Crying Wolf

by Peter Abrahams

  “Click,” Izzie said again, now looking up at her father. She’d done beautifully. Nat’s premonition had probably been false; certainly false, he would have thought, except for one thing: there was no briefcase.

  Silence in Grace and Izzie’s room.

  Andy sighed. He rose, slowly, as though his legs were tired, and went to the phone on Grace’s desk. “The call came on this phone?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “About what time, Iz?”

  “Exactly?”

  “As close as you can’ll be all right.”

  “I didn’t check. Around five-thirty this morning.”

  “Give or take how much?”

  “Ten minutes either way.”

  “Could it be more?”

  “I guess.”

  “How much more?”

  “I don’t know. Five minutes, ten, fifteen. It was pretty upsetting.”

  “I understand,” Andy said. “So give or take a half hour, either side?”

  “I guess.”

  “Maybe a little more?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But not, say, ten hours.”

  “Ten hours? What are you talking about?”

  Andy turned to Nat. “And where were you at that time, Nat? When the call came.”

  “In my room.”

  “Which is?”

  “In Plessey. Across the quad.”

  Andy went to the window. “Mind pointing it out?”

  Nat pointed to Plessey Hall.

  Andy shook his head. “All so picturesque,” he said. “I can’t get over it. The call didn’t come on your phone, by any chance?”

  He was still gazing out the window; Nat wasn’t sure for a second if the question was directed at him.

  “Mine?”

  “Yours,” said Andy.

  “No, sir.”

  Andy turned to Mr. Zorn. “That it, Mr. Zorn?”

  “Other than asking Izzie if there’s anything she’d like to change, yes, that’s it.”

  “Change?” said Izzie. “About what?”

  “Your story,” said Mr. Zorn.

  “I’m not getting this,” Izzie said.

  “No?” said Mr. Zorn. “For one thing, there haven’t been any calls, in or out, on this phone since… when, Andy?”

  “Seven thirty-three P.M. yesterday. Incoming from room nine in this same dorm. Something about the arrival of a pizza, according to the student who made the call. The next one, the only other one, was Izzie’s call home this morning.”

  “Second,” said Mr. Zorn, “Andy made a phone call of his own on our way up here.”

  “Spoke to Nat’s mom, out in Colorado,” Andy said. “A very nice woman. She explained all about her unfortunate new circumstances, and their implications. I felt bad.”

  “Third,” said Mr. Zorn, “I know your sister.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Izzie shifted down the bed, away from him.

  “I know people, Izzie.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I know all I need to know. I did a billion-dollar deal last year-meaning I made a billion-dollar decision-on less information, less essential information, than this. So if you’ll just tell me where Grace is, we’ll get back to work.”

  “Have you all gone crazy?” Izzie said. Nat knew they hadn’t. It was over, just like that, the whole plan blown apart effortlessly, as though they’d posted it on the Web by mistake. Nat tried to catch Izzie’s eye, get her to stop. Izzie didn’t look at him.

  “She probably has a suite at the Inverness Inn,” said Mr. Zorn.

  “Want me to check?” Andy said.

  “It really doesn’t matter. She’ll turn up.”

  Izzie rose, stood over her father, getting it at last. “You’re not paying?”

  “Why pay ransom when there’s no kidnapping?” said Mr. Zorn. “Make any sense to you, Nat?”

  “No, sir.” He hated letting Izzie down, but that was the answer. He also hated the way Mr. Zorn was watching him, without anger, without hostility, without scorn, but still punishing. He’d been a guest in this man’s house.

  “I take that as a confirmation,” said Mr. Zorn.

  “Yes,” said Nat.

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Zorn. He rose too. Now they were all on their feet; the room seemed small. “It’s beautiful here, Andy, as you say. The thing to remember, though, is it’s just a big playpen. Won’t do to get too caught up with people like Leo. It might interest you to know, Nat, that I never hire people from this kind of place. I harvest from the top five percent of the state schools every year.” He checked his watch. “Anything else, Andy?”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Zorn.”

