The Secret History - Donna Tartt [196]
He rambled on with this fraudulent recollection while Henry, pale and ill, endured his prods and backslaps as a well-trained dog will tolerate the pummeling of a rough child. The story itself was ludicrous. It had a dynamic and strangely hot-headed young Henry wanting to rush out and buy a used single-engine airplane against the advice of his parents.
“But this guy was determined,” said Mr. Corcoran. “He was going to get that plane or bust. After he’d told me all about it I sat there for a minute and then I took a deep breath and I said, ‘Henry, son, she sounds like a beaut, but I’m still going to have to be a square and agree with your folks. Let me tell you why that is.’ ”
“Hey, Dad,” said Patrick Corcoran, who had just come in to fix himself another drink. He was slighter than Bun, heavily freckled, but he had Bunny’s sandy hair and his sharp little nose. “Dad, you’re all mixed up. That didn’t happen to Henry. That was Hugh’s old friend Walter Ballantine.”
“Bosh,” said Mr. Corcoran.
“Sure it was. And he ended up buying the plane anyway. Hugh?” he shouted into the next room. “Hugh, do you remember Walter Ballantine?”
“Sure,” said Hugh, and appeared in the doorway. He had by the wrist the kid Brandon, who was twisting and trying furiously to get away. “What about him?”
“Didn’t Walter wind up buying that little Bonanza?”
“It wasn’t a Bonanza,” said Hugh, ignoring with a glacial calm the thrashing and yelps of his son. “It was a Beechcraft. No, I know what you’re thinking,” he said, as both Patrick and his father started to object. “I drove out to Danbury with Walter to look at a little converted Bonanza, but the guy wanted way too much. Those things cost a fortune to maintain, and there was plenty wrong with it, too. He was selling it because he couldn’t afford to keep it.”
“What about this Beechcraft, then?” said Mr. Corcoran. His hand had slipped from Henry’s shoulder. “I’ve heard that’s an excellent little outfit.”
“Walter had some trouble with it. Got it through an ad in the Pennysaver, off some retired congressman from New Jersey. He’d used it to fly around in while he was campaigning and—”
Gasping, he lurched forward as with a sudden wrench the kid broke free of him and shot across the room like a cannonball. Evading his father’s tackle, he sidestepped Patrick’s block as well and, glancing back at his pursuers, slammed right into Henry’s abdomen.
It was a hard blow. The kid began to cry. Henry’s jaw dropped and every ounce of blood drained from his face. For a moment I was sure he would fall, but somehow he drew himself upright, with the dignified, massive effort of a wounded elephant, while Mr. Corcoran threw back his head and laughed merrily at his distress.
I had not entirely believed Cloke about the drugs to be found upstairs, but when I went up with him again I saw he had told the truth. There was a tiny dressing room off the master bedroom, and a black lacquer vanity with lots of little compartments and a tiny key, and inside one of the compartments was a ballotin of Godiva chocolates and a neat, well-tended collection of candy-colored pills. The doctor who had prescribed them—E. G. Hart, M.D., and apparently a more reckless character than his prim initials would suggest—was a generous fellow, particularly with the amphetamines. Ladies of Mrs. Corcoran’s age usually went in pretty heavily for the Valium and so forth but she had enough speed to send a gang of Hell’s Angels on a cross-country rampage.
I was nervous. The room smelled like new clothes and perfume; big disco mirrors on the wall reproduced our every move in paranoiac multiple-image; there was no way out and no possible excuse for being there should anyone happen in. I kept an eye