Beggarman, Thief (15 page)

Sources in Antibes say that Jordan was bludgeoned to death only days after his wedding and after he’d extricated his tipsy sister-in-law from the clutches of a harbor ruffian in a seedy Cannes nightspot.

Staying in the plush Hôtel du Cap while police continued their investigation, Jean Jordache says she was accosted while having a solitary, quayside nightcap. Jordan, appearing on the scene, savagely beat the man who had accosted her. Later, Jordan was found murdered on his yacht.

French police will only confirm that they have a list of suspects.

LUCKILY, IT DOESN’T MENTION ME. IT WOULD HAVE TO BE AN OUTSIDE CHANCE FOR ANYONE TO CONNECT ME WITH MRS. BURKE, ONCE MARRIED TO EMINENT DIRECTOR, NOW DEAD, EARLIER TO AN OBSCURE FLACK NAMED ABBOTT. MONIKA WOULD, OF COURSE, BECAUSE I’VE TALKED TO HER A LOT ABOUT MY MOTHER, BUT FORTUNATELY MONIKA DOESN’T READ “TIME.” INFORMATION FOR ENTERTAINMENT, SHE CALLS IT, NOT INFORMATION FOR THE SAKE OF TRUTH.

I SOMETIMES WONDER IF I SHOULDN’T TRY TO BE A NEWSPAPERMAN. I AM INQUISITIVE AND MISCHIEVOUS, TWO IMPORTANT QUALITIES IN THE TRADE.

MONIKA NOT HOME. NOTE ON TABLE. WILL BE GONE A FEW DAYS. SHE BELIEVES IN THE DOUBLE STANDARD ALL RIGHT—BUT IN REVERSE.

I MISS HER ALREADY.

«  »

The limousine that the concierge had ordered for them was packed. Gretchen, Jean and Enid were already on the back seat, Enid a little tearful because the French girl was being left behind. Rudolph had checked for the third time that he had all their plane tickets, and the chauffeur was holding the front door open for him to get in, when a car drove up to the courtyard in front of the hotel and stopped. A small, plump, plainly dressed woman with graying hair got out of the car and a small plump man in a business suit emerged from behind the wheel.

“Rudolph Jordache, if you please,” the woman called, coming toward him.

“Yes?” The woman looked vaguely familiar.

“I suppose you don’t remember me,” the woman said. She turned to the small plump man. “I told you he wouldn’t remember me.”

“Yes, you told me,” the man said.

“I remember you, though,” the woman said to Rudolph. “Very well. I’m Tom’s wife, Wesley’s mother. I came to get my son.” She dug into the big handbag she was carrying and pulled out a copy of
Time
Magazine and waved it at Rudolph.

“Oh, Lord,” Rudolph said. He had forgotten about the newspaperman and the telex. But the newspaperman obviously hadn’t forgotten about him. Poor Wesley, he thought, his name known for a week in millions of homes, the stares of the curious to be dealt with for years to come, the strangers approaching him wherever he went, saying, “Excuse me, aren’t you the one …?”

“May I see what the story’s like?” Rudolph reached out for the magazine. The journalist had been down to the boat before Wesley had been jailed, but he might have followed up on the story. He winced, thinking of what
Time
might have done with the account of Wesley’s fight in the nightclub and the Englishman in the hospital with a concussion.

Teresa drew back, put the magazine behind her. “You can go out and buy your own magazine,” she said. “According to what it says, you can damn well afford it. You and your fancy naked wife.”

Oh, God, Rudolph thought, they’ve dug up that old picture. What a blessing it would be for the entire world if the files in the office of every newspaper on the face of the globe suddenly went up in smoke in a single day.

“It’s all in the magazine,” Teresa said malevolently. “This time your money didn’t bail my great ex-husband out, did it? He finally got what he was looking for, didn’t he?”

“I’m sorry, Teresa,” Rudolph said. Tom must have been dead drunk or drugged when he married her. The last time Rudolph had seen her, three years ago in Heath’s office, when he had paid her off to go to Reno for a divorce, her hair had been dyed platinum blond and she must have been twenty pounds lighter. Looking no better and no worse than she looked now.

“Forgive me for not recognizing you. You’ve changed a bit.”

“I didn’t make much of an impression on you, did I?” Now the malevolence was more pronounced. “I’d like you to meet my husband, Mr. Kraler.”

“How do you do, Mr. Kraler?”

The man grunted.

