Green Ice (12 page)

It was night, going on eleven o’clock, when they reached Mexico City. They didn’t enter the city proper, turned off before that, went down a few outlying commercial streets and then into a district that became purely residential. The Pedregal area. Wide, nicely kept streets, houses set well back. Passing through, Wiley thought.

Lillian turned a sharp right. The headlights of the Rolls raked across a high wall and hit upon a wood-and-iron gate that opened as though it had expected them and closed behind like a trap. A winding drive, single lane. Tall hedges on both sides.

Then, there was the house. Antique brick, pleasantly vined, three stories, twenty rooms. A series of archways along the front making a long covered walk.

A man came out, smiling, nodding, saying,
“Buenas noches, señorita.”
A servant. Lillian told him there was no luggage, that he could put the car away.

They went in, to an elegant reception area, two stories high, hung with a crystal chandelier so huge Wiley felt uncomfortable walking beneath it.

Lillian seemed edgy, somewhat embarrassed. She pulled off her driving gloves, tossed them toward a hall table and missed. Wiley picked them up.

“Mi casa es su casa,”
she said with a smile that almost asked for consolation.

Her house? Surely she couldn’t be serious. More likely belonged to one of her affluent “friends.” After all, Wiley reasoned, she had been hitchhiking.…

Two, three more servants appeared. They greeted her in a respectful manner, genuinely pleased to see her. She introduced Wiley, told the servants he would be staying on. They should do everything to make him comfortable.
“Sí, señorita,”
they chorused.

She certainly sounded like the lady of the house.

“Hungry?” she asked Wiley.

“No.” He was stunned.

“Well, I’m going to try to sauna away all that driving.” She seemed eager to leave him, said “Good night” and went quickly up the wide stairs and out of sight.

Did Señor Wiley wish to be shown to his room?

He would also like a bottle of beer.

Wiley followed a servant up to a bannistered landing and a wide corridor. Along the way he saw what a spacious and beautiful house this was. Native tile glazed in subtle shades felt cool and clean beneath his feet. To some extent the decor was in keeping with the Spanish architecture. More prevalent, however, were the tasteful contradictions of authentic period French, English and Italian furnishings. A Louis Quinze commode was flanked by a pair of
bergères
that had somehow survived the ravages of revolution. And wasn’t that a Cézanne on the hallway wall? Wiley slowed his stride to make sure.

His room was at the extreme end of the corridor. It was L-shaped, a section of it furnished as a sitting room. Everywhere Wiley looked was something that only a lot of money could buy. He didn’t belong there. And, damn it, neither did she. He went to the window, looked down on the ideal blue rectangle of the lighted swimming pool. He would have preferred the one-bedroom apartment, he thought.

The beer was brought. Not just one bottle but four, and not just cold but buried neck down in a bucket of shaved ice. Four crystal goblets. Also on the tray were several sterile gauze compresses, some adhesive tape and a bottle of peroxide. The servant hadn’t thought of those. She had, and it made him feel slightly better about everything. He took a shower, dressed his wound and drank a beer from the bottle.

The bed was turned down, open like a fresh envelope. He inserted himself between sheets that felt finer than any ever. Three oversize pillows. His head was flashing on all sorts of thoughts. Clicking off the light didn’t diminish them.

Some day it had been. The end, as confusing as the start, had been alarming. He refused to accept that this was her house. If all this belonged to her, he had been deceived. He tried to recall her exact words, to pinpoint her lies, and realized now what she’d meant about omission being one of her habits. At the least, he’d been misled. But, then, he was equally guilty, posing as a fortune chaser. How could it all have gotten so complicated in such a short while?

Sleep now.

He dozed off and, after only three hours, came awake. Wide, sharp awake, with Lillian on the front of his mind. The need to see her. At nearly four in the morning? Ridiculous. Go back to sleep. He tried, but he had to see Lillian, just see her.

He put on his
pantalones
and went out. A stillness to the place now, as though the structure itself and every object in it were also sleeping. He went down the hallway to the opposite wing.

Numerous doors. He only guessed the one on the end would be hers.

Slowly, noiselessly, he turned the knob, opened the door just enough to look in. Lamps were on, bright. The bed hadn’t been slept in, still had its spread on it. He went in. No one there. Perhaps it wasn’t hers. But the blouse and slacks she’d worn that night were thrown over the back of a chair. Her shoes were on the floor, her handbag open, its contents spilling on the bed.

