Riven Rock Part 22

"You hurt-a my daughter, Eddie, and now you gonna answer to me."

That was when the two goons moved in close with the ax handles and started chopping away at the fragile tottering tree that was Eddie O'Kane. He went down after the first couple of blows, and he stayed down, cradling his head, even as the tempered oak sought out his ribs and his knees and the tough little fist of bone at the base of his spine. The last thing he remembered was Pietro cursing him and the soft wet kiss of the spittle on his cheek.

He came out of it right at the end of his first day in the hospital, a smell of hot food, the rattle of a cart, a dapple of light on the ceiling as the sun sank out of sight. There were flowers on the table beside him-sent, he would later learn, by Katherine, the Ice Queen herself-and he was in a room that had two beds in it. He didn't feel a whole lot of curiosity about who was occupying the other one-his head ached too much-but later, after the tide of nurses had ebbed, he saw that it was a child, a little boy, all wrapped up like King Tut and with his leg in a cast suspended from a hook over the bed. That was when O'Kane began to wonder about the extent of the damage to his own bodily self, and he ran a reluctant hand-his left hand; the right was pinned fast to his chest-down one side of his rib cage and up the other. He felt pinched and constricted, as if he couldn't fill his lungs and take a breath of air, and he knew that he was all wrapped up too, and he was wondering about that in a drifting remote sort of way-his ribs, they'd broken his ribs-and then he was running through the streets of the North End with some lady's pocketbook in his hand and a whole horde of people chasing after him, and wasn't Mr. McCormick one of them?

When he woke the next morning, there was a doctor standing over him, or at least he looked like a doctor, white jacket, clipboard and regulation smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Scrambled," O'Kane managed, and he tried to lift his head but couldn't. "Three eggs in a pan."

"It could be worse." The doctor's smile was eerily serene. "You'll walk again-in three to six months-but you'll very likely carry a limp the rest of your life. You've shattered your right patella and there's a hairline fracture of the femur, just above it, in addition to a compound break of the tibia-the shinbone. You've got three broken ribs on the right side, a fractured wrist-also on that side-and oh yes, as you've no doubt noticed, your arm is in a cast too. The right ulna is fractured-your elbow, that is." He paused. "Do you remember anything of the incident? The ident.i.ty of your attackers, for instance? The police want to know if you can provide a description."

O'Kane looked into that fixed smile and tried on a smile of his own, albeit a weak and evanescent one. "No," he said, "I don't remember a thing."

The next day they wheeled his bed out the door and all the way down the corridor to the admissions office: Mr. McCormick was on the line. "h.e.l.lo? Ed-Eddie? Are you all-are you okay?"

"Sure," O'Kane said. "I'll be up and about in no time."

Mr. McCormick's voice was high and excited, sticking on the consonants and ratcheting up over the vowels. "I w-wish I'd been there with you, to-to fight, I mean. I would have given them something to think about, you know I would-"

O'Kane, miserable, broken in half, reaping his own sour harvest, tried nonetheless to placate him-it was his job, after all. "I know you would. But don't worry, don't worry about a thing."

A pause. Mr. McCormick's voice, pinched almost to nothing: "You-you' re coming back, Eddie, aren't you? Back here with m-me and Mart? "

What could he say? Of course he was coming back, coming back like a convict to his ball and chain every time he tries to lift his foot from the floor. It was sad to say, sadder even to admit, but Mr. McCormick was his life. "Yeah," he said, "I'll be back."

On the third day, Giovannella appeared. He was dozing at the time, drifting deliciously in and out of consciousness while the mother of the boy in the next bed read aloud from a book of children's stories in a soothing soft mellifluous voice: "'Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning, and he was glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs, ...'"

"Eddie?"

The story faltered, just the smallest pebble in the path of that smooth onrolling voice, and then it picked up again: "... and when Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" he was so excited that he said, "Both" ...' "

"Eddie?"

