Vanishing Act

by Seth Margolis

  “Absolutely. We met at an opening.”

  “Do you go to many openings?”

  Rudolph shrugged. “Some.”

  “The way you pursued me that night, I’d never felt so…desired.”

  Both men turned and stared at Joanna as if she’d awakened from a long coma.

  “You never mentioned what you were doing there. You’ve never wanted to go to galleries since then.” She was staring at Rudolph with amazement, almost as if she were impressed with the success of his deception, rather than injured by it.

  “What did you want from her?” Joe D. asked.

  “Okay, at first I thought about getting close to her because of her uncle. He ruined my father, and she was his only heir.”

  “You figured you could get your father’s money back by, what, marrying her?”

  Lessing/Rudolph looked at Joanna. “Maybe at first. Then I fell in love with you. Truly.” There was no way to make these words sound other than syrupy and insincere, but he’d taken a pretty fair stab at it.

  She turned away from him.

  “Don’t you think someone would have figured out who you really were?” Joe D. asked. “I mean, I don’t think Samson would have left Joanna anything if he found out she had married Arthur Rudolph’s son.”

  “Maybe. I hadn’t really thought this through. You have to understand. All my life my father was this rich, powerful man. I grew up thinking I’d never have to worry about money. I was a writer, I figured I’d never make a living on my own. But I wouldn’t have to. Then George Samson destroys my father and robs him of every last cent.”

  “Your father spent every last cent trying to get revenge,” Joe D. corrected him.

  Lessing/Rudolph ignored this. “When I read somewhere that Samson had a niece, I knew I had to get to know her. I didn’t have a plan all worked out.”

  He was addressing these words to Joe D., as if Joanna wasn’t even in the room. She was staring into space, as if in fact she weren’t there. Then Joe D. spotted a single tear detach itself from Joanna’s eye and shimmer down her pale cheek. It clung to the edge of her chin for a moment before plunging to her lap.

  “Maybe I thought, unconsciously, that I could recover some of my father’s money by marrying her. But I never had a plan. I just needed to get close to her.”

  Joe D. found himself almost believing him. Lessing/Rudolph wasn’t evil so much as weak. But in Joe D.’s experience, weak people were usually far more dangerous. “Where is your father?” Joe D. asked. He wanted this interview to be over as soon as possible.

  “In a rest home. He lost his mind along with his money.”

  “He’s not there now.”

  “Ah, so you know that too.”

  “Has he contacted you?”

  Rudolph shook his head.

  “When was the last time you spoke to your father?”

  “A week ago. I call him every Sunday.” His voice caught here. “He didn’t always make a lot of sense. But I think he knew who I was.”

  “Was it you who sent him the clippings about George Samson?”

  Rudolph looked momentarily surprised. “That’s right. Samson was the only thing he was interested in. The idea of getting even with Samson kept him going.” Rudolph’s eyes widened momentarily, as if he’d realized the implication of what he’d said.

  “Did he know about you and Joanna?”

  They both looked at her, still staring blankly.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Suddenly, Joanna came to life, almost startling Joe D. “Get out, both of you,” she said with unexpected composure.

  Joe D. was only too happy to obey. He’d learned what he’d needed to know. Joanna Freeling hadn’t known who her boyfriend was, and wasn’t, therefore, involved in some weird scheme to punish her uncle by marrying his enemy’s son. And Arthur hadn’t heard from his father.

  Rudolph stood, crossed to Joanna, and took her hand. “Darling, you know that I love you.”

  “Just leave,” she said evenly, without looking at him.

  “You can’t deny the past six weeks, what we’ve shared.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “Try to understand.”

  “I understand perfectly. Get out.”

  “I think you should do what she says,” Joe D. told him. “Maybe later…”

  Rudolph looked at her forlornly. He did seem to have genuine feelings for her. Or was the desperation in his eyes due to the loss of a potentially huge chunk of George Samson’s money? There was no knowing.

  Joe D. held Rudolph’s arm as they descended the steep staircase from Joanna’s loft. He seemed about to pitch forward.

