“I’m leaving now.” Coming around the desk. “Please don’t try to follow me.”
“Julia, stop. Just stop. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Get out of my way, Mary.”
The journalist reached. “Tell me what’s in the—”
Julia maced her, dead in the face.
CHAPTER 59
FEBRUARY 1973
(I)
“YOU’RE LUCKY she’s not pressing charges,” said Lemaster.
“I had to protect myself!”
Her husband shook his head. He stood in front of the dresser, working with free weights. “We could probably have her arrested for breaking and entering. But the two of you have been palling around. No jury’s going to believe she was assaulting you.” He paused. “I don’t even believe it.”
Julia, nervous and sweaty and furious at herself, pulled the blankets over her head. She had never maced anyone before. She had assumed it worked like in the movies, the bad guy gasping, rubbing his eyes, falling against the wall as you rushed by. But Mary had shrieked, hands flying to her throat, her body convulsing even before she hit the ground, where she curled into a fetal crouch, dry-heaving and wet-heaving alternately until Julia stopped hugging her and apologizing long enough to dial 911. She had spent half the night in the emergency room, waiting for word.
Lemaster worked out in the mornings, before going to the campus. Julia was just now getting to bed.
“What was the big deal anyway?” he asked. “What were you two fighting about?”
“I want to know what happened the night Gina died. What really happened.”
“I was in England, Jules. I wasn’t here.”
Julia jerked the blanket from her head and sat up. “Open my briefcase.”
“Hmmm?”
“My briefcase.”
Good-naturedly, he did, putting down his weights and, wearing his athletic togs, sitting next to her on the bed. He opened the slim leather valise. He found the envelopes. “These?”
“Look inside the envelope marked number three.”
He did, glancing bemusedly over the pages from the letters and pages from the diary. His good humor faded as he reached the last document.
“No,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“This is impossible.”
“No.” She sat up. “Sweetie? I think it’s time to tell me the truth.”
He was holding a photocopy of a round-trip airline ticket. He lifted his gaze then to hers, and the tortured look made her want to hold him and protect him forever, just as soon as she finished never laying eyes on him again.
The ticket was London to Boston, dated February 1973, in Lemaster’s name.
“You came for Bay Dennison’s birthday,” said Julia. “You’ve never missed it.”
(II)
THEY DRESSED WARMLY and walked down the sloping back lawn toward the reservoir, boots crunching agreeably.
“I don’t know all of it,” said Lemaster. “I don’t even know very much of it. Or I didn’t. I know more now.” He glanced at her. She kept her face as neutral as she could. “Yes. Yes. I came back for Bay’s party. I had a day to kill first, so I came down to campus.”
“To see your friends?”
“Actually, no. To check on the books and things I’d left behind in Hilliman Suite. I wanted to make sure nobody had disturbed them. My roommates had a habit of rearranging my things. They thought it was funny. I arrived on the night of the fourteenth, and nobody was home. I checked, and, by a miracle, everything was in place. I said hello to a couple of people around the dorm, but I was exhausted from the flight, so I went to bed, figuring I’d drive up for the party in the morning.” They had reached the fence. Lemaster grabbed hold as if to keep from falling in. His voice strengthened. “Then, about, oh, two, maybe three in the morning, I woke up. Or, rather, one of my roommates woke me. He said he was in big trouble. Something terrible had happened.”
“Which roommate?” she asked, but she was ahead of the story.
“I asked what. He wouldn’t say. He just said he was in trouble and—well, maybe they were all in trouble. He was drunk and crying and scared. Very scared. And, well, I was twenty years old, Jules. I wasn’t sure what to do. I told him to get some sleep and it would all look better in the morning. He went off to bed. As for me, I got up, got dressed, got my things, got my car, got out of there. I drove straight to Boston. So, yes, I guess I abandoned him in his trouble. But, Jules, you know, my roommates were drunk a lot, and they were in trouble a lot, and they always asked me to fix it. They used to call me Big Brother. And I guess, well, I was feeling uncharitable. Here I was, back in the States for only seventy-two hours, and this guy wanted me to spend my first full day fixing some problem? No, thanks. I went to Boston for the party.”
