Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  Leona Castle presented him no opportunity. She was a small woman, less pretty than porcelain, her head covered because she was inside the church, the very picture of what Eddie thought of as Southern weakness, except for black eyes of a curious intensity. Eddie sat one pew ahead of her, meaning he was forced to turn around in order to speak. He had barely made it through his condolences when Leona lifted a delicate gloved hand, signaling silence. Then she leaped immediately to where he least wanted her to go.

  “You are very kind to come visit me, Mr. Wesley,” she said, her accent almost as deep as the lawyer’s. “I know how busy your schedule must be. But let’s not pretend this is a social call. Your note said you had information about my husband’s death. I would like the information, please.”

  Eddie glanced at the others, six or seven unfriendly Caucasian faces.

  “No, Mr. Wesley,” said Leona. “We will speak in front of my friends, or we will not speak.”

  The porcelain face was now hard. He had heard that her family had once been among the largest slaveholders in the state, and here in South Carolina that competition was fierce. He supposed that, for all her whispered liberalism, Leona Castle did not suffer Negro resistance.

  As it happened, Eddie had arrived equipped with several other evasions and prevarications. But circumlocution was not natural to him, and, besides, he sensed that the wounded woman sitting behind him would not sit still for a burst of misleading eloquence. If he lied, she would walk out.

  “After your husband died,” he began, “I met a man named Emil.” He told her of the visit to the wedding, the questions about the envelope, the claim that he had taken photographs for a Boy Scout function, the second appearance outside the bookstore. He did not mention Joseph Belt. He said nothing about his sister, or the FBI’s interest. Instead, he said that the envelope surely held the key. He planned to ask whether she might have found it among her husband’s possessions, but Witter cut in first like a trucker in a hurry.

  “Mrs. Castle’s property has been subjected to three searches by federal agents,” the lawyer said, “and her husband’s estate has twice been inventoried by court order. Those inventories do not include a pink envelope, with or without a number penciled in the corner. We have also had several requests by private parties to—”

  Leona lifted the glove again, and the lawyer fell silent at once. Eddie recognized that the tiny woman seated before him possessed an influence, if perhaps in a smaller circle, not unlike Erebeth Hilliman’s.

  “Was there anything else, Mr. Wesley?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “So—you do not know who killed my husband.”

  “Not directly, ma’am. No.”

  “You are here under false pretenses.”

  Eddie hesitated. “Ma’am,” he began.

  The glove came up again. Southerners, Eddie had noticed, tended to settle themselves comfortably before long speeches. Northerners, slouched in whatever position they might find themselves, simply launched in. Now Leona was a moment settling, and Eddie had the wit to wait.

  “My husband was a very intelligent man, Mr. Wesley. Very careful. Very prudent. Philmont believed in prudence the way I believe in God and Jesus Christ. Prudence was his lodestar, Mr. Wesley. He did not make many mistakes, and, most certainly, was cautious in selecting those with whom he would do business. He was even more so in selecting friends. He had few. He would never have been involved in any way with a pushy little German like your Emil. I am afraid that your Emil was lying to you. Why he chose to involve my husband and my family in his lies, I cannot say. That problem is yours to resolve, Mr. Wesley. Not mine.” She was on her feet, the entire company with her. “I am so sorry about your sister, Mr. Wesley. I do hope that you find her alive.”

  Long skirts rustled as she left the sanctuary, accompanied by her church sisters, the deacon, and the younger of the two lawyers. The pastor lingered, along with Witter.

  The lawyer said, “It was kind of you not to mention what happened to her husband’s colored friend.”

  Eddie said, “I assume you are referring to Professor Belt.”

  Witter seemed puzzled. “No, no. I mean Shands. The jazz fellow.” When Eddie only stared, the lawyer added, “The one who died in ’54 of an overdose. That was difficult for Leona also. Shands and Mr. Castle were very close.”

  Eddie could not hide his surprise. “Philmont Castle and Ralph Shands were friends?”

  Witter was packing his wide leather briefcase, although God alone knew why he had brought it along. “Jazz is not to my taste, Mr. Wesley. But they tell me that Ralph Shands was one of the best jazz pianists ever.”

