The Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  The phone buzzes. Uncle Mal stops in mid-sentence and picks it up. “Yes? Who? Okay.” He puts his hand over the receiver. “It’s the AG’s deputy.” Then he is lost to us again: “Mort, how the hell are you? . . . I hear that Frank is going to Harvard next year. That’s great . . . . When are you going to start making an honest living? . . . Well, you know there’s always a place for you here . . . . What? Los Angeles? Oh, come on, our smog is much better than theirs . . . . Uh-huh . . . Oh, I know, I know . . . . Well, listen, let me tell you why I called. I am sitting here in my office with a couple of very irate citizens of this fine republic, one of whom rejoices in the name of Talcott Garland, and the other of whom is known as Kimberly Madison . . . . Yes, that Kimberly Madison . . . No, I know you have nothing to do with picking judges, but that’s not what I’m calling about . . . . Uh-huh.” He puts his hand over the receiver and says to us: “Aren’t there any secrets in this town?” Back to the phone: “Well, listen. It seems that a couple of not very polite FBI guys visited Mr. Garland this morning . . . . No, nothing about that. A criminal investigation. The subject appears to be a certain Jack Ziegler, whose name I assume you have heard . . . . What? . . . No, no, I’m not representing Mr. Ziegler any longer, you know Brendan Sullivan over at Williams & Connolly does that these days . . . . No, Morton, no, not that either . . . No, my guy is Talcott Garland . . . . Uh-huh . . . Morton, listen. Here’s the thing. In the first place, as I suspect you know, my client just buried his father yesterday. So I’d say the timing is a little bit lousy. Second, one of these FBI guys threatened Mr. Garland.” I am shaking my head emphatically, but Uncle Mal, once he gets going, is relentless. “Yes, that’s right . . . . No, not with bodily harm. He said that if Mr. Garland did not tell him exactly what he wanted to know, right then and there, it would hurt Ms. Madison’s chances for the nomination . . . . Yes, I know they’re not supposed to, that’s why I’m calling . . . . Yes . . . No, I haven’t . . . . Yes, I do, and an apology from your boss would be even better . . . . Yes . . . Yes, I will . . . . Exactly one hour, though . . . Okay.”

  He hangs up without saying goodbye, which has become a status symbol in our uncivil times: the less you have to worry about offending people, the more powerful you must be.

  “Uncle Mal,” I begin, but he rides right over me.

  “Right. So this is the thing. These FBI guys seem to have broken lots of rules. So Morton Pearlman is going to talk to his boss, and then we’ll see.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” says Kimmer, nervously.

  “Kimberly Kimberly, dear, don’t worry.” He actually pats her hand. “This will not snap back on you, I promise. This is just how the game is played in this town. Take the word of an old hand. You have to let them know they can’t fu—, uh, can’t mess with you, and you have to let them know early. So, this is what I suggest.” He is on his feet now, so we are, too. Outside, it is silvery twilight. “Why don’t you two lovebirds get a bite to eat? Call me right here in, say, an hour. I’ll tell Grace to put you through. I’ll have an answer by then, or I’ll be down at DOJ eating somebody’s lunch.”

  During this splendid little speech, he has somehow moved us to the door. I notice Meadows approaching down the hall, a colorful volume of the Code of Federal Regulations in her hand.

  “Thank you, Mr. Corcoran,” says Kimmer.

  “‘Mal’ is fine,” he says, for about the tenth time.

  “Thank you, Uncle Mal,” I add.

  This time I get the hug. And a furtive whisper in my ear: “This smells, Tal. It stinks to high Heaven.” I turn in surprise, thinking, for some reason, that he is talking about me, not to me. But I see in his wise, experienced insider’s eyes only warning. “Be very, very careful,” he says. “Something isn’t right.”