They were on the move again, walking along the fence. Julia was getting cold but was not about to interrupt.
“So that night was the party. At some point, I was alone with Bay Dennison, and I told him what had happened. I think I asked to talk to him. Maybe he just asked me how things were going. I’m not sure. Either way, I told him about my roommate. Bay thought it over, then said I should go back and tell him, if it was really serious, he should come up to Boston and tell Bay the story, and he would see what he could do. And I figured, Great, Bay’s a fixer, this young man is connected, maybe I can help after all. So the next day—this is the sixteenth—I drove back to Elm Harbor, I found my roommate, I told him to go up and talk to Bay. I assured him that Bay could solve his problem. In those days, I thought Byron Dennison could do anything. And maybe he could.”
“Did he go?” said Julia, when her husband paused.
“Yes. He went. I was back in England by then. I didn’t know what the trouble was, and I didn’t know how Bay had fixed it. But my roommate wrote me a letter to say that everything was fine, and he was in my debt. All I had to do was ask, and he would give me whatever I wanted. Now and forever.”
Like dumping Cameron Knowland, Julia thought but did not say. Like firing Astrid. Like shutting down an investigation or throwing Tony Tice in jail.
“When I got back in June, my roommates were unusually solicitous. If I was Big Brother before, I was Lord and Master now. It was strange. It was as though I had saved all of them, but in fact I didn’t save any of them. I just sent one of them to see Bay. Still, they kept doing me favors, even unasked, and kept reminding me that they owed me, that I only had to ask, et cetera, et cetera. Naturally, I didn’t turn them down, even though I was more than a little confused. I didn’t know what they had done, or what Bay had done.”
“The confession,” Julia prompted, but Lemaster wanted to tell it his way.
“I graduated, I got a job, I got another job, I went to div school, I met you, we got married.”
“You left out ‘I fell in love.’”
“That was implied.” They had reached the property line, deep in the winter woods, and were circling back the other way. “Anyway, by that time I was an Empyreal. A minor one. What they call a Legionnaire.”
“They’re not dying, are they?”
“No. Not really. They’re—underground.” He hesitated. He was now speaking not of his personal experience but of things he had promised never to disclose. “It’s a part of their strategy, Jules. An important part. Staying in the shadows.”
“What strategy?”
“To help our community. Jules, look.” Walking faster, making her huff to keep up. “Let’s take a hypothetical frat boy, a rich kid, well connected, at one of the top Ivies. His family plans big things for him. His only problem is, he develops this terrible crush on the seventeen-year-old daughter of one of his professors. And he’s not the kind of kid who’s ever really learned to resist temptation. His family has always been there to get him out of whatever jams he gets himself into. They can buy anybody. So he starts flirting with this—this kid. That’s what she is, a kid. The thing is, she flirts back. And, after a while, the two of th
em start sneaking around together. All right, they never quite go all the way, as we used to say back in those days. But they do a lot, the frat boy and the teenager.
“Then, one night, one of his roommates wants to get in on the fun. He says, ‘Why should you be the only one who gets to mess around with her? We share everything. You should share.’ Maybe they have words. Hypothetically. Or maybe the first frat boy is willing from the start, because—well, because he’s spoiled to the point of utter amorality. So, that night, the two of them go cruising to go see her. It’s Valentine’s Day, but she has an easy way of seeing her boyfriend whenever she wants. She picks a fight with her mother and stalks out of the house. Simple as that. So, that night, sure enough, she and her mother get to screaming at each other, and our hypothetical teenager storms out of the house. Her boyfriend picks her up. Only there’s two boys in the car, not one, and they’ve both been drinking. A lot. Maybe she’s a little uneasy at this point, but she gets in anyway. They drive to the beach. There our first frat boy—her boyfriend—passes out in the car. The second frat boy, just as rich and spoiled as the first one, well, he wants to mess around. Maybe she cooperates at first. Maybe she fights all along. Either way, things go further than she planned. She tells him to stop. He won’t stop. He’s never had to stop in his life. His family has bought off a dozen girls by now. What’s one more? So he gets rough with her.”
