He looked at her and managed a wry smile. “I know. But you have to admit . . . it’s been one hell of a night.”
Twenty
JANUARY AND HUGH had been silent on the drive back, both immersed in their own thoughts. The night had faded into a slate-colored dawn when they reached New York. The heater in the car was uncomfortably warm, but January suddenly shivered. Everything about New York seemed so dismal and gray. Westhampton and the violence that had occurred suddenly seemed unreal. Hugh pulled up in front of her apartment building. The streets were empty. A chill wind sent small bits of paper skimming across the sidewalk. Her mood was as heavy as the soot-stained canopies of the unattended apartment buildings along the street. “Buildings look dead without doormen,” she said.
Hugh smiled and patted her hand. “Go grab yourself some rest, January.” He helped her out of the car and they stood in front of her building. Her teeth chattered from the early morning cold. “You must be tired and stiff from driving,” she said. “I make lousy instant coffee . . . but if you want some—”
“No. The police at Westhampton are very polite but also very thorough. Tom can handle just about anything, but I think he’d feel better if I was there.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Look, I want to take back a lot of the warnings I handed out so freely in the beginning. There’s something that’s clicked between you and Tom that’s never happened with any other girl before. I’m not just saying this because you’re a woman in love. I’m saying it from watching Tom, the way he looked at you tonight, his attitude—it’s a whole different thing. Now you get some rest and we’ll call you as soon as everything is settled.”
When she entered her apartment it was as if time had stood still. Remnants of her packing lay strewn about. Slacks across the chair, shirt on the bed—inert signs of a distant past. A lifetime had happened in twenty-four hours.
She went to the refrigerator and poured herself a Coke. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten anything. Hugh had teased her about not liking his cooking. Perhaps she should scramble some eggs. But for some reason the thought of food repelled her. She felt crystal clear . . . wide awake . . . charged with energy. She longed to go out into the lonely morning and walk. She leaned out the window. A heavy mist coated the air. She felt that if she walked . . . she could dispel it . . . like a magic genie . . . wave her arms and scatter sunshine everywhere. She was stronger than the mist . . . stronger than any element . . . Because as Hugh had put it, she was a woman in love. But she couldn’t leave, she had to wait for Tom’s call.
She chain-smoked, drank another Coke . . . It was still too early to call Linda, and besides she didn’t want to keep her phone busy in case Tom called. She turned on the television set. There was a sermon on one channel. She switched to another channel—a children’s cartoon. Then there was an early movie, an old Van Johnson picture with the sound so bad on the print that she couldn’t listen—she couldn’t listen to anything. She turned off the set. Suddenly she thought of her answering service. She had forgotten to check. Not that anyone important would call.
The woman on the service was disgruntled. “Miss Wayne, you must remember to check in with us. Or at least leave a number if you’re going away for a long stretch of time. Your father was very angry. He acted as if it was our fault that we couldn’t find you. After all, we’re just an answering service, not a—”
“When did he call?” January asked.
“Friday night at ten. He had checked into the Plaza and wanted you to call.” (Friday night at ten . . . she was at the Plaza . . . and of course she had forgotten to check in with her service.) “And then again Saturday morning at nine-thirty,” the woman continued. “He wanted you to have lunch with him.” (She had been at Dr. Alpert’s.) “Then again at noon.” (She was at Saks on her shopping spree.) “And then at five . . . at seven . . . and finally at ten o’clock last night. He left for Palm Beach and wants you to call him there.”
She looked at the clock. Eight-ten. She waited until nine, then called Palm Beach.
“Where in hell have you been?” Mike demanded.
She managed to laugh. “Mike, you won’t believe it, but I keep forgetting about checking with the answering service. I was out in the morning . . . shopping. I forgot to check. I went out again in the afternoon, and must have just missed your call, and then I was out for dinner. It’s awful . . . I’m so sorry. But how was Gstaad?”
