The Outside Man, page 4
“Why don’t you rob some graves,” I spat out. “Maybe take pictures.”
She shrank from me. I grabbed her cameraman by the collar. “Get out of my way, you sonofabitch.” His mouth fell open. I threw him to the cement and pushed down the steps through the parting crowd.
On the sidewalk police moved Henry toward Cade’s blue Audi. They opened the passenger door as I reached his side. He turned to me, voice trembling. “Adam, you must believe I would never do this.”
His eyes locked mine. Quietly, I said, “Don’t ask again.”
He nodded at the ground. Cade glared at me over the hood of the car. “If there’s anything you need,” I said quickly, “Krissy and I can move over there, whatever.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right. Roland’s called my sister—”
“Let’s go,” Cade snapped. Henry Cantwell disappeared into the car and was driven away.
SIX
That night Kris Ann and I put on evening clothes and drove to the country club.
I’d come home to find all the lights on and the telephone off the hook, and no one waiting. No one answered when I called for Kris Ann. I went quickly up the stairs, nerves taut for a long half minute until I heard the shower. I called out, and in the moment of relief when Kris Ann answered knew how frightened I had been. I went downstairs to fix two drinks, and waited.
She didn’t come. For a while I watched the ice melt in her drink, then drifted to the porch. It was dark and there were cricket sounds and the whir of a moth near the gaslight, but all I saw was Lydia Cantwell’s murdered face, and Henry’s as it fell into his hands.
“Are you all right?”
Kris Ann stood near the gaslight in a silk caftan, beautiful without makeup, the shock in her face now become something sadder.
“I was thinking about Henry.”
She nodded. “Daddy said the police were such bastards.”
“Only when he gave them an engraved invitation.” She watched me carefully, in silence. “So he called,” I added.
“I called him, to see if I should stay with Henry. His sister’s flying in. So I said I’d at least bring a casserole.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“It’s still baking.” She walked to the end of the porch, staring out. I went to stand next to her.
“There’s a drink on the coffee table.”
“No. Thank you.”
I hesitated, then asked, “Why is the phone off?”
“Reporters kept calling.”
“I might have needed to reach you.”
“It didn’t matter. They kept wanting to know things …”
I touched her shoulder. She flinched, turning suddenly. “I want to go out,” she said.
“Out? Where?”
She looked down. “The club.”
“Jesus Christ—”
“Please.” Her words rushed forth. “Just for an hour. It’s a benefit Lydia put together for the symphony and what with it already planned they’ve decided she’d want it to go on. You know I’d rather be with Henry but here we are and they need money and dammit I don’t want to sit in this empty house feeling sad and afraid instead of seeing friends and at least trying to cope—”
“Sounds perfect,” I cut in. “Maybe Henry would like a ride.”
She recoiled as though struck. I reached out. “I’m sorry …”
She backed away, gaze steady now. “I have to, Adam. Please. This afternoon, what we did—afterwards it made me cold.”
My hands fell to my sides. “That wasn’t meant.”
She stood tense and quiet. I felt suddenly drained. “We’ll go then,” I said.
Kris Ann was still quiet on the way to Henry’s. When we drove up, the house was dim and massive and Cade almost a shadow as he came to the window. He vanished when Kris Ann got out; then the front door opened and Kris Ann disappeared. I waited outside.
About ten minutes later Kris Ann emerged looking pale. “Henry?” I asked.
“He’s sedated.”
She lapsed into pensive silence as we drove off. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “You found Lydia, not me. I acted hysterical.”
“No matter, Krissy. There’s no good form for this.”
“What I mean is that we can go home if you want. Really, it’s been so horrible about Lydia that I forgot your father—”
I took her hand. “It’s okay. All that was a long time back.”
She turned to me, questioning. I tried switching subjects. “I’ve been missing you all week. When did you get in last night?”
“Not until after midnight. I got the last Atlanta flight and didn’t want to wake you. It all seems so long ago.”
