Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  I do not see it. Then I do. “His writer’s block.”

  “Exactly.” Theo almost cackles with glee. “I guess I scared him into never writing another book.”

  Or ordered him not to, so that his arrogant colleague would have to suffer years of listening to people mutter about his wasted potential.

  “Why would you do something like that?” The words jump out of me.

  “People like Marc Hadley deserve what they get.”

  “But why would he imagine he could get away with it?”

  “Marc thought he was clever. He asked me, maybe half a year after Perry died, if I remembered his paper on Cardozo. I told him I didn’t remember a word of it, that I never even read it.” Theo’s merry eyes twinkle. “That was a lie.”

  I am ready to go. I have had enough of Theo. I suspected his capacity for hate, but never imagined this streak of cruelty. Poor Marc is finished as a judicial nominee: that is the one nugget of actual news in this stream of reminiscence. Dana’s story is right on the money. The allegation of plagiarism is not survivable in today’s climate, even if it turns out not to be true—and, not having read Perry Mountain’s manuscript, I warn myself cautiously, I have no way to be sure. The whole tale could turn out to be fiction. Or a misunderstanding. But I doubt it. The lines of worry in Dahlia Hadley’s face that afternoon at the preschool were too stark; when she said something was eating away at her husband, she spoke the simple truth. Marc was not worried about people discovering that his daughter was sleeping with Lionel Eldridge; he was worried about his own terrible error of two decades back. Sitting in Theo Mountain’s paper-strewn office, I find myself growing lightheaded. Marc is out. Kimmer is in. The President wants quality and diversity, according to Ruthie Silverman, and my wife brings both: unless something pops up in her background check, my wife is going to become a federal judge.

  And maybe our marriage will be saved, despite my late father’s machinations.

  I hand back Theo’s battered old folder and thank him for his time. Theo snatches it from my hand and buries it afresh in his file cabinet, although not in the same drawer from which he initially pulled it.

  At the door, another thought strikes me.

  “Theo, don’t you think it’s awfully convenient, all of this coming up at just the right moment to knock Marc out of the box?”

  “Yes, I do.” A smile of reminiscence. “I’m reminded of what Mr. Justice Frankfurter supposedly said when he heard the news of Mr. Chief Justice Vinson’s death just before the reargument of Brown v. Board of Education in the Supreme Court: ‘This is the first indication that I have ever had that there is a God.’”

  Theo chortles madly. I wait until he settles down and then ask the other question that is burning in my mind: “Theo, you wouldn’t happen to know how the news really got out, would you? I mean, about the … alleged plagiarism.”

  “Believe me, Talcott, it’s genuine plagiarism.” He smiles at his own turn of a phrase. “What, you think I let the cat out of the bag? Well, you’re wrong. From what I hear, it was a student at UCLA. I told you.”

  “But do you believe that story?”

  Theo is finally exasperated. “Tal, come on. Sometimes you get actual, genuine good news. Try to appreciate those moments. They don’t come often.”

  “I suppose not,” I murmur, shaking his hand as I go, because Theo is of the generation that appreciates such niceties. But my mind is not in this office, or even in this building. My thoughts are back at the cemetery on the day we buried my father, when a sickly old man named Jack Ziegler told me to tell Kimmer not to worry about Marc Hadley. I do not think he has the staying power. Weren’t those the words? A fairly large skeleton is rattling around in his closet. Sooner or later, it is bound to tumble out.

  I’ll say.

  CHAPTER 36

  A BROTHERS TALE

  (I)

  I FINALLY REACH ADDISON on the quiet Sunday afternoon before classes resume. I have been calling him, on and off, since Mariah’s visit, and tried him on both Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. I have left messages on his machine at home and with his producer at the studio. I have tried his cell phone. I have sent e-mail. I have received, in response, nothing. In a fearful burst of inspiration, I even tracked down Beth Olin, the poet, who turns out to live in Jamestown, New York, but when she heard who I was and what I wanted she hung up on me, which answered the question of whether they are still together. I even thought of calling one of his ex-wives, but my boldness has its limits.

  “I’ve been away,” he tells me now, as I sit in my study eating a tuna sandwich and watching a fresh flurry of midwinter snow blowing around the street. Another four to six inches are forecast, but Kimmer went to the office anyway. Addison sounds exhausted. “Sorry.”

  “Away where your cell phone doesn’t work?” I ask peevishly.

  “Argentina.”

  “Argentina?”

  “I never told you? I was looking at land. I’ve been there, I don’t know, seven or eight times in the past two years. I’m thinking I might build a house down there.” To live in until the Democrats are back in the White House, maybe. “And I had such a good time I thought I’d stay a few days. The days became weeks and … well, anyway, I’m back.”

  Days became weeks?

  “So—what did you do? Took time off from the show?”

  “The show is getting a little old, to tell you the truth. I think it’s time for me to get back to work on the book.” Addison says something like this every few years, but all it ever means is that he is about to change jobs. Nobody I know has ever actually seen him write a line.

  “That would be great,” I offer loyally. “To do the book, I mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a history that needs to be written.”

  “Yeah.” It isn’t just exhaustion that is depressing my brother’s voice, I realize. There is a sense of resignation. I wonder what it is to which he is resigned. “Hey, guess what, bro? The FBI was out talking to me. About your wife.” A small chuckle. “Like, sure, I know anything about her.”

  “It’s her background check, Addison. They have to talk to everybody.”

  “I know that. I just don’t know why her damn background check has to include so many questions about my damn money.” But I am sure Addison remembers, as I do, the embarrassingly cursory investigation of the Judge. Procedures, it is said, have been tightened since those days. “So, anyway, you left lots of messages. Must be something important.”

  I have had plenty of time to think about how to handle this moment. I work around to the more urgent issue by starting with the lesser one.

  So I tell my brother about Mariah’s visit and the missing report from Jonathan Villard. I explain that there is no copy to be found anywhere, including the police files, where Meadows drew a blank. I tell him about the two pages of notes in the Judge’s handwriting. All we can glean from the notes, I add, is that the car that killed Abby had two people in it.

  “Huh,” is Addison’s only comment. Then he adds, surprised, “You guys have made a lot of progress,” and I know, at that moment, that I am right. My brother pauses again, but I wait him out. Finally, he asks the question that surely troubles him most: “So, why are you telling me this?”

  “You know why,” I say softly. Waiting for his answer, I can hear the television in the family room, where Bentley is watching a squeakyclean video that John and Janice Brown, his godparents, gave him for Christmas. Two nights ago, Kimmer and I attended the annual post-holiday bash of Lemaster Carlyle’s fraternity, joining a couple of hundred other well-to-do members of the darker nation, dancing the electric slide, the cha-cha slide, and a brand-new invention known as the dot-com slide into the wee hours of the morning. Maybe we do have a bit of a social life after all.

  “No, I don’t know why,” says my big brother, his voice now peevish.

  “Because you know where the report is.”

  “I what?”

  “You know
where it is. Or you know what was in it.”

  “What makes you think that?” