Davidian Report (17 page)

Miss Grasse said, “Mama, this is Mr. Wintress. He says he knew Fred in Berlin.”

Mrs. Grasse rose from a straight chair, a chair which didn’t belong to the room. It was maple, decorated with some unidentifiable small white-paint flowers. Probably from a breakfast-room set. The mother was her daughter twenty, thirty years hence. As tall, as spare, more gray, more lines on the skin. But there were deeps in this face that would never be in the spinster’s. Mrs. Grasse had borne life and death.

“You knew Fred?” There was German in her speech, a long time ago.

Steve took her hand and he felt shame. He hadn’t come as a friend; he’d come to ask questions. Determined on answers.

With increasing disapproval, Miss Grasse said, “My sister, Mrs. Knott, and her husband, Mr. Knott.”

These were plain people; the sister could have been older or younger, she was softer and more round but these qualities didn’t allay the hostility in her. The husband had the tired look of a man who had worked hard and honest for long years and small reward. He, too, was hostile. The only warmth was in the dry hand of the older woman.

It was she who urged, “Sit down, Mr. Wintress,” and she indicated the big flower-covered chair. The company chair. The brother-in-law left it and put himself between the two Grasse girls on the flowered couch. His white collar was especially white against the weathered red-brown of his neck, and his stiff Sunday shoes were heavy on his feet.

“We bury Frederick today,” the mother said. There was no outward grief, whatever agony curled her heart because she buried her son was covered by her flat black bosom. Nor was her mourning dress new. “You were his friend?”

“Didn’t he ever speak of me?” He and Albion had been friends, if ever he’d had a friend in the organization. Albie talked of Mama away from home; at home wouldn’t he talk of his friend?

“Fred didn’t live here,” Miss Grasse stated. Her diction was coldly precise.

Her sister added to it. “He lived in a room in Hollywood.”

“It was his business,” the mother explained to Steve. Perhaps the stranger would believe this; the others would not. “He worked very hard at his business. He could not live so far from it.” She wasn’t a soft woman, she said it without emotion, “He was a good boy. He came to see me.” She dared the others to doubt it.

Steve repeated, addressing her alone, “He spoke of me? Steve Wintress?” Because of the sisters he couldn’t say, “Of Stefan Winterich?” Because their enmity was too near the surface.

“Fred didn’t mention his friends to us,” Miss Grasse said. “We didn’t know his friends.”

Mr. Knott made it clear. “We didn’t want to know his friends.”

They knew. They knew Fred’s business and they were good citizens all. They despised. Only the mother. She knew; she would have been told, over and over; she would have been told with throttling anger, with acid spite. The disgrace of Fred. But he was the son she had borne and she was old and had wisdom. She could wash his sins with pity.

“He was too young to die,” she said. Tired, gray Albion was too young to her. Was it because he was a man, small of stature, amid tall, stony women that he had compensated by taking a little unnatural power to himself? There was always a reason. For every one of them a reason.

The mother continued, “He did not tell me he was sick. I scolded him because he works too hard. He is thin and no good color in his cheeks, but I did not know he was sick. He would not worry me.”

The other three exchanged eyes. They knew Fred hadn’t died from sickness; they knew the police wouldn’t question and re-question about a sickness. When Steve was gone they’d tell the mother again, barb it into her heart. While he was here, they couldn’t. They were respectable, too respectable to mention the police before a stranger.

“He came to see you recently?”

“Every week he comes,” she said proudly. “On Thursday. Every Thursday without fail. It is the night of Marguerite’s bridge club.” Two against Marguerite. “I give him a fine dinner. Dumpling stew. It is his favorite ever since he was a little boy. Dumplings.” She put the passion out of her voice. She wouldn’t make dumpling stew again. Marguerite would eat for health, whole wheat and fresh greens. “He ate too much. Because it was so good.”

“He didn’t mention I was coming to California?”

“He didn’t bring his friends here,” Miss Grasse stressed grimly. “He didn’t talk about them. We didn’t want to hear about them.”

“I’d written him I was coming.” He hung on as grimly. If only he could speak alone to Mama. “I hadn’t seen him in five years. A reunion.”

