital,” said Grace. “Isn’t he supposed to write a book or something? Wasn’t that the whole point of having him here? Didn’t someone tell me that?”
“Yes, that’s probably where he is, at the hospital,” said Jerry. “Charlotte can bring him back.”
“I must admit,” said Grace, “that I am very disappointed that Harrison has given up his religion. I was really quite shocked last night when he told me that. And he’s separated from his wife, and there’s two little children. Can you imagine? It probably has something to do with that business with his family, his parents being murdered, and all that, and no brothers and sisters. He never had a proper family life. Except for us, I suppose. Did you know he married Claire Rafferty? Did you know that, Maureen?”
“Yes, Ma, I knew,” said Maureen.
“The thing about marriage is, you just work it out,” said Grace. “You just don’t run off and separate every time you have a little spat.”
“I’ve never been such a fan of Harrison’s as you have, Ma,” said Maureen. “I think he’s a user. I think he’s used all of us in this family to get ahead. Beware of scholarship students who get too friendly is what I always say. Jerry and I have been on to Harrison for years, haven’t we, Jerry?”
“I never liked the guy,” said Jerry.
“You see?” said Maureen.
“You are hateful, Maureen,” said Kitt, in a low voice. “You are really hateful.”
A doorbell rang.
“That’s probably Harrison,” said Grace. “Wouldn’t you think he’d just walk in and not ring the doorbell? Now, you must stop talking about him, Maureen. And you too, Jer
ry. I’ve always had a soft spot for Harrison, and I know one day he’ll come back to the Church. They always do.”
Bridey walked into the room. “It’s a taxi. Did someone order a taxi?” she asked. “He said he was told to come here to this address.”
Murmurs of no went through the room. “There’s some mistake, Bridey,” said Grace. “Why in the world would someone need a taxi in this house with all those cars out there? Unless it’s one of the maids. Is one of the maids going into the city, Bridey?”
“No, ma’am,” said Bridey. “Not that I know of. I’m sure I would have been told. Not since Maureen fired Nanny the day before yesterday. She ordered a taxi.”
Down the stairs walked Harrison carrying his two bags. “I ordered the taxi, Bridey,” he said. “I’m catching the seven-oh-two train into the city.”
“I didn’t know you were in the house, Harrison,” said Bridey. “When did you come back?”
“Oh, a while ago. There was no one around, so I went right upstairs.”
Jerry, stunned, looked at Harrison and then over at his father.
“Harrison,” said Kitt, “we’ve all been worried about you. I was about to call out the Coast Guard. I just finished saying no one could swim for four hours.”
“Could you give these bags to the driver, Bridey,” said Harrison as he walked into the room and over to Grace. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Bradley,” he said. He ignored Gerald Bradley. He ignored Maureen. He walked over to Kitt. “Good-bye, Kitt,” he said.
“I don’t understand, Harrison,” said Kitt. “I’ll drive you back to the city. There’s no reason for you to take the train.”
“No, thank you, Kitt. I’m going to go on the train.” He walked out of the room to the hall.
Kitt followed him. “Harrison, what’s happened? Something’s wrong. I can tell.”
“Ask him,” said Harrison, pointing to Jerry. He walked out the front door.
“What is it, Jerry?” asked Kitt.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Jerry. Jerry, ashen, followed Harrison outside.
Harrison opened the door of the cab. “The railroad station,” he said to the driver as he got in. He rolled down the window and looked out at Jerry. Gerald and Kitt were behind him. “Do you remember when we used to be shocked by murder, before it became an everyday thing, Jerry?”
A Season in Purgatory Page 30