  (II)

  MY SISTER and the terrifying au pair are watching Bentley. Mariah said he can stay with her as late as we need to be out, so worried Kimmer and I, lovebirds or not, walk up to K Street to one of the city’s many steak houses. Our nation’s capital is not noted for the quality of its restaurants, but its chefs do seem to know steak. It is just past five, so we are able to get a quiet corner table without waiting. Kimmer, who has been silent for most of the four blocks we have walked, throws herself into her chair, orders a brandy Alexander before the waiter can get a word out, and favors me with a disapproving glance. I reach for her hand, but she snatches it away.

  “What is it?” I ask in frustration.

  “Nothing,” she snaps. She looks across the room, then looks back. “I thought you were on my side. I thought you loved me. Then all this bullshit about the FBI. I mean, why the hell did you bring that up?”

  Kimmer knows that vulgarity bothers me, which is why she uses it when she is angry; I do not believe she speaks this way to anybody else.

  “I thought Uncle Mal could help,” I tell her. “And he is helping.”

  “Helping! He picks up the phone and yells at some idiot who works for the Attorney General, and then says I told him to do it, and that’s supposed to help?” She slumps in her chair, yanks off her glasses, closes her eyes for a moment. I glance around nervously, but none of the other diners seem to have noticed her outburst. Kimmer perks up again. “I mean, I thought he was supposed to be some kind of major player. Doesn’t he have more sense than that?”

  Now, the truth is that Uncle Mal’s reaction bothered me too. So did his decision to send Meadows out of the room. But I am not sure how to make either of these points to my wife. Goodness knows, nobody in my family ever says anything directly.

  “Kimmer, don’t you think the best thing is to get this out in the open—”

  “Get what out in the open?”

  “Whatever’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on.”

  “How can you say that after Jack Ziegler—”

  “Your damn father just won’t leave us alone, will he?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She seems almost ready to cry. “Your parents never wanted you to marry me in the first place! You told me that.”

  I am stunned. My wife has not mentioned this story in years but, obviously, has not forgotten it. Well, that your in-laws opposed your marriage cannot be easy to forget. “Oh, darling, that was years ago, and they weren’t against it exactly . . . .”

  “They said it would be scandalous. You told me.”

  And they were right. It was. But this is hardly the time to remind my wife how the two of us gleefully shocked black Washington. “Well, sure, but you have to understand the way they meant it . . . .”

  “Your father’s in the grave, and he’s still making trouble.”

  “Kimmer!”

  She sighs, then puts up her hands in a gesture of truce. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. That wasn’t fair.” She leans forward and sips her drink, closes her eyes for an instant, then takes my hand. Despite my own growing anger, I let her do it. Being touched by her calms me; it has always calmed me, even back when the reason I was nervous around Kimmer was that she was married to somebody else. “But, Misha, look at it from my point of view. You have what you want. You wanted a marriage and a child and tenure at a good law school. Well, guess what? You have all three.” Kimmer begins to massage my fingers, one at a time, which she knows I like. “But what about me? I’m ambitious, okay? That’s my sin. Fine. You’ve known since we were in law school that I wanted to be a judge, right? Well, now I have a chance. I used to think the . . . Well, okay, what happened with your father made it impossible. And maybe that’s . . . that’s maybe one reason I haven’t been as good a wife to you as I should.”

  She drops her eyes briefly, a gesture so uncharacteristically coy I am sure it is feigned. When Kimmer and I finally married, my father wasn’t even on the bench any more. Sensing that I have not bought her explanation, she tiptoes past it. “And I’m sorry about that. I really am. I want to do better for you, Misha. I really do. I’ve been trying.” Caressing my hand now, as t
hough Jerry Nathanson, probably the most prominent lawyer in Elm Harbor, does not exist. “But, Misha, then he . . . he dies. And I know you’re aching and I’m sorry for that. I truly am. But, Misha, he’s all over the papers again. Your father. Everybody’s talking about him again. And I’m thinking, Okay, maybe I can still hold it together. So I go over and see the Senator, like a good little girl, and he just sits there with this . . . this supercilious grin, and I’m like, Why did I bother to come here? Because, you know, the whole thing is like fixed. Fixed so Marc wins, I mean. And then Ruthie won’t tell me squat. And Jack Ziegler at the cemetery, and then this FBI thing. What did those guys want? I mean, it’s like this thing with your father . . . it’s going to ruin it for me after all.”