“But your cousin’s okay.”
“Fine.”
“And the baby?”
She turned back to the window, her profile still. The stab of beam lights on the empty road ahead accented our solitude in the moving darkness. “He’s precious,” she finally said. “They’re very lucky.”
It was quiet as we both thought whatever we were thinking. “You’re sure it doesn’t matter?” she asked.
“About the club?” I tried smiling. “Not really. They can bore me, but they can’t make me think.”
We arrived at a staid building of English fieldstone set back from the road with the distance that money buys. There were two prowl cars at the end of the drive and a uniformed officer had replaced the doorman. Leaving the car with an attendant, we took an entrance hall, lined with pictures of dead founders, to the ballroom. It stretched across the blue hand-loomed rug to a large rectangular mirror on the far wall, two hundred feet from where we stood. Seven chandeliers swept toward it in a crystalline line to be abruptly reflected, the nearest the largest, like stations in society. Beneath a thin haze of smoke, men in tuxedos and women in evening dresses drank in small clusters from which the occasional one or two would drift toward the bar, then amble with a fresh drink in search of something new. Usually they would discuss vacations, children, their lake houses, the imbecility of the President and the next party where they would discuss all that again. But tonight there were police inside, and the talk was of Lydia Cantwell.
As we entered, couples turned to stare, their voices lowering. A flashbulb exploded from amidst a clutch of media people about three times too many and too badly dressed to be society editors. Kris Ann blinked, startled. Angrily, under her breath, she said, “Damn them.”
I took her arm, kept moving as a hard-eyed tractor magnate stopped castigating Jason Cantwell to his willowy lawyer and their plump wives long enough to announce, “The little bastard should be executed,” and look to me for an answer. He sounded as if Lydia’s death were the ultimate thing that had gone wrong. For him and his friends too many things had gone wrong already—blacks, inflation, their children who couldn’t stand them, that first burglary next door—until their pride of place had become mere twitches: harassing waiters, inspecting the greens, reviewing membership with a jeweler’s eye as they slid gradually closer to that national nervous breakdown that produced angry shoppers, battered wives, charge-card deadbeats, and born-again Christians by the thousands. It was clear from their stares that my finding Lydia’s body was common knowledge. “This is grotesque,” I muttered.
“Adam, Kris Ann.”
I turned to see Ardrey Carr tottering toward us, the fat of soured youth dulling his jawline, face florid to match his hair. Fifteen years ago Carr’s forearm shiver had shattered the face of a Mississippi right end before a howling mob at Legion Field, where Alabama played, and brought him fame, a thriving insurance business, and the disgruntled look of a man who has passed his peak and can’t remember where. “We’re over there,” he said, jerking his thumb toward a group we hadn’t spotted. “Figured for sure you’d want to be with friends.”
For once Carr watched me instead of Kris Ann, avid with curiosity. I wished fiercely I were somewhere else. But Kris Ann smiled with relief and went toward the circle of expectant faces.
“I’ll get drinks,” I told Carr.
The barman was a slight, smooth-faced black with a gray mustache and cautious eyes. “Evenin’, Mr. Adam.”
“How’re you tonight, Carter?”
A dubious smile crossed his face like trouble. “Just fine, sir.” He handed me the usual drinks and slipped quickly back into his profession, a small black man in a red jacket, polishing the clean wet glasses from the kitchen with a white towel, snapping the towel and polishing again, until they gleamed. Someone called for a drink. “Yessuh,” he said.
From the end of the bar a pompous surgeon I knew just well enough to dislike was pushing toward me. Turning to escape, I nearly bumped the fortyish blonde they called West Lounge Winnie, sipping a fresh martini as her restless eyes searched over the rim for a man. For the five years since her husband had died she would arrive at parties in one-strap gowns and an intricate bouffant hairdo and then drink until gin had dulled her features and unwound her hair and psyche, so that by one o’clock she was talking about sex, to no one. Ardrey Carr thought she was very funny.
