Текст книги "Rich Man, Poor Man"

Автор книги: Irwin Shaw

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Текущая страница: 44 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

He air-mailed the two letters at the Antibes post office and then went back to the ship to get it ready for the English party.

Chapter 4

I

Nobody had remembered Herman Schultz at the Bristol Hotel, but somebody in the publicity department at Madison Square Garden had finally come up with the address of a rooming house on West Fifty-third Street. Rudolph was getting to know Fifty-third Street very well. He had been there three times in the last four weeks, on every trip he had made to New York in the month of August. Yes, the man at the rooming house said, Mr. Schultz stayed there when he was in New York, but he was out of town. He didn’t know where out of town. Rudolph left his telephone number with him, but Schultz never called him. Rudolph had to suppress a quiver of distaste every time he rang the bell. It was a decaying building in a dying neighborhood, inhabited, you felt, only by doomed old men and derelict young men.

A shuffling, bent old man with a twisted hair piece opened the peeling door, the color of dried blood. From the gloom of the hallway he peered nearsightedly at Rudolph standing on the stoop in the hot September sun. Even with the distance between them, Rudolph could smell him, mildew and urine.

“Is Mr. Schultz at home?” Rudolph asked.

“Fourth floor back,” the old man said. He stepped aside to allow Rudolph to enter.

As he climbed the steps, Rudolph realized that it wasn’t only the old man who smelled like that, it was the entire house. A radio was playing Spanish music, a fat man, naked to the waist, was sitting at the head of the second flight of steps, his head in his hands. He didn’t look up as Rudolph squeezed past him.

The door to the fourth floor back was open. It was stifling hot, under the roof. Rudolph recognized the man he had been introduced to as Schultzy in Queens. Schultzy was sitting on the edge of an unmade bed, grayish sheets, staring at the wall of the room, three feet across from him. Rudolph knocked on the framework of the doorway. Schultzy turned his head slowly, painfully.

“What do you want?” Schultz said. His voice was reedy and hostile.

Rudolph went in. “I’m Tom Jordache’s brother.” He extended his hand.

Schultz put his right hand behind his back. He was wearing a sweat-stained skivvy shirt. He still had the basketball of a stomach. He moved his mouth uneasily, as though he was wearing plates that fit badly. He was pasty and totally bald. “I don’t shake hands,” Schultz said. “It’s the arthritis.” He didn’t ask Rudolph to sit down. There was no place to sit down except on the bed, anyway.

“That sonofabitch,” Schultz said. “I don’t want to hear his name.”

Rudolph took out his wallet and extracted two twenty-dollar bills. “He asked me to give you this.”

“Put it on the bed.” Schultz’s expression, snakelike and livid, did not change. “He owes me one fifty.”

“I’ll have him send the rest over tomorrow,” Rudolph said.

“It’s about fucking well time,” Schultz said. “What does he want now? Did he put the boots to somebody else again?”

“No,” Rudolph said, “he’s not in trouble.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Schultz said.

“He asked me to ask you if the heat’s still on.” The words sounded strange to him as they came off his tongue.

Schultz’s face became sly, secretive, and he looked sideways at Rudolph. “You sure he’s going to give me the rest of the money tomorrow?”

“Positive,” Rudolph said.

“Nah,” Schultz said. “There’s no more heat. There’s no more anything. That bum Quayles never had a good night again after your shitty brother got through with him. The one chance I ever had to make a real buck. Not that they left me much of a share, the dagoes. And I was the one who discovered Quayles and brought him along. No, there’s no heat. Everybody’s dead or in jail. Nobody remembers your goddamn brother’s name. He can walk down Fifth Avenue at the head of the Columbus Day Parade and no-body’d raise a finger. Tell him that. Tell him that’s worth a lot more than one fifty.”

“I will, Mr. Schultz,” Rudolph said, trying to sound as though he knew what the old man was talking about. “And then there’s another question …”

“He wants a lot of answers for his money, don’t he?”

“He wants to know about his wife.”