He opened his eyes. The ceiling was there, right where he'd left it, and then a glint of the boy's mother's blondness combed out over her shoulders, and finally, Giovannella. Her face hovered over him, an anxious look, the ends of her hair so close he could smell the shampoo she'd used that morning. He smiled, one of the smiles his mother had no name for because it was spontaneous and true: how could he blame Giovannella? She'd provoked him, sure, but he had no right to touch her, never, and he'd had it coming to him for years now, a debt of violence accruing.

"I talked to my father," she said, and he watched her eyes and her ringless fingers as she tucked the hair behind her ears. It was January of 1929 and she was thirty-eight years old, ripe in the bosom in a white blouse and yellow cardigan, her face getting rounder by the day and the flesh settling under her chin. "It's going to be a small wedding, just the Dimuccis and the Fiocollas and maybe Mart, Pat and Nick, if you want-but in the church, with a white gown and rice and everything else."

He didn't know what to say, but he felt it, something stirring in the deep yearning root of him, inside, beneath the sixty yards of gauze and tape and the rock-hard plaster and the flesh that was as tender and yielding as a-as a bride's. Or make that a groom's. He was going to marry Giovannella, adulterously and bigamously, and legitimate his two surviving children, Guido of the heavy O'Kane shoulders and Edwina with the green eyes in her sweet vanilla face, and this was it, this was what he'd been waiting for all his life: his three o'clock luck. It wasn't money or orange groves or a fleet of cars, but this woman hanging over him in a moment of grace and poignancy and the children waiting in the wings. Okay. All right. He was ready. He tried to nod his head and winced.

Giovannella was smiling down on him, the strong white teeth, the everted lips, the faint hairs trailing all the way down her temple to the hollow at the base of her jaw. "As soon as you can walk, of course," she said, and her voice was every bit as sweet and a.s.sured and anodynic as that mother's in the next chair over. "We don't do anything till you can walk. Okay, Eddie?" He felt the soft pressure of her hand on his.

"Okay," he said.

The wedding was in April, on a fine blue-sc.r.a.ped day with every flower in creation bursting all around them, and after the ceremony at Our Lady of the Sorrows, O'Kane and Giovannella and Guido and Edwina and all the Dimuccis and Fiocollas and half the Italians in Santa Barbara (Italians, (Italians, not wops, most definitely not wops anymore) piled into the McCormick automobiles and had their reception on the front lawn at Riven Rock, Mr. McCormick looking on from the high barred windows of his room. They'd hoped to have him right down there amongst the guests, but Kempf vetoed it-after the incident with Katherine, not to mention the complication of the professional girl, which Kempf had never found out about, thank G.o.d in His Heaven, Mr. McCormick had to be isolated from women again. Except for Nurse Gleason, that is, and she gave him a wide-enough berth, at least at first. not wops, most definitely not wops anymore) piled into the McCormick automobiles and had their reception on the front lawn at Riven Rock, Mr. McCormick looking on from the high barred windows of his room. They'd hoped to have him right down there amongst the guests, but Kempf vetoed it-after the incident with Katherine, not to mention the complication of the professional girl, which Kempf had never found out about, thank G.o.d in His Heaven, Mr. McCormick had to be isolated from women again. Except for Nurse Gleason, that is, and she gave him a wide-enough berth, at least at first.

But still, it was a real celebration, and with enough food prepared by the Dimucci girls and their mother and aunts to feed everybody twice and enough left over for all the millionaires and their starved-looking racehorses too, if they'd had the sense to show up and toast the true match of the year. O'Kane got along pretty well on his crutches, and everybody said he looked as handsome as one of G.o.d's angels, and Giovannella filled out her satin gown in a way no rumpless flapper could ever have. After the ceremony, after the toasts and the gnocchi and the intercostata di manzo intercostata di manzoand the palombacciaallo spiedo palombacciaallo spiedo and the and the millifoglie millifoglie and the wedding cake that was as tall as little Guido, Roscoe drove O'Kane and Giovannella up to San Luis Obispo and a three-day honeymoon in a blue-and-white clapboard inn by the sea. And then O'Kane, moving well enough and with his seminal parts in an advanced state of relaxation, went back to work at Riven Rock. and the wedding cake that was as tall as little Guido, Roscoe drove O'Kane and Giovannella up to San Luis Obispo and a three-day honeymoon in a blue-and-white clapboard inn by the sea. And then O'Kane, moving well enough and with his seminal parts in an advanced state of relaxation, went back to work at Riven Rock.

