T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

He laughed, the sweetest sound in Jackie’s universe. “Leave it to you to pour on the cold water. You know what this means, Sis? We’re free.”

“We’ll be free when you find yourself a real job in the real world.”

“You can quit your job. Finally go to school.”

That froze her up solid. She could scarcely squeak, “What?”

“You don’t think I’ve noticed how you’ve listened when I talk about school? Now’s your chance to stop living your dreams through me and go for your own brass ring.” He reached for the pencil she used to make her shopping lists, pulled the envelope back over. “We’ll start a list. Things we’re going to do. Not just talk about them. Do. Normal things.”

“There’s nothing normal about any of this.”

“Careful now. You’re almost sounding like Mom.” He scribbled across the top end of the envelope, and said aloud, “Normal things. First on the list is Sis going back to grad school. Gainesville should do, you can commute, we’ll get a house on the north end of town. That’s number two. A house.”

“We’re fine here.”

“This place is a dump. A house with a pool. You’ve been driving around looking at houses and neighborhoods for years.” He looked up, pressing her with the eagerness of a kid the day before Christmas. “Come on, help me out here.”

She was urged forward, not by her own desire, but his euphoria. “Vacation.”

“There you go. Ship or plane?”

“Plane.”

“Right. Mountains or ocean?”

“Mountains.”

“You got it. Start packing, Sis, we’re on our way.”

She shook her head slowly back and forth, feeling then and there the unspoken threat, the gnawing worry. This isn’t real, she thought, almost wishing it was so.

Jackie stood outside the Watergate Complex, wondering what to expect. Or pretend to be. She watched four couples emerge through the glass front doors, glittering in evening wear and jewels and musical prattle. Jackie forced herself up the stairs and into the brightly lit lobby. As she waited while the doorman called the Hutchings apartment, she wondered how people could grow so comfortable in their masks they stopped hearing all the lies they sang.

Upstairs, Esther Hutchings was the same woman Jackie had met before, only now she was utterly undone. The poise was shattered, her cashmere sweater heavily stained, her makeup streaked and two days old. “Come in. Sorry, the time has gotten away from me. Graham has had a very bad day.”

“It’s no problem.” The living room was tasteful, the lighting muted, the oils on the wall no doubt original. The carpet was thick as a newly trimmed putting green. The upholstered furniture and the cushions and the silver-clad table were all perfect.

“My husband hates hospitals. He would rather die than go into a nursing home.”

“I understand.” Double sliding doors opened off the living room onto what had probably been a formal dining room. Paintings also hung on those walls, and additional silver ornaments stood upon other antique cabinets. Only this room now held a pneumatic hospital bed that could be electronically cranked to a hundred different positions. The kind necessary for someone who might never rise again. The back was pumped up so that the inhabitant could stare out over the dusk-washed Potomac. Jackie said, “You don’t need to explain.”

“No. I suppose I don’t.” Wearily Esther observed her husband. “He has good days and bad days. This one. .”

“Hasn’t been so good.”

“Here, let me take your bag. Would you like something to drink? A coffee, perhaps?”

“Not if it’s any bother.”

Esther managed a tight little smile. “We keep a fresh pot charged at all times around here.”

“A coffee would be great. Black.”

“Just a moment.” Esther took the back way and disappeared.

Jackie walked to the open double doors. She was not drawn by the figure in the bed so much as the man seated beside it. The visitor was ugly and overweight, and his carrot red hair grew in odd tufts. His shoes were stranded at the end of the bed along with his jacket and his briefcase. He was reading the Washington Post with the steady drone of someone who had been at it for quite a while. He did not look up until Jackie’s shadow fell on the page. Then he said in greeting, “Graham understands every word.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“You know strokes?”

“My mother.”

“Right. I remember. Esther told me.” He offered a hand. “Carter Styles.”

“Jackie Havilland. Do you do this every night?”

“My wife wouldn’t permit that. Or my kids. I try to make it by a couple of times every week. I used to work for him.”

But the look he gave the immobile man with the glittering dark eyes said that Esther’s husband had been far more than a boss. And still was.

Jackie’s eyes searched the room for something that would explain how a silent man with parchment skin could lie in this bed and command the world about him. How Graham Hutchings could grip this visitor so fiercely he would come and read the paper to a corpse.

A wooden cross hung directly in front of the bed. All the paintings in this room, Jackie now noted, were religious. The one over the glass balcony doors captured her. A figure holding a lantern stood at an ivy-clad door and knocked.

Carter Styles flipped over his paper, but did not resume his reading. Instead he asked, “So tell me what you see.”

Jackie sensed Esther moving up behind her and knew the young man’s words were some form of test. “The door doesn’t have a handle.”

“Which means?”

“Either the door was meant to stay shut,” she mused aloud, “or it has to be opened from the inside.”

Carter glanced to the woman behind her, said nothing. Esther touched Jackie’s elbow. “Your coffee is ready.”

Jackie nodded to the man in the bed, received a flickering shift of the gaze in reply. She followed Esther back into the living room and chose the sofa that would place her back to the sickroom. She needed to concentrate here.

Esther put the steaming cup on the table in front of her. “My husband was absolutely certain that the American fund managers and the Washington lobbyists were conspiring to emasculate our financial system’s oversights and restrictions. Are you aware of the Ecuador currency crisis?”

The bone china was eggshell-thin, the aroma rich enough to shove the sickroom stench momentarily aside. “It happened just as I was leaving school. The professors were all certain it had been orchestrated.”

“They were correct. Hayek was behind it.”

Jackie set down her cup. “You’re sure?”

“Of course not. If I were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But Graham was certain enough to take this on as his mission in life.” Hands unaccustomed to being idle straightened everything in reach-magazines on the table, throw cushions, the edge of the carpet, Jackie’s own saucer. “Today’s hedge fund operators and the investment bankers who front for them are nothing more than financial gunslingers. The forex traders are the worst of the lot. Of course you know what Soros did to the pound sterling and the financial markets of England.”

“Yes.” In other circumstances, Jackie would have found the woman’s constant plucking and straightening enough to give rise to a good scream. But now, with the mantle of sorrow draped over those strong features, she could not help but reach over and settle her own hand upon Esther’s. Showing her that she was not alone.

Esther stared down at the hand covering her own. Misery and fatigue smudged and slackened her face. “You can’t imagine what it’s like living with a man on a mission. I positively loathed it at times. I was jealous of his cause and everything that kept him from caring for me as much as he did all these other things.” She blinked once. Twice. “And now it’s all in my hands. Life is such a lover of cruel irony.”