What Immortal Hand

by Johnny Worthen

  “It’s okay, Carla.”

  “So what was wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t know. They wanted me to stay until they found out.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I have things to do.”

  “What do you have to do? You’re unemployed. I have to tell you, Michael, that I’m not surprised you lost your job. You lost a step. I hear it in your voice. I’ve seen this coming for years. You’re distracted. Are you going through a midlife crisis?”

  “Maybe,” he says.

  “You need to find a girl who understands you.”

  “Like you do?”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” she says. “So when were you released?”

  “I left the hospital Thursday.”

  “Four days? And you didn’t call me?”

  “My phone was dead.”

  “Michael—”

  “I’m in Connecticut,” he says. “That’s the noise you hear in the background. I’m in New Haven now. At Tweed Airport. It’s nice.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “A job offer.”

  “Good,” she says. “Take it. Whatever it is. Take it. Don’t act too desperate. Be confident, play hard to get, but take it. You need a job.”

  “You mean you want me to have a job so I can take Tiffany.”

  “You can’t ignore your paternal responsibilities,” she says. “You need a job. It gives purpose and meaning. Besides a change of scenery is just what you want.”

  “What’s Tiffany done now?”

  “I’d like to know. She hasn’t been home in two nights.”

  “Is she missing?”

  “No. She texted me.”

  “What did the text say?”

  “She said she was with friends.”

  “Do you doubt it?”

  “She needs to come home. She’s sixteen. She’s uncontrollable.”

  “School’s out isn’t it? What’s the harm?”

  “For God’s sake, Michael? Tell me you’re not that dense.”

  “Do you know where she is? Physically? Do you know which friends she’s with?”

  “Yes. I figured it out. She’s with Tami. I talked to her mother before I called you.”

  “What did Tami’s mother say?”

  “They’re hippies. I didn’t have a very good conversation with her at all. She said that the girls were just “hanging out.” If that isn’t a euphemism for getting high I don’t know what is.”

  “Carla…”

  “I’m not kidding. Tami’s parents have police records. They smoke pot. Everyone knows it.”

  “To me, it sounds like Tiffany’s trying to get away from you.”

  “Of course she is.” Carla shouts into the phone. “She is not minding me. She’s avoiding me because I won’t let her behave this way. I have standards.”

  “I’m in Connecticut,” Michael says. “I can’t help you.”

  “You’re worthless, Michael Oswald.”

  “My ride’s here. Thanks for the chat.” He ends the call and puts it on silent. Tagget’s gift of telephone service is not all good.

  The car isn’t for him but it is a good excuse to get away from Carla. He can’t help her. She used to go on about how girls mature faster than boys. Tiffany’s independent streak should not be surprising. Carla is smothering and Tiffany is growing up. It’ll settle out. Or it won’t.

  He looks up the approach for the promised car but sees nothing encouraging. It’s a sunny summer day and the airport is lax and calm. It’s littered with well-dressed but casual folks carrying tennis rackets and golf bags waiting for cabs. The airport is tiny compared to Salt Lake International. Compared to JFK where he landed earlier that morning, Tweed in New Haven is barely better than a crash site.

  He’d called Oliver Tagget back Sunday morning. His call had been answered by the man himself. Michael had expected to go through a secretary.

  “Mr. Tagget, this is Michael Oswald. You called me yesterday.”

  “Mr. Oswald,” he said. “Thank you for calling back. I need your help.”

  “I think you have the wrong man, Mr. Tagget. I don’t know who you think I am, but I doubt I can do anything to help you.”

  “No, you’re the right man,” he said. “I have a real problem. An important problem. An impossible problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’d like to show you.”

  “Mr. Tagget, I appreciate you paying for my phone, that was very kind—”

  “I didn’t know how else to get ahold of you.”

  “You’re going to have to tell me more here.”

  “Come to Connecticut.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can show you.”

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to,” Michael said. “I lost my job.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know that? How do you know me? What makes you think I can help you?”

  “I’ll tell you everything if you come see me. It’s personal. Please, Mr. Oswald. Please.”

  “I’m in the middle of something.”

  “I’ll give you two thousand dollars just to come plus all expenses. I won’t have peace in my house until this is done.”

  Michael stirred another sugar into his coffee.

  “Mr. Tagget, you have the wrong man.”

  “I’ve got the right man.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Crystal Springs.”

  Those two words hooked him and his long pause telegraphed his intention to comply. He was unable to elicit another detail from Tagget except promises, thanks, and a flight number leaving that night for the east coast.

  He’d left his car in long term parking and picked up his waiting ticket at the counter for a red-eye to JFK and a puddle jumper to Connecticut. He has little luggage.

  The morning is cool. He can smell the ocean. He’d seen it from the plane. He is right on the edge of the country. From the front of the terminal he can see neighborhoods of small white houses and residential lanes. Nothing gaudy or big. They’re old and cozy, close to the noise of an airport so not pricey.

  A limousine finally appears and pulls to the curb in front of him. A capped and uniformed chauffeur steps out of it. “Are you Mr. Oswald?” he asks, his north-east accent catching in the vowels.