  “He was,” said Eddie, distantly. Two prominent Negroes, both among the best at what they did, both friends of Philmont Castle, both dead in secret circumstances, nobody else around.

  “I am sorry your trip was in vain, Mr. Wesley,” said the lawyer. He favored the pastor with a significant look, then departed.

  The pastor was a young man, perhaps in his mid-thirties, with thick glasses and a brown cowlick that made him look unserious. He invited Eddie back to the office, where another church sister, eyes downcast, served lemonade, then left them alone. The pastor, whose accent was New England, seemed embarrassed to be waited on. Eddie looked around. Stuffed onto the bookshelf among Bibles and hymnals and volumes of inspirational thought were books by Niebuhr and Barth. Eddie shifted around in his seat. Religionists made him uncomfortable, but liberal religionists were the worst, because they were less interested in saving your soul than in being your friend. Any minute he expected the young pastor to begin talking about civil rights. Instead, the pastor reached into his desk and pulled out a copy of Field’s Unified Theory.

  Eddie was surprised. He said he had understood the book was almost impossible to find in Southern stores.

  The pastor nodded. “I picked it up on a trip home. I don’t dare keep it on the shelves.” He asked Eddie to inscribe it. While Eddie wrote, the pastor explained. Leona had mixed feelings about her husband. Philmont Castle was in most ways a good man, but, according to Leona, had allowed himself to become involved with people less good than he. He wasted much of the money the Lord entrusted to his stewardship. He had been tempted, said the pastor, by the easy answer. The devil’s answer. The young man’s tone grew more somber. Eddie tried to hand back the book, but the pastor ignored him. “Leona did not know exactly what Phil and his new friends were up to, but she saw that it was work that could not be done in God’s good daylight, and that was reason enough to oppose it. Her husband would not be dissuaded. Still, he told her a little. He said there were twenty of them. He called them the Twenty. He spoke of a Project—capital ‘P.’ He spoke of its importance. Not to him, Mr. Wesley. To the country. To the future of America. Leona could not reach him. I have been pastor here only four years, but this is the congregation where she grew up. Her spiritual home. She came to me for counseling. This was while her husband was still alive. She told me that he was laughing in God’s face and inviting the devil into their home.”

  The pastor’s eyes flamed behind the comical lenses, and Eddie knew that, liberal or not, this man was every bit as fervent in his beliefs as Wesley Senior was in his. Searching for a way to slow the tumult, Eddie said, “She was speaking metaphorically, of course.”

  This the young pastor did not deign to answer. He was toying with one of the drawers. “You are not yet a believer, Eddie. I can tell. Sitting in the church made you uneasy. Sitting here and listening to talk of God and the devil makes you more so. But you do not have to believe in the devil for him to get to you.”

  Eddie looked at him. “Do you have to believe in God for Him to get to you?”

  “When God wants you, you cannot keep Him at bay.”

  “And what does God want of me right now? That I go back to New York and forget about what happened?” A thought occurred to him. “And why did Mrs. Castle mention my sister? How did she know anything happened to Junie?”

>   The pastor opened the drawer and pulled out an envelope.

  A pink envelope.

  While Eddie stared, the pastor talked. “This has been in my possession for three years, Mr. Wesley. Leona found it before she left New York. She entrusted it to me to keep it away from prying eyes.” He smiled. “There has been a lot of prying, Eddie. Not just what Dave Witter mentioned. Three break-ins at her home. And a couple of visitors, like you, asking questions. All of this in addition to the FBI, of course.”

  Eddie was staring at the envelope. “She lied to the FBI?”

  The pastor shook his head—not in rejection but in refusal. Whether Leona had lied was no business of Eddie’s.

  Eddie acknowledged the point. “So, why me? If Mrs. Castle would not turn over this envelope to the federal government or any of the other visitors, and if she knew enough not to keep it at home, where it might be stolen, why give it to me?”

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Wesley, I am not entirely sure. All I can tell you is that when she received your note, Mrs. Castle wanted to make sure that you are the same Edward Wesley who lives in Harlem and writes novels.”

  Bewildered, Eddie accepted the envelope from the pastor’s outstretched hand. “Do you know what’s in here?”

  The pastor shook his head. “I haven’t opened it. I cannot say whether Leona has.”

  Back at the rooming house, Eddie set the envelope on the dresser and tried to decide whether to open it. He already knew what he would find, and the knowledge depressed him. Photographs, just as Goldfus/Abel had said. They would be gobbledygook that would translate to equations and technical diagrams he could not have fathomed on his best day. The pink envelope was numbered seventeen, and Eddie was willing to bet that there were sixteen before it. Sixteen what? Well, interpreting the diagrams might require a genius, but a baby could work out the logistics. Joseph Belt, enticed by Phil Castle, stole the information from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He slipped it to Castle, who somehow transferred it in bits and pieces to Emil Goldfus.

  What kind of information? From what Eddie had ascertained, the scientists at Los Alamos had one major purpose.

  Building hydrogen bombs.

  Eddie stood up and strode around the threadbare carpet. He imagined Junie marching beside him, whispering, laughing, counseling. He explained the problem. The contents of the envelope would prove that J. Edgar Hoover had been right that eerie night in Washington, and that Bernard Stilwell had been right that foggy afternoon in Harlem: that Joseph Belt, rigid, disdainful Joseph Belt, the only Negro physicist in Los Alamos, had been a traitor.

  “I don’t want to know,” he said.

  Junie said that was too bad. He had no choice.

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not really here.”

  Junie said what she always said, that he was a little brat.

  Eddie stopped pacing. His face was warm. He might have burned the envelope, contents unread, but for the memory of Stilwell, asking what he could offer in return for the Bureau’s interest in Junie’s disappearance. He needed a chip to stay in the game, and Philmont Castle’s legacy was the only chip he had left.

  So he opened the envelope and drew out the contents and knew at once that everybody had been had—the Bureau, Colonel Abel, everybody.

  The contents had nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

  First Eddie withdrew a note card and, pinned to it, what appeared to be a seed pod, the kind of cockle that used to prickle his legs when, as a child, he would wander the high grass along the dunes of Martha’s Vineyard. On the card were four words, in block capitals:

  HIS WIFE HAS IT

  Eddie put the pod aside. His wife. Whose wife? Castle’s? But he held in his hands what her husband had left. And the rest of what? Meaning eluded him, no matter how he tried to conjure it.

  Eddie pulled out a second card, similar to the first, with more words in block capitals, written in a slightly different hand:

  NOT AS IN A TRAGIC AGE

  Curioser and curioser. The cards surely constituted a message, but Eddie doubted that he was the intended recipient. Were they to be read together? If so, in what order? Were the references to the Bible, perhaps? To a play he should recognize? He studied the cards as if hoping to unlock the secrets of the universe.

  But in another sense, sitting in the colored rooming house in Charleston, fiddling with the seed pod as dusk drew in the day, Eddie Wesley was only teasing himself. The treasure trove was the cache of letters snuggling just beneath, all but one undated. He picked up the first:

  Dear P:

  You were right. I had a wonderful time. I knew it was important, but I had no idea it would be so much fun. Thank you so much for inviting me. I hope you-know-who doesn’t find out.

  A second:

  Dear P:

  Maybe what you say is true. Maybe there is a way to do it without getting caught. But do you know what I have realized? Not all of us are meant to be happy. Sometimes we are drawn into things we never expected, and we enter them with joy, but continue them out of ennui. Do not misunderstand. I am not ready to quit. Not even close. But I get the feeling that you are.

  A third:

  Dear P:

  Of course I understand your position. You have a wife and a family. But it seems to me that what you are proposing requires a commitment. I see no reason that I should be the one who stays true while you flit back and forth between one commitment and the other. You have to choose, P. Or else the choice might be made for you.

  And the last, the only one with a date—late January of 1955, three weeks before Philmont Castle was killed:

  Dear P:

  You have made your decision. Now I must make mine. You say that you are acting out of love. So am I. The difference is that you are willing to long and lament. I am not. I have always been a woman of action. Probably you will not see me again. Never make the mistake of believing that giving a gift entitles you to anything.

