Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller

by Clifford Irving

  But when I opened my eyes, the wheels bounced and settled, the tires hummed easily, and we were racing south on Amagansett Springs Road.

  I didn’t like the idea of going back into the house on Hedges Lane. I had been lucky slipping out so easily the first time, lugging my gear down the stairs in the darkness, bumping it out through the french doors into the garden, hauling it one bag at a time across the grass along the sliver of path that I knew existed between the sensors. Going back in, and then getting out undetected a second time, anything could happen.

  I entered the house through the french doors. I didn’t need a flashlight. Upstairs, a night light burned in the hallway. I climbed the stairs slowly. If I left my bedroom door open I could see well enough for what I wanted. I squirmed my fingers into the side pocket of my pants slung on the back of the chair — the key was there. I snugged it down deep in the pocket of the pants I was wearing.

  “Billy.”

  I nearly shot up out of my shoes.

  Simon stood there in my doorway, in his underwear, rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of one hand. In a cracked voice still full of sleep, he said, “Billy, whatchoo doin’?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s four o’clock in the morning.”

  “Go back to sleep, Simon.”

  He shook his head. Doggedness may have been a family trait.

  He raised his voice. “Billy —”

  “Shhh.”

  “Don’t shush me. You’re dressed. You’re goin’ out, right?”

  “Bed, Simon, bed.”

  “You’re going out to see that girl. The one who talks to herself. The one you went to New York with.” He was suddenly wide awake. “My nerdy kid brother is getting laid before I do. I can’t believe this.”

  In disgust, he started to leave, then turned back again.

  “And you’re grounded,” he said. “Dad grounded you, right?”

  I shrugged.

  “And you don’t give a shit.” There was awe in his voice.

  “Keep it down, Simon.”

  “My little brother has got some big balls.”

  I didn’t want Simon’s admiration, I wanted his silence, and I said so again.

  “All I want to know,” he said, “is, has she got a friend she can bring along?”

  “Can you please shut up? We’ll wake Inez.”

  I got past him and out into the hallway. Maybe he wouldn’t follow me. At the top of the stairs I peered down and stopped short: I saw a moving shadow in the living room. The shadow grew darker, clearer, and the shadow took form and became Inez. She looked like she was crouching, but she wasn’t, it was just her natural hunchbacked shape; she was standing to her full height, tall as she could get, wearing her nightgown and slippers, and she carried the fireplace poker in one hand.

  My carefully-worked-out plan was starting to unravel.

  “Where you goin’, Billy?” Inez demanded.

  “Out.”

  “Your dad told me you was grounded. That means not go out. He says to me, ‘Inez, I count on you. Make sure he stays home.’”

  She blocked my path at the bottom of the stairs. She was holding the poker as if she was going to wallop me with it. I knew that wouldn’t happen, but it looked that way. And it made me smile.

  “Four o’clock in the morning,” she said, “and I’m telling you what’s right and what’s wrong. You think that’s muy cómico?”

  Four o’clock? Actually, ten past four. I looked up from my watch, looked out through the french doors into the garden. It was no longer black out there. The sky above the hedges was the color of dark ash. The stars had grown paler. Mist edged among the tree trunks. Soon it would be dawn.

  “Inez, I have to go.”

  “Oh, Billy, cariño, what happen to you? You used to be a good boy. So sweet. Everybody love you. What make you change?”

  Her words stung me. It’s not that I hadn’t thought about it. I thought about it a lot. I had changed. I wasn’t sweet and good anymore. I was tough and determined. Was that part of growing up? And if it was, was it the good part or the bad part of it? And was it worth it?

  I was trying to save Amy’s life. So maybe I wasn’t so sweet and good anymore. But I wasn’t ashamed of what I was doing, even if I had to lie and break other people’s rules by doing it.

  “Inez, I have to go.”

  “Where you gonna go? How you gonna go? Your dad, he chained your bike to Simon’s. I got the key. Thanks God, safe and sound.”