  “I should kill you,” Rudolph said, but his voice was anything but violent.

  “Sooner or later she’d have figured things out.”

  “I always knew that.”

  “Then why’d you stick around?”

  Rudolph just shook his head. “I actually loved her. I mean, she’s a spoiled thing, and those paintings…” He chuckled mirthlessly. “But I loved her. She’s so full of herself, she’s almost irresistible. And when Samson was killed, I started believing that things could work out.”

  “Samson’s death was a good deal for you, then.”

  “It was a good deal for a lot of people. But I didn’t kill him.”

  They’d reached the vestibule. Joe D. held open the front door for Rudolph, then followed him out to the sidewalk. “Did your father kill him?”

  Rudolph turned angry. “He couldn’t have. He was too deranged to plan something like that.”

  “Doesn’t take much planning to jump into a cab and pull a trigger a couple of times.”

  Rudolph seemed momentarily fazed by this, though of course the thought that his father could have murdered Samson must have occurred to him already. “I told you, I haven’t spoken to him since last week.”

  They walked a few blocks together, neither inclined to speak. “I’m going to get the subway here,” Joe D. told him at Houston Street.

  “I think I’ll keep walking. Maybe I’ll get lucky and a bus’ll run me over.”

  It wasn’t easy feeling sorry for a guy who’s biggest problem was that he’d expected to inherit millions and then hadn’t. Still, Joe D. found himself almost pitying Rudolph. “Call her later. You never know.”

  The words sounded hollow, even to Joe D. But he also knew that some women would forgive anything—getting slugged with a closed fist, being cheated on, watching their children being abused. Joanna Freeling didn’t strike him as the forgiving type, let alone a masochist, and what Rudolph had done would take a Mother Teresa to forgive, but it was worth a shot. You just never know when women are involved. “I was once in your shoes,” he found himself telling Rudolph, surprised to be confiding in him. “I got to know a woman under false pretenses, and she found out.”

  “What’d she do?”

  “She threw every loose object she could get her hands on. Now we’re living together.”

  Rudolph seemed to take some comfort from this. “If you find my father, let me know, okay? I can’t stand the idea of him wandering around.”

  Joe D. promised he would, and the two men parted.

  Nineteen

  Alison was dressed and reading the Sunday Times when Joe D. got back to the apartment. His head had resumed throbbing, and he was looking forward to a nap. Alison reminded him that they had made plans to visit her mother in Westchester.

  This news was like a second blow to the head. It wasn’t that he disliked Selma Rosen, or even that he knew she disapproved of him. No, it was her efforts to be cordial to him that made him miserable. She was constantly wincing and puckering and squinting when he was around, trying to disguise the fact that she found him lacking in every way—wrong profession, wrong religion, wrong address (Alison’s). An afternoon with Selma made Joe D. long for a confrontation, and he wasn’t much for confrontations. But an out-and-out argument is always easier to take than the feeling of being just barely tole
rated.

  Joe D. showered and changed and they took a cab down to Grand Central, where they caught the local to Scarsdale. “You look like you’re about to face a firing squad,” Alison told him on the train.

  He answered, “I wish.”

  Selma was standing on the platform of the Scarsdale Metro-North station. She was a tall, thin woman of sixty or so with salt-and-pepper hair who always reminded Joe D. of Geraldine Ferraro. Most of Alison’s attractive features—her angular face, her pale blue eyes, her high forehead—came from Selma, though on the whole she resembled her father, who had the sharp, intelligent look that was Alison’s single best quality. Selma was invariably well dressed, often overdressed. Today she looked a bit formal for a Sunday afternoon. She had on a white blouse, a fashionably short skirt, and a cardigan draped over her shoulders.

  She kissed Alison and extended a limp hand for Joe D. “So nice to see you,” she said through what could only be described as clenched teeth.