“Great. Dee came in second in the tournament. She flew right back to Palm Beach, but I stopped off in New York to see you. And instead of going to our place at the Pierre, I checked into the Plaza because I thought you’d get a kick out of it. I couldn’t get my old suite . . . Hey, guess who has it . . . Tom Colt. But I got an identical one on a lower floor. And there I sat—like a groom left at the altar—waiting for my girl.”
“Oh, Mike. . . .”
He laughed. “It was okay. Listen, I didn’t tell Dee. I said we saw each other. I didn’t want to look like a damn fool.”
“Of course, Mike.”
“Now listen, we’re staying here until Easter. And we expect you and David to come down for that weekend. That’s when Dee gives her last big bash. Then . . . I have a real surprise for you.”
“What?”
“The Cannes film festival.”
“The what?”
“Remember how we talked about it in Switzerland, how you dreamed of going? Well, there’s a backgammon tournament in Monte Carlo just about that time, so I’ve convinced Dee to go. We’ll stay at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes—you’re twenty-one now, so I can take you to the Casino, teach you Chemin de Fer, Baccarat . . . We’ll see all the pictures . . . all my old friends . . . And I may just have a few other surprises for you, too.”
“Mike, when is all this?”
“It starts in May. But I figure if we hit it around the fifteenth, we’ll get all the action we want. That’ll give Dee a chance to come back to New York from Palm Beach, open the suite at the Pierre—I think it’s probably all covered with sheets and stuff. And I’ll catch up on the shows. Maybe you’ll go with me if David can spare you. But I’ve got to teach you backgammon. I’m on a hot streak with it, and eventually I’ll play big. Right now I’m still playing for five bucks a point. But it’s just a matter of time . . .”
“You’re happy, aren’t you, Mike?”
“I’m gambling, and I’m hot, and that’s what it’s all about—for me anyway.”
“I’m glad.”
“How is it with you and David?”
“He’s really a very nice man.”
“That’s it.”
“I’m afraid it is . . .”
“Anyone else on the scene?”
“Yes . . . Mike . . .” Suddenly she knew she was going to tell him. He would understand. “Mike . . . I met someone . . . I think . . . I mean I know—”
“Who is he?”
“Mike, he’s married.”
“Go on.” His voice was suddenly hard and ugly.
“Don’t tell me that shocks you?”
“It disgusts me. When I played around, I played around with bums. That’s exactly what I thought of them, even if they were stars, because they all started off knowing I was married and had a kid. So when you . . . at twenty-one . . . a girl who has everything . . . who has a guy like David in love with you—”
“Love has to be a two-way deal, Mike.”
“You mean to tell me with all the guys you could meet, you could only hook up with a married one. And, of course, he has kids.”
“He has one.”
“Can he get a divorce?”
“I don’t know. He’s—”
“Don’t tell me. I can see the scene. An advertising guy . . . maybe in his thirties . . . tired of the girl he married on the way up . . . has her stashed in Westchester . . .”
“Mike . . . it’s nothing like that.”
“January, tell me one thing. Have you . . . have you been intimate with this man?”
She stared at the phone. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe the phrase—“have you been intimate”—or the faltering way he asked. He sounded like a preacher . . . not like Mike. She couldn’t tell him. He really wouldn’t understand. It was awful—to have to hide this from Mike—but she heard herself saying, “Now, Mike, it’s not that serious. I just said I met someone and—”
“January, have I ever steered you wrong? Now listen to me . . . please. Don’t see him again. He can’t respect you if he thinks you’ll go with him when he’s married . . .”
“Mike, you’re talking like . . . well . . . like three generation gaps . . .”
