Harry wasn't used to surprises. Didn't like surprises. He liked to know just what was happening all the time. Plan a job carefully, cover every detail, and then pray to the god of thieves that there wouldn't be any surprises.
But the night with Phillip and Carol had narcoticized him, had taken him into a strange rarefied atmosphere – not the dense inner life he knew well, but something outside and extremely powerful. They were weird, the two of them, and he'd travel with them. Probably end up in a dark hole and find it was hell. Maybe they were taking him to hell, because they'd both been there. There and back, and there and back.
Probably where Carol got the highest prices for jewels. Went down, down, and sold them to the highest bidder in hell. You could hold onto your money in hell, Harry felt. You could hold onto your beauty and money and youth and never care about anything else. Hell would be to never to lose your hold on what someone else would admire. Harry had never been in that hell, but he had an idea that Phillip was king, and the handmaid Carol would show him the way. Go to hell clinging to a big, flawless, blue-white diamond. It would be worth it. It would make life worth living to have a death worth dying.
Harry felt that surge of strength and meaning that he always got when he was moving into a new job. Usually he knew exactly where he was going, how many nails were in the front door. But it was exhilarating to be able to put faith in Phillip. To be able to say, "I'll go where you're going, Phillip." To feel like a protected boy.
That was what Phillip gave to Carol. Harry didn't really know what was between Phillip and Carol. More than the fucking, though. He'd watched them fuck on the floor. Phillip mounting Carol, and Carol sinking against the hard wood as if the missing piece had just been put back. They were the same, somehow, Phillip and Carol. Two parts of the same puzzle.
And Harry wanted her, but he wanted the diamonds just as much.
They were picking up tickets at La Guardia airport, Phillip and Harry. Carol, ever the female, was late. Phillip had told Harry in the taxi that they were going to Detroit. Plenty of loot in Detroit. Lots of money from putting America on wheels. And he'd roll away with all of it. They stood before the section marked, 'Central West.'
"Detroit, huh," said Harry as they turned away from the counter.
"What's happening there?"
"Anything can happen in Detroit," Phillip smiled. "Do you know the city?"
Harry distractedly stared at a woman, large and shapely and covered with gems. The brooch and earrings of a quality that could interest even him. "Not … intimately," he finally answered.
Phillip glanced at him guardedly. What did not intimately mean?
What did anything about Harry mean? Where was the conscience of the undefined man? What did Harry care about? Did he have a huge bleeding ruby where his heart should be?
Phillip had felt the directness of Harry's taking Carol. Just get in there and pump. Don't complicate things, just unload. That's what it's for. It was more remote, in a way, for Harry to just get in there and fuck than for Phillip to inflict the delicate and gross perversions with which he controlled Carol. It was more controlling to fuck the way Harry did. In the ass, in the cunt, in Phillip's ass, in the mouth, in the ear, in any dark, tight, wet hole. Just let go and have a ball. A kind of insane determination Harry had. Couldn't stop until he was finished.
Phillip certainly discovered that in Boston. Now Harry had started something with Carol, but Phillip had started that a long time ago. He had his hooks in. Carol might fall in love with Harry, probably was in love now, going through some romantic idiocy. But Phillip had his hooks in. And the fish could play.
The jewel-bedecked woman half-turned her back to Harry. She was coquettishly, titillatingly aware of the man's stare, and couldn't find the strength to turn completely away. She bent over her luggage, and her breasts pressed together in the long V neck of her dress. Harry stared at her, detached and intense. Phillip's eyes followed Harry's. He looked long at the glittering woman and then smiled.
"Think she's going to Detroit?" Harry asked plaintively. Then they heard her ask for a California flight. "Maybe we should go to California?" The woman turned around and flirted playfully, like a delicate young elephant.
"Maybe we should," Phillip laughed. Nothing to fear. She wasn't Harry's type. They just had the same tastes in decoration. "But remember Harry, Detroit is the backbone of America."
"Oh?" Harry's eyes left the woman. "Then we must go. Mustn't neglect the country's backbone. Especially when it's held together with platinum."
Phillip didn't answer. He hadn't said one word about the job.
Instead, he looked at his watch, then scanned the waiting room. "Oh, here she is," he said, brightening, as Carol approached, girlish and breathless.
"Last minute things at the office," she said in a rush. "Sorry Phillip darling. Hello Harry." She looked at him briefly. A breathless, girlish, adorable, cool witch. "Good, here come my bags." She wore a back suit and held a big red purse. Harry touched the bag playfully and said,
"Going shopping?"
She looked quickly away, and he realized that it wasn't control that produced her smoothness. It was fear.
