He picked up the phone and asked for Gretchen’s number. He listened as the operator dialed. The busy signal, that snarling sound, came over the wire. He hung up and went over to the window and parted the curtains and looked out. The afternoon was cold and gray. Down below pedestrians leaned against the wind, hurrying for shelter, collars up. It was an ex-policeman’s kind of day.
He went back to the phone, asked for Gretchen’s number again. Once more, he heard the busy signal. He slammed down the instrument, annoyed. He wanted to get this miserable business over with as quickly as possible. He had spoken to a lawyer friend, without mentioning names, and the lawyer friend had advised him that the injured party should move out of the communal habitation with the child before bringing any action, unless there was some way of keeping the husband out of the apartment completely from that moment on. Under no conditions should the injured party sleep one night more under the same roof with the defendant-to-be.
Before he called Willie and confronted him with the detective’s report, he had to tell Gretchen this and tell her also that he intended to speak to Willie immediately.
But again the phone rang busy. The injured party was having a chatty afternoon. With whom was she talking—Johnny Heath, quiet, bland lover, constant guest, or one of the other ten men she had said she no longer wanted to sleep with? The easiest lay in New York. Sister mine.
He looked at his watch. Five minutes to four. Willie would undoubtedly be back in his office by now, happily dozing off the pre-lunch martinis.
Rudolph picked up the phone and called Willie’s number. Two secretaries in Willie’s office wafted him along, disembodied sweet voices, electric with public relations charm. “Hi, Merchant Prince,” Willie said, when he came on the line. “To what do I owe the honor?” It was a three-martini voice this afternoon.
“Willie,” Rudolph said, “you have to come over here to my hotel right away.”
“Listen, kid, I’m sort of tied up here and …”
“Willie, I warn you, you’d better come over here this minute.”
“Okay,” Willie said, his voice subdued. “Order me a drink.”
Drinkless, Willie sat in the chair the ex-policeman had used earlier, and carefully read the report. Rudolph stood at the window, looking out. He heard the rustle of paper as Willie put the report down.
“Well,” Willie said, “it seems I’ve been a very busy little boy. What are you going to do with this now?” He tapped the report.
Rudolph reached over and picked up the clipped-together sheets of paper and tore them into small pieces and dropped the pieces into the wastebasket.
“What does that mean?” Willie asked.
“It means that I can’t go through with it,” Rudolph said. “Nobody’s going to see it and nobody’s going to know about it. If your wife wants a divorce, she’ll have to figure out another way to get it.”
“Oh,” Willie said. “It was Gretchen’s idea?”
“Not exactly. She said she wanted to get away from you, but she wanted to keep the kid, and I offered to help.”
“Blood is thicker than marriage. Is that it?”
“Something like that. Only not my blood. This time.”
“You came awfully close to being a shit, Merchant Prince,” Willie said, “didn’t you?”
“So I did.”
“Does my beloved wife know you have this on me?”
“No. And she’s not going to.”
“In days to come,” Willie said, “I shall sing the praises of my shining brother-in-law. Look, I shall tell my son, look closely at your noble uncle and you will be able to discern the shimmer of his halo. Christ, there must be one drink somewhere in this hotel.”
Rudolph brought out the bottle. With all his jokes, if ever a man looked as though he needed a drink, it was Willie at this moment. He drank off half of the glass. “Who’s picking up the tab for the research?” he asked.
“I am.”
“What does it come to?”
“Five hundred and fifty dollars.”
“You should’ve come to me,” Willie said. “I’d’ve given you the information for half the price. Do you want me to pay you back?”
“Forget it,” Rudolph said. “I never gave you a wedding present. Consider this my wedding present.”
“Better than a silver platter. I thank you, brother-in-law. Is there more in that bottle?”
Rudolph poured. “You’d better keep sober,” he said. “You’re going to have some serious conversation ahead of you.”
“Yeah.” Willie nodded. “It was a sorrowful day for everybody when I bought your sister a bottle of champagne at the Algonquin bar.” He smiled wanly. “I loved her that afternoon and I love her now and there I am in the trash basket.” He gestured to where the shreds of the detective’s report lay scattered in the tin bucket, decorated with a hunting print, riders with bright-red coats. “Do you know what love is?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.” Willie stood up. “Well, I’ll leave you. Thanks for an interesting half hour.”
He went out without offering to shake hands.
III
He was incredulous when he came to the house. He looked again at the piece of paper Rudolph had given him to make sure that he was at the right address. Still over a store. And in a neighborhood that was hardly any better than the old one in Port Philip. Seeing Rudolph in that fancy room at the Hotel Warwick and hearing him talk you’d think that he was just rolling in dough. Well, if he was, he wasn’t wasting any of it on rent.
Maybe he just kept the old lady in this joint and had a rich pad for himself in some other part of town. He wouldn’t put it past the bastard.
Thomas went into the dingy vestibule, saw the name Jordache printed next to a bell, rang. He waited, but the buzzer remained silent. He had called and told his mother he was coming to visit today, and she said she’d be home. He couldn’t make it on a Sunday, because when he suggested it to Teresa, she’d started to cry. Sunday was her day, she wept, and she wasn’t going to be done out of it by an old hag who hadn’t even bothered to send a card when her grandson was born. So they’d left the kid with a sister of Teresa’s up in the Bronx and they’d gone to a movie on Broadway and had dinner at Toots Shor’s, where a sportswriter recognized Thomas, which made Teresa’s day for her and maybe it was worth the twenty bucks the dinner had cost.
Thomas pushed the bell again. Still, there was no response. Probably, Thomas thought bitterly, at the last minute Rudolph called and said he wanted his mother to come down to New York and shine his shoes or something, and she’d rushed off, falling all over herself with joy.
He started to turn away, half relieved that he didn’t have to face her. It hadn’t been such a hot idea to begin with. Let sleeping mothers lie. He was just about out of the door when he heard the buzzer. He went back, opened the door and went up the steps.
The door opened at the first floor landing and there she was, looking a hundred years old. She took a couple of steps toward him and he understood why he had had to wait for the buzzer. The way she walked it must take her five minutes to cross the room. She was crying already and had her arms outstretched to embrace him.
“My son, my son,” she cried, as her arms, thin sticks, went around him. “I thought I’d never see your face again.”
There was a strong smell of toilet water. He kissed her wet cheek gently, wondering what he felt.