I almost expected him to take off his glasses and rub his eyes. He walked back to his car instead, tossed his case in, then followed it. I watched until he had backed up to the lane and I was sure he was gone. Then I went into the living room and opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper, faintly scented with the perfume my mother had worn when I was just a kid. White Shoulders, I think it’s called. Across the top — neat, ladylike, printed in slightly raised letters —
was
ROGETTE D. WHITMORE
Below it was this message, written in a slightly shaky feminine hand: 8.30 P.M.
Dear Mr. Noonan,
Max wishes me to convey how glad he was to meet you! I must echo that sentiment. You are a very amusing and entertaining fellow! We enjoyed your antics ever so much.
Now to business. M. offers you a very simple deal: if you promise to cease asking questions about him, and if you promise to cease all legal maneuvering — if you promise to let him rest in peace, so to
speak then Mr. Devore promises to cease efforts to gain custody of his granddaughter. If this suits, you need only tell Mr. Osgood ‘I agree.’ He will carry the message! Max hopes to return to California by private jet very soon — he has business which can be put off no longer, although he has enjoyed his time here and has found you particularly interesting. He wants me to remind you that custody has its responsibilities, and urges you not to forget he said so.
Rogette
P.S. He reminds me that you didn’t answer his question — does her cunt suck? Max is quite curious on that point.
R.
I read this note over a second time, then a third. I started to put it on the table, then read it a fourth time. It was as if I couldn’t get the sense of it. I had to restrain an urge to fly to the telephone and call Mattie at once. It’s over, Mattie, I’d say. Taking your job and dunking me in the lake were the last two shots of the war. He’s giving up.
No. Not until I was absolutely sure.
I called Warrington’s instead, where I got my fourth answering machine of the night. Devore and Whitmore hadn’t bothered with anything warm and fuzzy, either; a voice as cold as a motel ice-machine simply told me to leave my message at the sound of the beep.
‘It’s Noonan,’ I said. Before I could go any further there was a click as someone picked up.
‘Did you enjoy your swim?’ Rogette Whitmore asked in a smoky, mocking voice. if I hadn’t seen her in the flesh, I might have imagined a Barbara Stanwyck type at her most coldly attractive, coiled on a red velvet couch in a peach-silk dressing gown, telephone in one hand, ivory cigarette holder in the other.
‘If I’d caught up with you, Ms. Whitmore, I would have made you understand my feelings perfectly.’
‘Oooo,’ she said. ‘My thighs are a-tingle.’
‘Please spare me the image of your thighs.’
‘Sticks and stones, Mr. Noonan,’ she said. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure of your call?’
‘I sent Mr. Osgood away without a reply.’
‘Max thought you might. He said, “Our young whoremaster believes in the value of a personal response. You can tell that just looking at him.”
‘He gets the uglies when he loses, doesn’t he?’
‘Mr. Devore doesn’t lose.’ Her voice dropped at least forty degrees and all the mocking good humor bailed out on the way down. ‘He may change his goals, but he doesn’t lose. You were the one who looked like a loser tonight, Mr. Noonan, paddling around and yelling out there in the lake.
You were scared, weren’t you?’
‘Yes. Badly.’
‘You were right to be. I wonder if you know how lucky you are?’
‘May I tell you something?’
‘Of course, Mike — may I call you Mike?’
‘Why don’t you just stick with Mr. Noonan. Now — are you listening?’
‘With bated breath.’
‘Your boss is old, he’s nutty, and I suspect he’s past the point where he could effectively manage a Yahtzee scorecard, let alone a custody suit. He was whipped a week ago.’
‘Do you have a point?’
‘As a matter of fact I do, so get it right: if either of you ever tries anything remotely like that again, I’ll come after that old fuck and jam his snot-smeared oxygen mask so far up his ass he’ll be able to aerate his lungs from the bottom. And if I see you on The Street, Ms. Whitmore, I’ll use you for a shotput. Do you understand me?’
I stopped, breathing hard, amazed and also rather disgusted with myself. If you had told me I’d had such a speech in me, I would have scoffed.
After a long silence I said: ‘Ms. Whitmore? Still there?’
‘I’m here,’ she said. I wanted her to be furious, but she actually sounded amused. ‘Who has the uglies now, Mr. Noonan?’
‘I do,’ I said, ‘and don’t you forget it, you rock-throwing bitch.’
‘What is your answer to Mr. Devore?’
‘We have a deal. I shut up, the lawyers shut up, he gets out of Mattie and Kyra’s life. If, on the other hand, he continues to — ‘
‘I know, I know, you’ll bore him and stroke him. I wonder how you’ll feel about all this a week from now, you arrogant, stupid creature?’
Before I could reply — it was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that even at her best she still threw like a girl — she was gone.
I stood there with the telephone in my hand for a few seconds, then hung it up. Was it a trick? It felt like a trick, but at the same time it didn’t. John needed to know about this. He hadn’t left his parents’ number on his answering machine, but Mattie had it. If I called her back, though, I’d be obligated to tell her what had just happened. It might be a good idea to put off any further calls until tomorrow. To sleep on it.
I stuck my hand in my pocket and damned near impaled it on the steak knife hiding there. I’d forgotten all about it. I took it out, carried it back into the kitchen, and returned it to the drawer.
Next I fished out the aerosol can, turned to put it back on top of the fridge with its elderly brothers, then stopped. Inside the circle of fruit and vegetable magnets was this: d
go
w
19n
Had I done that myself?. Had I been so far into the zone, so tranced out, that I had put a mini-crossword on the refrigerator without remembering it? And if so, what did it mean?
Maybe someone else put it up, I thought. One of my invisible roommates.
‘Go down 19n,’ I said, reaching out and touching the letters. A compass heading? Or maybe it meant Go 19 Down. That suggested crosswords again. Sometimes in a puzzle you get a clue which
reads simply See 19 Across or See 19 Down. If that was the meaning here, what puzzle was I supposed to check?
‘I could use a little help here,’ I said, but there was no answer — not from the astral plane, not from inside my own head. I finally got the can of beer I’d been promising myself and took it back to the sofa. I picked up my Tough Stuff crossword book and looked at the puzzle I was currently working. ‘Liquor Is Quicker,’ it was called, and it was filled with the stupid puns which only crossword addicts find amusing. Tipsy actor? Marion Brandy. Tipsy southern novel? Tequila Mockingbird. Drives the DA to drink? Bourbon of proof. And the definition of Down was Oriental nurse, which every cruciverbalist in the universe knows is amah. Nothing in ‘Liquor Is Quicker’
connected to what was going on in my life, at least that I could see.
I thumbed through some of the other puzzles in the book, looking at 19 Downs. Marble worker’s tool (chisel). CNN’s favorite howler, 2 wds (wolfblitzer). Ethanol and dimethyl ether, e.g.
(isomers). I tossed the book aside in disgust. Who said it had to be this particular crossword collection, anyway? There were probably fifty others in the house, four or five in the drawer of the very end-table on which my beer can stood. I leaned back on the sofa and closed my eyes.
I always liked a whore . . . sometimes their place was on my face.
This is where good pups and vile dogs may walk side-by-side.
There’s no town drunk here, we all take turns.
This is where it happened. Ayuh.
I fell asleep and woke up three hours later with a stiff neck and a terrible throb in the back of my head. Thunder was rumbling thickly far off in the White Mountains, and the house seemed very hot. When I got up from the couch, the backs of my thighs more or less peeled away from the fabric. I shuffled down to the north wing like an old, old man, looked at my wet clothes, thought about taking them into the laundry room, and then decided if I bent over that far, my head might explode.