Beggarman, Thief (21 page)

F
ROM
B
ILLY
A
BBOTT’S
N
OTEBOOK—

THIS WILL BE THE LAST ENTRY IN THIS NOTEBOOK FOR SOME TIME.

I HAD BETTER NOT WRITE ANYTHING ABOUT MONIKA ANYMORE.

THERE ARE SNOOPS, AND AUTHORIZED BURGLARS EVERYWHERE. BRUSSELS ABOUNDS IN THEM.

MONIKA EDGIER THAN EVER.

I LOVE HER. SHE REFUSES TO BELIEVE ME.

«  »

Sidney Altscheler was standing at the window of his office high up in the Time and Life Building, staring gloomily out at the lights of the buildings around the tower in which he worked. He was gloomy because he was thinking of all the editorial work ahead of him over the weekend.

There was a discreet knock on the door and his secretary came in. “There’s somebody called Jordache here who wants to see you.”

Altscheler frowned. “Jordache?” he said. “I don’t know anybody named Jordache. Tell him I’m busy, let him write me a letter.”

The secretary had turned to go when he remembered. “Wait a minute,” he said. “We ran a story five, six months ago. About a murder. The man’s name was Jordache. Tell him to come up. I’ve got fifteen minutes free before Thatcher comes in with his rewrite. Maybe there’s a follow-up on the Jordache story we can use.” He went back to the window and continued being gloomy about the weekend as he stared out at the lights in the surrounding offices, which would be dark tomorrow because it was Saturday and the vice-presidents, the clerks, the book-keepers, the mailboys, everybody, would be enjoying their holiday.

He was still at the window when there was a rap at the door and the secretary came in with a boy in a suit that was too small for him. “Come in, come in,” he said, and seated himself behind his desk. There was a chair next to the desk. He indicated it to the boy.

“Will you need me?” the secretary asked.

“If I do, I’ll call you.” He looked at the boy. Sixteen, seventeen, he guessed, big for his age. Thin, handsome face, with disturbing intense eyes. Trained down like an athlete.

“Now, Mr. Jordache,” he said briskly, “what can I do for you?”

The boy took out a page torn from
Time.
“You did this story about my father.” He had a deep, resounding voice.

“Yes, I remember.” Altscheler hesitated. “Which one was your father? The mayor?”

“No,” the boy said, “the one who was murdered.”

“I see,” Altscheler said. He made his tone more kindly. “What’s your first name, young man?”

“Wesley.”

“Have they found the murderer yet?”

“No.” Wesley hesitated. Then he said, “That is—technically no.”

“I didn’t think so. I haven’t seen any follow-up.”

“I really wanted to see whoever wrote the article,” Wesley said. “I told them that downstairs at the desk, but they telephoned around and found it was by a man named Hubbell and said he was still in France. So I bought a copy of
Time
and I saw your name up in front.”

“I see,” Altscheler said. “What did you want to see Mr. Hubbell for? Did you think the article was unfair or mistaken?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Is there any new development you think we ought to know about?”

“No. I wanted to talk to Mr. Hubbell about my father and my father’s family. There was a lot about all that in the article.”

“Yes. But Mr. Hubbell couldn’t help you. That was done here; the material came from one of our researchers.”

“I didn’t know my father well,” Wesley said. “I didn’t see him from the time I was little until just a couple of years ago. I’d like to know more about him.”

“I can understand that, Wesley,” Altscheler said kindly.

“In the article you seemed to know a lot more than I ever did. I have a list of people who my father had something to do with at different times in his life and I put
Time
on the list, that’s all.”

“I understand.” Altscheler rang for his secretary. She came in immediately. “Miss Prentice,” he said, “will you find out who did the research on the Jordache article? If I remember correctly it was Miss Larkin; take the young man to her office. Tell her to do anything she can for Mr. Jordache.” He stood up. “I’m afraid I have to go back to work now,” he said. “Thank you for coming to see me, Wesley. And good luck.”

“Thank you, sir.” Wesley stood, too, and followed the secretary out of the office.

Altscheler went back to the window and stared out. Polite, sad boy. He wondered what he would have done if his father had been murdered and he himself had been sure he knew who had done it. They did not consider these questions at Yale, where he had earned his B.A.

The researcher had a little office without windows, lit by neon tubes. She was a small young woman with glasses, carelessly dressed, but pretty. She kept nodding and looking timidly at Wesley as Miss Prentice explained what he was there for. “Just wait a minute right here, Mr. Jordache,” she said, “and I’ll go into the files. You can read everything I dug up.” She flushed a little as she heard herself using the phrase. “Dug up” was not the sort of thing to say when you were talking to a boy whose father had been murdered. She wondered if she ought to censor the files before she let the boy see them. She remembered very well working on the story—mostly because it was so different from anything she herself had experienced in her own life. She had never been on the Riviera, in fact had never been out of America, but she had been a hungry reader in the literature courses she had taken in college and the south of France was firmly fixed in her imagination as a place of romance and tragedy—Scott Fitzgerald driving to a party or from a party on the Grand Corniche, Dick Diver, desperate and gay on the blazing beaches, with all the trouble ahead of them all when everything collapsed. She had kept her notes, which she didn’t usually do, out of a vague feeling of being connected to a literary geography that she would one day explore. She looked at the boy—who had been there, had suffered there, now standing in her office in his clumsy suit—and would have liked to question him, discover if he knew anything of all that. “Would you like a cup of coffee while you wait?” she asked.

“No, thank you, ma’am,” he said.

“Would you like a copy of this week’s magazine to look through?”

“I bought a copy downstairs, thank you.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” she said brightly. Poor little boy, she thought as she went out of the office. So handsome, too. Even in the ridiculous suit. She was a romantic girl who had read a great deal of poetry, too. She could imagine him, dressed in flowing black, twin to the young Yeats in the early photographs.

