Scruff

  “Who was that?”

  “Lillian.” She referred to their housekeeper, cook, aide-for-all-seasons at High Barnegat. “She had some electrical trouble; it’ll be all right. The repairmen said they’d be out soon.”

  They kissed their customary kiss, but Trevayne was hardly aware of it. “What do you mean, trouble?”

  “Half the lights went out. The north side. She wouldn’t have known except for the radio; it went off.”

  “Didn’t it go right back on again?”

  “I guess not. It’s all right, the men are coming.”

  “Phyl, we have an auxiliary generator. It cuts in when a circuit breaker fails.”

  “Darling, you don’t expect us to know about those things. The men’ll fix it.… How did everything go? Where did you go, incidentally?”

  It was possible, Trevayne supposed, for there to be an electrical malfunction at Barnegat, but unlikely. Barnegat’s entire electrical system was designed by Phyllis’ brother; a labor of love and enormous sophistication. He’d call his brother-in-law later; ask him, jokingly perhaps, to check into it.

  “Where did I go?… all over town with a nice young fellow whose late-night reading is restricted to Clausewitz.”

  “Who?”

  “The science of … military supremacy will do.”

  “That must have been rewarding.”

  “ ‘Enlightening’ would be more accurate.… We settled on the offices. Guess what? They’re on the river.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “I didn’t. They were just available.”

  “You haven’t heard anything, then? About the hearing, the confirmation?”

  “Nope. At least, not so far. The desk said you stopped for the messages. Did Walter call?”

  “Oh, they’re on the table. Sorry. I saw Lillian’s and forgot.”

  Trevayne went to the coffee table and picked up the notes. There were an even dozen, mostly friends, a few quite close, others vaguely remembered. There was no message from Madison. But there was one from a “Mr. de Spadante.”

  “That’s funny. A call here from De Spadante.”

  “I saw the name; I didn’t recognize it.”

  “Met him on the plane. He goes back to early New Haven. He’s in construction.”

  “And probably wants to take you to lunch. After all, you’re a bulletin.”

  “I think, under the circumstances, I won’t return the call.… Oh, the Jansens phoned. We haven’t seen them in almost two years.”

  “They’re nice. Let’s suggest dinner tomorrow or Saturday, if they’re free.”

  “Okay. I’m going to shower and change. If Walter calls and I’m in the john, get me, will you, please?”

  “Sure.” Phyllis absently took the remainder of her husband’s ice water from the bar and drank it. She walked to the couch and sat down, reaching for the messages. Several names were completely unfamiliar to her; business friends of Andy’s, she presumed. The rest only peripherally recognizable, except for the Jansens and two others, the Fergusons and the Priors. Old Washington cronies from the State Department days.

  She heard the shower running and considered the fact that she, too, would have to dress when Andy was finished. They’d accepted a dinner invitation over in Arlington—a duty call, as Andy termed it. The husband was an attaché at the French embassy, a man who years ago had helped him during the conferences in Czechoslovakia.

  The Washington carousel had begun, she reflected. God, how she hated it!

  The telephone rang, and for a second Phyllis hoped it was Walter Madison and that he had to meet with Andy, thus canceling the Arlington dinner.

  No, she thought further; that would be worse. Quickly called meetings were always terrible in Washington.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Andrew Trevayne, if you’d be so kind.” The voice was a touch raspy, but soft, polite.

  “I’m sorry, he’s in the shower. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Is this Mrs. Trevayne?”

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure; my name is De Spadante. Mario de Spadante. I’ve known your husband, not well, of course, for a number of years. We met again yesterday, on the plane.”

  Phyllis remembered that Andy had said he wouldn’t return De Spadante’s call. “Then I’m doubly sorry. He’s way behind schedule, Mr. de Spadante. I’m not sure he’ll be able to call you back right away.”

  “Perhaps I’ll leave a number anyway, if it’s not too much trouble. He may want to reach me. You see, Mrs. Trevayne, I was to be at the Devereaux’s over in Arlington, too. I’ve done some work for Air France. Your husband might prefer that I find an excuse and not be there.”

