Wherever There Is Light

by Peter Golden

  As Eddie killed the engine, Jarvis wheezed, “What—what y’all gon’ do?”

  “Stop talking,” Julian said, getting out of the Impala.

  Eddie unlocked the trunk. Hurleigh was lying on his side, cocooned in a paint-splattered tarp. Julian moved the tarp aside. Hurleigh had two blood-rimmed bullet holes below his police badge, and Julian unpinned the badge and stuck it in his wallet. Eddie grabbed the upper half of Hurleigh, Julian the bottom, and they carried him to the water and heaved him off the tarp, quickly backing up because fifty yards away three alligators, who had been sunning themselves on logs, slipped into the water as if someone were ringing a dinner bell.

  Walking to the car, Julian asked, “How much longer till Shady Isle?”

  “Five minutes tops.”

  Julian pulled Jarvis out of the back and pushed him into the trunk.

  Shady Isle Rest Home, a U-shaped building of eggshell-colored stucco, was surrounded by a moat and across a bowed wooden bridge with an arm gate. A security guard, in a black uniform and billed cap that reminded Julian of the SS, asked Eddie to state his business.

  Julian flashed Hurleigh’s badge. “I’m here to see Dr. Evarts. Can you tell me where his office is?”

  “Second floor. Center wing.”

  Eddie parked in the lot across from the entrance.

  “Don’t let that prick suffocate,” Julian said.

  Patients and visitors were sitting on the dowdy couches in the lobby, the patients groggy and wearing light-blue robes. Upstairs, music as triumphant as a John Philip Sousa march was blasting through the door of Dr. Evarts’s office. No secretary was in the anteroom, but Julian saw a man in a seersucker suit standing in the inner office, next to a desk with a portable record player on it, and waggling a flyswatter as if conducting the Marine Band. He was short and pallid with the idiotic, gleeful countenance of someone easily amused. When he saw Julian, he put the flyswatter on the desk and lifted the needle off the record. “Yes?”

  “Kendall Wakefield.”

  Evarts’s countenance was less gleeful. “Is she a patient?”

  Julian joined Evarts on the other side of the desk, and Evarts backed up against the jalousie windows. “You got some choices here, Doc. I could contact the state troopers, district attorney, and anyone else who can nail you for locking up a sane woman against her will. You could take a ride with Mayor Scales—he’s handcuffed in the trunk of my car and—”

  Evarts lunged for the phone on his desk, and Julian grabbed his hand, muscled him into his chair, took out the Nambu, and aimed the pistol at the doctor.

  “Or,” Julian said, “I could shoot you. Any of this appeal to you?”

  “I can’t say that it does.”

  “Then get on that phone and have her brought here and I’ll take her with me.”

  The doctor dialed three numbers, then made the request, and Julian stowed the pistol in his jacket pocket. Part of him—the part he’d come to loathe—would have preferred to shoot Evarts and to feed Jarvis to the alligators. It was puzzling to Julian that after all he’d seen and done, depravity still outraged him as though he were an innocent discovering, for the first time, that people were not always well behaved, especially if some fanatically desired prize was involved. My daddy’s land . . . The Thousand-Year Reich . . . But who was Julian to judge? He’d been more savage than most, and deep into middle age he was the same furious boy who had drowned the Kaiser and gone on to kill others for reasons he couldn’t bear to recall. Yet Julian wondered: had he been a different sort of man, how many more girls would the Kaiser have murdered? Would Bobby have been lost to Payback and the same rough streets as his father? Would Kendall be freed from this prison? Julian needed to ask himself these questions: they were his home remedy for a guilty conscience.

  A stooped, bald Negro in a light-blue smock rolled Kendall into the office in a wheelchair. Her outfit was familiar to Julian’s—white polo shirt, dungarees, and tennis sneakers—and her khaki satchel, almost thirty years old now and patched with strips of leather, was on her lap, but Julian couldn’t believe he was in her presence. Her thick, sable hair, with strands of gray in it, still flowed past her shoulders, and her beauty was intact: the age lines called attention to her high cheekbones and the hazel of her eyes.

  However, as they stared at each other, Julian noticed that her eyes were glassy, and he wasn’t sure she knew it was him.