Mr. McCormick was glad to see him. Very glad. Ecstatic even. The minute O'Kane appeared on the landing outside the upper parlor door, his crutches extended like struts, Mr. McCormick sprang up off the sofa and rushed him. "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie!" he cried, "I knew you'd be back, I knew it!" The keys turned in the locks, Mart hovering over Mr. McCormick's shoulder, Nurse Gleason a frowning presence in the background. "Sure I'm back," O'Kane said, and he was touched, genuinely touched, he was. "Just because I'm married you think I'd desert you? We're in this together, aren't we? Till you're well again?"

Mr. McCormick didn't say anything. He stood there inside the door and waited patiently as O'Kane fumbled with his keys and the crutches and his arms that were stiff with the strain of doing two things at once; Mr. McCormick had something in his hand, a trophy of some sort, bronze, with an engraved inscription. It looked like a bugle with two bells.

"So what's this?" O'Kane asked, maneuvering through the door while Mart secured it.

Mr. McCormick gave him a big grin, rotten teeth, faraway eyes and all. "F-first prize in the orchid show. For-for our cymbidiums, the Riven Rock cymbidiums. Mr. Hull entered for me, and Kath-Katherine said it was a real coup. She, she-"

But that was it. The rest of the story, whatever it was, was locked up inside him and he couldn't get it out. Normally O'Kane would have coached him, the way Kempf did, but he'd just stepped through the door for the first time in three and a half months and Nurse Gleason was giving him a fishy eye and he didn't know her from Adam yet and he just didn't feel up to it. Instead, he stumped right by his employer, putting some good weight on the right leg now and walking through the crutches every other step, and settled himself at the table. Mr. McCormick was already at the bookshelf, making a place for the trophy amongst the eight others he'd won in previous years. He was a while at it, getting things just so, and from his posture and the att.i.tude of his shoulders and the way he ducked his head and muttered to himself, O'Kane could see that his judges were very likely looking on and commenting on the arrangement.

Nurse Gleason, who'd nodded a curt h.e.l.lo at O'Kane as he entered, pa.s.sed between them now, making a show of straightening the cushions of the sofa and beating out and folding the pages of Mr. McCormick's newspaper. She was a big-beamed, fish-faced pre-crone of a woman, fiftyish, and as close to being s.e.xless as you could get-short of hermaphroditism, that is. Kempf's thinking was that Mr. McCormick would be predisposed to accept her more readily than someone like poor what-was-her-name from McLean, the one with the locket between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s-or if not accept her, then at least refrain from any sort of s.e.xual impropriety. O'Kane had heard she was a good clinical nurse who took no nonsense from anybody-she'd been at the Battle Creek Sanitarium for years, wielding nozzle and enema tube, before going on to Saint Elizabeths-and so far Mr. McCormick had tolerated her presence.

After twenty minutes or so, during which no one said a word, Mr. McCormick finally seemed satisfied with the relative positions of his trophies and came over to sit down across from O'Kane at the table. O'Kane had a magazine spread out before him, but he wasn't reading anything in particular, just leafing through the pages as if they were blank on both sides. He looked up and smiled. Mr. McCormick did not smile back. He seemed unusually tense and his face was running through a range of expressions, as if invisible fingers were tugging at the skin from every direction. "You're looking well," O'Kane said automatically.

"I'm not."

"Is something the matter? You want to tell me about it?"

Mr. McCormick looked away.

Nurse Gleason entered the dialogue then, her eyes very close-set and her lips puckered fishily. "He's been out of sorts lately, because of the doctors."

O'Kane lifted his eyebrows.

"You know," she said, "the trial and all. And I don't blame the poor man, what with one after the other of them here poking and probing at him so he hasn't had a minute's peace these last two weeks."

O'Kane looked to Mart, but Mart, sunk into himself like some boneless thing washed up out of the sea, had nothing to add.