  There are tears on Kimmer’s cheeks. It has been years since she has opened herself to me this way; what she has said to others I don’t want to know. Her pain is genuine, and I warm to her. Although we were law school classmates, my wife is three years younger than I—she skipped a grade somewhere along the way; I wasted twenty-four months as a graduate student in philosophy and semiotics before turning to law—and there are moments when the three years feels like thirty.

  “Kimmer, darling, I had no idea,” I whisper. And this is true. There are depths to my wife I am too often afraid to plumb; and my fears have done as much as her conduct to sour the sweetest parts of our marriage. I squeeze her hands. She squeezes back. As her tears reflect the candlelight, her face grows even more exquisite. “But none of it has to be ruined. The Judge was my father, not yours. And the Judge is not you. There isn’t any . . . I mean, you don’t have any scandals. They certainly can’t hold your father-in-law against you.”

  Kimmer is miserable. “They can so,” she says, all at once childlike. “They can. They will.” A sniff. “They do.”

  “They won’t,” I insist, even though I am afraid she is right. “And you know I’m in your corner.”

  “I know you are,” she says bleakly, as though nobody else would be so foolish.

  “And Uncle Mal—”

  “Oh, Misha, get real. Uncle Mal won’t be able to do anything unless this goes away. You see what I’m saying? It has to go away.”

  “What does?”

  “This thing with your father. Whatever it is, Misha. I don’t know. The FBI. Jack Ziegler, all of it. It has to go away, and it has to go away fast, or folks will be like, ‘No, uh-uh, not her, she’s married to you-know-whose son.’ So we can’t do anything to keep it alive, Misha. Not me, not you, not Uncle Mal, nobody. We have to let it die, or I don’t have a chance.” Her mysterious, tormented brown eyes burrow into mine. “Do you understand, Misha? It has to die.”

  “I understand.” Her fervor, as always, overwhelms my caution. Kimmer has long had a talent for coaxing promises out of me before I know what I am saying.

  “You have to let it die.”

  “I hear what you’re saying.”

  “But do you promise?”

  She seems to think I have some choice. I am not sure I really do. Because love is a gift we deliver when we would rather not.

  “I promise, darling.”

  She slumps back in her chair as though worn out from all this pleading. “Thank you, honey. Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome.” I smile. “I love you.”

  “Oh, Misha,” she whispers, shaking her head.

  The waiter brings a bottle of wine that I scarcely remember Kimmer ordering. I do not drink, given my father’s history, but the Madisons consider the prudent consumption of high-priced alcohol a part of the sophistication of the palate. She takes a few sips and smiles at me, then leans back in her chair again and looks out over the room. Then she suddenly hops up. I know this routine. She has spotted somebody she knows. Kimmer loves to work a room: that’s why she was president of her graduating class at Mount Holyoke and of our local bar association and might soon be a federal judge. As I watch, she hurries across the restaurant to greet an Asian American couple dining over by the far wall. They shake hands, and they all share a good laugh, and then she is back. The man writes editorials for the Post, she explains. She met him this morning, when she went to see her friend from college. His wife, Kimmer continues, is a producer for one of the Sunday-morning television talk shows. “You never know.” She shrugs. Then she retakes my hand and plays with my fingers in the candlelight until our main course arrives. I would usually be willing to let Kimmer play with my fingers all night, but my brain refuses to cooperate. As I cut into my overpriced steak, a thought occurs to me, prompted by my wife’s table-hopping.

  “Darling?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Do you remember the last time we saw my father? I mean, both of us, together?”

  She nods. “Last year. He was in town for the alumni association or something.” She will not concede he might have wanted to see Bentley, or me, still less her. She shifts in her seat. “About this time.”

  “And you said he looked . . . worried.”