No doubt this was her room. He found some of her engraved personal stationery on the desk and, on the mantel, several photographs propped up in enamel and silver frames. Snapshots. Her, arms around an older man slightly shorter than she. A young girl who greatly resembled Lillian, Lillian about age ten. And Lillian again, alone, wearing a visored sailing cap and a double-breasted blazer, smiling over the rail of a ship. Examining that one closely, Wiley saw the ship’s name across its stern:
Sea Cloud
. One of the big ones he’d admired at Las Hadas. Handprinted across the top of the photo:
CAPTAIN HOLBROOK
, 1974. Was it possible?

His need to see her was increased now. Where was she? Spending the night with someone else in the house or somewhere nearby? Inconsiderate, the way she’d just left him standing there in the foyer. Seemed she could hardly wait to get away from him. That anxious to be with someone else?

A door off to the right, Wiley noticed. Probably a storage closet. He took a look.

It was another room, much smaller. Lighted by a fat candle stuck in its own melt on top of a wooden crate. There was the odor of marijuana. A peace symbol was painted large in red on one wall. Two planks supported by bricks served as a low shelf, on which there was a record changer and some LPs. A pair of speakers and paperback books. No other furniture in the room. The floor was bare. Except for an ordinary twin-size mattress.

Lillian was asleep on it.

She lay on her side with her legs drawn up and her hands pressed between her knees. She had kicked away the madras coverlet. All she had on was a faded green tank shirt.

10

Back in 1966, on Friday, April 8, Lillian Mayo Holbrook was reported missing.

At 3
P.M.
that day she boarded Swissair flight 110 at Cointrin Airport, Geneva. For the early part of the flight she was in First Class, along with five other girls from the school in Gstaad. There had been nothing unusual about her behavior. She drank some wine. The girls had brought their own, knowing they’d be refused service because they were underage, but there was no reason for the flight attendant not to supply them with a cork-screw and glasses so the girls could serve themselves. They quickly finished off three bottles of red, one of white.

They held it well for sixteen-year-olds, were used to it. Nearly every afternoon in Gstaad they would wait outside a wine shop until they could persuade or pay some local to buy a few bottles for them. They hid the wine in the snow, then stole out after dark to get it. Came spring, when the snow melted, the area around the dormitory was littered with empties and, here and there, a misplaced full.

Spring vacation. Well in advance the school had sent each girl’s parents a reminder, rather like a warning, that the vacation was scheduled. As an alternative to going home, and all the inconvenience that might require, the school offered chaperoned excursions to either Cairo or Rome. At additional cost, of course.

It was up to the parent(s).

Last holiday, Christmas, one of the alternates offered had been Paris. Lillian was among eight girls who stayed at a hotel on the Rue Poincaré that was not much different from the school dormitory. Except that the tip of the Eiffel Tower could be seen from Lillian’s window, and wine was easier to buy but more difficult to hide.

If Lillian was homesick, she didn’t let it show. However, she’d been counting the days to this spring vacation, going home.

Two hours out of Geneva, Lillian left First Class and walked back through Tourist. An exceptionally pretty, long-haired girl wearing a white blouse and a loden-green school blazer. Well noticed, particularly by most of the male passengers. She went up and down the aisle twice, casually, as though taking stock. There were a number of vacant seats. One was next to a man of fifty trying not to look it. Hair dyed, eyes worked on, young-cut suit.

Lillian took that seat and immediately struck up a conversation. The man’s name was Mitchell—Paul, call him Paul. He made a point of saying he wasn’t flying First Class because it had been fully booked and he hadn’t wanted to bump anyone. He was in the motion picture business. Not a producer, the next worst thing, he said. He arranged deals with foreign distributors. Had to fly a lot. Had no strings, used to, but none now. Did Lillian want a cigarette? No. A drink? No. Anything?

Playing cards.

The flight attendant brought a fresh deck.

Lillian and Paul played for over two thousand miles. He should have known from the sharp way she shuffled. He thought she might be cheating, but she couldn’t be because they were playing losers deal, so she hardly ever got to handle the cards. By the time the approach to Kennedy was announced he was down four hundred and some. Perhaps they hadn’t been playing for dollars really, he suggested. Anyway, he didn’t have that much cash on him. Would she accept his personal check? How much in cash did he have? Two hundred seventy-five. Paul thanked her when she settled for two-fifty.

