Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

He took a sip from his julep, his eyes on hers. “You still like it pink around the bone?” he said.

“What?” she said.

“Your steak,” he said. “I’ll put another one on.”

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Jerry said.

“Thank you,” she said.

She took his arm, her high heels catching on the edges of the flagstones, the heat from a gas torch bright on the side of her face. She looked once more at Roy. He was turning a steak on the grill, watching the grease flare on the coals. His gaze lifted to hers. He pointed a finger at the back of Carbo’s neck, grinning, his thumb cocked like a pistol. He jerked his finger as though he had just pulled the trigger.

Jerry opened the driver’s door on her car. Clara Wiseheart had gone back inside the dining room. Carbo was talking to Roy, who kept looking through the piked gate at Linda Gail.

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nbsp; “What’s that man doing here?” she said.

“He’s the laddie you see if you want into the fight game,” Jerry said. “You know what the sports wire is?”

“It has to do with Las Vegas?”

“The people who control it control all the gambling in the United States. Some of the money gets laundered in the film industry. The Mafia already controls the projectionists and stagehands. You think that guy in there is bad? You ought to meet Charlie Luciano.”

“Hershel might die, and I’m responsible. Did Roy have Jack Valentine killed?”

“He knows the guys who could do it. I doubt Roy would go to the trouble with a guy like Valentine. Frankly, who cares? People live, people die. Carbo was just telling us he was pals with Bugsy Siegel. Some people think he was involved in Siegel’s murder. It’s not ours to worry about. Move your husband out to Santa Monica and forget all these people in River Oaks. There’s nothing that goes on in Roy’s house that doesn’t go on in the government. At Okinawa I strafed Japanese fishing boats because they had radios on them. There were families on those boats. It’s the way of the world. We’re wayfaring strangers. We’re born alone, we die alone.”

“You got that from Roy.”

“It’s the only thing in life he’s been right about, except for his infatuation with you.”

“I don’t have the power to deal with these people. I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re the one with the talent. They’re the ones who want to buy it. What’s that tell you? Take their money and treat them with the contempt they deserve.”

“I quit.”

“Quit what?”

“The picture,” she said.

He stepped back from her and turned her shoulders so the carriage lamps shone on her face. “Look at me,” he said.

“You heard what I said.”

“Don’t even think those words.” She started to speak, but he pressed one finger to her lips. “No,” he said. “You did not say what you think you did. You imagined those words. You did not say them. You do not throw hundreds of thousands of dollars of studio money into the incinerator.”

She got into the Cadillac and started the engine. Jerry was trying to hold on to the door handle and walk alongside the Cadillac, talking all the while at the glass. He didn’t let go until she smacked into a ceramic urn by the entrance and bounced over the curb into the street, a hubcap rolling down the asphalt.

WHEN I WAS released from jail on the streets of downtown Houston, I knew what a derelict felt like. My coat was gone, my clothes filthy and torn, my face unshaved. There was blood in my hair. One eye was swollen into a slit. My wallet was gone, my car towed to an impoundment somewhere outside Beaumont.

Our enemies, whoever they were, had created a masterpiece of misery. There were no criminal charges against Rosita or me, so we had no way to seek redress. Rosita had been locked up in the psychiatric ward at the county hospital and was now classified as a mental patient and ward of the system. Wasn’t it the responsibility of the state to care for the insane? Anyone who doubted she was ill could examine her record of abnormal behavior, her insularity and detachment, her connection with Communists, her scalding of a police officer’s face. Hadn’t she been in an extermination camp? Perhaps she had been used in experiments that had driven her mad.

I walked to my office and borrowed money from my secretary to take a cab to our house in the Heights. Our maid, Snowball, and her daughter had moved into the back room and taken good care of Grandfather. I showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes and placed an ice bag on my eye before I let him see me. He was in the sunroom, reading the newspaper, his boots on, his trousers stuffed in the tops. “Where’s Rosita?” he said.

“They got her.”

“Say again?”