Carrion Comfort (29 page)

“I had forgotten that monsters do not die. They must be killed. “Less than five months ago I almost walked into the Oberst on a New York street. It was a sweltering July evening. I was near Central Park West, walking, thinking, mentally composing an article on prison reform, when the Oberst emerged from a restaurant not more than fifty feet from me and hailed a cab. There was a woman with him, an older lady but still beautiful, whose white hair flowed down over an expensive silk evening dress. The Oberst himself was dressed in a dark suit. He looked tanned and fit. He had lost much of his hair and what was left had faded from blond to gray, but his face, although heavier and ruddier with age, remained chiseled in the same sharp planes of cruelty and control.

“After several seconds in which I just stood and stared, I ran after the cab. It pulled out into traffic and I dodged vehicles in a frenzied attempt to catch it. The occupants in the back seat never looked back. The cab pulled away in traffic and I staggered to the curb in near collapse.

“The maître d’ in the restaurant could not help me. Yes, there had been a distinguished older couple dining there that evening, but he did not know their names. No, they had not had a reservation.

“For weeks I haunted that area of Central Park West, searching the streets, watching for the Oberst’s face in every taxi which passed. I hired a young New York detective and again I paid for no results.

“It was at this time that I experienced what I now recognize as a massive nervous breakdown. I did not sleep. I could not work and my classes at the university were canceled or covered by nervous teaching assistants. I wore the same clothes for days on end, returning to my apartment only to eat and pace nervous ly. At night I walked the streets and was questioned several times by police. Only my position at Columbia and the magical title of ‘Doctor’ must have saved me from being sent to Bellevue for examination. Then one night I was lying awake on the floor of my apartment when I realized what I had been ignoring.
The woman’s face had been familiar
.

“For the better part of that night and the next day I fought to retrieve the memory of where I had seen her before. It had been in a photograph, I was sure of that. Along with her image, I associated vague memories of boredom, uneasiness, and bland music.

“At fifteen minutes after five that afternoon I hailed a cab and rushed uptown to my dentist’s office. He had just left for the day, the office was closing, but I prattled some story and bullied the receptionist into allowing me to pour through the stacks of old magazines in the waiting room. There were copies of
Seventeen, GQ, Ma de moi selle, U.S. News and World Report, Time, Newsweek, Vogue, Consumer Reports,
and
Tennis World
. The receptionist was becoming truculent and more than a little alarmed by my manic state by the time I began going through the issues a second time. Only the depth of my obsession and the near certainty that no dentist would change his stock of magazines more than four times a year kept me searching while the shrill woman threatened to call the police.

“I found it. Her photograph was a small black and white insert near the front of the thick sheath of glossy ads and breathless adjectives which was
Vogue
. The picture was at the head of a column on purchasing accessories. It had a byline— NINA DRAYTON.

“From there it took only hours to trace Nina Drayton. My New York private detective was pleased to work on something more accessible than my elusive phantom. Harrington reported back in twenty-four hours with a thick dossier on the woman. Most of the information was from public sources.

“Mrs. Nina Drayton was a rich, well-known name in the New York fashion industry, the own er of a chain of boutiques, and a widow. She married Parker Allan Drayton, one of the found ers of American Airlines, in August of 1940. He had died ten months after the wedding and his widow had carried on, investing wisely, inserting herself into several boardrooms where no woman had previously been. Mrs. Drayton was no longer active in business other than her boutiques, but she served on the boards of several prestigious charities, had a first-name acquaintance with numerous politicians, artists, and writers, was rumored to have had an affair with a famous New York composer-conductor, and kept up a large sixteenth-floor apartment on Park Avenue as well as several summer and vacation homes.

“It was not too difficult to arrange an introduction. Eventually I thought of going through my patient lists, and I soon found the name of a rich, manic-depressive matron who lived in the same building as Mrs. Drayton and who moved in at least some of the same circles.

“I met Nina Drayton on the second weekend of August at a garden party arranged by my ex-patient. There were few guests. Most people with sense had fled the city for their cottages on the Cape or summer cha-lets in the Rockies. But Mrs. Drayton was there.