“It is good to see old friends,” Mrs. Grasse sighed. “I do not remember if he spoke of you.”

And the break came. There’d been so few, Steve deserved this small one. The bells chimed. Miss Grasse went to answer; it was safe, she left her sister and the husband on guard. No one spoke. The two on the couch waited tensely as if they feared the ring meant another of Frederick’s friends or again the police. Mama Grasse didn’t care; she mourned Absalom, her charity covered the why and how he had betrayed them.

There was crisscrossing of voices in the hall, young and old, female and male. Aunt Gertrude and Uncle Nicholas, Cousin Barbara and her husband, and Aunt Anna and Cousin Willie. The little room was overfilled with too many people and their words. But under cover of the confusion Steve could speak privately, in this moment when the Grasse sisters were trapped by the relatives.

He said to the mother, “He planned to meet me.”

Her pale blue eyes flickered. “You are the one?”

He pushed ahead quickly. “Was there no message for me? You have his things?” The police would return mementos to the next of kin. They had released Albion; they wouldn’t retain the belongings.

“Yes.” The hesitation was too long but the sisters continued to be cornered by weeping Aunt Gertrude. “There is no message, nothing.” She saw his refusal to believe, because her eyes like Albion’s could see. And because Steve called Frederick friend, among his own who had rejected him, because she grasped for one kindness to her boy who had died alone, unwanted, too soon, she said, “I will show you.”

She put her heavy-veined hand briefly on his wrist. He started to follow her but Miss Grasse’s voice whipped across the room. “Mama!”

The mother’s voice was strong. She knew Marguerite wouldn’t make a scene, not before the relatives. “I will show Frederick’s friend the fine lace shawl he brought to me.” Her bedroom was the first beyond the living room, a warm, rose-colored room. There were framed pictures on the wall, family pictures. Three little girls in stiff hats and high-buttoned black and white shoes, two little boys in sailor suits, unreal as cartoons. Steve wondered where the other children were now; he didn’t ask. Children were born and they died. She had opened a long bureau drawer and from tissue paper lifted out a folded black lace shawl.

Steve remembered. “I was with him when he bought it. In Berlin.” The first time he’d heard about Mama. He touched the delicacy of the fine lace. And he remembered the aged man who had sold it, the furrows in his pallid cheeks, his blackened teeth. He remembered how the old man had held it in his withered hands before he could let it go.

She unfolded it. “See? How big it is!” Her voice was powerful. “It was much too fine for me.” As she spread it on her rosy satin bedspread, she was pulling open the small drawer of her bed table. Her voice went under her breath. “This is what came from his pockets.” While Steve touched the keys, the license case, the half-roll of mints, she spoke up loud again. “He was a good boy. He was never in trouble. Never!”

And Steve’s fingers closed on the ruble, folded so small to escape attention. Not to be thrown away, for Frederick had preserved it; not to be shown to the shame of the good sisters. Steve unfolded it, his back to the woman. She wasn’t watching him, she watched the door.

“He could not give me so much as Marguerite, no. She with her fine position, a high school principal she is, for ten years now. He was not so successful.”

No message save that Albion had carried it as message, the proof that Davidian was in the city.

Her voice lifted, “Ah, Gertrude! My shawl, you remember this fine lace Frederick brought to me from Berlin?”

Aunt Gertrude blocked the doorway. She mourned, “Always so good to you, your son.”

Softly Steve closed the drawer. Miss Grasse’s nose quivered behind her aunt’s heaving shoulders.

The mother said, “His friend was with Frederick when he bought the shawl for me.”

Miss Grasse didn’t believe. She didn’t know what Steve wanted here but she knew his coming wasn’t honest. Her eye was trained to spot excuses.

He said to Mrs. Grasse, “I must go. Thank you for your kindness.”

She was a little fearful. As if, in his leaving, he was taking away another part of her son. She took his hand and pressed it. “Come again to see me. Thank you for coming today. Thank you.”

Had Albie spoken of Davidian, perhaps a funny story to make her laugh, about a little man who made money and who was hidden in the open streets but no one could find him? No more questions. Miss Grasse was at his side until he was shown out the door. She remained on guard in the doorway until he was beyond the path and out on the sidewalk. Her silent mouth was repeating, “We don’t want to know Frederick’s friends.”

