But something was wrong, thought Matlock. Something was missing or out of place, and for several minutes he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. And then he did.
The suntans, the laughter, the wrist jewelry, the jackets, the Dior ties—the money, the elegance, the aura was predominantly male.
The contradiction was the women—the girls. Not that there weren’t some who matched their partners, but in the main, they didn’t. They were younger. Much, much younger. And different.
He wasn’t sure what the difference was at first. Then, abstractly, it came to him. For the most part, the girls—and they were girls—had a look about them he knew very well. He’d referred to it often in the past. It was the campus look—as differentiated from the office look, the secretary look. A slightly more careless attitude in conversation. The look of girls not settling into routines, not welded to file cabinets or typewriters. It was definable because it was real. Matlock had been exposed to that look for over a decade—it was unmistakable.
Then he realized that within this contradiction there was another—minor-discrepancy. The clothes the girls wore. They weren’t the clothes he expected to find on girls with the campus look. They were too precisely cut, too designed, if that was the word. In this day of unisex, simply too feminine.
They wore costumes!
Suddenly, in a single, hysterically spoken sentence from several tables away, he knew he was right.
“Honest, I mean it—it’s too groovy!”
That voice! Christ, he knew that voice!
He wondered if he was meant to hear it.
He had his hand up to his face and slowly turned toward the direction of the giggling speaker. The girl was laughing and drinking champagne, while her escort—a much older man—stared with satisfaction at her enormous breasts.
The girl was Virginia Beeson. The “pinky groovy” perennial undergraduate wife of Archer Beeson, Carlyle University’s history instructor.
The man in an academic hurry.
Matlock tipped the black who carried his suitcase up the winding staircase to the large, ornate room Stockton had offered him. The floor was covered with a thick wine-colored carpet, the bed canopied, the walls white with fluted moldings. He saw that on the bureau was an ice bucket, two bottles of Jack Daniels, and several glasses. He opened the suitcase, picked out his toilet articles, and put them on the bedside table. He then removed a suit, a lightweight jacket, and two pairs of slacks, and carried them to the closet. He returned to the suitcase, lifted it from the bed, and laid it across the two wooden arms of a chair.
There was a soft tapping on his door. His first thought was that the caller was Howard Stockton, but he was wrong.
A girl, dressed in a provocative deep-red sheath, stood in the frame and smiled. She was in her late teens or very early twenties and terribly attractive.
And her smile was false.
“Yes?”
“Compliments of Mr. Stockton.” She spoke the words and walked into the room past Matlock.
Matlock closed the door and stared at the girl, not so much bewildered as surprised.
“That’s very thoughtful of Mr. Stockton, isn’t it?”
“I’m glad you approve. There’s whisky, ice, and glasses on your bureau. I’d like a short drink. Unless you’re in a hurry.”
Matlock walked slowly to the bureau. “I’m in no hurry. What would you like?”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever’s there. Just ice, please.”
“I see.” Matlock poured the girl a drink and carried it over to her. “Won’t you sit down?”
“On the bed?”
The only other chair, besides the one on which the suitcase was placed, was across the room by a French window.
“I’m sorry.” He removed the suitcase and the girl sat down. Howard Stockton, he thought, had good taste. The girl was adorable. “What’s your name?”
“Jeannie.” She drank a great deal of her drink in several swallows. The girl may not have perfected a selection in liquor, but she knew how to drink. And then, as the girl took the glass from her mouth, Matlock noticed the ring on her third right finger.
He knew that ring very well. It was sold in a campus bookstore several blocks from John Holden’s apartment in Webster, Connecticut. It was the ring of Madison University.
“What would you say if I told you I wasn’t interested?” asked Matlock, leaning against the thick pole of the bed’s anachronistic canopy.
“I’d be surprised. You don’t look like a fairy.”
“I’m not.”
