EIGHTEEN
Kout's dark room was furnished with plunder, mismatched and ill suited for the small space. During his stay with the ALA, the acquisitive financier had continued to grab or buy every pretty object that caught his eye—but the assemblage’s lack of cohesion badly detracted from each painting and statuette. A Persian rug lay before a crushed velour couch; a green leather chair was coupled with a floral needle-point ottoman; unmatched silver plates, jars, and knives were dubiously arranged atop a rattan buffet. The old banker’s clumsy attempt at elegance left his room claustrophobic and ugly.
Irma and Rollins entered, examined the room disdainfully. Although Kout had straightened the house in preparation for receiving his daughter, dust and trash were everywhere, and the rooms smelled of old food and bad plumbing. Irma had always felt that although her father appreciated the value and beauty of the thing itself, he no sense of context. Irma wondered if his treason could be traced to the same flaw in his neurological hardwiring: A silver tray on a wicker stool was not so different from status without honor.
Rollins walked around the room, looking out windows, peeking through doors. He had no interest in listening to the dysfunctional reunion of the traitor and his headstrong daughter. Rollins was interested the house's layout, its exit lines and hidden nooks. The windows were high and smallish; there were two doors at the back of the room, and a narrow, rough-hewn staircase led to bedrooms on the second floor. Outside, he had noted that the banker lacked bodyguards. He now realized there was no protector inside, either. Obviously, the ALA had scant concern for the turncoat’s safety: They already had what they wanted from him, and now his fate was his own worry.
Kout rushed toward his daughter with his pudgy arms outstretched. His small eyes watered as he cried, "Irma. Oh, Irma."
She turned her cheek and coolly accepted his kiss; her arms dangled limply at her sides. Kout stepped back from the frigid figure of his daughter. He read the hatred in her eyes. "Irma?" he said weakly. He searched her face, looking for the tender admiration he had long so cherished and, at the same time, taken for granted. She barely noticed and was not concerned about the genuine love on the old man’s face. She did not notice at all how changed he was, how humbled, small, and alone he had become. In the months Kout had been in the ALA camp, he had been treated with an indifference that neither he nor any of his patrician family had previously experienced. Here, being a banker meant nothing: He was a convenient collaborator, and his treatment by officers and enlisted men was commensurate with his undignified position. He had never understood how much his self-esteem depended on the deference of others, and this insight still eluded him despite its ready apparentness. Without his knowing why, his recent experiences led him to a resolution to build a life centered on friends and family. Making up to Irma for all that she had suffered would be the first step. He had not planned much after that, except to go to Los Angeles, enter the business world of that commercial center, and develop a social life with respectable folk.
Avoiding her father’s now-mawkish eyes, Irma said, "I do not intend to stay here."
"Irma?"
She glared at the trembling banker and said through clenched teeth, "You've ruined my life! You left me homeless, imprisoned and ridiculed. I can’t even protect my own boobs!" Once she began, she could not stop. She narrated in detail all that she had endured. Her pretty face twisted unattractively in anger and her voice choked with fury, Irma described the hovel in which she had been housed, the gruel she had eaten, and the painfulness of her dreary isolation. She told him of her shame, her loss, and her agonizing hours spent trying to figure out why he had done the horrible thing. “I love San Francisco, even now when it loathes me. I didn’t want to leave; I was brought here by force. And I would rather be back on that bleak cliff than spend one night under your tainted roof!”
The old man shook his head, and a tear ran down his ashen cheek. This was not at all what he had expected. He had arranged her freedom. It had taken time and influence. Surely, she understood that his intentions were only for her betterment. He would take her to Los Angeles, to the great city. She would be rich and have all that could be had in what was left of the world. Despite his resolve to live a more people-oriented life, wealth and cosmopolitan pleasure mattered to Kout; and they were only things he could imagine mattered to his daughter.
While the family conflict ranged, Rollins continued to survey the banker’s abode. The one door led to a walk-in closet, filled not with clothes but booty. Kout’s gold had facilitated purchase of much of the prize swag plundered from central California by the bandit army. Rollins assumed that upstairs he would find much of the same. The other door lead to a foul-smelling kitchen, which Rollins investigated while Irma continued shouting at her overwhelmed father.
Irma wanted her message to be clear, but her ferocity was as great a surprise to her as it was to her father. Up until now, she had thought of him as badly as she now spoke of him, but the thoughts had been quiet, reasoned, and without churlish malice. But at that moment, she heard her own voice throwing the cruelest possible words at the man whose seed spawned her. It flashed before her that her past dignified suffering was undone in the spiteful tirade she now unleashed. Her former calm had been a sham; this was the inconsolable rage she had hitherto repressed.