He was watching Kris Ann as the group talked back and forth. But then most men did. Even me.
It had first happened in a dingy apartment crammed with law students, beer cans, Salvation Army furniture, back copies of Esquire, and cigarette smoke that seeped through the screens of the open windows. A paunchy classmate was shouting with a Temptations album in a Mississippi accent, trying to sound black. It was hot and too close and the fall crispness of late afternoon kept looking better. I was about to slide out the door when I saw her.
She was watching the singer from a corner of the room, looking disdainful and a little amused as two first-year law students hovered near her, trying to think what to say. Even at a distance she had an energy of beauty like no one I’d ever seen. Above the chiseled nose and high, strong cheekbones her eyes were wide and black and lambent. Long black hair fell away straight on both sides of her face, and her mouth, full and regular, set off a clean, delicate chin. It was as though the strength in her face had been sculpted to the point of losing that for beauty, but not quite. I took in the cool, easy tilt of the beer to her lips until she ran through me. I went over without thinking.
For an instant her face clouded, as if I had frightened her. But when I introduced myself she mustered a lingering hint of amusement. She was Kris Ann Cade, she told me, a senior and just watching after that rotten game. “This is terrific anthropology. You’ve got primitive mating rituals and what with two men to every woman, there’s some absolutely vicious social Darwinism.”
“Beats football,” I agreed. “Vanderbilt may win some year but it’ll take legislation.”
The animal white smile came and went so fast it seemed almost a trick. She nodded toward the white soul singer. “God, he’s awful, though.” Her voice was at once smoky and metallic. “You know, I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Are you a recluse?”
“Almost. I go to law school and work twenty hours a week, so nights and weekends I study.”
She sounded mildly surprised. “Why do you do all that?”
“Because I’m here on scholarship,” I smiled. “You’ve heard of those?”
Her gaze was cool and unembarrassed. “That was foolish, wasn’t it? You must be hell-bent on being a lawyer.”
“I guess I must be.”
She inspected me with mock gravity. “I think the problem is that you don’t look like one. More like Warren Beatty with a mean streak.”
“Now you tell me, when I’ve got student loans to my eyeballs.”
She smiled again, then wrinkled her nose and batted at a near curl of smoke. I stopped reaching for a cigarette. “Maybe we should find air someplace.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t sing, do you?”
“I don’t even hum,” I grinned. “Plus I’m a virgin.”
Her smile returned. “It’s your schedule,” she said, and allowed that I could walk her home.
We took the gravel path to Branscomb Quad, hands in our pockets, talking back and forth in the pale fall sunlight. Leaves crunched beneath our feet and there was the rich, damp odor of more leaves burning. Her father was a lawyer, she was telling me, which was where she got her notion of how they looked and acted. “Maybe you should be one,” I remarked. “You don’t look like Warren Beatty.”
She shook her head. “I don’t burn like that—whatever he’s got that makes him a brilliant lawyer. I’ve never been sure I wanted to.” She frowned. “He needed a son—someone to do what he does. The best I can do for him is have one.”
“Is that the program, then? Kids?”
Her shoulders curled downward. “It’s Daddy’s. He’s not always wild about the boys who come home but he wants a son from me.”
I smiled. “Too bad he can’t just start without you.”
“Oh, I want one, too, someday. I think most women do”—she looked wryly across—“no matter what they tell you in the middle of the night.”
I laughed. “Then you didn’t believe me?”
She smiled back. “About being a virgin? You don’t seem the type.”
I shrugged, saying carelessly, “Easier not to be, these days.”
“Easier to be a man, period.” She became abruptly solemn. “Sometimes I wish Daddy had gotten what he wanted.”
I was thinking she was funny, flip, and serious by turns, perhaps a little frightened under the cool. “If you were a man,” I said easily, “I wouldn’t have noticed you. And too many of them are lawyers already. After two years of this I can think of better things.”
