Tom slumped down in his chair so that his knees jutted out and his chin rested on his chest. He brought his joined hands beneath his lower lip and regarded Ransom with a steady speculation. He seemed more comfortable, more actually present than at any other time during the evening.
"Were you considering offering me some payment for this assistance?"
"Absolutely," John Ransom said. "If that's what you want."
"What sort of payment?"
Ransom looked flustered. He glanced at me as if asking for help and raised his hands. "Well, that's difficult to answer. Ten thousand dollars?"
"Ten thousand. For identifying the man who attacked your wife. For getting the man you call Blue Rose behind bars."
"It could be twenty thousand," John said. "It could even be thirty."
"I see." Tom pushed himself back into an upright position, placed his hands on the arms of his chair, and pushed himself up. "Well, I hope that what I told you will be of some help to you. It's been good to see you again, John."
I stood up, too. John Ransom stayed seated on the couch, looking back and forth between Tom and me. "That's it? Tom, we were talking about an offer. Please tell me you'll consider it."
"I'm afraid I'm not for hire," Tom said. "Not even for the splendid sum of thirty thousand dollars."
Ransom looked completely baffled. Reluctantly, he pushed himself up from the couch. "If thirty thousand isn't enough, tell me how much you want. I want you on my team."
"I'll do what I can," Tom said. He moved toward the maze of files and the front door.
Ransom stood his ground. "What does that mean?"
"I'll check in from time to time," Tom said.
Ransom shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. He and I went around opposite sides of the glass table toward Tom. For the first time I looked down at the stacks of books beside the bottles and the ice bucket and was surprised to see that, like the books on John Ransom's table, nearly all of them were about Vietnam. But they were not novels—most of the books on the table seemed to be military histories, written by retired officers. The US Infantry in Vietnam. Small Unit Actions in Vietnam, 1965-66. History of the Green Berets.
"I wanted you to know how I felt," Ransom was saying. "I had to give it a try."
"It was very flattering," Tom said. They were both working their way toward the door.
I caught up with them just as Ransom looked back over his shoulder to see the paintings on the long back wall. "And if you're ever interested in selling some of your art, I hope you'll speak to me first."
"Well," Tom said. He opened the door to scorching heat and the end of daylight. Above the roofs of the lakefront houses, the moon had already risen into a darkening sky in which a few shadowy clouds drifted in a wind too far up to do us any good.
"Thanks for your help," said John Ransom, holding out his hand. Tom took it, and Ransom raised one shoulder and grimaced, squeezing hard to show his gratitude.
"By the way," Tom said, and Ransom relaxed his grip. Tom pulled back his hand. "I wonder if you've been thinking about the possibility that the attack on your wife was actually directed at you?"
"I don't see what you mean." John Ransom probed me with a look, trying to see if I had made sense of this question. "You mean Blue Rose thought April might be me?"
"No." Tom smiled and leaned against the door frame. "Of course not." He looked across the street, then up and down, and finally at the sky. Outside, in the natural light, his skin looked like paper that had been crumpled, then smoothed out. "I just wondered if you could think of someone who might want to get at you through your wife. Someone who wanted to hurt you very badly."
"There isn't anyone like that," Ransom said.
Down the block, a small car turned the corner onto Eastern Shore Road, came some twenty feet in our direction, then swung over to the side of the road and parked. The driver did not leave the car.
"I don't think Blue Rose could know anything about April or me," said Ransom. "That's not how these guys work."
"I'm sure that's right," Tom said. "I hope everything turns out well for you, John. Good-bye, Tim." He gave me a little wave and waited for us to move down onto the walk. He waved again, smiling, and closed his door. It was like seeing him disappear into a fortress.
"What was that about?" Ransom asked.
"Let's get some dinner," I said.
13
John Ransom spent most of dinner complaining. Tom Pasmore was one of those geniuses who didn't seem too perceptive. Tom was a drunk who acted like the pope. Sat all day in that closed-up house and pounded down the vodka. Even back in school, Pasmore had been like the Invisible Man, never played football, hardly had any friends—this pretty girl, this knockout, Sarah Spence, long long legs, great body, turned out she had a kind of a thing for old Tom Pasmore, always wondered how the hell old Tom managed that…
I didn't tell Ransom that I thought Sarah Spence, now Sarah Youngblood, had been the driver of the car that had turned the corner and pulled discreetly up to the curb thirty feet from Tom Pasmore's house as we were leaving. I knew that she visited Tom, and I knew that he wished to keep her visits secret, but I knew nothing else about their relationship. I had the impression that they spent a lot of time talking to each other—Sarah Spence Youngblood was the only person in the whole of Millhaven who had free access to Tom Pasmore's house, and in those long evenings and nights after she slipped through his front door, after the bottles were opened and while the ice cubes settled in the brass bucket, I think he talked to her—I think she had become the person he most needed, maybe the only person he needed, because she was the person who knew most about him.
John Ransom and I were in Jimmy's, an old east-side restaurant on Berlin Avenue. Jimmy's was a nice wood-paneled place with comfortable banquettes and low lights and a long bar. It could have been a restaurant anywhere in Manhattan, where all of its tables would have been filled; because we were in Millhaven and it was nearly nine o'clock, we were nearly the only customers.
John Ransom ordered a Far Niente cabernet and made a ceremonial little fuss over tasting it.
Our food came, a sirloin for Ransom, shrimp scampi for me. He forgot Tom Pasmore and started talking about India and Mina's ashram. "This wonderful being was beautiful, eighteen years old, very modest, and she spoke in short plain sentences. Sometimes she cooked breakfast, and she cleaned her little rooms by herself, like a servant. But everyone around her realized that she had this extraordinary power—she had great wisdom. Mina put her hands on my soul and opened me up. I'll never stop being grateful, and I'll never forget what I learned from her." He chewed for a bit, swallowed, took a mouthful of wine. "By the time I was in graduate school, Mina had become well known. People began to understand that she represented one very pure version of mystic experience. Because I had studied with her, I had a certain authority. Everything unfolded from her—it was like having studied with a great scholar. And in fact, it was like that, but more profound."
"Haven't you ever been tempted to go back and see her again?"
"I can't," he said. "She was absolutely firm about that. I had to move on."
"How does it affect your life now?" I asked, really curious about what he would say.
"It's helping me make it through," he said.
He finished off the food on his plate, then looked at his watch. "Would you mind if I called the hospital? I ought to check in."