The Reserve (25 page)

Jordan just smiled. He didn’t believe a word she was saying. But why on earth would she tell such a story? Was it to cover her disappointment that he had rejected her overtures? He hadn’t really rejected her, anyhow; he had merely backed away from her first touch and changed the subject, changing it only temporarily, perhaps. In matters of seduction, Jordan Groves was passive. Never the initiator, he let the woman come to him, giving her the responsibility for the invitation to the dance, and only then, when the dance had begun, would he take the lead. That’s all he was doing here, he thought—foisting on to Vanessa the obligation to declare her intent to have him make love to her, so that afterward he could tell himself that he had merely been complying with her wishes, fulfilling her needs, not his, slaking her lust, not his. Though, naturally, he well knew that he had met his wishes, too, had fulfilled his needs and slaked his lust as much as the woman’s.

That it was a pattern he knew, but he had never examined the causes. In every other action in his life, he was the initiator, the prime mover, but when it came to sex, he let the woman come to him. Or rather, he
made
the woman come to him. Even his wife, Alicia—except for that first time, way back when they left the gallery party drunk on champagne and new fame and went to his studio downtown, and he asked her to marry him and she said yes, and to celebrate they took off their clothes and made stormy love the entire rest of the night, until dawn broke and gray New York winter light drifted through the high windows and skylight of the studio and fell onto the two of them lying asleep
in each other’s arms. From then on, though, he had waited for Alicia to come to him. For Jordan Groves, a man’s sexual favors were precisely that, favors. A woman’s were something else—a request, perhaps, a statement of need or of desire strong enough to require explicit expression by the woman. In a small way, it comforted his vanity and assuaged any residual guilt afterward that, in order to have sex with a woman, he had not been obliged to overcome her objections by any means fair or foul. And he never risked being rejected.

He surprised himself, therefore, when he stood up and took off his leather jacket again and crossed to the bed and sat next to Vanessa and put his bare arms around her. He kissed her on the mouth, softly, and then, as he felt his passion rise, with force this time.

Vanessa pulled away and pushed him back and said, “Wait. You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m lying.”

“Lying? You mean about your father? No, not exactly.”

“That means you think I’m lying.”

“It means you sometimes say things that are not exactly false and not exactly true, and it’s hard for me to know where they fall between the two.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, was your father interested in lobotomies? Yeah, sure. Why not? He was a brain surgeon, after all. Did he perform them himself? Maybe he did, maybe he only wanted to, or intended to. But did he go to Europe and do it at that private clinic in Zurich and teach the doctors there how to do it? It’s possible, I guess, but unlikely. I’m sure you
believe
he did. But based on what? And was your mother setting you up for a lobotomy by sending you to Zurich? Again, I’m sure you
believe
she was, but based on what evidence? She never said that to you, did she?”

“She didn’t have to. But think about it, Jordan! What a public
ity coup for the famous psychiatrist, Dr. Theobold, if he were able to say he miraculously cured the daughter of the equally famous American brain surgeon, Dr. Carter Cole, of an incurable mental illness by using the surgical techniques and tools invented by the late Dr. Cole himself. Rich parents and husbands from all over the world would be shipping their troubled and troublesome children and wives to Zurich. For a half-hour’s surgery and with only a few days needed for recovery, he could charge whatever he wanted, ten, twenty, fifty thousand dollars a head! Remember, Jordan, I know these people, Theobold and Reichold and the others. They’re Nazis, Jordan. Very ambitious and greedy Nazis. And I know my father.”

“You’re not suffering from an incurable mental illness.”

“Of course not! I’m not even mentally ill. I’m suffering from
something,
though.”

“What? Other than the sudden, unexpected loss of your parents.”