"They, they-" Mr. McCormick said suddenly, his face still going through its calisthenics, as if the muscles under the skin couldn't decide on an appropriate response, "they want to take Riven Rock away from me, in the courts, Kath-Katherine and, and-"

"No, no, Mr. McCormick," Nurse Gleason chided, interposing her bulk between them as she scurried over to lean into the table on one stumplike arm, "n.o.body's going to take Riven Rock, that's not it at all-"

Mr. McCormick never even glanced at her. "Shut up, c.u.n.t," he snarled.

She flared then, Nurse Gleason, but only briefly, like a Fourth of July rocket sputtering on its pad. "I won't have such language, I tell you," she spat, leaning in closer, but then Mr. McCormick kicked back the chair and leapt to his feet and she faded back out of reach, her face flushed and crepuscular. O'Kane, bad knee and all, came up out of his chair too and caught his employer by the wrist; for a moment both of them froze, looking first into each other's eyes and then down at the intrusive hand on the trembling wrist. O'Kane let go. Mr. McCormick righted his chair, and after a moment's fussing, sat back down. "It's all right," O'Kane said, but clearly it wasn't.

A trio of doctors appeared that afternoon, just after Mr. McCormick woke from his postluncheon nap. O'Kane didn't catch their names, not that it mattered-there was the lean one, the heavyset one and the one with the bandaged nose. Dr. Kempf wasn't present, because they were examining Mr. McCormick with a view to supporting Katherine's contention that psychoa.n.a.lysis alone was not the proper treatment for her husband and was in fact having a deleterious effect on him. Other doctors would come on other days to examine him in support of Cyrus and Anita, who wanted to retain Kempf-look at the progress he'd made, women in the immediate environment and their brother as fit and rational as ever, or almost-and maintain their two-to-one advantage on the board of guardians. But these doctors were for Katherine, and they gathered solemnly in the upper parlor to await Mr. McCormick's emergence from the bedroom.

Did they want anything? Nurse Gleason wanted to know, fishily solicitous. Tea? Coffee? A soft drink? She only had to ring for it, no trouble at all.

They didn't think so.

When Mart led Mr. McCormick out into the main room, O'Kane could see immediately that the meeting wasn't going to be a propitious one. Mr. McCormick was actively engaged in a debate with his judges as he came through the door, and his face was still going through its permutations.

The Lean Doctor: "Good afternoon, Mr. McCormick. I'm Dr. Orbison, and this is Dr. Barker and Dr. Williams. We've come to chat a bit, if that's convenient.

True to form, Mr. McCormick said nothing, but his face spoke volumes to O'Kane. He positioned himself on the arm of the sofa, propped up on one crutch, ready to fling himself forward at the first sign of trouble.

The Lean Doctor (settling himself into one of the three folding chairs set up in antic.i.p.ation of this visit, while his colleagues followed suit): "Well, pleasant day, isn't it?"

Mr. McCormick: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!"

The doctors exchanged a glance. The one with the bandaged nose craned his neck to look out the window, as if to be sure the sun was still there and shining.

Mr. McCormick: "Be-betrayed by his daughters."

The Bandaged Doctor: "Who?"

Mr. McCormick: "Lear."

The Heavyset Doctor: "Leer?"

Mr. McCormick: "First name of King."

The Lean Doctor: "Oh, yes, I see. Of course. Lear. Do you, uh, think much about Shakespeare then, Mr. McCormick-I take it you're an aficionado?"

Mr. McCormick (his face working): "Kath-Katherine ..."

The Lean Doctor: "Katherine?"

The Bandaged Doctor: "His wife."

The Lean Doctor (puzzled, drawing at his chin with two lean fingers): "Your wife reads Shakespeare?"

