The Matlock Paper Page 6

  Lysergic acid and methedrine.

  Acid heads. Pill poppers.

  The Beesons were somehow forcing themselves to show themselves as part of a past and carefree era. Perhaps to deny the times and conditions in which they found themselves.

  Archie Beeson and his wife were frightening.

  By eleven, after considerable wine with the “interesting-little-veal-dish-from-a-recipe-in-an-old-Italian cookbook,” the three of them sat down in the living room. The last of the proposed seminar problems was ironed out. Matlock knew it was time to begin; the awful, awkward moment He wasn’t sure how; the best he could do was to trust his amateur instincts.

  “Look, you two.… I hope to hell this won’t come as too great a shock, but I’ve been a long time without a stick.” He withdrew a thin cigarette case from his pocket and opened it. He felt foolish, uncomfortably clumsy. But he knew he could not show those feelings. “Before you make any judgments, I should tell you I don’t go along with the pot laws and I never have.”

  Matlock selected a cigarette from the dozen in the case and left the case open on the table. Was that the proper thing to do? He wasn’t sure; he didn’t know. Archie and his wife looked at each other. Through the flame in front of his face, Matlock watched their reaction. It was cautious yet positive. Perhaps it was the alcohol in Ginny, but she smiled hesitantly, as if she was relieved to find a friend. Her husband wasn’t quite so responsive.

  “Go right ahead, old man,” said the young instructor with a trace of condescension. “We’re hardly on the attorney general’s payroll.”

  “Hardly!” giggled the wife.

  “The laws are archaic,” continued Matlock, inhaling deeply. “In all areas. Control and an abiding sense of discretion—self-discretion—are all that matter. To deny experience is the real crime. To prohibit any intelligent individual’s right to fulfillment is … goddamn it, it’s repressive.”

  “Well, I think the key word is intelligent, Jim. Indiscriminate use among the unintelligent leads to chaos.”

  “Socratically, you’re only half right. The other half is ‘control.’ Effective control among the ‘iron’ and ‘bronze’ then frees the ‘gold’—to borrow from The Republic. If the intellectually superior were continually kept from thinking, experimenting, because their thought processes were beyond the comprehension of their fellow citizens, there’d be no great works—artistically, technically, politically. We’d still be in the Dark Ages.”

  Matlock inhaled his cigarette and closed his eyes. Had he been too strong, too positive? Had he sounded too much the false proselytizer? He waited, and the wait was not long. Archie spoke quietly, but urgently nevertheless.

  “Progress is being made every day, old man. Believe that. It’s the truth.”

  Matlock half opened his eyes in relief and looked at Beeson through the cigarette smoke. He held his gaze steady without blinking and then shifted his stare to Beeson’s wife. He spoke only two words.

  “You’re children.”

  “That’s a relative supposition under the circumstances,” answered Beeson, still keeping his voice low, his speech precise.

  “And that’s talk.”

  “Oh, don’t be so sure about that!” Ginny Beeson had had enough alcohol in her to be careless. Her husband reached for her arm and held it. It was a warning. He spoke again, taking his eyes off Matlock, looking at nothing.

  “I’m not at all sure we’re on the same wavelength …”

  “No, probably not. Forget it … I’ll finish this and shove off. Be in touch with you about the seminar.” Matlock made sure his reference to the seminar was offhanded, almost disinterested.

  Archie Beeson, the young man in an academic hurry, could not stand that disinterest.

  “Would you mind if I had one of those?”

  “If it’s your first, yes, I would.… Don’t try to impress me. It doesn’t really matter.”

  “My first?… Of what?” Beeson rose from the couch and walked to the table where the cigarette case lay open. He reached down, picked it up, and held it to his nostrils. “That’s passable grass. I might add, just passable. I’ll try one … for openers.”

  “For openers?”

  “You seem to be very sincere but, if you’ll forgive me, you’re a bit out of touch.”

  “From what?”

  “From where it’s at.” Beeson withdrew two cigarettes and lit them in Now, Voyager fashion. He inhaled deeply, nodding and shrugging a reserved approval, and handed one to his wife. “Let’s call this an hors d’oeuvre. An appetizer.”