For a long moment they both remained silent, gazing out the window. Finally, in a voice barely above a whisper, Vanessa said, “Secrets. Secrets kept from me, and secrets I’ve kept from everyone else. Secrets aren’t like lies. They’re more like brain surgery. They kill your soul. Lying is only a technique for keeping secrets.
One
of the techniques. Lies and silence and…and storytelling, which is nothing more than changing the subject in an interesting way. All those clever diversionary tactics. Like bad behavior in public. Reckless behavior in public. Or like this,” she said, and she put her arms around him and drew him to her and kissed him and softly moaned. She whispered into his ear, “I want you to take me, now, here,” and ran her hand down his chest and began loosening his belt. He kissed her on the mouth and throat and began unbuttoning her shirt—her father’s flannel shirt, although he did not note that.

F
AR OUT ON THE LAKE, THE TWO FISHERMEN SLOWLY REELED
in their lines and lay their fishing rods in the boat. The man who was the guide, Sam LaCoy, dipped the oar blades into the still water and began to row the boat slowly back toward the Carry. The other man, whose name was Thomas Smith, a retired diplomat, once ambassador to the Court of St. James, turned in the bow and looked back across the lake at the Cole place, Rangeview. The log buildings glowed in the late afternoon sunlight.

“Do you know the Coles?” Smith asked the guide.

“Can’t say I do. Not personally.”

“Damned good people, Dr. Cole and his wife. He’ll be missed around here.”

“Expect so.”

“I wonder what she’ll do with the camp, now that he’s gone. The widow. It’s hard to imagine she or the daughter will want to hold on to it. Carter Cole was a lifelong Adirondacker, a real true Reservist, you know. His father was one of the original shareholders. Not the wife, though. And certainly not the daughter.”

“You plan on making ’em an offer on the place?”

“It’s a thought.”

“Be good to have a camp of your own up here on the Second Lake. Instead of boarding all the time down to the clubhouse cottages.”

“Yes. The Coles got in the Reserve early. My father was a little slow to realize the value of a camp at the Second Lake.”

“The daughter, she must be third generation, then.”

“Right. She’s got quite a reputation, the daughter, Vanessa. You ever meet her?”

“I’ve seen her. From a distance,” the guide said and pulled once on the oars, hard, driving the boat alongside the dock to
where Ambassador Smith could step directly from the boat without wetting his boots or trouser cuffs. “Sorry about the fish not biting,” the guide said.

“My fault, Sam, not yours. We’d have caught a string of trout, I’m sure, if I’d been ready early and didn’t have to get back to the clubhouse before dark. Oh, look!” he said and pointed out a ways where ring-size ripples in the flat black surface of the water spread in widening circles, as if someone were dropping pebbles into the lake. “Now they’re feeding.”

The guide said, “If you owned that Cole place, you’d have yourself a couple more hours to catch your supper before going in.”

“You’re right about that,” Ambassador Smith said. “I’ll have to give the matter some thought.”

The guide took up their gear and pack basket, and the two men headed into the woods of the Carry on to the First Lake, where another boat awaited them.