  Julian said to Evarts, “You kept her tranquilized so she wouldn’t run away or get to a phone.”

  “Naturally, she was upset about being here, but—”

  Kendall stuttered, “B-B-obby?”

  Julian went to her. “I have him.”

  Despite his earlier contemplation of good and evil, nothing would’ve been more satisfying to Julian than killing Evarts on the spot, but he calculated that his probability of getting away with it was low and he was concerned about Kendall, so without another word he wheeled her outside.

  She was asleep in the back seat before they were over the bridge, with Eddie’s sport jacket balled up into a pillow and Julian’s covering her like a blanket.

  Julian said, “We’ll go to her house in Lovewood and pack some of her stuff. Then swing by and give Lucinda the news.”

  “We should dump the hardware.”

  “I’ll call Looney. He’ll come to the Eden Roc to grab his pistols and take care of Hurleigh’s thirty-eight. We’ll stay tonight. I don’t wanna fly until I know Kendall doesn’t need a doctor.”

  “Wanna make a stop?”

  “That’d be nice. How’s Jarvis?”

  “Resting uncomfortably.”

  Julian turned to look at Kendall. He had watched her sleep on so many nights and never tired of it, the peacefulness that came over him with her nearby.

  At the marsh, Julian let Jarvis out of the trunk.

  He was too cramped to stand up straight, and he was gulping for oxygen. “Miz Wakefield’s fine, ain’t she? Like I done told you.”

  Julian curled an arm around Jarvis’s neck and led him toward the water. The alligators sunbathing on the logs were as hypnotic and frightening as dragons.

  “Please,” Jarvis begged, struggling to breathe. “Please.”

  Julian looked at him, but all he saw was Kendall sleeping, her face even lovelier in repose, and Bobby in the breakfast nook eating pancakes, and then a great sadness welled up in Julian, a sadness woven through with a memory of pure happiness—Holly jumping off the diving board, laughing as she sprang up into the sun-bright sky and splashed, in a spray of silver, through the turquoise surface of the backyard pool.

  If any men deserved to be dinner for reptiles, Jarvis Scales was among them. Yet Julian couldn’t serve him up. He brought Jarvis over to the Impala and asked Eddie to unlock his handcuffs.

  Julian said, “You can walk to Shady Isle from here. Go right on the road and you’ll see the sign. And you’re gonna hear from a lawyer in Fort Lauderdale.”

  “I’ll do whatever he says, I swear I will.”

  “You better think up a tale about Hurleigh taking off for parts unknown.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Jarvis, I’m giving you a break.”

  “Yes, suh, you are.”

  “Fuck around or try and chase me, there’ll be no discussions. Get going.”

  Jarvis was already on the road when Julian got into the car.

  Chapter 67

  All those decades melted away, and here they were, together again at Gruning’s, Kendall eating butter pecan with butterscotch sauce and Julian digging into a scoop of coffee chip with hot fudge. Julian felt as if no time had gone by, as if God had hired the Three Stooges to design His kingdom, telling them, Break their hearts, boys, but don’t forget to leave ’em laughing.

  Kendall asked, “When’s Bobby get out of school?”

  “In an hour.”

  Last evening, Kendall had slept through dinner, then kept phoning Bobby, who was staying with Fiona. There was no answer. Relaxing in th
e living room of the suite, Julian had listened to her cry until she fell asleep again. He finally got through to Fiona. She’d taken Bobby to the movies, but he was sleeping now, and Julian said they’d meet him outside the junior high. On the plane to Newark, Kendall had stared at the clouds. Julian had driven Eddie home and retrieved Bobby’s suitcase. Now, after four spoonfuls of her sundae, Kendall said, “I knew I was no college administrator. But I feel so guilty about losing that land. Mama would’ve had a fit.”

  “Divide your guilt in half.”

  “Why?”

  Julian explained that there were two thousand and twenty-four acres. He was purchasing one thousand and twelve acres from Jarvis, and his portion included the college grounds, the fruit groves, and the beachfront. Julian was wiser now than when he’d bought the house in Greenwich Village, and he didn’t expect Kendall to respond with unambivalent delight.

  She didn’t. “I can get magazine assignments and do more books, and I have some income from royalties, but I can’t afford Florida real estate.”

  “Bobby can. The land’s going into a trust for him.”