  Mr. Zorn faced Izzie. “I’m not blaming you, angel. I know what’s going on.”

  Izzie was white. “You’re abandoning her? She’s not worth one little million out of that last billion?”

  “Izzie, the game’s over.”

  “What if… what if it was… me, instead of Grace?”

  “You’re not making sense, Izzie.”

  Izzie laughed, a strange laugh of real amusement. “You don’t know anything.”

  Mr. Zorn gave her a careful look. “Maybe you should have gone to separate schools,” he said. “To escape her influence.”

  “Influence?” said Izzie. “You think I don’t know whose bidding you’re doing?”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Your present wife, of course.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong. She wanted me to hand the money over, on the assumption it was going to Nat.” Mr. Zorn turned to him. “She liked you. But it doesn’t work that way, Nat-might as well learn now.” He paused, looked Nat in the eye. Nat met his gaze; it took just about all the willpower he had. “I can relieve your mind on two things,” Mr. Zorn said. “First, we didn’t tell your mother what was happening, and have no intention of doing so. Second, there will be no legal consequences-as long as you do what I’m sure you knew was the right thing from the beginning.”

  “Which is to go on home,” said Andy. “Plus no hard feelings, right, Mr. Zorn? You said to remind you.”

  “Of course not,” said Mr. Zorn. “No hard feelings, no recriminations, no threats. I never threaten people.”

  The nature of the threat-his mother and the law-was clear.

  “They’re at the age for adolescent pranks,” Andy said.

  “Good point,” said Mr. Zorn. “Imagine if they’d been funneling-is that what they call it, Andy?”

  “ ’Fraid so.”

  “Funneling quarts of vodka or something.” Mr. Zorn shivered.

  “Every parent’s nightmare,” said Andy.

  “So we dodged one this time. Let’s think of it that way. Have Grace get in touch when she cools down.”

  Nat and Izzie stood by the window, watching Mr. Zorn and Andy Ling walk across the quad. Andy said something that made Mr. Zorn laugh; a big breath cloud rose above him.

  “We ended up looking like idiots anyway,” Nat said. He felt worse than an idiot, embarrassed and ashamed; but deep inside he agreed: We dodged one this time.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Izzie.

  He looked at her in surprise.

  “Sorry,” she said; came to him, wrapped her arms around him, shivered, just as her father had done. Mr. Zorn and Andy disappeared from view. “There is a positive side,” Izzie said after a moment or two. Was she, too, aware that they had dodged one this time? Izzie surprised him again. “It’s not often,” she said, “you get the chance to find out what someone really thinks about you.”

  “He likes you,” Nat said. “He loves you.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “It couldn’t have been clearer,” Nat said. “If he’s got problems, they’re with Grace.”

  Izzie’s grip on him tightened. Outside snow was falling harder.

  “We’d better go tell her,” Nat said.

  “What’s the rush?” Izzie said, h
er mouth close to his ear; the sound sent one of those odd nerve reactions down his neck and spine. He knew what Izzie was thinking: Grace would say they’d blown it.

  But they had to tell her, tell her about the failure of their little scheme; and while they were at it, there was more: “We should tell her about you and me.”

  “Both at the same time?” Izzie said. “How much can the poor girl take?”

  Nat turned her sideways a little so he could see her face. “You’re acting funny,” he said.

  “Am I?”

  He looked into her eyes, saw the gold flecks, took in Izzie’s whole golden effect. “Maybe there’s no point telling her about us,” he said, “now that I’m going home.”

  Did the idea upset Izzie? Nat couldn’t tell. Before, she’d said, You can’t just go. Now she said, “Let’s worry about that later.” She kissed him; then kissed him deeper. At first, he felt nothing. Then he realized this might be the last time-Albany-Chicago-Denver, there was a flight that very afternoon at three-and felt a great deal, much more than he was prepared for.