At breakfast on the morning of April 5, 1937, the big American, the one they called Rembrandt, announced to the others that today’s mission would be his last. He told them he’d had enough. Tomorrow he was going to Madrid. He intended to stay at the Hotel Florida with the American journalist Matthews and the novelists Hemingway and Dos Passos and the photographer Capa. He claimed they were friends of his. He said that he wanted to make pictures of the war to help raise money back in the States. He was an artist, he said to them, not a soldier, and could do more for the anti-Fascist cause with his pictures than by machine-gunning men in trenches from the air, which he said was like shooting ducks in a barrel. Anyone could do that. They didn’t need him for it. The other pilots said nothing. He told them he didn’t care if he was breaking his contract with the Republic of Spain, the government could keep his back pay and whatever signing bonus they still owed him, he’d had enough and wanted to be able to sleep at night without seeing bodies exploding in the air. The others seemed not to mind. They went on eating breakfast. The big American was the least popular man in the unit and had been from the start. Finally Fairhead spoke. He said if this was to be Groves’s last mission he might as well lead it himself. An hour later they were in the air in a V of V formation, with the departing American leading the point patrol. They had their Russian monoplanes now, the Polikarpov I–16s that the Spanish
called Moscas. There were heavy rain squalls and a low ceiling of about fifteen hundred feet. They crossed the line at Brihuega where the Italians had attempted to cut their way to Torija and began their bombing run against the lines of tanks parked alongside the valley road. The big American dropped his bombs on the tanks, and the rest of the pilots did the same, and they destroyed many of them. Then Fairhead, who led the right patrol, waggled the wings of his aircraft and pointed up and to their left, where there was a squadron of Fiat single-seat CR 32s, no match for the speed and armaments of the Russian monoplanes. The pilots put their Moscas into a sharp right echelon and began climbing, closing fast on the Fiats. There were seven of the Italians and then, still higher, another five. When the airplanes engaged, formation flying was no longer possible. They broke into one-on-one dogfights, making passing side shots mainly as they tried to position themselves behind their targets. The Moscas began to take advantage of their superior maneuverability and climbing speed. The big American got himself in on the tail of the lead Fiat and fired his 20-millimeter cannons for fifteen seconds straight, sending the Italian spinning downward, spilling a trail of water, gasoline, and black smoke. The American quickly dove after a second target a thousand feet below, but the Italian saw him coming and turned away and dove in the opposite direction. The American curled back in pursuit, but after a few moments the Fiat managed to elude him in the low clouds. When the American broke through the clouds at about five thousand feet, he looked up and saw five Fiats diving toward him. He plunged back down into the clouds again and with the Fiats close behind carved a sharp left vertical bank and completed a 360-degree turn, bringing him in behind his pursuers, firing both machine guns steadily and scattering all five of the Fiats in different directions. A few moments later when he emerged below the clouds again, he found himself in unfamiliar territory, moun
tainous, with the tops of the mountains in clouds. He was alone in the sky. He dropped down into a valley, hoping for some sign, a river or a road or a village that would help him read his map. As he moved along a rough valley cut with arroyos and narrow dry stream-beds, he spotted too late an antiaircraft gun emplacement in among the trees. At that instant, before he heard the sound of the gun or saw the white puff of smoke in front of his airplane or the second off to his right, a third shell struck his airplane. It hit the left side of the fuselage behind the cockpit, and he could no longer fly the airplane. He was bleeding badly from his shattered left thigh and ankle, and then another shell hit the airplane, this time in the cowling, smashing the engine, igniting the fuel, and instantly the airplane flipped onto its back and began its spiraling plummet to the ground.

H
UBERT HAD HOPED TO FIND
R
USSELL
K
ENDALL ALONE IN HIS
office. But when he approached the corner room at the far end of the greeting desk, as it was called, the office door was open, and standing outside the door like a valet was the guide Sam LaCoy, looking at the floor as if lost in thought, wicker backpack at his feet, a pair of fishing rods in his hands. Hubert heard the manager’s barking laugh and noted the trouser cuffs and shoes of someone seated just inside—Ambassador Smith, he assumed, joshing with the clubhouse manager. The English girl who greeted the guests coming and going and guarded the dining room and bar and other clubhouse facilities from intrusion by nonmembers stood at the desk, leaning on her elbows with a book open before her. It was always an English girl, because of the accent. She looked up from her book, a novel called
Caddie Woodlawn
, marked her place with her index finger, and studied Hubert for a second. The guides rarely came this far, unless in the company of a member.

“May I direct you to someone?”

“I need to see Mr. Kendall.”

“Sorry. He’s with a member.”

“I can wait.”

“As you wish.”

Hubert nodded hello to the other guide.

“Hubert.” LaCoy rubbed his knuckle across his nose and thumped the cork handles of the fishing rods on the floor in greeting. He was a thick-bodied man, built like a stump with green suspenders.

“They biting out there today?”

