Death Shall Overcome Read online

  He smiled wryly. Clovis Greene Bear Spencer & Clark sent best wishes to the NAACP. CASH did not. Possibly they had been formed too late to make the publication deadline. Robichaux & Devane also sent good wishes. The Sloan, Thatcher discovered with approval, sent nothing; it had merely taken two full pages.

  On the whole, he was inclined to think that the NAACP was the group to value this above quarter-page “good wishes.” Particularly when, as he found riffling on, good wishes were also emanating from Dibbel Abercrombie. Well, fund raisers, like public relations people, couldn’t he deflected by little things like reality.

  “Oh, my God!” It was an involuntary exclamation, made as the last of the violins finished his cacophonous wailing and joined the rest of the orchestra in staring at the audience, willing it to still the magpie chatter that was keeping the maestro in the wings.

  “What’s the matter?” Laura asked as the lights began to fade.

  He had stumbled on the evening’s program, sandwiched between eloquent statements of faith from Chock Full O’ Nuts and Macy’s. Pre-intermission he was safe: Bach, Brahms and Schumann. But post-intermission? He read it again.

  INTERMISSION

  ROOTS AARON BOATMAN

  to a text by Richard Simpson

  Soprano: Lucine Asmara

  Tenor: Jan Arrow

  Bass: William Barlick

  Narrator: Alicia Pontandante

  PREMIERE

  “Roots,” fluted Program Notes, “is an orchestral ‘happening’ by Aaron Boatman, the musical rendering of the mellifluous verse by Richard Simpson. It is scored for twelve violins, fourteen trumpets, a marimba and the full percussion section of the orchestra with arias by the soprano, tenor and bass, contrapuntally painting the pastel musical nuances of the long anguish of suffering humanity evoked by Simpson’s agonizingly immediate word images. First, the Narrator reads Simpson’s powerful and moving “Where Are My Roots?” against the background lament of the richly conceived atonal choral . . .”

  “Do you mean . . . ?” he began with deep indignation.

  “Sh!” said Laura. She determinedly stared ahead, applauding the arrival of the conductor. Her father eyed her. Without turning, she laid down the law: “And Daddy, we are staying after the intermission!”

  Thatcher fell back, strangely relieved. Obviously Fate could have nothing worse than Roots in store—at least this evening.

  Chapter 14

  And Only Man Is Vile

  TWO HOURS and thirty-four minutes later, the music crashed into its penultimate bar. The only thing sustaining Thatcher was the dim air of finale that had crept into the otherwise unidentifiable melodic workings of the evening’s last selection. There was a shattering dissonant chord for three beats, a quarter rest, another chord, a half rest and finally a vast tumult that defied definition as a chord, suggestive as that word is of some relationship between individual notes.

  Then a horizontal flick of the conductor’s baton brought silence, blessed silence. But not for more than ten seconds. Too long had human beings been coerced by mere instrumental chaos. A mighty clamor arose from thousands of human voices, hands, feet. From the balcony, a demented claque from Julliard howled for the composer. The conductor bowed alone, then graciously lofted the orchestra to its feet with one sweeping gesture.

  Wild applause continued. Thatcher himself was still clapping, he realized. It was understandable. No matter what the critics might say, this was enthusiasm for release, or, more simply, the human propensity to raise Cain in any socially acceptable manner. Functionally speaking, Roots was not music but an outlet that left everyone happy without constituting a threat to life or property. Presumably, at a performance by a teen-age idol, Thatcher reflected as the ovation continued, it was at this point that high-strung adolescents proceeded to wreck the premises. Although he wondered why the young were always described as supercharged dynamos perilously close to eruption. The ones he knew personally, those employed by the Sloan as file clerks or messenger boys, displayed a languor profound enough to approach the pathological.

  20 minutes later, Thatcher was still lapped by the tide of well-being, but the tide was ebbing fast. The audience had been marshaled back into the great lobby for supper. Now, against the dramatic backdrop of glass planes and other geometric complexities, there twinkled a myriad of tables resplendent with crystal and silver damask. As the guests seated themselves, each table assumed a distinct personality. Thatcher saw Charlie Trinkam and Miss Feathers join the Jacksons to fill out a circle of NAACP notables.

