The maitre d’ of the Restaurant Cortez, who was also the proprietor, was named Alfredo Hernandez: a tall, lean, hidalgo-type character, black-haired, with a neat black mustache and a neat black suit. He was very good indeed, recognizing Madeleine immediately and addressing her by name, showing every indication of pleasure at greeting an old customer, even one whose appearance and style of dress showed distressing changes. I noticed that he carefully made no reference to how long she’d been away—the only hint he gave that he was quite aware of where she’d been.
He also recognized me, although I’d never been a regular; and he said that certainly we could have a booth along the wall, Mr. Helm, this way, please. He maneuvered the heavy, half-round table out of the way to admit us to the semicircular settee, returned the table to a comfortable position, and summoned a waitress to take our drink orders.
“Whatever you’re having,” Madeleine said when I asked her preference. “Well, a good quick jolt is indicated, I guess. A vodka martini.”
“It must be ESP,” I said. “Two vodka martinis, please.”
We sat in silence waiting for the drinks to arrive, watching the place fill up. The decor was turn-of-the-century red-leather-and-plush-and-velvet; you half expected Diamond Jim Brady to swagger in with Lily Langtry on his arm, but, coming from outdoors yourself, you wouldn’t really be able to see him, or her, until your eyes became used to the low light level inside. Very cozy illumination. When a trio of pants-wearing middle-aged ladies stopped by our booth, I thought they were simply pausing to let their eyes get properly accommodated so they could make their way to the table indicated by Hernandez without bumping into anything. Then I saw that the leader of the group was staring at us with an expression of cold disapproval.
The woman was rather tall and bony, but quite handsome, and her expensively tailored black pantsuit didn’t look too bad on her narrow body. Well, if you like pantsuits. There was a frilly white blouse. Her graying hair was very carefully arranged about her thin face. I thought she was about to address Madeleine; but after a long moment she turned away in a very pointed manner and spoke to her friends instead, saying loudly:
“Well! I suppose Alfredo is obliged to let in anybody who doesn’t create a disturbance, but one would think an ex-convict would at least have the decency to ask for the back room if she must patronize a respectable restaurant!”
They swept on, leaving the people at the nearby tables staring our way curiously, or carefully not staring our way curiously. When I looked at Madeleine, there were lines of strain around her mouth, but she spoke with the same dreadful clarity the tall woman had used:
“In case you didn’t know, Mr. Helm, that mouthy old bitch is Adelaide Lowery. Her mother used to run a cheap boardinghouse in Annapolis, which made it easy for her to grab herself a future admiral. You know the kind of noovow reechies from the East who move out here; and before they’ve got their fucking bags unpacked they’re acting like their ancestors came down the Santa Fe Trail by wagon train. Instant old-timers, we call them… I think the waitress wants our orders. What are you eating?”
We both took the day’s special: sauerbraten. When we were alone once more, Madeleine glanced towards the table where the tall woman had settled and was now conversing very brightly with her friends.
“Did I sound like a vulgar felon type, I hope?” Madeleine shivered slightly. “Brrrr, it’s like jumping into an icy pool, coming home like this; the first shock is pretty breathtaking. But I guess you can get used to anything, even being a… a second-class citizen, fair game for witches like that.” She swallowed hard. “God, after that little exchange, I feel as if I were sitting here naked. Talk to me, Matt.”
“You talk to me,” I said. “Tell me about the Lowerys. I suppose that’s the wife. Kind of a coincidence running into her like this, when I heard the name for the first time only half an hour ago.”
Madeleine shook her head. “Actually, it’s not so strange. She eats here every day, holds court you might say.”
“What do you think of Baron’s suggestion? Could her husband, this retired admiral, be the Tolliver we’re looking for?”
“I suppose it’s possible.” Madeleine frowned, thinking hard. “The Lowerys hit Santa Fe—I think it was the year you and I met on the Chavez case—like the hordes of Attila the Hun. Socially speaking, of course. They really took this town by storm. I mean, one day nobody’d ever heard of a Lowery, and the next day everybody knew the name.” Madeleine hesitated. “But shouldn’t we be asking ourselves whether Waldemar really thinks Admiral Lowery is this mysterious and intimidating voice on the phone, or just wants us to think he thinks so.”
I glanced at her sharply. “When you start suspecting a guy, you go all the way, don’t you? Of course you’ve got a point, but it’s the best lead that’s been offered us so far, because it’s the only lead. To hell with Baron’s motives in suggesting it. We can’t afford not to check it out. So give me the Lowery story as far as you know it, please…”
There was a pause while the waitress put our lunches in front of us, and offered rolls around, and asked about coffee. Later. Madeleine tasted her sauerbraten and nodded approvingly.
