Best Friends Part 6

"I've never eaten that kind of stuff," Suzanne said. "It would be lost on me. I probably couldn't hold it down." She poured herself a stiff portion of Maker's Mark. "I'm not playing poor little poor girl, believe me, but I can't afford expensive food, and while my friend of recent memory could, he spent it all on his wife and kids." She swallowed some bourbon. "As he should have, let it be said! I'm no enemy of society." She drank some more. "I'd settle for some crackers and cheese, though I guess what you would have is Brie."

He went to the fridge and peered within. "How about Gorgonzola?"

"Is that full of blue veins? I see enough of those when I take a shower."

"Cashew b.u.t.ter?"

"Is that like peanut b.u.t.ter only with cashews? Where in the h.e.l.l would you get something like that?"

"My brother-in-law," said Roy. "Somebody gave it to him, and he thought I might eat it. I haven't. That was months ago. It might be rancid by now. I'm going to toss it one of these days."

She was at his side, looking into the almost vacant refrigerator, holding her gla.s.s. "You eat every meal out? That must run into money."

He pointed to the condiment-laden shelves in the door. "I live on whole-grain mustard, cornichons, and pepperoncini."

"You're rich, aren't you?" asked Suzanne. "According to your friend." She appeared to be more curious than resentful.

Of course this question had been directed to him before, in one way or another, usually unspoken. It always seemed rude, but he was aware that many of those to whom it was of interest, if sober, intended no insult.

"I've had a small business for seven years," he said after another sip from the gla.s.s he had returned to. "It's consistently been in the red, even when I pay myself no salary."

"That's what I mean," Suzanne said. "That's all I mean. If that's the case, then you've got other income. I couldn't go without a salary for seven days."

Sam's gratuitous contribution was festering under Roy's skin, but he would not reflect aloud on his friend, except to say, "He shouldn't go around giving people the wrong impression."

She shrugged. "I'm not criticizing you." She refreshed her gla.s.s from the bottle and sat down again. "Mr. Grandy himself seems to do well. He's got some wife."

Roy was prepared to take offense. Fortunately he did not, for before he could ask aggressively, "What do you mean?" Suzanne said, "What a cla.s.sy lady. I guess I should hate somebody like her, but I have too much awe for real quality."

Roy was now drunk enough so that he had to be careful of his speech, especially the p.r.o.nunciation of names with sibilants. "I'm glad to hear you say that, because Kristin's father started out as a driver for a trucking company, and her mother was a waitress at the lunch counter across the street."

"You've just stripped me of every excuse for being a clod," Suzanne said with mock chagrin. "Except I did get moved around a lot as a kid. My dad's a career army officer, and my mother got a B.A. and once published a children's book."

"Positively lace-curtain," said Roy. "I should go on to say that by the time Kristin grew up, though, her father had his own trucking business. He and her mother drove twin white Cadillacs."

"Oh." She inspected his face, eye by eye. "You're making that up."

"Of course not."

She displayed a triumphant if slightly blurry grin. "My mother never published a book. She used to talk about writing one about army kids, the way they see the world." She emptied what was left in the gla.s.s, then swallowed some air, making a deliberate process of it, raising her eyebrows when it was over. Roy realized they were cosmetically darkened, else they would probably have been pale as the lashes she forgot to color. The freckles were subdued on her cheeks, perhaps by makeup, but more prominent across her small nose. He liked her more and more, but if anything, desired her less.

"If I don't get out of here now, I'll be in no condition to drive." Yet she made no move to go, sitting there at his table in her white nylon outfit.

"It's already too late for that," said Roy. "What you need is food."

"I have to go to the toilet." She stood up, more staunchly than he had expected.

"First door on the right." He curved his finger to suggest the turn. As soon as she was gone he felt worse than he would have if he had faced the evening alone. He wished he had never imposed himself upon her.

When Suzanne returned, he apologized.

"For what? I'm having a great time."

"You're being ironic."

"Really, I'm not. I might be exaggerating a little.... But I wouldn't want to be anyplace else." She took his hand. "I just wish I could help."

He related the salient events of the last twenty-four hours, omitting only Sam's unprecedented turning on him, which, though not involving loss of life, had left a disabling wound.

When he had finished, Suzanne took his hand again. "Come on, Roy. At least I can hold you." She led him along the hall to the right bedroom, though she had never been here before and there was a choice.

