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"That's great," said Greg. "She'll be pleased to hear it."
"Now put that damn blade away."
"One more thing. A warning."
Lev looked angry. "You're warning me?"
"If anything bad happens to Jacky--anything at all . . ." Greg moved the razor side to side, just a little.
Lev said scornfully: "Don't tell me you're going to cut Joe Brekhunov."
"No."
Lev showed a hint of fear. "You'd cut me?"
Greg shook his head.
Angrily, Lev said: "What, then, for Christ's sake?"
Greg looked at Gladys.
She took a second to catch his drift. Then she jerked back in her silk-upholstered chair, put both hands on her cheeks as if to protect them, and gave another little scream, louder this time.
Lev said to Greg: "You little asshole."
Greg folded the razor and stood up. "It's how you would have handled it, Father," he said.
Then he went out.
He slammed the door and leaned against the wall, breathing as hard as if he had been running. He had never felt so scared in his life. Yet he also felt triumphant. He had stood up to the old man, used his own tactics back on him, even scared him a little.
He walked to the elevator, pocketing the razor. His breathing eased. He looked back along the hotel corridor, half-expecting his father to come running after him. But the door of the suite remained closed, and Greg boarded the elevator and went down to the lobby.
He entered the hotel bar and ordered a dry martini.
iii
On Sunday Greg decided to visit Jacky.
He wanted to tell her the good news. He remembered the address--the only piece of information he had ever paid a private detective for. Unless she had moved, she lived just the other side of Union Station. He had promised her he would not go there, but now he could explain to her that such caution was no longer necessary.
He went by cab. Crossing town, he told himself he would be glad to draw a line at last under his affair w
ith Jacky. He had a soft spot for his first lover, but he did not want to be involved in her life in any way. It would be a relief to get her off his conscience. Then, next time he ran into her, she would not look scared to death. They could say hello, chat for a while, and walk on.
The cab took him to a poor neighborhood of one-story homes with low chain-link fences around small yards. He wondered how Jacky lived these days. What did she do during those evenings she was so keen to have to herself? No doubt she saw movies with her girlfriends. Did she go to Washington Redskins football games, or follow the Nats baseball team? When he had asked her about boyfriends, she had been enigmatic. Perhaps she was married and could not afford a ring. By his calculation she was twenty-four. If she was looking for Mr. Right she should have found him by now. But she had never mentioned a husband, nor had the detective.
He paid off the taxi outside a small, neat house with flower pots in a concrete front yard--more domesticated than he had expected. As soon as he opened the gate he heard a dog bark. That made sense: a woman living alone might feel safer with a dog. He stepped onto the porch and rang the doorbell. The barking got louder. It sounded like a big dog, but that could be deceptive, Greg knew.
No one came to the door.
When the dog paused for breath, Greg heard the distinctive silence of an empty house.
There was a wooden bench on the stoop. He sat and waited a few minutes. No one came, and no helpful neighbor appeared to tell him whether Jacky was away for a few minutes, all day, or two weeks.
He walked a few blocks, bought the Sunday edition of The Washington Post, and returned to the bench to read it. The dog continued to bark intermittently, knowing he was still there. It was the first of November, and he was glad he had worn his olive green uniform greatcoat and cap: the weather was wintry. Midterm elections would be held on Tuesday, and the Post was predicting that the Democrats would take a beating because of Pearl Harbor. That incident had transformed America, and it came as a surprise to Greg to realize that it had happened less than a year ago. Now American men of his own age were dying on an island no one had ever heard of called Guadalcanal.
He heard the gate click, and looked up.
