Power in the Blood (61 page)

“You have some very nice furniture. Sell some of it.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Never. I will give you nothing more, not a cent.”

“I see. I guess you’ll also want me to be moving out from under your roof, is that it?”

She had not dared to broach so dangerous a topic in the same breath she had refused him money, but since he himself had raised the question, she would not shy away from it.

“Yes …”

“Yes? You want me gone?”

Lydia could not speak, could only nod. Tatum studied her face and saw the terror there. He wished to break his cane across her shoulders, but did not; beating a woman of his aunt’s character would bring the police into his life, create too many difficulties for him, and so he made himself smile at Lydia instead of beating her; surprisingly, her fear-whitened features blanched further at the sight of this unusual expression on his face, and Tatum saw himself, briefly, as did his aunt—a creature without any emotion other than general disdain and occasional rage, an entity upon whose lips a smile was as insincere as the welcoming face of a whore. Lydia hated and feared him, but Tatum would spare her, even though she had done what few ever dared to do; she had denied him his wants, face-to-face, and she had won. Amused by his own sense of magnanimity, he leaned closer to her and said, “Pack my things, Aunt. I’ll return for them later.”

“Yes …,” she said, and sent thanks to God when Tatum turned away from her and left the house without having laid so much as a finger on her person. She felt ill, took herself to the kitchen and vomited copiously into a bucket.

For Tatum, his dismissal from Lydia’s home came at an opportune time. He recently had met a young man who shared his tastes in flesh and his newly acquired yen to gamble. This friend, the son of a wealthy banker, would allow Tatum to share his rooms at one of Denver’s finest hotels, because Tatum was the dominant partner, and could bend Jared Morrow to accommodate any whim that suited him. Tatum already owed Jared more than a thousand dollars for having covered his gambling debts, but was confident the test of friendship could be extended further.

Entering Jared’s rooms, Tatum found his friend in an unreceptive mood. Jared was in no position to help him, since his father had rescinded Jared’s line of credit and refused to pay off Jared’s own debts, until such time as Jared reformed himself, stopped flaunting himself among bad company and dedicated himself to a position in his father’s bank. Until these requirements were met, Jared was utterly without funds, and in the circles among which he moved, a lack of money meant public humiliation. Jared was disinclined to set foot outside the door, circumstances being as they were.

Tatum offered comfort after his own fashion, by taking Jared to bed for soothing talk and a bracing round of boodling, as Tatum referred to their sexual act. In the wake of their exertions, Tatum was struck by the perfect solution to Jared’s difficulties, and his own.

“Do you love him at all, your father?”

“No, I can’t say I do.”

“Like him?”

“No, never. He always called me a mother’s boy.”

“Would you be made miserable if he was to die?”

“I’d be the happiest fellow in Denver, Tatie, and one of the richest besides.”

“Then what say we do the old man in, you and me?”

“Do him in?”

“Put him away. Under Mother Nature’s blanket of earth. Understand?”

“Yes, but … no, I couldn’t do that, not kill him.”

“Are you sure? Think of what you stand to gain if father dear goes to a better place before his rightful time.”

“No, Tatie, I won’t even think of it. I just couldn’t.”

“Even though you hate him?”

“I didn’t say I hate him. I said I’ve never liked him. There’s a difference. He’s my father after all.”

“He’s not mine.”

“Meaning?”

“If you can’t bring yourself to be my partner, I’ll do it by myself. I’ll do it for you.”

“I believe you’re serious.”

“Will you keep your mouth shut if I do it?”

“Oh, Tatie, this is ridiculous. You couldn’t kill anyone.”

“No? Are you sure?”

Jared watched his lover’s face, and saw a disturbing stoniness there. Once, while drunk, Tatum had hinted of a murder he committed some time ago, but he had not provided details, so Jared had not believed him, and had forgotten the incident until Tatum’s eyes, inches from his own, now gave him cause for belief.

“You wouldn’t,” he breathed, giving his words the teasing quality of a dare.

“I would,” said Tatum, without any hint of levity, and Jared realized he had stepped into waters that might possibly rise to swallow him. He admired Tatum for his commanding ways in bed, for the semiplayful force with which he made Jared submit to him in ways that gave pleasure to them both. Tatum was a special person, not someone to be taken lightly. He meant what he said, and he was waiting for Jared’s reply.

