I called Cass at Our Bank and asked him to ask Joey for one more favor.
"Sure thing, buddy,'' he said. "It's no fun around here without you.''
"We are willing to make the deal," Winston Meeks told me.
"Okay," I said. "A lawyer will call you this afternoon at four. He will lay down the terms for any meeting I agree to take. When he calls me and tells me that it's okay, I'll come over."
"You don't need a lawyer just to talk to us, Mr. Dibbuk."
"Oh yes I do. And you know it too."
It took three days to work out the agreement. Meeks had to promise to leave the NYPD out of it and also to allow a "crew" (Cass's word, not mine) to come with me to the Plaza suite.
In that time I got my life together as much as I could.
I went to Augie's coffee shop at four fifteen on Friday afternoon. Mona was there. Her visits to that coffee shop were like my tight regimen of going to work. If I had wanted to kill her, I could have done it then. I thought about it but there was no reason really. Svetlana had taught me something about love—enough to know that I had never really experienced it as an adult. I couldn't blame Mona for that. I asked her if she knew about the article they published on me.
"Yes," she said, once again holding her phantom cigarette.
"Did you write it?"
She seemed like a computer program in a loop then. Her face and hands were stock-still; her eyes didn't even blink.
"Yes," she said, looking down. "What of it?"
"Are you back with Harvard Yard?"
"His name is Rollins."
"I know what the fuck his name is. I even know that you lick the end of his cock and tell him how much you like the taste."
Mona made to rise but I took hold of her forearm.
"Let me go."
"This is the last time we're ever going to speak, Mona. Let me get a little angry, huh?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm going to see the D.A. from Denver tomorrow. He'll try to figure out if I should be extradited and put on trial. So either I'll be in jail or otherwise gone."
"What about Seela?"
"Why didn't you tell Seela's father that there was a woman who was blaming him for a murder that he doesn't know anything about?"
Mona's face shifted then. It dawned on me that she had had a strange look on her face ever since she'd heard Star's story.
"You think I did it?" I said.
"You didn't?"
"I have no idea. I didn't remember her. I certainly don't remember killing anyone."
An unspoken, maybe even unconscious, apology crossed her face. She brought her fingers to her lips, the invisible cigarette forgotten.
"How could we be together for so many years and have this little trust?" I asked her.
"Harv said that there had to be something to it. Barbara knew too much about you."
It's funny how words are so delicate and still powerful. I could see Star at that moment lying across a couch or a bed. She was naked, big boned but young and also handsome. I did know her back then.
"But that doesn't mean I killed anybody."
"But . . ." Mona said. Here we were having our last verbal joust and she had just lost.
I smiled, relishing the empty victory.
"Could it be that you betrayed me because you love him, Mona?" I asked. "That all those years we spent building this life were nothing?"
"You never loved me, Benny," she said.
"No. But we made Seela, we made a home for her."
"I was sure that you were a murderer," she said. "I was frightened."
"Because if you told me, you thought I might have to kill you?" I asked. "Because you never knew me and you were &aid of your own mistakes?"
"I just didn't feel safe," she said. "That's all."
I was intent on allowing Mona to have the last word. It seemed right, especially since I had won our last argument.
I stood up from the stool. She touched my forearm.
"Where are you going?"
"That's not really up to me, honey."
"You smell like cigarettes," she said, and I turned away.
We'd probably see each other again. In lawyers' offices, in courts, at our daughter's graduation if I was free, but the relationship ended there. I could feel it.
Svetlana made a home for me in her apartment. She cooked every night and bought me new clothes. When I tried to tell her that I might go away to prison, she wouldn't listen.
"You and I are in love," she'd say. "God wouldn't take something like that away."
"Do you believe in God?" I asked.
"He believes in me," she said with unqualified conviction.
We set the meeting with Winston Meeks for that Saturday. I overslept but that was my only symptom of fear. I met Cass's "crew" at a coffee shop around the corner. Cass was wearing black slacks and a black turtleneck, like I was used to seeing him in.
The security expert was accompanied by Leonard Gideon, a bald white man with enough hair on his lip to make up for what was missing up top. He was bursting with energy that teetered on the verge of rage. Gideon was my lawyer. He shook my hand and asked a few questions, then he smiled under that bale of mustache, saying, "We're gonna kick their asses, Arna, all the way from here back to the Rocky Mountains."
Accompanying Cass and the lawyer was Charles Milford. Milford worked for the federal government in some capacity that was not clear to me. But Cass assured me that no city or state entity could arrest me if Milford objected.
* * *
Meeks's suite was on the ninth floor. It should have been called an apartment it was so big. There were seven people waiting for us: the stenographer, two Colorado marshals, two female assistants from Meeks's office, and the lie detector expert. The machine itself was set up on a table next to a plain pine chair. For some reason the setup brought to mind the electric chair. That made real the worry that I could be executed for the crime Star Knowland said I committed.
Gideon started the conversation. He presented Meeks with a stack of papers to sign. Whenever the Western D.A. balked, Gideon threatened to leave with his client, me.
