The Outside Man, page 7
“What business?”
“You haven’t talked to Roland? I thought that’s why you’d come. The police were here an hour ago.”
I tensed. “Without telling us? Did they talk to Henry?”
“No, it was me they wanted. They called my home in Virginia and traced me here.”
“What did they want?”
Her mouth tightened again. “What this Lieutenant Rayfield said he wanted was to ask about Lydia. But it all seemed to work around Henry, and finally I asked them to leave.”
“What did he ask, exactly?”
She looked quickly behind her. Henry didn’t seem to be downstairs. Our only company was the end table and an empty vase. “It was more what he implied. The lieutenant wanted to know how Lydia and Henry got on. I think what he meant was whether they were still intimate.”
The old-fashioned word made it somehow more disturbing. “Did you tell them anything?”
“Nothing. I didn’t like the man. There was something cold about him.”
“Did he let on what was behind all that?”
She was unbending now, and the anger showed. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. But I think perhaps Jason. He has a very strange perspective.”
“On what?”
She crossed her arms, hugging herself in a protective, virginal gesture. “They weren’t demonstrative, that’s all. There’s such a thing as taste.”
I nodded. “I always thought there was a nice courtliness between them.”
“Explain that to this Lieutenant Rayfield. Or to someone like Jason. We—the family—were all surprised when they had that boy and now I wish they hadn’t.”
“Surprised? In what sense?”
“It was just, oh, I don’t know exactly, perhaps a little after they were married, Henry told me they’d decided not to have children. Something about Lydia. He wasn’t specific.”
“But you don’t know what it was?”
“Not really, but Lydia was a tenser person than she seemed. You weren’t born here, were you, and of course you wouldn’t remember anyway.”
“Remember what, exactly?”
She frowned. “The Grangeville business. It turned sour on Lydia’s father. Some of the Birmingham papers even attacked him. Then he lost for governor and not too long after died of a heart attack when Lydia was only twelve or thirteen.
“We didn’t know her then, of course, but when I met her mother after she and Henry were engaged, she told me it was hard on Lydia, that before the executions she’d been quite a happy little girl, very imaginative and a little spoiled by her father—not at all like Henry, whose father terrified him and asked too much. Apparently, she changed. I know there was some unhappy involvement with an older man in Grangeville before she married Henry. But the woman I knew always tried to be perfect. I suppose she thought she wouldn’t be perfect as a parent.” Her jaw worked. “Perhaps Jason proved she was right.”
The last sentence lingered there. Her eyes froze as if shocked by its sound. “I’m sorry,” she said in a chastened voice. “That was a terrible thing to say.”
The apology wasn’t for me. She held herself tighter, as if afraid of what was inside. I let it drop. “Henry—would it be possible to see him?”
Interrupted from guilt, she looked pensive. “I’d just like him to know I was here,” I said.
She nodded slowly. “He’s on the patio.”
Henry Cantwell sat on a bench wearing a thin sweater, staring across the rear grounds at a secluded stand of pines. He was utterly still. His stillness bothered me; it mimed too well the sad, endless patience of those very old who have nothing more to expect. He looked like an old man on a park bench, who shuffled to his mailbox at the same time every day and combed the paper for coupons to clip, painstakingly, and take to cheap groceries to save a quarter on tea. I crossed the patio and stood next to him.
I couldn’t tell if he had heard me. His face was ravaged, his eyes bleary and unspeakably tired.
“’Lo, Henry,” I said casually.
He moved over on the bench without answering. I sat down. We watched the grounds in silence. A squirrel rooted at the base of a pine tree, found something, and disappeared up the other side of the tree.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “She’s here, then … no chance even to talk …”
I lit a cigarette. I took one deep drag and watched it burn in my hand. “It was Aeschylus who said, ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’”
He turned to me. “Do you believe that, Adam?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it was something to say.”
He seemed to ponder that. Then he shook his head, wonderingly. “Jason should be here, and instead it’s you.”
