But Willa had wanted it. She was a Buffalo girl, from the cracked-sidewalk section back of Civic Centre, and owning one of these stone piles by the park had been her driving ambition for as long as she could remember. And what Willa wanted, whatever she truly wanted, Arthur Bronson went out and got for her.
He was fifty-six; born in Baltimore seven years before World War I and thirteen years before Prohibition. He’d been driving a rum-runner’s truck t fourteen, in charge of collections in the north east area of Washington at twenty, one of the four most powerful men in the Baltimore-Washington area liquor syndicate at twenty-seven when Prohibition ended. He was the most powerful man in that area at thirty-two, member of the national committee from the mid-east states at thirty-nine. He had become chairman of the committee at forty-seven and held that post for the past nine years.
His cover was impeccable He was senior partner in a Buffalo firm of investment counsellors, with a junior partner who handled all the legitimate business. He was a member of the board of three banks, two in Buffalo proper and one in Kenmore, a suburb. He belonged to a country club and a businessmen’s fraternal organization; he was a member in good standing of the church three blocks from his Buffalo home, and his income tax returns would never send him to jail. At fifty-six, he was of medium height, about twenty pounds overweight, and his black hair was flecked distinguishedly with grey. His face was broad and somewhat puffy, but he still retained traces of his earlier dark good looks. He gave the impression of being a solid citizen, a hard businessman, possibly a difficult employer, but absolutely respectable.
Willa, too, was respectable. In 1930, when he’d married her, she’d been a mediocre singer with a fair jazz band, but she took to rich respectability as though she’d known no other life. She was now fifty-two, a plump and soft-spoken matron, a doting grandmother who was constantly phoning her married daughter in San Jose, to find out how her two grandsons were getting on. The pile of stones facing the park was her home twelve months out of the year. Her husband might be away for months at a time New York, Las Vegas, Mexico City, Naples but this pile of stones was Willa’s home, and she stayed in it.
It was not her husband’s home, and he avoided it as much as possible. He didn’t like the place, it was too big, too solemn, too empty, too draughty, too far removed from life. He preferred hotel suites with terraces overlooking a pool or the sea. He preferred chrome and red leather. When it came to that, he preferred a good, stacked, intelligent, hundred-dollar whore on a white leather sofa to the plump grandmother in the pile of stones in Buffalo, but, at the same time, it was the good whore who got the hundred dollars and the plump grandmother who got the hundred-thousand-dollar house.
The lead Cadillac crawled on past the driveway and stopped. There were four men in the car, and they looked out the windows intently in all directions, watching the traffic and pedestrians. The second Cadillac with the armed coloured chauffeur at the wheel and Bronson alone in the back seat turned in the driveway like a sleek tank. Only after it had gone in past the hedge did the other Cadillac go on down the street and around the corner. To the undiscerning eye, there was no particular connection between the two Cadillacs.
The blacktop drive looped past the front of the house, then curved around to the garage at the side. The chauffeur stopped at the front door and hopped out to open the door for Bronson. Bronson climbed out and the chauffeur asked, “You want the car any more today?”
“No.” It was said angrily. Where the hell was there to go? He’d just come from the funeral of a local businessman, the owner of a chain of supermarkets. Funerals. Big, dark, stone houses. Cold weather. All because of one madman named Parker. He went up the steps and into the house, and the chauffeur took the Cadillac around to the garage. Another driveway came in from behind the garage, and the second Cadillac came in that way. The two of them were put away and the five men went into the house through one of the back doors.
Bronson, passing through the main hall, found his wife in the small room behind the drawing room watching television. He stood in the doorway, feeling grumpy, but not wanting to take it out on Willa. It wasn’t herfault. He said, “Hello.”
“Oh, hello!” She got to her feet, a plump, pleasant-looking woman with timid mannerisms, and went over to turn the television off.
“Let it go,” he said. “What’s on?”
“It’s just a movie. I think there might be a football game on one of the other channels.” She wasn’t used to having her husband home. She was grateful for his presence, but at the same time she knew he wasn’t here of his own free will. What the problem that had forced him home was she didn’t know he never talked about his business with her but she knew it had to be something serious. Every once in a while during the year he would stop in for a few days, just long enough to put in token appearances at his office downtown and at a few business luncheons or civic meetings, then he would be off again. But this time was different. This time, he was obviously angry and upset, as though it hadn’t been his original plan to come at this time. And he had brought all those bodyguards with him, a thing he’d never done before. So she knew he was here against his will and she worried about it, wondering what she could do to make his stay less difficult. “I’ll see if I can find that football game.”
“No, never mind. You watch your movie.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m sure.”
She wilted at the tone, immediately looking sheepish. “I’m sorry, Arthur.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! I’m not mad at you.”
“I know, Arthur. I”
One of the bodyguards appeared in the doorway. “Phone, Mr Bronson.”
“All right.” He was grateful for the interruption. He left the room and hurried upstairs.
Could this be it? Had they run Parker down? Could he now get the hell away from this mausoleum?
At the head of the stairs on the second floor, a hall as wide as many of the rooms stretched away to his left, lawned with Persian and lined with candelabras. He walked down this hall, the carpet muffling his tread, and entered the third room on the right his office.
The office was dominated by a desk the size of a sports car, carefully wrought of hand-carved Honduras mahogany. Books he had bought not to read, but because they were in sets with bindings of which the decorator approved lined the shelves on three walls. Two tall narrow windows faced the tree-lined street and the park beyond.
Bronson sat at the desk and reached out for the telephone, hoping it was the good news he’d been waiting for. He checked the movement at the last second, wanting to prolong the suspense, and made the caller wait while he
