Parnell Hall: The Baxter Trust

“What do we do?” he said. “We put three bodyguards on her at all times, assign five squad cars to the area, and tap her phone.”

He looked up to see Sergeant Stams looking at him, impassive as always.

“What do you think we do?” Farron said. He snorted and handed him the letter. “File it.”

Sheila Benton spent a restless night.

Johnny called around seven o’clock to tell her he’d arrived safely and everything was going fine. Sheila would have loved to have told him all about what was happening, but she didn’t have the heart. He had his wife’s attorneys to deal with, and he didn’t need the added distraction. Besides, he’d kidded her on the way to the airport that she wouldn’t be able to get along for two days without him, that she’d be calling him up for advice. Well, she’d handled this herself, hadn’t she? She’d reported it to the police. She’d done everything she could do. And what the hell could he do, a million miles away?

And the other thing was, Johnny was never serious. He treated everything as a joke. He wouldn’t take this seriously. He’d just kid her about it

That started Sheila off on a bad train of thought. Johnny was never serious. How could she be sure he was serious about her? Nonsense. She knew he loved her. Didn’t he? Wasn’t he in Reno divorcing his wife so he’d be free to be with her? So what if he was never serious. She liked the way he kidded around. That was part of what had attracted her to him in the first place. So what was she worrying about?

It was a bad night. A night without Johnny. A night without coke. Jesus, she hadn’t thought it was going to be this hard. By eleven o’clock she was climbing the walls. She had ransacked the refrigerator and the kitchen shelves, and found damn little. Some orange juice. Some Wheaties. Some stale crackers. What she found, she ate, but it wasn’t nearly enough. She wanted something exciting, like pizza. But she couldn’t eat a whole pizza, and no one would deliver a slice. And she wasn’t that keen about walking out to Broadway, not alone, not at night, and not now. But she really wanted something.

What she wanted, of course, was coke. She didn’t really want to admit that, but it was true. And when she finally did admit it, when she finally said to herself, “Jesus, I need a hit of coke,” she rationalized. It would have been all right, she told herself, if it hadn’t been for the letter. That was what was throwing her. If it hadn’t been for that, she wouldn’t have needed the coke. She wouldn’t have felt this anxious and desperate. She could give up the coke easy enough, that wasn’t the problem. But not now. Not with Johnny gone and this thing happening to her. This scary thing that she didn’t understand. There was plenty of time to stop taking coke when everything was all right. That was the time to do it. Not in the middle of a crisis. Not with so much else on her mind.

By one in the morning she had convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with buying coke at this particular juncture in her life, and, considering how things stood, she should simply go ahead and do so.

With this conviction, she was finally able to fall asleep.

She awoke the next morning at nine o’clock. She got up, showered and dressed, folded up the bed and set out to accomplish her purpose.

On her way out, she checked the mailbox. The mail hadn’t come yet, and she was glad. She wasn’t up to another letter, if one happened to be in it.

Sheila walked out to Broadway and hailed a cab. Aside from cocaine, taxis were her one extravagance. Sheila couldn’t stand public transportation. It was so filthy in the subway. And so inconvenient, particularly getting from one side of town to the other. You had to take the subway to Times Square, shuttle, and then take a third train where you wanted to go, which was usually blocks from a subway stop anyway. So Sheila splurged a lot on cabs.

The cab took her through Central Park at Eighty-sixth Street, down Fifth Avenue and across to the address she had given on Park Avenue.

Sheila dug in her purse and discovered she had twenty-one dollars. She gave the driver a twenty and a smile. He grumbled over the twenty, which Sheila felt was uncalled for. After all, the meter had been five-seventy. She’d been about to tell him to keep seven bucks, but when he bitched, she made it six-fifty.

A doorman opened the door of the cab and said, “Good morning, Miss Benton,” as Sheila got out. Sheila favored him with a smile. It was nice to be greeted by name in such a posh setting.

Sheila went into the lobby and waited for the elevator. When it arrived, the elevator man also greeted her by name. She smiled at him also. The fact that she knew neither his name nor that of the doorman bothered her not at all, nor did it seem to bother them.

The elevator stopped at the eighth floor and let her off, not in a hallway, but in the spacious foyer of the floor-through apartment.

The double doors to the living room were open, and Sheila could see someone sitting on the couch. She frowned and had an uncharitable thought for the doorman and the elevator man. They should have told her Uncle Max had company. That didn’t suit her purpose at all.

Sheila walked in and the person on the couch heard her and turned. He was a young man, about twenty-five, dressed in a tweed jacket and slacks, which coupled with his glasses immediately identified him as a student.

Sheila, who had been prepared to dislike the intruder, whoever he might be, nonetheless, broke into a smile. “Phillip!”

“Hi, Sheila.”

“What are you doing here?”

He smiled. “What do you think? I want to go to summer school.” He jerked his thumb toward the door to the study. “Dad’s in there making the touch now.”

“You study too much.”

“I don’t study enough. You know how long it takes to get through law school?”

Sheila looked at him. “You really want to be a lawyer, Phillip?”

Phillip shrugged. “Uncle Max will support me through school. He wouldn’t give me a dime if I quit.”

“You have your trust fund.”

Phillip grinned. “Yeah. Just like yours. And what brings you here, cousin?”

Sheila grinned back. “What do you think?”

They both laughed, as they shared their own, special in-joke.

“Can’t wait to be thirty-five, can you?” Phillip said. “Well, I’ve got it all figured out. By the time I’m thirty-five, I’ll either be a wealthy lawyer or I’ll still be in school.”

The door to the study opened and Max and Teddy Baxter came out.

Sheila looked up at them, and thought the same thing she always thought when she saw them together. It was hard to believe that they were brothers, and only a year apart, too. Moreover, it was hard to believe that Teddy was the eldest. Maxwell Baxter, hearty, robust, assured and confident, looked like what he was-a wealthy powerlord. Teddy Baxter, slim, emaciated, tentative, and apologetic, looked like what he was-a poor relation.

Secretly, Sheila liked Teddy, Phillip’s father, better. Uncle Max was a cold, cultured, condescending, affluent snob. Uncle Teddy was a real person. But Sheila, who like Teddy and Phillip depended on Maxwell Baxter for everything, was careful never to let this show.

Uncle Teddy spotted Sheila first.

“Sheila!” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“Hello, Uncle Teddy. How are you?”

“Fifteen hundred dollars richer, that’s how he is,” Max said dryly.

Sheila gave him a playful scolding. “Uncle Max, that’s not nice.”

“It’s a crime, but there you are,” Max said.

Teddy, feeling called upon to justify himself said somewhat stiffly, “Education is very important-”