“Where’s my son?” Teresa said harshly.

“Rudy,” Gretchen called from the car, “we don’t want to miss the plane.” She hadn’t heard any of the exchange.

Rudolph began to sweat, although it was a cool morning. “You’ll have to excuse me, Mrs. Kraler,” he said, “but we have to go to the airport …”

“You don’t get off that easy, Mr. Jordache,” Teresa said, waving the rolled-up magazine at him. “I didn’t come all the way here from America to let you fly off just like that.”

“I’m not flying off anywhere,” Rudolph said, his voice rising, to match the woman’s tone. “I have to put my family on the plane and I’m coming back here. I’ll see you in two hours.”

“I want to know where my son is,” Teresa said, grabbing his sleeve and holding on as he started to get into the car.

“He’s in jail, if you must know.”

“In jail!” Teresa shrieked. She put her hand to her throat in a tragic gesture. Her reaction reassured Rudolph. At least that part of the story hadn’t been in the magazine.

“Don’t carry on so,” Rudolph said sharply. Her shriek had been the loudest noise he had heard at the hotel since he had come there. “It’s not that serious.”

“Did you hear that, Eddie?” she screamed. “My son is behind bars and he says it’s not serious.”

“I heard him say it,” Mr. Kraler said.

“That’s the sort of family it is. Put a child in their hands,” as loudly as before, “and before you know it he has a police record. It’s a blessing his father got murdered or else I’d never have known where he was and God knows what these people would have made out of him. You know who belongs in jail—” She released Rudolph’s sleeve and stepped back a pace to point a shaking, accusatory finger at him, her arm outstretched operatically. “You! With your tricks and your bribes and your crooked money.”

“When you calm down,” Rudolph said, moving to get into the front seat of the limousine, “I’ll explain everything to you.” Then to the chauffeur,
“Allons-y.”

She lunged at him and gripped his arm again. “No, you don’t,” she said. “You’re not getting off that easy, mister.”

“Let go of me, you silly woman,” Rudolph said. “I haven’t time to talk to you now. The plane won’t wait, no matter how loudly you scream.”

“Eddie,” Teresa shrieked at her husband, “are you going to let him get away with this?”

“See here, Mr. Jordache …” the man began.

“I don’t know you, sir,” Rudolph said. “Keep out of this. If you want to talk to me, be here when I get back.” Roughly, he shook the woman’s hand off his sleeve, and the concierge, who had come out to say goodbye, moved, quietly threatening, toward her.

Rudolph got into the car quickly and slammed and locked the door behind him. The chauffeur hurried around to the wheel and started the engine. Teresa was standing, waving the magazine angrily at the car, as they drove out of the gate.

“What was that all about?” Gretchen asked. “I couldn’t hear what she was saying.”

“It’s not important,” Rudolph said shortly. “She’s Wesley’s mother.”

“She certainly has changed,” Gretchen said. “Not for the better.”

“What does she want?”

“If she’s running true to form,” he said, “she wants money.” He would have to get Gretchen aside and tell her to make sure Jean didn’t get hold of a copy of
Time
Magazine.

From the terrace of the airport building Rudolph watched the plane take off. The good-byes had been quiet. He had promised to get back to New York as soon as possible. He had tried not to think of the comparison between today’s subdued farewell and the holiday gaiety with which they had arrived at this same airport, with Tom waiting for them with his bride-to-be and the
Clothilde
in port ready to take them all out to the channel between the islands off Cannes for a swim and a reunion lunch.

When the plane was out of sight, Rudolph sighed, went through the building, fighting down the temptation to buy a copy of
Time
Magazine at the newsstand. Whatever the story was like, it certainly could not bring him joy. He wondered how people who were constantly being written about, politicians, cabinet ministers, actors, people like that, could ever bring themselves to open a morning newspaper.

He thought of the plump, graying woman and her round little husband waiting for him back at the hotel, and sighed again. How had that dreadful woman ever managed to find a husband? And a second husband, at that. Perhaps, he thought, if the man from
Time
were still in Antibes, he should ask him to dig up the newspaper photograph of Teresa, with her old fake name, being taken away by the police after the raid on the brothel. One photograph deserved another. Poor Wesley.

Delaying, he asked the chauffeur to drive into Nice, directed him to the street on which Jeanne lived. He didn’t know what he would do if by chance he saw her coming out of the house with her children or her martial husband. Nothing, most likely. But she did not appear. The street was like any other street.