“Jasper Lowery,” she said, after swallowing. “Rich boy, old New England money, went into the Naval Reserve during World War II and was sent to Annapolis to take some kind of courses at the Academy. That great Santa Fe social arbiter and aristocratic southwestern beauty, Addie Krumbein as she was then, was helping her ma sweep the floors and make the beds in the tacky rooming house where he stayed. Propinquity had its way. If I sound prejudiced, it’s because I am; and not just because of the lovely welcome-home she just offered me.”
“Explain, Mrs. Ellershaw.”
“It’s hard to like somebody who hates your guts,” Madeleine said. “Well, maybe I did act a little too unimpressed when I first started seeing her around at social functions behaving as if Noah had dropped her family off here when he passed by in the Ark. I mean, one gets tired of these phony Old-Santa-Feans. It’s a goddamn cult. Maybe my trouble is that my family actually did come down the Trail way back before New Mexico became a state. The first Rustin hit here about 1895, if I remember right.”
“You were just a kid at the time, of course,” I said.
She grinned and stuck out the tip of her tongue at me; then she sobered quickly and I could see her reminding herself that she was a mature and dignified woman who’d known great hardship and suffering. But the martini was doing its work, and she was relaxing again after the strain of her encounter with Baron, and the shock of the insult she’d just received. The color was returning to her face, and I found myself thinking that, regardless of how she was dressed, she was by far the most attractive woman in the restaurant.
“So you can see that it was a great triumph for Adelaide when the cocky young bitch who’d snooted her wound up behind bars as a common criminal,” Madeleine said. She grinned wryly. “But I’m not the only jailbird in the family. As a matter of fact we’re quite proud of my great-uncle, who spent ten years in prison for shooting a man. Self-defense, he said, but the jury didn’t agree. Very dangerous family, we Rustins.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said, “It’s got a lot of survival value. Let’s hear more about the Lowerys.”
“Jasper must have been a pretty competent young officer. The Navy let him switch from reserve to regular and kept him on after the war, and kept promoting him, although I don’t think he ever really functioned as an admiral; it was one of those courtesy promotions they often give them when they retire them. Anyway, I met him socially a few times, back before I was sent to… back when they first came to town. He likes to tell the ancient story about the old salt who, on the beach at last, throws an anchor over his shoulder and hikes inland; when he finally reaches a place so far from the water that a local yokel asks him what he’s doing with that funny-looking pickaxe, that’s where he puts down his roots. In Lowery’s case, Santa Fe.”
“Does he do anything here except collect his Navy pension and count his old New England money?”
She shook her head sadly. “I don’t know where you keep yourself when you come to town on vacation, Matt. Don’t you ever read the papers? Plural. Back in the good old days there used to be only one, remember?”
“That’s Admiral Lowery? The Daily Journal?”
“That’s him. When he got here, the old Santa Fe New Mexican was the only paper in town. Way back when Lew Wallace was governor, he probably read the New Mexican every afternoon after he’d settled his problems with Billy the Kid and done his daily writing stint on Ben Hur. Lowery started up the Journal a year after he got here. The New Mexican had never been what you’d call rabidly liberal, but the Journal quickly made it look like Pravda West. However, the Journal turned out to be sprightly and interesting to read, if you didn’t mind suffering an occasional attack of apoplexy at the reactionary editorials. Lowery was no newspaperman himself, but he picked good newspapermen to run his paper, and let them run it as long as they followed his basic political guidelines.” She hesitated. “Well, they don’t have completely free hand; there’s a little nepotism. Like a rather amateurish social column entitled “Today with Adelaide.” At least it was amateurish when I last read it; maybe she’s improved with eight years of practice.”
“Anything else?”
“No, but I have an unworthy hope that Waldemar is right about Jasper Lowery. I suppose it’s too much to expect that his wife’s done anything to be arrested for herself, but I’d get a big kick out of seeing her visiting her so-important husband in the same jail they had me, with the newspaper and TV people yapping and snapping at her just the way they did at me.” She made a little grimace of distaste. “Oh, God, I used to be such a nice, kind, charitable little girl, and just listen to me now!”
Then she looked up, quickly and warily, as a man stopped by the booth. He was tall and rather fragile-looking, slightly stooped, with a wispy white mustache and a pink expanse of scalp that didn’t have too much white hair around it. And very sharp old blue eyes beneath white eyebrows.
“It’s good to see you back, Madeleine.”
Her defensive attitude relaxed. She drew a long breath, and smiled up at him. “Thank you, Judge. This is Mr. Helm, from Washington. Helm, Judge Harlan Connors.”
His answering smile was gentle. “Keep your chin up, young lady. It’ll be a little rough for a while, but don’t let them grind you down. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.”
I watched him move away, walking carefully as befitted his age. When I glanced at Madeleine, her eyes were shiny.
