Palace Council (13 page)

They were headed someplace else.

They.
Not
she. They.

Maybe the key was that Junie had not vanished alone.

Eddie realized at last that half-measures would not do. Sneaking up on problems had never been his best thing, any more than it had been his baby sister's. The only way he would find Junie was to look for Junie, and if that meant everybody would know, then everybody would just have to know.

He even knew where to go next.

CHAPTER
20

A Companionable Journey

(I)

K
EVIN
G
ARLAND WAS DOING EVERYTHING
in his power to keep his wife happy. Yes, they could move to the suburbs. Yes, he would spend more time at home, not only with her but with the children. Yes, it was fine if Aurelia wanted to go to Chicago for a week to visit Mona. Yes, yes, yes, to everything. Aurie was surprised by his fervor, and grateful for it. But she was also perplexed. One night, as they drove back to the city from an excruciating dinner at Matty's house, she asked him, in as casual a voice as she could manage, what people meant when they mentioned the Garland heir.

“I don't understand,” said Kevin, eyes on the road.

Aurie had her shoes off. She loosened her girdle, put her head back, and shut her eyes. “Our son. Somebody told me he's the Garland heir.”

“Locke?” The bewilderment in his voice seemed genuine. “I guess he's one of the heirs, anyway. I inherit my father's estate. Naturally, I would divide it between the children. And you, of course.”

“Of course,” said Aurelia, very puzzled.

“Unless you mean—” he began, and stopped.

“Unless I mean what?” She was now awake, and alert. She could read her husband's nervousness in the dipping of his head and the way he licked his lips. She sensed that this was the moment to press. The only moment. “Come on, honey. Unless I mean what? Tell me what you're thinking.”

“That night in our bedroom,” he said. They rounded a curve. The lights of Manhattan loomed suddenly from the darkness. “What I said to you, how I said it—I wasn't myself, Aurie. Please believe me.”

She touched his cheek. “I believe you, honey.”

“I shouldn't have said it. I'm sorry. I love both of our children the same. I really do.”

“I believe you,” she said again.

“It's just—in the family—there are certain traditions. You know. Passed on from father to son. My dad thinks things like that are important, and, well, we're not a family that takes well to change.”

“What traditions?”

“Like running the family business. Garland & Son.”

“You don't think Zora could do that?”

“It's not the tradition,” he said, stubbornly, but she sensed that they had somehow veered into a different argument, and that Kevin was relieved to have distracted her.

(II)

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK,
Kevin had to go down to Washington for a couple of days to see some people, as he always put it. This was their new arrangement, that he would tell his wife exactly where he was going, and when he would return. Usually he asked if she wanted to go along. This time she said yes. She drove the children up to Dobbs Ferry to stay with their grandparents. Wanda, as chilly as ever toward her daughter-in-law, was delighted to have Zora and Locke.

Kevin and Aurelia took the train. They stayed at the home of a relative on Sixteenth Street, an enclave of prosperous Negroes known as the Gold Coast. Kevin had meetings the first day. Aurelia shopped with Janine, her sorority sister. That night Kevin and Aurie dined with their hosts. The second day was much the same, and the second night they had dinner at the Wisconsin Avenue apartment of Congressman Lanning Frost and his wife, Margot. A couple of years ago, there had been this rumor about Eddie and Margot. Aurelia wondered whether it was true. Margot and Kevin talked about these new radicals, Agony, or Jewel Agony. Harlem was abuzz because the group had managed to set off a bomb at a Klan rally in Alabama. Nobody had been hurt, but Negroes across the country cheered. A letter from Agony's head, somebody called Commander M, promised to target only “the most violent satraps of white reaction.” A couple of newspapers had published it, but not in the South. Kevin was telling Margot that this sort of thing would do more harm than good in the long run. Margot, for whom most questions were reducible to matters of who gained political advantage, said that her husband had gone to the well of the House to condemn the bombing while other liberals were dithering over whether they should seem to be protecting the Klan.

“Violence is violence,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Congressman entertained Aurelia. “The thing about the missile gap,” he said, “is that, whatever might be the precise amount, our preparedness has yet to be specific to our needs.” But she was getting the hang of him. Still listening with half an ear to the other conversation, she said something about civil defense and air-raid shelters, and Frost nodded enthusiastically. “Because otherwise,” he explained, “everyone in America is worse off in the rest of the world.”

