Redemption Mountain (5 page)

The trail ended in a thicket of pine trees on a high outcropping that dropped off precipitously on three sides. Natty walked through the trees, as she had done so many times in her youth, to a mammoth rock formation that jutted off the side of the mountain like a huge nose. The top of the rock was smooth and gently curved, like an inverted saucer. She sat down and rested at the edge of the rock, her legs dangling over the edge. She leaned forward and looked down at the tops of the trees and the rocky cliff side several hundred feet below, instinctively pulling herself a little farther away from the edge.

Next to the farm on Redemption Mountain, this was her favorite spot in the world. The mountains stretched as far south as the eye could see. When the sky held wispy white clouds, it was difficult to tell where the mountains ended and the sky began.

Natty came to the rock with her friends in high school to smoke cigarettes, pot when they had some, to drink and talk about boys and sex and share their dreams about what they would do when they all left McDowell County. The other girls were gone—to colleges, jobs, husbands, new homes in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and only Natty still came here, alone, to enjoy the view and the serenity, to daydream.

But not today. She didn't have time to get into a good daydream. She stood up on the rock and looked out toward the southwest. Beyond some of the smaller hills, she could just make out the peak of Redemption Mountain. Her mother was probably up, working at some farm chores, thinking about Natty, and wondering when her little girl was coming to visit. Natty stood on her tiptoes, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shattered the morning stillness.
“Hello, Mama. I love you, Mama. I'm coming to see you on Sunday.”
She laughed and wondered if any mothers living on the other side of the Heavenly River might have been cheered by her message.

 

CHAPTER 4

 

C
harlie was feeling more uneasy as he got closer to the club. He wished Ellen hadn't asked him to pick her up after her tennis match. He wished her Volvo wasn't in the shop. He wished it wasn't a beautiful Saturday afternoon in July. The clubhouse and the patio bar would be crowded, and he was sure to run into old friends anxious to discuss his defection from the club. And to subtly take his temperature on the health of his marriage, no doubt.

Hickory Hills was a beautiful country club and a wonderful golf course, but Charlie felt enormous relief in his decision to leave the club. Beyond the time he now had for running and hockey, his liberation from the country-club lifestyle produced in Charlie an emotion close to euphoria. He was tired of the displays of wealth and status and the conversations endlessly devoted to the benchmarks of success—stocks and the market, big houses and summer homes, exotic vacations, good schools and fast-tracked children, and, of course, the politics that supported it all. Charlie couldn't pretend any longer that these things interested him.

For his wife, though, the country-club lifestyle was something she had set her sights on from the first days of their marriage, living in a squalid three-room apartment in Cambridge with its permanent odor of Asian cooking. This was the life she was raised in. It was all she knew of how adults were supposed to live and socialize, and Ellen had been aghast when Charlie told her he was quitting the club.

Eventually Ellen embraced the club's activities as a single member, with enthusiasm and energy. At home they simply didn't discuss the club, although she did enjoy chatting about the results of her tennis matches, and Charlie was always glad for the opportunity to share in some part of her day. They'd reached a truce over the issue, but the fissure in their marriage remained.

The outside restaurant area was crowded, as Charlie had feared. Every linen-covered table was occupied with lunching, drinking, and gabbing golfers and tennis players, eager to get on with the main sport of the club, which was watching and talking about each other. Charlie wore khaki shorts, his favorite faded University of Michigan T-shirt, and a pair of well-worn running shoes. He left his sunglasses on to hide at least part of the shiner that had darkened around his left eye. When he was a member, walking around the grounds in this outfit would have brought a reprimand and some penalty points from the membership committee. It felt good not to have to deal with the petty aspects of the club anymore.

He stood at the edge of the patio, hands in his pockets, trying unsuccessfully to look inconspicuous while scanning the tables for Ellen. Charlie Burden had the muscular build of a defensive back and the kind of rugged, permanently weathered face that women were universally attracted to. His nose, broken more times than he could remember, had a slender S-curve shape. At forty-eight, Charlie was actually ten pounds lighter and in better physical condition than when he played hockey at Michigan. It was difficult for him to be inconspicuous anywhere, and he could feel the eyes upon him.

