by Dick Cluster
Meredith stopped and stood her ground. She gave him the carpenter’s-level stare.
“You’re determined to keep your rendezvous with Tochter Cynthia, then?”
Alex took back his hand, in fact put both hands in his back pockets. He was still wearing the outfit he’d put on for the police, and he felt not quite like himself. He nodded.
“Well, what can I say, then? I can’t say that I like it. I’ve had to grow accustomed to the idea of your disappearance, in an ultimate sense. That makes me more sensitive, I suppose. But I won’t nag or bluster where I can see that others have already failed. So Tuesday I cancel my morning seminar, we meet Father, and I kiss you good-bye at Victoria Station.”
“But?” Alex said.
“But— I love your enthusiasm. You’re tenacious, and I love that too. You’ve embarked on this, and I don’t want the role of making you give it up. What scares me is your impulsiveness. Someone makes you an attractive offer, and off you go. It’s not the waving good-bye, but never knowing which way you might be turning next. After Hannover, for instance.”
“On to Berlin, apparently. With Cynthia. Does that bother you?”
“In the short run. A strange city, a mission, a mysterious woman whom you’ve traveled four thousand miles to meet. In the long run, I’m more concerned about your safety. Now we’re taking the tube to Soho and a very good little Indian place on Gerrard Street. We’ll pick up the car on the way back. Are you sure you want to be doing this to your stomach?”
“Hot spiced brinjal and greasy puffed poori, with Cytoxan and steroid for chasers. I’ve got the cravings of a pregnant lady again.”
Alex regretted those words as soon as they left his lips. They were a stock phrase for him, but not one he used with Meredith when he could help it. Meredith had been pregnant only once, at twenty, and only briefly then. She’d been married later, but she claimed to have seen clearly that the marriage wasn’t good enough for kids. Now, with Alex, it wasn’t a question of good enough or not. The half-stepmothering of Maria was all she stood a chance to get. Alex wished he could take back the sentence, but more he wished he could take back and rearrange all the events of the past nine months.
Meredith took no notice, overtly at least. “I’ve got the cravings of a woman who’s been sleeping by herself too long,” she said. “Let’s get you your food, though. First things first, on a Sunday morning.”
12. Hackney Carriage
Meredith was staying with friends in Hackney, East London. On the way home she swung by the local open-air market, set up on a dead-end street. The vendors— Asian and Caribbean as well as English— displayed clothes, cosmetics, record albums, hanging poultry and meat, and unfamiliar fish on ice. Meredith bought a big fish to contribute toward dinner— a whole one, gray-blue, filleted on the spot. From a skinny, dreadlocked Jamaican youth, Alex picked up a UB-40 album to smooth his meeting with Cynthia Meyer. He asked whether Meredith knew of any special symbolism attached to a white rose.
“Purity, for one. The House of York as opposed to Lancaster, also. And it was the emblem of a German anti-Nazi youth underground, during the war.”
A few blocks from the market, she pulled up in front of a three-story row house of chipped brownstone. A big, hearty man burst from the house, with red cheeks and a broad chest like a Scandinavian logger. “Here,” he insisted, exchanging glances with Meredith during the opening of the trunk. “Here, Alex, let me take your things.”
“This is Mark,” Meredith said. “You spoke on the phone.”
Alex could not work up much interest. Yes, Mark from the phone, married to Janice, Meredith’s old schoolmate, now a free-lance TV producer. They shared the house with a medical student, an exiled painter from Chile, and some offspring, though Alex couldn’t remember whose.
Inside, the grownups were gathered around tea and toast and beer. The lived-in living room was scattered with newspapers, glasses and cups, and a pile of Legos in disarray. Alex, at a loss, wished he could plop down and build something out of the bright plastic blocks. Maria had lately been outgrowing hers.
Janice brought him beer but looked him over coldly. After a while the beer took its toll, and he felt it was okay to plead exhaustion. That was more polite, certainly, than pleading discomfort, or boredom, or a-month-since-we-last-fucked. Meredith showed him to the third-floor room she was using, still in the process of renovation. The steep roof was covered only by foil-backed fiberglass and gray plastic sheeting, but on the floor rested a new, thick, double mattress. Alex plunged happily onto this bed, managing to strip off the clothes he’d put on the afternoon before. “Ugh,” Meredith said. “If you want to take a bath, I’ll be here when you get back.”
