I felt slick as JFK with his next conquest. Concerned and certain that Bonnie would see the phone number, I walked down to the corner of Commonwealth Ave and dropped dimes into a payphone and called Cat.
The scourge of my loins and Kali to my Shiva in my teen years—Catherine Braddock was the next best thing to The Social Register for any information on Alfred R. Wiggins the third. Boston Brahmins were an incestuous bunch, bred to keep money and power inside the family vault. Cat had suffered the common affliction seen in Austen novels. Her title was a piece of paper and, moreover, she married to maintain appearances and a lifestyle. I became a footnote when she married Brayton Braddock, an inbred, unattractive popinjay. I dove into a case of blackmail for him when I was hard up and couldn’t pay the rent and put food into Delilah’s bowl.
I worked the case and Cat worked me.
For his legal troubles, her husband’s connections secured him posh accommodations that the legal system reserved for the elite. Brayton Braddock had not killed anyone nor did he do the skunk’s walk to catch a better deal, but his unforgivable crime among his peers was that he’d been caught. Brahmins believed that when you stole money, you should at least have the foresight to slip on the white gloves so the bills wouldn’t stain your fingers green.
Cat wouldn’t rat hubby out to the Feds but she’d never let him forget he should’ve been grateful for her presence in their bedroom. Bray’s mortal sin with her was he’d cheated on her. That I had become collateral damage and her object for revenge sex didn’t make me shed a tear. Not one. I didn’t forget that she was my first unforgettable love, like I didn’t forget her private number after her husband hired me.
I called. I asked. She said yes.
The butler answered the door at the top of a very steep incline. He was tall, sixtyish, in a smart tux, wingtip collars, and fresh boutonnière in his lapel. He tipped his head forward to hear my name and for me to state my intentions.
“Shane Cleary calling on Catherine Braddock. She’s expecting me.”
He stepped aside for my entrance. A maid descended the stairs without looking at me. Servants in wealthy households make for poor witnesses in any court case. They see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing from the witness box. He relieved me of my coat and hat. He’d spotted the revolver in the holster.
“Allow me a moment to inform Mrs. Braddock,” he said.
The hallway was wide enough for a delivery truck. A large mirror on the wall enlarged the thoroughfare. The dark wood in the banister and staircase reminded me of Hawthorne’s tales of the darkness all around us. The stark white walls and the high ceiling gave me that chill of what it is to walk into a crypt.
“This way, Mr. Cleary. She will receive you in the parlor.”
As I walked away from the front door and the twentieth century, I imagined hundreds of afternoon teas, spoons stirred, and all those tight economical laughs, all those finger sandwiches and sliced cucumbers. Cat and her husband were more royalist than the loyalists, their families in bed with the British before the colonial dispute. We stopped at a set of French doors, which he opened. He stepped in and announced me. I stepped in and he departed and closed the doors behind me.
The mirror above the lit fireplace had been relocated to the far wall behind the liquor cart. The carpet underfoot dramatized a medieval hunt. In a taupe dress, Cat came at me with open arms and embraced me. Firm and tight against her, I inhaled her scent. Chanel No. 5.
She lingered as she whispered hello into my ear. Her long blonde hair had grown out, past her shoulders. My hand sought the familiar small of her back. I touched bare skin and enjoyed that sin too much, so I let my hand fall away. She smiled.
Cat turned, my hand in hers, and pulled me deeper into the room. She asked if I would join her for a drink. Cat poured herself a splash of her incarcerated husband’s precious brandy. Henri IV Heritage.
I watched while she tended bar. The cutout in her dress exposed the strong line down her back. She looked over her left shoulder and said, “Caught you looking at me in the mirror. Think I’ve still got it?”
“Careful now. Pride before the fall, Cat.”
She put a knee onto the cushion of her armchair and reached over to a small table for her cigarette case. She did that to show some leg and how toned her thighs were. I saw an ankle bracelet.
“That’s cute,” I said, and my eyes glanced down. “The ankle bracelet. Gift from Bray?”
“No need to go spoil the moment and mention his name. I haven’t seen you in a while, and I’m fond of you, Shane.”
“People are fond of their pets. Children are fond of their toys.”
She reached for her light. “Don’t be like that. You’re more to me than a pet or a toy.”
I lifted my chin. “Thought you’d given up cigarettes. The Surgeon General says they’re bad for your health.”
She tamped her cigarette against the case before she placed it between her lips. I couldn’t place the shade of lipstick. I didn’t want to. I tried not to think about it. The cigarette didn’t move when she spoke. She clicked her Tiffany lighter. It was crystal and could crack skulls. She blew out smoke and measured me in reverse, from toes to crown. Her eyes lingered where I kept the .38. “Still carry that?”
