The Wind Chill Factor (50 page)

Across the way, near the Frog Pond, a woman in a blue cloth coat sat on a bench reading a book. A small boy in a harness attached to the bench had gotten to the end of his tether, as far from her as possible, and was peeing into the leaves, a beatific smile on his round face. I noticed the scene, the world around me, and when I did I’d been told to make a point of it to Doctor Moss. That inevitably brought a reassuring smile from Doctor Moss. She had been worried about me through the summer: I hadn’t been much in contact with the world. Now I was noticing things like the weather and the smell of the leaves and the pastels revealed far across the Public Garden and the Common as the fog lifted. She’d told me to get back in touch with the world and I was trying.

I saw him standing in front of the Ritz. It was so like him to come to Boston and matter-of-factly stay at the Ritz. I made a point of noticing what he wore, the light gray herringbone suit, the white shirt, the foulard tie in red and blue, the silver collar pin. He turned as if telepathically controlled and saw me coming toward him. He faced me and waited, smiling a bit off-center.

“Cooper,” he said, and self-consciously shook my hand. “How are you?”

“Normal,” I said. “My shrink tells me I’m normal. Or almost normal. She tells me that’s the way she wants me.”

Peterson grunted, his face swarthier than I’d known it. He’d spent a summer in the sun.

“It’s overrated, this normality stuff.” He was checking me out, looking into my face to see what he could see, looking for scars on the old psyche.

“How the hell would you know? You’ve never spent a normal day in your life.”

We laughed together, not quite friends but at the least a couple of people who had been together during a time of stress. It was like war buddies meeting when the war which had held them together was finally over. There wasn’t much common ground and what there was lay there, brooding and dark, in the past.

“My wife has gone shopping with an old friend,” he said. “I’ve got to meet them for lunch, probably some goddamned tearoom with doilies and little old ladies in mob-caps.” We were crossing the street “Shopping,” he muttered. “Thank God she’s rich, thank God for that.”

The grass was brown and the ground was hard from frost. There were always people in the Public Garden and on the walkways of the Common. I could smell pipe smoke. You could always smell pipe smoke in Boston. We walked in silence for a while and I felt healthy. No psychic shocks from seeing Peterson again. I remembered what had happened, what I’d seen him do, and it was all right. It was a test. Doctor Moss would have had a fit if she’d known I was seeing him even now. But I was all right.

“Tell me about Cooper’s Falls,” I said.

“Oh,” he said after a lengthy pause. “Oh, it’s back to normal. They’re talking about a new building where my office used to be, they’ve got to have something. Aho is running around making little impromptu speeches. Same with the library. You know how it goes. They’ll build some glass box, put some shelves in it, a bunch of modern furniture, call it a library. But it won’t be the same.”

“No, it won’t.”

“Otherwise, everything’s pretty … normal.” He glanced at me. The mustache drooped, the eyes flickered like pieces of anthracite.

“Did they ever find out who killed Cyril and Paula? And poor Arthur?”

“No, they—we never have. Not a clue, or what clues there were went just so far and came to dead ends. The Feds were with us again but they weren’t worth anything either—just an isolated footnote to history, I guess. Worlds full of them, I hear. People getting killed all the time, nobody ever gets caught. Happens all the time.”

There was a Salvation Army band at the top of the hill. We stopped to watch it for a moment, our reflections bigheaded in the immaculate flowering of the tuba. The man who played it had his eyes closed. He must have known his part by heart. His face was turning purple. Peterson tugged my sleeve.

“Let’s go up there.” He pointed to a bench at the top of the rise commanding a view of the Common and the city of Boston rising up on the other side. Sitting down, he took out a case and offered me a cigar. I took it and we puffed for a moment, watching the people and feeling the sunshine on our faces.

“Have you heard from our friends?” I asked.

“No, not since the Colonel and Mr. Dawson left.”

“How did it happen, Olaf? I’m curious. I don’t think it will bother me now, not anymore.”

“All right,” he said from behind a cloud of smoke. “Then let’s not talk about it again—”

“We may never see each other again,” I said.

“Well, be that as it may. Let’s get it out of the way once and for all. If we live long enough we’ll talk it over in our old age. I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll give it to you briefly.

“They took me to Washington and gave me pretty much the same story Arthur gave you. I oohed and aahed on cue and didn’t know if they were all nuts or if I was or if the world was. It turned out to be the world, by the way, but that’s neither here nor there at this point, is it? Well, when they were finished I told them that it was all right with me—I mean, what are you gonna say at a time like that? The whackos are running the world, that’s their problem—I’ve got my wife’s money and you don’t live forever, right? Okay. Fuck it, I told them, more or less. They clapped me on the back, said that they had faith in me—can you imagine that?” He shook his head. “They said Arthur had assured my welfare, sort of signed for me or some goddamn thing and I winked and said I understood. … God, telling this for the first time—it’s government by the Marx Brothers.” He stopped to reflect. “I don’t know, though. We’re reelecting an invisible President in a week, we’ve had a summer of Watergate and Eagleton and God only knows what else. The loonies are at it, Cooper. Well, anyway.” He turned back to the subject, forcing himself away from the fantasies of the front pages and back to our own world.

