Burial of the Dead

PLOTS - 10

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C. Coop Johnson, CFO, CEO, Chairman of the Board, lauded Trustee of two hospitals and one university, Yale, B.A., Harvard Business School, New England Presbyterian, hard-knuckled-pol, back room king-maker, power-wielder, Renaissance scholar, lover of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Emerson, Twain, Grant, Eisenhower (the General), rowing, rugby, fine cuisine and wines from the late Mrs. Simpson’s orchards in southern France, entertains the few guests remaining in the Hunt Room with the bars and the walk-in fireplace. The mood is hushed, the gathering is respectful and relaxed. Johnson changed clothes when he returned home from the cemetery and wears the khakis, the ox-blood weejuns, the striped shirt with the white collar and a navy blue sweater draped over his shoulders. He walks from friend to relative to friend, a glass of scotch in one hand, his thick silver hair, perpetually damp and brushed in place with one wing tucked left-to-right behind his ear. His manner is social, controlled, a virtual handbook on how to keep emotions in check while contemplating the most onerous of days. His wife lies buried now. The nightmare that began three years ago when the doctors first diagnosed the cause of the weight loss is over. Money had helped with the personal care and the private nurses and the best treatments available. And Margaret Johnson had been strong, a reserved woman, as proud as her husband. No tears, she’d say: I won’t give this disease a thing, but a cold shoulder and my disdain. And yet, for all of it, she suffered, and when the end came, she’d been asleep for days. They called it palliative care. They took away the pain and, one afternoon, when he left her bedside to take a call from Cal Stevens, she drifted away, like a boat drifting away from a dock.

She was peaceful in the end, he says to Tyler Bach, a friend from his Harvard Business School days. Tyler’s wife, Muffy, a petite woman with brilliant eyes, who looks younger than her age, who golfed with Johnson’s wife (and who complained how Margaret Johnson cheated every round), looks up to Coop Johnson and touches his sleeve. “I’m so sorry, Coop. We all are. Margaret was a very special woman.”

Officer Louis LaPorta, newly arrived and off-duty, in a black suit from Bonds’ Front Room, stands in the doorway to the Hunt Room with his hands behind his back. When a waiter stops by with a tray of finger food, Louis shakes his head and the waiter moves on. Louis often moonlights for Johnson as an all-around-security expert and aide-de-camp. Louis has known Johnson for over a year and hopes to retire to a full time position with the great man. Johnson often alludes to it, but he’s yet to set forth any details.

Muffy Bach watches LaPorta from a distance. She notes the dark complexion, the straight nose, the heavy eyebrows, the large brown eyes, Mediterranean or “Zhivago’s eyes,” she thinks, almost black, hidden. The man’s a kind of anti-Tyler, her husband, who’s always been half-way to gay with the aristocratic foppery of his bow-ties, soft skin and the ballerina subtleties of an overweight movie critic.

LaPorta catches Muffy’s eye as she steals another look and lowers her head, caught, blushing.

“Louis?” Mr. Johnson calls from a few feet away, inviting Louis to join him in another threesome of casual mourners. Louis approaches and Johnson leans over and whispers in LaPorta’s ear that he’d like Louis to look around the first floor to see if Cal Stevens had arrived. “I can’t believe he wouldn’t show,” Mr. Johnson says, and Louis nods a military nod, and makes his way through the many and various rooms.

The rooms to the left of the central hallway are empty, and Louis marvels at the height of the ceilings and the huge paintings that hang on the walls. He stands in one of three libraries and steps before a painting of a Madonna and Child. It’s tall and there’s gold flake in the Madonna’s blue robe.

“Something, isn’t it?” Muffy Bach says.

Louis turns and sees the petite blonde with the black hair band, holding a long stemmed glass of white wine.