“How would you do it? I wouldn’t want there to be any unnecessary suffering.”

“Quickly, I’d do it quickly and be gone. No one would ever know who did it. Everyone would suspect you, since you’re the one who’ll inherit everything he has, but you can be among swarms of people the whole day or evening or whenever I choose to do it, so they won’t be able to accuse you of a damn thing.”

“And your reward for such risk taking would be?”

“A large settlement of cash, and your undying love.”

Jared laughed. “I might be able to guarantee the first, but Tatie, you’re so fickle I doubt that you’ll want me forever. Let’s order food and forget about this nonsense.”

Tatum took him by the throat. “Grow up, Jared. Look around and see the world as it truly is, my friend. If I don’t get rid of him, you’ll have nothing, and you’ll have it soon. Order food now, and it will arrive. Tomorrow it may not. They know here who pays your bills. He only needs to close the spigot, and you’re through, finished. Be a man for once, sweetness, and make the decision you have to make.”

Tatum released him. “Well?”

“I … You hurt me, you shit …”

“Tell me to do it.”

“It doesn’t have to be decided now.…”

“Tell me to do it.”

“Will you kindly stop! I won’t tell you any such thing! You have no right to bully me this way.…”

Tatum slapped him across the face. Jared hit back and they began to wrestle back and forth across the bed. Tatum quickly asserted himself as victor by pinning Jared beneath him in a position they often assumed while engaged in sexual penetration, in fact both felt themselves aroused by the tussle, and Tatum entered his friend while entreating him to give Tatum what he needed—a direct order to “deal with the situation now, before word gets around that he’s reining you in. Do it. Tell me. Tell me …!”

Jared finally granted his consent to the pact in a rush of gratification that left him breathless. Tatum stroked his damp hair and kissed his ear.

“This will be for the best,” he whispered, “for everyone.”

Before leaving Jared the following day, Tatum had equipped himself with knowledge of Walter Morrow’s habits of movement and relaxation, and with a small nickel-plated Remington revolver Jared had purchased but never fired.

He liked to think of himself as a man of few vices, so Walter Morrow chose to view his evening snifter of brandy as an elegant ritual, rather than a habit. Walter found brandy wonderfully soothing, and he paid well for the finest. Ambrosia, he called it, and kept a supply at the home of his mistress, so the evening ritual could be performed there as well. His mistress was not permitted to visit him at his mansion, but Walter felt that the house he provided for her was compensation enough for the lady’s having to exist in the shade, as it were, of his reputation for propriety and rectitude. He would not even have required a mistress, he often reminded himself, if his wife had not died.

The brandy ritual was best enjoyed in solitude, so Walter preferred to indulge himself at home, surrounded by the silence only opulent living can guarantee. His study was eighty yards from the street, and the clattering of coaches was muffled by a high wall, a wide lawn and French windows. He served himself a generous measure and sat in his most comfortable armchair before the fireplace. Sometimes, after the first few mouthfuls, he grew introspective, even melancholy, and sometimes, as he did tonight, he became bitter. The cause for this was no mystery to Walter; his son had disappointed him—again.

Jared had been a delightful child, but as he grew older, there remained a strong element of the faintly girlish qualities Walter had found endearing in a seven-year-old but far less appealing in a boy of fifteen. He had tried everything to make Jared manly, including physical training and lessons in horsemanship and hunting by way of an ex-army sergeant, but all of that had come to nothing. Jared walked in a hesitant, tiptoed manner that infuriated Walter whenever he witnessed it. Heavier boots had not solved the problem, nor had a parental whipping. The whipping had been an especially grievous error on Walter’s part; his wife had never forgiven him for treating her poor dear boy so, and until the time of his wife’s death, Walter left Jared alone, to become whatever it was that he seemed bent on becoming; certainly it was not a banker.

Once a widower, Walter attempted to reassert himself as the moral custodian of his son, now twenty, but found he had assumed this duty too late. Jared was a confirmed pantywaist by then, a caricature of masculinity gone awry, a pouting, preening little vixen of a creature whom Walter suspected of actually applying a light blush to his cheeks with rouge. It was a tremendous blow to a father’s heart, seeing the product of love between man and wife evolve into the brightly poisonous bloom Jared had become.