The answering machine was blinking redly. He disconnected it and the telephone before taking off his clothes. She was already in bed when he turned. Of her body he saw only her very white shoulders, and that was just as well, because he did not want her. Her flesh was warmer than expected when he lay down and she rolled against him. Now that he was here, he wanted to hold and not be held.

...He understood that he had fallen asleep only when he awoke at three-thirty. The bedside lamps were still burning and Suzanne was asleep in his arms. Had they done anything? It was unlikely. He had never been so drunk as to lose that sort of memory. He visited and returned from the bathroom without waking her. He turned off the lamps and slept till the digital clock on the dresser registered, in big red numerals, seven-thirty a.m.

The place beside him was empty and not even warm. He could not find her anywhere throughout the apartment. Finally he penetrated far enough into the kitchen to see the note, held down and obscured by its saucepan anchor: Roy- Had to get to work. Thanks for the drinks. I'm sorry I disappointed you by not wanting anything to eat. We live in different worlds. I do hope your fortunes take a turn for the better. You are a good guy.

S.

PS: Unless you tell me it's okay, I won't say anything to your friend.

Roy discovered he was naked except for slip-on sandals and repaired to the bathroom lest it be one of the days the cleaning woman was due; he could never remember which. But she had standing orders, when arriving early, not to open any door firmly closed.

After dressing, he reconnected the answering machine, which resumed its frenetic blinking, and the telephone, which immediately rang. He answered and heard the voice of his lawyer, Seymour Alt.

"I'm due in court and can't enjoy a leisurely conversation. I won't ask where you've been, but I have been trying to reach you for twelve hours. Just as I advised when you came up with the idea, Francine Holbrook's survivors, as well as those of her late husband, not only rejected your offer to give financial a.s.sistance to her children, but are about to sue you for provoking the incident which led to the deaths of the parents. Also, the police are looking for you."

Roy found the first matter so outrageous that he postponed facing it until he had disposed of the lesser problem. "The cops know where I live. I've been here all night. What do they want? To arrest me for murder?"

Alt, however, preferred the former. "I don't know yet if there'll be two suits. Either way, it could be for big money."

"What does that mean?"

"We should probably begin to think about dealing. We don't have to let on to them-as if they wouldn't know! Francine's brother and sister-in-law are represented by Ashford, Fine & Corrigan. There's n.o.body better."

While being c.o.c.kily aggressive with adversaries and obsequious with anyone addressed as Your Honor, Alt habitually employed a professional pessimism with clients, but Roy had never heard him this defeatist.

"It stinks, Sy."

"I got to go, Roy. We can talk divine injustice on Sunday morning. I hope you're still on."

"I don't want to look at a golf club at the moment."

"Make your mind up by tomorrow. I need to fill out the foursome."

Roy listened to the messages on his machine. The first was from Chief of Police Albrecht, asking him to get in touch. The next had been left by a Midwestern scout of his who had located in an Indiana barn a rusted but restorable example of the cla.s.sic Cord 810 of 1937.

The final message was registered as of 7:22 the evening before, which signified that it had long been there when he went to bed with Suzanne. He felt an odd initial thrill when he heard the voice, but that was gone as soon as it had come.

"Roy, Kristin. Sam has had another scare. I'm in the car now, en route to the hospital. I'll try your cell phone again. The time is"-she paused to check and then came back to report it. She ended the call. Her voice was cool as ever and did not waste a word.

It was now half a day later, and his best friend could well be dead. They had last parted with jealous rage on Sam's side and bitter disgust on his own. That might have been enough to kill one of them.

6.

Roy immediately tried to reach Kristin at the bank, but whomever it was he spoke to, perhaps for reasons of security, had no information on Sam's condition and declined to say where Kristin might be found. Calling the Grandy house, he was obliged to speak with the Central American cleaning woman, whose distraught replies were incomprehensible to him. Maria was partial to Sam, the most generous of employers.

Roy had no confidence that the urgent requests he left at both places for Kristin to contact him would ever reach her, but he did not know what else to do at the moment. Showing up at the hospital without first clearing the way might only damage Sam further, if indeed his friend had survived the night.

He forgetfully phoned Mrs. Forsythe, who was not due till noon, and was greeted by his own recorded voice. He punched in the code by which he could listen to the incoming calls that had acc.u.mulated on the office machine. Most favored clients had his unlisted home number. All others used either the business line or e-mail. Roy usually let Mrs. Forsythe deal with the latter; she was the one whose fingers operated the keyboard. The texts, responses to his ads on Websites and in cla.s.sic-car magazines, were supplied by him, but he disliked submitting himself in person to the Internet, which had not existed at the time his youngest cars had been made.

