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The Cavanaugh Quest
By Thomas Gifford OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1976 Thomas Gifford
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-6610-6
CHAPTER 1
Summer frequently ends abruptly in Minneapolis, where the natives speak of the Theater of Seasons with a pride not unlike that they take in the Guthrie Theater and the Minnesota Vikings. It can be there one August day, the summer, and be gone the next as the clouds sift down over the lakes and the beaches go grainy and lonely beside the whitecaps. I knew such a day was coming, had to be coming, but the August warmth was still hanging in the trees and I was sufficiently optimistic to buy some new Slazenger tennis balls the day Hubbard Anthony and I played our monumental world class five-setter. I hadn't lost the weight I'd promised myself that summer. I was still struggling into my Fred Perry shorts and shirt with the distinctive marking; snug, yes, but I wear them on principle, proving a point which recedes each summer. I was freshly forty and not prepared to make concessions to time.
The day of the five-setter was also the day Larry Blankenship blew his head inside out against the green-and-gold-flocked wallpaper in the main lobby of the building where I lived. I'd played three hours of sweating tennis with Hub at the Norway Creek Club and my ass was dragging. He was sixty years old, hard as the judge's bench he sat on, and possessed of an infernal stamina which wore me down over five sets.
The temperature hung entrapped at ninety but huge oaks left the clay courts shade-dappled, playable; but Hub craftily used the shadows. After winning the first and third sets I began to go a trifle rubbery in the face of his great, awful cannonading serves. They rocketed down like V-2's, blurring in and out of the sun and shade, and he took the final two sets, 6-2 and 6-1. I'm a rather boorish loser, but I had to admire the way he'd paced himself.
We stood at the net, Hubbard looking as if he'd been out for a pleasant Sunday-afternoon hit. He was grinning at me, spinning the sixty-dollar Arthur Ashe carpet beater in his large tanned hand.
"I'm sure you cheated somehow," I said. "Come on back for a drink. Tell me your secrets." I was puffing.
"It's only a game," he said as we walked back to the clubhouse, past the pool with the kids shouting and splashing and the mothers looking eighteen in their bikinis and tans. "But it's more fun to win than to lose." Everybody was looking too young, too vigorous. It made me nervous. Hubbard was talking while I watched all the breasts struggling to slip out of their bikinis.
"What?" I said. "I missed that."
"Zen tennis," he repeated in that patient, judicial way. "I've been playing it for years and now this fellow's written a book about it. You've got to let yourself win, he says, Paul, as opposed to making yourself win."
"Cutting it a bit close, don't you think?"
"Well, your body knows how to hit the shots. You must simply let it do what it already knows how to do." He twirled the racket again.
"My body weighs twenty pounds too much. Twenty pounds larded in between knowing and doing."
"All you have to do," he went on, "is let your mind make a picture of how the shot should be hit, how you've seen Laver or Rosewall hit it, and let it happen." He chuckled apologetically. "Of course, I'm oversimplifying...."
"Of course," I said. Sweat was burning nasty little holes in the corners of my eyes. "Let it happen...."
Hubbard Anthony was too good for me, a fact which I discovered all over again each summer, but I was counting on time as my ally. In ten years I'd be fifty and he'd be seventy and then, by God, I'd show the old bastard.
Showered and dressed and exhausted, I flung the Porsche around Lake of the Isles Boulevard with a childish daring which I equated with the great Fangio behind the wheel of his Ferrari or whatever it had been. Fangio dated me, of course, and the Porsche looked as old as I felt but driving it fast helped me regain the self-respect I'd labored so long that afternoon to lose, to squander.
I wheeled it up the driveway to the guest's parking area since I'd have to take Hubbard home later and it was obvious that something was happening. There were two police cars, an ambulance, and a rescue-squad van cluttering up the driveway and a nattering wave of curious tenants lapped at the edges of the red carpet under the canopy. Reflexively I looked up the twenty-five-story façade with its geometry of redwood balconies and sharp angles. It looked as if it were gnashing its teeth at the world. Somebody finally fell off; that's what I was thinking as I walked toward the apparent disaster area. The pathetic little fountain in the middle of the glaring concrete squirted faintly, tiredly, as if the long day were just too much for it.
"Somebody took a header," I said. "It was bound to happen, sooner or later."
Hubbard followed me past the ambulance, between the rescue van and a cop car, and through the delivery entrance tucked in behind a screen of decorative concrete blocks. There was no point in using the front door: Two uniformed cops were blocking it off. There wasn't a big splotch in the driveway after all. Whatever had happened had happened inside.