When she came back with the file the boy was sitting hunched over on the straight chair, his arms resting on his thighs, his hands hanging between his knees, like a football player on the bench.

“Here’s everything,” she said brightly. She had debated with herself about whether or not to take out the photograph of Jean Jordache naked, but had decided against it. The picture had been in the magazine, after all, and he must have seen it.

“Now, you just take your time,” she said. “I have some work to do.” She gestured toward the pile of clippings on her desk. “But you won’t bother me.” She was pleased to have him in the office. It broke the routine.

Wesley looked down for a long time at the file without opening it, as Miss Larkin busied herself at her desk, using scissors and making notes, occasionally looking at the boy, until he caught her at it, which flustered her. Still, she thought, excusing herself, he’d better get used to girls looking at him. They’re going to be doing it in droves.

The first thing she saw him take out of the files was a photograph of his father in boxing trunks, with his fists cocked. He looked fierce and young. To Wesley, he hardly looked older than he himself was now. Every muscle stood out in his arms and torso. He must have scared the wits out of the guys he was going to fight.

Miss Larkin had looked at the picture, too, when she took it out of the files. She thought the fighter looked like a handsome ruffian, somebody it would be wise to stay away from. She preferred men who looked like intellectuals. She studied the boy frankly now, since he was paying attention only to the photograph in his hand. He looked surprisingly like his father, but there was nothing ruffianly about him. He must be at least nineteen, she thought; maybe it would be nice to invite him downstairs for a drink. These days, she thought, nineteen can be very mature for a boy. She was only twenty-four herself; you couldn’t call it an impossible gap.

The photograph had been cut out from
Ring
Magazine and there was a little article about Tom Jordan pasted to the bottom of the picture. “Tom Jordan, promising middleweight, undefeated in fourteen bouts, 8 k.o.’s, on his way to London to fight Sammy Wales, contender for British middleweight championship, at Albert Hall. Arthur Schultz, Jordan’s manager, predicts that with another four or five matches under his belt, Tommy will be ready for anybody in his division.”

Clipped to the photograph, there was another sheet of paper with typing on it. Wesley started reading again. “Won fight in London by knockout. Fought René Badaud three weeks later in Paris. Knocked out in seventh round. From then on, record spotty, slipped down in class. Hired as sparring partner Freddy Quayles, Las Vegas, Nevada (date). Quayles leading challenger middleweight title. Incident between Quayles and Jordan. L.V. stringer reports rumor fight in hotel room over Quayles’ wife, later small-part actress Hollywood. Witness claims to have seen Quayles in hospital, badly battered. Quayles never regained form, quit ring, now works as salesman sporting goods store, Denver, Col. T. Jordan disappeared from Las Vegas, warrant out for his arrest, auto theft. Has not surfaced since.”

And that was it. A whole life in a few lines, all summed up in four words—“Has not surfaced since.” He surfaced all right in Antibes, Wesley thought bitterly. He took out his pen and a piece of paper and wrote, Arthur Schultz, Freddy Quayles.

Then he stared once more at the photograph of his father, the left hand out, the right hand up under the chin, the shoulders bunched, the fierce, confident young face, ready, according to authority, after four or five more matches, for anybody in his division. Not surfaced since.

Wesley looked up at Miss Larkin. “I don’t think I’d recognize him if he came in through the door right now looking like this.” He laughed a little. “I’m glad he didn’t believe in hitting kids, with those shoulders.”

Miss Larkin saw that Wesley was proud of the hard body, the confident pugnacity of his father when he was just a bit older than the boy was now.

“If you want the picture,” she said, “I’ll put it in a big envelope for you so you won’t crease it.”

“You mean that?” Wesley said. “I can really have it?”

“Of course.”

“That’s really great,” Wesley said, “having the picture, I mean. I don’t have any picture of him. I had some, but they were all taken later.… He didn’t look like this. He looked okay,” he said hastily, as though he didn’t want Miss Larkin to think that he was running his father down or that he had turned into a fat, bald, old man or anything like that. “He just looked different. The expression on his face, I guess. I don’t suppose you can go through life always looking about twenty years old.”

“No, you can’t,” Miss Larkin said. She searched for wrinkles around her eyes every morning.

Wesley dug in the file and brought out a biographical note that Miss Larkin had prepared on the members of the family.

Wesley went through the notes quickly. There was very little in them that he didn’t already know, his uncle’s early success and the scandal at the college, his aunt’s two marriages, the outlines of his father’s career. One line he read twice. “Rudolph Jordache, when he retired in his mid-thirties, was reputed to be a millionaire many times over.” Many times over. How many times would his father have had to fight, how many seasons on the Mediterranean would he have had to serve even to be a millionaire just one time over?

He looked curiously at the pretty girl with glasses working at her desk. Just by accident she had been chosen to learn so much about his family. He wondered what she would say if he asked what she really thought about the Jordaches. In her notes she had written that Rudolph’s was the standard American success story, poor boy makes good in a big way. Would she say of his father, poor boy makes bad in standard American way?

He made a funny little noise, almost a laugh. Miss Larkin looked over at him. “That’s about all there is,” she said. “I’m afraid it isn’t very much.”

“It’s okay,” Wesley said. “It’s fine.” He didn’t want the nice young lady to think he wasn’t grateful. He gave her back the file and stood up. “Thank you very much. I better be pushing along now.”

Miss Larkin stood up, too. She looked at him strangely, as though she was making up her mind about something. “I’m just about finished here for the day,” she said. “I was wondering if you’d like to go downstairs with me and have a drink?” She sounded as though she was appealing to him, but he couldn’t tell for what. “I have a date later …” Even he could tell she was lying. “And I have an hour to kill …”