“Naw. They was only waiting till we left, I guess. We pretty much come up empty. You?”

“Never wet a line. Just lugging supplies for the Coles.”

“Figured. So them two ladies staying out there alone awhile.”

“Awhile, yes.”

Ambassador Smith and Russell Kendall emerged from the office together, both smiling, their transaction satisfactorily completed. They ignored the guides and kept walking in the direction of the greeting desk, where Smith suddenly stopped, as if remembering something he’d left behind. “Don’t mention
who
was inquiring, Russell. Not unless she shows genuine interest.”

“Not to worry, Ambassador,” the manager said. They shook hands and Smith moved on, his faithful guide following behind. The manager hoped Ambassador Smith was right, that if Mrs. Cole received a generous, timely, and discreet offer from an old-time reservist like Ambassador Thomas Smith, she would be willing to sell their camp at the Second Lake. It had to be done before the widow got over Dr. Cole’s death, but not while she was still in deep mourning, or she might feel she was being taken advantage of. It was shrewd of the ambassador to make his move quickly, however, while the place was still associated in the minds of Mrs. Cole and her daughter with the death of Dr. Cole. A year from now their memory of the event will be dimmed somewhat, and by then they would have made new associations with the place, social and otherwise, and Mrs. Cole might not want to sell Rangeview.

The ambassador and his family would be easier for Kendall to deal with than the Cole women, especially the daughter, Vanessa. He liked the ambassador. Everyone did. And there would be a sizable commission in it for Kendall if he helped facilitate the sale. The ambassador was an extremely wealthy man from very old money who preferred to let others do his business for him, even in trivial matters. He often had his secretary make his clubhouse dining room reservations for him by telephone from New York City, even though he and his wife were right here in residence in one of the Club cottages, she out on the golf course, he out on the Second Lake fishing.

“Hubert’s waiting to speak with you, Mr. Kendall,” the English girl said, surprising Hubert. He hadn’t thought she’d known his name.

Kendall turned to Hubert, eyebrows raised. “Yes?”

“In private, if that’s okay.”

Kendall nodded and went back into his office. Hubert followed him and stood facing the wide desk like a schoolboy, hat in his hands. Kendall leaned back in his chair and peered out the window behind him at the tennis courts. The window was open, and the soft tympani of the ball and racket and the ball and fine clay played in counterpoint in the background.

After a few seconds, Hubert cleared his throat and said, “There’s something you ought to know that happened today.”

“Really? What?” Kendall continued watching the tennis. A pair of tall, blond, long-jawed men in white flannel trousers and white short-sleeved shirts trotted back and forth on the near court like agitated storks.

“You mind if I sit down?” Hubert suddenly felt that if he didn’t put himself into a chair and trap himself there, he’d turn around and walk out the door.

Kendall waved him toward the dark green club chair recently vacated by Ambassador Smith and resumed gazing at the tennis. “What happened today that I should know about?”

“You know Mrs. Cole, Evelyn Cole? Dr. Cole’s wife. His widow, I mean.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Well, this morning I was up to the Second Lake there, at their camp. And she got accidentally shot.”

Kendall wheeled around in his chair. “
Shot!
By a gun? Oh, my!”

“Yes. By a gun. Shotgun. Over-and-under Belgian twenty-eight gauge that belonged to the doctor. I…I got it in my truck. My car. Outside.”

“Oh, my!” the manager said again. “Is she…is she all right?”

“Well, no. She’s dead. But it was an accident.”

“Dead!”
Kendall left his chair and hurried across the room and closed the door. “Oh, my. Oh, my, this is terrible.”

Hubert looked down at his hands, one holding his old fedora by the brim, the other upturned in his lap, as if waiting for a coin from a passerby. What he was doing now did not feel any longer like the right thing. But it was too late to stop it, too late to go back to what he had been doing before. That had felt wrong, too. In little more than twenty-four hours—starting at the moment Vanessa Cole showed up at his cabin door—he had arrived at a place in his life where he could no longer choose between right and wrong. His life no longer felt like it belonged to him. It belonged to Vanessa Cole and Jordan Groves, and to Alicia Groves, and now it belonged to Russell Kendall, too.