  “Why in heaven’s name would he do that?”

  “I read in the papers about his subcommittee.… Tell him, please, that since I got into Dulles Airport I’ve been followed. Whoever it is knows he drove into town with me.”

  * * *

  “What does he mean, he was followed? Why does your driving into town with him have any bearing on anything?” Phyllis spoke to her husband as he came out of the bathroom.

  “It shouldn’t—my driving in with him; he offered me a lift. If he says he was followed, he’s probably right. And used to it. He’s supposed to be in the rackets.”

  “At Air France?”

  Trevayne laughed. “No. He’s a builder. He’s probably involved with air-terminal construction. Where’s the number?”

  “I wrote it on the blotter. I’ll get it.”

  “Never mind.” Trevayne, in undershirt and shorts, walked into the living room to the white desk with the green hotel blotter. He picked up the telephone and slowly dialed as he deciphered his wife’s hastily scribbled numbers. “Is this a nine or a seven?” he asked her as she came through the door.

  “A seven; there was no nine.… What are you going to say?”

  “Straighten him out. I don’t give a damn if he rents the rooms next door. Or takes pictures of me on May Day.… I don’t play those games, and he’s got a hell of a nerve thinking I do.… Mr. de Spadante, please.”

  Trevayne calmly but with obvious irritation informed De Spadante of his feelings and suffered through the Italian’s obsequious apologies. The conversation lasted a little over two minutes, and when Trevayne hung up he had the distinct feeling that Mario de Spadante had enjoyed their dialogue.

  Which was precisely the case.

  Two miles away from Trevayne’s hotel, in the Northwest section of Washington, De Spadante’s dark-blue Cadillac was parked in front of an old Victorian house. The house, as the street—the area itself—had seen better, more affluent times. Yet there was a grandeur; decaying, perhaps, but still being clung to in spite of the declining values. The inhabitants of this particular section fell into roughly three categories: the dying elders whose memories or lack of money prevented their moving away; the youngish couples—usually early-rung-on-the-government-ladder—who could lease a fair amount of space for comparatively little rent; and finally—in sociological conflict—a scattering of subculture youth enclaves, groups of young nomads wandering into sanctuaries. The wail of Far Eastern sitars, the hollow vibrations of Hindu woodwinds continued long into the morning; for there was no day or night, only gray darkness and the moans of very personal survival.

  Hard drugs.

  The suppliers and the supplied.

  The old Victorian house beyond De Spadante’s Cadillac was recently taken over by a cousin, another cousin whose influence was felt in Washington’s Police Department. The house was a substation in the subculture, a minor command post for narcotics distribution. De Spadante had stopped off with some colleagues to inspect the real-estate investment.

  He sat in a room with no windows, the indirect lighting illuminating the psychedelic posters on the walls, covering the cracks. Except for one other person, he was alone. He replaced the telephone in its cradle and leaned back in his chair behind a filthy table.

  “He’s
edgy; he just told me off. That’s good.”

  “It would have been better if you goddamn fools had let things take their course! That hearing would have been reconvened and the confirmation withdrawn. Trevayne would have been out!”

  “You don’t think; that’s your problem. You look for quick solutions; that’s very dumb. It’s especially dumb right now.”

  “You’re wrong, Mario!” said Robert Webster, spitting out the words, the muscles in his neck tense. “You didn’t solve anything, you only gave us a potentially dangerous complication. And a crude one!”

  “Don’t talk to me crude! I laid out two hundred thousand up in Greenwich; another five for the Plaza!”

  “Also crude,” blistered Webster. “Crude and unnecessary. Your out-of-date waterfront tactics damn near exploded in our faces! You watch your step.”

  The Italian leaped out of the chair. “Don’t you tell me, Webster! One of these days you pricks will kiss my ass for what I got on him!”