  He went into his study and returned with a Chinese lacquered box, then showed Matlock the tiny peg which, when pushed, enabled the holder to flip up a thin layer of wood on the floor of the box, revealing a false bottom. Beneath were two dozen or so white tablets wrapped in transparent plastic.

  “This is the main course … the entrée, if you’re up to it.”

  Matlock was grateful for what knowledge he possessed and the intensive homework he’d undertaken during the past forty-eight hours. He smiled but his tone of voice was firm.

  “I only take white trips under two conditions. The first is at my home with very good, very old friends. The second is with very good, very old friends at their homes. I don’t know you well enough, Archie. Self-discretion.… I’m not averse to a small red journey, however. Only I didn’t come prepared.”

  “Say no more. I just may be.” Beeson took the Chinese box back into his study and returned with a small leather pouch, the sort pipe smokers use for tobacco, and approached Matlock’s chair. Ginny Beeson’s eyes grew wide; she undid a button on her half-unbuttoned blouse and stretched her legs.

  “Dunhill’s best.” Beeson opened the top flap and held the pouch down for Matlock to see inside. Again there was the clear plastic wrapped around tablets. However, these were deep red and slightly larger than the white pills in the Chinese box. There were at least fifty to sixty doses of Seconal.

  Ginny jumped out of the chair and squealed. “I love it! It’s the pinky-groovy!”

  “Beats the hell out of brandy,” added Matlock.

  “We’ll trip. Not too much, old man. Limit’s five. That’s the house rules for new old friends.”

  The next two hours were blurred for James Matlock, but not as blurred as they were for the Beesons. The history instructor and his wife quickly reached their “highs” with the five pills—as would have Matlock had he not been able to pocket the final three while pretending to have swallowed them. Once on the first plateau, it wasn’t too hard for Matlock to imitate his companions and then convince Beeson to go for another dosage.

  “Where’s the almighty discretion, Doctor?” chuckled Beeson, sitting on the floor in front of the couch, reaching occasionally for one of his wife’s legs.

  “You’re better friends than I thought you were.”

  “Just the beginning of a beautiful, beautiful friendship.” The young wife slowly reclined on the couch and giggled. She seemed to writhe and put her right hand on her husband’s head, pushing his hair forward.

  Beeson laughed with less control than he had shown earlier and rose from the floor. “I’ll get the magic then.”

  When Beeson walked into his study, Matlock watched his wife. There was no mistaking her action. She looked at Matlock, opened her mouth slowly, and pushed her tongue out at him. Matlock realized that one of Seconal’s side effects was showing. As was most of Virginia Beeson.

  The second dosage was agreed to be three, and Matlock was now easily able to fake it. Beeson turned on his stereo and played a recording of “Carmina Burana.” In fifteen minutes Ginny Beeson was sitting on Matlock’s lap, intermittently rubbing herself against his groin. Her husband was spread out in front of the stereo speakers, which were on either side of the turntable. Matlock spoke as though exhaling, just loud enough to be heard over the music.

  “These are some of the best I’ve had, Archie.… Where? Where’s the supply from?”

  “Probab
ly the same as yours, old man.” Beeson turned over and looked at Matlock and his wife. He laughed. “Now, I don’t know what you mean. The magic or the girl on your lap. Watch her, Doctor. She’s a minx.”

  “No kidding. Your pills are a better grade than mine and my grass barely passed inspection. Where? Be a good friend.”

  “You’re funny, man. You keep asking. Do I ask you? No.… It’s not polite.… Play with Ginny. Let me listen.” Beeson rolled back over face down on the floor.

  The girl on Matlock’s lap suddenly put her arms around his neck and pressed her breasts against his chest. She put her head to the side of his face and began kissing his ears. Matlock wondered what would happen if he lifted her out of the chair and carried her into the bedroom. He wondered, but he didn’t want to find out. Not then. Ralph Loring had not been murdered to increase his, Matlock’s, sex life.