“I don’t mind. I’m thirsty, though.”
He marshaled himself with effort and stood to get me something. I let him.
He returned with a Bushmills on ice.
“Thanks.”
He sat down again. “It’s still peaceful back here,” I said.
He nodded. “Twenty-eight years—my family’s had it for seventy. Not many people last that long in one place.”
“Maybe in the South.”
He thought. “Maybe here. But it’s changing.”
I held the cool, icy glass in my hand. Sun fell through the pines on dark swatches of lawn.
“The funeral’s tomorrow,” he said.
“I know.”
We watched together. The squirrel reappeared, scrambling down the tree onto the lawn. Henry’s gaze seemed to follow it. “I’ve always wondered, Adam, why Roland never taught you to hunt.”
I smoked the cigarette. “I suppose I was afraid I’d like it too much.”
He nodded silently, seeming to lapse into thought. I didn’t mention the green Cadillac or his last talk with Lydia. Finally I stood. “You know where to find me. If you need to talk, anything at all.”
“Thank you.” He still stared ahead. I started across the patio.
“Adam.”
I glanced back. He had turned. “I’m pleased you read Aeschylus,” he said.
I smiled. “You lent me that, remember?”
Henry gave a faint answering smile. “I remember.” He turned back to the grounds.
I went home. Two reporters with a camera were filming Henry’s drive.
TEN
At six o’clock Monday morning I acted out my fear of growing older: running four miles, doing push-ups and sit-ups and lifting weights, punching the heavy bag I’d hung in the basement, and generally battling what Kris Ann had smilingly identified on my thirtieth birthday, before leading me upstairs to forget it all, as the instinct we’d never be back in college. The instinct drove me harder than usual. Then I showered and dressed, kissing Kris Ann hastily as she uncurled from sleep. She awoke suddenly to say that the funeral was at two, as if recalling a bad dream. I checked the locks again on the way out.
The city was hot and drowsy. Bankers and businessmen in lightweight suits ambled toward new glass towers or older cement ones with dime stores, jewelers, and one-story diners squatting in between. I passed a newsstand, saw the headline, DISCREPANCY IN CANTWELL STATEMENT, and stuffed the dollar I’d reached for back in my pocket. In front of our building a wizened black man with no body below the hips lolled in a wagon, begging. I gave him the dollar, pushed through the revolving door, and caught an elevator.
The fifty-one lawyers of Cantwell, Brevard, Winfield, and Cade rented the top two floors of the brown bank building, which had housed them for sixty years. It was the partnership’s pride that there was no need to move: as Cade had put it, over bourbon at the club, we were beyond showing off. Our reception area featured oak paneling with the firm name lettered in discreet gold script, a linen-suited receptionist, wing chairs for clients, and Business Week to read. Framed oils of the sacred dead—Messrs. Cantwell, Brevard, and Winfield—presided over the room like guarantors of probity. Coming off the elevator, I thought again that Cade had worked thirty years to be suitable for framing.
The receptionist looked up at me, vaguely flustered. She was a bony, middle-aged widow with a kind of fading elegance, a proprietary air, and a low, husky voice. I said good morning.
She gave a quick nod, like a hiccup. “It’s horrible about Mrs. Cantwell,” she managed.
“Yes, it is. She was here just last Friday, wasn’t she?”
She glanced toward a wing chair. “Right over there, waiting for Mr. Cade. It’s strange now to think about.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“Just hello. Usually we’d chat; she always remembered to ask after my son. But Friday she seemed upset.”
“In what way?”
She looked back at the chair. “I can tell by watching people how they feel about their business here. Mrs. Cantwell sat quite straight in her chair, with her ankles crossed and her arms folded, looking at everything and nothing, if you know the look. Once she flipped a magazine and put it down without reading it. She acted as women do when they’re here on some upsetting problem.”
