TWENTY-ONE

At the emergency room a mustached young doctor in cowboy boots took six stitches and made jokes while a nurse sponged the blood off my face and neck. When they finished I drove to my office, told people who asked that I’d tripped at home, and shut the door behind me without returning a message from Cade that ordered me to call. I felt trapped and shaken.

I was pulling a fresh shirt from my credenza when the telephone rang.

“Mr. Shaw.” Mooring’s voice was strained. “We’re going to need a precise understanding.”

“I have one, Mooring. You’re a liar, and maybe worse.”

There was a long silence. “Meet me at the club,” he said finally. “Twelve-thirty.”

I hesitated, tracing the stitches with my finger. “Make it noon.”

He hung up.

I looked at my watch. It was eleven-thirty. At four o’clock Rayfield would ask for Mooring’s name.

I began pacing. But I could talk to no one about Joanne Mooring—except Cade. I would have to meet Mooring.

When I arrived the club was teeming: golfers in bright shirts, overdressed matrons with sullen mouths, bankers come to lunch with borrowers and look into their faces. Parking-lot boys eased long cars to rest, chrome gleaming in the sun. On the far tennis court two figures in white scrambled amidst money-green trees.

Entering, I passed a doorman in spit-shined shoes, coat, and a military cap. Down the hall, in small fussy corners, dowagers played bridge. In the men’s grill it was darker and the game was gin, played tight-mouthed, for money. A barman brought drinks. Cards slapped and were shuffled again. Dim wreaths of smoke hung over the center table where a steel company chairman, the senior federal judge, a bank president, and the owner of a newspaper held the same four chairs they’d held for years. Their heads butted forward like prows. No one else played, or asked to play.

“Mr. Shaw.” At my side was Lewis, the headwaiter. “Please follow me.”

He led me out of the grill and down a side hallway. Three years before, when the club president had collapsed on the last tee, Lewis had been a pallbearer. He had always called the dead man Mister. After the funeral, the man’s friends came to the club to drink. Lewis had served them. He motioned me through the doorway of a small private room. “In here, please, Mr. Shaw.” He made a point of not noticing my face.

The room had green walls and a worn Oriental rug. Mooring sat beneath a crystal chandelier, next to the portrait of some half-forgotten plutocrat. His table was covered in white linen. Two places were set. Lewis whisked out my chair. When he was gone I said, “Isn’t this a little baroque?”

Mooring inspected the gash under my eye. “I’ve hired a nurse for Joanne,” he finally said.

“Like with Martha Mitchell?”

He shrugged. “The result’s the same. You can’t see her.”

In the doorway a red-jacketed barman was waiting to be noticed. Mooring’s nod summoned him. “Bloody Mary,” I said. Mooring ordered Dry Sack. The waiter thanked us and left.

Mooring sat straighter, as if buoyed by the ritual of service. I sensed that he was part romantic: a man who’d redefined himself, selecting the elements of his new persona and the trappings to go with them, leaving his wife earthbound. “You know,” I told him, “I’ve sometimes wondered why I came to despise this place—besides the obvious. It’s that people like you find such comfort in it.”

For an instant someone else lived behind his eyes; vulnerable and angry. “You’re fresh from bullying my wife, Shaw, and in no position to offend.”

“I am, though. I’m an Irish Catholic whose father was a cop. Twenty-five years ago you were listening to elocution records. So forget where we are. As far as I’m concerned this conversation’s happening in the street. What you told me before was lies. Either tell me the truth about Lydia Cantwell or I go to the police.”

Mooring looked at me, expressionless and appraising. A cough came from the doorway. The barman served my drink, then Mooring’s, from a silver tray. Mine was tangy with lemon and Tabasco. Mooring sipped his sherry, passing it beneath his nostrils. “There’s not much to tell,” he said softly. “Lydia and I had an affair. I might be with her now.”

“When did that start?”

He ran his index finger down the side of the glass. “Three years ago, whatever Joanne thinks. The details are none of your business. You need to understand only two things. The first is that Lydia wasn’t raped.” He looked away. “What the police found was mine.”

I lit a cigarette, still watching him. “And the second?”

“That when I left, Lydia was still alive.”

Laughter came from the hallway, clubmen walking to lunch in pairs. “He’s not worth the money,” someone was saying. “You could fit the entire Republican party down here into one room and wipe ’em out quicker than the St. Valentine’s Day massacre.” To Mooring, I said, “What happened that night?”

“I was only there an hour. She was high-strung, but laughing. We celebrated.”

“Celebrated what?”

He gave me a quick sideways glance. “Being together. It was hard to arrange.”

“Is that what made her high-strung, or was it Jason and the will?”

“No,” he said flatly. “She didn’t mention that.”

“Wouldn’t she?”