Her luggage was the last to be weighed. As it was wheeled toward the scale, the three of them walked out to the field. Harry was upbeat, a new dimension of his usually somber way. He felt good. Proud of Carol for looking so chic and untouched – and probably hot between her thighs right now. Proud of Phillip, too, distinguished in his perfectly fitted suit and homburg. Proud of himself, as a matter of fact
– free and clean and a fit companion for the elegant couple.
"My mother should see me now," he said to them. Phillip cut him short. "Was that the woman you were staring at?" He couldn't tell if Carol had heard or felt the words. They boarded the plane.
Harry walked down the aisle ahead of them and took a seat next to a plump, jeweled dowager. My God, thought Phillip, he's got the magic touch. Carol and Phillip sat behind him. They watched as Harry offered the delighted woman a cigarette and then turned and winked at them. Phillip smiled broadly. Carol hesitated, then said, "Just like Tom Sawyer. How adorable." As the plane took off, she studied Manhattan below them.
In Detroit it was raining heavily. A uniformed chauffeur just outside the gate ran toward them carrying a huge black umbrella.
"Mr. Johns, Mr. Johns," he shouted. Phillip was transformed. He looked like the master come back from the wars. "Good to see you, Sam," he greeted.
Then Sam, protecting them all with the umbrella, himself hatless and soaked, said, "You'd better get to the car, Miss Carol. You'll get all wet."
That would be a tragedy, Harry thought in a rankling of anger and confusion. Imagine Miss Carol all wet. Is Miss Carol ever dry?
Miss Carol said, "Hi Sam," warmly like the gentle princess she was.
It was enough for Sam. They followed him swiftly to the black limousine. In the instant before getting into the car, Phillip paused and said, "Sam, this is Mr. Gregory. Steven Gregory. He'll be our guest for a while."
"Pleased to know you, sir," Sam acknowledged, touching his cap.
Harry nodded. His expression was the same as when he had met Carol in the prison, guarded and half asleep. He was furious, furious.
It was like being denied by Phillip. But he'd have to wait. Phillip might be after a big load. Maybe they were going to be honored guests of Detroit's finest, and then leave with all the gold plumbing. Had to be patient. But Harry felt strange, separate. As if Phillip and Carol had come home and he'd turned down the wrong road.
Phillip sat up front with Sam and Carol, and Harry slipped quickly into the back seat. Phillip and Sam began talking, and Harry tried to piece their conversation into a coherent story. He heard Phillip's voice through the glass cage. "Yes, these past two years in Europe were a gold mine of information. My plans for the gardens are superb. We'll talk about it soon. Ah, to be home at last."
How sweet, how absolutely touching. Carol reached backwards and tapped Harry's arm. "Don't sulk," she mocked. "Everything will be explained to the little boy who hates the dark."
The car arrived at the gate of a huge estate in Grosse Pointe, just outside Detroit. Sam turned into the driveway that formed a huge arc in front of the main house. Another servant hurried down the steps to meet them with an umbrella. When Carol saw him, she exuded, "Dear Wilbur!" Wilbur, undoubtedly the most important of the staff, rushed Miss Carol up the steps, terrified that the honey would melt if she got wet.
"Wilbur, Mr. Gregory. Steven Gregory. He'll be staying with us a while."
After the hurried introduction, they all stood in the front hall of the house. "That's very good, sir," Wilbur approved with an eccentric nod of his head. He gathered up their coats.
The house was like a small chateau. It looked like a house Phillip would live in, retreat to. The front room had a great vaulting ceiling and a curving oak staircase. Phillip looked eagerly about him, rubbing his hands like a chilled squire after the hunt.
"Yes," he said a bit pompously, exaggerating his comfort and relaxation, "home at last. Show Mr. Gregory to the large guest room please, Wilbur. And take care that he has everything he needs."
"Very good sir. This way please, Mr. Gregory." The name sounded phony on the servant's lips. The whole set-up could be a phony.
"You'll excuse me," said Phillip to both Carol and Harry, "while I see to a few things around the place."
Carol smiled at him indulgently and Harry gave him an odd look.
Phillip followed Wilbur up the wide staircase. On the wall of the first landing, he stopped and studied a very large portrait. It was a woman in her mid-thirties, and at first he thought it was a painting of Carol.
The resemblance was striking. He could hear Carol's voice in the still lady.
"Oh, Mr. Gregory, dinner at eight, don't forget," Carol called from below. Harry smiled wanly at the picture and followed Wilbur up the stairs.
Harry walked to the blazing fireplace in the large comfortable room.