The girl looked up at Matlock. Her pale blue eyes were warm—but professionally warm—meaning, yet not meaning at all. Her lips were young. And full; and taut.
“Maybe you just need a little encouragement.”
“You can provide that?”
“I’m good.” She made the statement with quiet arrogance.
She was so young, thought Matlock, yet there was age in her. And hate. The hate was camouflaged, but the cosmetic was inadequate. She was performing—the costume, the eyes, the lips. She may have detested the role, but she accepted it.
Professionally.
“Suppose I just want to talk?”
“Conversation’s something else. There are no rules about that. I’ve equal rights in that department. Quid pro, Mister No-name.”
“You’re facile with words. Should that tell me something?”
“I don’t know why.”
“ ‘Quid pro quo’ isn’t the language of your eight to three hooker.”
“This place—in case you missed it—isn’t the Avenida de las Putas, either.”
“Tennessee Williams?”
“Who knows?”
“I think you do.”
“Fine. All right. We can discuss Proust in bed. I mean, that is where you want me, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps I’d settle for the conversation.”
The girl suddenly, in alarm, whispered hoarsely, “Are you a cop?”
“I’m the furthest thing from a cop,” laughed Matlock. “You might say that some of the most important policemen in the area would like to find me. Although I’m no criminal.… Or a nut, by the way.”
“Now I’m not interested. May I have another drink?”
“Surely.” Matlock got it for her. Neither spoke until he returned with her glass.
“Do you mind if I stay here awhile? Just long enough for you to have balled me.”
“You mean you don’t want to lose the fee?”
“It’s fifty dollars.”
“You’ll probably have to use part of it to bribe the dormitory head. Madison University’s a little old-fashioned. Some coed houses still have weekday check-ins. You’ll be late.”
The shock on the girl’s face was complete. “You are a cop! You’re a lousy cop!” She started to get out of the chair, but Matlock quickly stood in front of her, holding her shoulders. He eased her back into the chair.
“I’m not a cop, I told you that. And you’re not interested, remember? But I’m interested. I’m very interested, and you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”
The girl started to get up and Matlock grabbed her arms. She struggled; he pushed her back violently. “Do you always get ‘balled’ with your ring on? Is that to show whoever gets laid there’s a little class to it?!”
“Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus!” She grabbed her ring and twisted her finger as if the pressure might make it disappear.
“Now, listen to me! You answer my questions or I’ll be down in Webster tomorrow morning and I’ll start asking them down there! Would you like that better?”
“Please! Please!” Tears came to the girl’s eyes. Her hands shook and she gasped for breath.
“How did you get here?!”
“No! No …”
“How?”
“I was recruited.…”
“By whom?”
“Other … Others. We recruit each other.”
“How many are there?”
/>
“Not many. Not very many.… It’s quiet. We have to keep it quiet.… Let me go, please. I want to go.”
“Oh, no. Not yet. I want to know how many and why!”
“I told you! Only a few, maybe seven or eight girls.”
“There must be thirty downstairs!”
“I don’t know them. They’re from other places. We don’t ask each other’s names!”
“But you know where they’re from, don’t you!”
“Some.… Yes.”
“Other schools?”
“Yes.…”
“Why, Jeannie? For Christ’s sake, why?”
“Why do you think? Money!”
The girl’s dress had long sleeves. He grabbed her right arm and ripped the fabric up past the elbow. She fought him back but he overpowered her.
There were no marks. No signs.
She kicked at him and he slapped her face, hard enough to shock her into momentary immobility. He took her left arm and tore the sleeve.
There they were. Faded. Not recent. But there.
The small purple dots of a needle.
“I’m not on it now! I haven’t been in months!”
“But you need the money! You need fifty or a hundred dollars every time you come over here!… What is it now? Yellows? Reds? Acid? Speed? What the hell is it now? Grass isn’t that expensive!”
The girl sobbed. Tears fell down her cheeks. She covered her face and spoke—moaned—through her sobs.