“Even before I shook her hand or stared into those clear blue eyes, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was one of
them
. She was like the Oberst. Her presence seemed to fill the courtyard, making the Japanese lanterns glow more brightly. I felt the certainty of my knowledge like a cold hand at my throat. Perhaps she sensed my reaction, or perhaps she enjoyed baiting psychiatrists, but Nina Drayton verbally fenced with me that evening with a mixture of amused contempt and mischievous challenge as subtle as a cat’s claws sheathed in velvet.

“I invited her to attend a public lecture I was giving that week at Columbia. To my surprise, she appeared, trailing behind her a malevolent-looking little woman named Barrett Kramer. My talk was about the deliberate policies of violence in the Third Reich and how they related to certain Third World regimes of today. I tailored the lecture to suggest a premise contrary to current thinking— that, indeed, the inexplicable brutality of millions of Germans was due, at least in part, to the manipulation of a small and secretive group of powerful personalities. All through the talk I could see Mrs. Drayton smiling at me from the fifth row. It was the type of smile the mouse must see on the face of the cat which is about to devour it.

“After the talk, Mrs. Drayton wished to speak to me privately. She asked if I was still meeting with patients and requested to see me professionally. I hesitated, but each of us knew what my answer would be.

“I saw her twice, both times in September. We went through the motions of initiating therapy. Nina Drayton was convinced that her insomnia was directly related to the death of her father decades ago. She revealed that she had recurrent nightmares wherein she
pushed
her father in front of the Boston trolley which killed him even though she was actually miles away at the time. ‘Is it true, Dr. Laski,’ she asked at one point in our second session, ‘that we always kill the ones we love?’ I told her that I suspected that the opposite was true; that we sought, at least in our minds, to kill those we pretended to love but secretly despised. Nina Drayton only smiled at me.

“I had suggested that we use hypnosis during our third session in an attempt to relive her reaction to the news of her father’s death. She agreed, but I was not surprised when her secretary called in early October to cancel any further sessions. By this time, I had assigned a private detective to full-time surveillance of Mrs. Drayton.

“When I say private detective, I should clarify the image. Rather than the cynical ex-policeman one would imagine, I had on the advice of friends, hired a twenty-four-year old ex-Princeton dropout who wrote poetry in his spare time. Francis Xavier Harrington had been in the private investigation business for two years, but he had to buy a new suit in order to enter the restaurants where Mrs. Drayton spent her lunch hours. When I authorized twenty-four-hour surveillance, Harrington had to hire two old fraternity friends to round out his agency. But the boy was no fool; he worked quickly and competently and had a written report on my desk every Monday and Friday morning. Some of his accomplishments were not strictly legal, such as his knack of obtaining copies of Nina Drayton’s telephone billing statements. She called many, many people. Harrington tracked down the listed numbers on the statement and made a list of the names and addresses. Some were well known. Others were intriguing. None led me to the Oberst.

“Weeks passed. By this time I had used most of my savings to document Nina Drayton’s daily doings, her luncheon preferences, her business dealings, and her phone calls. Young Harrington understood that my resources were limited, and he kindly offered to intercept the lady’s mail and tap her telephone. I decided against it, at least for a few more weeks. I wanted to do nothing which would tip our hand.

“Then, only two weeks ago, Mrs. Drayton called me. She invited me to a gala Christmas party to be held at her apartment on the seventeenth of December. She was calling personally, she said, so that I would have no excuse for not attending. She wanted me to meet a
dear
friend of hers from Hollywood, a producer who was
so
looking forward to meeting me. She had just sent him a copy of my book,
The Pathology of Violence
, and he had
raved
about it.

“ ‘What is his name?’ I asked. ‘Never you mind,’ she responded. ‘You may recognize him when you meet him.’