She didn’t pick up her baggage. The Holbrook chauffeur was waiting, watching for her outside Customs. She had to go out that way. She waited for a crowd, got behind someone tall, ducked down, slipped around the side. The chauffeur never saw her.

She taxied into the city to Broadway and Forty-ninth, where she asked a likely-looking girl directions to an army-navy surplus store. The nearest was on Eighth Avenue. Lillian found it, went in and bought an entire new old outfit: white regulation navy jeans that laced up the back, an overwashed khaki-colored tank top and a royal-blue satin zip-up jacket with an outline map of Korea appliquéd on its back.

She changed in a pay toilet booth at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, flushed all her identification down the toilet, threw her school clothes in the trash receptacle. From there she caught another taxi to Lexington and Fifty-ninth, where she found a second-floor, all-night beauty shop. Not a wince while she had her hair cut short as a boy’s.

By then it was nine-thirty. Her transformation and the taxi rides had cost $74. Lillian had left Geneva with only $52. She was grateful to that man, Paul, and the roommate who had taught her to play gin seven years and three schools ago. She still had $228 to go on.

For the first time in her life she took a subway. The Lexington Avenue downtown local. To where the blue letters inlaid on the white-tiled station wall announced:
ASTOR PLACE
.

She came up out of the ground and walked across Cooper Square to St. Mark’s Place.

The East Village. It was wonderfully confusing, impossible for her to take it all in—all the loud colors and sounds, long-haired young men with jeans hanging precariously on their hipbones, girls so apparently with nothing on underneath. Lillian tried not to stare or appear out of place, sauntering along imitatively with a nonchalant, self-likable air. No one seemed to be taking special notice of her, and that was reassuring.

Several young men and girls were sitting on the steps of a brownstone. Lillian stopped and faced them. They made room for her. She climbed up and sat among them. They didn’t talk much, were content to just sit and watch the passersby. Lillian felt included. As easy as that, she’d become one of them.

She told them her name was Penny. Where she was from wasn’t asked.

Seated next to her was a girl whose taken name was Charity, a fifteen-year-old with a roundish face and figure. Lillian admired the beads Charity was wearing. Striped blue-and-green glass strung with intermittent tufts of white feathers. Charity smiled with her entire face, took off the beads, and looped them over Lillian’s head.

Lillian wanted to give something in return.

“Got any bread?” Charity asked.

“Some.”

“I’d dig some frozen peas.”

Charity grabbed up her blanket roll, led the way to a market on Second Avenue. Lillian bought a package of Birdseye frozen peas and a can of Fresca for Charity. A Three Musketeers bar for herself.

“How long you been around?” Lillian asked as they walked up Second.

“Where?”

“Here.”

“Ten days Sunday.”

Charity had seemed such a veteran to Lillian. “Where do you stay?”

“Anyplace.” Charity popped some cold raw peas into her mouth, let them melt a little before biting down. “They ain’t so good if you eat them fast,” she said, “but if you don’t, they unfreeze and then ain’t so good either.” Charity stopped beneath a street light. About four inches shorter than Lillian, she looked up into her eyes and asked, “You stoned?”

Lillian was heavy-eyed. The six-hour time difference from Geneva made it five in the morning for her.

She spent that night in St. Mark’s Church, stretched out on a hardwood pew, with her head sharing Charity’s blanket roll.

The chauffeur waited two hours at Kennedy Airport before reporting that Miss Holbrook had not arrived.

Laurence Holbrook II thought probably his daughter had changed her mind at the last minute, decided the school trip to Cairo or Rome would be more enjoyable. She’d been given that option.

Mr. Holbrook was disappointed. And relieved. Since Lillian’s last time home, last summer, he had again built up his resolve to be a better, closer father. Nothing, neither crucial business nor the most promising pleasure, would be allowed to interfere. He would focus all his attention on Lillian, extend himself to her as never before, really stretch out, in the hope that they would take hold and establish a new span between them. There had always been the blood connection, of course, but very little had ever been exchanged across that either way. Less and less for the past six years. Not even
tempers
. Actually, he had never in his life reprimanded Lillian, never once given her so much as a spanking. Such things had been left to someone else, usually to Evelyn, her mother.