Trust (23 page)

“Good,” Beale said. He rubbed his forehead. “Like I say, I was in the market for good news.”

“Yeah,” Cobb said, “but what you did could turn good news into a hurricane warning. Do you know where that car came from?”

“New Jersey,” Beale said, yawning

“If it came from New Jersey,” Cobb said, “it came from New Jersey because Battaglia sent Earl to New Jersey to get it, and there’s something wrong with it. And if that something wrong floats to the surface someday, Battaglia’s going to float op with it, and that’s where Henry’s vulnerable. The people that like Henry now will not like Henry if that wop begins to run his mouth.”

“Ahh,” Beale said. “It’ll never happen. The lady gave it to her husband. It’s his brand-new toy. Go and talk to Henry now, and put the boots to him. I’d like to see Bob Wainwright’s face, when this news gets to him.”

The bar and billiard room at the back of the third floor of the Wampanoag Club on Boylston Street in Boston was empty when Allen Simmons emerged from the wire cage of the elevator shortly after 7:30 in the evening. The Oriental rugs and the tapestries hanging from the oak paneling of the walls of the broad corridor and wide staircase absorbed most of the conversational noises and muted the occasional rattle of dishes and silverware from the dining room overlooking the street. He found the switch for the fluorescent lights that illuminated the stainless-steel sinks and Formica working space under the ornate oak bar; that and his own memory enabled him to locate the bottle of Campari on the back bar, and the ice maker enclosed next to the sinks. He took a bottle of club soda from the refrigerator next to that and mixed the drink with a long silver spoon. There was another panel of switches to the right of the bar entrance. He chose one at random, and a hundred-watt bulb shrouded by a green-glass circular shade threw all of its glare onto the green baize surface of the billiard table in the corner farthest from the bar.
Two cue sticks and a wooden triangle lay at the far end of the table; the cue ball was against the near rail. He went over to the table and put his drink on the sill of the high window near the farthest end. He bent to retrieve the balls from the bin under the table, racking them in no particular order except for the eight ball, which he placed at the center. He hung the rack on the peg under the far end, and put one of the cues in the holder on the wall behind him.

He had broken the formation with a sharp shot that dispersed the balls, sinking both the thirteen and the two, when Sidney Roth entered the room. Simmons did not look up at his soft entrance; he chalked the tip of the cue and lined up a combination shot, intending to sink the three ball in the corner pocket by caroming the seven ball off the cue ball, dropping the three, and leaving the cue and the seven lined up for his next shot at the same pocket. Roth put his attaché case on an oak chair next to the entrance and hit the switch to his left that turned on the lights overhanging the bar. He went behind it and poured white rum into a rocks glass, adding two cubes of ice and a twist of lemon from the shot glass at the service area. He joined Simmons at the table as the seven ball kissed the three too hard and slightly off the angle he had chosen, so that it rattled against the edges of the pocket and halted on its brink; the seven rebounded from the cushion at the end and stopped amid a cluster of balls near the center of the table. The cue ball came to rest against the rail. Simmons straightened up and studied his situation. Roth set his drink on the windowsill and took a cue from the holder. Simmons stepped back from the table. Roth chalked his cue, frowning. He leaned over
the surface of the table and tapped the end of the cue on the corner pocket farthest from him on the right. He drew his shot to put overspin on the cue ball and hit it sharply, so that it struck hard on the twelve ball, sending it crisply into, the pocket, and ricocheted into the cluster at the center of the table.

“Nice,” Simmons said.

“Misspent youth,” Roth said. He chalked again and tapped the side pocket to his left. He struck the cue ball softly, so that the eleven rolled slowly into the side pocket and the cue ball came to rest against the ten. He tapped the corner pocket on his left at the other end and executed another soft shot, sinking the ten and leaving the cue ball still at the center. Walking quickly to the side of the table opposite the window, he sank the fourteen in the corner opposite to the one at which Simmons had left the three, the carom sending the cue ball off the rail in perfect position to drop the nine in the side. When that clunked home, the cue ball was precisely positioned to drop the fifteen in the corner, the white ball stopping after that shot at a tough but possible angle to sink the eight ball in the far corner, or a three-rail shot into the side pocket nearest him. “What the hell,” Roth said, chalking, “faint heart, fair lady, all that kind of shit.” He tapped the far rail, the near rail, and the far rail again, and said, “Eight the side.” He hit the cue ball crisply and launched the eight hard against the far rail on precisely the path he had wanted. It moved back and forth across the cloth three times, as he had predicted, changing its angle slightly with each impact, slowing gradually until it lay poised on the lip of the side pocket. “Come on, come on,” Roth said. The eight ball dropped. He straightened
up, his face disappearing into the gloom above the lamp, and looked where Simmons stood near the window in the gloom. “Now,” Roth said, “my secret’s out. Now you know what I was really doing all those cold winter nights when I should’ve been studying Real Property.”

