The New City

by Stephen Amidon

  The saw started shrieking again. It was the worst sound there was.

  He said her name. There was no reply. After a few more seconds he lowered himself onto the platform and put the beam back on the water. There was still no sign of her.

  “Susan, don’t fuck around. This isn’t funny.”

  He checked under the pier to see if she was there. Crouching. Hiding. Having her little joke. But there was just a complicated web of shadow created by the timber pilings.

  She was in the water. He shoved her and she busted her head and she was under there.

  He placed the flashlight lengthwise on the boat platform so that its light played out over the dying ripples from Susan’s fall. He peeled off his jacket and then his glasses. As he stripped down, the saw at the Pavilion once again bit into wood. God, how he hated that sound. Trying not to think about any of this, Teddy jumped. The water was warm and black. For a moment he couldn’t even tell which direction the surface was. When he finally got his bearings he started to make his way toward the bottom, propeling himself with two strong scissors kicks. He couldn’t believe how dark it was. Or how deep. He couldn’t even see his hands, tearing at the water just a few inches in front of his face. Something brushed his shoulder. He reached for it but there was only more water. Fuck this, he thought. He turned toward what he thought was the surface and swam at it as fast as he could. But the surface wouldn’t come. He saw a cloud of light and he headed toward that. Finally, just when his frail lungs were beginning to burn, he broke free of the water, only inches from where he’d jumped in. He gasped for air. It seemed darker now than when he’d first jumped in. The Pavilion was quiet. He wondered for a moment if the men there were watching this. But that was impossible. It was too far away. Those dense trees stood between them. He grabbed the edge of the platform and looked around. There was still no sign of Susan. Not floating on the surface. Not laughing at him from the pier.

  Nowhere.

  He took as big a breath as his narrow chest would allow and went back under. He only managed to find more darkness and more water. He surfaced and dove again. Each time he felt the same blind panic just seconds after going under. Between the second and third dive he called her name. On the last descent he found the bottom, but that was just sucking clay and smooth rock. Touching it, he realized he would never find her. When he surfaced for the third time he knew he would not be going back under. His heart and lungs could no longer take it.

  Susan was at the bottom of the lake. He’d shoved her and now she was gone.

  He pulled himself spitting and gasping onto the boat platform. Why was it so fucking dark? And then he knew. The flashlight had gone out. He got down on his knees and groped for it along the redwood planks, finally finding it at the back of the platform. He worked the switch. It was dead. Everything was dead tonight.

  Hammering started at the Pavilion. For some reason the noise made Teddy remember that Joel was due here any minute. He felt a sudden spurt of deep relief. Joel would know what to do. Joel could swim like a dolphin. His lungs could hold hours of air. He’d strip off his shirt and dive right in. He’d have Susan on the pier in no time flat.

  The only problem was that she’d be dead.

  Teddy grabbed his coat and his glasses and climbed back onto the pier. He looked back toward the Plaza. It remained empty. He had to get out of here. If he stayed here people would come and they would not understand. Before he did anything else, he had to go get his dad. The Swope would know what to do about this. He had to.

  Teddy hobbled back along the slanting pier, his shoes squishing on the wood. Twice he almost slipped over. The sound of that fucking saw chased him. It seemed louder than ever, like it was trying to cut right through his skull. He was moving so fast by the time he hit the boardwalk that he almost slammed into that mound of fish. He hopped the fence and headed toward the Firebird. There was still nobody around. Just another quiet night in Newton. When he got to his car he sat behind the wheel for a moment, dripping on the customized leather seat.

  Susan was in the lake. He’d put her there.

  He fished his keys from his soggy pocket and slotted them into the ignition. But before he could turn over the motor he saw movement. He froze. Someone was coming along the boardwalk from the direction of Mystic Hills. He recognized the walk right away. Joel. He moved with the same loose-limbed confidence as he did back in school. Teddy checked his diver’s watch. It was still working. Of course it was. It was a fucking diver’s watch. And Joel was right on time.