Schultz cackled. “That whore,” he said, pronouncing the word in two syllables. “She got her picture in the papers. In the Daily News. Twice. She got picked up twice for soliciting in bars. She said her name was Theresa Laval in the papers. French. But I recognized the bitch. Some French. They’re all whores, every last one of them. I could tell you stories, mister …”

“Do you know where she lives?” Rudolph didn’t relish the thought of spending the afternoon in the sweltering, evil-smelling room listening to Schultz’s opinions of the female sex. “And where the boy is?”

Schultz shook his head. “Who keeps track? I don’t even know where I live. Theresa Laval. French.” He cackled again. “Some French.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Schultz,” Rudolph said. “I won’t trouble you any more.”

“Ain’t no trouble. Glad for a little conversation. You for sure going to send over that money tomorrow?”

“I guarantee.”

“You’re wearing a good suit,” Schultz said. “But that ain’t no guarantee.”

Rudolph left him sitting on the bed, his head nodding in the heat. He went down the steps quickly. Even West Fifty-third Street looked good to him when he put the rooming house behind him.

II

He had Rudolph’s cable in his pocket when he got off the plane at Kennedy and went with hundreds of other passengers through the Health and Immigration formalities. The last time he had been at the airport it had been called Idlewild. Taking a bullet through your head was an expensive way of getting an airport named after you.

The big Irishman with the Immigration badge looked at him as though he didn’t like the idea of letting him back into the country. And he thumbed through a big, black book, full of names, hunting for Jordache, and seemed disappointed that he couldn’t find it.

He went into the Customs hall to wait for his bag. The whole population of America seemed to be coming back from a holiday in Europe. Where did all the money come from?

He looked up at the glass-enclosed balcony where people were lined up two and three deep waving at relatives down below that they had come to meet. He had cabled Rudolph his flight number and time of arrival, but he couldn’t pick him out in the crowd behind the glass window. He had a moment of irritation. He didn’t want to go wandering around New York hunting for his brother.

The cable had been waiting for him for a week when he came back to Antibes after the charter with Heath and his wife. “Dear Tom,” the cable read, “Everything OK for you here Stop Believe will have sons address soonest Love Rudolph.”

He finally saw his bag in the bin and grabbed it and went and stood in line to go through the Customs counter. Some idiot from Syracuse was sweating and telling a long story to the inspector about where he had gotten two embroidered dirndls and whom they were for. When it was his turn, the inspector made him open his bag and went through everything. He had no gifts for anyone in America, and the inspector passed him through.

He said no to a porter who wanted to carry his bag and carried it through the exit doors himself. Standing bareheaded among the crowd, looking cooler than anybody else in a pair of slacks and a lightweight jacket, Rudolph waved at him. They shook hands and Rudolph tried to take the bag from him, but Thomas wouldn’t let him.

“Have a good trip?” Rudolph asked him as they walked out of the building.

“Okay.”

“I’ve got my car parked near here,” Rudolph said. “Wait here. I’ll just be a minute.”

As he went for the car, Thomas noted that Rudolph still walked in that peculiar gliding way, not moving his shoulders.

He opened his collar and pulled his tie down. Although it was the beginning of October, it was stinking hot, wet smoggy heat, smelling of burned kerosene. He had forgotten the climate of New York. How did anyone live here?

Five minutes later Rudolph drove up in a blue Buick coupe. Thomas threw his bag in the back and got in. The car was air-conditioned, which was a relief. Rudolph drove at just the legal speed and Thomas remembered being picked up by the state troopers with the bottle of bourbon and the Smith and Wesson in the car on the way to his mother’s deathbed. Times had changed. For the better.

“Well?” Thomas said.

“I found Schultz.” Rudolph said. “That’s when I sent you the wire. He said the heat’s off. Everybody’s dead or in jail, he said. I didn’t inquire what that meant.”

“What about Teresa and the kid?”

Rudolph fiddled with the air-conditioning levers, frowning. “Well, it’s a little hard to begin.”

“Come on. I’m a big, strong fella.”

“Schultz didn’t know where either of them was. But he said he saw your wife’s picture in the newspapers. Twice.”

“What the hell for?” For a moment, Thomas was rattled. Maybe the crazy dame had finally made it on the stage or in a nightclub.

“She was arrested for soliciting in a bar. Twice,” Rudolph said. “I hate to be the one who has to tell you this, Tom.”

