Ugly Money

The blue eyes were very direct. ‘Are you going to help me?’

‘How, is the question. Let me think it over.’

The wind blustered and hurled buckets of Oregon rain at the windows, a cozy sound as long as you’re safe indoors. I could see that their heroic day, not to mention the thousand-mile drive preceding it, not to mention the large meal they’d just consumed, were all taking their toll; they were only managing to keep their eyes open because it would have been impolite to let them close. I suggested we make up the bed; we could talk some more in the morning, and by then I might have come up with an idea. There were no disagreements. As a matter of fact I’d already had the idea, but sudden inspiration should never be voiced until it’s been allowed to marinate for a while, preferably overnight; ideas often lead to further ideas.

Bed-making was weird and wonderful; they preferred to sleep head to toe. ‘In case,’ she said, ‘he kind of half wakes up and thinks I’m a boy.’

‘Nobody,’ replied her best friend, taking the words out of my mouth, ‘could possibly mistake you for a boy.’

Myself, I didn’t feel sleepy: too many questions weaving around in my mind, most of them requiring answers from Ruth, some from my brother Jack. What worried me most was the thought of their gnawing anxiety. Would they have put the police onto their daughter? Probably not yet, possibly not ever, even if they wanted to: there were enough wounds to be healed without that one. Did they know that she’d taken off with Nick? He was only a youngster but evidently a prudent and resourceful youngster, and that would be some comfort.

My first loyalty was to Jack and Ruth of course, and yet there was something about their daughter’s dogged independence which also demanded loyalty. I would have to tell them she was with me and safe (relatively speaking) but I could only do so after she’d agreed that it must be done: a weak decision certainly, but what in life is weaker than divided loyalty, and what more common?

Had anyone asked me earlier that evening if I loved my brother I would have replied, ‘No, not really.’ I admired him, yes, and occasionally enjoyed his company, in small doses; but sibling love has always struck me as being either a very strong emotion, or a thing you take for granted and ignore. So I was surprised to find that now, a few hours later, my answer would have been different; perhaps there’s more feeling between us than I’ve ever supposed.

The fact is he’d become remote: a noted figure occasionally seen on television, accepting some award with a witty little speech. Misfortune seemed to have snapped him back into focus. What a heart-wrenching thing to have to do, telling that loved child he wasn’t her real father. His marriage, in a town of nonmarriages, has always been considered perfect; both he and Ruth are honest and honorable people – it’s a wonder he ever made it in that dishonest, perfidious industry.

I suppose that always, from the start, they’d meant to tell Marisa the truth; and knowing Ruth as I did, I was sure it wasn’t a very shameful truth. Presumably they’d put it off and put it off, trying to decide what age would be the right one. Not this year, she’s just a kid. Maybe next year, they grow up so quickly. And then Ruth had again become pregnant; had they convinced themselves that presently, when Marisa had a small brother, things would become easier?

Easier! It seems incredible in our world, and in that city of prestigious hospitals, but something went disastrously wrong. One day it appeared to be a normal pregnancy with five weeks to go, next day it was the emergency ward and an oxygen tent. Ruth nearly died and, thank God, a decision was made not to save the baby, which had suffered brain damage during delivery. It was six weeks before Ruth recovered sufficiently to be told she could never have another child.

So there was only Marisa, and how infinitely precious she must then have seemed. Did they really have to tell her? Supposing it turned her against them? And there the agonizing indecision had stayed, a cancer of untruth in the minds of two honest people: until a dinner-party argument had tipped the scales – we all know those scales, they take very little tipping.

Marisa came out of the bathroom and padded over to where I was sitting. In pajamas, hair tousled, she looked twelve years old again, beautiful eyes clouded by sleep – and, it seemed, by doubt: ‘Will, those things I did, were they wrong?’

Moral sense is always touching. I said, ‘Right, wrong, who knows? Who cares, as long as you get yourself straightened out and happy again?’

She smiled and kissed my cheek. I went with her to the bedroom door and looked in. ‘Sound asleep. I bet you sleep sound too. Get up when you feel like it – I’ll be out, got to see to my boat.’

‘You have a boat?’

‘Last time I looked. Weather like this, she may be at the bottom of the river by now, she’s an old lady.’

Her eyes were closing as she stood there. Mine didn’t close for a long time: continuing mental indigestion.

3

I can’t discover the origins of Mary Celeste II, but whoever christened her had a dark sense of humor. You may recall that in 1872 the brigantine Mary Celeste (I) was found off the Azores, bowling along under half-sail with no one on board, not a soul; the captain, his wife and baby daughter, and a crew of seven were never heard of again. Dozens of explanations have been suggested over the years, from drunken mutiny – the cargo was commercial alcohol, but it would have killed anyone who drank it – to sea monsters, plague and waterspouts. Conan Doyle announced that the tea in the galley was still warm and breakfast was cooking – absolutely untrue. It remains one of the great mysteries of the sea.

Mary Celeste II is a twenty-foot cabin cruiser, of sorts, with a stumpy mast and no sail. She is steered, not by a nice tidy wheel in the cabin but by an old-fashioned tiller. (Does this indicate that she was once a sailing boat?) When you’re at the tiller the engine hatch, under which reposes a bloody-minded old diesel, is at your feet, so you can control her speed by leaning forward and dealing with this machine directly, an unusual procedure. Such arcane details make her an object of amusement; and so does her figure; she’s tubby, and it looks as though successive owners arrived at her present eccentric shape by adding bits and pieces whenever they felt the urge. I’m not sure how far she’d sail with no one on board, but she can potter very agreeably to and fro on the Columbia, as long as I keep her well away from the infamous bar where river and ocean collide, and where many ships a hundred, two hundred, times her size have come to grief. I’ve described her at some length because she plays a role in this story, and one not unworthy of her notorious name.

