It was forty miles out to McArdle’s place. We took the Triborough Bridge and the Expressway. For the first ten or fifteen miles it was all city, slit open by the Expressway. After Floral Park and Mineola it got more suburb. Every once in a while, there was a glimpse of Long Island Sound off to our left. But it still didn’t seem any more like an island than Manhattan did.
The last mile and a half was private road, blacktop. McArdle shared it with two other millionaires, and his place was last of the three, where the road made a hangman’s knot. There was a birdbath inside the loop, and a Negro with a power mower. The house was clapboard and brick and masonry. Windows enclosed the porch.
When we got out of the car, the Negro stopped and wiped his face with a white handkerchief. His hat was gray and he held it in his left hand, then put it back on his head. He kept the power mower running, and it sounded loud but far away, the way they do. He never quite looked at us, and he never quite looked away.
We went up the stoop and tried the screen door. It was locked and there wasn’t any bell. I rattled the door and shouted. A guy in a white jacket came out, carrying a towel. He looked at us through the screen.
“Kelly,” I said. “We’re expected.”
He pointed to his right. “Down at the dock,” he said. He went back inside.
The house was backed against a half-moon of forest. A brown path led in among the trees to the left of the house, going gradually downhill. We went down it. Behind us, the Negro put his handkerchief away and went back to work.
A voice droned ahead. The path wound downhill. Through the trees, there were blue glimpses of the Sound.
We came out on a narrow strip of shade-mottled lawn. At the lower end, a swath of smooth pebbles led down into the water. A little blond girl in a ruffled bathing suit stood half-bent in the shallows, filling her green pail with water.
The lawn was flanked by brush and trees, down the sides and overhanging the water’s edge. To the right, an unpainted dock jutted out atilt into the water. A white motorboat nodded beside it. A boy and girl of about twenty were on and off a float a ways away. Four people sat in white-fence lawn chairs to the right, three of them watching the little girl.
The woman of about twenty-seven, with the white bathing suit and the ash-blond hair and the vertical frown lines between her brows, would be the mother of the little girl and the sister of one or both of the people out on the float. The nondescript middle-aged heavy couple in city clothes would be her parents, he the brother of the McArdle I’d met at the law office, this one older and tougher and not a lawyer. The gross ancient bald man wearing young man’s sports clothes would be Andrew McArdle.
I stopped and looked at him. The short-sleeved white shirt showed flabby blue-veined white-skinned arms, the muscles so little able to bear weight that the upper slopes of the arms were only skin over narrow frail bone, the fat all hanging in long bags of skin underneath. The shirt was open at the throat, showing gray flesh writhing over a convulsive Adam’s apple. There was no chest. The shirt sagged down to a gross belly. Tan slacks covered the stick legs beneath, and the feet were bare, looking like frozen plaster molds.
His head sagged back, his mouth hung open, the thin-veined lids were stretched over his eyes. The sound of his breathing was very loud.
The voice I’d heard had been the middle-aged man. He stopped and looked at us. The women turned their heads and looked, and then the ash-blonde watched the little girl again. The boy and girl on the float stood still, arms at their sides, gazing in at us. The little girl ignored us. She laughed suddenly and splashed herself with water.
The ancient man gulped and rolled his head around and opened his eyes. He stared at Bill. “Willard.” His voice was a croak that had once been a ringing bass.
I came across the lawn, Bill trailing me. “Mr. Krish -man called you,” I said.
The present slowly came into his eyes. He looked at me. “Yes. Arthur, go up to the house. All of you, up to the house.”
The middle-aged woman smiled like a beautician. “You shouldn’t exert yourself, Papa.” She got up and crouched over him, hoping everyone would think she was solicitous. She was afraid to strangle him. “Don’t you talk too long, now,” she said.
Arthur said to her, “Come on.”
The ash-blonde called to the little girl, “Linda. Come here.”
She came out of the water, carrying the green pail. She stopped in front of me, serious, squinting up at me with sun in her eyes. “Why do you limp?”
