No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart (24 page)

"This may be a frustrating discovery for you,
Mr. Cassella, but this is a society of rules and laws. The police
find that frustrating. Prosecutors find that frustrating. Even I, at
times, am irritated by it. But it is something we must live with if
we are to survive as a social organism, and I for one am glad and
grateful for that fact."

I rose to go.

"Mr. Cassella," he said, "bring me due
cause, or the equivalent thereof, and I will speak with the other
senior partners, and we will make available as much as we can to
you."

When I left, my stomach was in knots. I expected the
worst when I saw her. I expected her to say she couldn't deal with it
anymore. The thought filled me with fear and I forgot that it should
have been me saying "this can't be," just plain forgot.

When I came through the door, she was standing in the
middle of the room, looking distraught and distracted. When my aims
went around her, hers went around me. When my mouth opened on hers,
hers opened in welcome. Her softness leaned into me, and my body,
battered parts and all, sang with joy. Love, opiate and analgesic.

Her shirt lifted up and off her, leaving her breasts
and belly bare to my mouth. She made sounds in her throat. Her skirt
unlatched easily and floated down her long legs. The small bikini
pants follwed and so did I. Her warm moisture tasted just fine. Her
fingers trembled when they touched my head and her knees lost their
strength. She slid down so that we knelt face to face and she tasted
herself on my lips.

"Angel, my angel," she said.

When the time came to try to get up off the floor, I
got dizzy and had to cling to her. Pain thudded through my middle in
a double mismatched beat, one for my blood and one for my breath.

"My angel, you're hurt. Why didn't you . . ."

"It's just a disguise," I said.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah," I hoped. "Just help me up."

She helped me get to bed and helped me undress. The
magic pick-me-up was in my pants pocket and I asked for it. The snort
woke me up. It felt good, so I did another round and suddenly grew
afraid.

"Do you want some?" I asked.

She nodded yes. I gave her the bottle. After she
snorted I asked if that was enough. She said yes.

"Then flush what's left," I said. "Now.
Do it now."

I waited. When I heard the water running I yearned
for it not be happening; somewhere down in the drains I could snatch
it back.

When she returned, I summarized again. I downplayed
the violence, trauma and death, just like John Wayne would have. She
reacted perfectly, concern on her face, a tear in one corner of her
eye, her cheek laid gently on my wounds. It would have mined the
moment to tell her how perfectly Sandy's kiss went with Demerol, so I
left that out.

"Don't go on. I don't want you hurt. My angel, I
don't want to lose you." The cynical side, the son of a bitch
that hides in back but never leaves, said that her lines were right
on cue. But even he loved her for saying them so damn well. "This
is gonna sound melodramatic," I said. "A lot of evil things
have been said about vendetta. In fact, I've never heard anything
good about it. And all the bad things are probably true, but there is
a deep satisfaction in knowing that any blow against me and mine will
be returned. Avenged, if you like."

"Are you doing this for me or for you?" she
asked.

"I don't know. All I know is that there is too
much pain and shame living with an unavenged wrong. Like rape, it's
the victim that feels dirty."

"Yes," she admitted, "it is."

The tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

"I can't let you live the rest of your life like
that," I explained.

Another kind of dam broke; she clung to me, sobbing
hard.
 

24
THE
MAN HIMSELF

WHEN CHOATE WINKLER
,
Higgiston, Hahn & Moore informed Over & East of the charges
against Edgar Wood, a whole set of procedures was set in motion. Over
& East's inhouse legal department took care of things like
seizing Wood's papers and sealing his office. They informed the banks
that Wood was no longer authorized to sign checks or transact
business for any part of the vast empire. They instituted the actions
required to remove Wood from the board of directors and from the
boards of various subsidiaries. Personnel and administration also
took part in shifting what had been the domain of Edgar Wood into
other hands.

But certain things Charles Goreman did personally.
Immediately after the meeting, he went to the basement of the Over &
East building and found the head of night maintenance. Together they
went to the lobby. The maintenance man opened the glass doors of the
building directory. Goreman reached in with his hands and removed the
name of Edgar Wood.

Wood had his name in bronze letters on his solid
mahogany office door. Goreman pointed out to the maintenance man that
even if the letters were pried out, the name would remain engraved.
Though it was well after business hours, the entire door was removed,
and another one, blank, replaced it within 120 minutes. Goreman
stayed until it was done.

Goreman was hounded by the press for comment. The
only thing he ever said, publicly or privately, was that Wood's
activities were hardly of a size to do substantial damage to Over &
East, and that the interests of the stockholders were, as always,
secure.

I told Christina that I had to talk to Goreman. Yet I
had no leverage, no angle, no introduction. I had tried calling. I
spoke to the assistant executive secretary, who wanted to know my
business, which I didn't tell her, but I did leave a name and number.
The call was not returned.

"Oh, I'm sure Charlie will see you if I ask.
He'll see us together if you like," Christina said. I expressed
some surprise.

"I told you . . . Charlie was always sweet to
us, to me. He was a real dear to the family, even after. . . He's
still cordial to Mother, even though I don't think he ever really
liked her. He still invites her to the sort of social events she
dotes on. Are we planning to sneak up on him and pop the questions?
How should I arrange this?"

"Tell him that I want to see him because I'm
investigating the murder of your father .... Yeah, tell him that
straight up. And I need to talk to all the top people at Over &
East  and at Choate, Winkler. You can even say it's because
that's where the dead man's hand points. But you don't have to tell
him he's number one on the list; he knows that."