  Teddy waited until he’d disappeared over the fence before he started his car. He had to get out of here. He had to go talk with his dad.

  The Swope was in his office. Working late, as usual. Teddy paused in the front hallway, trying to figure out what the fuck he was going to say, how he could make his father understand what had happened. Understand, so he could set things right. Like he always did. Though this was different from that DWI or the roust for that nickel bag down in College Park. This was for real.

  But then his father summoned him to his office and Teddy knew there was nothing else to do but tell him exactly what had happened. The Swope sat behind his big oak desk, staring at him over the cradle’s stilled spheres. A drained highball glass rested on the blotter; a stubbed Tiparillo smoldered in the ashtray.

  Teddy could see his eyes flex in surprise.

  “You’ve got to help me,” Teddy said, his voice sounding so small and weak that it almost wasn’t his own.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “I was at the lake and …”

  He didn’t know where to start. The stupid girl. Why had she made him do this?

  “Come in here,” his father was saying. “Come in here and sit down.”

  Teddy did as told, stepping up to one of the chairs facing the desk. He paused before dropping into it.

  “I’m sort of soaked.”

  “Teddy—sit.”

  He sat.

  “Now I want you to tell me right now what the hell is going on.”

  Teddy felt his mouth form an unintended smile. His father was starting to get impatient. He knew he should start talking. But for some reason he couldn’t find the right place to start.

  “Wait a minute—where’s Susan Truax? Weren’t you supposed to be with her tonight?”

  “She’s in the lake.”

  Something appeared on his father’s face Teddy never thought he’d see. Fear.

  “What does that mean, in the lake?”

  Teddy looked at his father’s desk. There were scribbles on the blotter.

  “She’s under the water, Dad.”

  “Teddy, are you telling me Susan Truax has drowned?”

  The word cut through him like the sound of that saw. For some reason he hadn’t said it to himself yet. He nodded dully. His father stared at him for a moment, his eyes unblinking.

  “My God. How did this happen?”

  “We were waiting for Joel …”

  “Joel?”

  “I was letting them be together.”

  His father accepted this, even though he didn’t seem to understand.

  “Go on.”

  “Only Susan didn’t get it. She’s a stupid girl, Dad. She was going to screw the whole thing up. They were going to ditch me.” Teddy felt his voice catching in his throat. “I shoved her. I mean, I just wanted her to shut up.”

  “What exactly did you do, Edward? It’s important that I know. I mean, if you hurt her or—”

  “I shoved her, all right? Like, hardly at all. She was riding me so I gave her a little push. No big deal. I wasn’t trying to hurt her or anything. Okay, maybe get her wet, but only to shut her the hell up. And then when she fell I guess she hit her head, ‘Cause she went under like a ton of bricks. I jumped in to get her but it’s so dark in there …”

  Teddy’s father looked like he was trying to catch his breath for a moment.

  “Where exactly did this happen?”

  “You know t
he last pier?”

  “The damaged one.”

  “On that.”

  “Did anybody see you?”

  “No.”

  “Teddy, listen to me. You have to understand this—are you sure that no one saw you?”

  “They couldn’t of. That was part of the plan.”

  “Not Joel?”

  “I split before he got there.”

  “But you saw him?”

  Teddy nodded.

  “From my car. Right before I left.”

  “But he didn’t see you?”

  Teddy shook his head. His father dipped his head, his eyes locking onto the blotter. For a moment Teddy thought that he was going to start yelling. But the only thing he did was stand and walk to the window overlooking the front yard. Teddy felt himself relax a little. This was what his father did when he had to solve a problem. He looked out a window. Here. At the office. It didn’t matter. Almost like he was waiting for the solution to come into view. Teddy knew that he should keep quiet now. Let things run their course. But he had to ask.

  “Am I in trouble, Dad?”

  His father stared out the window a while longer before turning. His face was grim but there was no anger in it.