“I’m talking to my daughter. And I don’t give a damn about how things have changed. Sure there’s more sexual freedom. I wouldn’t be shocked if you told me you went to bed with David . . . say . . . a few months before you married him. Or that you had gone to bed with him already and he left you cold. That’s Today. That’s the new freedom. That’s the big change. But men don’t change as far as their emotions go, and let me tell you, they don’t respect a broad who goes to bed with them when they have a wife. Because no matter what kind of a story they give you . . . how the wife is a wife in name only . . . or that they have separate bedrooms . . . or an arrangement—you better believe that the nights they don’t see you and have to go home, they’re still going to bed with their wives. Even if it’s a mercy hump. I know . . . because I’ve been there. And they still respect their wives because of their guilt. In fact, she almost gets to be a madonna because of it. And the better the lay the girl is, the more guilt they feel toward their wives. And when the guilt gets too heavy and when the girl wants more than a few nights a week . . . or a stolen trip . . . or gets too demanding—they drop her and go back to their wives for a few weeks until they find a new girl. Don’t give me this liberated jazz. A married man is a married man—in nineteen fifty . . . sixty . . . or seventy. Laws and morals might change, but emotions remain the same.”
“Okay, Mike. Please. Cool it. I’m fine . . .”
“All right. Now get back to David or some guy like him. Make your old man happy. I’ll talk to you later in the week. I’ve got to run off for golf. I’m playing that game for big money—because like I said, when your luck is good, you’ve got to push it.” He clicked the phone.
She hung up and walked to the window and stared aimlessly at the barren courtyard. She had been insane to think Mike would understand. Even if he hadn’t sounded off on it, she could never have told him the entire story. And unless he knew about Tom’s problem, there would be no way she could convince Mike that Tom really loved her, that their love was different from the affairs he had had. She thought of Tom . . . and the love and tenderness she felt constricted her chest. This great strong wonder of a man . . . and she had been able to make him happy.
The phone jangled. She almost turned her ankle rushing to it. “Hello—” She stopped. She had been about to say, “Hello, Tom.” But it was Mike.
“Listen, I can’t go off to play golf leaving it like this between us. Look, if this joker you say you like is really a good Joe and wants to get a divorce and you really love him and—”
“Oh, Mike, it’s not anything like that . . . really.”
“I have a hell of a nerve sounding off like that. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Mike.”
“I love you, babe. And remember—there’s nothing you can’t tell your old man. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mike.”
“Love me?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. Call you in a few days.”
She sat by the phone the rest of the day. Tom’s call finally came at five o’clock. “I’ve sent the car for you. Will you come to the Plaza?”
“Of course, Tom. Are you all right?”
“I will be . . . as soon as I see you.”
The traffic was heavy and she felt jittery as the car inched its way toward the Plaza. When she reached the hotel she actually ran down the hall to his suite.
He looked drawn and weary, but his smile was bright as he took her in his arms. He sat on the couch and sipped bourbon as he told her how everything stood. The man was in a coma, but no charges would be filed. The man had a long record of arrests. The police were still checking on his accomplice.
“I don’t know how you did it,” she said. “You were drinking a good bit.”
His smile was sad. “I fight for blood when I fight.”
“Have you ever lost?”
“A few teeth at times. But there’s a killer instinct in me that always makes me win. It worries me at times, because I could kill. That was a karate chop I gave the big guy. I tried to miss his windpipe. Thank God I did. Otherwise he’d have been dead. I once promised myself I’d never do it unless my life was threatened.”
“But it was.”
“No, I could have beat him with my fists. The karate thing”—he showed her the motion with the side of his hand—“you hit a man in the right place with that . . . it’s over.”
She spent the night with him and once again she managed to arouse him into actual intercourse. His gratitude was overwhelming, and when he held her and told her he loved her, she knew he meant it.
The next day he was deluged with reporters. The story at Westhampton broke in all the papers. It was the kind of story the press associated with Tom Colt. At noon, the police got a “make” on the little man. He was wanted in Chicago for raping and killing three women. Now the story took on national importance. The Chicago police had arrived. The phones were going. The suite was cluttered with police and reporters.