  “For God’s sake, lower your voice. And don’t use my name. The biggest mistake we ever made was getting mixed up with you! Allen’s right about that. They all are!”

  “I didn’t ask for any engraved invitation, Bobby. And you didn’t get my name out of no telephone book. You came to me, baby! You needed help, and I gave it to you.… I’ve been helping you for a long time now. So don’t talk to me like that.”

  Webster’s expression betrayed his reluctant acceptance of De Spadante’s words. The mafioso had been helpful, helpful in ways few others dared to be. And he, Bobby Webster, had called upon him more than anyone else. The day had long since come and gone when Mario de Spadante could be so easily dismissed. It reduced itself to controlling him.

  “Don’t you understand? We wanted Trevayne out. A reconvened hearing would have accomplished that.”

  “You think so? Well, you’re wrong, Mr. Lace Pants. I talked to Madison last night; I told him to call me from the airport before he boarded. I figured someone ought to know what Trevayne was doing.”

  The unexpected information caused Webster to check his hostility, replace it with a concern he hadn’t anticipated.

  “What did Madison say?”

  “That’s different, huh? None of you smart asses thought of it, huh?”

  “What did he say?”

  De Spadante sat down again. “The esteemed attorney was very uptight. He sounded like he was going to head home and climb into a bottle with that lush wife of his.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Trevayne figured that panel of senators for what it was—a big roomful of loaded dice; he made that clear. And Madison made no bones that he sweated out the confirmation—not Trevayne, he didn’t sweat piss—Madison sweated. For a very goddamn good reason. Trevayne told him if those bastards turned him down he wasn’t leaving town quietly. He was going to call in the newspapers, television; he had a lot of things he wanted to say. Madison didn’t guess any of it was too good.”

  “About what?”

  “Madison doesn’t know. He only knows it’s very heavy. Trevayne said it would rip the city apart; those were the words. Rip the city apart.”

  Robert Webster turned away from the mafioso; he breathed deeply to control his ire. The sour-sweet odor that permeated the old house was offensive. “It makes absolutely no sense. I’ve talked with him every day this past week. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Madison didn’t lie, either.”

  Webster turned back to De Spadante. “I know. But what is it?”

  “We’ll find out,” answered the Italian with quiet confidence. “Without having our asses in a sling over some press conference. And when you girls put it all together, you’ll see I was right. If that hearing was reconvened and Trevayne thrown out, he would have shot off his cannon. I know Trevayne, from way back. He doesn’t lie, either. None of us are ready for that; the old man had to die.”

  Webster stared at the heavyset man sitting so arrogantly in the filthy chair. “But we don’t know what it was he was going to say. Has it crossed your Neanderthal mind that it might have been something as simple as the Plaza Hotel? We could have—and would have immediately—disassociated ourselves from anything like that.”

  De Spadante didn’t look up at the White House aide. Instead he reached into his pocket, and while Webster watched apprehensively, with a certain unbelieving fear, De Spadante removed a pair of thick tortoiseshell glasses. He put them on and began scanning some papers. “You try too hard to get me pissed off, Bobby.… ‘Might have,’ ‘could have’; what the hell is that? The fact is, we didn’t know. And we weren’t going to risk finding out on the seven-o’clock news. I think maybe you ought to go back to the lace parade, Bobby. They’re probably sewing up a storm.”

  Webster shook his head, dismissing De Spadante’s invective as he walked to the shabby door. Hand on the broken glass doorknob, he turned to look once again at the Italian. “Mario, for your own good, don’t make any more unilateral decisions. Consult us. These are complicated times.”

  “You’re a bright boy, Bobby, but you’re still very young, very green. You get older, things don’t seem so complicated.… Sheep don’t survive in the desert; a cactus doesn’t grow in a wet jungle. This Trevayne, he’s in the wrong environment. It’s as simple as that.”

