The Saberdene Variations

by Thomas Gifford

  I knew I was standing exactly where Victor had stood earlier. Only now I was the one holding Caro while I stroked her hair just as he had done.

  Chapter Six

  ONE

  I DIDN’T SLEEP WORTH A damn.

  If I wasn’t thinking long guilty thoughts about having my arms around Victor’s wife and wanting to keep them there, I was thinking about Varada. What in the name of God did he plan to do? Scaring hell out of everyone wasn’t going to be enough for him. One look into those hooded eyes and you knew scaring people was just the opener, just something to set the mood. I’d written about enough sociopaths to know what seemed to them the only logical conclusion. People dying. That was the part that was eating me.

  So when I came downstairs and saw Victor, the whole night coalesced, guilt about the way I was reacting to Caro and fear that Varada was going to kill them. Kill us, if it seemed convenient.

  “You look like shit, old son,” Victor said. “Cheer up, it’s not the end of the world. Have a Pop Tart, have a cup of coffee. French Market, coffee with chicory. Opens your eyes right up. You’ll love it.” He beamed at me. He was huge and crisp, white shirt, blue suit, bow tie, polished shoes, the Times on the table before him. “Conchita,” he called to the kitchen, “a Pop Tart and coffee for Mr. Nichols.”

  “Conchita?” I said. “Is Conchita a Filipino name?”

  “I don’t know. She looks like a Conchita to me, she doesn’t seem to mind, she’s been with us six years, so let’s not make a federal case out of it, okay?” She brought me coffee right away and I told her I’d forgo the Pop Tart and have some plain toast with butter and jam. Victor broke off a chunk of a second Pop Tart. “So, Charlie. Sleep well?”

  “Like a baby. I woke up and cried every fifteen minutes.”

  “Well, I’ve got a handle on this thing now. Andy was right. I was on the defensive. No way to be. Ever. Gotta take control. I’ve been up since six, thinking things over. I was scared of this jerk! Jesus! That’s all ass backward. I make people scared, I don’t get scared.” He licked blueberry filling from his thumb. “Well, the news from the front is that I’m me again. So you go through with our plan, as per last night. I’ve already been on the horn to Potter and Claverly. I’ve used these guys before. They may sound like a comedy team but, believe me, Charlie, they are not funny fellows. All you have to do is take Caro up to the Metropolitan. Somewhere along the way they’ll just fall in discreetly and tag along. Tall black guy, that’s Claverly, and Potter is about the size of a refrigerator. One will stay fairly close, the other will be farther away, they’ll try to sandwich Varada. Braverman’s given them his photo and the description you gave last night. All you’ve got to do, old son, is squire Caro. Look, Charlie, I sure as hell appreciate your baby-sitting like this, but don’t worry about a thing. We’re all going to come out of this okay.” He fixed me with those deep-set eyes. “This is all going to be over and done with by tonight. Do you hear what I’m telling you?” I nodded. “Well, then, cheer up, for Christ’s sake!”

  He was full of himself that morning, sure he could see the future. He was fresh, well rested, ready to go. He was whistling “Moon River.” I knew this Victor. He figured he had the bull by the balls and was about to start squeezing.

  Caro had been right last night. Victor had a plan of his own. I didn’t know what was going on in that huge head but I was sure that even had I known I wouldn’t have felt any better. I’d stood beside Varada, felt the weight of his gaze, seen the smirk and heard that too syrupy drawl, and I had felt myself coming unglued. I was afraid and so was Caro. Our fears were feeding off one another.

  And Victor was thanking me for spending time with his wife.

  I hoped he was right. I hoped it would be over by that night.

  Then I could get away from her. I could run for home.

  TWO

  “Behold,” she said. “The Rubens Venus. I thought you’d find it particularly interesting.”

  We were standing in a cool, lonely gallery, before a large canvas. A fleshy Venus, her skin pink with the iridescence Rubens had made his trademark, her hair long and thick, was turning toward us, seductively, as she’d been doing through the centuries. There was a kind of modest brazenness in her eyes, the oxymoron which lay at the heart of every persuasive seduction. In her hand she held a mirror—Venus at Her Glass—from which she’d turned, as if she knew we’d be watching.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “But why particularly interesting?”

