The Saberdene Variations

by Thomas Gifford

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m Caro Saberdene. And you are absolutely bound to be Charlie Nichols—I’ve read your books.” She shook my hand and her smile broadened in the heart-shaped face. More teeth than the rest of us have. An olive complexion. Tawny, sun-streaked hair to her shoulders. She leaned forward and brushed her cheek against mine. She was wearing a black sleeveless dress. Victor had warned me and I’d worn my tuxedo, which had seen a lot in the ten years since I’d had it made for me at Huntsman in Savile Row. “I feel like I’ve known you as long as I’ve known Victor. I’m so glad you could come. But you are doomed to put up with a motley crew, I’m afraid. Some of the partners.”

  “Motley is my usual style.”

  “Then you’ll be right at home.” She took my arm, guided me toward the voices. “Let me get you a drink. Then I’ll introduce you around.” She squeezed my arm and smiled up at me quickly, no longer performing a wifely duty. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She sounded as if she knew I’d been clued in, as if she knew Victor had warned me of trouble brewing.

  I may not have had any premonitions, but looking into that face, feeling her arm against me, I was sure I’d never reacted so quickly to any woman before. I remember wishing, in those moments before we went in to meet the others, that she were anything on this earth but Victor’s wife.

  TWO

  It was six minutes past eleven when I noticed that the other end of the dining table had fallen silent. That meant that Victor had stopped being brilliant and fascinating for the moment and the listeners were taking the respite to mull over the received wisdom in grateful silence. Margo Norman seemed particularly mesmerized by Victor’s observations. From what I’d heard he’d grown expansive on the subject of Gothic painting which he’d begun to collect “in a small way.” But her fascination, I suspected, would have been identical had Victor been recapitulating Joe Namath’s career as quarterback for the New York Jets. Margo was apparently Victor’s protégée within the firm, the only woman Matz, MacReady, Stetson, and Saberdene had ever chosen to lead in criminal defense cases, surely with Victor casting the deciding—if not the only—vote. Clearly Margo Norman worshiped Victor Saberdene the man, as well as Victor Saberdene the career. All things considered, I was sure Victor felt that she had an utterly firm grasp on reality.

  In the moment’s stillness, Caro removed her hand from beneath the wrinkled paw of Judge Martin Edel, who had grown casually amorous as coffee and the hazelnut mousse had been served by the Filipino couple who took care of the Saberdenes. Mrs. Edel looked on, stifled a yawn. Muffy Stetson chain-smoked her way through the mousse while her husband across the way next to Laura Matz tried to express interest in Laura’s racquetball tournament at the club. The Matzes lived in Darien. They seemed to derive a good deal of comfort from the fact.

  Marc Foxx had felt earlier that there might be an audience for his views on Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo, but he had miscalculated. Foxx, it had turned out, was the writer who had transformed Victor’s collected tapes into Necessary Villain. He seemed to be attached to Margo Norman, at least for the evening. And in the quiet it was Foxx who unceremoniously dropped the clanger. What Victor had in college called “the turd in the punch bowl.”

  “Say, Victor,” Foxx observed, stirring several lumps of brown natural sugar into his coffee, “did you notice the other day, a month ago, maybe, your Carl Varada was set free?”

  At the sound of the name Caro’s hands clenched involuntarily, as if she’d been singed by an invisible flame. Little fists, a diamond and pearl ring catching the candlelight, ducked beneath the table into her lap. Her mouth was set in a fixed smile and her eyes flickered, sought Victor’s at the other end of the table.

  Foxx, with his tight red curls and auburn eyebrows, small periwinkle blue eyes, appeared to be perfectly cast in the role of inquisitive, purposely insensitive reporter. “After eight years, the guy is suddenly free. Pardoned, given a cheap suit and a firm handshake … the money he’d earned making twine and license plates, whatever they do up there … and he’s returned to society, to behave himself and make his way.” He shook the red halo, the curls vibrating. “You sent the wrong man up the river, Victor.” He smiled, like a Puck twisting a knife in a wound, as if collaborating with Victor had led to something other than friendship.