  “Let me try one of your joints. Let me see just how advanced your taste is. You may be a phony, Archie.”

  Suddenly Beeson sat up and stared at Matlock. He wasn’t concerned with his wife. Something in Matlock’s voice seemed to trigger an instinctive doubt. Or was it the words? Or was it the too normal pattern of speech Matlock used? The English professor thought of all these things as he returned Beeson’s look over the girl’s shoulder. Archie Beeson was suddenly a man warned, and Matlock wasn’t sure why. Beeson spoke haltingly.

  “Certainly, old man.… Ginny, don’t annoy Jim.” He began to rise.

  “Pinky groovy …”

  “I’ve got several in the kitchen.… I’m not sure where but I’ll look. Ginny, I told you not to tease Jim.… Be nice to him, be good to him.” Beeson kept staring at Matlock, his eyes wide from the Seconal, his lips parted, the muscles of his face beyond relaxation. He backed away toward the kitchen door, which was open. Once inside, Archie Beeson did a strange thing. Or so it appeared to James Matlock.

  He slowly closed the swing-hinged door and held it shut.

  Matlock quickly eased the drugged girl off his lap and she quietly stretched out on the floor. She smiled angelically and reached her arms up for him. He smiled down, stepping over her.

  “Be right back,” he whispered. “I want to ask Archie something.” The girl rolled over on her stomach as Matlock walked cautiously toward the kitchen door. He ruffled his hair and purposely, silently, lurched, holding onto the dining room table as he neared the entrance. If Beeson suddenly came out, he wanted to appear irrational, drugged. The stereo was a little louder now, but through it Matlock could hear the sound of Archie’s voice talking quietly, excitedly on the kitchen telephone.

  He leaned against the wall next to the kitchen door and tried to analyze the disjointed moments that caused Archie Beeson to panic, to find it so imperative to reach someone on the telephone.

  Why? What?

  Had the grand impersonation been so obvious? Had he blown his first encounter?

  If he had, the least he could do was try to find out who was on the other end of the line, who it was that Beeson ran to in his disjointed state of anxiety.

  One fact seemed clear: whoever it was had to be more important than Archer Beeson. A man—even a drug addict—did not panic and contact a lesser figure on his own particular totem.

  Perhaps the evening wasn’t a failure; or his failure—conversely—a necessity. In Beeson’s desperation, he might let slip information he never would have revealed if he hadn’t been desperate. It wasn’t preposterous to force it out of the frightened, drugged instructor. On the other hand, that was the least desirable method. If he failed in that, too, he was finished before he’d begun. Loring’s meticulous briefing would have been for nothing; his death a rather macabre joke, his terrible cover—so painful to his family, so inhuman somehow—made fruitless by a bumbling amateur.

  There was no other way, thought Matlock, but to try. Try to find out who Beeson had reached and try to put the pieces of the evening back where Beeson might accept him again. For some insane reason, he pictured Loring’s briefcase and the thin black chain dangling from the handle. For an even crazier reason, it gave him confidence; not much, but some.

  He assumed a stance as close to the appearance of collapse as he could imagine, then moved his head to the door frame and slowly, quarter inch by quarter inch, pushed it inward. He fully expected to be met by Beeson’s staring eyes. Instead, the instructor’s back was to him; he was hunched over like a small boy trying to control his bladder, the phone clutched to his thin scrunched neck, his head bent to the side. It was obvious that Beeson thought his voice was muffled, indistinguishable beneath the sporadic crescendos of the “Carmina Burana.” But the Seconal had played one of its tricks. Beeson’s ear and his speech were no longer synchronized. His words were not only clear. They were emphasized by being spaced out and repeated.

  “… You do not understand me. I want you to understand me. Please, understand. He keeps asking questions. He’s not with it. He is not with it. I swear to Christ he’s a plant. Get hold of Herron. Tell Herron to reach him for God’s sake. Reach him, please! I could lose everything!… No. No, I can tell! I see what I see, man! When that bitch turns horny I have problems. I mean there are appearances, old man.… Get Lucas.… For Christ’s sake get to him! I’m in trouble and I can’t.…”

  Matlock let the door swing slowly back into the frame. His shock was such that thought and feeling were suspended; he saw his hand still on the kitchen door, yet he felt no wood against his fingers. What he had just heard was no less horrible than the sight of Ralph Loring’s lifeless body in the telephone booth.