As he was about to wade into the murmuring crowd, a familiar sight caught his eye, off to his right at a small table against the garden wall. He immediately recognized the wide grin, the trademark black beret, horn-rimmed glasses, and the long dark cigar. He hadn't seen Mal Berman in months, and he instantly regretted it. If there was one person at the club he truly missed spending time with, it was Mal. Charlie postponed his search for Ellen and went over to see his old friend.

“Well, hellooo, Charlie,” Berman cooed, as he half-rose and extended his hand. “Come sit with me and have a beer, like the old days.”

“I'd love to, Malcolm, since it'll have to be on your number now, not like the old days. So, how have you been? Break one-fifty today?”

“Ha! Oh, I miss you, Burden. Golf isn't as much fun without you, and, yes, I damn near broke a hundred today, wiseass!” Charlie took a chair next to Berman at the small round table, his back to the garden wall, looking out at the crowded patio. He would enjoy a few minutes with his old friend.

Berman was a senior partner in a small but extremely prestigious and profitable law firm specializing in international banking and finance. Dietrich Delahunt & Mackey was his oldest and most important client. There were few big-league bankers in London, Zurich, Paris, Hong Kong, or Tokyo whom Berman didn't know on a first-name basis, and no American lawyer was more respected or feared in contract negotiations.

Semiretired, Mal loved golf and loved playing it with his friend Charlie. He had been disappointed when Charlie told him he was leaving the club, but, unlike Ellen, Malcolm could empathize with his friend's decision. Malcolm wasn't a country club kind of guy, either, but he
did
love to play golf.

Berman folded up his
New York Times
and stuffed it into a canvas tote bag by his chair, coming back up with a long silver cigar case. “I know this is what you're really after, Burden. It's the only reason you ever played golf with me.”

Charlie laughed and accepted the twenty-dollar cigar. He'd taken plenty of Malcolm's cigars over the years while playing golf. It had become a ritual of their friendship, and he would enjoy this one. He slid the long cigar out of its silver sleeve. “I'm here to pick up Ellen. Have you seen her? She's playing tennis.”

“What else would the lovely Mrs. Burden be doing but playing tennis?” Berman beckoned over a young waitress, one of the attractive college girls the club was known to hire in the summer. “Bring us two Heinekens, and run down to the tennis courts and inquire as to the score of Mrs. Burden's tennis match. And very quietly, at an appropriate moment, you may inform Mrs. Burden that her husband is on the patio, enjoying the stimulating company of Mr. Berman and Mr. Castro, and she needn't hurry through the next set.”

The girl flashed a quick, flirtatious smile at Charlie before hurrying off on her assignment, stopping in the kitchen only long enough to report to the other waitresses that the gorgeous and dangerous-looking stranger in the sunglasses was none other than the husband of the elegant Ellen Burden.

“So, you gave up golf to take up boxing, or is that eye shadow you're wearing?” Malcolm gestured to the darkening bruise visible from the side, behind Charlie's sunglasses.

“Rough game this morning.” Charlie gave Berman a brief synopsis of the fight at the hockey game.

“The kid should sue the shit out of you,” Berman said, taking out a ballpoint pen. “Maybe he needs a lawyer. Got a name?”

They shared a laugh just as the waitress arrived with the bottles of Heineken and frosted mugs. “I'm sorry, I didn't see Mrs. Burden anywhere down at the courts,” the waitress explained, as she put the beer on the table. At that moment, Ellen Burden and her entourage of three other women, an older man with a towel around his neck, and the club's tennis pro emerged from the stairway that led up from the courts.

The buzz level on the patio rose as the group made their way toward one of the large tables near the center of the floor that, almost by design, opened up as they made their entrance. Greetings, waves, and radiant smiles were sent around the patio as the women and the tennis pro unloaded their equipment on and under the canopied table. This was a group with star power within the club's social spectrum, and the group's leader was clearly Ellen Burden.