“Forget it,” Thomas said roughly. “It figured.”

“Schultz said she was using another name, but he recognized her,” Rudolph said. “I checked. It was her. The police gave me her address.”

“If I can afford her prices,” Thomas said, “maybe I’ll go around and give her a screw. Maybe she’s learned how to do it by now.” He saw the pained expression on Rudolph’s face, but he hadn’t crossed the ocean to be polite. “How about the kid?”

“He’s up at a military school near Poughkeepsie,” Rudolph said. “I just found out two days ago.”

“Military school,” Thomas said. “Christ. Do the officers get to bang his mother on maneuvers?”

Rudolph drove without speaking, allowing Thomas to get his bitterness out.

“That’s just what I want my kid to be,” Thomas said. “A soldier. How did you get all this good news?”

“A private detective.”

“Did he talk to the bitch?”

“No.”

“So nobody knows I’m here?”

“Nobody,” Rudolph said. “Except me. I did one other thing. I hope you won’t mind.”

“What’s that?”

“I talked to a lawyer friend of mine. Without mentioning any names. You can get a divorce and custody without any trouble. Because of the two convictions.”

“I hope they put her in jail and throw away the key.”

“Just overnight each time. And a fine.”

“They got some great lawyers in this city, don’t they?” He remembered his days in the jail in Elysium. Two out of three in the family.

“Look,” Rudolph said, “I have to get back to Whitby tonight. You can come with me if you want. Or you can stay in the apartment. It’s empty. There’s a maid comes in every morning to clean up.”

“Thanks. I’ll take you up on the apartment. I want to see that lawyer you talked to first thing in the morning. Can you fix it?”

“Yes.”

“You got her address and the name of the school and all that?”

Rudolph nodded.

“That’s all I need,” Thomas said.

“How long do you plan to stay in New York?”

“Just long enough to make sure of the divorce and go up and get the kid and take him back to Antibes with me.”

Rudolph didn’t say anything for awhile and Thomas looked out the window to his right at the boats moored in Flushing Bay. He was glad the Clothilde was in Antibes harbor and not in Flushing Bay.

“Johnny Heath wrote me that he had a wonderful trip with you,” Rudolph said. “He said his bride loved it.”

“I don’t know when she had the time to love anything,” Thomas said. “She was going up and down the ladder changing her clothes every five minutes. She must have had thirty bags with her. It was lucky there were only two of them. We filled two empty cabins with her luggage.”

Rudolph smiled. “She comes from a very rich family.”

“It sticks out all over her. He’s okay, though. Your friend. Didn’t mind rough weather and asked so many questions by the end of the two weeks he could have sailed the Clothilde by himself right to Tunis. He said he was going to ask you and your wife to come with him on a cruise next summer.”

“If I have the time,” Rudolph said quickly.

“What’s this about your running for mayor of that little one-horse town?” Thomas asked.

“It’s far from a one-horse town,” Rudolph said. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”

“I wouldn’t wipe my feet on the best politician in the country,” Thomas said.

“Maybe I’ll make you change your mind,” Rudolph said.

“They had one good man,” Thomas said, “so naturally they shot him.”

“They can’t shoot all of them.”

“They can try,” Thomas said. He leaned over and turned on the radio. The roar of a crowd filled the car and then an excited announcer’s voice, saying, “… a clean line drive into center field, the runner is rounding second, it’s going to be close, close, he goes into his slide. Safe! Safe!” Thomas turned the radio off.

“The World Series,” Rudolph said.

“I know. I get the Paris Herald Tribune.”

“Tom,” Rudolph said, “don’t you ever miss America?”

“What’s America done for me?” Thomas said. “I don’t care if I never see it again after this time.”

“I hate to hear you talk like that.”

“One patriot in the family is enough,” Thomas said.

“What about your son?”

“What about him?”

“How long are you figuring you’ll keep him in Europe?”

“Forever,” Thomas said. “Maybe when you get elected President and straighten out the whole country and put all the crooks and generals and policemen and judges and congressmen and high-priced lawyers in jail and if they don’t shoot you maybe I’ll send him over on a visit.”

“What about his education?” Rudolph persisted.

“There’re schools in Antibes. Better than a crappy military academy.”

“But he’s an American.”