  12

  The rambling white house, with the four Ionic pillars supporting an impractical balcony above the front porch, was situated in the middle of a landscaped three-acre plot. The driveway was as impractical as the balcony; it bordered the right side of a weedless, carpetlike front lawn and veered—inexplicably—again to the right, ending in a half-circle away from the house. The real-estate agent told Phyllis that the original owner had planned a garage apartment at the end of the semicircle, but before he could build it, he was transferred to Muscaton, South Dakota.

  It was no High Barnegat, but it had a name—a name Phyllis wished she could obliterate. It was in raised lettering in the white stone beneath the impractical balcony.

  Monticellino.

  Since the year’s lease did not entitle her to sandblast the letters, Phyllis decided the name would remain between God, the original owner, and Thomas Jefferson.

  Tawning Spring, Maryland, was no Greenwich, although there were similarities. It was rich, ninety-eight percent white, and catered to the upward-mobility syndrome; it was essentially imitative—of itself—and insular; it was inhabited by people who knew exactly what they were buying: the penultimate rewards of the corporate dream. The ultimate—when admitted—was southeast: McLean or Fairfax, in the Virginia hunt country.

  What the people who were buying the penultimate rewards didn’t know, thought Phyllis, was that they were also getting, without additional charge, all of the unbearable problems that went with their purchases.

  Phyllis Trevayne had had them. Those problems. Five years’ worth; nearer six, really. Six years in a half-hell. It was no one’s fault. And everyone’s. It was the way things were. Someone once decreed that a day should have twenty-four hours—not thirty-seven or forty-nine or sixteen—and that was that.

  It was too short. Or too long.

  Depending.

  In the beginning, of course, there were no such philosophical thoughts about time. The first exhilaration of love, the excitement, the unbelievable energies the three of them—Andy, Douglas, herself—put into the shabby warehouse they called a company; if there were any thoughts of time then, it was usually in the form of where-the-hell-did-it-go.

  She did triple duty. She was the secretary so needed to keep Andy organized; she was the bookkeeper filling ledger after ledger with unpronounceable words and unbelievably complicated figures. And finally she was the wife.

  Their marriage had been comfortably situated—as her brother phrased it—between a Pratt and Whitney contract and an upcoming presentation to Lockheed. Andy and Doug had agreed that a three-week honeymoon in the Northwest would be ideal. The couple could see the San Francisco lights, catch some late
skiing in Washington or Vancouver, and Andrew could make a side trip to Genessee Industries in Palo Alto. Genessee was an enormous conglomerate—everything from trains to aircraft, prefabricated housing to electronics research.

  She knew when they began—those awful years. At least, the day she saw the outlines of what was coming. It was the day after they got back from Vancouver.

  She had walked into the office and met the middle-aged woman her brother had hired to fill in during her absence. A woman who somehow exuded a sense of purpose, who seemed so committed to accomplishing far more than eight hours would permit—before dashing home to husband and children. A delightful person without the slightest trace of competitiveness about her, only a profound gratitude at being permitted to work. She didn’t actually need the money.

  Phyllis would think of her often during the coming years. And understand.

  Steven came; Andrew was ecstatic. Pamela arrived, and Andrew was the clichéd, bumbling father filled with love and awkwardness.

  When he had the time.

  For Andrew was also consumed with impatience; Pace-Trevayne was growing rapidly—too rapidly, she felt. There were suddenly awesome responsibilities accompanied by astronomical financing. She wasn’t convinced her young husband could handle it all. And she was wrong. He was not only capable, but adaptable to the changing pressures, the widening pressures. When he was unsure or frightened—and he was often both—he simply stopped and made everyone else stop with him. He told her that his fear and uncertainty were the results of not understanding, not knowing. It was better to lose a contract—painful as it might be—than to regret the acceptance later.

  Andrew never forgot the courtroom in Boston. That wouldn’t happen to him.

  Her husband was growing; his product filled a void that desperately needed filling, and he instinctively parried in point-counterpoint until he was assured of the advantage. A fair advantage; that was important to Andy. Not necessarily moral, just important, thought Phyllis.