Atropos

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Ella? Mother? Are you all right?”

  “Oh,” Ella said. “I wonder if it ...”

  “What do you wonder?”

  “If the letter could be in there?”

  “Letter?”

  “Oh. Oh, Mark dear. I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  There was a knock on the door. A pitcher of dry martinis for his mother. Mark took it, poured, and handed his mother the glass. She sipped at the top layer as if she’d never tasted gin before and wasn’t sure how she liked it. Mark knew the pitcher would be gone before the sun went down. That was one of the reasons his visits to his mother were so infrequent.

  “After the size of your reaction, I’d say you have to tell me, now.”

  She sampled the liquor again, rolling it around in her mouth and looking heavenward, still trying to decide if she liked it. This would go on for five minutes. Then she’d decide she loved it.

  Ella sighed. She had a good nose for sighing, too. “I suppose you ought to know. You’re not my little baby anymore, you’re a strong man now. I should trust you to take care of me.”

  Mark smiled sadly. The habit of loving his mother had not been broken, but he knew that habit was all it was. His mother was weak and venal and ineffectual, everything he despised.

  “Tell me about the letter, Ella,” he said.

  She told him. It was after one of the Senator’s multitudinous extramarital flings, but “before he burned up that Italian girl, of course.” Instead of facing the situation with her usual resignation, Ella had gotten angry and, worse, had threatened to make a fuss. She knew how the Van Horns felt about fusses.

  The Senator had been contrite. He wrote her a letter, begging forgiveness.

  “It was quite sweet, in a way,” Ella said. “He said it was a weakness that grew from the strength of his Dutch sea-captain forebears, and other romantic lies. The truth, of course, is that your father’s brains are in his testicles. In any case, he begged me to forgive him, and while he couldn’t promise to conquer the weakness once and for all, he did say I was the only one he had ever loved, and if he ever did anything to drive me away, he would quit politics and sign over completely his entire share of the family businesses.”

  “He didn’t,” Mark said.

  “Oh, he did, dear, and signed it. The whole thing, in fact, was in his handwriting.”

  “He must have been crazy. You could destroy him at any moment. You still can.”

  Ella looked horrified. “I never would!” she said. “If I let your father throw it all away, he can’t leave it to you, can he, dear? I know you’ve been preparing yourself to be everything it means to be a Van Horn. I’m certainly not going to ruin it for you.”

  She sniffed, then took a long pull at her drink. This martini stuff was pretty good, after all. “Besides,” she went on, “I couldn’t if I wanted to. He got the letter back somehow. I used to keep it in my overnight case, you know, the one I kept packed for when your father would be just too outrageous with some woman. Then came that Italian girl. I waited a decent interval after he managed to get himself cleared—protecting the family to the last, you see—then walked out for good. When I got to my hotel, I looked for the letter. I was going to mail it back to your father, you know, a noble gesture. But it was gone.”

  “He had ample opportunity to take it back,” Mark said.

  “I know, I know. It’s just that you wondered about the safe. That was all I could think of that he’d want to keep secret from Ainley Masters.”

  Ella smiled at her son. “But, of course, that’s foolish. Lord knows your father isn’t Einstein, but even he wouldn’t be stupid enough not to burn that letter once he got hold of it again.” She looked up from her drink. “Would he?”

  Mark smiled back. “You’d like to find out, wouldn’t you?”

  “If it still exists, I’d like to get it back again and send it to your father. I owe myself the grand gesture, don’t you think?”

  Mark continued to smile. “Next time I visit him,” he said, “I’ll do what I can to find out. If the letter’s there, I’ll mail it back to him in your name.”

  Ella pouted. “But Mark, dear, it’s supposed to be my grand gesture.”

  “You might forget.”

  “Listen to you talk. A person would think you didn’t trust me.”

  “What kind of son wouldn’t trust his own mother?”