  Against her will, Kendall smiled. “You win—on a technicality.”

  “It’s more than that. Bobby’s my only heir.”

  “Your wife, she’s—”

  “She was killed in a car accident.”

  “Julian, I’m—”

  “Our daughter, Holly, died with her.”

  Kendall’s eyes filled.

  Julian looked down at his ice cream. He didn’t feel like eating it. “I still want to see Bobby. Wherever you wind up.”

  “Of course.” Kendall poked at her butter pecan. “I was ashamed of myself for not telling you about him.”

  Julian was angry about it, but he saw no reason tell her. Not now, probably never.

  Kendall closed and opened her eyes. “Remember Christina?”

  “That artist Brigham’s wife. With the chain.”

  She nodded. “After Bobby was born, I had meetings in the city, so I checked into the Chelsea with a nurse for Bobby. One afternoon, I’m waiting for an editor at the Caffe Reggio and thinking that I’m going to call you afterward. That I had to. And I’d missed you terribly in the hospital. The doctor’s telling me to push and the overhead light’s in my eyes, and I remembered being at the beach with you down the shore, and you standing over the blanket with cups of orangeade in your hands, and I’m looking up at you through overlapping circles of sunlight.”

  Kendall twirled her spoon in the ice cream. “Christina and Brig walk into the Reggio—without their chain. I hadn’t seen them in years. Brig, he has to be past eighty, keeps his distance, but Christina comes over and we’re chatting away as if she hadn’t accused me of screwing her pig of a husband. She says they’ve been following my career, that my work’s extraordinary, and carries on like she’s my press agent. The editor arrives, and before Christina goes, she says, ‘Your old boyfriend got married. It was in the Sunday Times. A real society dame. I told you—you were better off without him.’ ”

  Julian grinned. “I never liked Christina much.”

  “Yes, well, when I heard that news, I could barely pay attention to the editor. I felt so—so betrayed. By you.”

  “Me?”

  Kendall laughed, and Julian ached with loss hearing that laughter, her peculiar blend of melancholy and joy.

  “Ridiculous, isn’t it?” Kendall said. “And after my meeting I’m walking through Washington Square and I thought, There’s a wedding present for your wife, her husband’s black son. I’d hurt you enough, Julian. I couldn’t . . . A week later, I went back to Paris.”

  Kendall glanced at her sundae. She had churned it to soup. “When Bobby was four, he started asking about his father. I wanted to tell him about you, but you’d said you didn’t want him burdened with your last name.”

  “Still don’t. He’s Bobby Wakefield. At least until he’s older.”

  Julian was eyeing Kendall. She glanced away.

  He said, “More to the story, is there?”

  “You always . . . how . . .”

  “You skipped the stuff you were ashamed of.”

  Kendall put down her spoon. “I was always determined to live my life according to a plan. When I devised this grand plan, I can’t say. In college? As a little girl—listening to my grandfather and my mother? Can’t blame Ezekiel for his obsession with being free, for believing you can’t rely on anyone except yourself. The same with Mama. But I didn’t understand how closed off they were and how lonely they must’ve been. So I kept at my plan, even when it didn’t make me happy, and look what I did to us.”

  “You were young, and I—”

  “And Bobby?”

  “Bobby? He’s terrific. You did that.”

  “Did what? Without Bobby I would’ve been as empty as an image in a photograph. And look at the life I forced on him.”

  “Jarvis Scales? That’s history. Both your families’ history, the history of the whole country. You were born into it. It wasn’t your doing.”

  “Not letting Bobby see his father was my fault. Not living in a family was my fault.”

  “If you could’ve—”

  “But I couldn’t. And I’m ashamed of that. Jesus, God, I didn’t have anyone serious in—”

  Kendall’s eyes were the color of an evergreen on fire, but she didn’t complete her sentence. “Let’s go get our son,” she said.

  They were outside the junior high, and Kendall was gazing at the buff-brick apartment building on the corner where they had lived—all those years ago. She said, “I once fell in love in that building.”

  “So did I.”

  Absentmindedly, Kendall threaded her arm through his, and a moment passed before she understood why Julian was looking at her with surprise. She began to pull back, which was when the bank of doors flew open and children stampeded out, their shouts and laughter like the ringing of bells in the bright-blue afternoon.

