Jack of Spades

by Oates, Joyce Carol

  In a high-pitched theatrical voice Haider read passages from her material, and then passages from Andrew J. Rush—“You see? This is ‘theft’—‘plagi-rism.’ Not only is the scoundrel stealing my words but he is stealing from my life.”

  These wild accusations went on for some time. How painful it would have been if I’d been seated at the defense table with Elliot Grossman! As it was, my eyes filled with tears of mortification. I had heard audio books of my novels read by sympathetic professionals but I had never heard my prose read aloud in such an accusatory and derisive way; the carefully constructed phrases, the “clever” similes, the unusual words (claustral, sere) selected from my battered old Writer’s Thesaurus now seemed to me pathetic, self-conscious preening. Not only was Haider accusing me of plagiarizing her prose but the prose itself, exposed to the bemused audience in the courtroom, was achingly bad.

  Haider’s voice rose shrilly: “As these works of C. W. Haider he has pillaged have not yet been published it is clear that the scoundrel broke into my house, that is to say my late father Walter Haider’s house, at 88 Tumbrel Place, to steal them by some photocopying device . . .”

  In the courtroom, ripples of laughter. What a nightmare!

  Grossman was right, it had been a terrible mistake to come here. I thought—It was Jack of Spades who brought me here. In the future I must avoid giving in to the impulsive and anarchic impulses of Jack of Spades.

  At last Judge Carson cut the plaintiff off in mid-sentence, noting that she had made her point several times. He urged Grossman to respond—“Concisely, please.”

  It was Grossman’s contention that the case was absurd prima facie—the defendant Andrew J. Rush was a “distinguished, long-established master of the mystery genre” whose published work dated back to the late 1980s; Rush was the “bestselling author” of twenty-eight mystery novels translated into that many, or more, languages; indeed, Rush was a local citizen known for his civic involvement and his philanthropy. If there appeared to be “parallels” and “echoes” of the plaintiff’s prose in Rush’s prose, as the plaintiff had read it to the court, it was not clear that the plaintiff’s prose preceded the defendant’s prose, for the plaintiff had not published her work, and could offer no provable dates of composition. “Theft of a private life” could hardly be proven in any case, for nothing in Rush’s novels was evidently, obviously, or literally traceable to the plaintiff’s private life; if there were “coincidences” that was all that they were—“coincidences.” Thus, Grossman moved to dismiss.

  Furiously Haider objected that the journals were indeed “dated”—by her; and a scientific laboratory could “date” the manuscripts if there was any doubt. Grossman retorted that the journals were only dated “in the plaintiff’s own hand”—and until a reputable scientific laboratory dated the manuscripts precisely, the plaintiff had not even the glimmering of a case. Again, he moved to dismiss the case as a nuisance suit, not worthy of serious judicial consideration.

  Haider was becoming increasingly excited. The beret had slipped from her head and her air of superiority was unraveling. Judge Carson, whose courteous manner she’d taken for granted, as her due, was no longer so indulgent, interrupting her with his gavel, and ruling repeatedly against her, insisting that she allow Grossman to speak. Yet Haider seemed unable to keep from interrupting Grossman as if a demon were speaking through her: “No! No, no! This is my writing, sir! I am a writer, too—I am a writer of prose and poetry! He has broken and entered my residence—for years!”—“These are my precious memories, Your Honor, for this happened to me”—“The plagiarist takes my precious memories from me, and things that happened to me, and to my family, and he twists them into his fiction so that it did not happen this way at all but is a nefarious LIE.”

  Again Grossman moved to dismiss the “utterly flimsy, insubstantial and meretricious” case and with a single rap of his gavel Judge Carson concurred. By this point Carson was florid-faced and smarting with indignation and Haider had grown so excited, and so disheveled, the bailiff and a county sheriff’s deputy hurried forward to escort her from the courtroom.

  “You will please leave the courtroom peaceably, Ms. Haider. At once.”

  “Sir, I am here to be heard. I will have justice. I will not leave until I have justice.”

  Somehow it happened, the (portly, middle-aged) bailiff was on the floor, and—(was this possible or did I, in the confusion of the moment, imagine it)—Haider was kicking at him with her stubby-toed shoes, as one might kick at a recalcitrant door to open it.

  Haider was pushing at restraining hands—a half-dozen hands by this time. Haider was screaming, and Haider was shrieking. Yellowed manuscripts fell to the floor, the cardboard file was ­upended—papers, documents, journals fell in a cascade. Hardcover books by Andrew J. Rush were kicked underfoot. It appeared that Haider was suffering some sort of attack, like an epileptic fit; several uniformed officers were trying to restrain her. Did I imagine it, the afflicted woman’s eyes had rolled back in her head, her distended mouth was wet with saliva like the froth of madness . . . In a loud voice Judge Carson declared the morning’s session closed. Hurriedly he left the room by a rear door. Poor man! I could see the abject horror in his face. The judge of a small suburban court is not accustomed to brute, physical reality—only to words. But now, words had erupted into brute, physical reality.

