Nightwork (46 page)

“A bit,” I said.

“You remember I warned you about him when it came to money?”

“I remember.”

“Did he cheat you?”

“A bit.”

She chuckled. “Me, too,” she said. “Dear old Miles. He’s not an honest man, but he’s a joyous one. And he gives joy to others. I’m not the one to say, but maybe one is more important than the other.” She lit a fresh cigarette. “It’s hard to think of his dying.”

“Maybe he won’t die,” I said.

“Maybe.”

We said no more until we reached the hospital. “I think I’d like to see him alone,” Lily said, as we drove up to the door of the handsome red-brick building.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll drop your bags at the hotel. And I’ll be home if you need me.” I kissed her and watched her go into the hospital, in her smart brown coat.

It was dark by the time I got home. There was a car I didn’t recognize standing in front of the house. More reporters, I thought disgustedly, as I walked up the gravel path. Evelyn’s car wasn’t in the garage and I guessed that Anna had let whoever it was into the house. I opened the door with my key. A man was sitting in the living room, reading a newspaper.

He stood up when I came in.

“Mr. Grimes …?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I took the liberty of coming in and waiting for you here,” he said politely. He was a thin, studious-looking man with sandy hair. He was neatly dressed in a lightweight, dark-gray summer suit with a white shirt and dark tie. He didn’t look like a reporter. “My name is Vance,” he said. “I’m a lawyer. I’m here on behalf of a client. I came for a hundred thousand dollars.”

I went over to the sideboard where the whiskey was and poured myself a drink. “Would you like a Scotch?” I asked the man.

“No, thank you.”

I carried my drink with me and sat down in an easy chair, facing Vance. He remained standing, a neat, small-boned, unmenacing, indoor type of man. “I was wondering when you’d come,” I said.

“It took some time,” he said. His voice was dry, low, and educated. It would bore a listener in a short while. “You were not easy to follow. Fortunately …” He made a little movement with the newspaper. “You’ve made yourself into quite a hero out here.”

“So it seems,” I said. “There’s nothing like a good deed for shining in a naughty world.”

“Exactly,” he said.

He glanced around at the room. From the nursery came the sound of the baby crying. “A nice place you’ve got here. I admired the view.”

“Yes,” I said. I felt very tired.

“My client has instructed me to tell you that you have three days to deliver the money. He does not want to be unreasonable.”

I nodded. Even that was an effort.

“I will be at the Blackstone Hotel. Unless you prefer the St. Augustine.” He smiled, skull-like.

“The Blackstone will do,” I said.

“In the same conditions in which it was found, please,” Vance said. “In one-hundred-dollar bills.”

I nodded again.

“Well,” he said, “that takes care of everything, I think. I must be on my way now.”

At the door, he stopped. “You haven’t asked me whom I represent,” he said.

“No.”

“Just as well. I couldn’t tell you if you had asked. Still, I can say that your … your escapade … was not without its benefits. It might ease the pain of having to return the money to know that it saved several distinguished people … very distinguished people from considerable embarrassment.”

“That makes my day,” I said.

It was nine o’clock when I went up in the elevator in the apartment building on East Fifty-second Street. I had left word with Anna to tell Mrs. Grimes that I had been called to the city suddenly on business and that I would be gone a day or two. I could have called Evelyn at her office, but I didn’t want to have to explain anything.

Henry let me into the apartment. I had caught him just as he was about to go out. He and Madeleine had tickets for the theater, but when I said he would have to wait for me, he said, “I’ll be here.” He looked worried as he opened the door. Madeleine was in the living room, dressed for her night out in New York. She, too, looked worried.

“Maybe it would be better if you and I talked alone, Hank,” I said.

But he shook his head. “I’d rather she stayed, if you don’t mind.”

“All right,” I said. “It won’t take long. I need a hundred thousand dollars, Hank. In hundred-dollar bills. I haven’t time to collect it from Europe and I don’t have it here. I have only three days. Can you get it for me in three days?”

Henry sat down suddenly. We had all been standing in the middle of the living room. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, in a gesture that was a hangover from childhood. “Yes,” he said, almost inaudibly. “Somehow. Of course.”

It only took two days.

I called Vance’s room from the lobby of the hotel. He was there. “I’m coming up,” I said. I held the heavy suitcase in one hand while I held the telephone with the other.

“Excellent,” he said.

I waited while he counted the bills. He did it slowly and carefully. I hadn’t asked Henry where he had found the money and he hadn’t told me. “That’s it,” said Vance, as he snapped a rubber band around the last bundle of bills. “Thank you.”

“You can keep the bag,” I said.

“That’s kind of you.” He escorted me to the door.

