Belinda (27 page)

Ir was nothing as hard as Alex had imagined. The kid was a schemer and a bully, but he was also a coward. And I was damned honored that I had been the one Alex called. But the incident hurt Alex, really hurt him. We'd gone to Europe immediately after that and stayed in his house near Portofino until he felt he was OK again and could go back to work.

"Alex, I enjoyed playing hero that time, if you must know, and in Portofino afterwards you treated me to the time of my life."

"You're in trouble, Walker, I know you are."

"No, I'm not, not at all."

"Then you tell me who the young lady was," he insisted, "the sweet young lady who answered the phone at your place this morning when I called."

I didn't answer.

"It couldn't be the kid, could it? The one everybody thinks is away at the Swiss school?"

"Yes, it was Belinda. And I promise you, one day I'll explain everything. But for now don't tell anyone about this. I promise, I'll call you soon."

I GOT a cab in front of the hotel.

All I wanted in the world right now was to be with her, to hold her, and to tell her I loved her. I was praying that George Gallagher hadn't called her and hadn't alarmed her, that she'd be there when I got home.

I'd confess the spying. I'd confess everything and then I'd tell her I'd made the decision, no more questions ever and this time I meant it. We were going to leave San Francisco and head south tonight.

If she could only understand the prying enough to let it go, we'd be all right.

Lovely to think about it suddenly, the van loaded, the long drive across the country together through desert and mountains and finally emerging in the sultry New Orleans heat.

Wouldn't matter, all the old memories associated with the house, Mother, the novels, all that. We'd make our memories in it, she and I, and we'd go far away from all of it. Nobody would ever find us down there.

As the cab moved up Market Street towards the Castro, I opened the Bonnie biography again and looked at the photograph of Marty Moreschi-the dark eyes shining behind the thick glasses, the thatch of black hair.

"Thank you, asshole," I said out loud. "You've given her back to me, you've made it OK for me to be with her, you're worse than me."

He seemed to be staring right back at me off the pulp page. And for an odd second I didn't hate him so much as I acknowledged we were brothers. We both found her irresistible, didn't we? Both took a risk for her.

How he might have sneered at me. Well, fuck him.

I was too elated and too relieved right now to care about him.

I thought about the things the biographer had said, about the suicide attempts and the car nearly going off the cliff on Saint Esprit.

Yes, it all made sense, it explained so much about her, the odd precocity, the strange almost-proletarian hardness, and the elegance and the sophistication, too.

She must have had a bellyful of it all before she even got to LA, and then they exile her to Switzerland, she takes the fall after he molests her so "Champagne Flight" can stay in the air. Damn them. And thank God for them and their madness.

Because we have our madness, don't we, she and I.

Just be there, darling, when I get there, just don't have run off on me, because of anything George Gallagher might have told you. Just give me a chance.

She wasn't there when I got home. I went upstairs and into her room.

All her luggage was stacked on the bed-the new brown leather suitcases I had bought her and also the old battered case she had brought with her from the Haight.

One glance into the closet told me she had packed everything. Nothing left but the fancy satin hangers and the smell of jasmine sachet.

But the luggage was still here! Even the overnight case was still here. And everything was locked.

What a strangely affecting sight it was.

Made me think of another sight years and years ago-the bare mattress on my mother's bed the afternoon of her death.

I'd just come in from classes at Tulane and hurried up the stairs to see her. I guess I thought she'd be sick forever. And the minute I saw that bare mattress I knew, of course, that she had died while I was gone.

As it turned out, they'd had to take her to the funeral parlor. It was too hot that summer for them to leave her till I came home.

"Walk over to Magazine Street and see her," the nurse had said when she finally caught up with me at the bedroom door. "They're waiting for you."

Five blocks through the flat quiet tree4ined streets of the Garden District. Then Mother in a refrigerated room. Goodbye, my darling Cynthia Walker. I love you.

Well, Belinda wasn't going anywhere. Not yet!