Rita Lewis was ecstatic as she directed the traffic of the news media. January had slipped out at eight-thirty in the morning just before his first scheduled interview . . . before the news had broken. That afternoon he called her at the office and said, “The place is a madhouse. Now the FBI is in on it. I may have to go to Washington tomorrow—something about testimony on the little guy—and added to everything, his accomplice, the big guy, his name is Henry Morse. Well, Henry has a common-law wife and two kids and she’s got herself a lawyer who’s slapped me with a million-dollar assault charge.”
“She can’t do anything to you, can she?” January asked.
“No. Just take up my time. In the end, she’ll settle for a few hundred bucks.”
“But why should you have to pay her anything? That man was out to kill us all.”
“It’s easier than going through pre-trial examinations. Her lawyer knows that. Unfortunately, that’s the way it works. The people who have plenty of time and nothing to lose figure their nuisance value will make you pay off . . . and you do.”
“Oh, Tom . . . how awful.”
“Anyway, you better play a low profile as far as I’m concerned for the next few days. The little guy—his name is Buck Brown—he’s already mumbling about a girl with long brown hair being there. No one believes him. But it’s just as well that no one see me with you until this blows over.”
“Well, how long will it be?”
“Just for a few days. My publisher is jubilant. He acts as if I planned this whole setup just to help the book. We had over eight thousand reorders in the last twenty-four hours. They’re going into another big printing. Everyone seems to think I’m a cinch for number one.”
“Oh, Tom, how wonderful!”
“I was getting there on my own.” His voice was grim. “Number three this week. I’d hate to think a fist fight could put me to the top.”
“If the book wasn’t there, all the fights in the world couldn’t make it sell. You know that.”
“January, tell me something—how did I ever live without you?”
“I’m just wondering how I’m going to get through today without you.”
“I’ll keep in touch by phone. And the first chance I get, we’ll be together.”
He left for Washington that afternoon and called her at midnight. “I’ll be here for a few days. I
’m also doing some book stuff, so it works out fine. That little Buck Brown—the one that was holding the knife at your throat—he would have killed you. That’s his pattern. Rape, then kill. He just hooked up with the big guy a few weeks ago on a dope score. They’re both involved with drugs. They’re pushers and users. But the little guy is paranoid. Now it seems he’s killed six women, and the list seems to be growing—once he rapes, he must kill, he’s admitted that.” His voice went low. “Know something, baby? I may just give up drinking. Suppose I had been more sloshed . . . and had slept through it all . . . You’d be—” He stopped. “Look, I’ll be back at the end of the week. You get some rest. Then we’ll spend the weekend together.”
“Not at Westhampton,” she said.
“No. At the Plaza. All safe and sound in Fun City. And, January, for God’s sake, never let on to Linda that you were there when all this happened. After all . . . I am under oath.”
It hadn’t been easy. When the story broke, Linda had turned into a Torquemada.
“Where were you when all this happened? I thought you were spending the weekend at West Hampton with him?”
“No, I just went for the day. He sent me back so he could work.”
“And nothing happened?”
“Well, it looks like plenty happened after I left.”
“I mean . . . with the bed department.”
“Linda, everything is fine.”
“January, are you leveling with me?”
“Yes.”
“But when did you do it?”
“Linda, for heaven’s sakel I didn’t leave there until around ten.”
“Was he great?”
“Yes . . .”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“I’m just tired . . . I haven’t slept very much.”
“You look awful. You’re getting too thin, January.”
“I know. I’m going to eat a big dinner and go to bed early.”
But she hadn’t eaten. And after she had talked to Tom, she hadn’t been able to sleep either. A whole week without him . . . suddenly all of her sense of well-being vanished. The following morning she woke up stiff and her neck was sore. She went to the office, and at three o’clock she was positive she was coming down with a virus. Linda told her to go home. “Honestly, January. Most girls who are in love bloom . . . you wilt!”