Mr. McCormick said nothing to this, and though he was alert and struggling with his facial muscles and rapping his long fingers on the twin pyramids of his knees, he had very little to say to their subsequent inquiries, which ranged from his knowledge of the Peloponnesian War to the Declaration of Independence, American banking customs, the mechanism of the reaper and his feelings about Dr. Kempf, women and dentists, to his recognition of various celebrated individuals in the public eye, both by name and likeness: Babe Ruth, Al Capone, Calvin Coolidge, Sacco and Vanzetti. If it was a test-and O'Kane knew that it was-then Mr. McCormick had flunked it badly. There was only one point at which he rose to something like coherence, and that was right at the end, when the distinguished doctors had filled their notebooks and begun to shoot glances at one another out of the corners of their eyes. The Lean Doctor said "Riven Rock" and Mr. McCormick looked up alertly.

The Lean Doctor: "Tell us about your home, if you would, Mr. McCormick, about Riven Rock-how did it get its name?"

Mr. McCormick (sunshine at first, and then increasing clouds): "I-well-it's because of a rock, you see, and I-well, my mother, she-and then I came and saw it and it was, well, it was-"

There was a long hiatus, all three doctors leaning forward, the day drawing down, Mart snoring lightly from the vicinity of the couch, Nurse Gleason silently dusting the plants, and then Mr. McCormick, his face finally settling on a broad winning ear-to-ear grin, at last spoke up. "It beats me," he said.

As a family man, O'Kane wasn't exactly an overnight success. His experience of children was limited and sad, infinitely sad, and he was used to the peace and sterility of Mrs. Fitzmaurice's rooming house (reconstructed after the quake to look exactly as it had before, or even more so). He was used to the speaks too and to eating at the drugstore or not eating at all if he didn't feel like it and to doing any d.a.m.n thing he pleased any time he pleased. And now, in the spring and early summer, he found himself living amongst the olive-pressing garlic-chewing Valpolicella-quaffing turmoil of the Dimucci household, a place rife with screaming barefooted children, dogs, pigs, chickens and Italians. Baldy had fixed up one of the outbuildings for Marta and her husband, and when they'd moved to their own place downtown on Milpas Street, he let the unsteady O'Kane and his new family move in temporarily-"Just," he said, "till Eddie can get back on his feet." and there wasn't a trace of irony in his voice.

Edwina turned nine in June and Guido would be thirteen in October, too old to be fooled by anything O'Kane tried to do to ingratiate himself, though they took the candy and games and dolls and penknives he pressed on them readily enough. He wasn't their father, not in their eyes-their father was Guido Capolupo, and he was dead, like the saints in heaven. With Giovannella it was different. He'd made the ultimate sacrifice for her, giving up his body and soul both-not to mention committing bigamy-and she came each night to worship at his altar. In the beginning, before he could walk without the aid of crutches, she gave him sponge baths in bed, spoon-fed him to keep his strength up, every stray drop of soup or sauce lovingly blotted from his chin with a carefully folded napkin, and once he was getting around again, she spent hours ma.s.saging his cramped muscles or depressing the skin around the cast on his leg and gently blowing into the aperture to relieve his itching. She made love to him with all the fierceness of possession and when they were done and sweating and still breathing hard she would straddle him and run her hands through his hair again and again. "You're mine now, Eddie," she would say, her lips puffed and swollen with all they'd done, "all mine."

He couldn't say that he forgave the Dimuccis (not exactly-he was no pacifist and he would as soon crush Pietro as look at him), but he accepted the rightness of what had happened and he was content, or at least he thought he was. But once he was back at work and putting in his twelve hours a day at Riven Rock, free of the chaos of the Dimucci dominion and the incessant demands of the children-Read me a story; Fix this;You don't like me, I know it; You're not my father anyway-he knew the time had come to move on. The first order of business was a car. Baldy had been dropping him off at Riven Rock in the morning and Roscoe swinging by in the evening, and that was all right-or no, it was intolerable-and he scanned the want ads till he found a ten-year-old Maxwell just like the one Dolores Isringhausen used to drive, only older and slower and noisier, the spark of life in its greasy automotive heart all but extinguished. Roscoe helped him get it going, tuned it up for him and drove him down to State Street to invest in a new set of tires. knew the time had come to move on. The first order of business was a car. Baldy had been dropping him off at Riven Rock in the morning and Roscoe swinging by in the evening, and that was all right-or no, it was intolerable-and he scanned the want ads till he found a ten-year-old Maxwell just like the one Dolores Isringhausen used to drive, only older and slower and noisier, the spark of life in its greasy automotive heart all but extinguished. Roscoe helped him get it going, tuned it up for him and drove him down to State Street to invest in a new set of tires.

