The Goldfinch(278)

Courteously, Hobie introduced me around the circle—gentle, tactful, unhurried, a social lion of the mildest sort.

“Um,” I said, looking around the room, “sorry to drag you away, Hobie, I hope you won’t think me rude if—”

“Word in private? Certainly. You’ll excuse me?”

“Hobie,” I said, as soon as we were in a relatively quiet corner. The hair at my temples was damp with sweat. “Do you know a man named Havistock Irving?”

The pale brows came down. “Who?” he said, and then, looking at me more closely, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

His tone, and his expression, made me realize that he knew more about my mental state than he’d been letting on. “Sure,” I said, pushing my glasses up on the bridge of my nose. “I’m fine. But—listen, Havistock Irving, does that name ring a bell?”

“No. Should it?”

Somewhat erratically—I was dying for a drink; it had been foolish of me not to stop at the bar on the way over—I explained. As I spoke, Hobie’s face grew blanker and blanker.

“What,” he said, scanning over the heads of the crowd. “Do you see him?”

“Um—” throngs milling by the buffet, beds of cracked ice, gloved servers shucking oysters by the bucketful—“there.”

Hobie—shortsighted without his glasses—blinked twice and squinted. “What,” he said shortly, “him with the—” he brought his hands up to the sides of his head to simulate the two puffs of hair.

“Yes that’s him.”

“Well.” He folded his arms, with a rough, unpracticed ease that made me see for a flash the alternate Hobie: not the tailor-fitted antiquaire but the cop or tough priest he might have been in his old Albany life.

“You know him? Who is he?”

“Ah.” Hobie, uncomfortably, patted his breast pocket for a cigarette he wasn’t allowed to smoke.

“Do you know him?” I repeated more urgently, unable to stop myself glancing over at the bar in Havistock’s direction. Sometimes it was hard to get information out of Hobie on touchy matters—he tended to change the subject, clam up, drift into vagueness, and the worst possible place to ask him anything was a crowded room where some genial party was apt to wander up and interrupt.

“Wouldn’t say know. We’ve had dealings. What’s he doing here?”

“Friend of the bride,” I said—and received a startled look at the tone in which I’d said this. “How do you know him?”

Rapidly he blinked. “Well,” he said, somewhat reluctantly, “don’t know his real name. Welty and I knew him as Sloane Griscam. But his true name—something else entire.”

“Who is he?”

“Knocker,” said Hobie curtly.

“Right,” I said, after an off-balance pause. A knocker, in the trade, was a shark who charmed his way into old people’s homes: to cheat them of valuables and sometimes to rob them outright.

“I—” Hobie rocked on his heels, looked awkwardly away—“rich pickings for him here, that’s for sure. First-class swizzler—him and his partner as well. Smart as Satan, those two.”

A radiantly smiling bald man in a clerical collar was threading his way toward us; I folded my arms and tried to angle myself away from him, blocking his approach, hoping Hobie wouldn’t see and cut his story short to welcome him.

“Lucian Race. At least, that was the name he went by. Oh, they were a pretty pair. See—Havistock, or Sloane, or whatever he’s calling himself now, would chat up the old ladies and old gents too, get to know where they lived, drop in to visit… he’d hunt them out at benefit dinners, funerals, Important Americana auctions, all over the place. Anyway—” studying his drink—“he’d turn up to visit with his delightful friend, Mr. Race, and while the old dears were occupied… really, it was dreadful. Jewelry, paintings, watches, silver, whatever they could lay their hands on. Well,” he said on an altered note. “Long time ago.”

I wanted a drink so badly it was difficult for me not to keep glancing in the direction of the bar. Already I could see Toddy pointing me out to an elderly couple who were smiling expectantly at me, like they were about to totter over and introduce themselves, and obstinately I turned my back. “Old folks?” I repeated to Hobie, hoping to get a little more out of him.

“Yes—sorry to say it, but they preyed on some pretty helpless people. Anyone that let them in the door. And a lot of the old folks didn’t have much, they’d clean them out in one go but if there was real loot for the taking—? oh, they’d keep up the fruit baskets and the confidential talks and the hand-patting for weeks—”