Read Online Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone - Free Book Online

thought about Matthew Hylan, the young merchant-adventurer who had engaged him to record his next voyage. Strickland had amassed a dossier of Hylan clippings. There were pieces in
Fortune, Harper’s
and
Manhattan, Inc.
There were admiring profiles in the yachting press, dippy puffs in the weeklies, poisonous anecdotes in the upscale celebrity magazines. Hylan was forty-four and supremely rich. He had inherited a North Shore Boston mortuary business worth a couple of million dollars and parlayed his legacy into a late-century colossus of fun services and real estate. He appeared vain and lippy, a millionaire vulgarian in the contemporary mode. He was single, dressy and apparently heterosexual. He liked a party. His chosen image seemed that of a sailor. There was nothing in any of the material to engage Strickland’s insight. Hylan of Hylan resembled many others.
    Physically, Hylan was more or less conventionally handsome. His jaw was large and emphasized in caricatures. His eyes were slightly protuberant and fleshily hooded. His mouth was large and suggestive of the appetites. Strickland had never witnessed the face in motion.
    He made it up to Hylan headquarters in little more than half an hour, over the George Washington Bridge and up the parkway. Hylan Corporation headquarters occupied an old estate called Shadows, on the right bank of the river, opposite a sugarloafshaped hill called the Plattsweg. The main house was an odd structure, built in the middle of the nineteenth century to the eccentric designs of a disappointed matron who squandered her husband’s dishonestly acquired fortune in its construction. The house was enormous, with carved buttresses and much gingerbread and a roof that curved upward at both ends with the thrusting violence of a Viking chapel. The lady founder had called it Shadows because of the way the surrounding hills abridged the sunlight. She affected to rejoice in the changing patterns they cast. There was plenty of light to be seen on the river, though; the prospects, upstream and down the Hudson, were sublime.
    The old building had a modern wood-paneled reception room with a security guard on duty at a circular desk. When Strickland had been announced Mrs. Manning came promptly to claim him. She was a handsome, high-colored upper-class woman in her forties.
    â€œMr. Strickland,” the woman cried, “I’m Joyce Manning. Welcome to Hylan.”
    â€œThank you, ma’am,” Strickland said humbly.
    â€œToo bad about Matty. He’d have loved to meet you. He’s a great admirer of your outstanding work.”
    â€œYes,” Strickland said. “Too bad.”
    â€œIt just wasn’t on. Things are in chaos today.”
    â€œWhy’s that?”
    â€œMeetings. Arrivals and departures. Excursions about.”
    Strickland smiled politely.
    Joyce Manning conducted him to a man called Thorne, whose name occurred often in the more serious of the Hylan articles. Harry Thorne, a hard case from the Boston construction wars, vice president of the corporation, was said to be Hylan’s mentor and partner. Journalists liked to contrast Thorne’s dangerous manner with the hail-fellow glibness of his younger pal.
    Thorne received Strickland in Matty Hylan’s office. He was ugly, vigorous and sixty-odd. There was absolutely no more to his face than function required: it was spare and brutal, with an impatient squint and a lipless pseudo-smile that emphasized the lustrous melancholy of his black eyes. Great mug, thought Strickland. Thorne’s shirt was white on white, his suit funereal and superbly cut.
    â€œHow are yez?” Thorne asked with faint insolence. His voice suggested gulls over India Wharf. Strickland had no trouble recognizing his manner, which was that of a man who equated documentary films with souvenir napkins or balloons and had other things on his mind. Beyond that, Strickland thought, Thorne looked distinctly weary and