Tall, tanned, and elegant, Ellen radiated confidence and charisma. Her jet-black shoulder-length hair shone as she quickly brushed it out of its competition ponytail. Her dark eyes and brilliant white smile sparkled like the jewelry on her hands as she moderated the discussion of the day's match with animated enthusiasm. Her companions coveted her attention, which she would bestow by leaning forward, raising her eyebrows and the intensity of her smile as she listened to her subject's contribution, followed by a hearty, guttural laugh or a clap of the hands to show her pleasure.
Compete hard, relax hard.
Few people could match Ellen Burden's intensity in the pursuit of life's enjoyments.

At fifty years old, Ellen D'Angelo Burden was easily one of the club's most attractive females. Large-boned at five foot ten, with the figure of a twenty-five-year-old, Ellen had been accustomed since adolescence to the subtle peeks and sideways glances that beautiful women detect like sonar. She also enlisted whatever outside assistance she needed in pursuit of her image. Several hours every few weeks at the Carlos Marché Salon preserved the deep sheen of her hair and eyebrows. A visit to a noted cosmetic surgeon in Boston several years earlier, followed by a recuperative stay at the Boca Raton Resort & Club, effectively erased the creases around her eyes.

Ellen worked hard at her appearance, but anyone who got close to her soon came to know that her dominating characteristic was relentless ambition. Ellen Burden craved success and status and recognition the way others needed alcohol, sex, or money.

Mal Berman motioned the waitress over and pointed his long cigar in the direction of Ellen's table. “Darling, run over and tell Mrs. Burden—”

Charlie interrupted him. “No, no, let her enjoy her time with her friends. And we'll have two more on Mr. Berman's tab.” He clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder and smiled. “We don't get this chance too often. I'm in no hurry, and it looks like they're getting something to eat.”

“You know, Charlie, Ellen's going to be the first female president of this club very soon,” said Berman.

“And no one deserves it more, Mal.” Charlie gazed over at his wife's table. Ellen was in her world, enjoying herself, having fun with her friends. And there was nothing wrong with that. She had always been a woman who needed substance and craved status, and she'd never pretended to be anything different. This was the life she was born to. It was he who'd changed, who'd altered the small print of their marriage without warning or explanation, and he was determined not to let his confusion about life distort Ellen's clarity.

“In fact,” said Berman, “I pity the two fools who are running against her.” He blew out a cloud of smoke and chuckled. “They don't know what they're up against.”

Charlie smiled. “No, I'm sure they don't, Mal,” he said, peering through the haze of cigar smoke at Ellen as she presided over the center table. He knew his wife well.

The fire of determination was lit within Ellen during her senior year at Wellesley, when word spread across the campus that Ellen D'Angelo's father, a Providence car dealer, had been indicted for racketeering and loan sharking, along with a group of other Rhode Island businessmen known to reside on the fringe of the Providence underworld.

Years of mob activities, including old contract hits, soon surfaced, leading Augie D'Angelo to plea-bargain his way to a twenty-year sentence in a federal prison. His daughter's humiliation at the hands of the high-society Wellesley elite that she had so recently been a part of was deep and permanent.

The family had enough money for Ellen to finish college, but the estate in East Greenwich was gone, along with the stocks, the house at Sea Pines, and the A-frame at Killington. After graduation, Ellen had virtually nothing but a degree, her clothes, and the Karmann Ghia convertible her father had given her when she left for school.

She also had Charlie Burden, the handsome Michigan hockey player she'd met the previous summer in Newport. Even though Charlie came from a lower-middle-class background, the son of a train conductor for the New York and New Haven Railroad, he had future success stamped all over him. He was a brilliant engineering student, an outstanding natural athlete, and the most sensual lover she'd ever had. Charlie Burden was going somewhere in life, and Ellen D'Angelo was determined to be there with him.

When Charlie was accepted into graduate school at MIT, everything began to fall into place. Ellen's suggestion that they get married and squeeze out enough from her teaching salary to pay for Charlie's tuition seemed like the most natural thing to do. She was a beautiful, sexy, and intelligent woman, and in spite of her family misfortunes, Charlie felt fortunate that she'd marry a penniless grad student like him. She was also employed, and there was no avoiding the fact that Charlie needed a source of income if he was going to attend MIT.