Chapter 12

Phyllis sat in an armchair in the living room of Jim O'Brien's house. Lem had put her there gently but firmly when he saw her on the verge of collapse. The sight of the thick-set Boston attorney's almost headless body had hit her like a blow to the solar plexus. Not that she gave an emotional damn about J. J. O'Brien-after all, she barely knew the man. But coming on top of all the other gruesome experiences, beginning with her discovery of poor Gerry Mann's murder, virtually on her own doorstep, three nights before, along with the physiological upheaval Tim Buckley had brought into her life, it was more than she could endure.

She sat there, shivering though the day was warm, holding tightly to the arms of the chair lest she topple from it, in a sort of near coma.

Much of what occurred in the next half hour she could recall later only in flashes, so deeply was she insulated against reality in the womb of her own withdrawal.

She remembered Lem remarking to a high police official, "Maybe Jim was lucky at that. If he'd lived, he would have been in big trouble."

She recalled a near frantic Emilio Colucci, his handsome face ash pale with anger and fear, crying out to Lem and some others, "But this was none of our doing-none of it is our doing!"

A little later, she could recall Lem's standing over her and saying, "Phyllis, you've got to have rest and care. I'm taking you back to Kitteridge."

She made no protest, though the violence of the past four days had caused her home, her quiet, orderly life there, to fade into unreality, as if on the other side of a barrier of mist that cast it into near neutral colors. She remembered Lem guiding through the swarms of police and reporters and an outer fringe of the mere curious, to his car-while cameras seemed to pop up everywhere.

She remembered little of the ride home-until Lem delivered her to a waiting Beth Davis, who helped her upstairs to the very bed from which she had fled in guilt to keep her belated date with Gerry Mann-and once again Orangeade, the big coon cat that had broken her slumber, jumped up on the bed, purring and scolding as if she had wronged him by not staying there in the first place.

She remembered stroking his jaws and thinking that Orangeade was probably right-that if she had only obeyed Lem Weldon's first dictum to stay put, a great many unpleasant things might not have happened.

Then Dr. Willoughby's familiar face was looking down at her, and there were poking and prodding and a glass of something cloudy that quickly put her to sleep.

For the next thirty-six hours or so, Phyllis slept and rested. Beth had brought a tiny TV set into her guest bedroom and, occasionally, Phyllis watched and listened-but never for long. Every few minutes she would drift back into slumber. It was not until late in the afternoon of her second day at Beth's that she came fully awake, roused by the clamoring of a stomach that had absorbed only medicine and a few cups of beef broth.

When she swung her long legs over the side of the bed and sat up, Orangeade regarded her balefully for having disturbed a soft warm setup he had been enjoying almost constantly since her arrival. For a long moment, Phyllis had to clutch the edge of the mattress to keep from falling-but the dizziness soon passed while her hunger remained. She stood up without difficulty, got into a robe Beth had provided, and made her way downstairs.

The older woman was in the kitchen, basting a nearly cooked leg of lamb with a cigarette in the corner of her mouth when her guest appeared. She said, "It's about time you snapped out of it. Help me put the salad together and then I'll get you a drink."

"I'll keel over," said Phyllis.

"You wouldn't dare," her friend told her and Phyllis laughed for the first time since her unintentional killing of Gina de Brett. It felt so good to be here, with Beth snapping her out of it. Her long rest seemed to have put a barrier between the homely, happier present and the violence and fear she had undergone between the murders of Gerry Mann and Jim O'Brien.

Beth was right about the drink. As the good S.S. Pierce bourbon flowed through her, Phyllis felt renewed warmth and strength of body and soul. She and the older woman drank and smoked and watched TV and chatted of local trivialities until it was time for dinner. Not until they were lingering over cafe royales at Beth's fine old antique cherry wood dining room table with its big silver pheasants in the center, did Phyllis become aware of a new conundrum.