  “No, Teddy.”

  And then he spoke the words Teddy had heard so often when he was a boy, all those times he’d lost things or broken things. All those times people were mad at him. They were the best words there ever were.

  “Leave it to me. It’ll be all right.”

  29

  He had to act fast. If this was going to be handled, it had to be handled now, before police or parents or anyone else became involved. The girl was due home. Alarms might already be sounding. Something had to be done to stop the landslide rumbling down Prospero’s Parade. Otherwise, his only child, his beloved son, the repository of every dream he’d mined from the grudging earth during a quarter century of mind-breaking work, would be buried without a trace.

  Of course, the truth was not an option. Swope realized that before Teddy had even finished talking. A story had to be concocted, something that would remove the blame from his son’s thin shoulders. And it was Swope who had to compose it. He had an hour, tops. After that it would be other people doing the writing. The cell door would slam. Twenty-two years of legal training had come down to a handful of minutes in the middle of a quiet Tuesday night, when his mind was already addled by a long day’s work and those three shots of leftover rye.

  “Dad?”

  “Give me just a sec here, Edward,” he said gently.

  Swope continued to peer through the window. His front yard was reassuringly quiet. Just trees and shrubs and mowed grass, all of it gently illuminated by the gaslight’s pale radiance. No police cruisers or pack of reporters or sneering curious onlookers.

  Not yet.

  Start simply, he told himself. First principles. Construct the case against Teddy. See what they got. Only then could he begin to pick it apart. Fact one—a girl is lying dead at the bottom of Lake Newton. What do they have to connect his son to this sad and weighty fact? Opportunity, for starters. It was no good arguing that Teddy hadn’t been there. He’d taken the girl out on a date, for Christ’s sake. And any number of passersby might have seen the Firebird in the Newton Plaza parking lot. Teddy was at the scene and very much with the victim. That much was undeniable. For a few seconds Swope toyed with the idea of claiming he’d abandoned her after a lover’s spat on the darkened pier, where she then met a mysterious death. Maybe he could implicate one of those punks who’d tried to mug him the other night. But he knew before the thought was fully formed that it was no good. The story would raise more questions than it would answer. Girls didn’t just happen to get killed by strangers moments after being ditched by an angry date. If it was just Chones, the story might wash. But Swope knew from experience that the sheriff had a tendency to call in the State Bureau of Investigation on major crimes. And those guys didn’t owe Swope squat.

  So Teddy was there and Susan was dead. These two facts were unavoidable. What Swope had to do was snap the causal link between them. An accident. Of course. That was the only way to go. She’d slipped on the slick and slanted pier, striking her head and drowning. Tough luck, but there you are. If it was anybody’s fault it was Swope’s for not getting the thing repaired. Without witnesses, the accident excuse was impossible to refute. He recalled the sardonic counsel of a criminal professor back at Michigan who claimed that if you wanted to get away with murder, the best thing to do was simply push your victim out a window when no one was looking. All Teddy would have to do was stick by the story. Folks had accidents all the time, especially on hazardous structures. They could have been messing around, like young lovers do, when she tumbled. Teddy jumped in to save her, but no soap. Especially given his medical history. Sure, Chones and the SBI might make him sweat that one a bit, but Swope would be there with him the whole time as guardian and lawyer. As long as the kid didn’t crack, it would be all right.

  So that was it. They’d rehearse the story and then call it in. The Truaxes would be crushed but manageable, especially after EarthWorks offered them a fat out-of-court settlement for not maintaining that pier. Teddy would have to spend a couple weeks under wraps, though by August the legal storm would have passed. Things would be back to normal.