  I walked past her and out the front door of the house. The security lights split the darkness and the mist with their intersecting white beams. I didn’t have to worry about the beams now, and I didn’t have to worry about the bikes being chained together. I walked toward the lane.

  Inez came stomping after me onto the gravel. Simon had run into his room and quickly thrown on baggy shorts and unlaced Nikes. He was right behind Inez, in her nightgown, still brandishing her poker.

  “Billy, you stop,” she said.

  I turned, ducked around and under the poker, and hugged her.

  “I can’t, Inez,” I said. “Some other time, I’ll explain. Te quiero, y te querré siempre.” That meant: I love you, and I’ll love you always.

  “You explain now,” she yelled, and she followed me down the gravel path. Simon trailed along behind the two of us, scraping his heels, kicking stones. He was confused, too.

  I couldn’t get rid of either of them. I hoped they’d get bored and give up. But they followed me all the way up Hedges Lane to Main Street, where Duwayne waited in the high-rider parked again by the hickory tree across from the Talkhouse.

  “Dude, what’s this? You brought a gang with you? Plan changed? We gonna rob a bank?”

  Dawn was already rising above Main Street, bathing the saltbox houses and the oaks in a pale gray light, like the tint of a watercolor. Birds were twittering.

  I said, “Inez. Simon. Please. I have to go.”

  “Who’s in that car?” Inez said.

  “My friend Duwayne.”

  I introduced them.

  “What’s he say about robbing a bank?”

  “It was a joke, Inez.”

  “Maybe so,” Inez declared, “but you think I let you go off on your own? You gotta be loco in the coco. You get in trouble, your dad and mom they never forgive me.”

  I opened the door to the front passenger seat of the car and climbed in. Duwayne turned the ignition key. The engine rumbled, the chassis shook, you could smell oil. The next thing I knew, Inez wrenched open the back door and wriggled her bulky little body among the duffel bags. From somewhere in the pile, Iphigenia squeaked.

  “Oooh! You got la mona with you. Did I sit on you, pobrecita? I wanna know—you tell me, Billy—where you and this colored boy off to this crazy hour?”

  Simon jumped into the car, squeezing next to Inez. Iphigenia caught a whiff of him and fired both barrels: “Chit-chit-chit! Chit-chit-chit!”

  Duwayne turned to me, eyes rolling in their sockets. “Little bro, what you want me to do?”

  “Floor it,” I said. “We’re running late.”

  Chapter 37

  It was almost the longest day of the year, and a rosy brightness spread slowly over the sky. We reached the forest between Neck Path and Red Dirt Road. Last October, not far from here, Duwayne and I had found Amy bleeding in the dust.

  Since then my life had changed. So had I, according to Inez.

  “Stop here,” I told Duwayne.

  I didn’t intend to drive the car right up to A-1 Self-Storage and wake Ginette and her kids and the dogs. My plan was to park in the shadows about a hundred yards away, and then, with Duwayne, move on foot to the small gate in the fence. I had checked the sunrise and sunset tables in the newspaper; my timing would have been perfect if I hadn’t made an incomplete to-do list, so that I had to go home for the key, which woke Simon, and then my talking with him woke the vigilant Inez. But what could I do? Inez was determined, and I was stuck with h
er. Simon, I figured, had tagged along because he had nothing else to do. None of that changed my plan, it just delayed things by about forty minutes. That wasn’t good but it didn’t seem a disaster.

  I wanted to be at the house at first light. I just didn’t want to get into that part of the early morning when people might be waking up, although with Ginette and her kids I didn’t believe there was a big chance of that happening. They didn’t live on a farm where there were cows to be milked. It was just a self-storage place, and it didn’t open for clients until seven a.m.

  Through the trees, from where we stopped the car, we could see the yellow brick house and the storage units. It wasn’t yet five o’clock. We had a good view of the Winnebago parked behind the house, and we could see the two vehicles, the Toyota truck — Carter’s trusty beat-up old Jap — and Ginette’s Beetle, both parked in the yard behind the front security gate.

  And I could see a third vehicle, too. Looked like a Dodge. Looked to be a dark red color. Looked like the van that had pulled up opposite the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway and West 45th Street in Manhattan. Was that same van.

