Chain of Fools

by Chain of Fools (lit)

  “Craig’s motivation would be getting even with his father by bol­stering the position of the liberal Osbornes who controlled the paper. Stu said I shouldn’t mention his involvement to Craig because Craig knew Stu and Chester were friends, and that would make Craig suspi­cious.”

  I said, “Torkildson actually proposed a jewel robbery?”

  Dan laughed sourly and said, “Hell, no. Do you think Stu Torkild­son of the Glens Falls Torkildsons is a common criminal? What Stu had in mind was a multimillion-dollar drug deal. He said I had friends in Cuba, and he knew from reading The Wall Street Journal that Cuban officials deal coke big-time. This was Stu’s idea of keeping the deal re­spectable.”

  “So you and Craig would be risking your necks, and Stu would— what?” I asked.

  “Stu would do nothing and risk nothing. He told me straight out that if the deal were ever exposed, he would deny any knowledge of it. He

  only wanted to save the Hera Id for the Osbornes, and he had to save himself for that noble pursuit.”

  “Right,” I said. “The way he saved the Herald with the Spruce Val­ley project.”

  Arlene blurted out, “And you listened to that flaming asshole, Dan? I can’t believe this shit! I just can’t believe it!”

  “Well, goddamn it, Arlene, how else was I supposed to save the Her­ald? You tell me!”

  She shook her head and muttered something inaudible.

  I said, “Whose idea was the jewel heist? Craig’s?”

  “He had this buddy,” Dan said, “who’d worked for the hotel and who swore it would be easy to hold the place up in the middle of the night. Nobody would get hurt,” Dan said, his pale eyes suddenly full of anguish. “And one job, if they hit the right night, could net over a million in cash and jewels, which I would then fence with my Cuban contacts. Nobody ever guessed that the one robbery alone would pro­duce a haul worth an amount more than equal to the Herald’s entire debt. And nobody guessed either that the hotel security man would turn up in the middle of the robbery. According to Craig’s buddy, the guard was supposed to be in some other part of the hotel at that hour.”

  “Did Stu know about the robbery in advance?” I asked.

  Dan shrugged. “Only after the fact. He still thought it was going to be a big drug deal, with the laundered cash arriving at the Herald by way of a so-called ‘loan’ from a bank in the Caymans. When he heard that Craig had been arrested for robbery and murder, he wasn’t too wild about the news. It was obvious that Stu’s going out on a legal limb to save the Herald was really to recoup his own battered reputation after the Spruce Valley debacle. A ‘world-class’ drug deal—that’s what Stu said he had in mind—was one thing, but armed robbery was some­thing else, and Stu was on the edge of freaking out when he heard about it.”

  I said, “And Chester knew none of this?”

  “Not in the beginning,” Dan said, looking away again.

  “But he figured it out,” I said. “Craig described that part to me.”

  Dan nodded grimly. “Fucking greedy, hothead Chester. We knew all along—I knew, Stu knew—not to get Chester involved.”

  “And Chester never tumbled to the fact that his good pal Stu was the man who had initiated the entire scheme?”

  “No,” Dan said, “Chester found out Craig and I had been spending time together before the robbery. And then when the stolen jewels failed to turn up, Chester was suspicious and went out and confronted Craig at Attica. Chester is such a total asshole. First of all, he threat­ened to blow open the whole deal if we didn’t give him the jewels so that he and June could gain control of the paper. Craig just blew him off.

  “Then in May, Chester gets it in his insane head that Eric and I are about to use the diamond money to squeeze him and June out of the paper, and he goes out and confronts Craig a second time. But by then I’d lost the jewels and I was frantically trying to find them up here in the woods, and I was too embarrassed to tell Craig where the jewels went. So when Chester goes out to Attica and says, ‘Where are the jew­els?’ Craig, who’s plenty pissed by now, he tells Chester, ‘Ask Dan where they are.’”

  Arlene said, “Jesus, Dan, what a bunch of fuckheads. Your family sounds like a bunch of people on a daytime TV talk show.”

  “Every family is a family from a daytime TV talk show!” Dan snapped. “Most families just don’t happen to go on television and make fools of themselves in public.”