“Back to the hotel, please,” he said. “Go the long way, along the sea.”

When they got to Antibes, they skirted the port. He saw the
Clothilde,
in the distance, with Dwyer, a tiny figure, moving on the deck. He did not ask the chauffeur to stop.

“I know my rights,” Teresa was saying. The three of them were sitting on the chairs in a little glade in the park of the hotel, where there was no one to hear their conversation. The couple had been sitting stiffly in two chairs facing each other in the hotel lobby when Rudolph had come in. Their expressions were grim and disapproving, their presence a silent rebuke to the idle, pleasure-seeking guests, dressed for sport, who passed them on their way to tennis or to the swimming pool. They had listened sullenly as Rudolph led them into the park, explaining quickly, keeping his voice calm and neutral, how Wesley had fallen into the hands of the police and about his departure for America.

“We’ve been to a lawyer in Indianapolis, where we live, Mr. Kraler and myself, and I know my rights as a mother.” Teresa’s voice grated on his ears like chalk on a blackboard. “Wesley is a minor and with his father dead, the lawyer said I am his legal guardian. Isn’t that what the lawyer said, Eddie?”

“That’s what the lawyer said,” Mr. Kraler said. “Exactly.”

“When I get him out of jail,” Teresa went on, “I’m going to take him back to a proper home where he can get a decent Christian upbringing.”

“Don’t you think it would be wiser to leave religion out of this?” Rudolph said. “After all, the life you’ve led …”

“You don’t have to beat about the bush about the life I’ve led. Mr. Kraler knows all about it. Don’t you, Eddie?”

“All about it.” Eddie nodded, little pudgy sacks of flesh under his chin shaking rhythmically.

“I was a whore, and no bones about it,” Teresa said, almost with pride. “But I’ve seen the light. The strayed lamb is dearer in the eyes of the Lord …” She hesitated. “You know the rest, I’m sure, even if you and your whole family are lost heathens.”

“Actually,” Rudolph said, with false innocence, “I don’t know the rest.”

“It makes no difference,” she said quickly. “Mr. Kraler is a Mormon and by his efforts I have been converted and accepted into the fold. For your information, I don’t dye my hair any longer, as you may have noticed, if you ever stoop to notice anything about me, and I don’t drink alcohol or even coffee or tea.”

“That may be most admirable, Teresa,” Rudolph said. He had read somewhere that Mormonism was the fastest-growing Christian religion in the modern world, but with Teresa in the fold the believers must feel that they had cast their net too wide. He could imagine the shudder in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City when the elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had to accept Teresa Jordache into their blessed company. “But I don’t really see what that’s got to do with Wesley.”

“One thing that it’s got to do with him is that he’ll stop being a jailbird. I know your family, I know the Jordaches, don’t think I don’t. Fornicators and mockers, all of you.”

Teresa’s vocabulary, Rudolph noted, had expanded considerably with her conversion. He was not sure it was an improvement. “I don’t really think that Wesley’s being in jail for a few days because he had a fight in a bar is because I happen to be an atheist,” he said. “And for your information,” he couldn’t help adding, “fornication and mocking are not my principal occupations.”

“I’m not accusing anyone,” Teresa said, although there was accusation in every syllable she spoke and every gesture she made. “But it can’t be denied that he was in your charge, you being his uncle and head of the family when he nearly killed a man.…”

“All right, all right,” Rudolph said wearily. He wanted her to leave, disappear, with her pudgy, purse-lipped, righteous husband, but the thought of Wesley being at the mercy of the couple back in Indianapolis appalled him. He didn’t know what he could do to prevent it, but he had to try to do what he could. “What do you want?” He had explained that Wesley was to be put on a plane to America in six days, but he hadn’t told her of his own hardly formed notion of putting Wesley into a good boarding school in America for a year and then sending him back to France to continue his education there, or his own plan (selfish? generously avuncular?) to come back to France himself to keep an eye on the boy.

“What do I want?” Teresa repeated. “I want to make him a decent citizen, not a wild animal in the jungle, like his father.”

“You realize, of course,” Rudolph said, “that in a little more than two years, he’ll be eligible for the draft if he stays in the United States, and may be sent to get killed in Vietnam.”

“If that is God’s will, that is God’s will,” Teresa said. “Do you agree with me, Eddie?”

“God’s will,” Mr. Kraler said. “My son is in the Army and I’m proud of it. The boy has to take his chances, just like everybody else.”