Dixon at last said that he would send the safe next week.
“Handle the arrangements yourself,” said Stern. “If no one but you knows where the safe is, no one can tell the government where to search for it.”
“What does that mean?” asked Dixon.
Stern waited again. He did not want to alarm him. On the other hand.
“Dixon, I must tell you, I am convinced the government has an informant.”
“An informant?”
“Someone close to you or the business. The government’s information is too precise. The trades. Where you bank. Who your data-processing vender is. And there is an odd order to what they are willing to have known. I suspect they are interested in misleading you about their sources of information.”
“I think they’re interested in showing how fucking clever they are,” said Dixon.
“You must reflect on this matter, Dixon. The identity of this informant could be of great significance to us.”
“Forget it, Stern. You don’t have the picture. Every jackal at the Kindle Exchange that’s ever wanted to sink his fangs in my hindquarter is probably feeding stuff to those guys.” Dixon’s tone was bitter as he spoke of his critics and competitors. “And I’ll have the last laugh. You mark my words. Just wait,” he said. “I’ll keep my mouth shut now, because you say I’ve got to. But when this thing is done, I’ll still be standing here. And there’ll be some bills coming due.”
Dixon was unaccustomed to being vulnerable—or restrained. The need for both enraged him. He hung on the line a moment longer, with the heavy breath of a bull. His bold promises of triumph and revenge behind him, he seemed to have no more to say. Perhaps he recognized their futility. The government would go on, notwithstanding, demanding his records, scaring his clients, courting his enemies, prying into every worldly connection he valued. Across the distance of two counties, Dixon seemed to consider his world of dwindling secrets. That was what had always protected him—not his friendships or alliances; he had few—not even his wealth or the power of his personality. Dixon was like Caliban or God—unknowable. The insult of his present circumstance was profound.
“Just wait,” said Dixon once more before he put down the phone.
7
“DON’T DO ANYTHING,” the woman said at the other end of the line. “I’m bringing you dinner.”
“Who is this?” asked Stern. “Helen?”
“Yes, of course, it’s Helen. Will that be a bother? I’ll just drop it off and go. I have a meeting.”
She must have been calling at fifteen-minute intervals, for he had been home only moments.
“You are most kind,” said Stern, eyeing the unidentifiable casserole dish already thawing on the counter. “Come ahead.”
So, thought Stern, the female nation heard from, once again. Helen Dudak, of course, probably had no interest in being forward. The Dudaks and the Sterns had been exchanging favors for twenty years. As couples, they had been connected principally by their children. Kate, through most of her life, was the best friend of Helen’s oldest, Maxine. The two families had the same ideas about things that seemed to matter substantially when you were rearing a family: about asking to be excused before leaving the table; the number of sweets allowed in a day; the right age to drive alone or to go out for the evening with a boy. The Dudaks were fine people, principled, with reasonable values, and concern for their children. So the relationship had stood on this solid, if narrow, footing. His knowledge of Helen’s inner realm was nodding, at best. Clara had never seemed to regard Miles and Helen as an interesting couple, and in the last few years, in the face of many changes, relations had drifted a bit. Maxine had gone to business school, married, and worked in St. Louis; and Helen had been divorced from Miles Dudak for three years now. She had a wised-up, funny, independent air, resolved to exceed the bathos and humiliation of the sad circumstance in which her husband of twenty-odd years, the wealthy owner of a box-manufacturing concern, had moved out and, only a few months later, married his thirty-year-old secretary.
From the kitchen window, Stern observed her arriving with a large purse and an armory of aluminum-foil containers. Buy bauxite, Stern thought as he watched her under flag, proceeding to the front door with the trays pyramided beneath her chin.