  Only, they wouldn’t. Not at all. Because even if Teddy ducked a manslaughter charge, there would still be that noxious cumulonimbus hovering over him, a cloud which the crop dusters in the press would seed until it stormed all over the Swopes. Rich kid alone on first date with sexy girl who dies in mysterious circumstances. Powerful lawyer father gets him off with a handout to the deceased’s family. The local rumor mill would run overtime. Harvard would hear about it. Potential employers. Even though he’d stay out of prison, Edward McDonald Swope would be damaged goods. The boy who beat the rap. And as the pressure built there was an increasingly good chance that he would crack, slipping up when Swope wasn’t there to help him. As for himself, Swope could forget about city manager. Whatever leverage he’d gained over Wooten these past few days would disappear. The big, bad pendulum would swing right back and catch him in the nuts.

  Come on, Swope told himself. You can do better than this. Think. Time is running out. Irma could be calling the cops right now. He looked over his shoulder at Teddy, damp and bedraggled and scared out of his wits. He stared hopefully back at his father, that sinkhole of a chest heaving in fear and exhaustion. Just as it had those first few incubated days of his life, when his father had been the only one there to save him. There had to be a better way for him now, just as there had been then. Something more than a besmirched and provisional innocence. Something that took the heat off him—immediately and permanently.

  As he turned back to the window a white sedan passed the mouth of the cul-de-sac. It hesitated, looking like it was about to turn, and at that moment Swope felt a terror more intensely pure than any he’d ever experienced. So now it starts, he thought. The long slide into ignominy. But the car sped harmlessly on. They’d simply slowed to admire the house. As so many did.

  When it was gone Swope knew what he had to do. The plan appeared suddenly, left behind in terror’s wake. He was appalled by its terrible perfection, how it arrived fully faceted, all nuances and details utterly intact. And the fact that it was so awful did nothing to lessen its inevitability. Even as he told himself there was no way he could do this, he knew that he had no choice. It was this or lose Teddy. This, or watch his life slip away. There was no middle ground now. No easy out. They’d come too far.

  He turned to his son.

  “Tell me again about Joel,” he said.

  “Joel?”

  “I still don’t understand his role in all this.”

  Teddy looked at the desk, a nervous smile tugging at his blue lips. Swope felt an unwelcome pulse of anger. That girl could be floating in plain view by now and here his son was smirking.

  “Teddy, for Christ’s sake, you
just confessed to murder,” he said, exasperation lacing his voice. “Let’s think about saving your own ass before we focus on loyalty to anybody else.”

  Teddy glanced up at him and Swope instantly regretted his display of temper. That was not the way to move this thing along. Keep cool, he told himself. One step at a time. He smiled and nodded encouragement. Teddy took heart from this.

  “I was just doing him a favor,” he said after a moment. “It was all a scam, me dating Susan. To get her out of the house. So she could see Joel.” He shook his head in a wronged sort of way. “I was just doing him a favor.”

  “But as far as anybody knows, you and Susan were on a date?”

  “Except Joel.”

  “And you said he didn’t show up until after you left?”

  Teddy nodded. Swope began to pace the room. His mind was racing now.

  “Teddy, listen to me. Because there’s not much time. We have to take care of this. Now.”

  “All right.”

  “I have to call Sheriff Chones. We must have a story for him.”

  Teddy suddenly came to life.

  “I was thinking about that on the way home. Maybe we could say it was an accident. You know, she just slipped …”

  He stopped talking when he saw his father’s shaking head.

  “Why not, Dad? It’ll be my word against hers. And she’s … dead.”

  “It’ll be your word against everybody’s,” Swope said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What would you think if some boy you knew stepped out with a sexy girl on their first date and she wound up in the drink?”

  Teddy shrugged.

  “I don’t know. That he’d offed her.”

  “Damn right you would. Even if you couldn’t prove it.”

  Teddy said nothing. Swope could see he still needed a nudge to get with the program. A little white lie to push him toward the larger truth.

  “I wish I could sit here and say that people would believe you if you told them it was an accident. But I can’t. The county attorney will certainly charge you. And then it will be up to a jury. Twelve strangers, Teddy. Ordinary people with their ignorance and superstition and petty minds. People who would envy and hate a boy like you.”