  “Yeah, I remember. We’d be sitting at dinner at the Faculty Club or something and you’d ask him a question and he wouldn’t say anything, he’d be looking into the middle of nowhere, and you’d ask again and he’d say, ‘You don’t have to shout.’” Her gaze softens. “Oh, Misha, I’m sorry. That’s not a very happy memory, is it?”

  I choose not to go there. “I’ve seen him since then. Once.” When I was in Washington on business and we had dinner. He was distracted then, too. “I just wondered . . . did it seem to you . . . when you said he seemed ‘worried,’ did you mean . . .”

  “Just tense, Misha. Stressed.” Taking my hand again. “That’s all.”

  I shake my head, wondering why the image of the Judge’s last visit to Elm Harbor leaped so nimbly to mind. Maybe Mariah’s creepy insistence that the causes were not natural is starting to get to me.

  The talk turns to other things: gossip about the law school, chitchat about the firm, jockeying our vacation schedules. She tells me what her sister, Lindy, is up to these days, and I recycle old stories about Addison. I tell Kimmer what fun Bentley had on his first day on in-line skates, but not about the woman who flirted with me, or about my temptation to flirt back. Kimmer, perhaps detecting something in my eyes before I glance guiltily away, teases me about the crush everyone once thought I had on Lindy, the more solid and reliable of the Madison sisters, whom my parents fervently hoped I would marry. We banter on, as we used to in the old days, the good days, our courting days, and then, as dessert arrives, Kimmer, who has been watching the time, tells me that an hour has passed. She is all business again. I sigh, but dutifully summon the waiter and ask him where the telephones are, and he produces one with a flourish, plugging it into a jack underneath the table. I wink at my wife.

  “You could have used my cell phone,” she says glumly.

  “I know, darling, but I’ve always wanted to do this. Just like in the movies.” Her return smile is tight; I realize just how overwrought she is. I pat her hand and push buttons on the phone. Grace picks up and, as promised, puts me right through.

  “Talcott,” booms the great Mallory Corcoran, “I am so glad you called. I was just about to send out an all-points bulletin. Look, we have a serious problem. In the first place, Jack Ziegler is not currently under investigation by the Justice Department. They wish they had something on him, because, well, you know, it’s every prosecutor’s dream to put a powerful white guy away”—he barks these words with no sense of irony—“but right now they just don’t. So they are busy frying other fish.”

  “I see,” I say, although I do not. Kimmer, reading my face, looks fearful.

  “That’s not the problem, though. The problem is this. Morton Pearlman talked to the Attorney General and the AG talked to the director of the Federal Bureau and he talked to his people. And here’s what they tell me. I heard it from the AG himself. The FBI did not know that you talked to Jack Ziegler in the cemetery yesterday, Talcott. There was no surveillance. And nobody from the
FBI came to see you today, Talcott. Why would they? Nobody from the FBI has asked you anything about Jack Ziegler at all. And the background check on Kimberly hasn’t really started yet.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I wish I were. Now, you’re sure they said they were from the Bureau?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Did you see their credentials?”

  “Of course I saw their credentials.” But, thinking back, I realize that I gave their wallets only a glance: who studies photos and numbers and the rest in any detail?

  “I figured you did.” He hesitates, as though uncertain how to share an unpleasant truth. “Listen, Talcott, here’s the thing. Somebody came to see you pretending to be from the Bureau. Well, that happens to be a major felony. That means they have to investigate it. As a courtesy, they are putting it off until tomorrow. But tomorrow morning, a couple of FBI agents, the real kind, want to interview you. Here, at the office, at eleven. I can’t be there, because Edie and I are going to Hawaii for a few days, but Meadows and maybe a couple of my other people will. No charge,” he adds, a considerable relief but also something of an insult. He senses my distress. “Sorry to dump all this on you, Talcott. Really sorry. But after it’s resolved, I will make the calls for Kimberly. I promise.”

  After it’s resolved, I am thinking as I hang up the phone. Meaning he will not lift a finger on Kimmer’s behalf until he sees which way the wind is blowing.