  Judge Edel looked at Caro, a morsel of mousse clinging to his ripe, pendulous lower lip. He had the seamed face of an old man who’d played a lot of poker, scrutinized even more frightened witnesses and shifty criminals and crooked lawyers, and never fallen for a bluff unless he wanted to. He cleared his throat, a wet sandpapery sound.

  “Really, Foxx,” Tony Matz said, blandly disapproving.

  Victor leaned back in his chair, slid a buttery leather case from the pocket of his dinner jacket, and extracted a long Punch Presidente. He leaned forward to light the cigar at the candle flame. He puffed slowly, a smile crossing his thin lips, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, least of all the fact of Carl Varada’s release from prison. Caro watched him. She seemed to be searching for a signal, an all’s-well. I knew all of Victor’s gestures: time hadn’t altered them. When he looked his most composed, he was playing hardest for time. Getting his bearings, turning the tables in his mind. He was good at it. He made his living doing just that. He had made himself impervious to surprise and that had made him both rich and famous.

  “Well, let’s face facts,” Foxx persisted. “The law miscarried.”

  Judge Edel said haw-haw and poured a tot of brandy from a bottle near the flower arrangement before him, among the candles. “Not at all, not at all. The man was a soulless brute. Deserved to be put away, clapped in irons, dropped into a hole, and forgotten—which is precisely what would have happened in a wiser age. Damn sight better if he’d been hanged … no, Foxx, the law worked like a Swiss movement. Just got him for the wrong murder. A trifle, a detail. Now the man’s free to kill again …”

  Victor smiled through the haze. “You are indeed a hanging judge, Martin.”

  “I prefer to think of myself as a good judge of character.” He rolled brandy on his tongue, satisfied. “You’re the one I must always give the fish eye, the gimlet eye. In the normal run of things, you defend such men, scoundrels and brigands and considerably worse—”

  “Not men like Varada,” Victor said equably.

  “It’s a relief to know you draw the line somewhere.”

  “Victor is,” Foxx said, “a victim of his image. A captive—”

  “Oh, do put a sock in it,” Muffy Stetson snapped, “there’s a good boy.”

  “Indeed I do draw the line somewhere,” Victor said. “Varada is a poor man. Which is customarily where I draw it.”

  Tony Mate muttered: “Speaking for the firm, let me say, Thank God.”

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off Caro Saberdene during this exchange which struck me as uniquely cold-blooded. Even for lawyers. She turned toward me, sitting on my right at the foot of the table. She caught my eye and I tried to smile reassuringly but it died being born. She shook her head imperceptibly and I noticed her earrings swaying. Pearls. One black and one pale pink, almost white, and somewhere in my memory they struck a faint chord. The candlelight glowed in the pearls, as if Hitchcock had devised tiny bulbs to fit within them, transformed them into molten drops, flowing, suspended like cries of passion from her delicate lobes.

  It’s all right. She formed the words with her lips, didn’t speak them aloud, and her eyes shifted enough so that I knew she was referring to the talk of Varada. She reached across and patted my hand with her fingertips, said: “I do miss London. We haven’t been there in so long … Tell me what’s going on there …” Her smile seemed to invade me, enter me through my eyes, and I thought about what she’d been through: the murder of her sister, the trial of Varada, her testimony putting him away, her breakdown, now his release and return. And I watched the contrasting pearls catching the fire and I sensed the manner, the form she was showing by bearing up in the face o
f Marc Foxx’s thoughtless observations. I felt her hand on mine and I began telling her about London, and the burble of conversation took its place in the background. She knew how to behave. Grace under pressure. Courage.

  THREE

  The clock on the mantelpiece had just struck midnight and I was the only remaining guest. We’d gone to the study, the three of us, and inevitably Victor had begun filling me in on the Varada situation. Caro and I were sitting at opposite ends of a wine-colored, tufted leather couch. She’d kicked off her shoes and sat with her legs curled under her bottom. She was wriggling her toes in her stockinged feet. She smoked a cigarette pensively, listening to her husband recount the facts of a story which had turned her life inside out. The bright side, if such a tragedy as murder could be said to have one, was that she’d found and enchanted Victor. Now she sat listening, slowly turning a huge Baroque pearl ring on the third finger of her right hand.