  It was a five-minute drive from the station to Selma’s house. This was the house Alison had grown up in; Selma had gotten it as part of her divorce settlement. Alison’s father had left her for a much younger woman to whom he was now married. This woman’s name was never uttered in Selma’s presence. Alison’s father, for that matter, was rarely mentioned either. Fortunately, though Alison was an only child, there were legions of aunts and uncles, cousins, and second cousins.

  The house always reminded Joe D. of the Texas oil man who, when asked by his architect to describe the kind of house he had in mind, took out a twenty dollar bill and pointed to the engraving of the White House. The Rosen house wasn’t quite as large as the White House, but it was almost as imposing; a big, white affair behind a row of columns and an expansive, perfectly cropped lawn. Like the White House, it was more symbol than home; it bespoke wealth and power and standards rigorously maintained rather than warmth, pleasure, or family spirit.

  Selma drove them into the garage, opening the double door by remote control. Joe D. had never entered the house except through the garage. Alison told him not to take this personally; she’d only been through the front door once or twice herself, and certainly not in the last ten years.

  Now what? Joe D. inevitably thought once they’d arrived chez Rosen. The three of them made such a small, uncomfortable group. He knew the women would have a much better, more relaxed time if he weren’t there, but Alison always insisted he accompany her on her bimonthly visits. She figured that familiarity would breed acceptance. So far she’d been wrong.

  They sat in the den, a large room off the center hallway that was somewhat less formal than the rest of the house, though it always reminded Joe D. of a set for a sitcom, with its forced homeyness. The two identical sofas were covered in a neutral tweed, separated by an oversized coffee table heaped with magazines and books. Above a never-used fireplace hung an oil portrait of Alison, aged sixteen. It was a stilted picture, not much more animated than a yearbook photo. Alison looked dreamy, almost distracted, her eyes glancing off to the side. On its own above the fireplace, the portrait always struck Joe D. as quite sad, a fitting remnant of a lonely childhood.

  “Alison tells me you have a major new client,” Selma said with what sounded like a stab at enthusiasm. He loved the way both women referred to his cases as “clients.”

  “Well, it’s new.”

  “Alison says you’re working on the Samson murder.” She said “Samson murder” the way a caterer might say “Goldstein bar mitzvah.”

  He started to tell her about the case when she interrupted him. “Alison, remember Sumner and Elaine Farkas, from Larchmont?”

  Alison’s shrug was ignored.

  “Well, Sumner was blouses. Very big. He did a lot of business with Samson Stores. And I’m positive he and Elaine used to socialize with the Samsons. In fact, I think Elaine and Mona were quite palsy-walsy.”

  One of Selma’s favorite conversational gambits was making a connection between anyone mentioned, no matter how remote, and herself or one of her friends. You could mention the Sultan of Brunei, Joe D. believed, and she’d know someone who knew someone who had once sat next to him at the theatre.

  The conversation shifted to the Farkases, migrated to a discussion of their enormously successful and tantalizingly unmarried son, Roger, and finally settled on a lengthy cataloging of recent marriages, divorces, separations, and affairs. Joe D. excused himself and left the room.

  He needed a phone and decided to try a room on the second floor. He ascended the staircase that rivaled that of the New York Art Alliance’s. Both edifices, he realized, shared a kind of imposing sterility that seemed impervious to human intervention. The second floor was bisected by a long, dark hallway, off which were untold bedrooms. Joe D. poked into several before discovering one with a telephone.

  He had looked up Stuart Arnot’s number before leaving New York. Once his mind cleared early that morning he concluded that it had to have been Arnot who’d knocked him out. Who else but Arnot knew what Joe D. was looking for in his office on Saturday? Whoever hit him had grabbed the bank statements—only Arnot would know precisely what documents to take. Joe D. was eager to know how Arnot had found out that he was going to be at the Alliance headquarters that day. Had Estelle Ferguson tipped him off in a last-minute fit of conscience? If not, was she perhaps in danger?

  Joe D. dialed Arnot’s number. After a few rings he heard a loud series of clicks. Then the phone resumed ringing, but with a different tone this time. A woman’s voice answered.

  “Arnot residence.”

