The door opened. A uniformed maid looked out. Her black eyes went to the point of the bowie, sticking out of the chamois.
“Renard,” Gil said again. “To see Mr. Hale.”
She led him across the marble floor of the entrance hall, along a corridor lined with oil paintings of lighthouses, sailing ships, whaling boats, and into a library. It overlooked a gazebo, where Mrs. Hale stood at an easel, and the sea, breaking on the rocks below.
Mr. Hale was sitting by the fire, oiling a basket-hilt rapier. He rose, holding up glistening hands. “I won’t shake,” he said, “but how about a pick-me-up?”
It was early for that. “Only if you are,” Gil replied.
“Why not?” Mr. Hale gestured out the window, where the wind was whipping the tops off the whitecaps. “Need something warming on a day like this.” Mr. Hale shivered. He wore thick gray-flannel pants and a wool sweater with an embroidered golfer on the front; the fire crackled behind him.
Hanging the rapier on the wall, he went to the drinks table and returned with two heavy crystal glasses, half filled with Scotch. “You take it neat, if I remember?”
The truth was Gil didn’t drink Scotch, preferred tequila if it came to hard liquor. While Gil was wondering whether to request it, or perhaps a beer, Mr. Hale added, “Meaning no ice.”
“I know that,” Gil said, taking the glass; it felt oily in his hand.
“Of course you do.” Mr. Hale raised his glass. “Here’s to cold steel.” They drank. Mr. Hale watched Gil’s face. “That’s more like it, n’est-ce pas? ”
“Yeah.”
Gil expected that Mr. Hale would now invite him to sit. Instead he asked, “How’s business?”
“Up and down.”
Mr. Hale, sipping his drink, peered over the top of his glass. “How do you like the work, Gil?”
“Fine.”
“You know the product,” said Mr. Hale. “That’s your strength.”
Gil waited for Mr. Hale to say what his weakness was. While he was waiting, he drank some more. Mr. Hale didn’t reveal Gil’s weakness. Looking down at the bundle in Gil’s hand, he said, “What have you got for me?”
Gil laid the chamois on the drinks table, unwrapped it. Mr. Hale went for the bowie at once. He picked it up, one hand on the pommel, one on the point, held it to the light. The damascene whorls shimmered on the blade.
“My God,” he said, “he was an artist.” He gulped down half his drink, then plucked a book from the shelves, leafed through, read. After a minute or two, he looked up and said: “Fifteen hundred.”
“It’s worth a lot more than that, Mr. Hale.”
“Gil. You’re in sales. There’s what it’s worth, and what it’s worth to me. You must have learned that by now.” His bleached-out eyes met Gil’s. “Seventeen hundred.”
“Two Gs.”
“Seventeen fifty, Gil. Don’t push it.”
“Eighteen.”
Mr. Hale drained his glass. “Nice seeing you,” he said.
“All right,” Gil said. “Seventeen fifty. What about the thrower?”
“Not interested in throwers, not even his,” said Mr. Hale. “Ugly little buggers. No character.”
He picked up the bowie, moved to the wall opposite the fireplace. It was lined with built-in drawers. He took out a key, unlocked one, opened it. Bowie knives, but not his father’s, gleamed on blue velvet. They were Randalls, Gil decided, just as Mr. Hale said, “Oops,” locked the drawer, unlocked another. In this one lay a dozen of his father’s bowies, all tagged with dates purchased and amounts paid. Gil recognized three he had sold himself. Mr. Hale laid the new one on the velvet, then took out his checkbook.
“Would cash be a possibility?”
Mr. Hale stared at him for a moment before saying, “If you like.” He took down a framed photograph of a long-ago Radcliffe fencing team with an unsmiling and very young-looking Mrs. Hale in the center, and exposed a wall safe. Then, hunching over, he spun the dial and opened it. Gil saw a stack of bills inside, two or three inches high. Mr. Hale glanced back over his shoulder. Gil turned away.
He gazed down into the drawer at his father’s knives. He recognized one, a classic bowie with a curving stag handle, even remembered some hunter’s pickup bumping up their dirt road, and his father hurrying from the forge in his leather apron to examine the deer in the back. Gil picked up the knife, studied the tag. Mr. Hale had bought it from a doctor in Oregon five years before, paying $4,500.
Mr. Hale came forward with a wad of bills in his hand. He smiled at Gil, took the knife. “A beauty, isn’t it?”
“His first one-hundred-dollar knife,” Gil said. His father had drunk a sixpack or two in celebration, while Gil did his homework at the kitchen table in the trailer and a blizzard blew outside.
“You don’t say.” Mr. Hale laid the knife in the drawer, closed it, turned the key. He held out the money.
Gil didn’t take it. “Big spread between forty-five hundred and seventeen fifty,” he said.
Mr. Hale said nothing.
“They’re both mint.”
“There are other factors, as well you know,” said Mr. Hale “Are you welshing on me, Gil?”
Gil wasn’t in a position to. He took the money, and since he had to do something to get back, counted it out in front of Mr. Hale. Seventeen hundred-dollar bills and one fifty.
“All there?” asked Mr. Hale.
Gil nodded.
Mr. Hale moved him toward the door. “Decide to part with something else, you just give me a call.”
Gil stopped, his back to a huge painting of a naval battle. He had nothing left to part with. “Tell me something,” he said.
“If I can.”
“What do people like you make a year?”
“What a question.”
“Millions?”
“People like me? Millions?”
“Five or six million.”
Mr. Hale laughed. “Don’t be silly. Nobody honest makes that kind of money.”
“Bobby Rayburn does.”
“Who’s he?” Beyond Mr. Hale’s picture window, the wind caught a scrap of paper and carried it up, up, and out of sight.
Gil drove back off the Cape and over the bridge. After forty or fifty miles, he stopped by the side of the road for a piss. He was just unzipping when a cop pulled up behind him, got out of his car.
“Some problem?” the cop said.
“No,” Gil told him, trying to remember if Mr. Hale had freshened his drink and, if so, how many times. All the cop had to do was ask for his license, get a whiff of his breath, and then hours of bullshit would follow.
“You’ll find sanitary facilities at the next exit,” the cop said.
Gil got back in the car. The cop glanced inside. The thrower lay on the passenger seat, wrapped in the chamois cloth. Gil drove off at a moderate pace, took the next exit, stopped at a gas station. Inside the men’s room, he strapped the thrower to his right leg.
Just outside the city limits, Gil remembered the ball game. He turned on the radio in time to catch the bottom of the first. Primo singled up the middle and Lanz grounded into a fielder’s choice. Rayburn was stepping into the batter’s box when Gil dipped into the tunnel, losing reception. Traffic in the tunnel was stop and go; when Gil reached daylight, the inning was over.
Gil drove to the box office. The man in the watch cap was at his post, leaning against the brick wall under the GATE B sign. Gil got out of the car.
“Lookin’ for tickets?” the man said, not appearing to recognize him.
“The two behind home plate, Opening Day.”
“One fifty,” said the man. “Each.”