“Helen, my Lord, I am one person.” Stern unburdened her and showed her to the kitchen. “There’s enough here for six. Sixteen.” Peeling the foil wrapper back from a tray of chicken, he was braced by the aroma. Garlic and thyme. Had he been required to wager, he would have bet that Helen Dudak was a good cook. It was part of her image of substance. “You must join me. It would be a pity to see all of this consumed from the freezer. Do you have time for dinner before your meeting? Please stay. I would welcome your company.”
Helen faltered, but eventually was persuaded to surrender her coat. Had this been planned? Stern doubted it. Helen was not a schemer, although she was clearly pleased to be asked. He took her raincoat to the closet, a fawn-toned garment with a famous label—Miles had not bought his freedom cheaply. She’d already found plates and flatware and was setting the kitchen table when Stern returned. He admired Helen’s good sense in not promoting this into a more auspicious encounter in the dining room, but, notwithstanding, there was a certain animated excitement as Helen traveled from the cabinets to the table. Here they were, people in their middle years. His wife was five weeks dead. But he was single, she was unattached, and because of that, they both seemed strangely, almost painfully enlivened.
And he was interested; there was no concealing that from himself. Since his evening at Fiona’s, he was aroused in some measure by every woman he saw. For Stern, it was a disconcerting fixation. As he put it to himself, he had not recently tuned in this channel. Oh, he thought, of course. He admired a hundred women in a day, just moving about downtown. But he had practiced such deliberate oblivion. He was one of those men glad for middle years, the settled portion of life, when sexual preoccupation could comfortably be left behind without some slur on masculinity. Now he received, almost in spite of himself, an eager, exhilarant message from his own systems. He could not truly envision himself as the companion of another woman—it was much too soon—but he nonetheless cast a somewhat naughty eye on Helen when he went down the corridor to draw a bottle from the wine closet.
She was, all in all, a handsome person—her midriff had given way somewhat, but Stern could hardly be critical on that score—and even if she looked a little roughened by experience, there was something in that which was admittedly attractive. Her hair was reddish, the color of a fox, enhanced somewhat by a coloring agent these days, but drying with age and verging therefore on a kind of unmanageableness. Her legs were well turned; she had no bottom to speak of; her face was large-pored, heavily made up, but in its own way comely. Helen had her well-worn look—humor, anguish, and dignity. Stern’s impression was that she had been utterly lost when Miles departed, but she was a strong person, perhaps not an intellect, but well grounded. She had carried on bravely, rightly convinced that she was not deserving of abuse.
“Well, this is an unanticipated pleasure,” he said when the meal was set out before them both. “What did you do to these potatoes, Helen? Really. They are quite remarkable.”
Helen described the process. Stern listened carefully. He was fond of potatoes.
She told him about her business. She had been trained as a travel agent along the way, but longed for something less mundane and had become a convention planner. Large organizations hired her to arrange sites, hotels, presentations. She worked out of her home, with a fax machine and a telephone console. A rocky start, but now she was well under way. She delivered the tale with good humor, an entertaining talker and willing to take the lead in maintaining this fragile, convivial air.
The doorbell rang. Glancing through the panes beside the front door, he saw Nate Cawley. Stern seemed to have caught him in a moment of reflection. On the slate stoop, he had turned to look into the wind. He was
a smallish man, narrow. His hair was gray and most of it was gone; a few longer hairs stood up straight now in the breeze. Rain was in the offing; late April here was always wet. Nate had run out without a coat and he jiggled a bit to keep himself warm. He wore a golf cardigan and a pair of blue plaid slacks.
“Welcome, Nate.” Helen had stood up from the table in the breakfast nook, and peered down the hall toward Stern and Nate in the foyer. In spite of the distance, Stern attempted the introduction. “Do you know Helen Dudak?” asked Stern.
“Certainly.” A moment of decided awkwardness occurred. Nate did not move. Clearly, he thought he had interrupted, and Stern had an instant aversive response, old-fashioned but strong, that he was not happy to be seen alone with a woman in his home. This was not the message he wanted Nate to take back to Fiona, who would put it out promptly over the neighborhood wire. Stern swung out a hand magisterially, a hammy bit, to gather some forward momentum.