Alex took one, in an old claw-footed tub with a makeshift shower dangling precariously overhead. He nearly fell asleep, but revived and returned to slide gratefully under clean sheets and a musty comforter. He watched Meredith undress, began to relearn after absence the freckled shoulders, breasts rosy and gentle, hipbones almost sharp, legs not long but trim. He could barely keep his eyes open, but he had a fond reawakened memory of warm skin on skin. He could think of nothing more important, right then, than being made love to.
When he awoke, in pitch dark and cold, he could dimly recall the feeling of mouths and tongues and hands and genitals all seeking mutual reassurance, of coming inside Meredith and of her coming on and around him. Now he was alone, and what had awakened him was not a warm lover beside him, but the nightly rush of lifeless steroids within. He rummaged, shivering, bouncing from one foot to another, to pluck clean clothes from his bag. He found underwear, jeans, and a sweatshirt, and tiptoed downstairs.
In the strange house he felt like a burglar— nerves zinging and alert for sounds. He tiptoed down past a darkened second story till he heard voices from the kitchen below. “What I know,” Janice was saying, “is that you seem to be in love with the man, Professor Phillips. And it’s been quite a while since that was true. You may not trust your feelings, but I do. What I’d like to know…” Janice paused, and Alex, sensing the drift of the conversation, began to ease his feet guiltily back up the stairs. “What I’d like to know,” the irritating, self-assured accent trailed after him, “is whether the man plans to stick with you, once you’ve got him past the transition you’re seeing him through.”
“Yes,” Alex whispered piously. “Yes, the man does.” And he meant it. But after that he forgot Meredith, forgot her housemates, forgot the Legos and his daughter far away. He began to imagine what it was going to be like to confront Jack Moselle. The high-powered prednisone had whisked him through eight or ten scenarios— some triumphant, some disastrous— by the time Meredith returned. Then Alex was content to be talked into a sleeping pill, to drift somewhat more slowly, and at last to sleep.
* * *
In the morning— Monday morning, it was— Alex woke up late, and once more alone. When he stood too quickly from the mattress, he saw spots and immediately sank back down. That went with a generally pale and washed-out feeling, yet he was pleased. Today he did not have to take any pills.
In the empty kitchen he found dirty dishes in the sink and a telegram addressed to him, unopened on the table. For a while he let the sleeping telegram lie. He washed red wine residue out of a pair of long-stemmed glasses. He rinsed dregs of cornflakes and milk from a jumble of breakfast bowls. He put the kettle on for tea. Then he opened the cable, which turned out to be from his local police, dated Sunday night.
He was urged to contact Sergeant Trevisone right away or face extradition proceedings. He crumpled the telegram into the trash, took a deep breath in and out, and checked the London phone directory for Interface, Inc. Asking to speak to Mr. Moselle got him as far as a secretary who wanted to know whether Mr. Moselle was expecting his call.
“He might be. Could you tell him it’s Alex Glauberman?”
“Certainly, Mr. Glauberman,” the secretary said, meaning maybe. “And from what firm?”
“Blond
Beasts, European cars.”
“I see. He’s not available, but if you’ll leave a number, Mr. Glauberman, I’ll see that he gets your message.”
“No, I can’t. My office is in America. I’m just passing through. Could you please tell him that Gerald Meyer sent me? If you could do that, I’ll wait.”
“Then wait, please, Mr. Glauberman.”
On hold, Muzak played a very dim reflection of “Light My Fire.” Alex could not find any oolong tea, but there was a good assortment from India. He opted for Darjeeling, brewed weak. “Penny Lane” followed as he slouched in a kitchen chair, sipping the pale, warm liquid. He knew from past experience that this was going to be a day of feeling fragile. The feeling resulted from going off the whopping dose of steroid, cold turkey.
“Yeah?” In Alex’s ear, a man interrupted the syrupy strings.
“Is this Jack?”
“This is Jack.”