His suitcase was open on the chair and he slowly emptied it into the dresser drawer. He was in shirt sleeves, and when he got to a cashmere sweater, he pulled it over his head. He returned nervously to the fire.
On the mantle was a small ornamental stock of long unused tapers. He took one out and, leaning to the fire, lit it, and then with it, his cigarette.
He blew out the taper and put it back with the others, realizing with chilled humor that the stand was merely decorative. He stared at it for a moment, and finally standing confused with the taper in his hand, threw it in the fire. He crossed to the bed and fell back on the pillows, smoking and looking into the fire. Outside, the Michigan rain was pounding.
It was too much … too much to be in a strange house called by a strange name, with everybody else acting like everybody's father.
Harry was getting the short end of Alice in Wonderland. He'd scurried down the hole after Phillip and here he was in Never Never Land, with a nice hot fire that didn't warm him, a picture of Carol painted ten years from now, and Phillip spewing stuff about Europe and gardens.
What the hell were they doing to him? Was this some kind of initiation into hell, or perhaps hell itself. To stay in this big, comfortable, pillow-decked bed and never know what he was doing there, with those creepy servants bringing meals in, and carrying the dirty dishes out and never knowing his right name. What the hell did they think they were doing to him?
What did Phillip want? To stuff him and set him on the piano in the old family manor house? Or shrink his head for the trophy room? The house had to have a trophy room somewhere. Harry got up from the bed, trying to hold onto himself, but feeling uncanny fear creeping into his body.
He stood at the window and looked out, then walked, trapped, around the room and was about to return to the window. What the hell was this? A drink, that would make it normal. A drink. How did you get anything in this damned tomb? Or did the servants train you so well that you didn't want anything until it was time to be served? He rushed out of the room, leaving the door open behind him.
The hallway was deserted. Harry went to the nearest door, listened, and then tried the knob. It was locked. He looked desperately around him and ran down the hall. He threw open the door to an empty room.
There was no dust on the unused, obviously untouched furniture. The room lay in its invisible covers, heavy and serious and, for many years, unused by a human. He rushed for another door and found it locked.
He shook it vigorously and finally broke down, shaking the handle and shouting, "Phillip, Phillip for God's sake where are you?"
Wilbur appeared soundlessly at the end of the hall and came toward Harry. He stopped to close the open doors. Harry wanted to crouch protectively against the wall.
"I know this is a rather large house, Mr. Gregory," Wilbur said, "but you'll get used to it. Mr. Johns is in his study, awaiting dinner-call, which has been his habit for years. I suggest you join him there."
He escorted Harry back to his room. At the door he said, "If there is anything you need, Mr. Gregory, don't hesitate to ring for me."
I need to know where I am, who I'm supposed to be, Harry thought.
But to the snide servant he said, "Thank you, I will," and slammed the door. Maybe that's what Wilbur was for. To make you angry and keep you sane. Once in the room, Harry wiped his perspiring face and changed into his dinner jacket. Phillip had better start talking, and none of Phillip's attitudes about life. Just answer a few direct questions.
Harry found Phillip in the library, kneeling over a canvas, a magnifying glass in his hand, scrutinizing a painting. Harry stood silently at the door and looked from one covered wall to the other. In the midst of the magnificence was Phillip.
"When you die, Phillip," Harry said bitterly, "they should put a few painting and a magnifying glass in your pyramid, and the god will withhold his curses."
Phillip got to his feet. "Yes," he agreed, "that's all I want now. It's strange how a man narrows down his needs, his expressions. All I want is a fine new canvas to study and to know it's mine."
Harry couldn't speak; his muteness a residue of the fear that had clutched him in the long hallway. He wanted to hear Phillip speak, to embrace the reality Phillip gave him, and then leave. Get away fast before all the doors were locked and the ghosts came back to the uninhabited rooms.
"That's all I have to say. No man can tell you more than his purpose in living, " Phillip imparted.
"Yes, you can," Harry shouted. "You can tell me what the hell this is all about. What we're doing here, why I am here, what this Mr.
Gregory bit is. I want a lot of pay for playing the fool, Phillip!"
"You're not playing the fool. Why are you and Carol so bitterly concerned about your tiny, insignificant appearances?" He poured a drink for Harry and one for himself. "What's the matter with the younger generation?" he scoffed. "They have to be told everything.
They hate surprises. Why, when I was a boy…" he continued sentimentally.
"Yes Phillip, that's what I want to know about. When you were a boy, in short pants, all the way up to when you were a boy in striped pants, to now. Do you understand? To this minute! To Harry Hatch!
And what the hell I have to do with this masquerade."
"I'll explain everything to you, Harry," Phillip said calmly. "That's why I've brought you here."