Simmons went over to the holder on the wall and put his cue stick away. “If what I wanted was a guy who knows the Rule in Shelley’s Case,” he said, “1 would’ve called somebody else.” He returned to the window and retrieved his drink.

Roth put his cue in the holder and joined Simmons at the window. “We take a seat?” he said, nodding toward the tables and the captain’s chairs grouped around the bar.

“Might as well,” Simmons said. “You up to dinner afterwards? I told Mario I’d be coming in.”

“Good,” Roth said. “Man cannot live by airline snacks alone.”

“It’s very simple,” Simmons said when they were seated. “The facts, I mean, are simple. What to do about them—that’s where it gets complicated.”

“Start with the facts,” Roth said. “That’s where I always feel more comfortable. The law’s what you go looking for when you’ve decided what you want to do, and when you want it done. Lots and lots of law. You can almost always find some that’ll suit your purposes. Facts’re the hard part.”

“There’s no question what’s being done to me,” Simmons said. “Neither is there any question about who is doing it. Or trying to, at least. A man is trying to blackmail me. He may or may not be in cahoots with a woman I’ve been dating.”

“Screwing,” Roth said absently. “This’d be the bounteous Miss Slate. Penny wise, pound foolish—didn’t I read that somewhere?”

“Screwing,” Simmons said. “That man’s name is Earl Beale. At least that’s the one he went by when I met him, and he didn’t change it. If he was lying, he was at least consistent. And I recognized his voice when he called me on the phone.”

“You met him,” Roth said. “More than once?”

“Every time she went away with me,” Simmons said. “Well, at least every time since she took up with him. Originally I met her through Nancy.”

“Whom you were also screwing,” Roth said.

“Sid,” Simmons said, “I didn’t ask you to come here and ratify my life.”

“That’s good, Allen,” Roth said. “Because I’m not doing that, and if I’d thought that’s what you wanted, I would’ve stayed in New York. Because I’m not up to it. But we are gonna call things by their right names here, Allen. You’ve been playing with the pros a long time now, ever since I’ve known you. When you’ve asked me for advice, I have given it to you. You never asked me for advice on that subject, so I never gave it. If this is that request, well, I think it’s kind of late but I’ll do the best I can. What was this Earl’s function, as near as you could tell? Did he act as her pimp or something? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Simmons said. “He moved in with her after Nancy moved out. Initially, though I’ve sure changed my mind since then, I was glad when this all happened. Nancy was a very busy lady. And I was never sure exactly what their relationship was—hers and Penny’s, I mean.”

“Wouldn’t be unusual,” Roth said. “I’ve seen more’n one guy fall ass-over-teakettle with a pair of sculptured marble tits he rented out in Vegas, and turn completely oblivious to the obvious fact that she considered men work, and other women fun.”

“I never fell in love with Penny,” Simmons said. “If that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“I understand that,” Roth said. “You thought of it as business. What you weren’t prepared for was that she, or her pal Earl, might approach it the same way. Strictly business. Object’s to make as much profit’s you can. As fast as you can. Pure and simple. What’ve they got? Pictures, I assume. Tapes? Did this jezebel come to your bed with a tape recorder running in her cosmetics bag?”

“No, no tapes,” Simmons said. “If they ever tried to make any, they’d be useless. I never promised her anything except money for sex. That’s all. No marriage proposals or anything. I’ve already got a wife.”