  “A smart kind,” Ella said flatly, and suddenly, it was impossible to tell she’d had anything to drink at all. “You just keep it up, dear. And remember to take care of your mother when you’re running the country.”

  There had been nothing to it. All he had to do was arrange his end-of-term visit to D.C. so that he just missed his father, who’d be back in the home state keeping them happy in the outposts of the empire, or off on a fact-finding trip to some balmy place with a comely member of his staff to take notes or whatever else the Senator was dishing out. No suspicion was aroused. That sort of thing happened often enough by accident. Mark would do what he always did—let Mrs. Rodriguez spoil him for a few days, then take off himself. The only thing he had to worry about was being caught in the master bedroom with a stethoscope.

  The first night, he went to his father’s empty room just to look the thing over. It had been years since he’d seen it, and he’d known nothing about safes at the time. Comparing his memory of it with what he’d learned since, he didn’t think it would be much trouble, but if he was going to need anything special, better to know now.

  There was a mirror in front of the safe, rather than a picture. Mark was sure that had never aroused any suspicion, either. The Senator’s major asset as a Senator was his Senatorial good looks, and he was quite well known for never missing an opportunity to admire them. People would have been more surprised if Hank Van Horn hadn’t had an extra mirror hanging on the wall of the bedroom.

  The mirror swung away from the wall on hidden hinges. The knob read “MasterSecure 500.” Nothing great, but not total garbage, either. Not much harder than what a headmaster might keep in his office, at any rate. Mark wasn’t going to do this with just his fingertips, though. If he was really serious about getting into this thing, he might have to drill it. Nitro, of course, was out of the question. Mark smiled and shook his head at himself for even thinking of it. He must have wanted into that thing even more than he’d been willing to admit to himself. Well, he’d have to go back to his room and decide just how badly he did want to get in there, because he wasn’t about to do it tonight.

  Unless ...

  How stupid was his father? Or, how mentally sloppy had a life of effortless power, of having all his messes cleaned up after him, made him? Maybe they were both the same question. Either way, Mark’s answer was “Quite a bit.” So he stood there for a while and twiddled knobs.

  This kind of safe would carry a four- or five-digit combination. The Senator certainly wouldn’t carry a slip of paper around with the combination written on it. He’d want something that would be easy for him to remember. That was the kind of thinking that had let burglars into a thousand safes. The Senator usually got better advice than that. Ainley Masters, for instance, wouldn’t have let him get away with it for a second.

  But this was the Senator’s own secret. Ainley Masters was to know nothing about it. No one was to know anything about it. Mark had found out only because he had been a nosy little kid, poking into everything. The Senator had figured him harmless.

  Even now, Mark wasn’t sure that he intended his father any harm. His mother’s story had given him the impetus to do this after years of merely wanting to, but Mark wanted to get into this safe as much to find something to admire about his father as about anything else. What was it, he wondered, after a lifetime of letting his life be run by his grandfather, his older brother, Ainley Masters, that had led Hank Van Horn to his first act of defiance? Since, Mark was sure, it would fall to him to run his father’s life, it was his duty to the family to find out.

  He
tried combinations. He tried his father’s birthday. He tried his mother’s birthday, which might have been suitable if all this really turned out to be that stupid letter. On the same theory, he tried the day his parents had been married, and the day they split up. No luck. Mark tried his own birthday, then 7-4-7-6 in the hope that the Senator had set the combination in a fit of patriotism.

  Nothing. Mark frowned and started to turn away. He’d be back with a drill. Or not. It all depended on how this escapade looked in the light of the morning.

  Then he had a hunch. He didn’t know, and would never know, where it came from. It was just there, and it refused to be ignored.

  Mark spun the dial to 8-8-7-4. August 8, 1974. The day before the resignation of Richard Milhous Nixon as President of the United States. The date Miss Giuseppina Girolamo had been reduced to a few greasy ashes. He could almost feel the tumblers meshing.

