'Did he buy it?' Hilliard said. 'First, though, you tell me now, because now I don't remember. What was it, about double that? Six grand or so, apiece?'
'It was eighty-four hundred,' Merrion said, 'which I was not about to tell Whalen. I could ah had three Oldsmobiles, six if I'd spent your piece of the action. Four thousand for the equity share, three thousand initiation. Fourteen hundred down-payment on the annual dues.
You're the math genius but I could do that one: times two, sixteen-thousand-eight-hundred American dollars. Not cheap.
'Did he buy what I tried to make him think it was? Probably. Two or three grand's still big money to Ev Whalen today. In fact I think if I'd told him the truth, and said sixteen-eight, he probably would not have believed me. That price to play golf would've boggled his mind, would've made him faint dead away. I doubt Whalen's house cost him that if he owns one now, after his kid. One of his kids, I think he's got two, had something terrible happen. So as a result the kid's helpless. Ev has not had a good time in this world; I try to cut him some slack.'
'Sixteen-thousand, eight-hundred dollars,' Hilliard said musingly.
'Jesus, that was expensive. Seven percent compound interest, more than twenty years: fifty grand, about, by now, if you'd left it in the bank.'
'Yeah, right,' Merrion said, 'if you don't deduct the taxes that you hadda pay every April on the interest that it earned from year to year.
Which you would've, of course, so that you'd now have a lot less. With inflation, you'd have nothin'. Less'n nothing, actually. Plus which the last time they talked about maybe re-opening membership, so they could put a dome over the pool and people could swim inna winter? They ended up not dotn' it, of course, but before that the talk was they'd be asking thirty-five K for the equity ante alone. Which I think was most likely what killed it: not the prospect of the course getting' too crowded, but the fact that the only people who would've had that kind of loose change to spend on playin' golf d be pro athletes and major drug-dealers, and havin' them as members scared the power elite.
'So you could say that we got a bargain. I think it's been a damned good investment. It's hard to play golf and have drinks inna bank, and anyway, over the years I've dropped a lot of dollars doing stuff and buying things that weren't worth what I paid, and I've had my regrets.
But I never regretted Grey Hills. That was a damned smart investment.
I've been having a wonderful time for over twenty years now with my high-priced toy, and I'm not even close to bein' through havin' fun with it yet.
'But tonight I was not havin' fun. Tonight I am a worried man. Whalen has heard something about you and me, and that means it's out on the street. What it is specifically I could not get out of him. I suspect he doesn't know either, exactly what the feds're doing. But they're doing something, he knows, and that means this will not go away. So that's why I hadda see you tonight. I was hoping that maybe you could make me feel better. At least tell me what's going on, which you did not this afternoon; what they're after you for, and therefore why they're after me.'
Hilliard's face was grey in the moonlight. He licked his lips. He shook his head. 'I want to say I know, and of course I'll tell you, but I can't because I don't,' he said miserably, looking down and studying his hands. He stopped and shook his head. 'Pooler isn't sure either. Or he wasn't when he called me, late Friday afternoon.' His voice trailed away and stopped. He coughed a couple of times and changed his position, as though that would help to dislodge some foreign substance that had accumulated in his throat. He covered his mouth and coughed several times.
Over his right shoulder Merrion saw a robed figure come out of the shadows into the dim light at the front of the kitchen. It was a woman. He could not make out her features but could see that her hair was blonde and that the robe was too big for her. She went to the refrigerator and opened it, taking out a quart carton of milk. She put it on the counter and opened the cupboard above it, removing a glass.
She poured the glass half full. She put the carton back into the refrigerator and closed it. She picked up the glass and turned toward the glass door, advancing into the soft light so he could see her clearly, looking straight into his eyes. Then Mercy Hilliard smiled comp licitly at her ex-husband's best friend, so that he could not help but smile back. Then she raised her milk in a silent toast before giving him a small fluttery wave and disappearing back into the shadows.
Hilliard, still looking down on his hands folded in his lap, said: 'All Bob knew on Friday was that he couldn't see how the heck they could do anything to either of us on campaign funds or anything else. I haven't run now for over ten years. The federal statute of limitations is five. So I said: 'Well, then there's nothing to get, and they've got their heads up their asses. I have to be in the clear.'
'And he said, 'Well, that's what you'd like to think, naturally, and not knowing exactly what their approach is, that is of course what you would think. But this's no ghost-image we're looking at here, something that will just go away. It's too substantial to be a mirage; the rumbling's just too distinct. It must be that they think they've found a way, to get around the time problem. Now our job's to find out just what that way is, and find a way to block them if we can. I'm on the case; I am actively on it. By Monday I should know what it is that they're after. Have Merrion come in to see me then, late in the afternoon. Then I'll be back to you.'
Hilliard looked up. 'And that's really all that I know, Amby,' he said earnestly. 'I know you don't like Bob, but at least after you see him, you'll probably know what it is we have to contend with. And that will be before I do.' Then he registered Merrion's expression of beguiled surprise. He spun in his chair and looked back into the kitchen, now unoccupied once more. He turned back and looked at Merrion. 'What's with you?' he said. 'Are you all right?'
Realizing he'd been holding his breath, Merrion exhaled heavily and smiled at Hilliard. 'I think I am,' he said. 'I'm still worried, of course, but for now that's secondary. You said something about ghosts just then: I could swear I just saw one right there in your kitchen.
Has to be since it was the spitting image of your ex-wife, and I know she's on Martha's Vineyard so that couldn't be.' Hilliard's face reddened. 'Barged in on reunion night, did I?' Merrion said, grinning now. 'Little duet of 'Auld Lang Sync,' I take it?'
Hilliard squirmed in the chair. He found his practiced sheepish grin and turned it on. 'I've discovered that I may be getting old, Amby,' he said. 'And this world isn't getting any warmer. I find I still need all the friends I can get, even if only occasionally.'
Merrion finished his drink and stood up. 'Can't argue with you there, pal,' he said. 'Can't argue with you there at all.'
SEVENTEEN
Leaving his house late in the morning of the third Sunday in August, Merrion was mildly pleased to register another day of sunshine. He began to feel actual cheer. The change surprised him; he'd been resigned to plodding through the day as best he could, resisting anxiety. He went to the grey and white house with the pale yellow front door on Pynchon Hill where Diane Fox had lived with Walter amid much laughter and not just when they had friends over for dinner, either, although there had been a lot of that.
Merrion had always liked Walter Fox, 'always' having commenced in 1972 when he had first begun to get to know the red-haired ruddy-faced man with the bristling red handlebar mustache. Succeeding to the seat Larry Lane had occupied and left to him along with his ownership interest in the Fourmen's Realty Trust he found he had inherited Walter Fox along with the wealth. Fox's place had belonged io his late grandfather, Phil, who had died in '68.
The trust had been set up in September of 1956. The original investors were Charles Spring, Roy Carnes, Larry Lane and Finnis D.L. 'Fiddle'
Barrow. Spring did the legal work, drawing up the declaration of trust, originally making his son, Edmund, practicing law in Boston, the nominal administrator, unpaid, omitting the names of the beneficiaries who were the actual trustees. The document made each interest in the trust indivisible in itself, inseparable from the remainder of the corpus, and non-transferable by conveyance or special mention in a will, except by express statement, oral or in writing, addressed to the other trustees, of testamentary intent to make a gift, or by testamentary deed of trust, to