“Still wear Chanel?”
“You’re on the rabbit,” she said looking at the carpet in front of my feet. “Doesn’t it represent lust?”
Cat possessed many voices. This one was Coy Cat.
I pointed to the figure in the rug near her feet. “There’s the fox; he represents the devil.”
She kicked off her heel and let her toe caress the fabric. “The devil isn’t a woman.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
She crinkled her nose. Crafty and cagey were apt words to describe Cat and her approach to life. She calculated all the angles. She had tried to have her husband killed. She failed. She’d tried to seduce me. She’d succeeded.
She pulled her foot closer and tucked it under. She adjusted the material of her dress. Cat was cognizant of everything she did since the day she first wore a training bra, aware of her effect on men. There was nothing innocent or accidental about her.
She was also direct. “You need something from me?”
“Information.”
“Information about what?”
The fireplace threw shades of orange and red against her beige dress and bared skin. I’d forgotten about her shoulders. I admired it all, but I also believed in the rabbit’s foot under me.
“Information about an individual in your circle.”
“I don’t socialize much since Brayton went away.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I said. “You decide on how much you wish to divulge.”
“Fancy word ‘divulge.’ Why don’t you just ask me to paw out simple answers with my hoof? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She extended a leg. “Name, please.”
“Alfred R. Wiggins.”
“Father or son? She asked.
“You decide.”
“Not much to tell. Déclassé.”
“You mean he’s French for poor.”
“His blood is blue as a lobster’s, but he’s poor as a sharecropper by our standards.”
“Your standards? Which means what in dollars and cents?” I asked.
“If you have to go to the office, you’re not wealthy.”
“So, he isn’t a very important person then?”
“It’s not to say his family is without, shall we say, influence. I’m not sure what you want to hear.”
“I’ll listen to whatever you’ll say.”
“Any Wiggins man is bland as a potato, which I found so terribly tedious as a young girl. Which is why I took to you.” She stopped for a lungful of cigarette smoke. “The Wiggins family traces back to the Norman Conquest and the saga is tedious reading. Granddaddy anointed his son’s pointy little head, told him he had a desk waiting for him at the bank. It’s tradition. Every Alfie in the family line has had his entire life mapped out for him before he learned how to read. Exciting, right? The Wiggins men are all bankers. Absolutely stultifying, if you ask me.”
“Conservative money, conservative life,” I said.
“Not if you’ve made bad investments. The Wiggins men follow the trodden footpath. Harvard is de rigueur. All their boys play football in the fall and lacrosse in the spring. They go to the awards dinners. They receive or exchange family heirlooms on birthdays and holidays. Rebellion for them is dating a Daughter of the American Revolution. Satisfied?”
“Like rebellion for you was to take up with an Irish boy.”
Her mouth formed a perfect oval and blew a perfect smoke ring. “Thought you’d like that?” she said. We both watched it ascend and disappear.
“You said he’s poor, so how does he afford Harvard?”
“I see you’re no fun today,” she said and took another hit off her cigarette. “The university wouldn’t dare turn him away. His family has clout, and there’s always Yale, if it came to choosing an education.”
“Anything else?”
“What does the R stand for in his name?”
“Root,” she said. “The name of some dead ancestor who started the banking dynasty.”
A Calvinist, like John Harvard, I assumed. Calvinists believed in predestination, that they were God’s chosen elect, top of the ladder, social and divine. Ordo salutis.
Cat’s foot pointed to the carpet. “There’s a fish over there.”
“Represents wealth and happiness.”
“Mutually exclusive, but not overrated.” She took another drag from her cigarette.
“Let’s talk about this family clout. They can keep things out of the papers?”
“You forget who owns the newspapers. Your innocence is endearing.”
“Answer the question, please?”
“Bray is in a resort, instead of Walpole. Does that answer your question?”
She crushed her cigarette into a gold ashtray. She hadn’t touched her drink. She stood up, reached behind her and bent her leg to remove her other heel. She let it drop to the floor next to the other one. Barefoot, she strode across the rug, towards me.
Cat placed her hands on the armrests of my chair. She repeated a move I used against her husband. Our eyes met. She moved in. Closer. Real close. One of her hands touched my chest and the other one grabbed a handful of hair. She pressed her lips against mine. A log in the fireplace crackled and buckled. She pulled back, pressed her thumb across my reddened lips.
“You can leave now.”