“Why?” Thomas asked.

“Well, he’s not a Frenchman.”

“He won’t be a Frenchman either,” Thomas said. “He’ll be Wesley Jordache.”

“He won’t know where he belongs.”

“Where do you think I belong? Here?” Thomas laughed. “My son’ll belong on a boat in the Mediterranean, sailing from one country where they make wine and olive oil to another country where they make wine and olive oil.”

Rudolph quit then. They drove the rest of the way in silence to the building on Park Avenue where Rudolph had an apartment. The doorman double-parked the car for him when he said he’d only be a few minutes. The doorman gave a queer look at Thomas, with his collar open and his tie loose and his blue, wide-trousered suit and green fedora hat with the brown band that he had bought in Genoa.

“Your doorman doesn’t approve of my clothes,” Thomas said as they went up in the elevator. “Tell him I buy my clothes in Marseilles and everybody knows Marseilles is the greatest center of haute couture for men in Europe.”

“Don’t worry about the doorman,” Rudolph said as he led Thomas into the apartment.

“Not a bad little place you have here,” Thomas said, standing in the middle of the large living room, with its fireplace and long, straw-colored corduroy couch, with two winged easy chairs on each side of it. There were fresh flowers in vases on the tables, a pale-beige wall-to-wall carpet, and bright, non-objective paintings on the dark-green walls. The room faced west and the afternoon sun streamed in through the curtained windows. The air-conditioning was on, humming softly, and the room was comfortably cool.

“We don’t get down to the city as much as we’d like,” Rudolph said. “Jean’s pregnant again and she’s having a bad couple of months just now.” He opened a cupboard. “Here’s the bar,” he said. “There’s ice in the refrigerator. If you want to eat here, just tell the maid when she gets in in the morning. She’s a pretty good cook.” He led Thomas into the spare room, which Jean had made over to look exactly like the guest room in the farmhouse in Whitby, countrified and delicate. Rudolph couldn’t help but notice how out of place his brother looked in the neat, feminine room, with its four-poster twin beds and patchwork quilts.

Thomas threw his battered valise and his jacket and hat on one of the beds and Rudolph tried not to wince. On his boat, Johnny Heath had written, Tom was a stickler for neatness. Obviously, he did not carry his seagoing habits with him when he went ashore.

Back in the living room Rudolph poured a whiskey and soda for Thomas and himself and while they drank, got out the papers he had collected from the Police Department and the report from the private detective and gave them to Thomas. He called the lawyer’s office and made an appointment for Thomas for the next morning at ten.

“Now,” he said, as they finished their drinks, “is there anything else you need? Do you want me to go with you when you go up to the school?”

“I’ll handle the school on my own,” Thomas said. “Don’t worry.”

“How are you fixed for money?”

“I’m rolling,” Thomas said. “Thanks.”

“If anything comes up,” Rudolph said, “call me.”

“Okay, mayor,” Thomas said.

They shook hands and Rudolph left his brother standing next to the table on which lay the reports from the Police Department and the detective. Thomas was picking them up to read as Rudolph went out the front door.

Teresa Jordache, Thomas read from the police file, alias Theresa Laval. Thomas grinned. He was tempted to call her up and ask her to come over. He’d disguise his voice. “Apartment 14B, Miss Laval. It’s on Park Avenue between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth street.” Even the most suspicious whore wouldn’t think there’d by any trouble at an address like that. He would love to see her face when she rang the bell and he opened the door. He nearly went to the phone to dial the last number the detective had ferreted out, then stopped. It would be almost impossible not. to give her the beating she deserved and that wasn’t what he had come to America for.

He shaved and showered, using the perfumed soap in the bathroom, and had another drink and put on a clean shirt and the blue Marseilles suit, then went down in the elevator and walked over to Fifth Avenue in the dusk. On a side street he saw a steak place and went in and had a steak with half a bottle of wine and apple pie à la mode, to salute his native country. Then he strolled over to Broadway. Broadway was worse than ever, with noise coming out of the music shops and bigger and uglier signs than he remembered and the people pushing and sick looking, but he enjoyed it. He could walk anywhere, go to any bar, any movie.

Everybody was dead or in jail. Music.