On the corner of Fourteenth Street there was a superdrugstore and supermarket. On impulse, Steve swung into the parking lot. He took the drugstore, found a phone booth and called Feather’s number.

The precise voice of the manservant wasn’t certain that Miss Talle was available. Before investigating, he was insistent on the name of the person calling; he’d been trained to preserve the Eldon Moritz privacy. He was worth every cent of the three or four hundred a month he’d demand.

Feather came on the phone. She said, “I have only a moment. Haig is waiting for me.”

“Have you found out anything?”

“Oh yes.” She sounded pleased.

“When do I see you?”

She was hesitant. “I don’t know whether I can get away.”

He told her flatly, “If you have a date for cocktails with me, you can get away.” Either she was without any experience or she didn’t want to get away.

She hesitated further. “Y-yes.”

“I’ll meet you at five. Wherever you say.”

She didn’t say anything but she was there, he could hear her faint breath. She might be consulting Haig.

“Well?”

“Could you make it at six? It may be difficult.”

“Six. But I can’t stay long. I have a dinner date.” Tonight he wasn’t going to drag her along. “Where?”

“The Beverly Hills.”

“I thought the point was to shake that guy?”

“Oh yes, he’s stopping there,” she remembered vaguely.

She was the dumbest girl he’d ever met; no one could be that dumb. “Well, where?”

“The Beverly Wilshire?”

She wouldn’t know any dumps, only chromium-plated
bistros.
There wouldn’t be any dumps in Beverly Hills. He’d buy her one drink. “Don’t be late,” he said and hung up. That one would be wasted money. But he couldn’t miss any bets. She just might not be Haig’s girl.

When he left the booth he realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. There was time for a sandwich. He sat down on an upholstered stool at the soda fountain, ordered a cheese and coffee. The sandwich came fresh, wrapped in wax paper. He ordered another, and, lured by a shiny brown-and-cream illustration hanging on the mirror, topped it off with a chocolate soda. He hadn’t had a chocolate soda in years and it was good. It was like being home.

And then it was time to put in an appearance at the farewell to Albion. Not for Albie’s sake but because both sides would speculate over his absence. In their respective myopias they wouldn’t consider he might stay away in protest against furthering the ancient ugliness of gathering about an empty rotting shell, a custom perpetuated out of superstition and greed. Albion was gone, a part of infinity. He might even be a part of blessed infinity, he’d made mistakes but the Divinity wasn’t the party. You could err; you could, if you had to, hug grievous error, and be forgiven. God could forgive Albion his mistakes, God and Albie’s mother.

There were plenty of cars around the funeral home. He was late, the macabre festivities hadn’t begun but within there was a sizable audience. Not mixed. Schmidt and Oriole and Frederick’s friends were on one side; on the other were relatives and the family friends. On the outskirts was the law. He recognized Hale’s jaw line and Ferber’s shoulders. Wilton was further offside where he could check each entrance. Were they hoping Davidian might show? Steve didn’t join any group; he took a doorman’s position on the opposite side from Wilton. He’d only gone into his folding chair when the immediate family appeared and the man who must be the minister. Mrs. Grasse hadn’t veiled her face, her shoulders were straight and her chin; she wouldn’t weep. Not for an audience.

The minister spoke briefly, without spirit, he might have been rented with the hall. He was safer with the words of the Lord; his voice strengthened as he read from his book:

He was too young to have known Frederick Grasse; had the Lord guided him to this Psalm? Or was it the mother?

There were hushed steps of more latecomers. Two heads turned, Steve’s and Wilton’s. There was no need, Haig Armour and Feather didn’t hide in the rear. They moved down the short aisle until they were directly behind the family party. Feather couldn’t have known she was coming to visit the dead; she was dressed for cocktails in a cap of violets, a spray of them at the collar of her blue suit.

the minister intoned as he closed the book. He didn’t try a eulogy, merely a brief prayer for a man who had been and was no more. The murmur of
Amen
came feebly from both sides. No one wept.