The doorbell announced the arrival of the remaining guests. Senator Van Epp apologized for his tardiness. His wife was olive-complected, perhaps Mediterranean. The Senator made a great fuss over Aurie, and, during dinner, kept the table laughing with his stories. Margot announced dessert. Then it was time for business. Kevin and the Senator withdrew with Lanning Frost to another room. After a moment, Margot apologetically joined them.

Aurie was left alone with the Senator's wife. Mrs. Van Epp sat very straight. Her voice came out of the side of her mouth in a lipless murmur. Aurie sensed the older woman's disapproval, and wondered why. Perhaps it was true what Kevin had once told her: that the white matrons of Washington were far worse than the black matrons of Harlem. As soon as she decently could, Aurelia took herself off to the powder room adjoining the foyer. When she emerged, the Senator's blond bodyguard was standing nearby, toying with a cigarette lighter.

“Good evening, Mrs. Garland.”

She refused to be cowed twice. “Will you be grabbing my arm this evening, Mr. Collier?”

“Please accept my apologies.” Again he seemed amused, and even managed what must have been intended as humor. “You might have been an assassin.”

“With my own key to the apartment?”

“I'm afraid my function requires me to allow for that possibility, Mrs. Garland. Yes.”

His evident friendliness intrigued her. “May I ask you a question, Mr. Collier?”

“Please.”

“Why does a United States Senator need a bodyguard?”

He tilted his head as if to acknowledge a good point. “Mine not to question why, Mrs. Garland.”

“Meaning, you'll do what you're hired to do? No matter what? Because, I have to tell you, Mr. Collier, that idea scares the hell out of me.”

The blond man gave this objection serious consideration. “If there are limits to my function,” he finally said, “they are not found in the task. They are found in the men assigning the task.”

“What you're saying is—”

“I am a bodyguard, Mrs. Garland. I will do what is necessary to protect my clients and their interests.” The blue eyes were fierce diamonds now. “But there certainly exist people, Mrs. Garland, who are not worth protecting.”

He slipped away. The Senator's wife came up behind her. “I understand you have young children, dear. You simply must tell me all about them.” But she had to say it twice before Aurelia heard.

CHAPTER
21

The Other Woman

(I)

P
ATRICK AND
I
RENE
M
ARTINDALE LIVED
in a peeling wooden house on a forested lot in the farming community of Darien, Connecticut. Remnants of late-winter snow clung to the trees. Climbing the gravel drive, he saw gray flash against brown and green as small animals, and sometimes large ones, darted across the road. He was surprised that the Martindales had agreed to see him so readily, and not only because they might not want to revisit the pain of loss. As Junie's brother, Eddie was, obviously, a Negro, and it had not been his experience that the sort of Caucasians who lived in Connecticut mansions inclined warmly toward his people.

Not that Patrick and Reenie were rich—this they made clear from the moment they wafted him into their dark, paneled home, pressing upon him a cigar and various liqueurs, as if meeting at a Manhattan men's club—no, no, there had been a bit of money in the family, but old Uncle Deaver had wasted the fortune, except for the land, they explained gleefully, smiling at each other in approval of their own fiscal modesty. They were an oddly matched pair, he small and happily disapproving, she taller and fuller of figure and in some murky way joyfully unsatisfied. But they took pains to assure Eddie that they were on his side, without ever asking what side he might be on. He was black, and so they knew. They spoke of the South with a fury proposing that slavery had ended just yesterday; and of Emmett Till with a fervor that suggested they had witnessed his mutilation. They could scarcely conceal their delight at hosting a Negro in their home, and Eddie suspected that within half a day all of their neighbors would know, because the Martindales were the sort of couple who would make sure of it.

“Our Sharon hated racism, old man,” Patrick explained, who had a way of speaking to a spot several feet over your head. For Saturday in the country, he wore a heavy sweater and workingman's pants splattered with paint, but his untutored hands were soft and pale. During the week, he did something clever on Wall Street, but only part-time. “She hated racism,” he repeated. “Battled it everywhere. That's why she and Junie were such good friends.”

Reenie picked up the theme. “Our
Sharon
hated racism, and your
Junie
hated racism”—the cadence made the words a nursery rhyme—“and they planned to
fight
oppression
everywhere.
”

“With the tools of law,” said Patrick. “They only ever intended to sue people.”

