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“Sure,” Thomas said. “I know where to reach you. I’ll call you.”
Gretchen and her son went into the hotel, a porter carrying the two bags.
“I’ll get a cab from here, Rudy,” Thomas said. “You must be anxious to get home to your wife.”
“I’d like a drink,” Rudolph said. “Let’s go in the bar here and …”
“Thanks. I’m pressed for time,” Thomas said. “I got to be on my way.” He kept peering over Rudolph’s shoulder at the traffic on Sixth Avenue.
“Tom,” Rudolph insisted, “I have to talk to you.”
“I thought we were all talked out,” Thomas said. He tried to hail a cab, but the driver was off duty. “You got nothing more to say to me.”
“No?” Rudolph said savagely. “Don’t I? What if I told you you’re worth about sixty thousand dollars as of the close of the market today? Would that make you change your mind?”
“You’re a great little old joker, aren’t you, Rudy?” Thomas said.
“Come on in to the bar. I’m not joking.”
Thomas followed Rudolph into the bar.
The waiter brought them their whiskies and then Thomas said, “Let’s hear.”
“That goddamn five thousand dollars you gave me,” Rudolph said. “You remember that?”
“Blood money,” Thomas said. “Sure I remember.”
“You said to do anything I wanted with it,” Rudolph said. “I think I recall your exact words, ‘Piss on it, blow it on dames, give it to your favorite charity …’”
“That sounds like me.” Thomas gri
“Well, what I wanted to do with it was invest it,” Rudolph said.
“Always a head for business,” Thomas said. “Even as a kid.”
“I invested it in your name, Tom,” Rudolph said deliberately. “In my own company. There haven’t been much in the way of dividends so far, but what there’ve been I’ve plowed back. But the stock has been divided four times and it’s gone up and up. I tell you, you have about sixty thousand dollars in shares that you own outright.
Thomas gulped down his drink. He closed his eyes and pushed at his eyeballs with his fingers.
“I tried to get hold of you time and time again in the past two years,” Rudolph said. “But the phone company said your phone was disco
“I was campaigning in the West,” Thomas said, opening his eyes. The room looked blurry now.
“Actually, I was just as glad I couldn’t find you,” Rudolph said, “because I knew the stock would keep going up and I didn’t want you to be tempted to sell prematurely. In fact, I don’t think you ought to sell now.”
“You mean I can go somewhere tomorrow,” Thomas asked, “and just say I got some stock I want to sell and somebody’ll give me sixty thousand dollars, cash?”
“I told you I don’t advise you to …”
“Rudy,” Thomas said, “you’re a great guy and all that and maybe I take back a lot of what I’ve been thinking about you all these years, but right now I ain’t listening to any advice. All I want is for you go give me the address of the place where that man is waiting to give me that sixty thousand dollars cash.”
Rudolph gave up. He wrote out Joh
“Don’t worry about me, Rudy. From now on I’ll be so careful, you won’t even recognize me.” Thomas ordered another round of drinks. When he lifted his arm to call the waiter, his jacket slipped back and Rudolph saw the pistol stuck in the belt. But he didn’t say anything. He had done what he could for his brother. He could do no more.
“Wait a minute for me here, will you?” Thomas said. “I have to make a phone call.”
He went into the lobby and found a booth and looked up the number of TWA. He dialed the number and asked about flights the next day to Paris. The girl at TWA told him there was a flight at eight P.M. and asked him if he wished to make a reservation. He said, “No thank you,” and hung up, then called the Y.M.C.A. and asked for Dwyer. It was a long time before Dwyer came to the phone and Thomas was just about ready to hang up the phone and forget him.
“Hello,” Dwyer said, “who’s this?”
“Tom. Now listen to …”
“Tom!” Dwyer said excitedly. “I’ve been hanging around and hanging around waiting to hear from you. Jesus, I was worried. I thought maybe you were dead …”
“Will you stop ru
“You meant you got reservations? On a plane?”
“I don’t have them yet,” Thomas said, wishing Dwyer wasn’t so excitable. “We’ll get them there. I don’t want my name on any lists all day.”
“Oh, sure, sure, Tom, I understand.”
“Just be there. On time.”
“I’ll be there. Don’t you worry.”
Thomas hung up.
He went back to the bar and insisted on paying for the drinks.
Outside, on the sidewalk, just before he got into the cab, that drew up next to the curb, he shook hands with his brother.
“Listen, Tom,” Rudolph said, “let’s have di
“Great idea,” Thomas said. “I’ll call you Friday.”
He got into the cab and told the driver, “Fourth Avenue and Eighteenth Street.”
He settled back in the cab luxuriously, holding on to the paper bag with his belongings. When you had sixty thousand dollars everybody invited you to di
PART FOUR
Chapter 1
1963
It was raining when she drove up to the house, the torrential, tropical rain of California that flattened flowers, bounced off the tiles of roofs, like ricocheting silvery bullets and sent bulldozed hillsides sliding down into neighbors’ gardens and swimming pools. Colin had died two years ago but she still automatically looked into the open garage to see if his car was there.
She left her books in the 1959 Ford and hurried to the front door, her hair soaking, even though it was only a few yards. Once inside she took off her coat and shook her wet hair. It was only four-thirty in the afternoon, but the house was dark and she turned on the front hall light. Billy had gone off on a camping trip to the Sierras with friends for the weekend and she hoped that the weather was better up in the mountains than down on the coast.
She reached into the mailbox. There were some bills, some circulars, a letter from Venice, in Rudolph’s handwriting.
She went into the living room, turning on lights as she went. She kicked off her wet shoes, made herself a Scotch and soda, and seated herself on the couch, her legs curled up under her, pleased with the warmly lit room. There were no whispers in the shadows anymore. She had won the battle with Colin’s ex-wife and she was going to stay in the house. The judge had awarded her a temporary allowance from the estate, against a final settlement, and she didn’t have to depend upon Rudolph anymore.
She opened Rudolph’s letter. It was a long one. When he was in America, he preferred to phone, but now that he was wandering around Europe, he used the mails. He must have had a lot of time on his hands, because he wrote often. She had had letters from him from London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Paris, St.-Jean-de-Luz, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Geneva, Florence, Rome, Ischia, Athens, and from little i
“Dear Gretchen”—she read—“It’s raining in Venice and Jean is out in it taking pictures. She says it’s the best time to get the quality of Venice, water on water. I’m snug in my hotel, undriven by art. Jean also likes to take pictures of people for the series she’s doing under the worst possible circumstances. Hardship and age, she tells me, preferably the two together, tell more about the character of a people and a country than anything else. I do not.attempt to argue with her. I prefer handsome young people in sunshine, myself, but I am only her Philistine husband.