  The Schuylers and Parrys were throwing the mantle of Wall Street over their own little enclave. Unfortunately, Thatcher could not join them or have his discussion with Edward Parry during supper. His own table, alas, was heavily musical, housing, as it did, the composer of the evening, Aaron Boatman.

  But the food was excellent and the wines even better. Much could be forgiven. While the woman on his right insisted on discussing the technical merits of a tone poem that he intended to forget as soon as possible, on his left, Mrs. Boatman was interested in nothing more alarming than finding an apartment in Manhattan suitable for small children.

  Diligently working his way through a crumbling paté, a memorable lobster bisque, and veal as it is too seldom encountered, Thatcher contented himself with small nods of comprehension to the right and rather more helpful comments on real estate to the left. The wine waiter was assiduous in attendance, and the end was in sight.

  It was with the appearance of artichokes in sauce vinaigrette that Thatcher’s attention was wrenched back to the menace at hand. Mrs. Boatman’s comments had turned his private thoughts to banker’s calculations. Once their children were grown, many people, like the McCulloughs, were moving from the suburbs back to the city and cooperative apartments without lawns. Construction was meeting this demand. But what about the Boatmans, with their small children? Were they an isolated instance, or the newest of nouvelles vagues? Perhaps new building was required. Deep in real estate syndicates, construction bonds and first mortgage holders, Thatcher was only distantly aware of his right-hand neighbor swaying to one side to allow a change of plates.

  “Oh, dear, there he is!” she cried.

  Thatcher murmured something politely interrogative.

  “Henry will be furious if there’s trouble. He didn’t want to come, but I said that he was always looking for an excuse to get out of concerts. And I said, ‘Henry, this is Aaron Boatman’s latest!’ ”

  Without understanding her, Thatcher experienced a marked fellow feeling for the unknown Henry.

  “That did it, I suppose?” he suggested helpfully.

  “Well, no,” she admitted. “He still said it was dangerous, so we made a bargain. We decided to come as far as the door, and see. Henry said that if there was a mob we’d go straight home. But there wasn’t, was there?”

  She appealed to him with large, watery blue eyes.

  He composed his face into an expression of manly reassurance, but Mrs. Boatman took the bull by the horns.

  “Do you mean Owen Abercrombie?” she demanded. “That awful man. Aaron was so worried that he might try to ruin Roots!”

  To avoid a comment, Thatcher turned. Owen Abercrombie and his party were dining at an inconspicuous table near the far wall. Thatcher inspected them. He wished to be fair-minded but they did not look like music lovers. There was an air of rented livery about six of the evening attires.

  “A friend of yours?” he asked his neighbor to the right, wondering if these were now fighting words.

  “Certainly not,” she said coldly. “But I did see him on television yesterday.”

  Hastily, Thatcher turned the subject. He did not succeed in turning it from Abercrombie.

  Mrs. Boatman was glaring at Abercrombie’s group. “Philistines!” she said. “And those men with him look more like a bodyguard than anything else!”

  Clearly, any threat to Roots brought out the beast in Mrs. Boatman. Since Thatcher could think of nothing pl
easant to say about the composition, he was at a loss.

  Fortunately, Mrs. Davis again contributed her mite. “Oh dear! You don’t suppose that it’s true what everybody’s been saying? That he’ll try to kill that dear Mr. Parry again?”

  Thatcher waggled his eyebrows furiously at his daughter. The ladies had drawn the attention of the whole table, and worse still, the attention of Owen Abercrombie himself. Noticing their unwavering interest, he was now staring back with imperial arrogance. Across half the width of the room, Thatcher could feel the lordly self-satisfaction.

  The man was aching for a scene. For the first time, Thatcher wondered if Abercrombie were certifiably insane.

  In the meantime Laura Carlson was proving herself worthy of her descent. As titular hostess she raised her voice into a sweet clarion, addressed a question to Aaron Boatman and then remorselessly involved the entire table in a discussion of the inspiration for Roots.