"If, if it turns out to be Uncle Charlie, I
won't believe it," she said, and I looked at her with my
questions. She cuddled closer to me, her strong young woman's body
somehow very soft, perhaps with the moment's contentment. "Right
now, it all seems, far away . . . when you're here, sometimes when
we're not talking about it, I forget that it happened, and that there
are people who kill people. And even when we do talk about it, I
don't feel the anger as much. I feel, safe, I guess. "

"I"m so in love with you," I said,
feeling so close to making her mine.

"Don't love me," she said so softly I
almost didn't hear, and I didn't say anything back.

The weekend alter next, Goreman told Christina the
next day, would be perfect. The two of us were invited to be his
guests from Friday night to Sunday at his house in the Hamptons. When
she told me about it she was as happy as a schoolgirl on holiday. She
had accepted for both of us.

Selling the lost weekend at home was not easy. I kept
telling Glenda how hard I was maneuvering to see Goreman. Lying and
legend creating are tools of my trade, but they 're on the outside,
they're a game. Home is supposed to be, and had been, a refuge from
all of that. Bringing them inside was a violation. Two days before
the weekend, I announced that Goreman had at last agreed to see me
and told her that I would be at his Hamptons' house for the weekend.

"I assume Miss Bikini is going with you,"
she said. "Gimme a break."

"Well, is she? A cute little weekend by the
shore. It sounds perfect for Miss Bikini."

"Look, this isn't personal. This is my job. As
far as I know, she won't be there. I have to do what I have to do to
make a living. If you start fucking around with me about that, I
don't know how to deal with it .... " And on and on it went,
until I left and spent the night in the office. I didn't tell
Christina because I would have ended up at her place and not been in
when Glenda called at 6: 15 A.M., not having slept and ready to make
up. Which she did and we did. Not that the Other Woman was content
and pleased with me that week either.

"How can you love me and not see me?" was
one of the things she said. "I've talked to my friends and they
all tell me the same thing. That I'm crazy to hang around with you.
That I'm just a toy for you to play with on the side."

"When women talk among women," I said, "and
I've taped, enough of them to know, no man is ever good enough ....
Christina, listen to me. I didn't want this to happen, neither did
you, but it happened. You complicate my life, but I can't stop, I
can't let go. Something inside me thanks God you exist."

"It does not make me feel good about myself. It
makes me feel used."

"What if I were free?" I said. It was an
offer, and I was stupid enough to follow through on it.

"Don't do that. You'll regret it. This—thing—we
have. Infatuation, hot sex, is going to wear out. And when you need
me, I won't be there. That's the way it is. If you leave her, I
swear, I will never see you again."

Which I didn't believe either.

And when we got on the seaplane that Charles Goreman
sent for us, it was all different again. Sort of.

"
I've been behaving like a neurotic idiot,
haven't I?" she said.

I agreed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I have been
wondering, day-dreaming, what we would be like if we had more than
eight hours together. Do you think it will all fall apart?"

"We are about to find out."

"A whole weekend with you. I am so excited. You
have no idea how I've been looking forward to it. Do you know what
you do? You make love to me the way I make fantasies about it when I
do it by myself."

"It's the 'us' that makes it happen," I
said with several different parts of me feeling overwhelmed.

"How can you go home at night then?"

"Because, I guess, it is home. It would be
different if I could say, 'My wife doesn't understand me,' but I
can't. She's not my wife and she does understand me. And there's
Wayne. I'm trying to be honest with you. But there isn't the magic
there that there is here."

"I'm sorry. Let's not talk about it. I promised
myself that I wouldn't ruin the weekend by thinking like that. Our
first weekend, and maybe our last."

We landed on the calm of Shirmecock Bay and there was
a Mercedes waiting for us. The mansion was built in an age that
predated income tax and presupposed an affordable servant class, in
the style favored by old-line WASPs so that they could call
twenty-two rooms a cottage.

The housekeeper, an elderly but vigorous example of
that rare breed, the native Hamptonian, was at the door to meet us.
Her mouth was prim, her iron-gray hair was cut in austere battle
lines and her name was Agnes. She greeted Christina fondly, calling
her Miss Christina, and declined to snub me only because she saw the
way Miss Christina looked at me. Goreman did not appear at dinner. He
sent his apologies from whatever end of the vastness he occupied.

Obscure signals passed between Agnes and Christina,
and after dinner our separate rooms became a single room on a corner
of the second floor overlooking the sea. The sound of breakers rolled
in and joined our own joyful noises.

We came down to breakfast in a glow of inexhaustible
and wholesome carnality. Agnes even smiled at me. Goreman was there,
avuncular when he wasn't preoccupied with Forbes, Friday's Journal,
the Times and his notes. I was preparing to broach the topics that
had ostensibly brought us here when what I guessed was a male
secretary came in to announce an overseas call.

"You will excuse me," Goreman said, "but
sometimes what is supposed to be a vacation cottage becomes just an
office over and east of Manhattan." Everyone, including him,
smiled politely at the weak humor, and he disappeared. I didn't give
a damn. I had her.

When we got back from the beach, late in the
afternoon, I attempted to find the area he used for an office. Agnes
intercepted me.

"Excuse me, Mr. Cassella, but Mr. Goreman is not
to be disturbed. Might I suggest you try our tennis courts?"

"Agnes, " I said, trying to look down the
broken ridge of my crooked Roman nose, "I am a Squash Player. I
never hit a ball without a wall."

"
That must be terribly limiting," she
replied politely, "By the by, do you have a jacket and tie?"

"In my entire wardrobe?"