She knew her hostess's insatiable curiosity about any and everything, knew that she had to be bursting with questions about what had happened to her guest. But thus far, over a two-hour period since Phyllis came downstairs, she had not once even mentioned what had to be the biggest melodrama to hit sleepy old Kitteridge since the Revolution, when a British foraging party from Boston had been summarily routed by sturdy Minuteman.

It was out of drawing ... unless...

Putting down her coffee cup and reaching for a recently lighted cigarette, Phyllis looked Beth in the eye and said, "Come across, Beth."

Beth looked blank, then said, "Come across with what? Is this a holdup or something?"

"You know something. If you didn't, you'd be pumping me dry. What is it?"

"Suppose I deny it. There's nothing you could do about it, honeybunch."

Phyllis said, "if that's true, I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."

"Then you'd better raise your hand when you have to go to the bathroom."

Phyllis had to laugh. Beth's sometimes earthy humor was liberally salted with the absurd. Beth grinned and said, reaching across the table to pat Phyllis's wrist, "Yes, I know something-but I wasn't especially anxious for you to find it out and Lem told me not to bug you with questions."

"What is it?" Phyllis looked at her hostess eagerly. "Not that I'm not grateful."

"Of course you're not," said Beth. Then, after a pause, "I suppose you think I'm a garrulous old gossip-which of course I am. But I know how to keep my mouth shut when I have to. If I didn't, I'd have been run out of this town on a rail forty years ago."

"Let's move it to the living room," Phyllis suggested and Beth agreed.

There, when they were settled, the older woman said, "Not that I'm not green with envy..."

"Because I got taken suddenly rich?" Phyllis was surprised since she knew Beth was well off.

"No, Phyl, I may have tired blood but it still flows red. I'm jealous of your three-day bat with Tim Buckley."

"What do you know about Tim?" Phyl was not merely surprised but shocked.

"Only that he's the most fascinating American male to come along this side of Burt Reynolds. When Lem told me he'd called him in to play watchdog over you, I thought about him, and then I thought about poor Freddy-and then I got jealous."

"Is he famous or something?" said Phyllis. "I mean, I never even heard of him until..." She felt herself blush at what had all but tumbled out of her mouth.

"Honeybunch," said Beth. "You don't mind if

I call you honeybunch, do you."

"Oh, shut up."

"Very well."

"Stop teasing me, Beth. Is he famous?"

"In an undercover sort of way, he really is. He's been the little man who wasn't there in more dangerous intrigues and investigations than anyone outside of Henry Kissinger over the last ten years or so."

"How do you know about him when I don't?" Phyllis demanded.

"Nobody knows this in Kitteridge outside of Lem Weldon and he got me into it," said Beth. "So if you ever breathe a word of it I'll wring your neck personally. During the war-the last big one-I took a job directing the central switchboard for the entire First Corps Area, as they called New England then. I stumbled onto a few things here and there and the first thing I knew, I was working for the O.S.S. as well. Lem was attached to it and, some years later, when there was trouble and he was Public Safety Commissioner, he put me to work again. That's why I called him when we first learned about your inheritance. That's why I'm keeping you here with me now. Not that I'm not delighted to have you, Phyl, naturally. Now, I hope we're still friends."

"Of course." But the relationship was different, no longer for Phyllis quite the old-shoe m comfortable thing it had been for so many years. She said, "I wish somebody'd tell me just what I am involved in, outside of the fact that there's a big Mafia angle and there's narcotics smuggling involved and I seem to be a prime target for somebody and people around me keep getting killed."

"I wish to hell I could," said Beth and there was no doubting either her sympathy or her sincerity. "I know some of the background, of course. It involves the most massive narcotics smuggling ever engaged in by any nation-yes, national interests are involved, Lem tells me."

"National-how come?"

"Don't laugh when I tell you. This is deadly serious business," said the older woman. "Apparently it involves an attempt by certain of the Eastern bloc nations to turn on the population of the United States via hard drugs, imported on a mammoth scale and retailed at a price far below the going market rates.

"It is the undercutting that has lined up some elements of the Mafia on the side of Law and Order," she went on. "A weird setup if ever I heard of one."