The door to the manager's office was open and the room was empty. The swivel chair behind the desk lay on its side. Someone had gotten up in a hell of a hurry and kicked it over. I used my key on the mailroom door and went through it, out the other end into the lobby with its green thick carpet as soft and yielding as a dune. There were several people standing in a kind of awkward, anticipatory silence and a few more speaking in self-conscious undertone. Bill Oliver, the manager, and his wife, Pat, were standing by the fireplace with its fake fire flickering cheerily behind the plastic log. They were talking to a plainclothesman in a business suit and white shirt while another cop stood staring at something in the corner beside the enormous, sparse, split-leaf philodendron. Two men in white medico costume were bending over the something which appeared to be a pile of green army blankets. Two highly polished penny loafers with virgin tan soles protruded from the bottom of the pile of blankets.
Fritz, one of the caretakers, was standing near the bank of elevators looking past the small crowd, sizing up the situation with soft, pained eyes which looked out from behind a well-creased face that had once been hard and maybe even mean. He was the kind of material they made fiftyish caretakers from: too much booze, too little luck, and a life gone a bit sour.
"Mr. Cavanaugh," he said hoarsely, dropping his cigarette into a gleaming cylinder of white sand. He looked as if he expected to be blamed for whatever had happened.
"What's going on?" I asked. Fritz was sweating, per usual. "Who's under the blankets?" Just looking at Fritz always made me feel peculiarly guilty, as if I'd done something unspeakable to him.
Hubbard couldn't quite tear himself away from body watching. His long bony arms were resting on his angular hips and he looked very calm. He'd been around, after all.
"I don't know for sure," Fritz said apologetically. Under stress his German accent surfaced. He was always apologizing; he acted like a friendly old dog who expected to kick square in his fidelity. "I've been up on the roof working on the dehumidifier system, see, and I come down here to check on the lobby vents—people been complaining, see, about coming in outa the ninety degrees and not feeling no big change like they oughta. So Bill ast me to get on it...." He wiped his grease-stained hands across the olive-green work shirt, eyes flickering softly past my shoulder.
"So, I come outen the elevator and I'm heading through the delivery hallway toward Bill's office and this guy comes by me, going the other way, goes into the mail room, and I go into the office. Bill's at his desk there tearing open this here envelope and he looks up and I start telling him about the goddamn vents which are finally putting out cool air—see, nice and cool now—and he's kinda half listening to me and reading this letter, at the same time like, and sumbitch, he says, 'Holy shit!' and he jumps up from behind his desk, the chair falls over, and there's a hell of a noise ... gunshot, I guess, from the lobby area, loud as a bastard, we can hear it through the glass door of the office and the glass door into the lobby, and Bill's out from behind the desk, through the office door, then he's gotta fuck with the lobby door, which is locked, naturally." Fritz took a breath and swallowed. Nothing had changed over by the fireplace, but Hubbard had joined us, smelling of Vetiver and looking cool in his seersucker slacks and Izod shirt. He was watching Fritz and listening carefully, like a judge.
"By the time he got his key out and got into the lobby there," Fritz continued, "I could see old Mrs. Hemenway come into view and she's got those little white gloves she always wears, well, she's got her hand up over her mouth and she's looking at something ...
"Guy fuckin' shot himself right in the lobby!" Fritz concluded abruptly.
"How long ago?"
"Half an hour, maybe."
"Did you know him? Was it the guy who passed you and went into the mail room?"
"I guess so ... but, hell, he smiled at me, nodded, when he went by me. Seems funny as hell. I didn't see the dead guy close up, y'know, but he had one of them light-blue summery suits on and so did the guy I saw go past me ..." He shook his head. "But the guy said hi, nodded, real friendly. Then he goes out in the lobby and shoots hisself ..."
"Did you recognize him?"
"Well, yeah, not by name—but I seen him before, going up and down in the elevator." Fritz wiped sweat off his forehead and left a bar of grease in the horizontal wrinkles of his supplicant's brow. "Bannister? No, something like Battleship but that's not it." He looked around as the elevator door opened. Margaret, one of the cleaning ladies, got out in her green smock and blue shorts.
"Marge," he said, "what is the guy's name? The dead guy? Something like Battleship ..."
Margaret looked like a dowager even when she was on the trash run, stopping at every floor. She had iron-gray hair swept back and wore glasses on a chain around her neck and was always calm. Her costume was completed with blue tennies, yet she always appeared to be going to or coming from the Symphony Ball.
"Blankenship," she said. "Larry Blankenship."
Hubbard Anthony whisked in a sharp breath and said, "Oh, Jesus, not Larry!"
But there wasn't time just then to investigate the slightly glazed, uncharacteristic cast in Hubbard's eye because the little group by the still-warm remains of Larry Blankenship was breaking up and the well-bred inhabitants of the building were backing away, trying to look as if they weren't really interested in such an unseemly business. Bill Oliver's gaunt face looked pale and his mouth was clamped shut; a great many rich, elderly people lived in the building so he was used to an occasional death, but guns going off in the lobby was something else, something you didn't get used to.