  Herron. Lucas Herron!

  A seventy-year-old legend. A quiet scholar who was as much revered for his perceptions of the human condition as he was for his brilliance. A lovely man, an honored man. There had to be a mistake, an explanation.

  There was no time to ponder the inexplicable.

  Archer Beeson thought he was a “plant.” And now, someone else thought so, too. He couldn’t allow that. He had to think, force himself to act.

  Suddenly he understood. Beeson himself had told him what to do.

  No informer—no one not narcotized—would attempt it.

  Matlock looked over at the girl lying face down on the living room floor. He crossed rapidly around the dining table and ran to her side, unbuckling his belt as he did so. In swift movements, he took off his trousers and reached down, rolling her over on her back. He lay down beside her and undid the remaining two buttons on her blouse, pulling her brassiere until the hasp broke. She moaned and giggled, and when he touched her exposed breasts, she moaned again and lifted one leg over Matlock’s hip.

  “Pinky groovy, pinky groovy …” She began breathing through her mouth, pushing her pelvis into Matlock’s groin; her eyes half open, her hands reaching down, stroking his leg, her fingers clutching at his skin.

  Matlock kept his eyes toward the kitchen door, praying it would open.

  And then it did, and he shut his eyes.

  Archie Beeson stood in the dining area looking down at his wife and guest. Matlock, at the sound of Beeson’s footsteps, snapped his head back and feigned terrified confusion. He rose from the floor and immediately fell back down again. He grabbed his trousers and held them in front of his shorts, rising once more unsteadily and finally falling onto the couch.

  “Oh, Jesus! Oh, sweet Jesus, Archie! Christ, young fella! I didn’t think I was this freaked out!… I’m far out, Archie! What the hell, what do I do? I’m gone, man, I’m sorry! Christ, I’m sorry!”

  Beeson approached the couch, his half-naked wife at his feet. From his expression it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Or the extent of his anger.

  Or was it anger?

  His audible reaction was totally unexpected: he started to laugh. At first softly, and then with gathering momentum, until he became nearly hysterical.

  “Oh, God, old man! I said it! I said she was a minx!… Don’t worry. No tattle tales. No rapes, no dirty-old-man-on-the-faculty. But we’ll have
our seminar. Oh, Christ, yes! That’ll be some seminar! And you’ll tell them all you picked me! Won’t you? Oh, yes! That’s what you’ll tell them, isn’t it?”

  Matlock looked into the wild eyes of the addict above him.

  “Sure. Sure, Archie. Whatever you say.”

  “You better believe it, old man! And don’t apologize. No apologies are necessary! The apologies are mine!” Archer Beeson collapsed on the floor in laughter. He reached over and cupped his wife’s left breast; she moaned and giggled her maddening, high-pitched giggle.

  And Matlock knew he had won.

  7

  He was exhausted, both by the hour and by the tensions of the night. It was ten minutes past three and the choral strains of the “Carmina Burana” were still hammering in his ears. The image of the bare-breasted wife and the jackal-sounding husband—both writhing on the floor in front of him—added revulsion to the sickening taste in his mouth.

  But what bothered him most was the knowledge that Lucas Herron’s name was used within the context of such an evening.

  It was inconceivable.

  Lucas Herron. The “grand old bird,” as he was called. A reticent but obvious fixture of the Carlyle campus. The chairman of the Romance languages department and the embodiment of the quiet scholar with a deep and abiding compassion. There was always a glint in his eyes, a look of bemusement mixed with tolerance.

  To associate him—regardless of how remotely—with the narcotics world was unbelievable. To have heard him sought after by an hysterical addict—for essentially, Archer Beeson was an addict, psychologically if not chemically—as though Lucas were some sort of power under the circumstances was beyond rational comprehension.