Two weeks later he and Giovannella found a place for rent in Summerland, just to the east of Montecito and an easy drive both to her parents' house and Riven Rock. It was a bungalow, with a low creased roof that climbed way out over the front porch and two palm trees set into the ground on either side of it like flagpoles. You could see the ocean from the far right-hand corner of the porch, and best of all, there was a private citrus grove out in the backyard, three grapefruit trees, two oranges and a Meyer lemon. O'Kane stood out in the street and took six snapshots of the house-dead-on and not a soul in the picture-to send home to his mother.

He was fit enough to carry Giovannella over the threshold and play husband and wife with her through one whole afternoon, evening and night while the kids made their grandparents' lives miserable and the pelicans sailed across the patch of sky defined by the bedroom window and the sound of the old man next door watering his roses invited them to slide down into the dreamless embrace of sleep. Baldy dropped off the children late the next morning and Giovannella made bruschetta and spaghetti and the house grew smaller and noisier till O'Kane felt he needed to get out for a drive-"Don't worry about me, I'll be back in a couple hours"-and he found himself at Riven Rock, Sunday afternoon, his day off, shooting the bull about one thing and another with Roscoe out in the reconstructed garage.

"How does he seem to you?" Roscoe said, leaning into the front fender of one of the new Pierce Arrows with a chamois cloth. "Because as far as I can see he's getting more and more worked up about this trial business, which from what I hear isn't even scheduled yet."

"I'm not sure if it's a trial, exactly. There's no jury or anything like that, just a judge. From what Kempf says, anyway."

"What's the difference? The point is, Mr. McCormick thinks she wants to take everything away from him, and that's why he's been so jumpy lately, just like years ago when we first started to take him out for his drives and he'd think every other tree was going to fall on the car. You know what he did the other night? He came out here with Nick and Pat-and why they let him out is a mystery to me-and he spent I don't how many hours rearranging the back seat because it wasn't comfortable enough ... here, take a look, see for yourself what he did." The panels of the rear door grabbed the light and then released it and there was Mr. McCormick's handiwork, the seat pried right out of its frame and meticulously customized with fifteen or twenty pillows appropriated from the couches in the main house.

"She already has," O'Kane said, leaning in for a closer look, "-he just doesn't know it."

"What?" What're you talking about?" Roscoe was wringing the wet cloth over a bucket, the sun painting two long white oblongs on the concrete floor where the bay doors stood open.

"Yeah, that's a real mess," O'Kane said, straightening up, "but no real harm done-at least he didn't carve up the upholstery like last time." He paused to pinch the crown of his hat and run a spit-dampened finger over the crease of the brim. "I mean Katherine, Mrs. McCormick. She already has everything-she got that back in ought-nine when she had him declared incompetent."

Roscoe turned back to the car, the pliant wet cloth swallowing up the beads of water as he flagged it across the fender. "Then what's she want now? Aside from Kempf's head on a platter, which I think's a crying shame, I really do...."

O'Kane gave it some thought, watching the chauffeur with his quick elbows and jerky movements, the little monkey cap and his flapping crimson ears, his body heaving out over the hood and the reflected glory of the deep-buffed blue-black steel. "Him," he said after a while. "She wants him."

One hand braced, the other moving in a clean, circular sweep, Roscoe glancing over his shoulder. "Kempf?"

"No, not Kempf-her husband."

"Hmpf," Roscoe grunted, rubbing now, really digging into the moving cloth. "Why doesn't she get herself a lapdog instead?"