  “Now?” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Izzie drew him toward the bed; the closest bed, which happened to be Grace’s. He steered her the other way, toward her own bed.

  “What’s the difference?” she said.

  They lay on Izzie’s bed. The last time, he thought: and maybe because of that knowledge, nothing went quite right. It was clumsy, awkward, quick-clumsier, more awkward, quicker, than any of the other times, even the first, on Aubrey’s Cay. He was surprised once more, then, when Izzie cried out at the end, loudly, passionately, instead of making the low moan she sometimes made, or no sound at all.

  Izzie came out of the bathroom. “I’ve been thinking-it might be better if I tell her myself,” she said. “Why don’t you wait here?”

  “No,” Nat said. Grace almost certainly would blame them-Izzie especially-and he wanted to shield her. “I’m coming.”

  “I’d rather do it myself.”

  That was Izzie. He smiled at her. “I’m coming.”

  She opened her mouth as though to argue, closed it, came over. “Why not? It can’t get any crazier.” She kissed him, running her tongue over his chipped tooth. “What’s that?”

  “My chipped tooth.”

  “You can always get it fixed.”

  Taking a flashlight, they crossed the quad, went down to the Plessey basement, shifted the panel at the back of the janitor’s closet, entered the tunnel. They walked, deep under the campus, Nat leading, their feet silent on the hard-packed dirt floor. All familiar now: the downward slope, the dampening air, the dripping sound from somewhere nearby. At the junction, they turned into the right-hand passage, no longer hung with spiderwebs because of their coming and going. The dripping sound grew louder. Suddenly Izzie screamed and dug her fingers into his shoulder, hard enough to hurt.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  In the flashlight’s beam, a bat hung from the valve on the steam pipe. “Just the bat,” Nat said.

  “Kill it.”

  “Don’t be silly. What’s wrong with you, Izzie?” But he knew: she was afraid of her sister. It made her jumpy. “Why don’t you go back? I’ll tell her myself.”

  “Piss on that,” said Izzie.

  They walked on, past the bat, hanging motionless. Izzie released her grip on his shoulder.

  Nat raised the trapdoor, saw it was dark down in the cave, at least in the bedroom part. Grace was probably asleep. He climbed down the rope ladder, Izzie following, shone the light on the bed. Grace wasn’t in it, but something lay on the pillow. Nat went closer. Because of its color-that of putty-Nat didn’t recognize it until he was within touching distance. He didn’t touch. Lorenzo: Lorenzo lying on the pillow, dead in the open air, all his gaudy beauty faded away.

  “Grace?” he called. “Grace?” And hurried, running at the end, into the big room. No candles burning in the big room either. Nat stabbed his light here and there. “Grace? Grace?” The room was a shambles-furniture overturned and broken, paintings knocked off the walls, cabinets smashed, shattered glass everywhere-and Grace was gone.

  Peter Abrahams

  Crying Wolf

  27

  According to Nietzsche, “Man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other” because (a) women have less need to vent their strength, (b) the religious nature is less developed in men, (c) their emotions run at different tempos and thus are never in sync.

  — Multiple-choice question one, final exam, Philosophy 322

  Izzie lit a candle. Huge shadows appeared on the walls. “Where is she?”

  She picked up a chair, one of those dainty gilt chairs, a leg now broken off, tossed it aside. Then something else, bang, and something else, crash, as she moved through the two rooms, faster and faster, the huge shadows in wild motion on the walls. “Where is she?” Then, much louder: “Where are you? Where are you?” No response; Nat thought he heard a distant dripping sound. She turned to him. “What’s going on?”

  He didn’t know. Where was Grace? His first thought was the studded door in the big room, bricked-in on the other side. He opened it, shone his light around, then up at the grate that led to Goodrich Hall. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t under the bed, under the couches, behind what was left of the old wind-up record player. He knelt over fragments of a record: “Caro Nome,” the label still intact.