The plainclothes cop turned out to be Mark Bernstein, a homicide dick I'd spent some time with while I was writing a book about a celebrated murder investigation and trial a few years before. He was forty-five or so, powdered and cool, neatly barbered with a fringe of hair over the collar and a long handsome face. He always reminded me of Craig Stevens, who used to play Peter Gunn on the tube. He nodded when he saw me and gave a tight-lipped grin.
"No book in this one, Paul," he said. He nodded to Judge Anthony, who was still distracted, ashen-faced. I suppose Hub's sudden pallor was the first thing that struck me as peculiar about the whole Blankenship story, other than Blankenship's manner of departure. The corpse meant nothing to me but Hub was a friend.
"Low marks for neatness, though," I said.
"Nobody cares about neatness anymore," Bernstein said.
"What actually happened? Why are you here?"
"I was in the office, that's all. Slow Sunday afternoon. The call came in and I figured what the hell, I'd go out myself. All we had was a guy'd been shot ..."
I followed along beside him. Bill Oliver was heading on into the office and we went with him. Bernstein looked at my tennis racket. "You win?"
"Nope, the judge here did it to me again."
"I never get a chance to play tennis anymore," he said.
"You're too damned busy trying to become mayor in your spare time. Dumb priorities. Tennis you can play all your life, being mayor is a sometime thing."
"Bullshit," he said. He was sensitive about his political ambitions and I didn't really think he was wrong. Anything is better than being a homicide dick, even being mayor.
Nobody said we couldn't tag along so Hub and I went on into the office. Pat Oliver had gotten there first and was putting the desk chair in place. She looked worried, her deep-set eyes downcast and hiding. She sighed heavily and leaned against the filing cabinet and watched the lads in white with stretchers go in to wrap up their bundle.
Bernstein said, "May I see this letter, please?"
Oliver picked it up off the neatly arranged desk and handed it to him. "Goddamnedest thing I've ever seen," he said. His jaw was rigid and his pale blue eyes flickered nervously from Bernstein, who was reading the note, to me. "He comes in here, Paul, and says hi to Pat and me, just as normal as hell, all dressed up like he's going out to dinner or something, fresh clean suit, tie, like all he's got on is brand new ... I could smell the Old Spice. He says he's got this for me, hands me the envelope, and I figure it's rent or something. Rent's the only thing people come in here with in an envelope, and I don't even give it a second thought. I took it from him, said, 'Okay, Mr. B.,' and he just smiles and goes back out. Fritz is coming in at the same time and he's going on with some song and dance about the goddamn air conditioner and I'm opening the envelope and I read the note and I can hear Fritz talking, at first it doesn't take—and then, holy shit, I get the point and right away the gun goes off ..."
His voice was shaking and he was short of breath. He shrugged his square farm boy's shoulders and took off his bifocals. He grabbed a Kleenex from the desk dispenser and began polishing them. "Christ, I hardly knew the guy, but still, it hits you when a guy does that to himself in your goddamn lobby ..." He turned to look out of the window where the sun's waves jumped and quivered on the cars.
Hubbard sat down in a straight-backed chair. He hadn't said a word since his quiet little exclamation in the lobby. I knew him well enough to know that he was getting himself under control by an expenditure of will; I'd seen him do it on the tennis court, counteracting a bad shot or a miscalculated placement I'd returned for a winner.
Bernstein bit his lip and said, "Funny, very funny, this one," and shook his head.
"So what does it say?" I asked.
He handed it to me.
"Read it out loud," he said. "Slowly, conversationally. I want to hear what it sounds like."
It was written in green Flair ink on cream-colored stationery of high quality. His name, Lawrence Blankenship, was printed in simple, unexaggerated capital letters across the top of the sheet, centered. No address, no occupation. Just the name. Very classy.
"'Dear Mr. Oliver,'" I read. "'I'm very sorry to cause you the inconvenience of doing this in your lobby but I do have my reasons. As you know, I live alone. It bothers me to think that my body might go undiscovered for several days and suffer the unhappy effects of hot weather. Particularly with this lousy air conditioning. So accept my apologies and my goodbyes to you and Mrs. Oliver. Sincerely, Larry Blankenship.'"
Nobody said anything and I read it again to myself.
Bernstein went to the window facing into the entranceway and the lobby. They were bringing the stretcher out, all covered up, and that was the end of Larry Blankenship.
But of course it wasn't. It was only the beginning.
I built us a pitcher of Pimm's Cup No. One with brandy, apples, cucumber slices, and lime wedges, sloshed over a seventy-nine-cent bag of sanitary ice cubes, all in a silver pitcher that had long ago been a wedding present and which I had stolen from what had once been my own home. Hubbard was sitting in an Italian deck chair with his feet tilted up on the rim of a flowerpot. I put the pitcher on a little plastic cube between us, poured two glass mugs full, and sat down on a porch swing I'd stolen from my father's garage. The best things in life are quite frequently the things you steal.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Cavanaugh Quest by Thomas Gifford. Copyright © 1976 Thomas Gifford. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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