“Yes,” Roth said. “Does Phyllis know about this? I mean this new development? She had to have a pretty good idea what you were up to, I assume.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Simmons said, “it was Phyllis’s idea. The year after I became a member of the firm I got into some trouble with one of the secretaries. She had to go away and have an operation. We didn’t have much money then, and what we did have Phyllis watched pretty carefully. I don’t mean I wrote a check to the kid, but there was no way a thousand dollars could come out of our income without Phyllis noticing. And she did. So I had to account for it, and she was very calm about it. Said if I felt I had to do things like that, well, she guessed there wasn’t much
she could do to stop me. But sooner or later she was afraid there’d be a real scandal that a thousand dollars wouldn’t fix. She was very practical about it. She reminded me that I refused to let her hire unskilled people to do work around the house because it never turned out right, and we always ended up paying to have it torn out and done again by someone who knew what he was doing. ‘If you feel you have to have this variety in your life,’ she said, ‘stop using amateurs. It won’t cost any more for you to give some other woman fifty or a hundred dollars for the use of her body each time than it will for you to go around sneaking the same amounts to save up for a gold bracelet or something for a secretary. And the one you come right out and pay won’t get it into her silly little head that she’s going to take my place.’ ”

“Phyllis always struck me as a real down-to-earth lady,” Roth said.

“She’s pragmatic,” Simmons said. “Her father kept a mistress most of his adult life. Her mother knew about it, and in time so did his kids. She wasn’t shocked when she found out I was attracted to other women. More or less expected it.”

“Well,” Roth said, “then if that’s the case, what’s the problem? Tell the extortionist to go to hell and show your wife the pictures.”

“The problem is this,” Simmons said. “Part of the deal with Phyllis is discretion. I wasn’t to bring home any diseases, which I haven’t, and I wasn’t to appear in places with a woman where our friends’d be sure to spot me. Well, my interests and Phyllis’s are quite different, so that was never a real problem. I did occasionally run into one of her friends’ husbands, but there
the benefit of mutual silence was so obvious we didn’t even need to discuss it. The society reporters may go to the parties down at Keeneland before Derby Day, and they’re all over the place when the America’s Cup’s being contested at Newport, or the Museum has a special show, but those weren’t the kind of events where I took my ladies. Where I took them, most of the men were about my age, and most of the women about the same age as Penny, and nobody in attendance saw much wrong with that. It was sort of like getting to the age where you could afford a beach house or a private plane or a big yacht with a crew. If you had the money, and you wanted a girlfriend, well, you certainly had the right.” He paused. “I’ve seen a lot of famous men at the places I’ve taken her. Faces you would recognize. Pro athletes, U.S. senators, show people, prominent businessmen—you name it. There may be some risk involved in that kind of amusement, but when someone that you’ve hired to sleep with you tells you that she slept with the president of the United States back when he was running, and people who know confirm it, well, it’s not the kind of risk that seems to stop anybody.”

“I suppose not,” Roth said.

“Unless it caused a ruckus,” Simmons said. “And that’s what seems to have happened to me.”

“How much do they want?” Roth said.

“I’m not sure it’s ‘they,’ ” Simmons said. “He says it’s just him, and that Penny’s not involved.”

“You don’t believe that, I assume,” Roth said.

“I didn’t when
he
said it,” Simmons said. “I figured that was just his way of trying to protect her. He collects the money, and then she flies off to meet him on
some Caribbean island. But then
she
said it, and the way she said it? I don’t know. He left a note for her, this was Monday morning, before I heard from him, and if what she read to me over the phone was what was really in that note, and he left the place in the shambles she said it was in, it could be that she’s telling me the truth.”

“What exactly did the note say?” Roth said.

“I can get you a copy,” Simmons said. “Basically he claimed some IRS guy’d been by the place where he worked, asking questions about me. And for some reason or another, that scared the daylights out of Earl, and he decided to hit the road. Said he’d made up some phony story for the people at work, something about a family matter back wherever he comes from, and he advised her to alert me and then he hit the road. Well, that didn’t make any sense. Not to me at least. If it, if he’d said it was a guy from the SEC or something, well, that might make me nervous. But the IRS? Pretty unlikely. My taxes, well, you know how pure and honest they are. What do I pay in taxes that I could probably beat? Quite a lot. And they’ve audited me three years in a row, right? With three ‘No change’ letters in a row? They have to leave me alone for a certain amount of time now, unless they can prove going in I did something. No, it’s not the IRS.