I drove fast. I wanted to look in at the hospital before it was too late for visitors. I had called at noon and spoken to Lily. Fabian was resting comfortably, she had said. I wanted to tell him that the man had come, as he had predicted, and asked for a hundred thousand dollars and that I had had it to give to him.

When I got to the hospital, the nurse at the front desk stopped me. “I’m afraid you’re too late, Mr. Grimes,” she said. “Mr. Fabian died at four o’clock this afternoon. We tried to reach you, but …”

“That’s all right,” I said. I was mildly surprised at how calm my voice sounded. “Is Lady Abbott here?”

The nurse shook her head. “I believe Mrs. Abbott has left town.” Even at that moment her American distrust of titles prevented her from saying Lady Abbott. “She said there was nothing more she could do here. She thought she could catch a night plane back to London.”

I nodded. “Very wise,” I said. “Good night, Nurse. I’ll be here in the morning to make the necessary arrangements.”

“Good night, Mr. Grimes,” she said.

I drove slowly toward East Hampton. There was no hurry now. I did not want to go home just yet. I drove to the barn, dark now, with the newly painted sign, The South Fork Gallery, in small, modest letters above the door. “Don’t neglect the shop.” Fabian had said. I took out my ring of keys and opened the door. I sat on a bench in the middle of the room, without turning on the lights, thinking of the joyous, dishonest, scarred, cunning man who had died that day, and who, by the terms of the contract we had signed that slushy day in the office of the lawyer in Zurich, now had left me free and absurdly wealthy. The tears came slowly.

I got off the bench and went over to the switch and turned on the lights. Then I stood in the middle of the room and looked at the paintings of the wanderings of Angelo Quinn’s father, glowing on the walls.

Irwin Shaw (1913–1984) was an award-winning American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer. His novel
The Young Lions
(1948) is considered a classic of World War II fiction. From the early pages of the
New Yorker
to the bestseller lists, Shaw earned a reputation as a leading literary voice of his generation.

Shaw was born Irwin Shamforoff in the Bronx, New York, on February 27, 1913. His parents, Will and Rose, were Russian Jewish immigrants and his father struggled as a haberdasher. The family moved to Brooklyn and barely survived the Depression. After graduating from high school at the age of sixteen, Shaw worked his way through Brooklyn College, where he started as quarterback on the school’s scrappy football team.

“Discovered” by a college teacher (who later got him his first assignment, writing for the
Dick Tracy
radio serials), Shaw became a household name at the age of twenty-two thanks to his first produced play,
Bury the Dead
. This 1935 Broadway hit—still regularly produced around the world—is a bugle call against profit-driven barbarity. Offered a job as a Hollywood staff scriptwriter, Shaw then contributed to numerous Golden Era films such as
The Big Game
(1936) and
The Talk of the Town
(1942). While continuing to write memorable stories for the
New Yorker
, he also penned
The Gentle People
(1939), a play that was adapted for film four different times.

World War II altered the course of Shaw’s career. Refusing a commission, he enlisted in the army, and was shipped off to North Africa as a private in a photography unit in 1943. After the North African campaign, he served in London during the preparations for the invasion of Normandy. After D-Day, Shaw and his unit followed the front lines and documented many of the most important moments of the war, including the liberations of Paris and the Dachau concentration camp.

The Young Lions
(1948), his epic novel, follows three soldiers—two Americans and one German—across North Africa, Europe, and into Germany. Along with James Jones’s
From Here to Eternity
, Joseph Heller’s
Catch-22
, Norman Mailer’s
The Naked and the Dead
, and
The Caine Mutiny
by Herman Wouk,
The Young Lions
stands as one of the great American novels of World War II. In 1958, it was made into a film starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift.

In 1951, wrongly suspected of Communist sympathies, Shaw moved to Europe with his wife and six-month-old son. In Paris, he was neighbors with journalist Art Buchwald and friends with the great French writers, photographers, actors, and moviemakers of his generation, including Joseph Kessel, Robert Capa, Simone Signoret, and Louis Malle. In Rome, Shaw gave author William Styron his wedding lunch, doctored screenplays, walked with director Federico Fellini on the Via Veneto, and got the idea for his novel
Two Weeks in Another Town
(1960).

Finally, he settled in the small Swiss village of Klosters and continued writing screenplays, stage plays, and novels.
Rich Man, Poor Man
(1970) and
Beggerman, Thief
(1977) were made into the first famous television miniseries.
Nightwork
(1975) will soon be a major motion picture. Shaw died in the shadow of the Swiss peaks that had inspired Thomas Mann’s great novel
The Magic Mountain
.

Shaw as a young soldier crossing North Africa from Algiers to Cairo in 1943.

Shaw’s US Army record.

Shaw just after D-Day in Normandy, France, in 1944.