I bought her from the man who was moving out of the apartment when I moved in: bought her for a song, which is all I could afford and maybe all she’s worth. I love her dearly. Greg Johansen, who owns the small marina on the Skipanon River where I keep her, is fond of her too. On that particular morning he wouldn’t let me take her out of the water – or more properly wouldn’t take her out of the water for me – because, he said, once this wind had blown itself out we’d be having an indian summer: perfect weather for Mary Celeste and me to go pottering. As a result I left her where she was, one of those negative decisions which have positive consequences.

When I got back to the house, which contains three large apartments on its three floors, I saw that Andy Swensen was cleaning the panes of glass in and around the grandiose front door. My heart fell because he only does this job, very badly, when he feels talkative, waylaying any hapless tenant who needs to enter or exit. I suppose I have to describe him because he too, like Mary Celeste, is important to what follows. He’s supposed to be our caretaker, but since the apartments are entirely self-contained, each having its own central and water heating, there’s nothing much for him to do except keep the front and back yards tidy and flourishing; he doesn’t like gardening, or any other form of physical labor, so they’re always neglected. He lives, with a mountainous wife, too fat to move, in the basement; this is by no means as bad as it sounds because the house is on a steep slope, and at the back his windows offer all the light in the world and a fine view of the river. He’s the half-brother of the owner, who resides in a squalid mobile home in the middle of a field about ten miles out of town, making a small fortune from our combined rents.

When I’d run the gauntlet, declining to gossip – I knew I’d pay for it; Andy can be spiteful – I found Marisa sitting at the table in the bay window admiring the view. Showered and dressed and as fresh as a violet, she was eating toast and butter and apricot jam. Nick was singing ‘Shenandoah’ in the bathroom. It was nice, for a while anyway, and chapter nine notwithstanding, to have youngsters around again; I knew a sudden pang for my solitary state in life – brought on, of course, by myself.

‘So,’ she said, ‘how was your boat?’

‘As dotty as ever.’ I had a feeling that in more normal times she’d have been asking for a day afloat (I didn’t then know she was afraid of water) but these weren’t normal times, and there was only one thing on her mind. She waited until I’d helped myself to coffee before saying, ‘How do I find him, Will? Where do I start?’

I’d known last night exactly where she could start: with a very sharp lady who lived in a large old house in Portland, Connie Sherwood King. But during the night this idea had spawned another, as I’d hoped it would: Connie was a powerful card, and I wasn’t about to play her without taking at least one trick; so I replied, ‘OK Marisa, let’s deal. I’ll help you start your quest, if you let me call your mother and tell her you’re all right.’

While she was considering this, blue eyes fixed on a piece of toast, Nick came out of the bathroom. Marisa transferred her gaze to her best friend. ‘Will wants to deal. He’ll help me if I let him call home.’

‘Depends how good the help’s going to be, doesn’t it?’ The generations were once again locked – he reminded me of my son, Harry.

Marisa said, ‘He’s right. How good is the help going to be?’

‘I have up my magical sleeve a lady who knows everything that’s gone on in and around Portland for the last forty years, and I mean everything.’

‘Then she’d know rich-as-hell Mr Hartman.’

‘Certainly. If he exists.’ I thought it better not to add that Connie would only divulge what she knew after her prodigious memory had scrutinized it with extreme care; her middle name was Diplomacy. She was ‘old money’ herself – except that her father had spent it all.

‘Would she know about Dad’s first movie, the bummer?’

‘Of course.’

‘How come?’

‘She used to be a journalist, she wrote the social page for umpteen years.’

They considered this for a while, and we all gazed out of the window. The Washington hills, rising to mountains, were rain-washed and sparkling clear: too clear, it’s never a good sign. Tremendous cumuli were sailing in majestically from the northwest where the Pacific builds its most magnificent clouds, and their shadows came sliding, undulating towards us: down the forested slopes and into the Columbia, turning it from icy blue to an ominous purple-gray, against which two tugs, coaxing a vast barge upriver towards Longview, remained dramatically sunlit. I never tire of this ever-changing panorama and have to work with my back to it.

Marisa said to Nick, ‘What do you think?’

‘I think you should go for it.’

Marisa nodded and finished the toast; then, eyes fixed on me over her coffee: ‘For a start you’d better know I laid a false trail. Unless I screwed it up they think I’ve gone south – to New Mexico, Santa Fe.’

‘Clever old you.’

‘I don’t know. They’re not silly.’ A shrug. ‘If you call her she’ll be on the next plane.’

‘Probably.’

She glanced at her watch and said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ Even the glance at the watch had a meaning, as I was to discover in a minute; it told her that the time was 9.40 and the date the 6th, Tuesday. I went to the phone, found the number in my book and tapped it out. If I knew Ruth she’d be sitting at the other end of the line, anxiously waiting. In fact as soon as I heard a woman’s voice I said, ‘Ruth?’ even as I realized it wasn’t Ruth.

‘No, this Luanne. Mrs Adams out, Mr Adams studio.’

I pressed the mute button and said to Marisa, ‘Luanne. Want to speak to her?’ She shook her head. I told Luanne I’d call again later.

With some satisfaction, Marisa said, ‘She’s never home 9.40, Tuesday morning. Tennis.’

OK, game to the little girl, set and match still to be played. I couldn’t see Ruth frisking off to the tennis club in the middle of a crisis, but anyway … I said, ‘When does she get back?’

‘Around noon.’