“There’s so much trouble! So much … trouble! Let me go, please!”
Matlock knelt down and cradled the girl’s head in his arms, against his chest.
“What trouble? tell me, please. What trouble?”
“They make you do it.… You have to.… So many need help. They won’t help anyone if you don’t do it. Please, whatever your name is, let me alone. Let me go. Don’t say anything. Let me go!… Please!”
“I will, but you’ve got to clear something up for me. Then you can go and I won’t say anything.… Are you down here because they threatened you? Threatened the other kids?”
The girl nodded her head, gasping quietly, breathing heavily. Matlock continued. “Threatened you with what? Turning you in?… Exposing a habit? That’s not worth it. Not today.…”
“Oh, you’re outta sight!” The girl spoke through her tears. “They can ruin you. For life. Ruin your family, your school, maybe later. Maybe.… Some rotten prison. Somewhere! Habit, pushing, supplying … a boy you know’s in trouble and they can get him off.… Some girl’s in her third month, she needs a doctor … they can get one. No noise.”
“You don’t need them! Where’ve you been?! There are agencies, counseling!”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, mister! Where have you been?!… The drug courts, the doctors, the judges! They run them all … There’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing I can do about it. So leave me alone, leave us alone! Too many people’ll get hurt!”
“And you’re just going to keep doing what they say! Frightened, spoiled little bastards who keep on whining! Afraid to wash your hands, or your mouths, or your arms!” He pulled at her left elbow and yanked it viciously.
The girl looked up at him, half in fear, half in contempt.
“That’s right,” she said in a strangely calm voice. “I don’t think you’d understand. You don’t know what it’s all about.… We’re different from you. My friends are all I’ve got. All any of us have got. We help each other.… I’m not interested in being a hero. I’m only interested in my friends. I don’t have a flag decal in my car window and I don’t like John Wayne. I think he’s a shit. I think you all are. All shits.”
Matlock released the girl’s arm. “Just how long do you think you can keep it up?”
“Oh, I’m one of the lucky ones. In a month I’ll have that scroll my parents paid for and I’m out of it. They hardly ever try to make contact with you later. They say they will, but they rarely do.… You’re just supposed to live with the possibility.”
He understood the implications of her muted testimony and turned away. “I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m one of the lucky ones. Two weeks after I pick up that piece of engraved crap my parents want so badly, I’ll be on a plane. I’m leaving this goddamn country. And I’ll never come back!”
25
He had not been able to sleep, nor had he expected to. He had sent the girl away with money, for he had nothing else he could give her, neither hope nor courage. What he advocated was rejected, for it involved the risk of danger and pain to untold children committed to the well-being of each other. He could not demand; there was no trust, no threat equal to the burdens they carried. Ultimately, it was the children’s own struggle. They wanted no help.
He remembered the Bagdhivi admonition: Look ye to the children; look and behold. They grow tall and strong and hunt the tiger with greater cunning and stronger sinews than you. They shall save the flocks better than you. Ye are old and infirm. Look to the children. Beware of the children.
Were the children hunting the tiger better? And even if they were, whose flocks would they save? And who was the tiger?
Was it the “goddamn country”?
Had it come to that?
The questions burned into his mind. How many Jeannies were there? How extensive was Nimrod’s recruiting?
He had to find out.
The girl admitted that Carmount was only one port of call; there were others, but she didn’t know where. Friends of hers had been sent to New Haven, others to Boston, some north to the outskirts of Hanover.
Yale. Harvard. Dartmouth.
The most frightening aspect was Nimrod’s threat of a thousand futures. What had she said?
“They hardly ever make contact.… They say they will.… You live with the possibility.”
If such was the case, Bagdhivi was wrong. The children had far less cunning, possessed weaker sinews; there was no reason to beware. Only to pity.
Unless the children were subdivided, led by other, stronger children.