“But she didn’t tell you what, or why?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head sadly. “I didn’t know until I read about the will. I suppose that would be upsetting. My son would never behave like that.”
“Then you should count your blessings. By the way, I’m not taking calls from reporters. And tell them my wife isn’t either. They can try Mr. Cade.”
“Very well, Mr. Shaw.”
I went toward my office.
The corridors droned with machines and work. In the library a table of shirt-sleeved associates read law books while another associate stood at a computer terminal that could spit out citations to any legal opinion in the last hundred years containing a phrase he wanted, like “sanctity of contract.” The morning crew in the word-processing center typed on machines that recorded their work on a screen, corrected errors, and replayed the final copy at six hundred words a minute. Their new supervisor, a brisk young woman who went to college nights, waited by the telex for a wire from London or Brazil or wherever steel companies did business. Down the hall more computers were translating the daily time sheets for each lawyer and paralegal into monthly bills to be reviewed by a senior partner and sent to clients. As I passed, Johnny Bentham emerged holding a sheaf of time sheets. “Morning, Johnny,” I said.
“Morning, Adam.” He stopped, uncomfortable. “Damned awful weekend you had. Terrible about Lydia, just unbelievable.”
“Unbelievable,” I agreed.
He shifted awkwardly, a great shambling man with the owlish look of a tax partner, unsure of what to say. “That’s a mess about Henry being gone,” he ventured, “and now that phone call. The papers keep bringing that up.”
“Of course they do.”
He scratched his cowlick. “Yeah, this is all fun to them—the biggest thing to hit Birmingham since Martin Luther King, my wife says. I just hope we can keep the firm off the front page.”
“Henry, too. But it’s not easy with that will.”
He looked at me sharply. “Well, you did what you thought best about that, I’m sure.”
I guessed my handling of the will had been the subject of discussion. “I couldn’t see getting Henry arrested.”
“Sure,” he persisted. “Still, when it’s all said and done it’s going to turn out to be some psychopath. I mean, with the picture and all. Some real sickie, you’ll see.”
“We all will.” I glanced at the time sheets in his hand, hoping for a change of subject. “Sending out six years of back bills?”
“Checking on the associates. I want to see who’s putting in the hours.” He decided to end on a hearty note. “I’m sure you’ll be glad to get back into some normal work yourself.”
“I’m sure,” I said, and went to my office.
My secretary looked up blandly from her desk. “Mr. Taylor just left word about the Stafford case,” she told me. “He said to call when it’s convenient.”
I stepped inside and dialed. “Hello, Nate.”
“Adam.” Nate Taylor’s black-accented voice was roughly what Otis Lee’s would have been after Harvard Law School and enough trial work to give him bleeding ulcers at thirty-three. “I told your secretary not to rush you to the phone. I figured you might not be in the mood.”
“Consider yourself a diversion.”
“All right. I’ve been sitting here reviewing the evidence of job discrimination by that fine gentleman of the old school, Peyton Stafford. I thought before I went to the trouble of proving at trial what you know to be true I’d see about talking settlement.”
“I’m always glad to talk. Peyton’s a little less flexible.”
“You’ve got no defense, Adam. Tell him that.”
“It’s not quite true, though. Reread my deposition of your lead plaintiff. No jury’s going to put some guy with four drunk citations in charge of a lumber mill.”
“Clients lie to you all the time,” he said matter-of-factly. “Even yours. My other plaintiffs are clean and your man has discriminated. Those are the facts.”
“Okay. We’ll sit down next week. I’m just telling you, don’t come expecting the sun, stars, and moon. You’re not getting them.” I said goodbye and hung up.
“Shit,” I said aloud.
I looked down at the list. Most days I came to the office, drank one cup of black coffee, and went over the list of things to do I’d written the day before. Staring now at Friday’s list—eight numbered items with the first three crossed off—I knew with a cold, clear certainty that I didn’t give a damn.