  “Look closely. At her face and at the reflections …”

  “Well, I’ll be damned—”

  “You see? I thought you’d like it.” A group of schoolchildren under guard whispered and pattered past us. Somewhere two men were watching us but I hadn’t seen them. The Venus suddenly had me in its grip.

  From one ear dangled a perfect pink white pearl, even more glowing than her flesh. Reflected in the mirror, from her hidden ear, hung a black pearl.

  “I’ve seen the way you watch me,” she said. “Looking at my earrings. Right?”

  “You are a very observant woman.”

  “I had an acting teacher once, he always told us to observe people closely. So I have been observing you. Closely.”

  “Observing me observing you—”

  “My earrings. My father took me to see this painting once, in Europe, when I was a little girl, I never forgot those twin pearls … and when I graduated from high school he presented me with these. He used to say they cast a spell. Then he had me read Zuleika Dobson and I saw what he meant about the spell. What do you think, Charlie?”

  “They’re very pretty. But it’s always the woman who casts the spell.” Zuleika Dobson. That was what I’d nearly remembered when I first saw Caro’s earrings. Zuleika and Caro, two of a kind. I remembered Beerbohm’s novel, the Oxford undergrads throwing themselves into the river, a mass suicide in her honor, so smitten were they. I looked at Caro. Hell, it made sense to me.

  “Well, I know what you’ve been thinking when you watched me.”

  “Am I so obvious?”

  “You’ve been thinking, is she working herself up to another breakdown—isn’t that about right? Victor’s worried sick, keeps staring at me when he thinks I’m not looking. He half expects me to butter my hand and eat my napkin …”

  “Well, no, that’s not what I’ve been thinking—”

  “The point is, I’m trying hard not to let all this get to me any more than absolutely necessary. Victor’s worried, Dad’s worried. It’s awfully nice having you here, Charlie. Someone from outside the infernal circle of survivors. You remind me of innocence …” She smiled up at me, hesitant, almost pleading, but I didn’t know for what.

  “Are you worried about another breakdown?”

  “What? Me worry? Sure, of course I’m worried. You think I’m crazy? I’d have to be crazy if I weren’t worried, Charlie.”

  THREE

  We were sitting ducks which, of course, was the way it was supposed to be. Heavy low clouds rolled across midtown Manhattan and the humidity took a quantum leap upward. The sun disappeared. Shadows went with it. We slowed down. My shirt was sticking to my back. When New York gets really hot and humid and the breeze dies, you quickly grow a kind of grimy scum. It starts on your forehead. It’s a mess. I was a mess before we got to the Plaza. By some peculiar quirk of fate, the scum never seems to afflict beautiful women. Go figure.

  “Do you see them?” she asked. She was wearing a beige linen dress. She looked like she’d never been cooler.

  I stopped and pretended to look at books at the Strand’s movable kiosks. It didn’t take me long to spot the black guy, Claverly, who was standing about twenty feet away. He wore a tan wash-and-wear suit and had a camera slung around his neck like a diligent tourist. It was a Nikon. He looked prosperous. He grinned in my direction, a gold tooth flickered. I didn’t see anyone matching Potter’s description. I didn’t see Varada. But I knew he was there, somewhere. Watching us, playing with us.
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  “Claverly’s over there,” I said, holding a book, pointing out something on the page.

  “Book’s upside down,” she said solemnly.

  “Doesn’t surprise me at all. My eyes are full of sweat and I don’t feel like reading.” I put the book down. “Come on. We might as well push on.”

  We crossed Fifty-ninth Street, past the musicians whacking away on the steel drums by the fountain in front of the hotel, across Fifty-eighth Street, past Bergdorf’s. Just out for a stroll. She stopped from time to time, inspecting shop windows. I kept snatching little surreptitious glances behind us but Claverly was our only companion. The process was getting to me. I’d never been good at waiting. Never been good in the role of bait. I kept trying to remember that nothing bad was supposed to happen to us. I took out my handkerchief, wiped my face with it, and it came away damp and dirty. We passed Harry Winston, passed the big Doubleday on the west side of the street, passed Air France and Dunhill and ran into heavy crowds swarming out of Saks across the street, streaming toward the Rockefeller Center restaurants. Now I could no longer find even Claverly. But nothing bad was supposed to happen. All we were doing was drawing Varada into the open again so Claverly and Potter could follow him back to his hole, give him the word, scare him off.