He heard nothing of interest, and two messages had negative connotations. He was insulted by an offer of $10,000 on the '63 E-Type Jag, fully restored but needing new paint, for which he was asking a modest twenty-five large; and an overly intimate-sounding vocal note from a woman he scarcely knew would have embarra.s.sed him had it been collected by Mrs. F.

Though not a true man of action, as he had discovered in amateur sports-car racing a decade earlier, unwilling as he was to go quite as far as it took to finish before those who would put their life on the line for a minor trophy, Roy found motion a more useful state in which to deal with his feelings than any pursued through a static means. Meditation, contemplation of his navel or the wall, made him only more anxious.

The reference to the Jaguar XKE reminded him that unless it had been stolen it was parked outside, where uncharacteristically he had left it the evening before. The odd experience with Suzanne Akins now seemed like one of those inconclusive dreams that can barely be remembered a moment after awakening. He went down to the car, which was unharmed by a dry night though somewhat dusty from the driveway, started the throaty engine, and accelerated, recklessly scattering gravel, out onto the road, heading away from town. He had not really driven at speed, 100 mph or better, time out of mind. The thruway, with its long level straightaways, ideal for fast driving to the automotively nave, was boring; also it was heavily policed, radared and lasered. The twisting back roads could be hazardous, not so much for the skilled driver as for the cyclists and runners who frequented them in strength; but once behind the wheel, with the powerful engine under his control, Roy converted his initial depression into defiance, though against whom he could not have said. Against what was a better question, the answer to which would have been: a sequence of negation, bad to worse. Sam, Francine, Sam again and still, the only affirmative having been the newly established friends.h.i.+p with Kristin, which soon enough was denied him.

He drove deep into a corner, braking, then downs.h.i.+fting at the precise point that enabled the car to accelerate out, overcoming centrifugal force, without loss of rpms. He still had the touch. At appropriate points he glanced at the tach and not the speedometer. How fast he drove was irrelevant to the joy of driving well.

The police car announced its presence too soon, sounding its siren when still far behind him. On a road like this, in an E-Type, he could put a second turn between himself and even a souped-up Crown Victoria before the cop could maintain adhesion through the first. And so he did, then just before a sweeping right-hand bend saw a blacktop lane on the left, probably a long private driveway to a house concealed from the main road by the grove of thick evergreens an eighth of a mile away.

Roy braked hard and executed a four-wheel drift, penetrating the driveway a good seventy yards, and stopped before the police vehicle wailed past on the road, probably without seeing him, though he could not be sure and therefore reversed, drove back to the road, and turned in the direction from which he had come. As soon as an intersecting route was available, he took it, lest the cop too soon suspect what had happened and return flat-out.

Circuitously, and at a moderate speed, Roy reached town and his place of business, the hillside building at the rear of which, on the lower level, was a garage. The doors were open now, and he drove the car inside.

Diego and Paul, the mechanics who enjoyed a free lease from him in exchange for which they gave precedence to the servicing of the cars in his inventory, were never seen except at the garage, where they were at work before he ever arrived and often stayed after he left. The guys were masters of their craft. As he had boasted to Sam, he could have brought these wizards a box full of a.s.sorted bolts, gaskets, and cotter pins and come back in the afternoon to find an a.s.sembled engine that when started would run like the pouring of cream from a pitcher.

To which Sam's usual response had to do with their being gay. He could not have known that for sure, as Roy himself did not. There could be no doubt they were exotic of origin. Diego was not simply Hispanic but a genuine native of Barcelona, whose English had British overtones due to his having served an apprentices.h.i.+p in the United Kingdom; Paul spoke with an accent acquired during his boyhood in central Europe as the son of a German woman married to a black sergeant in the U.S. Army.

The guys were, of course, at work when he pulled the Jaguar in. Not only were they extraordinarily skilled with internal-combustion engines, they were fanatics about cleanliness and order, or anyway, Paul was and Diego followed his lead. Never could a drop of oil, a smear of grease, or even the stains of earlier drops and smears be found on the concrete floor. All elements of their equipment, from the big hydraulic lift to the smallest gauge of hexagonal wrench, glistened as if new. The men themselves wore powder-blue coveralls, always as pristine as the floor, and at the neck a navy-and-white kerchief, which Roy had once called an ascot but was corrected by Diego, a stickler for precise nomenclature.

"Cravat," said he. "Ascot is the racecourse. For hosses."