Finally her harangue ended. After a moment of stunned silence, she said calmly, “You are a stranger to me. A meaningless stranger. When we meet on the streets, that’s how it will be."
"Irma, please don't," her father pleaded, now breaking down into open weeping. "I did the right thing, the right thing for us."
She was puzzled by his obtuseness. Couldn't he see what he had done? She had just abased herself with meanness and he still was ignorant of his guilt. The villain’s narrowness of focus protected him from understanding his own ignominy. Irma knew that he would remember this, hear her curses over and over for the rest of his life; she hoped that someday in the future the fullness of his betrayal would dawn on him. She spoke now in slow, calm, venom-filled tones. "I almost had a chance for a new start. Now you've ruined that, too."
“You are my daughter. Your first duty is to me!" He stretched his arms out to her and with a maudlin smile cooed, "And my duty is to you."
Irma sneered and evaded his touch. "You've forfeited all claims to duty and love. Live with it."
Her father now believed that exhaustion was at the root of Irma’s malevolent mood. She was such a lighthearted girl that it had always been easy for him to pick her up when she got grouchy. Irma was, God bless her, a low-maintenance child. Although he remained hangdog and took care not to shake a tear off his cheek, slight twinkles came to his little eyes as he said sadly, "Don't you see? I have saved you. San Francisco has no chance against these people. Look at them! See how powerful they are. It's only a matter of time!"
Irma said icily, "I've said what I came to say.” This being true, she folded her arms across her chest and pulled her mouth shut.
Her father watched the mute figure out of the corner of his eye. He saw that a new thought had shaken her fury. When Irma stopped speaking in the middle of such a tirade, it was not because she had run out of words or thoughts, but rather because she had run out of anger. She was, after all, a splendidly-tempered child. “Maybe you should sit down,” he said softly.
She looked at him as if he had asked to look up her skirt. “The soldiers are waiting outside. I am going.”
“But where will you go? You can’t go back to San Francisco!”
“No, Father. That is painfully clear to me. I will never be able to go back. You’ve fixed that just fine!”
“But, where will you go?”
“Well, Dad, you have put me in a position where I’ve had to learn new tricks to get by. I could go into details if you want to hear them. Would you like that? Want to hear about the taste of Todd Wentworth’s seaman?” She watched him put his hands over his ears and shudder. Her eyes sparkled with the knowledge that her words had hurt as intended.
“I didn’t think so.”
She turned and walked toward the door. After placing her hand on the knob, Irma paused and almost looked over her shoulder to see her father one last time. But she caught herself. She breathed deeply, and she left without a backward glance.
Kout stood, stoop-shouldered and confused. For a long miserable moment, he stared at the door. He looked at Rollins, who stared back at him, his jaw clenched so tightly that his lips were white as death. "She'll get over this," the banker said, half expecting the one-armed soldier to reassure him. Irma never stays mad, he told himself. Oh, it’s true that when she’s done with somebody, a suitor or a gossipy girlfriend, she gives no second chances. But a friend is not a father! The banker set the course of his inner dialogue to provide a reason to hope that her petulance had been of the moment and was not a hard conviction. Finally, he said to the deeply-thoughtful Rollins, who remained standing in front of the kitchen door, "It may take months, but time heals all wounds, eh?"
It took a moment. Suddenly, it dawned on Kout: Why doesn’t her bodyguard go with her? Actually, that is very unusual. What else is the man good for if not to hover around Irma? This is wrong. He shouldn’t be here. Rollins stepped toward him. Kout fell back in a newfound terror. He thought how ugly Rollins was, with his pain-creased face, blackhead-infested skin, and small yellow eyes. The man was ominous.
With his lone hand, Rollins reached inside the top of his boot and pulled out a large jackknife. His wrist flipped open a fat five-inch blade. The tool snapped into place. Kout bolted for the stairway, but he was fat, sedentary, and stunned; after three steps, he tripped over his own feet and went down in a pile. From the rug, he looked up nearly six and a half feet into the pinpoint eye of a man he now knew had been sent to do him harm. Kout scrambled onto his hands and knees, making it two more feet toward the stairs. He was almost able to touch them when Rollins’ powerful hand grabbed his neck and shoulder, then flipped the banker onto his back. From that point on, the soldier was fast. Rollins kneeled on Kout's chest, held the old banker’s frightened eye firmly in his own. He brought the knife down swiftly across and through his target’s neck. With a bloody gurgle, the traitorous banker died instantly.
Rollins stood. He looked about the room. He felt very large in that room, as though he were in a child’s playhouse. He caught himself wanting to savor the moment of his renewed marshal contribution to his nation. But to savor is to sully when one has but done his duty.