His eyelids dropped. Scowling, he said, “I’m not sure. Did you draft that?”

“Cade did. And he knows only what Lydia told him: not much.”

He took a pensive sip. “I can’t help with Jason. That night we didn’t talk about him. We made love and said foolish things. Personal things, that’s all. We made plans. When I left, she was smiling in the window.”

“Or dead on the floor.”

He flushed. “I had no reason, Shaw. Lydia was a rare woman—refined, yet real. There are no women like that, now.”

The words had the tinny ring of cheap sentiment. I wondered if Lydia were another fine thing he’d wanted, a mirror in which to see himself, the new aristocrat. “Life is unfair,” I said with a shrug.

His face hardened. Between his teeth he said, “It wasn’t meant like that. She was kind; it wasn’t practiced, it just was. There are things I can’t explain to anyone. With Lydia I never had to.”

“Where did your wife fit in?”

“Badly.” He put down his drink. “Most people have two lives, perhaps three. You start as one person, and then—you can’t expect a man and woman to keep fulfilling each other, not without children, something to build on.” His gaze grew pointed. “Perhaps you understand that.”

I shook my head. “Kris Ann’s still the woman I want. That’s one thing you should know: that if I find out who threatened her I won’t invite him to the club and quote Passages. I’ll kill him.”

Mooring stared at me fixedly. “Bravely spoken.”

“Lunch, gentlemen?” A waiter had slipped into the room and stood at a middle distance. Light from the chandelier made his face shiny. Carelessly, Mooring said, “You don’t eat here, do you? You might try the Coquilles St. Jacques.”

“Roast beef,” I told the waiter. “Medium rare.”

“Thank you, sir.” He was a grizzled, crease-faced man old enough to be my father. Mooring ordered prawns and the waiter shuffled out, stiff and careful in the joints.

Mooring’s eyes had stayed on me through the byplay. “I’ve had enough condescension now,” he said evenly. “You think you’re different from me. The only difference is that your marriage made things easier. You see, I’ve known you since you first came here for parties, without ever being introduced. The first dance you stared at the floral display. You were wondering what it cost. I knew that. I knew that your tuxedo tie fastened in back because you hadn’t learned to knot one. Your hands kept groping for pockets. When your wife talked to other men, you watched as though one might steal her. You felt out of place. Like me. And like me you kept coming back.”

His insight startled me. For a moment I recalled feeling always about to select the wrong fork. “Once I thought Fitzgerald characters were interesting,” I told him. “They are—in books.”

Mooring lit a cigarette. Narrowly he watched it burn, taking one deep drag with the cigarette still between his lips. “It’s ironic. Lydia understood that in you; she used to worry over your marriage, what would happen when you knew yourself. She understood it in me, that it was part of why I loved her. Not her money. Her sense of entitlement. You and I will never have that if we live to be a hundred.”

I didn’t answer. Mooring was a surprising man. His voice turned crisp. “About your wife. I know nothing of threats. You can accept that or not. But Joanne you leave alone. You’re not to come near her or the house. The nurse on duty has instructions.”

“You’re incredible, Mooring. This morning I got a good look at your wife. She’s feverish drunk and violent and crazy from neglect, and all you want is to lock her up.”

Mooring’s face closed against me. “There’s too much you don’t understand. I’m not asking your advice. You haven’t quite caught on, have you?”

“Draw me a picture.”

“I’ve told you all this so you would understand one thing: you’re not going to the police.”

“You’re forgetting that I know Otis Lee may be innocent. And you or your wife, guilty.”

“It wasn’t rape, Shaw. That means in theory it could be anyone: me, Jason, Joanne, this man Lee—or Henry Cantwell.” He pronounced the name bitterly.

“No one will believe your wife.”

His look was keen. “Think about what she told you. She didn’t see Cantwell, although that makes the best story. She saw his car. The police say there was no break-in. After Cantwell called Lydia no one saw him until the next morning. Except Joanne. Her testimony could send Henry Cantwell to the electric chair. And that’s why you’ll leave us out of it and the black man in jail. Because it’s practical.”

“That’s already been done,” I shot back. “To Lee’s father. You’re a bloodless prick and your wife’s story is horseshit. If it weren’t, you’d be tripping over me to nail Henry Cantwell for killing the woman you were supposed to love.”

“Don’t judge me, Shaw.” Mooring’s eyes turned bright and angry. “I hate Henry Cantwell more than you can dream. But Lydia’s gone now. I have other obligations—things that don’t concern you. There’s no one, ever, who can truly judge another person’s life, and I won’t have you judge mine. All you need to know is that your friend’s a murderer. You see,” he finished softly, “we are at the country club. You’ve come here, and we’ve just made a deal.”

A golfer laughed in the hallway. Mooring’s stare was utterly composed. I stood without speaking, and left.