"What is this 'that's why I've brought you here' line? Give me my part to read, Phillip. I don't want to fuck up the plot. There must be something for me to say like, 'Thank you Daddy. Please be kind.'"
"Harry, give me a moment."
"Well, you're calling me by my real name. Shall I pinch myself?"
"I thought you had grown to trust me enough that I could bring you here and tell you these things. I'm fond of you Harry, but I'm not fond of these hysterics." Phillip was collected now, the sitting master in his house. "Listen to me Harry; I admire you. I can understand being a man like you, rather than me. I've thought that of very few men.
You're pure, Harry," he laughed softly. "You're a beautiful pure young heathen. But you're pure, an artist in yourself. You should put the art somewhere else, somewhere outside of you, or you're going to become perfect and die. It's all going to lead to your death."
"Are you going to kill me?"
"You're off, Harry, way off. You don't know who I am, or who you are. You're going to kill yourself, my friend. That's going to be the only thing left to do. That's what happens when there's nothing out there, out in the world."
"Have you brought me here," he mocked, "to introduce me to a few hobbies?"
"In a way. I thought I might introduce you to living. Living outside the dream."
"Just finding nice, homey comforts."
"Perhaps."
"Like what?" Harry leaned forward. "Like tennis and chess and fucking Carol?"
Phillip looked serious. "Leave my daughter out of this."
Harry didn't say anything. He drank deeply as if Phillip hadn't spoken. When there was nothing but ice left in the glass he spoke quietly. "Your daughter?"
"I'll let you have it all, Harry, and straight. This is my house. This is where my daughter Carol grew up. I assume by now you've seen the portrait on the first landing? Rather fine, don't you think? My wife, Claire, Carol's mother." He let the slow surprising words reach Harry, and poured two more drinks.
"The house belonged to my wife. It was rather an elevating marriage for me, but not out of the question. I came from a good family and all that. But we were poor and I didn't like that at all. As a matter of fact, I liked my wife very much. At first I liked her for not being poor. That was enough. Then, when I got used to being rich, I liked her for being just like me, just as rich as me. That's when it all began. Wealth can be an oppressive habit, particularly for those who haven't been born with it. Claire thought it might be good sport not to have money. But I knew, knew very well what a bore it actually was."
"You can't stand boredom, can you Phillip?"
"Nor can you, Harry. That's what's attractive about you. Am I boring you now?"
"No, go on."
"When the crash came, I was at more of a loss than she was. After all, she had known wealth all her life. And she hated boredom too. So, to save the day, I stole her jewels. And then, to reassure the insurance boss, to make certain it didn't appear to be one of those proverbial
'inside jobs' that were so popular then, I lifted some jewels belonging to a friendly neighbor as well. It was so simple. And I rather enjoyed it, looking at other people's treasures and then getting a very good price for them. My neighbors would have been proud of how highly I valued their property."
"Of course," Phillip continued, "Claire was terribly upset at first, but when the insurance money came through, we took a trip around the world and she calmed down a bit." He paused and lit a cigarette.
"Anyway, she thought it was as exciting to be married to a thief as to a poor man."
He looked about the study. "I've been collecting pictures for almost thirty years." Then wistful, catching himself up, Phillip smiled.
"Besides, I had responsibility. What would have become of Sam and Wilbur?"
Harry listened with interest, even sympathy. Then he said, "I guess now you are about ready to retire. Is that it?"
"I was hoping you would be too, Harry. Sincerely hoping."
Harry looked at him oddly for a moment, as though caught off-guard. Then his mouth twisted into its cynical smile and he said coldly,
"To be your chess companion or stable boy? No, I guess I'm not ready for that yet. Even though the princess goes with the deal, and I understand the other night now, Phillip. I understand that the golden haired princess is thrown in with the kingdom."
The two men stared at each other in silence. It was broken by a knock at the door. Carol walked in, beautiful in a floor trailing gown.
She studied the two men, and Harry realized that she had known of this talk.
"You look very well tonight, Carol," Phillip said without really transferring his attention from Harry. "Really lovely I might say. I like that pendant with that dress. Sets it off nicely." Carol wore a delicate chain around her neck, heavily burdened between her breasts with a large lovely diamond. She touched the gem and turned finally to Harry.
"Do you like it? I know you have a … feeling for such things."
Harry's eyes were cruel on her face, his voice gross. "The Johns at home," he said. "The Mid-West, the backbone of America."
Carol stood motionless and stared intently at Phillip. She couldn't speak for a few seconds, and they could see her pulse beating fast and frightened in her throat.
"Mystery over?" she asked Phillip.
"Only half of it," he said cruelly.