  I said, “In the nineties, we’re a long way from Tolstoy in these mat­ters, I guess, but let’s get back to your interesting narrative, Dan. So Chester then came to you and asked where the jewels were?”

  Dan shook his head in disgust. “I told Chester he was nuts and to fuck off, which he did. But what does Chester do next? He goes to Eric. Eric! Eric came to me, and he says, what’s this about Craig and me and the jewel robbery? I said, God, Eric, don’t be ridiculous, it’s just Craig playing head games with Chester. Eric, who was so straight, so naive— Eric just says, oh, okay. And he went back and told Chester that Craig had made up the entire story, none of us had any jewels, and to for­get about it.”

  “It is Craig’s belief,” I said, “that at that point Chester became so frus­trated and angry that he flew into one of his violent rages and killed Eric.”

  Arlene let loose with another shriek. Dan looked at her and then at me and said quietly, “No. That’s not the way it happened.”

  I said, “Torkildson?”

  Dan nodded and Arlene shrieked again.

  I said, “How? Why?” v

  Dan took a deep breath. “By early May,” he said, “I was fairly cer­tain I’d never find the jewels out here. I’d spent weeks combing these woods without coming up with a single jewel, and meanwhile the ground cover was getting thicker and thicker.”

  “You bastard!” Arlene said. “That’s the whole month I thought you were out fucking Patsy Livingston again. And here you were up here in the woods looking for diamonds. Dan, you asshole!”

  “But the thing was,” Dan said, “by that time the paper was up for sale and it already looked as if the board’s choice would be either Griscomb or InfoCom. I had finally admitted to Stu that I’d stashed the jewels with Dad’s ashes and Eric had unknowingly scattered the con­tents of the urn up here in the woods. So Stu was getting agitated and he was saying that if we couldn’t save the Herald for the family—and restore his shattered reputation—then the paper would have to be sold to InfoCom so at least the family could come away with several mil­lion. I knew we had the board votes to approve a sale to Griscomb, but Stu started threatening legal action against any board member who blatantly voted against the company’s best interests—he said Chester and June would both sue and he would join them—and that’s when I panicked and made what turned out to be a terrible, terrible, terrible mistake.”

  Arlene sat looking frightened but said nothing. No one spoke until Dan took another deep breath, let out a long sigh, and went on.

  “I decided to blackmail Stu,” Dan said. “I told him that I had lied about Eric throwing the jewels away accidentally. I told him Eric had found the jewels and confronted me, and that I had confessed every­thing. I said Eric was threatening to go to the police and expose us all, Stu included, but that Eric had agreed to return the jewels to their own­ers anonymously if Stu threw his support to Griscomb and stopped Chester and June from suing us.”

  Dan paused and looked off into the woods thoughtfully. I said, “How did Torkildson react?”

  “He followed Eric into the woods on the day of Eric’s weekly trip to the beaver pond that Eric was writing about in his column and blud­geoned Eric to death. He described the whole thing to me the next day. Stu said he didn’t plan to kill anyone else if he could help it, but that after the Spruce Haven bust he was already too embarrassed to

  show up at the country club on Friday nights, and he would not risk being exposed additionally as an accomplice in a jewel robbery.”

  Arlene and I sat looking at Dan, who lean
ed comfortably against his tree but whose eyes were full of terror. Arlene did not exclaim this time, she just sniffled quietly.

  I said, “Is there any way it can be proven that Torkildson killed Eric?”

  “Sure, I’ve got the proof,” Dan said. “Stu told me he killed Eric with a camera tripod he borrowed from the Herald’s picture department. I found the tripod that night and took it home. Stu had washed it off, but there were still traces of blood on it and presumably Stu’s finger­prints and other DNA traces.”

  “Why didn’t you turn Torkildson in?” I said. “Dan, the man murdered your brother.”

  “Well,” Dan said, “for one thing, I just wanted to save the paper. I figured Stu would help me do that, considering what I knew. It turned out I was wrong about that. Torkildson is a psychopath. And of course the other thing was, it was my fault. I triggered Stu into killing Eric. I was just as guilty as Stu was.”

  With that, Dan stood up, walked over, and lifted the tent flap. He went inside, and a thought hit me hard and I stood up abruptly.

  I spoke rapidly to Arlene. “He doesn’t have a gun or anything in there, does he?”