“We are in the midst of a splendid repast Helen has provided, Nate. Do you care for some wonderful Chicken Vesuvio, or may I get you a drink?”
“No, Sandy. I just ran over for a second. Fiona said you were looking for me.” Nate apologized for being hard to reach. Much, he said, was going on. Yes, indeed, thought Stern. The Lord only knew what Fiona said they had discussed, but clearly she had offered an edited version. Preoccupied as he seemed, Nate did not wear the predictable air of a man who knew you and his wife had spent a moment commenting on videos of his erection.
Stern showed him to his study, where he had filed the lab’s bill.
“Have you any idea what that might have been for?”
“Huh,” said Nate. “Westlab.” He studied the invoice at length before handing it back. “I don’t use them much.”
“Apparently, Clara had visited a physician in the last month.”
Nate took a second to absorb that. “Where do you get that idea?”
Stern explained the notations on Clara’s calendar. “Frankly, Nate, I assumed it was you. I found no doctor’s bills.” Nate, a physician and neighbor in the old tradition, often worked on the cuff, billing Clara episodically, if at all. After the meeting in Cal’s office, Stern had been through Clara’s checkbook carefully. And, necessarily, he had also sifted through the mail. It had occurred to him, he offered, that Clara might have been ill. “Something grave,” said Stern, then added, more quietly, “Unendurable.”
Nate, mercifully, picked up the thread. A softer look came over him, the gentle eye of a practiced bedside manner.
“No, no, Sandy, there was nothing like that, nothing I know of.”
“I see.” They faced one another in the study, under a strangely burdened air. Perhaps Nate found Stern’s rummaging through his wife’s papers unseemly; or he may have been discomfited by Helen’s presence. “I was misled, I suppose, by Fiona’s mention that you had brought Clara medication from time to time.”
“Fiona,” said Nate, and a distinct expression of distaste passed by swiftly. It was an error, Stern saw, to have repeated any of her intoxicated blather. “Clara’s knee gave her some trouble this winter, Sandy. I dropped off an anti-inflammatory.”
“Ah,” said Stern. The two men continued to look at one another.
“Sandy, why don’t I give Westlab a call for you? I’ll find out what’s cookin’.”
“I can do that, Nate.”
“Neh,” said Cawley. “Let me. They’d be happier to talk to me than you. Assuming they’ll talk to anybody. If it wasn’t for you guys—” Nate, in his gentle, familiar way, was about to assail Stern with a doctor’s typical complaints about the legal profession and its recent impact on medical practice, but he cut himself off. “You know,” he said, “could be just a mistake. I’ve seen billings get awful bollixed up. Maybe they crossed one Stern with another.”
The idea struck Stern as farfetched. Then, just as quickly, it was all entirely clear.
“Oh, my.” Stern covered his mouth with one hand. “I have a thought.” Clara had received the bill—but not the test. That would have been, as Nate’s point suggested, for someone else—for Kate. Pre-pregnancy. Pre-something. Kate had said that there had been problems along the way. She had probably shared them with her mother, who, as she often did, would have insisted on helping with the expenses. That was another reason that Kate was so sabered that Clara had died not knowing there had been a medical success—and why no doctor’s bill had arrived here. Something rose, something sank, but it all settled in him with the solidity of a correct answer. “I suspect, Nate, this may have had something to do with Katy’s pregnancy.”
“Oh, sure,” said Nate. He brightened considerably. “That must be it.” He headed at once for the door, happy to have the matter resolved.
“Perhaps, Nate, if I have further questions, I might ask you to call the lab nonetheless.”
“Sure thing,” said Nate. “No problem. Just give me a buzz.”
On his way out, Nate turned back to wave briefly to Helen. She still had one hand raised, with a sad look of her own, as Stern approached. She had sat alone, not eating. She seemed to know that whatever spell had loomed was broken. The conspicuous presence of Clara’s mystery, the many complications were obvious about him. He was a fish in a net. Nothing now would change that.
