Nightwork

There had been very little opportunity for any kind of laughter at all in the last few days. Washington had been a sobering experience. If, as so many people believed, wealth made for happiness, I was a neophyte at the job. I had made a poor choice of companions in my new estate - Hale, with his blocked career and nervous love affair, Evelyn Coates, with her complex armor, my poor brother.

In Europe, I decided, I was going to seek out people without problems. Europe had always been a place to which the American rich had escaped. I now considered myself a member of that class. I would let others who had preceded me teach me the sweet technique of flight. I would look for joyful faces.

On Tuesday night I stayed in my room alone, watching television. On this last night in America there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks.

As a last gesture, I put a hundred and fifty dollars in an envelope with a note to the bookie at the St Augustine that read, 'Sorry I kept you waiting for your money,' and signed my name. There would be one man in America who would vouch for my reputation as an honest man. I mailed the note as I checked out of the hotel.

* * *

I got to the airport early, by taxi. The attaché case, with the money inside it, was in the big blue bag with the combination lock. The money would be out of my hands, in the baggage compartment, while we crossed the Atlantic, but there was nothing to be done about it. I knew that every passenger was searched and his hand luggage opened and examined before boarding the plane, as a precaution against hijackers, and it "would have been awkward, to say the least, to have to try to explain to an armed guard why I needed more than seventy thousand dollars for a three-week skiing trip.

Wales had been right about the overweight, too. The man at the desk never even looked at the scale as the skycap swung my two bags onto it.

'No skis or boots?' he asked.

'No,' I said. 'I'm going to buy them in Europe.'

Try Rossignols,' he said. 'I hear they're great.' He had become an expert on equipment at a departure desk at Kennedy.

I showed him my passport, he checked the manifest list and gave me a boarding pass and the formalities were over. Have a good trip,' he said. 'I wish I was going with you.' The other people on the line with me had obviously started celebrating already, and there was a loud holiday air about the entire occasion, with people embracing and calling to each other and skis clattering to the floor.

I was early and went into the restaurant for a sandwich and a glass of beer. I hadn't eaten lunch and it would be a long time before they served us anything on the plane and I was hungry.

As I ate and drank my beer, I read the evening paper. A policeman had been shot in Harlem that morning. The Rangers had won the night before. A judge had come out against pornographic films. The editors were firmly in favor of impeaching the President. There was talk of his resigning. Men who had had high positions in the White House were being sent to jail. The envelope Evelyn Coates had given me to deliver in Rome was in my small bag, now being stowed into the hold of the airplane. I wondered if I was helping to put someone in jail or keep him out. America. I reflected on my visit to Washington.

There was a pay telephone on the wall near where I was sitting and I suddenly had the desire to speak to someone, make one last statement, make one ultimate connection with a familiar voice, before I left the country. I got up and dialed the operator and once more called Evelyn Coates's number.

Again, there was no answer. Evelyn was a woman who was more likely to be out than in at any given moment. I hung up and got my dime back. I was about to return to my table, where my half-eaten sandwich was waiting for me, when I stopped. I remembered driving down the street past the St Augustine Hotel and nearly stopping. This time there would be no danger. I would be climbing into international jet space within forty minutes. I put the dime back into the machine and dialed the number.

As usual, the phone rang and rang before I heard Clara's voice. 'Hotel St Augustine,' she said. She could manage to get her discontent and her irritation with the entire world even into this brief announcement.

'I'd like to speak to Mr. Drusack, please,' I said.

'Mr Grimes!' My name came out in a shriek. She had recognized my voice.

I would like to speak to Mr Drusack, please,' I said, pretending that I hadn't heard her or at least hadn't understood her.

'Mr Grimes,' she said, 'where are you?'

'Please, miss,' I said, 'I would like to speak to Mr Drusack. Is he there?'

'He's in the hospital, Mr Grimes,' she said. 'Two men followed him in his car and beat him up with a pistol. He's in a coma now. They think his skull is fractured and...'

I hung up the phone and went back to my table and finished the sandwich and the beer.

* * *