“Or whatever
else
they had to
do
to win the
fight,
” said Reenie, with her oddly spaced emphases. A floral dress hung tentatively from her body like an unfinished display. It was only midafternoon, but Eddie had a shrewd notion that the Martindales had been drinking for a long while before he arrived; and he doubted that their shared inebriation was something special they were putting on for him. Maybe it had started when they lost Sharon.

Patrick corrected his wife with a fond smile. “But only within the law,” he murmured.

“Of
course,
dear,” said Reenie, looking away.

They sat in Uncle Deaver's gun room, surrounded by glass cases and open cabinets chockablock with weaponry. Eddie had the threadbare sofa, Sharon's parents an adjacent pair of sagging easy chairs with a low blond wood table between. Behind Patrick's head hung a Japanese sword, a souvenir from the war. Behind Reenie was a framed flintlock pistol, together with a little brass plate attesting its provenance. As the conversation danced across every topic except the one Eddie wanted to raise, it dawned on him that his hosts had chosen the venue for a reason.

“I don't know
why
you people put
up
with it,” said Reenie, as her fervent husband, now bounding around the room, drew the conversation once more to civil rights.

“Talk about the case for armed revolution,” said Patrick. “If I were colored, I'd carry a gun everywhere. I'd shoot the white man for sport.”

“And the white
woman,
” added Reenie, as if afraid of being left out.

Her husband shot her an affectionate look. She beamed back at him. They linked hands for a moment as he passed behind her. Eddie was looking at the gun cabinet, wondering what his hosts would do if he asked for a loaner, maybe to go out and shoot the white man with. He was starting to suspect that a teeming rage lay beneath the couple's surface amity.

“You need to top that up, old man,” said Patrick, pointing to Eddie's nearly untouched snifter.

Eddie dutifully held out the glass. “I'd like to hear about Junie, if I could.”

“Junie was such a sweetheart,” said Patrick, eyeing his wife, but this time she dropped her eyes. “We adored her.”

“
Adored
her,” confirmed Reenie, studying the rug.

“Sharon adored her, too.” Loping around the room again. “Always said she was the smartest Negro she'd ever met.”

“Negress,” said Reenie.

“Colored girl,” suggested her husband, as a compromise.

“They need a new
word,
” said Reenie.

Patrick pointed at Eddie. “You need a new word,” he proclaimed.

“They adored each
other,
” Reenie explained, hugging herself with thin arms. “They were
wonderful
friends. They
planned
to be together
forever.
They'd been reading
Foucault
about the
body
—”

“Mr. Wesley won't have heard of Foucault,” cautioned Patrick, not quite sotto voce.

“One of the
wives
was
talking
about him the other night at the
club,
” Reenie persisted. “
Not
about
you,
Mr. Wesley.” A shy smile. “About
Foucault.
How he's a
Platonist.
Or
not
a Platonist.
One
of them.” A brief furrowing of the brow before Reenie decided that she was above worrying about right answers. “Foucault says the
body
is a
battleground.
It
changes.
It's a
concept,
not a
thing.
”

This was how they lived together, Eddie realized. Mumbling importantly about people they barely knew and philosophies they would never attempt, then heading down to the club for a bite. What kind of daughter might they have produced? And how on earth had Sharon and Junie become best friends?

Eddie said, “When the girls disappeared—”

“Ran
away,
” said Reenie, promptly.

“Or were kidnapped,” added her husband with a frown.

Everybody waited. Eddie tried again. “After the car was found—”

But Patrick and Reenie were the sort who showed how much they liked you by carrying on their own conversation in your hearing. “Never really thought it made sense, old man,” said Patrick. “The car locked up like that. Not what a murderer would do, is it? Wondered whether it might have been locked up after the crime, actually.”

“By the
kidnappers,
” Reenie breathed. “If there
were
kidnappers.”

“To make it look like they ran away,” said her husband.

“Or else they really
did,
” said his wife.

Eddie felt as if he had forgotten to switch on his brain this morning. “What I really wondered was whether you had a theory about—well, say they did run away. Say the disappearance was voluntary, and not a kidnapping.” A glance at Patrick, already primed to object. “This is just a theory. But suppose they did. If Sharon decided to run away, I was wondering where she might go. Whom she might contact. Whether there are people to whom she would turn for help.”