Paul was nearer at hand this morning. "I don't like what I hear," said he, as Roy emerged from the E-Type. "Ve'll do a tune-up."

"No need for that," said Roy. "It drives beautifully. But the cops may be on my trail, so if they show up, make it look like you've been working on it for some time."

Paul winked. He was a strikingly handsome man, the color of milked coffee. "Ach, you been a bad boy."

Diego lowered the hand tool he had been using at a workbench and walked over to them, a stocky man in contrast to his tall and slender partner. The Jag's engine was still running. Diego put one ear as low to the bonnet as he could without making contact. He straightened up to say, "I don't like what I hyeah."

"Have it your own way," said Roy. "All I want is for the cops to think it's been here all morning-if they show up at all."

He left the guys and got the Jeep, the only vehicle he normally would leave all night in the parking lot and, without visiting his street-level office, drove to the Munic.i.p.al Building. Eluding the police car had rehabilitated his morale. For a short but effective time he had not been the pa.s.sive recipient of a.s.saults on his moral essence. For a change he had chosen the rhythm of events.

Chief Albrecht's manner was different from what it had been the day before. He begged Roy's pardon for asking him to repeat the account of the incident at The Hedges and dictate it this time as a formal statement. Albrecht also scoffingly disclosed that he had heard both bereaved families intended to sue. "In my position I can't take sides, Mr. Courtright, but as I'm sure your attorney already informed you, the whole bunch are sc.u.mbags."

After he had finished giving the statement, Roy phoned Sy Alt and was surprised to be put directly through to the lawyer.

"That's right," Alt told him. "Harrison Wilkie-that's Francine's brother in case you don't know-he's a registered s.e.x offender. He likes to flash his little wilkie at Catholic schoolgirls, and I tell you it's little. The cops took reenactment photos; you can hardly see it in his hand." Alt cleared his throat. "The late Martin Holbrook was charged with embezzlement eight or nine years back. It was settled out of court when he agreed never to work again as an investment counselor. I guess you know Francine had a shoplifting record."

"I did not," said Roy. "But then I never knew her well."

"You ought to get acquainted with the women you shtup," Alt said over his raspy chuckle. "Second thought, better you don't. Francine was also arrested for A 'n' B in ninety-four. She threw chilled soup on another woman in a restaurant."

"She didn't deserve to get beaten to death."

"Well, I never touched her," said Alt, rasping again. "I can't wait for those self-satisfied s.h.i.+ts at Ashford, Fine & Corrigan to return my call. They didn't do their homework, accepting clients like these. You can pretty much forget about the suit, Roy. Are you on for Sunday?"

"No," Roy told him. "I'm not much of a golfer."

"Which is why I always welcome you in a foursome," said Alt. "You're a lousy player on the course but the best-looking at brunch. You do have a way of attracting the ladies. Wish that wife of mine wasn't too old for you. I'll be in touch."

"Yeah, with a big bill." But Alt had already hung up. Roy was depressed again after speaking with the lawyer. He got no satisfaction from knowing about the delinquencies of Francine and her clan. He sincerely hoped he would be allowed to do something for her orphaned children before they joined adult humanity with the failings for which it is notorious.

He was en route to the office he had not visited for two days when his cell phone rang. Recognizing Kristin's voice, he pulled into an empty parking s.p.a.ce in front of one of the Main Street antique shops that did little weekday business.

Her tone was demanding. "Is this really you? I've been trying all your numbers for hours."

Roy asked docilely about Sam.

Her voice softened. "This second episode turned out not to be that dire."

"Do the doctors know what they're doing?"

"I'm not qualified to judge," Kristin said with her usual coolness. "But if they don't know, who would?"

According to Sam, his cardiologist was, like his electronic gear, top of the line, which might only mean expensive, but neither did Roy have medical credentials. "I tried to reach you at the bank this morning and also talked to Maria. I hadn't gotten your message till then." He felt she might despise him for supplying too much excuse. Anyway, what he had been doing was his own business. He had had no reason to suspect Sam would have a setback; besides, it had not turned out to be that serious. He wasn't married to Sam or to Sam's wife.

"I'm not checking up on you," Kristin said, as if she had heard and been chastened by his internal reflections. "I was worried you'd be offended by not hearing from me sooner."

"Oh."

"Well, I know you'll want to see Sam. Our trails will probably cross over there." She was obviously about to hang up. "I'll see-"

Roy spoke quickly. "I'd like to talk with you first, if you could spare a minute."

"Of course."

"I don't mean on the phone."