The Hilltop Military Academy was on top of a hill and it was military. A high, gray, stone wall enclosed it, like a prison, and when Thomas drove through the front gate in the car he had rented, he could see boys in blue-gray uniforms doing close-order drill on a dusty field: The weather had turned cooler and some of the trees on the grounds had begun to change color. The driveway passed close to the parade grounds and Thomas stopped the car and watched. There were four separate groups wheeling and marching on different parts of the field. The group of boys nearest to him, perhaps thirty of them, were between twelve and fourteen, just about Wesley’s age. Thomas stared at them as they passed him, but if Wesley was among them he didn’t recognize him.

He started the car again and went up the driveway to a stone building that looked like a small castle. The grounds were well kept, with flower beds and closely mown lawns and the other buildings were large and solidly built, of the same stone as the little castle.

Teresa must get a fancy price for her services, Thomas thought, to afford a place like this for the kid.

He got out of the car and went into the building. The granite hallway was dark and chilly. It was lined with flags, sabers, crossed rifles, and marble lists of the names of graduates who had been killed in the Spanish-American War, the Mexican Expedition, the First World War, the Second World War, and the war in Korea. It was like the head office of a company, with a display advertising their product. A boy with close-cropped hair and a lot of fancy chevrons on his arm was coming down the steps, and Thomas asked him, “Son, where’s the main office here?”

The boy came to attention, as though Thomas were General MacArthur, and said, “This way, sir.” They obviously taught respect to the older generation at Hilltop Military Academy. Maybe that was why Teresa had sent the kid here. She could use all the respect going.

The boy opened the door to a big office. Two women were working at desks behind a small fence. “Here you are, sir,” the boy said, and clicked his heels before turning smartly back into the hallway. Thomas went over toward the nearest desk behind the fence. The woman there looked up from papers she was making checks on and said, “May I help you, sir?” She was not in uniform and she didn’t click her heels.

“I have a son in the school,” Thomas said. “My name is Jordache. I’d like to speak to whoever is in charge here.”

The woman gave him a peculiar look, as though the name meant something not particularly pleasant to her. She stood up and said, “I’ll tell Colonel Bainbridge you’re here, sir. Won’t you please take a seat.” She indicated a bench along the wall and waddled off to a door on the other side of the office. She was fat and about fifty and her stockings were crooked. They were not tempting the young soldiers with much sex at the Hilltop Military Academy.

After a little while she came out of the door and opened a gate in the little fence and said, “Colonel Bainbridge will see you now, sir. Thank you for waiting.” She led Thomas to the rear of the room and closed the door after him as he went into Colonel Bainbridge’s office. There were more flags there and photographs of General Patton and General Eisenhower and of Colonel Bainbridge looking fierce in a combat jacket and pistol and helmet, with binoculars hanging around his neck, taken during World War Two. Colonel Bainbridge himself, in a regular U.S. Army uniform, was standing behind his desk to greet Thomas. He was thinner than in the photograph, with almost no hair, and he was wearing silver-rimmed glasses and no weapons or binoculars and he looked like an actor in a war play.

“Welcome to Hilltop, Mr. Jordache,” Colonel Bainbridge said. He was not standing at attention but he gave the impression that he was. “Won’t you sit down?” His expression was peculiar, too, a little like the doorman’s at Rudolph’s building.

If I stay in America much longer, Thomas thought as he sat down, I guess I’ll have to change my tailor.

“I don’t want to take up much of your time, Colonel,” Thomas said. “I just came up here to see my son, Wesley.”

“Yes, of course, I understand,” Bainbridge said. He was stumbling a little over his words. “There’s a games period shortly and we’ll have him sent for.” He cleared his throat embarrassedly. “It’s a pleasure to have a member of the young man’s family finally visit the school. I am correct in assuming that you are his father, am I not?”

“That’s what I told the lady outside,” Thomas said.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for the question, Mr. … Mr. Jordache,” Bainbridge said, looking distractedly at General Eisenhower on the wall, “but in Wesley’s application it was clearly stated that his father was dead.”

The bitch, Thomas thought, oh, the stinking, miserable bitch. “Well,” he said, “I’m not dead.”