  “No,” she said, “Dan’s just getting his stash. Sounds like a good idea, huh? Don, I’ll bet right about now you could go for a smoke too.”

  25

  Late Saturday afternoon, Bill Stankie arrested Stu Torkildson for murder. A magistrate ordered Torkildson held in the Eden County Jail pending forensic tests on the camera tripod Dan had pro­duced. When he was picked up, Torkildson lost his customary cool. Vehemently denying guilt, he railed against the police and the Osbornes He kept yelling, “After everything I’ve done for them!” But Stankie said a preliminary lab examination of the tripod supported Dan’s story. Plus, it turned out, Torkildson had no alibi for the time of the murder.

  Chester had no alibi either, but now he didn’t need one. Chester told Stankie that on the morning of Eric’s death he had been out ex­amining some woods and pastureland he had been looking at on be­half of the Wal-Mart company, and that’s how he’d gotten muddy. He said Pauline’s accusation of murder was a result of her mental insta­bility (Craig’s malicious phone call to Pauline never came up), and that instability was the subject of an upcoming court hearing.

  Chester did admit that he had brought Tacker Puderbaugh back from Tahiti to “play some pranks” on the pro-Griscomb Osbornes. But Tacker and a friend of his from Lake George had “gone too far,” Chester said, when they committed arson and then demanded that Chester pay them $150,000 in hush money so that they could open a surfboard rental business on Okinawa.

  Both Tacker and his friend were picked up at the friend’s house and charged with arson and attempted murder. Janet identified Tacker’s friend as the man who attacked her—and later attacked her, Dale, Timmy, and me—on a Jet Ski. At first, Timmy wanted to charge the Jet

  Ski maniac with assault too for breaking his foot, but after thinking it over decided to let it go.

  For the moment, Chester escaped being slapped behind bars—the DA was considering what charges to bring against him—and Chester’s dodging a murder rap was the one disappointment suffered by full-dentured Bill Stankie. Stankie did get to see Torkildson and Tacker oc­cupy adjoining cells (having admitted complicity in the jewel robbery, Dan was released on bond), and Stankie took satisfaction in Tacker’s determination to incriminate Chester to the utmost extent. Stankie and the DA were also interested—as was I—in Tacker’s assertion that “Mummy”—i.e., June—knew all about Tacker’s campaign of terrorism against the pro-Griscomb Osbornes.

  When she was informed of all these developments Saturday night, Ruth Osborne seemed unsurprised to learn that Dan, Chester, Tacker, and possibly even June had been involved in criminal activities that grew out of the battle for the soul of the Herald. “The Osbornes have always tended toward ruthlessness in support of their causes,” she said. But the news of Stu Torkildson’s arrest for Eric’s murder was even more deeply shocking. Mrs. Osborne began to tremble when Janet told her, and she went up to her room soon after.

  “The family always relied on Stu,” Janet told Timmy, Dale, and me on the Osborne back porch later that night. “Stu was the man Dad de­pended on to keep us all both solvent and honest. So to Mom what itu did must feel like the ultimate betrayal.”

  “Was the ultimate betrayal,” Dale said, and we all agreed solemnly with that.

  Both Janet and Dale were exhausted from working to salvage be­longings from the half of the lake house that remained standing after the fire that Tacker set, and from the shocks of the previous thirty-six hours. They weren’t too tired, however, to speculate on the upcoming family board of directors’ vote.

  “The outcome,” Janet said, “is going to depend on which board members are behind bars on September eighth, and which ones will be available to vote. If Dan is still out on bail, that should seal it for Griscomb. If Chester is unable to vote and Tidy comes on to the board, that won’t change anything one way or another.”

  “And certainly your mother should survive the mental competency hearing on Monday,” Timmy said. “She’s understandably devastated by

  all this rotten stuff coming out about the family and the fight over the paper. But at this point, anyway, I don’t think anybody can deny that her faculties are intact.”

  “It’s also to Ruth’s credit,” Dale said, “that she hasn’t been arrested.”

  Janet tried to smile but couldn’t. “That does seem to be a rarity among Osbornes these days.” Janet had spent two hours earlier in the evening giving interviews to reporters from The New York Times and the Boston Globe, who were preparing big stories on the dissolution of one of the great families of American journalism.