I surveyed my office—a framed law license, two shelves of law books, and some comic prints of English barristers—until I came to my grandfather’s dartboard on the far wall, pocked with contests between my father and me. I reached in my desk drawer for a dart.
It was wooden, with frayed feathers and weighted in front. I threw it. It struck the seven with a soft thud. I took another and began thinking. Lydia Cantwell’s killer had a key, or she had let him in. He had raped her, or they had made love. And then he had strangled her with such intensity of hate that afterward he needed satisfaction from a picture. I threw again. It bounced off the metal ring of the bull’s-eye and onto the floor.
I snatched a third dart from my desk drawer. There was a quick rap and the door opened. I looked up, surprised.
Nora Culhane’s dark green eyes caught the dart in my hand with a sardonic glance. “Interrupting anything?”
“Any day now. What do you want?”
“I thought we might try having a civil conversation.”
“Why? The last time we tried that you were setting up my client. Now your so-called ‘discrepancy’ is this morning’s headline. You people are building pressure to indict Henry Cantwell whether the evidence is there or not.” I threw the dart. “What the hell do you care—he gets indicted, you get a raise, and by the time he’s acquitted, railroaded, or just plain broken you’re Birmingham’s first anchorwoman. You don’t need me for that.”
She hesitated, glancing downward. “Look, Mr. Shaw, we’re both trying to find things out. Maybe if you’d quit being so emotional, we could help each other, okay?”
Her voice was cool enough. But her eyes were uncertain.
Maybe, I thought, she would know something useful.
Maybe, too, I’d sensed an ambivalence beneath the toughness, as if she were inhabiting a role she didn’t yet believe. It didn’t make me like her, exactly—I just liked myself less. But two hours later, when she asked why I’d agreed to lunch, all I said was, “Because I guessed you were Irish.”
We were sitting in a flagstone courtyard bordered by bamboo plants, ferns, and trees in wooden planters. More trees grew from spaces in the flagstone to form a leafy arbor. In the air was the lilting talk of women in silk and the clatter of plates. Black waitresses in print dresses dipped among the tables. “So you’re an ethnologist,” Culhane said dryly.
“It’s just that you couldn’t be anything else, even if the name weren’t yours. Next time you’re home—which I’d guess is Boston—look for women with china skin and bright green eyes or maybe freckles, and see that if their hair isn’t reddish or black it’s the kind of auburn you have. They’ll be Irish.”
“You’re quite observant.”
“No great trick if you’re Irish, too. Frankly, though, I came to persuade you to lay off Henry Cantwell.”
“He’s too logical to ignore,” she said bluntly. “And I’ve talked to anyone who’ll stand still.”
“Including Jason?”
“Jason slammed the door in my face.”
“I wouldn’t fool with him. His problem may be worse than bad manners.”
She nodded. “He’s pretty frightening. But Rayfield doesn’t seem to be looking his way.”
“So I gather. And you?”
She took a cigarette from her purse and snapped a lighter at it. “I think the Cantwells’ problems were bigger than just Jason.”
“Based on—?”
“Several things. To start, there’s something I got from a friend of Mrs. Cantwell’s who’s just been divorced. They last spoke just two weeks ago. Lydia steered the conversation around to the divorce: how long it took, whether the woman had to appear in court, that kind of thing. Her friend recalls that she was very curious.”
“From which you surmise what?”
Culhane raised an eyebrow. “I thought you’d tell me.”
“I couldn’t begin to.” She gave me a look of cool disbelief. “Seriously,” I added, “if Lydia Cantwell had wanted a divorce she’d have come to the firm.”
“You’re telling me she didn’t?”
“I’d know if she had. Just who is this woman?”
New arrivals were drifting past us to be matched with namecards on empty tables. Next to us a plump-armed blonde squealed, “Marilyn, you look so thin,” to a newcomer who didn’t at all. Culhane shook her head. “I told her she’d be anonymous.”
“Anonymous, or nonexistent?”
Her voice cooled. “What do you mean by that?”