I brought up the box I'd brought from Saks, and I unfolded the white and silver dress an d hung it carefully in the closet on one of the padded hangers.

Then I went up to the attic, leaving the door open so I could hear her if she came in.

I took stock.

There were now twelve completed paintings of her, done over this the strangest summer of my adult life.

The last picture completed was another Artist and Model, from the series of timer photographs of us making love. I did better by this one than the first, though I loathed painting my own naked body on top of Belinda. But the work itself was terrific, I knew it, and I saw now, as I looked at it, the resemblance of her profile here to the profile of her beneath the caresses of the woman in Final Score.

Was she a woman or a child in this picture? Because you could not see her baby face well, it was pure woman with the hair of a fairy princess, or so it seemed.

Unfinished was another "grown woman" study, Belinda in the Opera Bar, nude as always against the backdrop of gilded mirrors and cocktail tables, except that she wore high-heel shoes and a pair of black kid gloves.

Macabre, the deeply detailed figure, the mouth almost pouting, the unwavering gaze.

Ah, it gave me shivers to look at it. And when that happens, I know everything, absolutely everything, is going to be fine. But no time to lose.

I started carrying the canvases down to the basement, first the dry ones, then the moist ones, then the wet ones, and slipping them one by one into the metal rack inside the van.

Some smudging to the very edges was inevitable, but no more than a half inch on either side.

I could mend t!aat when we got to New Orleans. The rack would keep them safe, like so many sheets of glass, until we got all the way home.

And then I'd know the next step in the series. It would come to me when we were in Mother's house. I knew it would.

just come home, Belinda. Walk in the door now and let me hold you and talk to you. Let us begin again.

After all the canvases and supplies were loaded, I packed up all my own clothes.

I wanted to put her suitcases in the van, too, but I knew that was going too far.

And she wouldn't just bolt without those things, she wouldn't do that. I mean, she had left her own little sorry.. suitcase, too, and the overnight case and—

But the grandfather clock was chiming three when I finished and she was still not there.

Where to look for her? Where to call?

I sat staring at the phone on the kitchen wall. What if I called George Gallagher, what if I asked-? And what if he wasn't the "oldest buddy in the world" and hadn't told her anything? What if she was merely unhappy over last night's argument, what if, what if?.

No, he was the "oldest buddy," and he had put things together. Damn it, Belinda, come home!

I went to the front windows to see if the MG-TD was parked out there. Why hadn't I thought of that before? If she had the car with her, I'd know for sure she was coming back, she wouldn't steal the MG, would she? But there it was, damn it, parked where she frequently parked it, right across the street-and not too far from a big long black stretch limousine, of all things.

Big black stretch limousine.

For a second I panicked. Had I forgotten some damned book signing or something? Was that limousine here to pick up me? Frankly that was the only time I ever saw a limo in this neighborhood, when they came lumbering into my driveway to pick up me.

But, no, that was all over, Splendor in the Grass in Berkeley had been the last one, the farewell one. And the driver of this limo was just sitting in it, smoking a cigarette. Tinted glass in the back of course. Couldn't see who was or was not there.

OK. Belinda's not driving the MG. That means she may be somewhere near and she'll come walking in soon.

When the phone finally rang at three thirty, it was Dan.

"Jeremy, I'm going to say it again before you stop me. Get the fuck away from her now."

"I'm way ahead of you. We're dropping out of sight for a while. You won't get any mail from me, but you'll hear from me by phone."

"Look stupid. Saint Margaret's in Gstaad was asked on November 5 to accept Belinda Blanchard though the semester had already started, and on November 8th they were told that she would not be coming as planned. She is not now and has never been at Saint Margaret's. However, they have been asked to forward all her mail back to a law firm in the States. It is a cover-up."

"Good work, but I knew it was."

"And the shooting took place the night before the call to Saint Margaret's."

"Right. What else?"

"What do you mean, what else?"

"The connection between the shooting and Saint Margaret's, do you have it? Why did they send Belinda away?"