  It was the van Carter Bedford and his amigo Woody had driven to Bradenton, Florida. According to Amy, Carter had been driving it back up north to collect whatever he had of value, including his wife, his sons, and his daughter. Amy had said, “by Tuesday latest.” If you’re thinking straight, Tuesday latest means anytime before Tuesday. I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was. Nothing makes you feel dumber than the unexpected that should have been expected

  “Shithouse mouse,” I said.

  “Billy, watch your language,” Inez said. “And tell me what are we doin’ out here in the middle of nowhere. I got to know what’s happening. Your dad is gonna ask for a full report.”

  I looked at her. I felt beaten. I didn’t answer her.

  “That the house?” Duwayne asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure is a funny looking place.”

  “Well, I told you, it was a warehouse, and then a jail. See the bars?”

  “Cool,” Duwayne said. He meant that they were perfect for climbing, for grabbing hold of, or even looping with a climbing rope and an anchor knot, if they were solid bars that wouldn’t give way. After all these years of weather and rot, I thought, they might give way if you put a couple hundred pounds of downward pressure on them, but I still hadn’t got my weight up to even seventy five pounds, so they ought easily to hold me no matter whatever method I used, grabbing or looping.

  Inez said, “Billy, let’s go home. I make you pancakes with maple syrup and a fresh fruit smoothie. Whajoo eat this morning? Simon, you hungry? I want to go. This place gives me creeps.”

  “I think you’re right, Inez,” I said. “We have to go home.”

  “That’s the smartest thing you come out with all day,” Inez said.

  My forgetting the key and the extra forty-five minutes of delay had killed our chances. If Carter woke up in the middle of the operation, he would go berserk. I would be in more trouble than I thought I could handle. I would have to try another day. Or come up with some other plan.

  Duwayne wrinkled his nose. “What you sayin,’ dude?”

  “We have to forget it.”

  “How come?”

  I tried to make my heart beat more slowly. Be calm. Think it through.

  Try another day. But which day? For all I knew, later today Carter might turn around and head south. Unlikely, but not an impossibility. He’d rushed up here — he’d probably rush back. He had a job and his amigo waiting for him. Why dally? Well, he might be tired from the long drive. Okay, maybe not today. More likely, tomorrow. Leave early, because it made sense to do that. So how was I going to rescue Amy from her tower on another day?

  I had run out of days.

  And I didn’t have any other kind of plan. I wasn’t a never-ending fountain of plans. I’d done my best to come up with this one. I’d thought and thought, and this seemed the only way. It had failed, or seemed to have failed, but it was the best I could do. I wasn’t a twelve-year-old Albert Einstein and I wasn’t a twelve-year-old Superman.

  But I wasn’t a quitter, either. If I quit, I would lose Amy. Worse, she would be lost. She would be in Carter’s grip, and there would be nothing ever that I or anyone could do about it before it was too late. That would ruin her life. How can you let something like that happen?

  “Well, maybe not,” I said.

  “Maybe not what, dude?”

  “Maybe we won’t go home. Maybe we’ll still try it.”

  That big air of contentment faded from Inez. “What you say to him, Billy?” I turned to her in the back seat. Her eyes had narrowed, her mouth looked pinched.

  “Inez,” I said. “You, too, Simon. You have to help me. If you won’t help me, you shouldn’t have come.”

  Inez seemed to be taken aback by that. She had thought the escapade was over.

  Simon squeaked. “Help you do what?”

  “The first thing,” I said, “is to be quiet. I mean real quiet. And stay here in the car. Duwayne and I are going down to visit that house.”

  “Un momento,” Inez said. “You just tell me we going back home. Now you tell me you visiting someone at five o’clock in the morning?” Her voice rose to a loud whisper.

  “Can you be quiet, Inez? If not, Duwayne will drive you home.”

  That was a bluff. I had no time to drive her home or anywhere. But she believed me. She saw that I was as determined as she could be.

  “Nothing bad gonna happen to you, is there, Billy?”

