“Why, no, Mother.” Norma reddened under her mother’s rebuke.
“Then tell this poor man the goddamned truth. Tell him how the entire New York Yankees team used to get laid here after a weekend series up at Fenway Park.” Ada Geiger had been famous throughout her career for her bold, savage directness. Clearly, she had not changed. “Tell him how Astrid always had to keep silk sheets around for DiMaggio because Joe D wouldn’t sleep on anything else. I swear, Norma, by the time I’m gone you’ll have turned this place into a former convent. And Moses into, well, Moses. Don’t try to cover up the truth. Revel in it. It’s your heritage, dear.”
“Yes, Mother,” Norma said, lowering her eyes.
When Ada reached the bottom of the stairs she glided slowly toward them, her aquiline nose raised high in the air. She reminded Mitch of an ancient bird of prey. An osprey, perhaps-proud, fierce and defiantly alert, her hooded eyes sharp and keen. Ada combed her pure white hair straight back. Her face was still beautiful. It wasn’t an old face. It was a lived-in face. Her hands shook slightly, but she stood strong and straight. She wore a pair of eyeglasses on a chain around her neck. No makeup or lipstick. She was dressed in a bulky black turtleneck, wool slacks and sturdy walking shoes. A tweed jacket was thrown over her shoulders like a cape.
“Besides which,” she continued, “Astrid was a great dame in her own right. Somebody ought to be getting her life story down on paper instead of trying to ‘summon’ her every year with a crystal ball and a bad Romanian accent. True story: My mother never even knew Astrid existed. Hell, I didn’t meet her myself until I was forty. But people knew how to keep secrets in those days. Not like now. Now everyone wants to share. What fun is that?” Ada turned her piercing glare on Mitch. “You must be this Mitch person. Well, speak up. Are you or aren’t you?”
“I am,” Mitch responded, a bit awestruck. “How are you, Mrs. Geiger?”
“First of all, the name’s Ada. Second of all, don’t ever ask someone my age how they are. They might actually answer you, individual organ by organ, and it will consume the entire evening’s conversation. I have health problems. They’re not very interesting problems. Now let’s leave it at that, shall we?” She took him by the arm and pulled away from Norma and Les, her grip surprisingly strong. “I’m glad you could make it, Mitch. I know you had zero to do with this freak show they’re putting on for me. Or I prefer to think you didn’t.”
“I didn’t, actually. And meeting you this way is an incredible honor for me.”
“Nonsense. It’s entirely due to your efforts that today’s young people have so much as heard of my movies. I wished to thank you.”
“I was just doing my job.”
“Hah! You say that as if most people actually do their jobs. Your lady friend is the one who draws dead people, am I right?”
“Why, yes. She’s very talented.”
“Of course she is, of course she is,” Ada said impatiently. “Where is she? I need to speak with her.”
“She’s running late,” Mitch said, wondering why the grand old director wanted to speak to Des.
Jory reappeared now to see to her. “How about a nice cup of your herbal tea, Mrs. Geiger?” she asked, raising her voice.
“You needn’t shout at me, tootsie,” Ada barked. “I’m not deaf.”
“I’m sorry. I just wondered if you’d like a cup of your Lemon Zinger.”
“I would. With a generous slice of fresh ginger…”
“And a half teaspoon of honey. I know, ma’am.”
“I can’t abide most American tea,” Ada explained to Mitch. “It tastes like monkey piss to me. I’ll make it myself, if you don’t mind,” she told Jory. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that I, well, don’t trust you.”
“At least let me help you,” Jory offered.
“If you must, Dory,” Ada said imperiously.
“It’s Jory, ma’am,” she pointed out as the two of them started for the kitchen.
Norma let out a suffering sigh as soon as they’d disappeared through the service door. “I love the old dear, Mitch. But, as you can see, she is absolutely impossible. Not that she’s any different now than she was when I was a girl. She’s just more so.”
“I like her,” Mitch said admiringly. “She’s real.”
“Ada’s one of a kind, all right,” Les agreed. “Thank God.”
“I don’t know how I shall ever make this up to poor Jory,” Norma fretted.
“Have she and Jase worked here long?”
“Their whole lives. Their father, Gussie, was caretaker here going all the way back to Astrid’s days. He raised the two of them on his own out in the cottage. When they were old enough to work, they stayed on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d best see to dinner-and rescue the girl.”
“Come on, let’s get you that drink,” Les said, steering Mitch toward the taproom.
The castle’s taproom was paneled, cozy and clubby, as in the Union League Club, circa 1929. There was a hand-carved hardwood bar with half a dozen stools before it. Behind it, an antique wall clock seemed to be keeping perfect time. There were tavern tables and card tables, and comfy leather armchairs parked before the fire that was crackling in the fireplace. There were Rex Brasher Audubon Society prints hanging from the walls, built-in bookcases filled with hardcover volumes of literature and history. A vintage Brunswick pool table with ornate carved legs and hand-sewn leather pockets anchored the middle of the room. An amber glass light fixture was suspended over it, casting a warm glow over the green felt. The sound of Teddy’s piano was fainter in here, but Mitch could still hear it-just as he could hear the howl of the wind through the chimney flue.
A slender, striking blonde with very long straight hair was standing over by the fire in a sleeveless black dress and stiletto heels, sipping a martini and looking rather sulky. The great Aaron Ackerman sat gloomily at the bar, both hands wrapped around a snifter of single malt Scotch, a bottle of twenty-one-year-old Balvenie parked at his elbow.
A second couple, both in their twenties, were working away at a tavern table in the corner. She was busy inputting notes in a laptop computer. He was busy negotiating with someone on his cell phone: “I understand you perfectly-Oliver wants a limo from JFK. But I can’t give him one. If Oliver gets a limo, then Quentin will want one.” Spence Sibley from Panorama Studios, evidently. “I swear, no one is getting a limo. This is not the damned Golden Globes!”
“Now what can I get you, Mitch?” Les asked as he bustled around behind the bar.
“Whatever you have on draft will be fine.”
Les drew a Double Diamond for him in an Astrid’s Castle pilsner glass and set it before him on an Astrid’s Castle bar coaster. Mitch began to wonder if he’d be seeing that damned logo in his sleep tonight.
“We’ve never had the pleasure, Mitch,” Aaron spoke up, sticking his hand out toward him. “I enjoy your work thoroughly.”
Mitch shook Aaron’s hand, which was limp and sodden. “Thanks, glad to meet you,” he said, even though he was far from it. As far as Mitch was concerned, Aaron Ackerman was one of the most despicable figures in modern American journalism.
If you could even call what Aaron Ackerman did journalism. Mitch didn’t. Aaron specialized in skewering public figures for fun and profit, a brutal form of personal destruction that had come to be known in media circles as Ack-Ack. Ada Geiger’s grandson got his start during the Monica Lewinsky scandal as a member of what Mitch called The Young and The Damp, that perspiring, attention-starved legion of bow-tied baby neo-conservatives who began popping up all over the cable news channels to pummel Bill Clinton and tout their own right-wing agenda. Aaron had two things going for him that quickly set him apart from the others. He had a very famous left-wing grandmother and he had a giddy, unabashed love for toxic tirades. The man became a full-fledged star with the publication of Incoming Ack-Ack, a collection of his most outrageous diatribes, which spent a dizzy twenty-eight weeks atop the New York Times Best Sellers list. Among his targets: tax-and-spend liberals, mealy-mouthed moderates, yuppies, gays, feminists, environmentalists, New Yorkers, Hollywood political activists, the French-anyone and everyone whose world vision didn’t march in lock-step with his own.