“I was shaking so badly when I hung up that it took a full minute before I could punch out Harrington’s phone number. That evening the three boys and I met to discuss strategy. We went through the phone bills again. This time we called all Los Angeles numbers listed which were not in the city directory. On the sixth call a young man’s voice answered, ‘Mr. Borden’s residence.’ ‘Is this Thomas Borden’s home number?’ asked Francis, ‘You’ve got the wrong number,’ snapped the voice. ‘This is Mr. William Borden’s residence.’

“I wrote the names on the chalkboard in my office. Wilhelm von Borchert. William Borden. It was so true to human nature; the adulterer signs a close version of his own name on the hotel register; the wanted felon goes by six aliases, five of which have the same first name as his own. There is something about our names which we have great trouble abandoning completely, no matter how great the justification.

“That Monday, four days before the events here in Charleston transpired, Harrington flew to Los Angeles. I had originally planned to go myself, but Francis pointed out that it would be better if he went ahead to check out this Borden, to photograph him, and to ascertain that it was actually von Borchert. I still wanted to go, but I realized that I had no plan of action. Even after all those years, I had not confronted the details of what I would do once I had found the Oberst.

“That Monday night, Harrington called to report that his in-flight movie had been mediocre, that his hotel was decidedly inferior to the Beverly Wilshire, and that police in Bel Air had the tendency to stop and question you if you drove through the neighborhood twice or had the temerity to park your car on the winding streets to stare at a movie star’s home. On Tuesday he called to check on what was new with Mrs. Drayton. I told him that his two friends, Dennis and Selby, were a bit sleepier than him but that Mrs. Drayton was going about business as usual. Francis went on to tell me that he had been to the studio with which Borden had most often been associated— the tour was mediocre— and although Borden had an office there, no one knew when he might be in. The last time anyone had seen him work there was in 1979. Francis had hoped to get a picture of Borden but none were available. He had considered showing the studio secretary the Berlin photograph of von Borchert but decided, in his words, ‘That wouldn’t have been too cool.’ He was planning to take his camera with the long lens out to Borden’s Bel Air estate the next day.

“On Wednesday Harrington did not call at the appointed time. I phoned the hotel and they reported that he was still registered but had not picked up his key that evening. On Thursday morning I called the Los Angeles police. They agreed to look into it but, on the limited information I had given them, felt that there was little reason to suspect foul play. ‘This is a pretty busy town,’ said the sergeant I spoke to. ‘A young guy could get involved in a lot of things and forget to call.’

“All that day I attempted to get in touch with Dennis or Selby. I could not. Even the telephone recording device at Francis’s agency had been disconnected. I went to Nina Drayton’s Park Avenue apartment building. The lobby security man informed me that Mrs. Drayton was on vacation. I was not allowed above the first floor.

“All that day Friday I sat alone in my locked apartment, waiting At eleven-thirty the Los Angeles police called. They had opened Mr. Harrington’s room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. His clothes and luggage were gone and there was no sign of foul play. Did I know who would be responsible for the hotel bill of $329.48?

“That night I forced myself to go to a friend’s house for dinner as scheduled. The two-block walk from the bus stop to the town house in Greenwich Village seemed interminable. That Saturday evening, the night your father was killed here in Charleston, I was part of a panel on urban violence at the university. There were several po liti cal candidates there and over two hundred people attended. All through the discussion, I kept looking out at the audience, expecting to see Nina Drayton’s cobra smile or the cold eyes of the Oberst. I felt that I was once again a pawn— but in whose game?

“This past Sunday I read the morning paper. For the first time I heard about the Charleston murders. Elsewhere in the paper, a short column announced that Hollywood producer William D. Borden had been aboard the ill-fated flight which had crashed early Saturday morning in South Carolina. They included a rare photograph of the reclusive producer. The picture was from the nineteen sixties. The Oberst was smiling.”

Saul stopped talking. Their coffee cups sat cold and unnoticed on the porch railing. The shadows of the railing slats had crept across Saul’s legs as he talked. In the sudden silence, distant street sounds became audible.

“Which one of them killed my father?” asked Natalie. She had pulled her sweater more tightly around her and now she rubbed her arms as if she were cold.