“I apologize,” said Stern. “Questions I was required to ask. He was Clara’s doctor.”
“Mine, too,” said Helen.
“Ah,” said Stern, “so that is your acquaintance.”
Helen began to eat. There was music from the radio, Brahms. He sat in the caned chair with a full sense of his weight, his earthly substance. As so often, grief was here in its essential character.
“Had Clara been sick, Sandy? I didn’t know that.”
“Apparently not.” He explained briefly. The bill. His thoughts. Helen, who had known them both so long, nodded with each word, eyes quick, intent.
“I see,” she said. They were both silent.
“I have no idea why this occurred, you know,” Stern told her abruptly. To the thousands of other inquiries, tacit and overt, he had maintained a dignified silence which implied, not falsely, that he found the subject too painful for discussion. Helen Dudak, however, was too trustworthy a soul, too familiar, to be dealt with so briefly. “I take it people talk about this?” He had wanted to ask someone that question for some time.
“Would you believe me if I told you they didn’t?”
He smiled wanly. “And they say what?”
“Dumb things. Nice things. Who knows about anybody’s life, Sandy? Really. At the core. People are baffled, naturally. No one is quite certain they knew Clara. She was very contained.”
“Just so,” said Stern softly. He allowed himself the traces of a wry expression.
Helen, wisely, took her time with the remark.
“You must be very angry,” she said at last.
To the wheel of seething emotion, the bristling anxiety, the dense miserable sensations, Stern had not heretofore put that name. But of course she was correct. Buried deep in his bones, like a dose of radiation, he could feel the burning away of intense high-level emotion, and anger was the right word for it. It was not a feeling with which he had taken much conscious comfort throughout his life. Being the son of his mother, the brother of Jacobo, he had grown up believing that anger was an emotion allotted to others by prior arrangement. He was the steady one. Now a certain decorousness made him reluctant to fully agree.
“I suppose,” he said.
“It would be understandable,” Helen continued.
Chewing slightly, he shook his head.
“That, however, is not what predominates,” he said.
“No?”
He shook his head again. The powerful volatility of his emotions, the way they were always at hand, made it impossible to observe his usual reserve.
“I doubt myself,” he told her. “I failed,” he said and, with the words, and their deadeye accuracy, felt as if he had shot himself throu
gh with an arrow. “Quite obviously.”
“And what about her?” asked Helen. She looked up adroitly, over her fork, but he could see that she was measuring her questions, testing the regions of tenderness to see how far she might probe. It was, Stern decided, an impressive performance.
“Did Clara fail?”
Helen did not answer. She looked on while he considered the question. He understood her suggestion, but he was unable to say aloud the word somehow hanging here like smoke: betrayal. The mystery of it was deeper than that to him, and more complicated. He realized then, for the first time, how much he had dedicated himself to making no judgments in this matter for the present. Again, wordlessly, he wobbled his head: something not to know or to say.
Helen waited an instant.
“You can’t let everything rest on the end, Sandy.”
Stern nodded. That was a thought, too.
“I speak from experience. You accomplished a great deal with one another. And you made a marvelous couple.”
“Oh, yes,” said Stern. “I loved to speak, and she did not.”
Helen smiled, but leaned back to regard him from a distance.
“You’re too harsh with yourself.” She took his wrist and he reacted, even in this mood, to the sensations of a female touch. “How good a friend am I? May I make a suggestion?” Her hands were tan and strong, the nails unpolished. “Are you seeing someone, Sandy?”
Lord, again! What was contemporary morality?
“Helen, certainly not.”
Looking into her plate, Helen Dudak suppressed a smile. “I meant a therapist.”
“Ah,” he said. His initial impulse was categorical, but he answered simply, “Not for now.”
“It might help,” she said.
“Is that an informed opinion?”