  They heard Bobby before they saw him: “Maman, je suis là!”

  Kendall jumped up to look for him. “Bobby! Bobby!”

  He ran to Kendall, holding on to her as though his body were a ballast that would make it impossible for her to disappear again. He sobbed once, twice, and Kendall murmured in French, “Don’t cry, I’m here,” but her eyes glistened with tears.

  Standing back, Kendall said, “Look how tall. Julian, what are you feeding this child?”

  Bobby laughed. “Pastrami.”

  The three of them squeezed into the front of the Thunderbird, Bobby in the middle, nestling between his parents and grinning as if he’d won a lifetime pass to the circus. “Dad, can Stevie sleep over on Friday? I want him to meet Mom.”

  “You got it.”

  Kendall was quiet, while Bobby told her about Stevie and his own straight-A report cards. As Julian drove into the garage, Bobby said, “Mom, you have to see my room.”

  Kendall said, “Go ahead. I’ll be right up.”

  Julian was unloading the luggage from the trunk when Kendall walked behind the car and stood before him, shaking.

  “Kendall?”

  She was struggling not to cry. “Other men . . . when we were together . . .”

  Julian waited.

  “It wasn’t us.”

  “It could be. If you stick around.”

  Nodding, Kendall tried to smile, but started to weep instead. Julian put his arms around her, believing that she wept in penance for her choices and in prayer for a chance to choose again; wept because she had lived according to the dictates of yesterday, guided by ghosts she barely knew existed; and because Julian was right—we are as haunted by the times we live in as by the monsters lurking in our own misshapen selves. Yet as she clung to him, Julian understood that Kendall wept for him and Bobby too—because there was no adequate payment for all that they had lost—and so Julian joined her, their sobs echoing in the garage, both of them weeping as if they wished that their tears could conquer time.

  A
cknowledgments

  Some books I’ve written had longer gestation periods than others; Wherever There Is Light has been the longest, and so I have an army of people to thank.

  I’m grateful to my agent, Susan Golomb, for her wisdom and persistence. Susan brings along two others with no shortage of these qualities, Soumeya Bendimerad and Scott Cohen, and now that Susan has joined Writers House, I’d like to thank Maja Nikolic and Kathryn Stuart for their help.

  My first editor, Greer Hendricks, has moved on to other adventures, but not before she improved my manuscript with her discerning eye, and then turned over the pages to the equally discerning assistant editor Daniella Wexler, and editorial director Peter Borland, both of whom helped to shape my novel into its final form.

  At Atria Books, I’d also like to thank publisher Judith Curr; associate publisher Suzanne Donahue; publicity manager Ariele Fredman; senior marketing manager Hillary Tisman; production editor Carla Benton; art director Albert Tang; cover designer Greg Mollica; and copy editor Peg Haller. Also a tip of the cap to the Simon & Schuster social media team: executive director of content and programming Sue Fleming; director of programming and merchandising Aimee Boyer; and digital marketing manager Amy Kattan.

  I discovered the sunlit corners of Miami Beach as a child, and I was blessed to have my cousins Richard Russ, Denis Russ, and Lori Mishkin as guides. Since then, my corps of South Florida cousins has increased by two—Gina Russ and Andrew Kern, both of whom continue to teach me about all things Miami. In New Jersey, two other cousins were quite helpful: Laynie Golden Gershwin, an excellent family historian, and Sam Gershwin, who answered my questions about the real-estate game. I’ve been hearing stories about Longy Zwillman since childhood from my grandmothers, Mae Golden and Etta Perelman, both of whom knew him and Newark when they were all young; and my later interviews about Longy with Dr. Milton Shoshkes and the late Dr. Arthur Bernstein were especially enlightening. Karen Robinson, a classmate at South Orange Junior High, spoke to me at length about the challenges faced by African Americans in our hometown during the 1960s; and for the technical knowledge of photography required to create Kendall Wakefield, I received generous amounts of help from Nicholas Argyros, the owner and executive director of the PhotoCenter of the Capital District; and from Judy Sanders, a first-rate journalist and photographer, who sadly passed away shortly before this novel was finished. Marc Douaisi improved my French—an uphill battle—but the errors that remain are mine.