Matlock made up his mind to go down to New Haven. Maybe there were answers there. He had scores of friends at Yale University. It would be a side trip, an unconsidered excursion, but intrinsic to the journey itself. Part of the Nimrod odyssey.
Short, high-pitched sounds interrupted Matlock’s concentration. He froze, his eyes swollen in shock, his body tense on top of the bed. It took him several seconds to focus his attention on the source of the frightening sound. It was the Tel-electronic, still in his jacket pocket. But where had he put his jacket? It wasn’t near his bed.
He turned on the bedside lamp and looked around, the unrelenting, unceasing sounds causing his pulse to hammer, his forehead to perspire. Then he saw his coat. He had put it on top of the chair in front of the French window, halfway across the room. He looked at his watch: 4:35 A.M. He ran to the jacket, pulled out the terrible instrument, and shut it off.
The panic of the hunted returned. He picked up the telephone on the bedside table. It was a direct line, no switchboard.
The dial tone was like any other dial tone outside the major utility areas. A little fuzzy, but steady. And if there was a tap, he wouldn’t be able to recognize it anyway. He dialed 555-6868 and waited for the call to be completed.
“Charger Three-zero reporting,” said the mechanized voice. “Sorry to disturb you. There is no change with the subject, everything is satisfactory. However, your friend from Wheeling, West Virginia, is very insistent. He telephoned at four fifteen and said it was imperative you call him at once. We’re concerned. Out.”
Matlock hung up the telephone and forced his mind to go blank until he found a cigarette and lit it. He needed the precious moments to stop the hammering pulse.
He hated that goddamn machine! He hated what its terrifying little beeps did to him.
He drew heavily on the smoke and knew there was no alternative. He had to get out of the Carmount Country Club and reach a telephone boot
h. Greenberg wouldn’t have phoned at four in the morning unless it was an emergency. He couldn’t take the chance of calling Greenberg on the Carmount line.
He threw his clothes into the suitcase and dressed quickly.
He assumed there’d be a night watchman, or a parking attendant asleep in a booth, and he’d retrieve his, Kramer’s, automobile. If not, he’d wake up someone, even if it was Stockton himself. Stockton was still frightened of trouble, Windsor Shoals trouble—he wouldn’t try to detain him. Any story would do for the purveyor of young, adorable flesh. The sunburned southern flower of the Connecticut Valley. The stench of Nimrod.
Matlock closed the door quietly and walked down the silent corridor to the enormous staircase. Wall sconces were lighted, dimmed by rheostats to give a candlelight effect. Even in the dead of night, Howard Stockton couldn’t forget his heritage. The interior of the Carmount Country Club looked more than ever like a sleeping great hall of a plantation house.
He started for the front entrance, and by the time he reached the storm carpet, he knew it was as far as he would go. At least for the moment.
Howard Stockton, clad in a flowing velour, nineteenth-century dressing gown, emerged from a glass door next to the entrance. He was accompanied by a large, Italian-looking man whose jet black eyes silently spoke generations of the Black Hand. Stockton’s companion was a killer.
“Why, Mr. Matlock! Are you leavin’ us?”
He decided to be aggressive.
“Since you tapped my goddamn phone, I assume you gather I’ve got problems! They’re my business, not yours! If you want to know, I resent your intrusion!”
The ploy worked. Stockton was startled by Matlock’s hostility.
“There’s no reason to be angry.… I’m a businessman, like you. Any invasion of your privacy is for your protection. Goddamn! That’s true, boy!”
“I’ll accept the lousy explanation. Are my keys in the car?”
“Well, not in your car. My friend Mario here’s got ’em. He’s a real high-class Eyetalian, let me tell you.”
“I can see the family crest on his pocket. May I have my keys?”
Mario looked at Stockton, obviously confused.
“Now, just a minute,” Stockton said. “Wait a bit, Mario. Let’s not be impulsive.… I’m a reasonable man. A very reasonable, rational person. I’m merely a Virginia …”