  An affair, Eddie realized dully, flipping back to the start. Nothing more. Whatever the meaning of the cards or the seed pod, this much was clear: the late Philmont Castle had been having an extramarital affair, and Leona wanted Eddie to have the proof. Eddie and only Eddie. He supposed he should examine the letters again, in case he had missed anything, but could not bear the pain. He considered burning them in the grate. Instead, he refolded them, returned them to their envelope, and consigned the envelope to his briefcase. He left the next morning for the long drive north, having slept poorly, peering into the gray darkness, conjuring possibilities, explanations, theories—wondering about the lies. He could never share the envelope with Stilwell. He possessed no bargaining chip after all.

  The letters were from Junie.

  PART II

  New York/Washington

  1958–1959

  CHAPTER 19

  On the Difficulty of Progress Without Aurelia

  (I)

  AND SO THE TWO MYSTERIES, the murder of Phil Castle and the disappearance of June Cranch Wesley, were linked. Driving north, Eddie admitted to himself that he had been wrong. If his vanished sister and the late investor had been having an affair, he might indeed need to know what had happened to the one in order to figure out what had happened to the other. The lawyer had been involved with nineteen other men—the Twenty—in something called the Project. If he found the Project, perhaps he would find his sister. Upon his return to Harlem, he would apologize to Aurelia, and ask what she had learned about the Cross of Saint Peter, and why Kevin Garland possessed one.

  Except that Aurelia refused to see him.

  There was, Eddie supposed, nothing surprising in this. She was twice a mother, and married—to a Garland, no less—and dallying with a former lover could only risk upsetting the life she had been raised to lead. Besides, the last time they had been together, when Aurie, at what cost he could only guess, had walked with him in the clear light of day, he had been rude to her. No. No. He refused to fool himself. He had been not rude, but m
ean. He had hurt the woman he loved, and now had to woo her afresh, but lacked the means to do so. He could not send flowers or even flowery notes to the Garland apartment at 409 Edgecombe Avenue, and Aurie was currently on leave from the Sentinel, ruling out the possibility of his hanging around the entrance and hoping for his chance, a course that would in any case very likely force to public attention that which she needed most to hide.

  Very well. He would bide his time.

  He returned to the salons, and everybody remarked on the changes. The wit was back, the flattery, the charm, the fire, the almost ferocious willingness to suffer disagreement, to argue into the night over marvelously abstruse questions—all the qualities that made him a sought-after guest. In the fall of 1958, his second novel was published, Blandishment, the story of a black youth who is radicalized as he works his way through a New England college as a waiter, the semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel that editors used to say everybody published second, after working out, in the first novel, fantasies of lives unlived. The critics liked it less than Field’s Unified Theory, but the public liked it more, perhaps because the reader was not required to wade through all that physics, or, for that matter, to admit that a book by a Negro author might challenge not just the conscience but the intellect. Eddie accepted the accolades and the sudden fortune with a quietly impressive grace. As one of his biographers would later note, it was as though he was trying, through force of will, to be the man Harlem expected him to be. He wrote speeches for politicians, chief among them Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts: a favor for the Ambassador. It never occurred to the Czarinas that the Kennedy people had come to Eddie. They were unaware that Eddie owed the Ambassador any favors. They assumed that Wesley Senior, known to be close to the Kennedys, had finagled his son the job. Nevertheless, the connection opened the doors of still more salons. At Harlem parties, asked about Kennedy’s chances to win the presidency the year after next, Eddie frowned importantly. And he attended parties aplenty, downtown as well as in Harlem. He spoke on college campuses. He even dated, for a little while, the suitable daughter of one of the senior clans, a blushing, virginal creature called Cynda, who even after their breakup extolled, starry-eyed, his gentleness. He used to recite medieval love poems for her, said Cynda, not mentioning whether the recitations occurred in bed. And yet she sensed in him, Cynda told her girlfriends, a secret and quite different self beneath the happy surface. An angry self? they asked. A jealous self? For they had heard all the rumors. Not angry, said Cynda, marveling. Determined. Devoted.