After the preliminaries were done, Meeks and I sat across from each other surrounded by our seconds.
"Did you kill Sean Messier?"
"No," I said, thinking, not to my knowledge.
"Did you know him?"
"No." Again with the sentence finished in my mind.
"Did you hit him with a heavy metal object?"
"I just told you that I didn't know him," I said. "How could I have hit him if I didn't know him?"
I could make out Gideon's smile through the thatch of his mustache.
"Do you mind taking a lie detector test?"
"No. But I want to know something first."
"What's that?"
"That machine scares me. This whole thing is very anxiety provoking. How can you tell the difference between me being scared and me lying?"
The lie detector expert, who had been introduced to me as Roger, spoke up then. He was a short guy with bright eyes and facial hair that failed to become either a proper beard or mustache.
"We screen your emotions with test questions distributed throughout the interrogation," Roger told me. "In other words, we factor in your fear quotient."
"How accurate is it?"
"If you're a sociopath or a deranged psychotic, it won't work, but otherwise it's a hell of a lot better than an eyewitness."
I liked Roger. He was objective. A week before we could have been friends.
I was attached to the machine by my arms and one hand, my jugular, left armpit, and temple. They took my blood pressure beforehand and then attached a thimblelike cap to my left index finger to keep track of my heart.
They started with simple questions about my name, my marital status, my job. They asked me did I love my wife and I said no. They asked did I want to hurt her and I said no. They asked me if I had ever committed a crime and I said, not to my knowledge.
> We went through preparatory questions like these for twenty minutes by the digital clock that sat on a table to my right.
After that the serious questions started.
"Did you kill Sean Messier?"
"No."
"Did you strike him with a crowbar?"
"No."
"Do you know Barbara Knowland?"
"Yes."
"Where did you meet her?"
"I don't know."
"You don't remember?"
"That's right."
"How long ago did you meet her?"
"Probably more than twenty years ago, back in Colorado."
"Have you ever been to Sean Messier's house with her?"
"Not to my knowledge. You see, I only have one fleeting memory of her lying on a sofa. It seems real enough, but that's all I can remember."
When the lie detector test was over, Meeks came back at me. He asked me about Harvard Rollins.
"Why does he have such a hard-on for you in this thing?'' Meeks asked.
"He's having an affair with my wife."
"Did you go to Knowland's hotel room?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"To ask her to explain what was happening. She claims that I killed someone and I have absolutely no knowledge of that."
"What did she tell you?"
I repeated what she said word for word.
When I was through, the room went silent. For long moments we just sat there, eleven men and women communing with some external force.
"Is that all you need, Mr. Meeks?" Leonard Gideon asked at last. "I'd like to know how to keep in touch with your client, Mr. Gideon."
"You have my card."
"He lives with you?"
The lawyer smiled and stood up.
"I could still have Mr. Dibbuk arrested as a material witness," Meeks exclaimed.
"At the Brown Palace maybe," Gideon said. "But the Plaza is in New York state and you couldn't arrest a cockroach here."
I took all my money out of the various accounts I owned and gave most of it to Cass.
"Put it someplace safe," I said to him.
I quit my job and moved permanently into Svetlana's studio. She seemed very happy to have me there. She got a job at a bookstore and told me to take at least six months off.
"You need to rest," Svetlana told me. "Take it easy for a while and then, later on, you can do something else and I will finish my school."
We made love every night, and in the morning I'd sit in my chair trying to remember Star and what we had done, or not, that long ago day.
I was still in therapy too. I paid Dr. Shriver in cash and he gave me a discount.
Six weeks after my deposition Leonard Gideon called me.
"They decided that there wasn't enough of a case to prosecute," he told me. "But if I were you, I wouldn't plan any ski vacations in Aspen anytime soon."
"How much do I owe you, Mr. Gideon?''
"I was happy to help a fiend, Ben," he said.
I knew that I was not the fiend he was helping but I was grateful anyway.
* * *
Svetlana got pregnant and Mona moved in with, then broke up with, Harvard Yard. Since I was without a job, our lawyer told us that I could ask for alimony but I demurred.
Seela hates me now. Dr. Shriver found her a therapist who uncovered all the damage I had done to her. She sees the divorce as me abandoning her—that, and she can't stand the idea of me with a woman as young as Svetlana.
They arrested Barbara Knowland after questioning her sister about the car they junked back in the late seventies. In her attempt to save herself from me, she put herself on trial. It seems that when her sister was deposed, she said things about the murder that were never in the news.
I get together with Cass on Thursday evenings at Joey's Steak House. We never talk about anything important or emotional. I still don't know a thing about sports, and talking about sex is definitely a no-no. But we seem to have a good time anyway.
I had been slipping back into my old ways with Svetlana. The numbness and the distance were always threatening to descend. And then one day I saw a news clip online as I was looking around for a new job.