"Necessity," said Phyllis, "is the mother of strange bedfellows. No wonder Emilio Colucci was almost hysterical about his people having nothing to do with Jim O'Brien's murder!"

"But if the Mafia's not in this one, why all the uproar over the Carini will? Why not just make the settlement with me and be quiet about it?"

"Because there is reason to believe Old Sal was involved."

"You mean, the Godfather sold out the family to feather his own nest?"

"It's possible," said Beth. "But there's one big element still missing in the jigsaw and that's the actual go-between that carried out the deal between Sal and the Asian bloc. Nobody has the slightest idea who it is. That's why it's still in the air."

"I wouldn't like to be that person right now," said Phyllis with a shudder. "I suppose Jim O'Brien knew who it was-and got his head blown off for it."

Beth nodded, said, "With the same kind of bullet that was aimed at your head, Phyl. Oh, to hell with it-the go-between is probably safe and snug in Asia right now." She sighed, added, "But they're keeping this house under guard till they're sure."

"Then why can't I go home if I wish to?" asked Phyllis. "Not that I'm not grateful for everything, but sooner or later I've got to get dressed and I'd like to have my own wardrobe to pick from. At present, it's somewhat limited."

"I know what you mean," said Beth. "You miss your own bathroom. Well, I suppose you could go home if you want to. But we'd better call Lem first."

"Yes, mother dear-ask daddy."

Beth called the attorney and talked to him, then held out the phone to Phyllis. Lem said, "I'm not at all sure it's a good idea but I can't think of any valid objection, my dear."

"But if the house is guarded..."

"It will be, the moment you get there," was the reply. "Very well, Phyllis, but we don't want anything to happen to you."

"Has anything new broken?"

"Everything is in stasis," Lem told her. "Now let me talk to Beth once more."

Beth drove her home through the dimly lighted streets of the old town and a dark sedan containing two men followed them closely. As they turned in to the familiar driveway, the car followed and another car, waiting at the turnaround beyond the front door, turned on its headlights as Beth braked gently to a stop.

She said, "If for no other reason, your getting out of my house will get the Federal fuzz off my back. I'll call you tomorrow-there's still a month of good golfing weather ahead of us."

"Do that." Phyllis gave her a hug. "Don't think I'm not grateful..."

"Hateful condition," said Beth. "Adios, love."

A strange man helped Phyllis put her bags inside the front door and said, "If you'd prefer an inside watch..."

"No thanks," Phyllis told him. "I feel well enough protected as it is."

"Don't worry, Mrs. Barrett," said his companion. "We won't let a mouse through without a pass."

"I'm sure you won't. Thank you, gentlemen."

To her pleased surprise, the house looked spotless. A note from Hilma, propped up on the table just inside the front door, informed her that she had cleaned the place thoroughly three days earlier and would return on Monday, still four days away, unless Phyllis wanted her and called. Bless Hilma.

It was good to be home and, for the moment, alone. So much had happened to her so rapidly that Phyllis had had no opportunity to take stock of herself. For better or worse, she was not the same locked in young war widow she was when word of the inheritance first reached her. In one way, Tim Buckley had seen to that. In others, well-it was time she decided what sort of person she was going to be when it was all over but the shouting, as it seemed to be.

She went to the kitchen, poured herself a long light highball, kicked off her shoes, settled comfortably on the familiar sofa surrounded by all the dear, familiar things that spelled home to her. Thanks to the medicated rest she had enjoyed at Beth's, she felt wide awake, alert, alive, ready for ... All right, let's face it, ready for Tim to fuck her again ... Damn! She wondered what he had turned her into, a nymphomaniac? Then she remembered that nymphos are not supposed to derive much satisfaction from indulgence of their insatiable cravings for sex, and if ever there had been a satisfied female it was herself, Phyllis West Barrett, when Tim was prodding her guts with his codpiece.

Unedifying thoughts. She wondered where Tim was right then, whom he was with, what he was doing with her-as if she didn't know. She wondered if she were in love with him or merely infatuated. Either way, living without him was not going to be easy. She wondered if his apparent legion of other loves was plagued with the same problem. Damn again! With the Pill and antibiotics, why couldn't she simply be promiscuous and have a ball without regrets, as apparently millions of other females at all social levels succeeded in doing?