  “Only now are we beginning to understand the mainsprings of the baroque . . .”

  “. . . suitably modified by the demands of a mechanistic age . . .”

  “. . . but, Mr. Boatman, isn’t automation the most important facet . . .”

  “Too long have we allowed a slavish adoration of the romantic . . .”

  “The time has come to recognize we are in the midst of a new Renaissance. The twentieth century is the sixteenth century. What the cinquecento was to art . . .”

  Thatcher watched it all with relief and some amusement. His daughter, as nearly as he could tell, was going to skip being a young woman entirely. Incredibly, she had managed to remain a girl, albeit an attractive and considerate one, until the birth of her fourth child. Then, without pausing for breath or putting on an ounce of weight, she had started to unfold matriarchal petals. He was not sure that he approved. He remembered the 35-year-old women of his youth nostalgically. It had been an interesting time of life.

  And what of his own role in all this?

  Matriarchs, he felt, should have managed to shed at least their ancestors, and better still, their husbands. What future was there in being the father of a dowager? With extended life expectancy, one generation after another would soon be impinging on each other’s jurisdiction. Modern society would have to create new forms to absorb the ever-extending period between extreme youth and extreme age.

  Entrancing as these speculations were, he did not forget his duty. He agreed seriously with Mrs. Davis that we have much to learn from the East. The West had been too absorbed with the diatonic scale. Counterpoint had preoccupied some of our ablest men to a grievous extent. There was the simple charm of single notes to be rediscovered. Mrs. Davis, it developed, had been to Tokyo. Even worse, she knew from Time that Thatcher had been to India. While he would not, offhand, have assumed that a short trip to help open a dam made him an authority on yoga and Shinto, it was enough to convince Mrs. Davis of certain sympathies. Inevitably the conversation broadened.

  “Nowadays everyone realizes that theirs is a much more gracious way of life. Don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “All those rock gardens and almost no furniture. It gives the mind so much more room.”

  “Just so.”

  “Then one can concentrate on the really important things. It’s not surprising that they’re so far ahead of us in things of the spirit, is it? Why, I do believe that it’s time for coffee. The time has just flown talking with you, Mr. Thatcher. It’s so rare to meet someone who understands. Of course, I say it’s impossible unless you experience it yourself. And you have to be receptive. There’s no point unless you can open yourself to new impressions. Henry, I’m afraid, isn’t . . . Oh, he’s waving at me. You’ll have to excuse me. We’re taking coffee with Mr. Hornstein, the concertmaster, you know.”

  Thatcher assisted her to rise and watched her sweep off on the arm of the unfortunate Henry. That, of course, was one way of passing the middle years. He went to the head of the table to claim his own.

  “Ready, Laura?”

  “Yes. And there comes Mr. Schuyler.” She waved at the Schuylers and Parrys, who were threading their way forward as Thatcher pulled out her chair. Her eyes laughed at him. “Now you can be comfortable. And, remember, I took care of Aaron Boatman.”

  Nat Schuyler overheard her last remark. “Did you get stuck with the composer, Thatcher? We got the chairman of the NAACP finance committee. Tonight was a great success from his point of view.”

  Thatcher was too relieved at his deliverance from Mrs. Davis to comment on Schuyler’s ability to land on his feet. He congratulated him on his luck and Mrs. Parry on the financial prospering of the evening. He did not get far before he was interrupted by alarmed cries.

  Turning, he saw Owen Abercrombie and his followers bearing down on them.

  Abercrombie was in the lead, shouldering his way forward with a reckless disregard for the comfort or safety of his victims which augured ill for his intentions. Several women were already clutching the arms of their escorts in the wide wake that the group was leaving. Abercrombie’s dark eyes glittered under the busy eyebrows, and a vein in his neck twitched visibly over the starched white collar. Out of the corner of his eye Thatcher saw two stolid men close up on Edward Parry.

  Abercrombie stepped forward and grasped Nat Schuyler’s sleeve.