  So I kept sweating through my clothes while I tried to remember there really wasn’t anything to spoil the calm. But I’m a smart guy and I wouldn’t swallow that one. Varada was like a terrorist’s bomb. He was just waiting to go off. You could see it in his eyes, in the exaggerated swagger, the slow forced drawl, as though if he let himself speed up he might ignite, go off, start shredding his way through masses of flesh. Jiggle him and blam!

  So where the hell was he? Why hadn’t he shown himself yet? How could he resist the enjoyment of tormenting us?

  The bastard …

  We crossed Forty-second Street and saw a crowd forming a semicircle in front of the library. From a tinny outdoor loudspeaker came “The Dance of the Flowers.” We went closer, stood at the edge of the crowd which watched, awestruck, very rare in New York gatherings. The two lions couchant flanking the steps, Patience and Fortitude, were garlanded with thick ropes of ravishingly bright flowers. Between them two gigantic figures towered over the onlookers, dancing to the music. A man and a woman, elaborately costumed, her long dress dropping all the way to the cement, pirouetted and kicked and twirled with exquisite grace, all on stilts. It was weirdly hypnotic, as if they were descended from another galaxy far away and were giving an exhibition of a new art form. They whirled, spinning on the stilts, his trousers concealing his, giving an impression of Yellow Submarine characters, their movements quick at the source but slowing, becoming almost languid by the time they reached the distant outposts at the ends of the stilts. They moved like vast, programmed robots, and you couldn’t stop watching them. Caro stood with her mouth open, smiling in childish wonderment, her expression replicated throughout the crowd.

  I saw from the corner of my eye a small black boy wandering away from his mother. He was wearing a navy-blue tee-shirt with the interlocking NY logo of the Yankees on his chest. A Yankee cap rested atop his ears. He’d apparently had his fill of the stilt dancers and was heading for the rope of flowers around one leonine neck. He must have been five years old. Standing on tiptoe he struggled to pluck one of the flowers but couldn’t quite reach it. He looked around with his huge eyes, the whites like headlamps, as if expecting to be chastised. Seeing no one, no mother, no older sister to spoil the fun, he went back to his pursuit of a flower. I couldn’t keep from smiling and wanted to give a small cheer when he was suddenly hoisted up by a pair of large hands. Quick to know a good thing, the little boy grabbed two flowers. As he turned, smiling hugely, he gave one of the two flowers to the man who’d helped him. As he reached toward the man’s face he tipped the brim of the straw hat and the man laughed and pulled the bill of the Yankee cap down over the boy’s eyes. Giggling, the boy ran, clutching the flower, to his mother while the man stuck the yellow flower into his lapel. I couldn’t look away.

  It was Varada.

  He looked at me, as if he’d known I’d been watching him, and grinned. He pulled the stem down through the buttonhole and sauntered away from the great stone lion, shouldering his way through the crowd. I whispered to Caro, she looked, nodded, and we held our ground.

  Varada came to stand beside me. “Cute little jigaboo, wasn’t he? I’m a sucker for kids.” He leaned across me, tipped his straw hat to Caro. “Howdy do,” he drawled. “Amazin’ what they can do on those stilts, ain’t it? Why, look at ’em, just twirling their little hearts out … all that control! Why, I’ll bet they never fall down.” He shook his head in amazement at the dancers’ dexterity. My stomach was preparing to do a half-gainer. I looked around trying to find Claverly or Potter but I felt Varada’s hand on my shoulder like a sack of cement.

  “Say, you’re lookin’ nervous, pal. What’s the matter? Relax. Gotta take time to smell the roses.” A laugh like a gargle rattled around in his throat.

  Caro stared at the dancers. I saw Claverly, who’d climbed up near the lion and was trying to look like he was shooting some tourist pictures. We were in them.