“I can see that,” Bainbridge said nervously. “Of course I can see that. It must be a clerical error of some kind, although it’s hard to understand how …”

“I’ve been away a few years,” Thomas said. “My wife and I are not on friendly terms.”

“Even so.” Bainbridge’s hand fluttered over a small model brass cannon on his desk. “Of course, one doesn’t meddle in intimate family matters … I’ve never had the honor of meeting Mrs. Jordache. Our communication was entirely by mail. It is the same Mrs. Jordache, isn’t it?” Bainbridge said desperately. “In the antique business in New York?”

“She may handle some antiques,” Thomas said. “I wouldn’t know. Now, I want to see my son.”

“They’ll be finished with drill in five minutes,” Bainbridge said. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you. Very happy. Seeing his father may just be what he needs at this particular moment …”

“Why? What’s the matter with him?”

“He’s a difficult boy, Mr. Jordache, very difficult. We have our problems with him.”

“What problems?”

“He’s extraordinarily … uh … pugnacious.” Bainbridge seemed happy to have found the word. “He’s constantly getting into fights. With everyone. No matter what age or size. On one occasion last term he even hit one of the instructors. General science. The instructor missed a whole week of classes. He’s very … adept … shall we say, with his fists, young Wesley. Of course, we like a boy to show a normal amount of aggressiveness in a school of this nature, but Wesley …” Bainbridge sighed. “His disagreements are not ordinary schoolboy fights. We’ve had to hospitalize boys, upperclassmen … To be absolutely frank with you, there’s a kind of, well, the only word is adult, adult viciousness about the boy that we on the staff consider very dangerous.”

Jordache blood, Thomas thought bitterly, fucking Jordache blood.

“I’m afraid I have to tell you, Mr. Jordache, that Wesley is on probation this term, with no privileges,” Bainbridge said.

“Well, Colonel,” Thomas said, “I have some good news for you. I’m going to do something about Wesley and his problems.”

“I’m glad to hear that you propose to take the matter in hand, Mr. Jordache,” Bainbridge said. “We’ve written innumerable letters to his mother but she seems to be too busy even to reply.”

“I propose to take him out of school this afternoon,” Thomas said. “You can stop worrying.”

Bainbridge’s hand trembled on the brass cannon on his desk. “I wasn’t suggesting anything as drastic as that, sir,” he said. His voice quavered a little. The battlefields of Normandy and the Rhine basin were far behind him and he was an old man, dressed up like a soldier.

“Well, I’m suggesting it, Colonel.”

Bainbridge stood up too, behind his desk. “I’m afraid it’s most … most irregular,” he said. “We would have to have his mother’s written permission. After all, all our dealings have been with her. She has paid the tuition for the entire school year. We would have to authenticate your relationship with the boy.”

Thomas took out his wallet and drew his passport from it and put it on the desk in front of Bainbridge. “Who does this look like?” he asked.

Bainbridge opened the little green book. “Of course,” he said, “your name is Jordache. But otherwise … Really, sir, I must get in touch with the boy’s mother …”

“I don’t want to waste any more of your time, Colonel,” Thomas said. He dug into his inside pocket once more and brought out the Police Department report on Teresa Jordache, alias Theresa Laval. “Read this, please,” he said, handing the paper to the Colonel.

Bainbridge glanced at the report, then took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily. “Oh, dear,” he said. He handed the paper back to Thomas, as though he were afraid that if it lay around his office one moment more it would go permanently into the files of the school.

“Do you still want to keep the kid?” Thomas asked brutally.

“Of course, this alters things,” Bainbridge said. “Considerably.”

A half hour later, they drove out the gate of the Hilltop Military Academy. Wesley’s footlocker was on the back seat and Wesley, still in uniform, was up front beside Thomas. He was big for his age, sallow skinned and pimpled, and around his sullen eyes and wide, set mouth, he resembled, as a son does his father, Axel Jordache. He had not been effusive when he was brought in to see Thomas and had seemed neither glad nor sorry when he was told he was being taken from the school and he hadn’t asked where Thomas was taking him.

“Tomorrow,” Thomas said, as the school disappeared behind them, “you’re going to get some decent clothes. And you’ve had your last fight.”

The boy was silent.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir. I’m your father,” Thomas said.