  “Is Stuart Arnot in?”

  “He’s playing tennis. Shall I interrupt him?”

  Joe D. wasn’t aware of any backyard tennis courts in Manhattan. “Where am I calling?” he asked, feeling foolish.

  “This is Mr. Arnot’s house in Connecticut.” She sounded a bit testy.

  “But I dialed…”

  “You were probably transferred automatically. Mr. Arnot has call forwarding. He activates it every Friday before he leaves for the country.”

  Oh, the wonders of modern technology. Then something occurred to him. “When did Mr. Arnot arrive in Connecticut this weekend?”

  A long pause.

  “It’s just that I thought I saw Stuart yesterday evening in Manhattan,” Joe D. lied.

  “But that’s impossible. He arrived Friday night about nine. Shall I get him?”

  “Are you sure he arrived on Friday?”

  “I made him a late supper.”

  “On Friday.”

  “The day before yesterday, correct.” Now she was being patronizing.

  “I could swear I saw Mr. Arnot in Manhattan on Saturday.”

  “It must have been someone else.”

  “Perhaps he drove back into the city yesterday afternoon.”

  “He was here all day. I made him lunch at one. He played tennis from about two to three-thirty with the Paulsons. They’re his houseguests this weekend. Now, shall I interrupt his game?”

  Joe D. processed this news. If Arnot was in Connecticut on Saturday he couldn’t have been the person who knocked him out. He had three witnesses—the woman on the phone and the Paulsons—to prove it.

  He considered speaking to Arnot. But what would he say to him? That he had broken into his office on Saturday? That he’d been knocked out while trying to steal some bank records that just might be incriminating? He decided he didn’t need to speak to Arnot after all.

  “Never mind. I’ll call Mr. Arnot next week,” he said, and hung up.

  Alison and her mother were still talking about various friends and relations when he returned to the den. Alison was lying down on a couch, her head propped by a pillow. She looked comfortable in this house, which never failed to surprise Joe D. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like growing up in a house like this, particularly as an only child. Alison had been in therapy for most of her adult life, a fact that still fazed him. (What do you talk about? he would ask her occasionally afte
r her twice-a-week sessions. “Issues,” she’d answer cryptically. Or, sometimes, “I’m working things out.”) She’d once told him that as an only child she’d felt ignored rather than smothered. “I sometimes think that one child is easier to ignore than two or three. My parents were just too caught up in their own worlds to bother with me much, other than to make sure that I was properly dressed and looked after by a hired baby-sitter. Maybe if I’d had a brother or sister we would have formed a critical mass they couldn’t have ignored.”

  Alison claimed that Selma started paying attention only after her husband walked out on her. “She started calling me every night, crying or screaming or just moaning. I felt like I was never really her daughter, and now all of a sudden I’m her mother.” After the trauma of divorce abated, Selma restricted her calls to two or three a week, and Alison had fallen into a pattern of visiting once or twice a month. Joe D. didn’t see why Alison felt she owed her mother even this much attention, if what she’d said about her childhood was true, but suggesting this to Alison was pointless: “I have to, that’s all,” she’d say, and then she’d usually leave the room.

  But watching her lying comfortably on the couch, seemingly relaxed in a house that felt more like a hotel lobby than a home, Joe D. wondered if these visits weren’t more than obligations for Alison. Perhaps she enjoyed the easy, familiar conversations with her mother, the more so because they were recent developments. Perhaps the place you grow up in is always your home, no matter how stuffy, no matter how unhappy the childhood. Perhaps Alison liked coming here because as an adult she could savor the attention she never got as a child.

  Joe D. sat down across from Selma, who eyed him as if a stolen candlestick were poking out from his jacket. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I could ask Bernadette to make you a sandwich.” Her tone suggested that hunger was an animal trait with which she was only dimly familiar. Bernadette was Selma’s latest housekeeper—she went through one or two a year. Bernadette lived somewhere in a warren of rooms above the kitchen and garage. Joe D. hadn’t yet met her; at least he didn’t think so.