  “Yeah,” says Michael. “Don’t worry about bags. I have just this one.”

  The driver opens the door for Michael and he climbs in.

  He expects to see Oliver Tagget waiting for him in the car, cloak and dagger and tinted windows, but there is no one.

  There are two rows of seats, one facing front, the other back. Between them is a bar and a television with a console of buttons. It’s a limousine, but a modest one—no neon running light or rhinestones ceilings. A hired car with alterations. Michael pushes the button that lowers the smoked glass between his seats and the driver’s.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Mr. Tagget is at the coast. He’s expecting you for brunch. It won’t take long to get there. Less than an hour depending on traffic.”

  “New Haven gets traffic?”

  “Everywhere gets traffic. We’ll run into some. It’s not only in Fall that New England is swamped by tourists. Just sit back and relax. Open the sunroof if you want.”

  Michael closes the window and watches the residential areas disappear into commercial, industrial, and then rural settings in short order. He leans back and closes his eyes hoping to take another nap.

  He needs to watch his rest. He was tired at the library and that’s what messed with his brain. He was tired and wired and hungry. He’s been playing hell with his blood sugar levels. He’s probably diabetic now for all the sugar he’s poured into his body. He has to watch that. He has to rest. He has to keep his wits about him. He can’t go insane now. Not now.

  They slow to pass an accident in the right lane. A sedan rear-ended a bus and wedged itself underneath it. Ang
ry bus passengers mill around waiting for a tow-truck to pull the dead-filled wreckage away. Without meaning to, Michael studies the scene, squints his eyes, searching recesses and shadows for three-eyed demons and roiling blue-black halos.

  Past the accident, the car speeds away and Michael lets his mind go blank, sits quietly and does nothing.

  “Mr. Oswald. We’re here.”

  Michael blinks and orients himself by the smell of summer blossoms and salt. He’s had a little break of time again and the realization of it makes his hands shake.

  Outside his window there are manicured lawns, distant white fences, and from out the other window, a three-story colonial-faced mansion, regal and foreign to his suburban sensibilities.

  He exits the limo, the chauffeur holding the door for him, and he feels like a pretender. He is out of his class. Literally. This spread is not the product of recent wealth. No nouveau riche-ness here. This is old money, blue blood, the kind of thing never seen by his class because the wealthy don’t want them to see it.

  The driveway is crushed white marble gravel. It crunches beneath his shoes. A man in a casual suit better than the formal one he’d worn at his wedding welcomes him without a handshake.

  “Mr. Oswald,” he says. “Mr. Tagget will be with you presently. He asked that you wait for him.”

  The limousine pulls away, not down the road toward civilization, but around the house, he assumes, for storage.

  “Well,” says Michael. “My ride just left. I guess I can wait.”

  The man looks Michael up and down, taking in his scuffed shoes, wrinkled clothes, and tired eyes before turning sharply and dismissively toward the house. “Won’t you come in?” he says.

  Michael instantly dislikes him.

  “Hey, Jeeves,” he says. “Where is Tagget anyway? This is his shindig.”

  “Mister Tagget,” he says emphasizing the honorarium, “will attend you directly.”

  Their shoes echo loudly off the marble floor and then again, more quietly, off the hard wood in the hall as Tagget’s man leads Michael to a library in the corner of the ground floor. He opens the double doors with a flourish and steps aside for Michael to enter and gawk.

  Michael walks past him like he’s a greeter at Walmart.

  “You got any soda?” he asks. “Something sugary?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The man pulls the doors shut and his footfalls recede into the house.

  The room smells of wood polish, old leather, and brittle paper, but not dust. Sturdy, aged-wood bookshelves reach from the floor to the ceiling twenty feet above him. There’s a balcony high in one corner accessed via a wrought-iron spiral staircase from this floor, or from a carved oak door on the upper. There are three podiums with large tomes upon each; a dictionary, a Bible, and something in Italian. The desk has a blotter and pens carefully arranged in a museum-worthy tableau. The many books are mostly antiques, probably worth more than the house. They’re stale and lifeless. Cared for, but unloved. They’re investments, appreciating assets like the Monet he passed in the hallway. There isn’t a paperback in the place. Not a magazine, computer or ballpoint pen. The carpet deadens sound and is so thick it’s like walking on moss. He feels each footstep sink and settle.

  He crosses to the back window behind the desk and sees acres of mowed fields, a stable, several identical outbuilding large enough to hold a fleet of limousines. Far off toward the south-east there is forest and then nothing but he knows the sea lies beyond, waves and boats. Sailors, merchants, and…

  From the bay window, he can see a white gravel road disappearing into the trees where he assumes there’s a boathouse, yacht, and guard post. He opens the window and smells the ocean.

  He thinks of a Polanski movie, the one with Johnny Depp about a book written by the devil. This could have been a set from there, except it’s too neat and on the wrong continent.

  The doors open. The man from before carries in a tray with a crystal tumbler, crystal ice bucket and three flavors of soft drinks in sweating cans. He places the tray on a table beside a high-backed chair near the window. After placing the tray, he glances at Michael and leaves without saying a word.