The year ticked by, the summer soft and compliant, and then came the fall, spread like margarine across the corrugated sea and all the way out to the soft and melting islands. On a rainy Thursday afternoon at the end of November, O'Kane put on a clean shirt and his best suit and went down to the county courthouse to testify at the trial, Katherine's lawyer-Mr. Baker-raking him over the coals of Mr. McCormick's condition, one searing step at at time. Has there been any improvement, in your view, Mr. O'Kane, over the very lengthy course of your service-coming up on twenty-two years now, isn't it?-and did Dr. Kempf do this and did he do that? The attorney for the McCormicks-Mr. Lawler-seemed to wrap himself over O'Kane's shoulders like a warm sweater on a cold evening. Wasn't it a fact, Mr. O'Kane? and Isn't it so? and Wouldn't you say that Mr. McCormick was much improved as evidenced by his a.s.sociation with women-even to the extent of employing a female nurse? And hadn't the previous physicians been merely custodial with regard to Mr. McCormick's care-that is, all but useless?

Together, they called eighteen doctors to the stand, including Dr. Meyer, Dr. Brush, Dr. Hamilton (his hair gray now and his eyes spinning out of control) and most of the headshrinkers and pulse-takers who'd tramped through the house over the course of the past eighteen months, and they called Dr. Kempf and Mr. Cyrus McCormick, and Mr. Harold and Mrs. Anita McCormick Blaine, Nurse Gleason, Nick and Pat and Mart, and eventually even the Ice Queen and Mrs. Roessing. O'Kane caught only two days of it, his testimony split between Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, and then he pushed through the crowd of reporters in the courthouse hallway and drove himself back to Riven Rock and Mr. McCormick.

The proceedings had been going on for a week and a half when O'Kane arrived at the estate one morning to find a letter waiting for him on the table in the entrance hall. His name had been typed neatly across the front of the envelope-EDWARD JAMES O'KANE, RIVEN ROCK, MONTECITO, CALIFORNIA-and in the upper left-hand corner, in raised black letters, was Jim Isringhausen's name, over the legend ISRING-HAUSEN & CLAUSEN, STOCKS, BONDS, REAL ESTATE. Mr. McCormick was sleeping still, but Nick and Pat would be anxious to leave-and today, since Mart was due to testify, it would be only O'Kane and Nurse Gleason upstairs-so O'Kane brought the letter with him and waited till the Thompson brothers had departed and Mr. McCormick was up and preoccupied with folding and refolding his toilet paper before he slit open the envelope.

Inside was a check drawn on the Chase Bank in New York. It was made out to him, Edward James O'Kane, and it was in the amount of $3,500. A note was attached to it with a paper clip, and O'Kane found that his hand was trembling as he shook out the single sheet of white bond and began to read: November 24, 1929

Dear Eddie: Enclosed please find my check in the amount of $3,500, your share in the proceeds of the sale of our Goleta property. The orange trees never prospered as we'd hoped, but I and my partners were able recently to sell the property to a housing contractor, at a small profit.

But Eddie, I want to tell you that this is nothing compared to what you can make in stocks and bonds. Don't pay the slightest attention to all these scare stories in the newspapers, men jumping out windows and etc., because the big stocks, the Blue Chips, have never been a better bargain. American Can, Anaconda Copper, Montgomery Ward, United Carbide and Carbon, Westinghouse E. & M., these stocks are sure to rise through the roof on the next buying surge, and believe me, the Great Bull Market isn't dead yet, not by a long shot.

Enclosed for your convenience is a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Just put that check inside and send it on back here, and I guarantee you I'll triple that $500 profit of yours in six months' time or my name isn't Jim Isringhausen O'Kane had to take a minute to catch his breath. Married and a father, with a bungalow and a car, and now this, smiling Eddie O'Kane's three o'clock luck come home to roost for good. And what Giovannella wouldn't do to get her hands on that check-three thousand five hundred dollars, and the five hundred of it pure profit, for doing nothing more than sitting on his hands. And what was Mart's share in that, for the hundred he'd invested? Something like what, seventeen dollars? And of course he'd give it to him, right out of his own pocket, unless... well, unless he reinvested it for him, and n.o.body the wiser. No one knew about this check but him and here was the envelope to seal it up and send it right back to make another thousand dollars profit by June. Sure. And hadn't Jim Isringhausen steered him right the first time? and the five hundred of it pure profit, for doing nothing more than sitting on his hands. And what was Mart's share in that, for the hundred he'd invested? Something like what, seventeen dollars? And of course he'd give it to him, right out of his own pocket, unless... well, unless he reinvested it for him, and n.o.body the wiser. No one knew about this check but him and here was the envelope to seal it up and send it right back to make another thousand dollars profit by June. Sure. And hadn't Jim Isringhausen steered him right the first time?