“When I left Washington I was picked up by one of Roeschler’s people. Now, you’ve got to remember, these people in Washington are not autonomous—in the end they answered to Arthur. And Roeschler was Arthur’s second-in-command. So, when Roeschler’s people took me for a ride I had to execute a little triple think. Roeschler had had us watched on the flight back after all and now he was pulling a little end run on the Washington office. He was circumventing Washington and his little men told me that I’d be meeting an old friend with a very serious mission—that I would cooperate with him or I would die without further discussion, and that you would die.” He looked me square on. “And they told me that if I needed any more inducement to behave appropriately I should be aware that Lee Cooper—that’s what they called her—would die, as well.

“I told them it was all right with me, anything they said was fine. The old friend, of course, was Steynes. Roeschler told Steynes the truth about Brenner and the movement, everything but his own involvement. Roeschler told him that unless Brenner were neutralized at once it would be too late. Steynes went for the bait and made the trip himself. I was the guide. There was just no choice. Steynes pulled the trigger on Brenner himself. He looked upon it as the culmination of his work.

“It was a setup, Cooper.

“Roeschler knocked off the one man above him in the hierarchy and no one can possibly pin it on him since everyone else in the movement who knew of Steynes’ existence is dead. And no one but Brenner knew Roeschler worked for Steynes on suitable occasions.” He beamed at me, as if he’d finally finished the impossible all-white jigsaw puzzle. “Its perfect!” He couldn’t help admiring the scheme.

“One loose end,” I said. “Steynes.”

“Steynes is dead.”

“Dead? Roeschler?”

“No, no, he was dying, had six months at the outside when we saw him on Cat Island. Worked out to just over four. Roeschler knew that, of course, and knew the temptation to cap his career would be so great that Steynes couldn’t resist doing it himself. So Roeschler is at the top of the heap now. The top. Pulling the strings.”

“Dawson? What about Dawson?”

Peterson laughed.

“He’s in Munich. Works for Roeschler. Is paid through Brendel’s old firm, handles English interests. Sound man, Dawson. A mercenary. But fiercely loyal.” He puffed and leaned back, glad that it was over.

“It’s all tied up then, isn’t it?”

“Yes. We’re safe. Everybody’s safe. It’s the world that’s in danger … and maybe the world can take care of itself. Who the hell knows?”

“Have you heard anything from Munich?”

“No. I don’t expect to. You shouldn’t expect to either. It’s all behind us now, Cooper.”

Together we walked back the way we’d come.

At the sidewalk in front of the Ritz Peterson looked at his watch and shrugged.

“Well, it’s time for me to go,” he said.

“Me, too,” I said.

“Well, then,” he said. A breeze swirled down the street and tugged at his wig. He put his hand up reflexively, smoothed it down. “Always think the damn thing’s going to blow away.” He laughed. “You were the first person who ever just spotted it, you bastard.”

He grabbed my arm.

“Look,” he said, “this is getting silly. Stay well, John. And try to forget it.” He was shaking my hand, squinting in the bright sunshine, backing away from me.

“Everybody dies,” I said.

I don’t know if he heard me.

“I’ll be in touch, Johnnie.” He waved and we both turned around and went our own ways.

I went back to my flat. I’d moved: I no longer lived where I’d been when I got the telegram from Cyril. Now I was high up in a tower overlooking the Charles River Basin and the Boston skyline with the Hancock Building where the windows keep getting blown out by the wind.

I sat at my desk looking out past the window and the balcony at the river turning into something shiny, gunmetal, as the sun sank. Car lights came on and I watched them trace their little paths so far below.

On my desk there was a delicate, colorful ceramic depiction of Flowerdieu’s Charge. I had the only one in the world and I used it to hold piles of manuscript paper down when I opened the sliding doors onto the balcony.

And when I sat at my desk and looked the length of the room I could see the huge painting my father had done so many years before. My mother was there, looking just past you as if something interesting was happening just beyond your shoulder.

But I didn’t have the picture there to remind me of my mother.

Sometimes, when I am in just the right mood, I can look into her eyes, which never seem to be quite paying attention, and if I look long enough I can see the great house on the outskirts of Munich. The wind is blowing there, sweeping across the empty driveway and worrying at the windows. There’s a light on inside and the night is quiet. There may be a shadow at the window. But then again … maybe there isn’t. It really doesn’t matter.

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copyright © 1975 by Thomas Gifford

cover design by Michel Vrana

978-1-4532-6607-6

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