  We were being ordered to vacate the courtroom. With others I filed out into the corridor even as the wild-white-haired woman screamed and sobbed at the front of the room, still scuffling with deputies—Justice! I will have—justice!

  It is rare to hear the sound of madness. The actual, tearing-at-the-heart sound of another’s madness.

  You see? The enemy was defeated.

  If more punishment is required, more punishment will be exacted.

  9 Victor

  On the phone, Grossman was triumphant.

  “A total victory, Andrew! Maybe you should’ve been there, it was quite a performance.”

  “Was it!”—I managed to sound surprised, just slightly apprehensive.

  “I mean, the plaintiff gave quite a performance. Poor woman is deranged as we’d thought.” But Grossman laughed in exhilaration.

  I was driving home when Grossman called my cell phone to tell me the good news. Seeing his name in the caller ID I’d been reluctant to answer with a childish fear that, though I knew better, the court case had turned out badly for me after all.

  The entire episode in the courtroom had been dreamlike and unreal. Truly there was something nightmarish about the wild-white-haired C. W. Haider who’d been not only defeated but humiliated in a public place. I could hear the poor woman’s cries and sobs, her demands for justice.

  I thought—But I am not responsible for any of this. She brought this disaster on herself.

  “The judge dismissed as I knew he would. He let the complainant present her ridiculous case—gave her plenty of rope to hang herself. As I thought, ‘C. W. Haider’ turned out to be a local crank—not looking for money, I think—so much as some kind of public apology from you, and what she calls ‘damages.’ Evidently she’s from a well-known local family and has money, or rather has inherited money. You’d have been amused, Andrew—she was claiming that you, a bestselling writer, had actually broken into her house and stolen her writing—literally! You’d stolen ideas and prose passages from her manuscripts and from her journals—it looked like thousands of pages of handwritten journals. Jesus! Of course she had no proof of anything—just seemed to think that people should take her word for it. The way she addressed the court, you’d have thought she was some sort of royalty. Her major claim was that some manuscripts she’d written predated your novels—which were ‘derived’ from them—but there was no way to date the manuscripts, even if anyone wanted to take her ridiculous claims seriously. Unsurprisingly she’s a writer who has never been published except by a few vanity p
resses. She’s been writing a work-in-progress for decades. She was also claiming that you’d stolen events from her life—either you’ve written about her life literally, or you’ve changed it so much that it’s a ‘nefarious lie.’” Grossman laughed heartily. Through a buzzing in my ears I heard only part of what he was saying but I understood his reiterated words—deranged, pathetic, crazy, dismissed.

  “Essentially the case is finished, Andrew. Your role is finished—you can forget about ‘C. W. Haider.’ I will apply for an injunction to keep her from harassing you further, and I will demand that the complainant pay legal fees and court costs. Though you’re not paying my fee, and the publishing house has me on retainer, it’s always a good idea to sue people like Haider for all that you can, to discourage them from initiating lawsuits. Imagine, if the case had gone to a jury, and some paranoid crank on the jury connected with Haider—it could have turned out badly for you.” Grossman was working himself up to righteous indignation now. I’d had to pull over to the side of the road to listen to him.

  Dazedly, I’d left the courthouse avoiding all eyes, hoping that no one would recognize me. Hearing my prose read aloud in that grating jeering voice had been lacerating. Especially, I’d made a point of avoiding Elliot Grossman who was lingering on the courthouse steps talking animatedly with fellow lawyers—an assertive individual, very New York in manner, flush with victory and feeling the anticlimax of the abrupt dismissal. Grossman had been brought by limousine all the way from midtown Manhattan to Harbourton, New Jersey, and was finished with his day’s work before 2:00 P.M.—still supercharged with adrenaline.

  By the time I’d left the courthouse parking lot, I had heard a siren—I’d seen an ambulance pull up to the front entrance. A small crowd had gathered on the walk in front of the building, parting just enough to allow medical workers to hurry through.

  I’d looked quickly away. I hadn’t wanted to see even a glimpse of the stricken white-haired woman.

  But if you are very lucky, she will die now.

  She will die, and you will never be exposed.

  In his cruel jubilant voice Grossman was boasting again of how well the case had gone, exactly as he’d anticipated. Was he expecting me to praise him? Thank him—again?

  “Something for you to write about in one of your thrillers, eh, Andrew?”

  I felt the sting of insult. As if I had nothing better to write about than the pathetic C. W. Haider!

  Through a haze of headache pain, I thanked Grossman. I praised him, and I assured him that I would tell my editor how brilliantly he’d handled the case, but—“I don’t think that we should pursue the plaintiff further. Let’s drop the pathetic case now.”

  “What do you mean, ‘let it drop’? I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to sue her for—whatever you’d said: fees, court costs. Let’s just let it drop.”

  “Andrew, the plaintiff lost her case and she should pay costs. She should pay for her recklessness in bringing suit. Why should your publisher pay?”

  “I’ll pay. I’ll pay your fee and whatever the costs are. Just send me a bill.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the innocent party. My fee is paid by the publishing house. And I am well paid. But Haider is the losing party, and she should pay. Fees are deterrents in nuisance cases. Otherwise every idiot would be suing every other idiot and the courts would be jammed. This woman comes from a well-to-do family, after all.”