They were back at the house. The patio furniture was covered in snow.
“So she runs,” said Julia.
“Right. She runs. Hypothetically. It’s the middle of the winter, and she runs away down the beach. There’s a guard there. A teenaged boy. There always is. But, poor kid, she runs the wrong way. Not toward the guardhouse. Toward the water. Our frat boy chases her. He’s drunk out of his mind, remember, and maybe she’s had a few, too. He catches up with her just as she hits the water. Maybe they struggle. Maybe she just hauls off and slaps him, and he hits her back, a lot harder than he thought. Either way, she goes under. And she doesn’t get up.” He licked his lips. “Hypothetically.”
“Right,” said Julia, checking her watch. She had to go in shortly to make sure the girls made the school bus. “Hypothetically,” she echoed.
“So now it’s panic time. Our frat boy tries to revive her, but he doesn’t know how. He gives up. He lets the water take her. Maybe he even gives her a push. I don’t know. He jumps back in the car, he tries to wake his friend, but he can’t. So he hightails it back to campus, because campus is safe. Campus is home. Campus is where you can call your family and tell them to come and fix what you did, except that this is a little more serious than seduction—which, although we forget, used to be a criminal offense. He finally gets his friend up, but of course doesn’t tell him what happened. They stumble up the stairs, they get to the suite, and—what do you know?—their roommate who’s been away is back. The one they call Big Brother.”
“Their black roommate.”
Lemaster smiled grimly. “So our frat boy wakes him up and starts babbling about how he’s in a real mess this time, and a day and a half later Big Brother is back and tells him to go see this fixer up in Boston. Our frat boy goes. The fixer hears him out. Then he asks two questions. Did anybody see them at the beach? Only the guard. Does his roommate remember anything? No. The fixer says, leave everything to him. And, within twenty-four hours, he has a whole plan. Because by that time he knows that a black boy has stolen a car in the town. The plan is, the blame will shift to the black boy. But there’s also a backup, in case something goes wrong. The drunken roommate, the one who slept through the whole thing, has to be persuaded that he did the crime, and that the frat boy in fact slept through it. The fixer sees him too, and gives him the reverse plan. We’ll fix it so your friend gets the blame, he says. There’s only one condition. They both have to sign confessions—”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because the fixer has them stuck between a rock and a hard place. Sign the confession and it’ll be like it never happened, except that we’ll always have the confession if we should, say, need a favor down the road. Or don’t sign, and take your chances in court, bearing in mind that the fixer can testify against you, and he holds a lot of power in his hands. Maybe enough to beat the rich families. Certainly enough to give them a real battle. And, of course, in a battle, win or lose, the boys’ futures would be destroyed. And families like that, the great future is what they’re raised for.” He looked at his watch, too. “Time to wake the kids.”
“Lemmie, wait.” She put a hand on his arm.
“What’s wrong?”
“How long have you known this?”
The dark eyes were gentle now, at peace again, with himself and with her. “Only since I was elected Bubba.”
“You mean, all these years—”
“I didn’t know what happened. I suspected it had something to do with Gina—how could I not?—but I didn’t know, and I didn’t ask. And the interesting thing was, my roommates, well, they must have assumed I knew all about it. Because, all these years, whenever I’ve asked a favor, they’ve done it.” Holding open the door. “Of course, I don’t ask so many.”
The children tumbled downstairs. Julia made Lemaster wait, for he liked to leave for work early. But they were not done, and both knew it. Jeremy Flew scrubbed the kitchen while Julia escorted the kids to the school bus.
(III)
“YOU’RE WONDERING what the fixer thought he was up to. I’ll tell you exactly. He and his…club…have this theory. Their theory is that America gives nothing freely. They believe America won’t cross the street to help a black man, not if it’s not forced to. And so what they do, what they’ve done for a long time, is gather unflattering information about people in positions of power. Or people who might reasonably be expected to attain positions of power. Journalists and opposition politicians like to run with information like this, drive people out of office. Our hypothetical fixer considers this insanity. If you find some dirt on a powerful figure and use it to force him out of office, what do you have? A powerless politician and dirty hands, neither of which is useful. Better to let him stay in office, and let him know what you’ve got, and nudge him from time to time in the direction of justice. That way you have a powerful politician and clean hands, but he’s still doing what you want. Not all the time,” Lemaster added hastily. “You have to use it sparingly, or the system breaks down. But nudges. That’s what they believe in. Nudges.”