  “Nothing, Inez. Stay here, okay? Stay here and watch out for Simon.” I turned to Simon. “Don’t leave the car.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Simon said.

  “So go.”

  “Where do I go?”

  “Behind a tree, you dork.”

  “I have to do more to do than pee.”

  “Then go do it.”

  “I don’t have toilet paper.”

  “Jeez, Simon, you were just three weeks camping in Maine, in the forest.”

  “It was a music camp. We had tents with Port-a-Potties. We had toilet paper.”

  “Well, this is the forest primeval. Use leaves. Use your finger and wipe it in the earth. Go . Crap.”

  “What about soap and water to wash my hands with?”

  My mom’s upbringing had a long arm.

  But why I’d ever let Simon get into the car in the first place, I still don’t know. Meanwhile, the rosy glow continued to fill the sky and the spaces between the trees.

  Inez began to moan. Maybe a prayer. It gave me an idea. I spoke to her in Spanish.

  “Inez, do me a favor?”

  “What, Billy?” Her voice was tiny.

  “You see down there? See that Winnebago behind the brick house?”

  “That winnawhatta?”

  “The camper van. Not the pickup truck. The camper van in the back. Kind of light brown color. Has a flat place on top where people sleep. See it?”

  She grunted. She saw it.

  “When Duwayne and I are at the house, if a guy comes out of the camper… Inez, you remember Carter Bedford?”

  “The door-banger? The garbage-dumper?”

  “You remember what he looks like?”

  She crossed herself.

  “If he comes out of the winnawhatta, you honk the horn. Honk it loud. Keep honking on it. Lean on it hard.”

  Inez was silent.

  “Will you do that for me, Inez? Will you honk if you see him?”

  “Sí. Lo hago. I’ll do it.”

  I think she would have liked to say a lot more, but she was frightened, and poleaxed by the realization of where we were and what might be going on. I wasn’t happy, either.

  However, as soon as we got out of the car, I began to feel better. If Carter had come in last night, or even yesterday evening, he’d be tired from the road. He certainly wouldn’t be up and prowling around at five in the morning. And w
e would be super quiet.

  “Inez is gonna honk the horn if there’s a problem,” I told Duwayne. “You hear the horn, haul me down. Then we get out of there as fast as we can.”

  I wondered if Duwayne knew about “danger pay” in the foreign service. I think the concept was getting through to him.

  But he was a positive thinker. “You ready, little bro? You cool?”

  “I be cool. You be cool?”

  “You gonna wear them sneaks? They grip good enough?”

  “Thanks, man, I forgot.” I wrestled out of my sneakers, dug my Voodoo climbers out of the gear bag, laced them in place, and then I got the rest of the gear together: ropes, biners, harnesses, chalk bag, helmet. Duwayne had the belay device clipped to his belt and he carried the crashpad. I put on my harness, and I put on my helmet this time.

  “Oh, Billy…” Inez moaned.

  I must have looked to her like I was headed into the tunnel with the King Cobra.

  I picked up half a dozen more pebbles and put them in my pockets. I looked at my watch as we came through the trees to the birch glade. The sun would rise at 5:10, in six minutes. It was daylight, but over the office door the yellow bulb still glowed.

  I pretended I was from the Iroquois tribe. They were the best stalkers east of the Ohio. I don’t know who Duwayne was pretending to be. I guess he was just naturally graceful. We avoided rocks and pebbles, and when we couldn’t avoid them, we stepped on them softly.

  We were at the back gate before you knew it. I fished out the key from my pocket, worked it into the lock, and turned it. Open sesame. I moved the gate an inch at a time so that it wouldn’t squeak. When the gate swung open far enough for us to slide through, I gave Duwayne a thumbs-up sign. We were inside.

  I looked up for Amy. I’d told her to be at the window and to be ready, but I didn’t see her. But it’s hard to see much inside a window in daylight. I stopped a few seconds and looked for movement, a sign. I had told her I’d be there at first light. Maybe when first light came and then went, she decided that I’d changed my mind, and she’d gone back to bed.