  “Have either of you ever been arrested?” Dale asked Timmy and me. It seemed an odd question to ask, but Dale’s tight look and bright eyes suggested she had something in mind.

  I said, “I’ve been manhandled a few times in the line of duty by the Albany criminal justice establishment, Dale, and I wear every scar from those encounters as a badge of—not honor, I guess. Bemusement would be more like it, mixed with disgust.”

  “And what about you, Timmy?” Dale said. “Have you ever been ar­rested?”

  His fiberglass-encased foot bobbed once, his face went white, and sweat popped out on his forehead. Timmy stared at Dale and said, “No. I’ve never been arrested.”

  “But I have,” she said with a look of triumphant contempt. “Haven’t I, Timmy?”

  He said, “Oh, hell. You were in that ACT-UP group Oh, hell.”

  “Yes, I was in that ACT-UP group, oh, hell. In April 1987. I see it all is starting to ring a bell now somewhere deep inside your big, adorable head. Bong, bong, bong.”

  “Jeez. I felt bad about that. It was after the Health and Human Re­sources Committee vote on AIDS home-care funding, right?”

  “Right you are, Tim.”

  “And your group thought Assemblyman Lipschutz shouldn’t have compromised so much with the Republicans on the budget. You all came over to the office and wouldn’t leave—there were forty or fifty of you, as I recall—and you demanded to see Myron.”

  “Asked nicely to talk to him,” Dale said. “Forcefully but nicely.”

  “No, you demanded to talk to him. Except, as I remember it, he was off in a meeting somewhere with the Speaker.”

  “That’s what you told us at the time. That was all bullshit, of course.”

  “And you refused to leave the office. Your whole group sat down on the floor, and you said you weren’t leaving until Myron heard what you had to say. You were the spokesperson for the group. That’s when I left. I went over to the Speaker’s office to see if I could pry Myron out of the meeting.”

  “Uh-huh. So you said.”

  “And while I was over there, the Capitol Police got word that you were sitting in Myron’s office—”

  “You called them, Timothy! Admit it! You told us we could meet with Assemblyman Lipshutz, and then
you went out and called the cops, and we all got arrested. We spent the night in the lockup while you were probably down at the bar at Le Briquet having a good laugh over how you put one over on the dyke and faggot riffraff.”

  “Dale,” Timmy said, “you are wrong, wrong, wrong—as you are every once in a great while You are as sharp as they come, Dale, but you don’t know me. Or Myron Lipshutz. It was Assemblyman Metcalfe, across the corridor, who called the cops on you, and both Myron and I were furious when we came back to the office fifteen minutes later and found out what had happened. It was Myron who got you all a lawyer from Lambda Legal Defense, and it was Myron who, a week later, got another twelve million transferred to AIDS home care from the health administration budget. So if that incident is the cause of your attitude toward me, an adjustment is in order. An apology, I’m sure, is much too much to hope for.”

  Janet and I each had a swig of beer and watched as Dale carefully considered this. Finally, she said, “How come we never heard this ver­sion of events at the time?”

  “Because,” Timmy said, relaxed and enjoying himself now, “Myron knew he’d never get the extra twelve million if it looked like he was in bed with extortionists. He wanted results, not a lot of—‘diarrhea’ was Saul Alinsky’s term for righteous public explosions that make the demon­strators feel better but achieve nothing lasting. And Myron got results “

  Dale sniffed. “The twelve million was a drop in the bucket, speak­ing of diarrhea. Anyway, without ACT-UP there to remind the legisla­ture of the huge, crying need, the appropriation would have been half what it was.”

  “That is correct,” Timmy said. “ACT-UP and other better-behaved

  groups—each group in its own way—got their points across. They made a big difference.”

  Dale seemed to relax a bit. She gulped some beer down, then said to Timmy, “Okay, Timothy, my man. You passed the test. You’re it.”

  “Gee whiz, thanks.”

  ” ‘Gee whiz.’ There’s another one of those old-timey exclamations you like to use that we hardly ever hear anymore. Sort of like ‘golly gee.’ Or ‘gee willikers.’ I don’t suppose, though, that there would be a genetic predisposition to those funny expressions in any of your progeny. So, Timothy, you’re it.”