  I insisted, I didn’t want to further humiliate C. W. Haider. She was hospitalized—was she? She’d collapsed in the courtroom, and had to be taken away by ambulance . . .

  “How do you know that, Andrew?”

  “You told me.”

  “Did I? I don’t remember telling you.”

  Perspiration broke out on my forehead, and inside my clothes. My head throbbed with pain. I could not recall whether Grossman had told me any of this.

  “Yes, you said—you told me that Haider had collapsed in the courtroom and an ambulance was called. Just a few minutes ago, you told me this.”

  “Did I!”—it seemed that Grossman was genuinely perplexed.

  Quickly I stammered that I had to hang up, I couldn’t drive while talking on the phone and would speak with him another time.

  It was several minutes before I felt strong enough, and my scattered thoughts focused enough, for me to drive the rest of the way home to Mill Brook House.

  I entered the house, which was very quiet. I hadn’t noticed if Irina’s car was in the driveway. No one appeared to be home.

  Not even the cleaning woman. No one.

  Silence rolled at me, in waves.

  They are all dead, and you are free.

  And you are blameless.

  10 “Spotless As a Lamb”

  And then, I waited.

  The Harbourton Weekly came out on Wednesdays.

  Stealing myself for a withering front-page headline—Local Author Rush Sued for Theft, Plagiarism in Hecate Co. Court.

  There were no stories about the events of Monday on local TV or radio. No reporters tried to contact me. Nor did Irina seem to know that something upsetting had occurred in my life, and of course I didn’t tell her.

  When at last the Weekly was delivered to our mailbox, and I opened it hurriedly, I saw nothing on the front page that bore my name or photograph. No Rush, no Haider.

  Slowly I walked back to the house. My hands were trembling and my eyes filled with moisture.

  In sudden dread I stopped to open the Weekly, to scan the “Court Beat” column on page six, even the “Police Blotter”—nothing.

  Through the entire paper, nothing.

  My heart lifted. I laughed aloud, in gratitude. I felt the euphoria of one who has escaped punishment, though I could not have said why.

  II

  11 Perfect Crime

  And now, it is time.

  For Andrew J. Rush to commit a perfect crime.

  In the night waking with a lurch of my heart. And my jaws aching as if I’d been grinding my back teeth.

  What time was it?—barely I could make out the numerals on the bedside clock.

  That time before dawn that is not-yet-dawn. The Hour of the Wolf it is called, when people who are gravely ill are most susceptible to death.

  Can’t you see? In front of your eyes?

  Your enemy—helpless.

  Your enemy—waiting.

  On the farther side of the bed Irina was sleeping. Since moving to Mill Brook House we’d acquired a “king-sized” bed vast as a field in which two living breathing heat-producing bodies can lie oblivious of each other through the night.

  Though sometimes, it is true that Irina will call out to me, “Andrew? Are you all right?”

  Or, “Andrew? Are you having a bad dream?”

  Or, “Andrew! You were grinding your teeth again.”

  This time, Irina wasn’t (evidently) awake. Something had roused me from sleep at the climax of a dream of such chaos and confusion I’d immediately forgotten it—or rather, whatever it had been, possibly, fleetingly, involving the wild-white-haired woman—I was no longer able to recall.

  It was in such ways, at such times, that Jack of Spades most directly spoke to me. But I wasn’t always sure what Jack of Spades meant by his taunting words.

  . . . time.

  . . . perfect crime.

  12 Temptation

  “Andrew? May I have a minute?”

  It was Grossman. I had not wanted to answer the phone but felt compelled out of duty.

  A week had passed since the hearing in the Hecate County courthouse. My dread of being exposed in the local media was abating slowly and I was back to work, or nearly. Still I checked my e-mail with trepidation, and rarely answered the phone unless I recognized the caller as someone whom I knew well and could trust.

  I�
��d hoped not to hear from my publisher’s lawyer again. The episode had been upsetting in ways I could not have explained. So far as I was concerned, the case was over.

  I was determined not to think of C. W. Haider ever again—though at weak moments I found myself staring into space and hearing the furious wrathful voice I will have justice!

  I wondered if the wild-white-haired woman had died in the hospital. For all I knew, she might have died of a stroke or a heart attack in the ambulance. For a fleeting moment I thought that Grossman might have been calling to tell me this and I did not know if I would feel relief, or guilty regret.

  But Grossman’s voice was ebullient, loud in my ear.

  “Very interesting development, Andrew! Are you prepared for a surprise?”

  No. No more surprises.

  “I suppose so. Yes.”

  “Remember, I’d predicted that this C. W. Haider had to be a ‘local crank’?—turns out that this is so. She has filed complaints against other writers—major writers—just as she did you. My paralegal did a little investigating, and discovered that Haider tried to sue Stephen King a few years ago. I wasn’t representing King at that time but I know the attorney who worked with him, and I gave him a call, and guess what, Andrew—”