That was when Walter sought comfort in the arms of a woman, as a kind of affirmation that he was truly a man, and in no way responsible for the blood coursing in the veins of his son. For some time he was distracted from the thorn he carried, but his mistress, although a beautiful and compliant woman, was not in love with him, and Walter began to suspect she was in fact using him, as lovely women have always used rich men of middle age. Suspicious of his mistress, distressed over the wayward tendencies of Jared, Walter immersed himself in the thousand and one details of a banking man’s life in an effort to distract himself, but thoughts of his boy were hard to escape. He decided there must be one last effort on his part to bring Jared back into the fold of normalcy, to prepare him for his ultimate responsibilities as heir to a fortune and, in time, as a husband and father. If he failed to accomplish this, Walter would disown Jared completely, and might even contemplate remarriage and the conception of new, untainted progeny. All or nothing, Walter intoned to himself several times a day, while waiting for some kind of response from Jared, who had been informed by Walter’s attorneys that he no longer had access to any line of credit connected with his father. Time would tell if the boy was prepared to see reason.

Walter did that night what he had never done before—he poured himself a second brandy, equal in size to the first, and began drinking it without even bothering to savor its bouquet. He recognized that he was upset, but forgave himself the indulgence his mood required. What good man should have to tolerate the kinds of disappointment Walter was obliged to endure? His wealth was unable to dislodge the misery clutching at his soul. Lovey Doll was faithful to him, he was sure, but no mistress could be trusted entirely. If she was prepared to share her bed with Walter, to whom she was not married, then might she not perform the same service to some other man who happened to take her eye? A mistress was by definition a woman without morals, and Walter was obliged to be on his guard.

She had come to him by way of a shipping magnate in San Francisco, whose paramour she had been for almost a year. The poor fellow found himself dying of cancer, and had requested of Walter that he take Lovey Doll Pines with him to Denver, far from the wrath of his family, who suspected she would hire an army of lawyers to gouge a chunk of the magnate’s millions for herself. The dying man had similar suspicions, but retained enough affection for Lovey Doll to ensure that she was passed along into the hands of a righteous man with enough capital to smooth her feathers. He had known Walter Morrow professionally for several years, and had formed the notion that here was the likeliest benefactor Lovey Doll could latch onto.

The arrangement was made at the dying man’s bedside, without the presence of Lovey Doll, and news of it was brought to her by messenger. She had thought it over for twenty-four hours, then accompanied Walter across the deserts and mountains of the west in his private railroad car, treating him en route to a variety of sexual displays his wife and Walter had never been cognizant of. He was captivated, and his sense of rejuvenated maleness had lasted until Walter noticed for the first time how utterly empty were Lovey Doll’s eyes when he chanced to gaze into them in search of warmth, of passion, of simple friendliness. No woman with eyes such as hers could possibly hold Walter in the high regard Walter considered his by right. Someday she would have to go, but not yet, not while she still aroused in him the need for her body. She belonged to him. He could wait.

Other matters concerned him that evening, matters of consequence in the business world. Walter belonged to an organization centered in Denver, with unofficial branches in Cheyenne and Kansas City, whose purpose it was to control and profit by the various markets in the west. Their aims were achieved through back-room manipulations by unscrupulous negotiators, or by threatening anyone who stood in the way of their aspirations in some field, be it ranching or farming or mining. Outright spying was part of the organization’s stock-in-trade, and bribery was its principal weapon. When this failed, as it sometimes did, coercion was applied. Anyone foolish enough to ignore this was disposed of, in such a way as to resemble an accident or act of God, but it was understood, by those in the know, that the death of the fool had been sanctioned by the mysterious organization called Big Circle.

The members of Big Circle were rich men, so rich they no longer saw themselves as connected by any but the thinnest of societal strings to men of ordinary means and achievements. Most of the Big Circle fraternity had made their money themselves; there were few who inherited wealth, like the rich men of the east, and they were proud to be the authors of their own fiscal importance. They liked to imagine themselves working fellows who had worked harder than most, and in some cases this was true, but more often than not they had been lucky, or more vicious in their business practices than most men cared to be, and that was what rendered them eligible for membership. Once accepted, whatever their origins or the source of their wealth, Big Circle men were lost to the common herd by way of their very inclusion; the air of Olympus has never been for mortals.