  Mark felt something crawling on his forehead. Sweat. He grabbed the handle, hoping that it wouldn’t move when he pulled it.

  It practically jumped in his hand. The door swung open before Mark had even told his muscles to pull.

  Inside was a small, rectangular parcel wrapped in stiff white paper that was yellowing at the bent places. Mark could see bumps and lines embossed in the side of the paper toward him. Typewriting. Not just a piece of paper. A letter.

  Not, however, the letter his father had written to his mother. That, according to Ella, had been handwritten.

  Mark reached inside the safe and removed the parcel, then swept his hand around to see if there was anything else inside. Nothing, not even dust.

  The paper had been neatly folded around whatever was inside, but it hadn’t been sealed. It was stiff, but not brittle enough to break or tear when Mark removed it. He was grateful for that. All he needed to do was to leave little flakes of paper on the floor in front of the safe. It would be nice to be able to refold the thing and put it back the way it was, if that’s what he decided to do.

  The rectangle was a tape cassette. A cheap one. The label said “Exceptional Tape Company,” which made Mark think it was probably from Hong Kong, or someplace else that hadn’t found out that in the United States, “exceptional” was now a euphemism for “retarded.” Gray plastic, gray-and-white label. Nothing had been written on it. The tape was rewound and ready to go. Mark knew then that the parcel was not making its way back to the safe. Not tonight.

  He looked at the note. It read, “Senator—This is one copy. A thousand or more could be made. You will be contacted.” No signature.

  Mark closed the safe and spun the dial. He was so eager to get the hell out of there he almost forgot to put the mirror back.

  He forced himself to walk calmly back to his room. It was just past 1:00 A.M.; a servant might still be awake. It wouldn’t do for Mark to be seen sprinting through the house.

  He had to dig through a lot of stuff in his closet before he found his old Sony Walkman, one of the first ones. He’d grown tired of his before most people knew they existed. There was several thousand dollars’ worth of stereo equipment in this room, but as it happened, the only earphones were attached to the Walkman. Whatever was on this tape was not going to be let loose to blend with the atmosphere.

  Mark cannibalized a couple of batteries from a flash gun, put the headphones on, and got ready to play the tape.

  He fumbled the tape into the machine. His hands weren’t exactly shaking. They felt as if they had too much blood in them, as if they were swollen and hard to bend.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate. He got the tape settled, got the machine closed.

  As he listened to the hiss of the leader going through the recording head, he thought, blackmail. Blackmail, for God’s sake. It was ridiculous. Van Horns didn’t pay blackmail. It was ridiculous. There was no need. Van Horns brazened it out. That was the advantage of being bold about your vices. Van Horns drank. Van Horns womanized. Van Horns used every bit of financial and political power to help their friends and screw their enemies.

  Besides, the Van Horn family had paid with blood and spectacle for long-term kid-gloves treatment from the press.

  What could the Senator have possibly done to be blackmailed over? What in the world could there be that Mark’s father was afraid to tell Ainley Masters, a man for whom the death of Pina Girolamo had been a public-relations exercise?

  Voices came to Mark’s ears.

  “Do you want to eat first?” a woman asked.

  “After,” the Senator said.

  The woman laughed low in her throat.

  There was more small talk, then creaking bedsprings and moans and the sticky-valve sound of sex.

  Then there was more talking. “I thought you were taking care of that,” the Senator said.

  “Hank, darling, nothing works all the time. I’m sorry.”

  Talk about an abortion. Talk about blackmail. Then Mark’s father saying, “Bitch,” followed by more creaking bedsprings, this time accompanied by choking noises and gurgles rather than moans.

  More talk about abortion.

  The asshole doesn’t know he’s killed her, Mark thought.

  “Come on,” the Senator said. “Don’t sulk.” There was silence for a long time. No more talk after that, just movement in the room, followed by a crackling that got louder and louder until it ended in a squeal.

  That was the microphone melting, Mark thought.