It was at that moment, O'Kane contemplating his future as a Wall Street savant and the letter stretched taut in his amazed hands, that Mr. McCormick emerged from his bathroom and strode into the parlor, naked as the day he was born. But he wasn't simply naked, he was naked and erect and advancing on Nurse Gleason, who despite her rigorous as.e.xuality was nonetheless, technically, a woman. O'Kane had been expecting something like this ever since the day she walked through the door, and though she was tough, Nurse Gleason, hard as nails, he doubted she was anything like a match for Mr. McCormick, and so he hastily stuffed letter and check into his breast pocket and jumped up to intervene. "Mr. McCormick," he called out to distract him, "you've forgotten your clothes."

O'Kane had long since recovered from his injuries, but the right knee was still a bit tricky and recalcitrant and he did walk with a p.r.o.nounced limp, as the doctor had predicted, the right foot forever half a step behind the left. It ached when it rained, and sometimes when it wasn't raining too, and he had a h.e.l.l of a time keeping up with Mr. McCormick when their morning walk turned into a footrace. Still, he was reasonably fit for a forty-six-year-old former athlete, and he was able to intercept Mr. McCormick just as Mr. McCormick, his arms spread wide, had managed to back Nurse Gleason up against the barred window beside the sofa. O'Kane came in swiftly from the rear and got him in a headlock while Nurse Gleason shooed at his stiff red member as if it had a mind and life of its own, which apparently it did.

Immediately, the frenzy came into Mr. McCormick's shoulders and he took O'Kane for a wild ride round the room, a four-legged jig, furniture flying and Mr. McCormick pulling the air in through his nostrils in deep whinnying snorts. "No, no, no, no! " he cried, his usual refrain, trying all the while to throw O'Kane off his back and work his jaws round to bite the inside of his arm. Two minutes, three, they kept whirling and grunting, both of them, O'Kane gasping out truncated pleas and reproaches, Nurse Gleason maneuvering on the periphery, till finally they both tumbled onto the couch, O'Kane never relaxing his grip and Mr. McCormick's erection pointing staight up in the air. It was then that Nurse Gleason moved in, her face like a big granite block crashing down on them both, and she performed an old nurse's trick with a hard repeated fillip of thumb and index finger that wilted Mr. McCormick's erection like a flower starved of water.

No one was hurt, nothing broken that couldn't be fixed, and when Mr. McCormick, gone lax and sheepish, promised to behave himself, O'Kane let him go. And that was it, that was the end of it. Bowing his head and mumbling an apology, he limped off into the bedroom, dragging his right foot, and a moment later O'Kane got up and went into the room to help him dress.

Nothing was said about the incident, and Mr. McCormick did a creditable job with the breakfast Giovannella sent up, but he was fretting over something, that much was evident. He kept repeating himself, something about Dr. Kempf, but wouldn't respond when O'Kane questioned him, and after breakfast he began to pace up and down the room, jerking his head and arms out to one side as if he were trying to pull an invisible garment over his head. This went on for an hour or so, and then he came over and sat beside O'Kane on the couch, a flux of emotions playing across his face. "Ed-Eddie," he said, "I-I want to, because they're taking Riven Rock and Doctor-Doctor Kempf too, I-" And he broke off, looked O'Kane dead in the eye and lowered his voice. "Eddie," he said, all trace of a stammer gone, "I want to get out of here. Let me out of here. Use your keys. Please. Use your keys."

O'Kane had been looking over his letter again, electrified with the idea of it-sure the market was going to go up, sure it would-and he'd just sealed the check in the envelope when his employer stopped pacing and sat down beside him. They were two millionaires sitting there-or one millionaire and a millionaire in potentio, because with Jim Isringhausen the sky was the limit. "You know I can't do that, Mr. McCormick," O'Kane said.