Alex sat up. “My name is Glauberman. Alex Glauberman. I’m passing through London, today only, and wondered whether I could meet you. Gerald Meyer especially wanted us to discuss something.”
The answering voice showed neither surprise nor alarm, but perhaps a trace of caution: “Say that again.”
“My name is Alex Glauberman. I’m passing through London, today only, and Gerald Meyer especially wanted me to talk with you about something.”
“Jerry’s a sad old man, but he’s got nerve. Alex, is it? Why should I see you, Alex?”
Moselle’s accent was undoubtedly American. It had a thin overlay of what Alex pigeonholed as middlebrow British inflection. Not BBC, not cockney. The British equivalent of Omaha, if there was such a thing.
“Jerry’s dead,” Alex told him. “I thought maybe you’d know.”
“Is he? Okay, Alex, I’ve got a light morning today. Suppose you come by at noon. Listen, where are you located, anyway? Why don’t I send a man around to pick you up?”
“No, thanks. I can find my way. Should I come to this address in the book?”
“Nope. I’m at my secret hideaway. It’s— you in East London, by any chance?”
“Yes,” said Alex. East London was a big place, covering what must once have been five or six separate villages.
“Good, then. 23 Romney Road, Bethnal Green. Wait till you see it. Looking forward to our chat, then, Alex.”
“Yes,” Alex said again. Noon did not give him much time. He slurped his tea and dashed upstairs for suitable clothes. Near the top he fought off a sudden wave of faintness, gripping the banister tight till he regained his balance. The corduroy jacket for Trevisone would have to do for Moselle as well. Plus the striped tie he had brought in case of forced attendance with Reverend Phillips at church. He stuffed his wallet with a wad of Gerald Meyer’s pounds but left his passport and other I.D. behind. He took the stairs more slowly on his way down, found a street guide in the bookcase, made sure the front door clicked shut behind him, and began to jog through a gray London day. The idea of hailing a cab in Hackney was appealing.
A half-block toward the business district, he slowed thankfully as a black, hunchbacked London taxi slowed for him. The driver, Indian or Pakistani, headed back in the direction from which Alex had come. “Bet’nal Green,” as the driver put it, lay south and east, toward Stepney. The route carried Alex past old row houses like the one Meredith’s friends were remodeling, newer concrete housing projects, and occasional workers’ apartment blocks, dark brick, from an earlier industrial era. SHEARLING COMPANY, said the chiseled inscription on one of these, with the date 1895.
Bethnal Green turned out to be a rundown former town center, and Number 23 Romney Road to be a red-brick firehouse, recently renovated.
Alex gave the driver a twenty-pound note to cover fare plus tip. He stepped out and took time to look around. The ground floor of the old building now housed a pub, a pastry shop, and an herbal tea and medicine store. Upstairs, the firefighters’ quarters had been remade into offices. A round brass-cage elevator carried visitors up and down a transparent shaft of glass or Plexiglas. Through the middle of shaft and elevator ran a gleaming brass pole. Descending passengers apparently could hook their arms around the pole, if they liked, and play fireman. Alex browsed among herbs till noon, then rode up the pole. The ascent had an Alice in Wonderland quality. Up the beanstalk to meet Jack, thought Alex, mixing metaphors. A young female receptionist in suit and tie directed him to Mr. Moselle’s office, where she said he was expected.
If he hadn’t known better, Alex would have taken Moselle for fifty. His hair was handsomely gray and all in place. His cheeks were clean-shaven, but he wore a trimmed beard and mustache that made him seem like a man trying to look older rather than younger. His rangy good looks were, well, easygoing and American. Black-framed glasses added a touch of gravity. He stood from a shiny steel and vinyl armchair to shake Alex’s hand.
“What do you think?” he demanded proudly. “Quite cozy, isn’t it?”
The office was big. It had probably slept half a dozen firefighters once. White walls were interior-decorated with colorful prints. The armchairs and a tiled mosaic-topped coffee table made up a sort of living room area. To the left of that was a workspace dominated by a big, dark, antique desk. “Let them handle all the paperwork on some fortieth floor,” Moselle continued. “Give me a room close to the ground and quiet.” He pointed Alex to another chair, identical, at right angles to his own. “I bought the place for development, originally, but then I couldn’t let it go. Drink, or coffee, or a sandwich?”