  “Just a minute, Schuyler! We’ve got some business with you and your playmates,” he growled.

  Schuyler was superb. He stood still, unalarmed and quietly disdainful. His face expressed only inquiry at this rupture of the evening’s decorum. “I’m sure you have a great deal to say, Owen. But I have no intention of helping you create a brawl. You can come to my office Monday morning and say anything you want.”

  “You can’t get away with that! You and your protégé have to take what’s coming to you. We’ve had just about enough of your troublemaking. The time has come to settle things.”

  Abercrombie was so engrossed by this exchange that he could not check on his subordinates. They were in some disorder. Two of them, eyeing the approach of several uniformed policemen from the corridor, were uneasily trying to slip away.

  “You’re making a fool of yourself, Owen. Now we’re leaving.”

  As he spoke, Schuyler broke his arm abruptly free from Abercrombie’s clasp and stepped forward. Unfortunately this left Abercrombie face to face with Edward Parry. Without pause, he closed the gap, grabbed Parry’s shoulder and gave a bull-like roar that sent spittle streaming down his jaw:

  “Well, you’re not getting away, my fine colored friend. Think you’re somebody, don’t you? I’ll show you just what you are . . .”

  Parry did not try to emulate Nat Schuyler’s contemptuous hauteur. Instead he doubled a workmanlike fist. But, at that moment, the two stolid men behind him oozed forward. One of them firmly removed Abercrombie’s hand from Parry’s shoulder.

  “Now, we don’t want any trouble here tonight, Mr. Abercrombie . . .”

  “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH ME?”

  The strong hand on his wrist seemed to rupture Owen Abercrombie’s tenuous hold on sanity. The twitch spread from his neck to his face, working convulsively from jaw to brow. With an inarticulate shriek of encouragement at his followers, he shook loose from the detective and began to flail against him. The second detective instantly grasped his left arm, uttering professional injunctions to take it easy and come along quietly.

  These were lost. With his right arm thrashing wildly, Owen Abercrombie suddenly fumbled in a pocket, then brandished a small black revolver.

  “Hey!” shouted the detective, pushing forward.

  There was one deafening shot.

  Knocked off balance, Abercrombie had fired while he was still struggling. The bullet hit one of the chandeliers. There was a cascade of tinkling glass. And from somewhere came a frightened wail.

  “Let me alone . . .”

  “Watch it, there . . .”

  “Get back, get back . . .”

  With a madman’s
strength, Owen Abercrombie, still clutching the revolver, struggled against the two burly detectives, struggled to level his gun on his enemy.

  Then Edward Parry shook off restraining hands and stepped forward. With a clublike fist, he smashed a blow down on the gun so savage that Abercrombie’s high, thin scream of pain almost blanketed the thud of heavy metal striking the marble floor.

  Chapter 15

  Tell Me the Old, Old Story

  FOR A MOMENT that seemed to extend itself into an eerie vacuum of sound and movement, everybody was immobile, staring dully as the revolver bounced along the tiles and shards of falling crystal rang a series of notes that spaced themselves further and further apart. It was almost as if they were waiting for a second finale.

  Then, abruptly, there was a convulsive milling as the uniformed police pushed their way forward, hurrying to the scene. By the time they arrived, Owen Abercrombie, restrained by Edward Parry and one of the detectives, was shrieking and raving, twitching and sobbing, mouthing inarticulate exhortations and obscenities. The police shouldered Parry aside and grasped Abercrombie competently, before turning their attention to his companions. These, they lined up and searched on the spot.

  ‘‘Two more guns!” was the final tally.

  “Aiiihheee. . . !” Abercrombie’s unearthly screech made Thatcher’s skin crawl.

  “Leave him alone!”

  The shout, urgent and angry, rose above the growing buzz of conversation.

  “I said, leave him alone!”

  Dean Caldwell paused in his struggles against constraining arms to watch disbelievingly as a gibbering Abercrombie was moved swiftly toward the exit. Then he resumed his defiance.

  “Who do you think you are? You can’t do this to him, you filthy . . .”