“I was in an accident.”
“When?”
“Come along, Linda,” said her mother.
“Two months ago,” I said.
“Where?”
“Your mother wants you.”
They trailed by us, across the lawn toward the path. The middle-aged woman said, “I’m coming, Arthur.”
They trailed diagonally up the lawn. The last thing, the ash-blonde made the little girl empty the water out of her pail. Then they were gone, between the trees.
He told us to sit down, and we did. He kept his head back, twisted at an odd angle on a faded flower-pattern pillow. His voice was just above a whisper, no louder than his breathing. “Your father is dead,” he said.
I said, “I want to know about Eddie Kapp.”
“He went to jail. Years ago.” The head shook back and forth, slowly. “The Federal Government is a different proposition, Eddie.”
“Is he still in jail? Eddie Kapp, is he still in jail?”
“Oh, I suppose so. I don’t know. I have taken the final sabbatical, young man. I am no longer chained to the office, I—” His wandering eyes and wandering mind touched Bill again, and he frowned. “Willard? You shouldn’t be here, you know that.”
Bill was scared. He said, “No, you mean my father.” He broke the mood before McArdle said anything useful.
McArdle’s face started to close up. He was in the present again, and he remembered what he’d said. He watched me warily.
I said, “Why shouldn’t he be here?”
“Who? What are you talking about? I am retired, an old man with a bad heart...”
“My father shouldn’t have come to New York, should he? Why not?”
“I don’t know. My memory wanders sometimes, I’m not always responsible for what I say.”
The boy and girl came dripping out of the water. McArdle’s head twisted to glare at them. “Go out there! Stay out there! This is none of your business!”
“We’re going up to the house,” said the girl. She was snotty. She’d had money all her life, she didn’t care if she inherited or not. “Come on, Larry.”
They paused to fiddle with towels and cigarettes and sunglasses. I said, “Better hurry.”
The girl was going to be snotty to me, but then she wasn’t. She grabbed her gear and hip-jiggled away. She looked discontented, frustrated. The boy flexed his muscles at me, frowning because he’d been left out, and followed her.
When they were gone, I turned back to McArdle. “Who would know if Eddie Kapp was out or in?”
“I don’t know. So long ago.” The eyes misted again, cleared a little. “Maybe his sister. Dorothea. She married a chain-market manager.”
“What name?”
“I’m trying to remember. Carter, something like that. Castle, Kimball... Campbell! That was it, Robert Campbell.”
I wrote it down. “That was in New York?”
“He managed a chain market in Brooklyn. A Bohack? I don’t remember. A young man. She was young, too, much younger than her brother. A pretty thing, black hair. Glowing.”
He was starting to dream again. I said, “Who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town?”
“What? What?” His head nearly raised up from the pillow, and then subsided. “Don’t shout so,” he said. His breathing was louder. “I am an old man, my memory is failing me, I have a bad heart. You cannot rely on what I say. I should have told Samuel no. I should have refused.”
“Samuel Krishman? He doesn’t know the answer, does he?”
The belly laughed, shaking him. “He never knew anything. A fool!”
“But you do.”
He started the old man routine again. I said, “Tell me who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town.”
“I don’t know.”
“Who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town?”
“Go away. I don’t know.”
“Who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town?”
“No. No!”
I kept my voice low. “Tell me or I’ll kill you.”
“I’m an old man—”
“You’ll die. Here and now.”
“Let me go. Let the past alone!”
I bowed my head, covered my face with my hands. I plucked the glass oval out. I closed my left eye, and then I was blind. I kept the right lid open, but it was a strain with the eye out. It was warm in my palm.
I lowered my hands in my lap. Still blind, I raised my face toward him. I smiled. “I can see your soul this way,” I said. “It’s black.”
I heard a choking. I opened my eye and he was gaping, staring, choking, his face turning bluish red. I put the glass eye back in.
Bill was already running up the path, shouting for the family.