He caught the reproach in Julia’s eyes. “Come on, Jules. How many times have you said to me that neither party really cares about the darker nation any more? How all the Republicans care about is cutting taxes and building up the military, and all the Democrats care about is abortion and gay rights? Isn’t that what you always say, at least in private? Well, our hypothetical fixer and his club happen to agree with you. They don’t think the identity of the party in power makes a dime’s worth of difference in the lives of African Americans. All that matters to them is whether the people in power are people over whom they hold some influence.”
“Do you agree?” she asked, voice very small. “Do you think he’s right?”
“I see his point. Let’s leave it at that.” He was tying his tie. He could tell she remained unsatisfied. “Jules, look. Suppose you could prove who killed her. I don’t think you could, but suppose it was possible, after all these years. Suppose you could prove it, make the evidence public, and put him in prison for life. Would that bring the dead girl back? Would that help our people?” A stern shake of the head, in case she had failed to guess the right answer. “No, Jules. No. This is the only way that makes sense. It’s the only way in which justice actually accomplishes something other than allowing us to pat ourselves on the back. It’s less emotionally satisfying—there’s no catharsis—but it does some good for real people.”
He slipped into his jacket, turned this way and that in the mirror, watching how the soft wool fell.
“Lemmie, no. You can’t
just stop there.”
“I’ve already said more than I should.”
“Please. There’s Jock’s confession. Did he really kill her? Or was he the boyfriend, just drunk in the back seat?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Your fixer might have been blackmailing two men for the same crime!”
“Twice the justice, don’t you think?”
She shook her head. “I think it was Scrunchy. I think it was always Scrunchy. I think Jock’s confession was the cover. What Merrill Joule called pointing everybody in the wrong direction. I think the reason Mona had one was that somehow, among the elite, there are people who know the truth, and if anybody gets too close, they’re supposed to let them stumble on Jock’s confession as a way to throw them off the scent.” She stood up, still not dressed for work. “I think—if Scrunchy did it?—I hope he’s suffering. He deserves to suffer.”
“It doesn’t matter who did the deed. Not really. I’ll tell you something, Jules. They were all guilty. They were rich, drunken frat boys. All humans are mortal and imperfect, they grow up, and they grew into reasonably upstanding men. That’s fine. But you asked me about the past. Fine. Let’s talk about the past. They were monsters. They did what they wanted and assumed somebody else would clean up the mess. Because of who they were, somebody else usually did. They shared this attitude—most Caucasians do, at least in America, but the rich ones especially, no matter where they stand on the political spectrum—I see it every day on campus from the folks on the Left, and I see it every day in Washington from the folks on the Right—anyway, they had this attitude of being aggrieved. The world had given them everything, but they seemed to think they were due even more. Somebody had hurt them. Somebody had taken something they had, or denied them something they coveted. They sit around and reinforce each other’s sense that the bad people are out there trying to steal their toys.” He had crossed to the window. Fluffy snowflakes tumbled. In his mind he was far away. “And I’ll tell you something else. I didn’t create this plan. I didn’t know anything about it. When I first heard about it—a year ago?—I thought it was—nuts. Illegal, certainly; immoral, probably; but definitely nuts. I even talked to some of the people on the Council about putting a stop to it. The Grand Paramount took me aside. Think about it, he said. A lot of effort has gone into this. A lot of thought. I still thought it was wrong, Jules. Now, though, I’m not so sure. Nowadays, when I look around, when I listen to what our elites babble about, in a country where solving the problems of race and class was once central to our politics, when I see how the paler nation has moved on to other issues and left the darker nation behind? Nowadays, I think our hypothetical fixer might have a point about America—”
Stephen L. Carter Page 54