AUTHOR BARBARA KNOWLAND FOUND GUILTY OF 1979 MURDER AND CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE, SENTENCED TO LIFE PLUS 30 YEARS
At the trial Barbara maintained that I had been the killer. The defense and the prosecution wanted me to testify but I kept telling them that I had no knowledge of the murder, the man, or even of Star herself. Whatever she thought had nothing at all to do with me.
I never went to Colorado or participated with either side of the trial.
That night was Lana's last night of work. I told her that I could cover the rent until she delivered and after that I'd get a job.
I felt secure in the presence of the Russian's ferocious love. I didn't understand it and I couldn't share its intensity most of the time. But its power was like a great beating heart that protected me.
After she'd fallen asleep, I dozed off sitting there next to her.
I had a dream.
I was with Barbara Knowland on a blue couch that stood upon a white shag carpet. We were having quite vigorous sex. I remembered, somewhere outside of the dream, that when I was drunk or high I could really enjoy sex. Barbara was looking up into my eyes, her whole body shuddering every time I slammed into her. She screamed but not in pain or pleasure. And then someone grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to my feet.
It was a big guy wearing a greenish leather jacket and a cowboy hat, the stranger from my medieval dream.
He said something in the dream that wasn't clear but I knew that he wanted me to go outside with him.
The next thing I knew, we were out next to a barn near a woodpile. I was naked, standing in the mud, and he was Illy dressed. The rain was coming down.
"Let me tell you what I'm gonna do, son," the white man said to me in a frighteningly calm voice. I was drunk and nude—as vulnerable as you could get.
"I'm gonna beat you to the ground and then I'm gonna shove your head in with one'a them there logs." He hit me then, hard. I went down and he turned to get the log to kill me with. I jumped to my feet and leaped on his back. He twisted around and hit me twice. I fell again. He turned again. I struggled up and got him in a bear hug from behind. I was begging him not to kill me.
"You should'a thought about that before you broke my window," he said.
"I'll pay for it," I cried.
"You sure will," he promised.
He twisted around, breaking my grip, and hit me three times. I tried to hit him back but he had pugilist training. He made it to the woodpile that time and hefted a log that had to weigh twenty pounds. I ran at him and he threw the log at me. It hit me with a glancing blow to the head. I went down but the fear of death kept me from going unconscious.
There was a length of steel pipe next to me. The cowboy had turned back to the woodpile. And then, for one brief moment in eternity, I became the soul of human perfection. I grabbed the pipe and willed myself to a standing position. I staggered forward as he was hefting an even larger log. As he turned, I swung and the pipe landed perfectly on his right temple. I remembered the feel and the sound of bone crunching. And then I remembered nothing until it was night and I was coming awake in the muddy yard.
I didn't see his body, didn't really remember it. I went to the house and found my clothes. The pipe was still in my hand. I dressed, took the pipe to my car, and drove for hours. Somewhere along the way I threw the pipe down an embankment. A little after that I parked and drank from the last whiskey bottle in my trunk.
By morning all I had to remember the past day was a cut on my scalp along with a few bruises, nothing out of the ordinary. There had been a woman and a fight, but by the time I was back home, those memories might as well have been dreams.
The sleeping vision woke me up. It was just after three in the morning and Svetlana was asleep. I wondered if I should call Winston Meeks. Star was innocent. S
he hadn't killed anyone. But she did steal his money and his car. She had left me to shift for myself in the company of Sean Messier's corpse. And she had tried to build a case against me with the Colorado D.A. and in Diablerie.
I looked down at my young girlfriend and a feeling of love rushed through me. I kissed her temple and she smiled. It occurred to me that the emotion I was feeling went far beyond Svetlana. It had little or nothing to do with Star Knowland's self-demolition or the lucky break I got with the Colorado courts. There was an exhilaration in the dream I had. I was the killer. I had taken Sean Messier's life. It wasn't murder. It was most certainly self-defense, though I could have never proven that. But I didn't need proof.
My whole life I had felt naked and defenseless, under the authority of a force much greater than me. When Messier dragged me out into the yard and explained to me how he was going to end my life, I felt that this had been the place I'd been coming to since I was a child. I gave up, accepted death, and then went through the motions of trying to survive.
The memory of my victory gave me a feeling of elation, but not only that: The emptiness in my heart was suddenly Ned. I was a whole man lying there next to that Russian child. I was a complete person—flawed, guilty, craven to a degree, but still these things and my victory made me whole.
I got up out of bed and sat in my favorite maple chair, naked. I was leaning forward with my elbows on my knees and my fingertips all touching. The dream I had was like a vision for Joan of Arc or some other religious zealot. It was like a deity touching my mind, awakening my imperfect humanity.
The path I'd traveled was strewn with victims: my wife and daughter, Sean Messier, Grant Timmons, and Star Knowland, even my mother, who stood in the shadows while my father beat me with love in his heart. My brother, I felt, was my victim too. I thought back over my many crimes and misdemeanors. But I felt no remorse, only a giddy happiness. I'd been waiting for this moment with no hope of ever achieving it. I hadn't even known that I was my own hero, that I stood up to my death. And though I approached this test begging and whimpering, I still won.
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