  Mark hit the rewind button and listened to the tape hum its way back to the beginning. He was amazed at how calm he was.

  He listened to it again, then rewound and listened a third time. It didn’t change.

  Mark pulled the earphones off and shook his head. He took the cassette from the Walkman and stuffed it down behind the bottom drawer of his dresser. The note he folded up and put in his wallet, reminding himself as he did that he must be very careful not to have his pocket picked or to be hit by a car.

  Mark, who had been twelve years old when it happened, but already a true Van Horn, had put the odds at about forty percent that his father had killed that girl. A few years later, he had decided that if he had, he had done it because she’d gotten herself pregnant and was being difficult about it.

  But this—this was beyond belief. To choke her by accident in a bugged room. He didn’t even want to know who had been bugging the room. Yet.

  Mark had always known it was coming. He always knew that someday he’d have to take control of the family. He’d just always figured it would happen after he’d served a few terms in Congress, then made the move up to his father’s Senate seat, as Hank Van Horn was trundled off to one of the more prestigious ambassadorships.

  But that wasn’t the way it was working out. If Mark expected there to be anything of the Van Horn name and power left to inherit, he had to take charge right now.

  He’d also have to have a long and not especially pleasant talk with his father, but not now. Not for a while. There were things to do, first. Some facts had to be learned, and some people had to die.

  Chapter Two

  The Present—February—Concord, New Hampshire

  ONE OF THE TWO major candidates for the Party’s Presidential nomination lay back on a lumpy bed in a quaint New England inn. It was late afternoon now, and he’d been on the go since before 6:00 A.M. A campaign breakfast. Pancakes, great slabs of bacon, butter, maple syrup. The candidate usually had nothing but black coffee until he ate a small salad around 2:00 P.M., and the meal had been enough to make him gag.

  He did not, in fact, gag. He smiled and cleaned his plate. And asked for more when the cameras turned toward him. He’d made four speeches since. Or rather, he’d made The Speech four times, and each time it had taken a greater and greater effort to repress vicious, heartburn-inspired belches. What fun Dan Rather would have had with that.

  Finally, he had fought his way through mobs of reporters back to the inn. A lot of reporters, a few New Hampshirites. New Hampshirians. To hell with it. He’d just keep sayin
g “The People of New Hampshire.” The People of New Hampshire had a good thing going, as far as the candidate could tell. They had turned the primary into a major industry, getting suckers to come in and spend millions. In February, for crying out loud, when it was cold enough to freeze your feet to your shoes and your underwear to your groin. Amazing what people would go through to get to be President.

  The candidate was running a little behind schedule. Candidates always ran behind schedule. This was due to having schedules that made them so exhausted they could no longer move.

  Now, for instance, the candidate was supposed to be donning a tuxedo in order to attend a dinner being thrown by the state party chairman. The other candidate would be there, but the understanding was no debating, no overt campaigning. He just hoped the other guy would be as late as he was.

  The candidate groaned. Dressing for dinner. He had managed to get as far as shedding his jacket and tie before collapsing on the bed. A little work with his feet, and his shoes were off, too. That was progress. He had better not be there too late. He had lost in Iowa; not a big deal, perhaps, but when you lose in Iowa, you’d damn well better win in New Hampshire.

  The thing was, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be President. He thought he was doing a good job where he was. The people who had put him where he was had no reason to complain.

  And they weren’t complaining. They were just ambitious. This was the culmination of a glorious plan, and of the candidate’s glorious career. He supposed it wasn’t that bad an idea. It was hard to remember when you were tired and cold and faced with a procession of endless days finishing only in November (and then only if you lost) that the reason you had gotten involved in the business in the first place was that you had ideals and goals and a vision for the human race.

  The money wasn’t bad, either.

  With a mighty effort, the candidate sat up on the bed. He sighed. The problem was, they had already practically guaranteed him the nomination and the Presidency. It had all been arranged. He would have had a lot more interest in this if they’d told him it all depended on him.