  Izzie cried out. He hurried to her. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” She pulled a shard of glass from her finger. A fat drop of blood rose to the surface, quivered.

  Nat shone his light on the smashed aquarium at her feet, on the chunk of coral Lorenzo had liked to hide behind, on the seaweed almost invisible on the pattern of the rug. He raised the beam up to Izzie’s face. She was sucking on her finger.

  Izzie shielded her eyes; he aimed the light away. “Where are you?” she called, so loud and sudden it startled him. “Where are you?”

  A painting fell from the wall, startling them both. Nat went to it: the nude bathers with the centaur spying from the bushes. He passed his light over the wall, saw a small hole where the hook must have been.

  “Something bad is happening,” Izzie said.

  Nat wasn’t so sure. “Suppose she was out in the hall.”

  “What hall?”

  “Your hall, in Lanark. When your father was in the room. What if she came up to tell us something and heard what he was saying about her?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Wouldn’t it make her angry?” Nat said. “It made you angry.”

  Izzie watched him, saying nothing.

  “Maybe she was angry enough to come back here and… do this.” Do this, down at the subterranean level, in the time he and Izzie had spent in bed, above.

  “You don’t know her,” Izzie said. The candle she held lit her face from below, casting cheekbone shadows over her eyes, at the same time lightening her hair. “You talk about her like she’s some kind of monster.”

  “Not a monster. But she can be funny. You’re the one who told me that.”

  “Did I?”

  “On the beach.”

  “How loyal of me,” Izzie said.

  He overcame the urge to shine the light on her face again, to get a better look at her. “What’s wrong with you, Izzie?”

  “How can you ask a question like that? Something bad is happening. And you don’t care. You think she’s off by herself, in a sulk.”

  “What other explanation is there?”

  She gazed at him. “You’re starting to remind me of my father.”

  An uncommon feeling stirred inside him, that same anger he’d felt when the campus security officer had implied he knew something about the theft of the HDTV from the student union.

  “But here’s an explanation if you need one,” Izzie said. “Wags.”

  “Wags? Wags doesn’t even know about this place.”

  “Maybe he found out.”

 
; “How?”

  “Maybe she did come up, as you said, but went to your room. What if he was there?”

  “Why would he be?”

  “Why not? Where else can he go? What if he was there, popping those green pills, kidnapping plots buzzing in his brain?”

  “So?”

  “So he made her bring him here.”

  “Wags couldn’t make Grace do anything.”

  “Or tricked her, then.”

  “He couldn’t trick her either.”

  Izzie’s face softened. “You think pretty highly of her.”

  “It’s not so much that,” Nat said. The soft look faded. “More that Wags is-” He started to say harmless, stopped himself. Wags wasn’t harmless. Plus: leaving Lorenzo on the pillow. That was Wags; he’d probably seen something like it in a movie. “We’d better check my room,” Nat said. He shone his light around the wreckage one more time. There were movies like that, too.

  They started up the rope ladder, Izzie first. As he reached for the ladder, Nat stepped on something slippery. He shone his light on it, picked it up: a black satin jacket.

  “Wags’s?” said Izzie, coming back down.

  Nat had never seen it before.

  “The kind of thing that would amuse him,” Izzie said. A black satin jacket, two snaps ripped from the material, with Saul’s Collision in gold and crossed bowling pins on the front, and a gold crest, Runners-Up ’99. “Especially that runners-up part,” Izzie said.

  “Sure it’s not Grace’s?” Nat said.

  “You think she’d wear something like this?”

  “It’s not impossible.”

  “Trust me,” Izzie said.

  Nat’s room. And there was Wags, sitting at Nat’s computer, fingers on the keyboard, face almost touching the screen.

  “With you in a sec,” he said, not turning toward the door. “Just checking out the Fatty Arbuckle Web site.”

  Nat glanced in the bedrooms. No sign of Grace.