  “So there was Varada, rotting in prison—watching television and reading up on the law, I have no doubt, and sodomizing any chap he could get his hands on—” Caro flinched a little at that, said nothing. Victor took a deep breath, scowling, his huge hands flat on the arms of the massive leather wing-backed chair, clamped like steel over the brass-tacked ends. “When an insurance man from Boston put a bullet in his head in a motel down on the Cape. Fellow called Paul Bingham. And he left a long, specific note … about how he’d followed Anna Thorne down that deserted pathway, how he’d seen Varada leave her there after they’d argued, how he’d gone up to her, intending to comfort her, and had instead wound up raping her, then killing her to save himself and his family from disgrace, humiliation, et cetera. He wrote down every detail imaginable, stuff only the killer could have known. When he realized the police thought Varada had done it … well, he told himself Varada was scum anyway—he couldn’t bring himself to step forward to save such a creep. But it had been eating at him all these years. His wife had left him because of his morose rages, he’d lost his job, and he blamed everything on the murder and his refusal to admit it—so he wanted to wipe the slate clean … and killing himself finished the job.”

  “And set Varada free,” Caro said softly. “It seems like it may never end, doesn’t it, Charlie?” She looked over at me, using my name. “It seems like it may just go on and on. Now two people are dead, Anna and this Bingham person, Varada has had all those years wasted—”

  “He’s a fucking monster,” Victor interrupted.

  “And you can’t blame him if he’s come back with revenge, in his heart.” She stabbed her cigarette into the heavy crystal ashtray.

  “Don’t waste any sympathy on him,” Victor fumed.

  “What exactly has Varada done to warn you?” I asked. “If he’s going to make trouble, why would he put you on your guard?”

  “That’s the kind of man he is,” she said. “He gloats over the discomfort he causes his victims. He likes to tease, torture—”

  “But maybe that’s all,” I suggested. “Maybe he’s just playing brain games with you. Maybe he knows about your—well, you know—”

  “My breakdown? Yes, maybe he does. But I’m hardly a head case, am I, Victor? I didn’t go crazy or anything. I was exhausted, under a lot of strain, someone had murdered my sister and I was sure I’d seen the … the prelude to the murder. I felt it was my fault. I should have talked her out of ever seeing him again …” She shook her head, the earrings swinging again, and put her fingertips to her temple. “I do have a headache. I’ll admit to that. But not to being crazy.” She smiled tiredly.

  “You really ought to turn in, darling,” Victor said. “I’m going to persuade Charlie to stay with us awhile.” He turned to me. “You can manage that, can’t you?”

  “Well, I don’t know, I—”

  “Of course you can. You said you’d finished your media shtick. We’ll just move you in here from the Waldorf. Nothing simpler.”

  “Please, Charlie,” she said. Her face was suddenly bright, like a child confronting a happy change of routine. I felt like Uncle Charlie arriving unexpectedly with a bag of tricks and candies. Looking at her I felt again the frisson of danger. I am not a particularly amusing man, though reasonably good-natured. But when it comes to women I’m occasionally given to excess. Caro was well under my skin already: I’m only recounting the true story, hiding nothing, as I saw it happen. I already understood exactly what Victor had meant when he said he couldn’t resist her. She was just one of those women. Her hair just then was so shiny it might have been newly polished, like perfect teak. “Say you’ll stay,” she said. “You and Victor will figure out a way to fix this mess.”

  “Sure,” I said, “I’ll stay.” Victor had saved my life once and there was Caro. Caro hadn’t saved my life but maybe I could help save hers. I couldn’t say no.

  I jumped like a nervous cat when the phone rang with all the stark, loud clarity of a pistol shot.

  Caro leaned over and picked it up, shrugging at whoever might be calling so late.