“That was sweet of him,” she said huskily. Then she sniffed, and groped in her purse for a Kleenex.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I guess… I guess I just can’t stand people b-being n-nice to me.” After a few more sniffs, and some dabs with the tissue, she swallowed hard and sat up straight, facing me. “I’m okay, Matt. Don’t worry about me. Ill make it, if you’ll buy me a nice big gloppy dessert and to hell with my gorgeous new figure…”
Later, leaving, we had to make our way through the now crowded restaurant to the entrance hall, and past the little knot of people still waiting there to be seated. I could sense that my companion felt as if she were running a gauntlet, even though most of the patrons clearly didn’t know her at all. Even if they were locals who’d seen her picture in the newspapers eight years ago, they’d forgotten. However, there were a few who obviously recognized her but made a point of pretending not to, and a couple who recognized her—a pair of lawyers just coming in—and made a point of greeting her a little too heartily.
“God, Old Home Week!” she breathed as we emerged in the dazzling New Mexico sunlight. “It’s awful of me, Matt, but I find the ones who’re friendly almost as hard to take as the ones who aren’t. They’re all so obviously wondering just what it was like for a nice, well-brought-up girl like me, from a good family, to be locked up in a dirty dungeon all those years; and was I homosexually molested by my depraved fellow inmates or wasn’t I; and just what kind of a degraded female creature have I been transformed into by my brutal penitentiary experiences, really?”
I said, “Tell me about Homer Walsh. I had the impression he was retired; but judging by what Baron said, he still has a voice in the affairs of the firm.”
Madeleine grinned abruptly, walking beside me. “Don’t you want to help me feel sorry for myself?”
“You’re doing fine all by yourself,” I said.
“Good man. Keep slapping me down whenever I start my martyr act. Homer Walsh had a very bad auto accident and wound up in a wheelchair; that was the year after I joined the firm. A thin, dark, intense little man, and a very good trial lawyer, but he never practiced law again after he got well—I gather that, apart from being crippled, he’s never been really well since. But he’s still a partner, kind of an inactive partner, and he does have some say in the policies of the firm. At least that was the way it was when I… left, and I gather it’s still that way.”
“What about Walter Maxon?”
“Walter’s a very nice boy, that’s his trouble. Nice and a little shy. He’ll never be a real cutthroat lawyer, but he’s conscientious and totally honest. Perhaps that’s why Waldemar’s apparently been pushing him along faster than he really deserves; he wants somebody obviously square and straight right there to pick up the pieces, and the firm, if things go badly for him, after what he was forced to do to me.” She grimaced. “What Walter really needs is somebody to tell him what a wonderful guy he is, and keep on telling him and telling him.”
I said deliberately, “It’s fairly obvious that, with your husband nine years missing, you could have the job anytime. Even legally, with just a little red tape.”
She said, “Maybe, but it’s kind of optimistic of us to arrange my future, Mr. Helm, before we’re sure I’m going to survive this perilous undercover operation I’m engaged in for you and the U.S. government.”
“I’ll do my best to see to it,” I said. “And when it’s over I think that guy’s going to be right there waiting for you loyally—like he’s been for eight years—and you’d better have made up your mind whether or not you want what he offers you. Meaning him.”
She said with sudden sharpness, “Want? What does want have to do with it, Matt? I had what I wanted, everything I wanted, and it was all snatched away from me. Even if I’m given every possible break from now on, even if the old verdict is set aside and my name is cleared and all my rights as a citizen are restored, with all those years lost to me I’m going to have to pass up all the great things I wanted for myself and settle for what I can get—what I can get that I can still make some kind of an endurable life out of. What I really want… God, I don’t even know what it is any longer! And I used to be so sure, so blissfully sure!” She shook her head abruptly. “Whine, whine, whine! You’re neglecting your duties, Mr. Helm. You’re supposed to kick the self-pitying bitch in the pants where they’re tightest—and that’s pretty damn tight—whenever she goes into that sad routine. What’s next on our agenda?”
“Well, as soon as possible we’d better check out that Conejo Canyon installation. I’ve got the names of two scientific guys who knew your husband there before he vanished, and who’re still there. One’s more or less running the place now. But it’s a forty-mile drive to Los Alamos, and you’ve got that appointment with your folks’ lawyer, Birnbaum, in less than an hour. We’ll have to see how much of the afternoon is left when you’ve finished with him.”
But when we reached the motel, we found a handwritten note awaiting her at the desk. She glanced through it and gave it to me to read. My dear Madeleine: Unfortunately I find myself tied up in court this afternoon, how about ten tomorrow morning? Looking forward very eagerly to seeing you again and most sorry for the delay, your Uncle Joe.
Madeleine took it back from me when I’d finished. “I used to call him that when I was a little girl, although there’s no real relationship,” she said. “Well, what do we do now?… Oh, God, look at that!”
She was staring at the nearby newspaper-vending machine. The enormous headlines showed black through the slightly beat-up plastic: PRESIDENT SHOT! That was the Journal, making you read the paper to find out if the shooting had been fatal or otherwise. The New Mexican’s giant headline was equally terse, telling what had happened but not to whom: ASSASSINATION FAILS!