“It was an accident. She…well, she dropped the gun, and it went off, I guess. It was hair triggered, and she had the safety off. I guess you could call it a freak accident. She didn’t have much experience with guns and such.”

“Oh, dear God, this is terrible! Where were you when this happened? She shouldn’t have been handling the gun! That’s supposed to be your job, for heaven’s sake!”

“I was right there. Actually, when it happened, I was trying to take the gun away from her,” Hubert said and instantly regretted it. He didn’t have to volunteer that. He wouldn’t lie, he couldn’t now, but he decided to offer no more information than was absolutely required, no matter how dumb he sounded.

“You were there? You saw it? And you brought the gun in and put it in your car, for reasons I won’t ask into just yet. What about the body, Mrs. Cole’s body? Did you bring that in, too?”

“No.”

“No? Where is she? Her body, I mean. At Rangeview?”

“Well, it’s…it’s back up in the woods a ways.”

“And Vanessa Cole, where is she? Did she come in from the lake with you?”

“No.”

“This is terrible news. Just terrible. The timing couldn’t be worse. When it gets out, it’ll be in all the papers. A thing like this, it’s not the sort of thing the members want the Reserve associated with, you know.”

“Yes.”

“Who knows about this? Other than you, of course. And Vanessa Cole.”

Hubert hesitated a moment. “I seen Ambassador Smith and Sam LaCoy out fishing when I come in. But I didn’t tell them nothing about it. I just said Mrs. Cole and the daughter didn’t want no company just yet.” Hubert hated the way he was talking. He sounded like a country bumpkin, and he knew it, but couldn’t stop himself. He was glad that Alicia couldn’t see or hear him.

“So only you and I and Vanessa know about this accident. That’s good. How’s she taking it?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Kendall sat back down and clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling a moment. “I’m tempted to do something indiscreet,” he said. “Possibly illegal. But I’ll need your cooperation, Hubert.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s still possible to keep this whole thing just between us. You know, bring the body of Mrs. Cole out from the lake after dark tonight, and then you and Vanessa drive it someplace else. Someplace downstate, in the Catskills, maybe, and take the gun with you, and say the accident happened there.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Kendall. The body’s not—”

The manager interrupted him. “You would be handsomely paid for the service, believe me. I have a discretionary fund available for…discretion. Do you think Miss Cole would agree to that?”

“Well, to tell the truth—”

“There are favors I could grant in exchange. She wanted her father’s ashes placed in the Reserve. I could allow it. There might be other favors.”

Hubert shook his head. “She doesn’t want anybody to know what happened, all right. Just like you.”

Kendall brightened. “Really?”

“For different reasons she doesn’t want anybody to know what happened. But she doesn’t want her mother’s body brought out, neither.”

“Why not, for heaven’s sake? We can’t leave it there. She’s dead, Hubert. It’s a human body.” He started to say that Ambassador Thomas Smith was thinking of buying Rangeview and might change his mind if a scandal were associated with
the place, but thought better of it. Kendall didn’t want anyone getting between him and the ambassador in this transaction, and who knows whom Hubert might tell? If word got out, one of the other members might cut into line without relying on the manager to act as broker. There was a premium on camps in the Reserve.

“Well, for one thing, she’s scared,” Hubert said.

“Scared! Why? She didn’t do it, did she? Shoot her mother. I thought it was an accident. Mrs. Cole dropped the gun, and it went off accidentally, you told me.”

“Well, that’s more or less how it happened.”

“More or less?”

“Yes.”

Kendall narrowed his eyes. “What
aren’t
you telling me?”

“Nothing important.”