  “It’s sure to be Matz,” Victor said, nodding wearily at me. “He always drags the party on by phone, always thinks of something he should have said … and he’s always wrong.” He snorted, yawned behind his huge paw.

  Caro had said hello, nothing else, was listening. I glanced over at her: she’d gone dead pale, was staring at Victor, her eyes wide and pleading. He saw the change in her, said to me in a thick whisper, “It’s him!” He jabbed immediately at a button on the answering machine. Then he went to stand beside his wife, stroking her hair, then resting his hand on her shoulder.

  “What c-c-can I say?” she stammered softly into the mouthpiece. “What is it you want from me?” She listened, then glanced up at Victor. “Yes, he’s here … look, please stop calling … I’m sorry for what you went through, I’m sorry, what do you want me to say? … Oh no, don’t say that, oh God, please … do you want money? What? What can we do?”

  Victor was massaging her shoulder. “That’s enough, hang up on the bastard … I just want some recordings in case we need some voiceprints—” He reached out to take the phone away from her but she shook her head, stood up, her face intent, brows drawn together.

  He stepped back and she brushed past him, went to the bay window looking out from the second floor to the street. Victor and I were both right behind her.

  The street looked empty beneath the lights with their slightly roseate glow which made the scene look artificial, like a movie set which could be struck and carted away while we slept. The trees were translucent green in the artificial light. Caro stood staring out the window. I felt as if we’d all simultaneously stopped breathing.

  Then, slowly, with a kind of arrogant nonchalance, he stepped out of the shadows of one of the trees and I saw the telephone obscured behind the trunk, in the shadows. He was tall, something like six-four, Victor’s size. He wore a seersucker jacket and chino slacks and a straw fedora with a brightly printed band. He stood still, looking up at us in the window, his face shaded by the brim. But I felt as if I’d have recognized him anywhere.

  Deliberately, with a sense of theater, he raised a forefinger to his hat brim and flicked it toward us, a mocking salute.

  Caro sucked in a sharp breath. The telephone clattered to the floor, smacking off the windowsill and, soundless, she folded up and slid to the carpet herself. Victor had pressed against the window, glaring in a massive rage, and hadn’t even noticed that she’d fainted.

  I knelt beside her. She was limp and helpless and I scooped her up and took her to the couch. Her face rolled toward my chest and I smelled her perfume. Felt her body rising against me as she breathed. She was awake, eyes fluttering open, as I laid her on the leather couch. She reached out, took my hand, squeezed it tight. Her eyes were huge and dark and soft. They devoured me.

  Victor was staring down at us as I knelt beside her.

  “That son of a bitch,” he said, calm now, “is going to make me kill him …”

  Chapter Four


  ONE

  CARO INSISTED THAT SHE WAS perfectly all right and we weren’t to be silly and worry about her. She kissed Victor goodnight, came over to me, thanked me for being willing to put up with their problems, and brushed her cheek against mine. I felt one of the pearls bobbing at the corner of my mouth.

  Victor rubbed his eyes. His bags were growing more empurpled as the night lengthened. “Well, let’s listen to what the bastard had to say.” He pushed the answering machine’s playback button angrily as if it were responsible for the lousy news.

  “… lovely lady of the house herself?” Varada’s voice was deep, tinted with some indeterminate southern drawl that bore mockery like the arrogance I’d seen in the newspaper photographs of his face. “Bless my soul, I do believe it is. How are you, lovely lady? Was it a nice party tonight? Did that horny old judge behave himself?”

  Victor stopped the tape. “How the hell does he know stuff like this? It’s like he’s got us under a magnifying glass. Caro leaves the house, he’s nowhere in sight—but then he’ll be looking at her through the window of a shop on Madison or she’ll be having lunch at a sidewalk cafe and there he’ll be, across the street, watching her. It’s like he knows where she’s going … Now he knows Edel is a philandering old fart. I don’t get it.”

  “Maybe Edel’s behavior is not exactly a secret,” I suggested.

  “So what? How does he even know Edel’s coming to dinner?” He shook his head impatiently and started the tape again.