“I’m an English major now,” she shrugged. “Shelley, Keats, and Adam Bede, and all functionally useless. But I paint a little.”
The last sounded like more than a throwaway. “There are things you can do with art. Teach, maybe.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I could make it a job. It’s more a release—painting to get rid of something until there it is on canvas.”
I nodded. “I’d like to see what you’ve done.”
She gave me a sideways look. “They’re kind of private. Maybe sometime.” We reached the dorm. “The thing is,” she finished, “I’ve just been having fun, and I guess I’ve never wanted to face what comes next.”
“I’ve had times like that. But something’s always happened. It’ll come.”
“I guess so.” She looked at me again, suddenly hesitant, as if waiting for something more. Then she shrugged and reached for the door. “Anyhow, thanks for the walk.”
She turned in the doorway, poised to disappear, a tall, beautiful girl with a voice as stylish as gin and sports cars, eyes as deep and tempting as the things I’d never had. All at once I had to say something, do something.
“About what’s next,” I tried. “Maybe you can start small. Like next Saturday.”
She looked down. “What’s next Saturday?” she asked innocently.
I hung there a moment. Then her eyes raised, and her grin cracked wide and sharp and clean, confirming her joke.
I smiled back. “There must be a party.”
The party was louder now. The haze had lowered and people drank and smoked in the loose-jointed rhythm that comes with late evening, staring more openly as I moved across the room. Rayfield had materialized near a floral display, watching me. I looked past him. Through the sliding glass doors to the patio I could see only darkness, making the party seem self-contained, as if it were happening on a spaceship. I moved toward Kris Ann.
“Mr. Shaw.”
It took me a moment to place the greenness of her eyes: the reporter who had questioned me. “Back from the cemetery so soon?” I asked.
She placed hands on hips. “I’d like to know what that was all about.”
She spoke with a trace of Boston accent, its edge matching the knife keenness of her eyes and the quick, kinetic movements of someone who burned off calories just standing around. Her auburn hair was cut short and she had a pert face with no makeup and freckles on the bridge of her nose. Her jawline was square and her skin quite pale and clear. She could have been the girl I’d dated in high school, Mary Moore, who had closed her eyes when I touched her in the dark and had four children now.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
“This is an important charity event,” she said crisply. “I’m covering it. What the hell are you doing here?”
“I married well.” I began moving. “Excuse me.”
“We’re not through—”
I turned back. “What’s your name?”
“Nora Culhane. Channel Seven.”
“All right, Ms. Culhane. For openers, don’t kid me. You’re not that wounded and you already know what my problem is: you’re scavenging a tragedy so the local voyeurs can get those goose bumps in the night, have their talk a little spicier, their sex a little sweeter. I don’t like it.”
A long-necked woman in sequins moved closer, head cocked. Culhane’s speech was staccato. “Murder’s news, Mr. Shaw. Henry Cantwell’s money doesn’t change that.”
“No, it just makes them love it more, doesn’t it, like with Patty Hearst—vicarious thrills for the mentally unemployed. We both know that if Lydia Cantwell had been a poor black woman no one would give a shit. But here you are, wearing the First Amendment like a Communion dress.”
She flushed. “I suppose I should be covering the Pillsbury bake-off.”
“Oh God,” I said. “Not that, too. Look, you’re not Bacall and I’m certainly not Bogart—I’m not having enough fun. So let’s drop it.”
“I’ve got something to ask you first. Tell me, when Rayfield asked Cantwell how long that last telephone call to Lydia was, what did he say?”
“You tell me.”
“One or two minutes. But it wasn’t. It was twelve. Rayfield’s got the toll slip.”
“Good for him. It’s not hard for a man in shock to make that kind of mistake.”
“Come on, Mr. Shaw. What were they talking about? It wouldn’t take Henry Cantwell twelve minutes to tell Lydia where he was. He lied about the time, and he lied about what they said to each other. And if he lied about that, chances are he lied about other things.”
