compound.
Jerry Hasek came walking up the track thirty seconds later. He was wearing his grey suit and the chauffeur’s cap, and his hands were balled into fists. He took the big steps two at a time, strode across the porch, and knocked on the screen door. Jerry spun on his heel and hit his fists together several times, rapidly. His face wore an expression of worried concentration that was familiar to Tom, and meant nothing: it was just the way Jerry looked. He spun back around and opened the screen door and pounded on the wooden door. Jerry’s body told much more than his face—his movements were quick and agitated, and his shoulders looked stiff and bunched, as if he had developed extra layers of muscle and skin, like armor. “Pasmore!” he yelled. He banged on the door again.
Jerry stepped back and glared at the door. “Come on, I know you’re there,” he yelled. “Come on out, Pasmore.” He put his hand on the knob and turned it, then rattled the door.
He moved to one of the windows and peered inside the way Tom had looked into the machine shop, with his hands cupping his face. He slapped the window with his palm, and the glass shivered. “Come on OUT!”
Jerry went backwards down the steps, looking upward as if he expected to see Tom climbing out of a window. He put his hands on his hips, and his shoulder muscles shifted underneath the fabric of the jacket. He looked from side to side, exhaled, and gazed back up at the lodge.
He bounded back up the steps, opened the screen door, and struck the door again several times. “You have to talk to me,” he said, speaking in the voice he would use to a person who was hard of hearing. “I can’t help you out if you don’t talk to me.”
He leaned his head against the door and said, “Come on.” Then he pushed himself away from the door and trotted down the steps. His whole thick body looked energetic, electrified, as if you would get a shock if you touched him. Jerry went to the side of the lodge and went down between the trees to get to the back.
After a couple of minutes in which he must have banged on the back door and tried to get in, Jerry reappeared, heading toward the track with the cap in his hands and—for once—more concentration than worry in his broad face. He came out from beneath the oaks and turned to face the lodge. “You fucking dope,” he said, and turned to walk back to the compound.
When he was out of sight, Tom came out of his hiding place and went up the steps. His feet resounded on the boards of the porch. He slid the key into the lock, and felt a hard, jittery presence in the air that was Jerry’s ghost. Tom let himself in and locked the door behind him.
In the study, he dialed the operator and asked for his grandfather’s number on Mill Walk.
The phone picked up on the first ring, and Kingsley’s voice told him that he had reached the Glendenning Upshaw residence.
“Kingsley, this is Tom,” he said. “Can I speak to my grandfather, please?”
“Master Tom, what a nice surprise! Are you enjoying yourself at the lake?”
“It’s a great place. Could you get him, please?”
“Just a moment,” Kingsley said, and put the phone down with a noisy clunk that suggested that he had dropped it.
He was gone much longer than a moment: Tom heard voices, footfalls, a door closing. Seconds ticked by, followed by more seconds. At last the butler returned. “I’m afraid your grandfather is not available.”
“Not available? What does that mean?”
“Mr. Upshaw has gone out unexpectedly, Master Tom. I cannot tell you when he is expected to be back.”
“Is his carriage gone?”
Kingsley paused a second, and said, “I believe it is, yes.”
“Maybe he’s visiting my mother,” Tom said.
“He always informs us when he does not plan to dine at home,” Kingsley said, and both his voice and his language sounded even stiffer than usual.
Neither Tom nor the old butler said anything for a moment.
“Is he really not there, Kingsley,” Tom said, “or is he just unavailable?”
There was another brimming pause until the butler said, “It’s as I told you, Master Tom.”
“Okay, tell him I have to talk to him,” Tom said, and they both hung up.
The endless afternoon passed into an endless evening. Tom realized that he was starving, and could not remember if he had eaten lunch—he could not remember eating anything all day. He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator—most of the food Barbara Deane had bought for him was still on the shelves, preserved in the supermarket wrappings. I
He scrambled two eggs in a bowl, buttered two slices of whole wheat bread, cut slices off a garlic sausage and dropped them in the sizzling pan with the eggs. He turned the edges of the solidifying egg over the sausage, and after a few seconds, turned the whole thing out onto a plate. He ate in the kitchen and put the pan, bowl, plate, and his utensils into the sink and ran hot water over them.
Outside, sunlight still fell on the lake, but the shadow of the lodge darkened the deck nearly all the way to the pier. Tom pulled the living room curtains shut, and went to the desk and called the police department.
“Is Chief Truehart back in the office yet?” he asked.
“Is this Mr. Marlowe?” Spychalla asked. “Where are you calling from, Mr. Marlowe?”
Tom hung up and called his mother. No, her father had not been over that afternoon; no, she did not know where he might be. He was very busy with new plans for the Founders Club, and she had not seen him for days. Victor was out of town, doing something in Alabama for the Redwings. “Are you seeing all your friends?”
“I’m pretty busy,” he told her.
Tom sat at the desk with the telephone before him, watching the shadow of the lodge slide across the deck and begin to darken the pier. Fish jumped silently in the lake. The air went grey. Inside, it looked like night.
When the sky began to darken, he put on a sweater and went out on the deck and locked the door behind him. Lights shone in the Langenheims’ windows and reflected in narrow yellow lines on the water. Tom walked fast around the bottom end of the lake under a rising sliver of moon, passing the empty lodges—hurrying past the Langenheims’—until he came to Lamont von Heilitz’s place, where he wound through trees and came out on the sandy shore of the lake. The old lodge looked like a haunted house in a movie—like Norman Bates’ house, in
The Redwings and their guests sat at the long table just inside the terrace. Tom could see the backs of the people on the window side of the table, Sarah Spence, Buddy, Fritz, and Eleanor Redwing. Across from them, Tom could see only the heads of Sarah’s mother, Fritz’s father, and Katinka Redwing. Ralph Redwing and Bill Spence sat at either end of the table. Marcello, his tuxedo shirt unbuttoned to his sternum, was passing out the giant leaves of the menus. When he came to Katinka Redwing, he bent down and whispered in her ear, and Katinka made a cat face. Buddy Redwing put his hand on Sarah’s back and caressed her from the nape of the neck to her waist.
Marcello brought two champagne bottles in a silver bucket, and Ralph Redwing and Bill Spence each made toasts. Fritz’s father made a toast, and Buddy’s hand, fat as a starfish, slowly circled on Sarah’s back. Fritz made a toast, which Tom wished he could hear. Buddy pushed back his chair, stood up, and made a speech. Marcello circled the table, filling glasses. Everybody was watching Buddy—they laughed, looked solemn, laughed again. Mrs. Spence waggled her glass in the air for more champagne. When Buddy sat down, Sarah kissed him and everyone applauded. She put her arms around his neck. Fritz’s father said something, and everybody laughed again.
They ordered. Two more champagne bottles came. The fat brown starfish prowled across Sarah’s back. Whenever Sarah turned to look at Buddy, her face glowed.
This was how it worked, Tom thought. The Redwings gobbled up food, drink, real estate, other people—they devoured morality, honesty, scruples, and everybody admired them. Sarah Spence could not resist them because nobody could.
Buddy was waving a fork, talking, and Fritz stared at him as adoringly as a little dog. A greedier, more adult version of the same expression came into Mrs. Spence’s face whenever she turned to Ralph Redwing. Sarah’s right hand, a slimmer, whiter starfish, rested between Buddy’s shoulder blades.
Tom sat on the deck and watched them finish their dinner. There were two more bottles of champagne, coffee, desserts. At last they all stood up and drifted away from the window. A few minutes later, Tom saw them moving slowly on the track between the clubhouse and the compound, calling out good-byes loud enough to be