  “Well, you two don’t have much in the way of small talk. You’re a great disappointment to a friendly old boy like me.” He slapped me in a friendly way on the shoulder. “I’ve got some good news for you, though. I’m gettin’ pretty tired of all this pussyfootin’ around.” He looked down the long nose, eyes still behind the low-slung lids. “I’m about ready to do somethin’. I jes’ can’t wait much longer … I got me some big surprises in store for you folks …” He laughed softly, began applauding as the music ended and the two dancers took bows from on high.

  Then he was gone. Neither Caro nor I had said a word. When I tried to find Claverly he too had melted away. I never did see Potter.

  Caro took my arm. “Come on, Charlie. We’ve done our part. Let’s get a cab and go home.”

  In the cab she looked at me, in a very small voice said: “What did he mean, Charlie? What’s he going to do to us? Or is it Victor he’s after?”

  I told her I didn’t know. I was remembering Victor at breakfast. Why had he been so sure it would all be over tonight?

  FOUR

  Caro and I told Victor and Thorne the story over dinner in the garden. The rainclouds hung so low they felt like cobwebs brushing your face. There were a couple of large oscillating fans set up on the flagstones, sweeping across the garden.

  “Well, it worked,” Victor said. He lit a cigar with some difficulty. The fans kept blowing the matches out. “All we have to do now is wait for word from Claverly and Potter. I think we’ve just about gotten clear of this mess.”

  Thorne said: “You surprise me. I’d have thought that Mr. Varada would be a tougher nut to crack—”

  “We’ll see.” Victor was smiling to himself, satisfied. “I do believe Claverly and Potter may persuade him to see the light.”

  It turned into a long tense evening. After dinner we gave up on the al fresco side of things and sought the air-conditioning of the study. Thorne settled into one of the deep leather chairs to watch the Yankees and the Red Sox on a small color television. Caro put a cassette into the VCR and she and I watched Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake and Bill Bendix in The Blue Dahlia. I told her the stories surrounding the making of that long-ago masterpiece, Raymond Chandler staying drunk to write it as they shot it before Ladd was inducted into the army, the producer John Houseman providing a twenty-four-hour-a-day nurse for the writer so he wouldn’t drink himself to death. She relaxed, losing herself in the movie. “I think the woman is the bad guy,” she said. It turned out she was wrong about Veronica Lake but I told her if we’d been watching Bogart and Lizabeth Scott in Dead Reckoning she’d have been right. I drank iced tea and Victor paced in and out of the room, putting away gin and tonic at a goodly pace. The telephone rang twice and he grabbed each one on the first ring but neither was Claverly. Thorne wa
s pleased with the ball game. The Red Sox blew the Yankees out.

  At eleven o’clock the doorbell rang.

  Victor said: “Thank God!” He hugged Caro. “This is the good news, honey.”

  He and I went to the door together. Caro and Professor Thorne waited in the doorway to the foyer.

  Victor flung the front door open, stopped, then staggered back, as if someone had hit him. I moved to the side to see past him.

  Carl Varada was standing in the doorway.

  His face was shaded by the brim of his Panama but there was no mistaking his stance, the slant of his broad shoulders, the slight tilt of his head. As Victor took a couple of steps backward Varada came forward, like nature, filling the vacuum,

  “What the hell—” Victor swallowed the words, stood aside since he had no other rational choice. “You’ve no business here.”

  “Now, don’t get your skirts in an uproar, Counselor,” Varada said. “I think you may want to have a word with me after all. I’ve already had a discussion with your colored gentleman and his helper. They made it mighty clear to me, your wishes and whatnot, and I told them mine.” He raised his hand as Victor started to say something. “Now, you hush up, Counselor. You had your boys do your talkin’ for you. You set them on me but once we’d talked things over I jes’ knew I ought to have a word or two with the Massa himself.”

  He came farther into the foyer, into the glow of the chandelier, and I saw his face. Caro, watching from the door to the study, gasped and shrunk against her father.

  One side of Varada’s face was scraped raw, eyebrow to the line of his jaw, as if it had been laid open with a paint scraper. The finely shaped, full lower lip was deeply split in the middle. Blood had dried beneath his lip. More blood was caked beneath his nose. The front of his seersucker jacket was soiled with smears of blood. Victor’s high spirits had stemmed from a plan that was now obvious in its stark simplicity. Looking at Varada, I had the feeling that he was lucky to be alive.