  The chair is old but comfortable, full of stuffing and springs. The ice is clear as glass. The glass is cut crystal and heavy as a handgun. He drinks his three cans of soda and is thinking about a restroom when footsteps tap in the hall. They are heavy and loud, not the soft servile footfalls of the man who let him in. Without a shuffle in the step or a hesitation in the stride, the doors burst open and Oliver Tagget is in the doorway.

  “Hello Mr. Oswald,” he says. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  He’s lying. The forty minutes he’s sat there has been no accident. Tagget is posturing. Michael sees it as clearly as a bed-time tantrum. After the needy and desperate phone call that brought him here, Tagget needs to show Michael who is in charge. The limo, the house, the book museum, and definitely the waiting here and at the airport, were all to show Tagget’s importance and wealth in an effort to re-establish his dominance over a lowly unemployed investigator from the western fly-over states.

  “Thank you for coming,” Tagget says closing the doors. “I suppose you want to see the money?”

  Michael sees this as another intentional slight, peanuts to a monkey, a declaration of the great man’s understanding of the lower-class psyche.

  “You carry money?” asks Michael.

  “No, not usually” he says. “But I had a check drawn up.”

  “I’d prefer cash,” he says. “Cash would be better.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  If he is offended at Michael not rising from the stuffed chair, he doesn’t show it. He opens the door and speaks through the crack. Muffled footsteps retreat into the house.

  “It’ll be just a moment,” he says. The facade is melting on the old man. He’s nervous and anxious, eager to get going.

  “Sit down Mr. Tagget,” Michael says. He points to another chair inviting him to sit as if this were his library, his home. “I’d like to hear why I came.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I am a powerful man, Mr. Oswald,” Tagget begins. “I am not used to asking favors.”

  “You’re going to ask me a favor?”

  “I already have,” he says. “I asked you to come.”

  “You offered me money,” Michael says.

  “Is that why you came?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you?’

  “Because you knew I was involved in that thing in Nevada. That means you’re plugged in. That means you know more about what happened than most people ever will. I’d like to know more about it myself.”

  He nods.

  “Oh, and the money. That too,” says Michael. “I don’t have enough. You seem to have too much.”

  That makes Tagget smile.

  “It’s not my connections that unearthed your involvement in Crystal Springs, Mr. Oswald. It was my wife’s. I find the whole business disgusting. And as for what little good you might do here, the best I can hope is that you will bring some temporary peace to my house by satisfying her demands to talk to you.”

  “Your confidence in me is reassuring.”

  “Don’t be insulted Mr. Oswald.”

  “Don’t insult me,” says Michael.

  “Have I insulted you?

  “Have you left me waiting half a day?”

  Tagget shifts in his chair but keeps his eyes on Michael.

  Michael absorbs his stare like heat and sucks on an ice cube.

  Tagget’s posture shifts, changes, as if some unseen transmission is thrown into another gear. “I just can’t imagine how you can bring anything new to the problem,” Tagget says, posturing over. For now. “You found a graveyard. Well that’s nice. A stroke of luck from what I hear. Random chance. Desperate intuition while chasing a bounty on a missing truck.”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “Maybe it’s your suit.”


  “And the hat-trick,” Michael says getting up. “Bring me to your wife and get me my money.”

  Tagget looks at him coolly from his chair.

  Michael stares back. He’s supposed to quiver beneath the piercing gaze of the old plutocrat, but all he sees is a fragile old man. He’s in fantastic shape for someone his age, probably plays tennis daily and swims for hours with a personal trainer, but he’s still breakable. He’s like an exquisite ceramic vase teetering on the edge of a table, resisting a breeze that will eventually, inevitably, push him to ruin. He likes the image of the ceramic vase. Clay. A “clay-man.”

  Tagget coughs. A shadow passes over his face coinciding with Michael’s memory of that curious phrase. Tagget stands up and goes to the door.

  “I’ll see if she’s ready to receive you,” he says not looking at Michael. He flees the room, careful to close the doors behind him.

  Michael doesn’t wait long this time. He hears the muffled footsteps of the servant’s approach before he can get another ice cube to chew on. The door opens and the man is standing there with an envelope. “Follow me,” he says.

  Michael holds out his hand and with a contemptuous smirk, the man gives him his money.

  Michael puts the packet in his coat pocket and follows him back the way they came. By the door, they turn right and ascend a wide curving staircase. They exit to a landing on the second floor but the stairs continue up.

  They travel through a maze of windowless halls to a back room, far from the steps and the front of the house. The sound of exotic music grows louder as they approach a single door. The man knocks.

  “Come in.” It’s a woman’s voice.

  The man opens the door and but stays in the hallway. He doesn’t even glance inside. He averts his eyes deliberately.

  Michael goes in.

  The man closes the door behind him.

  Coming from the antiques of the library, the room shocks him. It is a mess of papers. The walls are festooned with printed reports, handwritten notes and maps. Green, yellow and red yarn connect pages to others with bright plastic push pins in a web of string making the whole room like a spider’s lair. There’re two white boards on wheels and filing cabinet in the middle of the room. A large desk sits in front of the window, upon it rests a large computer, a color laser printer, several half-buried coffee mugs, statues and books and, of course, more paper.