“She would do
anything
for the
revolution,
” Reenie assured him, and poured herself a fresh tot.

“She would never run away and not tell us,” said Patrick, flatly. “We told the police, for all that they cared. She had no secrets, old man. Not from us. We're not just her parents. We're her friends.” Waving importantly at his glass, a signal to his wife to fill it. “It was a crime, pure and simple. It was a crime, and they refuse to catch the criminals, because of Junie.”

“And
Sharon,
” added Reenie. Eddie waited for more, but evidently there was none.

“Still,” Eddie persisted, “if she did decide, hypothetically, to, say, help the revolution”—this for Reenie—“by going underground, for instance. I'm wondering where she would have gone.”

“You'd
have
to ask
Ferdinand,
” said Reenie.

“It would never happen,” said Patrick. “And Ferdinand was over long ago.”

Eddie had the wit not to interpose a question.

“Her
boyfriend,
” said Reenie.

“He was never her boyfriend,” said Patrick, his old-boy calm now a fierce restraint. “Colored boy.”

“He was a
Marxist.
”

“They barely knew each other.”

“He's at
Columbia
now.”

Patrick rounded on her, the revolution temporarily on hold. “They had nothing to do with each other! They never did! The fool boy was just one of her phases!” Back to Eddie. “We don't know if the boy is at Columbia or anyplace else. We don't know anything about him.” He seemed to be waiting for Eddie to write this down. Perhaps they thought he was official: one of Hoover's, say. “Ferdinand had dangerous ideas. Sharon wasn't the kind of girl to be attracted to his kind of ideas.”

Eddie asked, “What was Ferdinand's last name?”

“It doesn't matter,” said Patrick, jumping in before his wife could speak. “He was just a friend. Not even a friend. She barely knew him.”

“She
adored
—” Reenie began, but a look from her husband silenced her.

“If Sharon needed help,” Patrick declared, “she'd have come to us.” He scowled at the flintlock. “Us. Her parents. Not some boy she barely knew who wanted to burn everything down.”

Eddie said, “I thought you were in favor of the revolution.”

Patrick seemed ready to tear his thin hair. “That boy didn't care about the revolution. He wasn't a Marxist. He wasn't anything. He just hated.”

“Hated who? Hated what?”

“The world. The people in it.”

“Poor boy,” said Reenie, sipping. “Patrick couldn't
stand
him.”

“I barely knew him, woman! It was Sharon who couldn't stand him!”

But Reenie, finger wagging, had the final word: “It's
not
that Ferdinand wasn't for the
revolution.
He just wasn't very
practical
about it. He tried to burn down our
house
—”

“Don't you dare repeat that!” Patrick snapped, but it was unclear which of them he was addressing.

“This was after Sharon
dumped
him.” Reenie's glittering green eyes were focused into the past. “I
suppose
he thought
we
put her
up
to it, poor boy. Still, burning the
house
wasn't a very
nice
way to show he loved her, now,
was
it?”

“Did you report the fire to the police?” asked Eddie.

“He was drunk,” said Patrick, rolling his eyes. “He made a mistake. We all make mistakes. Me. You.” He glanced again at Reenie as if expecting her to argue the point. “Things happen. It had nothing to do with Sharon. She couldn't have dumped him, because they never dated. And besides”—it occurred to Eddie that Patrick was offering far too many excuses—“he didn't really do much damage. You would hardly call it a fire. Forget about it.” He straightened, smiled, recovered his poise. “Thanks so much for dropping in, Mr. Wesley. Oh, but drive carefully, old man. The police out here are fine people, but some of them have as much racial sensitivity as the worst Southern—”

“Sharon was
in
the house when he burned it,” Reenie interrupted. “Poor boy,” she said again. “He
used
to say the only thing to
do
was blow everything
up
and start
over.
”

(II)

M
AYBE,
Eddie told himself, driving back toward civilization, and sanity, all the while watching for stray cops as Patrick had advised. Maybe not. Maybe Sharon and Junie had been kidnapped after all. Maybe they had been murdered. Maybe they had run off together to explore the radical alternative. Maybe the Martindales were bonkers. Eddie supposed that losing your only child could do that.

Still, he now had a piece of a name and a possible affiliation: Ferdinand, a Negro, who used to be at Harvard, or at least in or around Boston, and had moved on to Columbia.

He even had a candidate. Every road led in the same direction.