“Whatever happens in the Reserve has to be reported to me. Especially when it’s something…untoward. As this certainly appears to be.”

“I know.”

“Hubert, I could make it so you’d never work in the Reserve again.”

“I know.”

“You’d starve without the Reserve. You and half the people in this town,” he added.

“I know,” Hubert said, and sighed. He leaned forward in the chair and looked at the floor and without raising his eyes proceeded to tell the manager the rest. Or most of the rest. He did not tell him about Jordan Groves’s being at the Second Lake, and he did not tell him that Vanessa Cole had kidnapped her mother and kept her a prisoner in the camp for days.

The manager heard him out in silence. When Hubert had fin
ished, Kendall sat up straight in his chair and brushed invisible crumbs from his shirt and straightened papers and pencils on his desk for a few seconds. The thunk of the tennis ball and an occasional hearty male laugh drifted through the open window.

The manager inhaled sharply through his nose. “You are a fucking idiot,” he declared. “You’re a fucking idiot twice over! First, for going along with the Cole girl and burying the mother on the Reserve, when you should have simply come here immediately and told me about the accident. We could have handled the matter discreetly, with no one the wiser. So you’re an idiot for having gone along with her, and God only knows why you did that, and second, you’re an idiot for coming here now and telling me what you’ve done with the woman’s body. And God only knows why you did
that
!”

“What should I have done, then?” Hubert asked. He genuinely wanted to know. “I’m not an idiot, Mr. Kendall.” He sat back in the chair and gave the manager a hard look.

“Really?” The manager laughed without smiling and shook his head. “What you should have done is refuse to cooperate with that girl and instead come to me right away so I could do the thinking for both of us. Now I’ve got no choice but to play it by the book. The Reserve rule book. I’ll have to call in the sheriff and tomorrow send a crew out there to dig up Mrs. Cole’s body and bring it in. The county will probably want an autopsy before issuing a proper death certificate. It’ll be in all the papers. Oh, they’ll love it. And not just the local papers, either. Kaltenborn will have it on the radio. It’ll make the newsreels. And the Cole estate, that’ll be tied up for years. Or else in the hands of that crazy girl. And who knows what she’ll do with the property.”

“The property?”

“Yes. Rangeview. Certain parties have expressed an interest
in purchasing Rangeview from Mrs. Cole. It could have been a quiet, private transaction, handled by me. These are socially prominent people, Hubert. They don’t like their names or activities or their financial affairs in the newspapers or associated with people like Vanessa Cole, who
does
want her name in the newspapers and her pretty face up on the ‘March of Time’ screen. I don’t expect you to understand that. But I do expect you to act rationally. Or at least I
did
. And to leave the business of being discreet to me. That’s supposed to be my business, Hubert. That’s my special skill. It’s why I have this job. Your business, your skill, is to guide and protect your clients here on the Reserve and take care of their property for them. Your employer, don’t forget, is the Reserve. Your clients pay the Reserve for your services, and the Reserve pays you. Your allegiance, therefore, is first and foremost to the Reserve and only indirectly to your clients. The rules we follow here, all of us, you as well as I, are the Reserve’s rules, written into law years ago, generations ago, by men like Dr. Cole’s father, when they first created the Reserve as a private sanctuary for themselves and their families and friends. Remember that. And when you obeyed Vanessa Cole and helped her bury her mother on the Reserve, which is practically sacred ground to these people, especially those members like Ambassador Smith whose parents and grandparents created it, when you did that, Hubert, you broke the Reserve’s rules. There shall be no grave sites anywhere in the Reserve. None. That’s the rule that applies here, Hubert. While I might have bent that rule a little for Vanessa Cole regarding Dr. Cole’s ashes, in exchange for her agreeing to move the site of her mother’s unfortunate accident to someplace else, now, thanks to you, it’s too late for that. We’ll have to go up there tomorrow with a crew and dig up the body in daylight. How deep did you bury her?”