Good question, good question, good question. ... the only trouble was, she didn't see how she could do it. For years she had survived after a fashion, even been content, after a fashion, on the mere memory of one man, Pres. Now Tim had come along and, in three nights, wiped Pres out. She wondered if those three nights were going to have to suffice her the rest of her life.

She finished her drink and went upstairs, carrying her bags with her. She went into her bedroom and got out of her clothes, laid out a robe and went naked into the bathroom. And there was Pres, sitting on the John.

Save for an increase in the little lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, he looked identical with the Pres that had left her for flying in Vietnam. As he turned his head upward to look at her, she caught a few shafts of silver in the coarse dark hair of his head. Sardonic silent mirth still gleamed in the dark brown eyes.

He sat there, naked save for a pair of red, white and blue striped underdrawers, and there was a long-barreled black automatic lying across his thighs.

His smile matched the mockery in his eyes as he said, "You might as well come in and shut the door, darling. We may be in here quite a while."

Despite the shock of Pres's reappearance, Phyllis discovered her surprise was not as deep as it might have been-somewhere, deep in her subconscious, she might even have been expecting it. All the talk of an undiscovered go-between, all the evasions of her questions indicated that the investigators had certainly considered Pres as a possibility, that somehow their suspicions had seeped through to her inner self.

His death in a flaming plane had been authenticated beyond question. Yet here he was, alive, sitting in her upstairs bathroom. She noted then a number of things that had not impressed themselves upon her awareness when she entered and found him there. The bathroom was large, a converted small bedroom in the old house, and Pres had made himself as comfortable as possible. Books and magazines rested on the two-tiered utility table, as did her bedroom telephone with its long extension cord. There was a carton of cigarettes, more than half filled, a large ashtray from the kitchen, even the silent butler from the living room downstairs. His clothing, a dark suit such as he had always favored, plus shirt and tie, hung from a hook on the inside of the door.

Windowless and almost soundproof in the center of the second story, the room was an all but perfect hideout. Still, she marveled at his nerve in coming here and said so.

His one-sided smile widened slightly. He said, "The house was searched thoroughly after you left it. Your friend Lem Weldon saw to that. Nobody saw me come here-I know a way in from my childhood and, besides, the place was unguarded-at least it was until now. I presume you brought an escort with you."

Phyllis nodded. Then she said, "For Christ's sake, Pres, whatever made you think you could get away with it?"

There was a trace of pride in his voice as he replied, "But I have gotten away with it. They may have suspected I was alive, but they couldn't prove it. I took damn good care of that end."

"But you had to put in occasional appearances-you must have run a high risk of being recognized by someone who knew you."

He shrugged, said, "Not as high as you might suppose. In Boston, or anywhere else I might be spotted, I moved entirely by night."

"Didn't you use disguises?"

"What for? If anyone who knew me saw me, it was fleetingly. And once people accept the fact you're dead, they aren't anxious to have that fact reversed. It upsets them. They might remark having seen someone who looked remarkably like me, they might be reminded of me, but that's as far as it went.

"Of course there were risks." He answered her question before she could utter it. "But since you've known me, when have I been afraid of taking a long chance-if the reward was sufficiently large to warrant it."

He looked hard at her and the glint in his dark eyes made her suddenly aware of her nakedness, of her vulnerability. Then he said, "OIi-oh!" and lifted the handgun from his thighs and, with a slight shift of his position, his phallus, long and lean and veined with purple, suddenly popped into view.

He put down the gun on the floor beside the throne and reached for her. She felt helpless at the well-remembered toughness of his hard palms sliding over her thighs to cup her buttocks. As he drew her toward him, she felt helpless as a Barbi Doll.

If I were a real heroine, she thought vagrantly as she was drawn irresistibly into her husband's embrace, I'd do something about this.

But what? She didn't really have any choice.