"Don't wait for the connection. The point is, if I could get all this simply by calling a friend in Gstaad and wining and dining a United Theatricals secretary, the Enquirer will eventually get it, too. Run for cover now."

"I am, I just told you."

"I mean without her. Jer, go to Europe. Go to Asia!"

"Dan-"

"OK, OK. Now listen to this. There are more detectives in this besides Sampson's people."

"Fill me in."

"Daryl Blanchard, Bonnie's brother, he's got his own men on the case, working just like Sampson. The mail goes from Saint Margaret's to his firm in Dallas. The girl from United Theatricals says he's a real pain. He and Marty scream at each other a lot long-distance."

"Not surprising."

"But, Jeremy, think again. The reason for this cover-up, what is it?"

"I can guess what it is. Something happened that night between her and this stepfather of hers."

"Very likely."

"So they don't want the slightest hint of that to get to the papers, and it's also what we figured in the beginning, she could be kidnapped. She's just a kid."

"Maybe. But study the pattern here. Jer, Saint Margaret's deals directly with Texas Uncle Daryl. Daryl deals with Moreschi. There is no evidence that Bonnie even knows her daughter is not in school."

"Wait a minute." I was stunned. I had thought I was ready for anything at this point, but that was too much.

"Bonnie may be the reason for the cover-up. They want to keep her working, they don't want her to know the little girl took off."

"That would be too ugly!"

"But don't you see what this means? These guys stink to high heaven, Jeremy. If they do get on to you and they do try anything, we can poleax them both."

What had she said to me that night? Even if they did find out about us, they wouldn't dare do anything? Yes, that had been exactly what she said.

"Bonnie is absolutely the legal guardian," Dan said. "I checked that out.

She's been in court fighting the kid's natural father for years."

"Yeah, George Gallagher, the New York hairdresser."

"Exactly, and he's crazy about the little girl by the way. These guys Moreschi and Blanchard will have to get busy covering up their asses with him, too, if this gets out."

"You're keeping records of everything-"

"You better believe it. But I'm telling you, old buddy, these guys aren't the enemy. What I'm really scared of is the press. This woman's in every tabloid this week-"

"I know it."

"-and the story's too juicy. It's just lying there waiting to be discovered, daughter of superstar on the run, holds up with children's author who paints little girls. I mean, 'Champagne Flight' will keep you on the front pages for two weeks."

"But how dumb is this Bonnie? Wouldn't she even call Belinda at school?"

"Dumb's got nothing to do with it. Let me tell you what you're dealing with here. This is a woman who for years has not answered a telephone, opened a piece of mail, hired or fired a servant, even written a check. She does not know what it means to handle a rude salesclerk or bank teller, to have to pick out a pair of shoes for herself, to hail a cab. Her house has been adding live4n personnel steadily for the last twelve months. She now has a haiMresser, a masseuse, a maid, a cook, a personal secretary. She goes to the studio every day of her life in a chauffeured limousine. And Marty Moreschi is never out of sight. He sits and talks to her when she's in the bathtub. She probably doesn't know who's in the White House. And this is not a new condition for this woman. On Saint Esprit her brother, her agents, and her Texas cronies maintained her in the same protective cocoon. And your Belinda was no small part of that. By all reports she took her turn at sentry duty whenever Mother was feeling panicky, right along with the rest. And there was a roadside attempt at suicide that nearly killed Belinda-"

"Yeah, I know about that one. But it's illegal what they're doing-"

"Oh, you said it. And I'll tell you something funny, Jer, something real funny. You know, if I just happened on this whole story without knowing the kid was safe with you, I'd think she was dead."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's like the cover-up of a murder, Jer. She could be buried in the garden or something. I mean the school scam, all that. What would happen if Susan Jeremiah went to the LAPD and demanded an investigation? These guys could wind up indicted for killing this kid." I laughed in spite of myself. "Beautiful!"

"But, back to the matter at hand. We've got a counterstrategy if these guys find you. With the press we do not."

And I've got a new problem, I was thinking. A stunning one.