“Very nice,” Alex said, saving his words. “Weak tea and a sandwich would be fine.”
Moselle issued orders into a speakerphone on the tiled table. Eventually Alex made out the initials JM, subtly displayed in the pattern.
“Well,” Moselle said, sitting. “Jerry Meyer sent you to talk to me.”
“That’s right. He appointed me ambassador to his daughter.”
“To his daughter.” Moselle scratched behind his right ear. “Now, what daughter is that?”
“Cynthia Meyer. I hope I’m not taking your job away.”
“Oh, Cynthia. I thought maybe you meant the other one.”
Moselle gave Alex a sudden searching glance, like steel, but to that comment Alex could think of nothing to say.
“Well, Cynthia. I’m more like an uncle than an ambassador to her.” Moselle dissolved the stare and waved at his surroundings as if these might sum something up. “An ambassador has to go to the right schools.”
“I’m supposed to see her, collect something Jerry sent her by mistake, and bring it back.”
“Tough job, if that’s not the way she’s inclined. Especially if Jerry’s dead— assuming she knows that.”
“She knows it,” Alex said. “I told her.”
“Honest man, are you? And what is it you’re supposed to get back?”
“Family pictures, according to Meyer.”
Moselle smiled, white teeth. “Family pictures. And what does any of this have to do with me?”
“That’s what I came here to ask.”
“Afraid I haven’t got any answers, Alex.”
Alex felt his will to keep up repartee draining away, slowly but regularly, like oil from the pan. He shook his head irritably, tried to make a motion of rising from the chair.
“Why did you waste your light morning on me, then?” he demanded.
“Keep your shirt on.” Moselle held up his hands like the victim of a movie holdup. “This ain’t New York. We do things a little bit slower. You haven’t even had your sandwich. Sure you don’t want a drink? I’ve got Jack Daniel’s, which you can’t get anyplace else in this country, believe me.”
“In my tea,” Alex said. Somehow he couldn’t bear to plead a ravaged stomach lining to Moselle, the way he had to Meyer. “I’d appreciate some in my tea.”
The receptionist came in with the tea, plus cheese and onion sandwiches on a pair of dry rolls. From a cabinet, Moselle fetched Tennessee whiskey, ice, and a glas
s for himself. He added a slug to Alex’s white china cup.
“How well do you know Jerry Meyer?” he asked.
“I met him for the first time Friday. He needed someone to stand under his daughter’s mailbox, and I happened to be heading the right way. Why did you call him a sad old man?”
“Isn’t he?”
“Wasn’t he, you mean. I told you, he’s dead.”
Moselle winked. The wink was so quick, behind the eyeglass lens, it might have been a tic. Alex thought it was a wink of complicity, of welcome to the fraternity of those in the know.
“Wasn’t he, then?” Moselle corrected himself.
“His eyes were sad. His life sounded sad. I don’t think— having talked to him once, more or less just like this— he took much pleasure in life. But I’m not convinced he had given life up, just because he didn’t enjoy it.”
“And how did he end up being dead? You haven’t told me that.”
“Somebody put a bullet in his brain. Somebody roughed him up a little, to get some information I guess, and then a little while later somebody shot him. So here I am, kind of operating on my own.”
Moselle nodded finally, raising his glass to Alex. “I’ll drink to that.” He did, and hissed out air between his teeth. For a minute he savored whatever it was that his homeland’s corn liquor did for him.
“You know,” he said, “Jerry always attracted calamities.”
“And calamities wash off you?”
Moselle raised his glass again.
“Like booze off a duck. That tea can be fatal, if you drink it too straight.” He poured another slug into Alex’s half-empty cup.
The speakerphone buzzed. Moselle leaned forward to press a button, then said to hold calls and visitors for another ten minutes. The whiskey was washing into Alex, not off, but it gave him a temporary lift. Moselle turned back to Alex with a nod that meant it was time to stop fucking around.
“Well, I tell you,” he said with no smile but evident sarcasm, “I’m not very interested in family pictures. Do you know what Meyer did for a living?”
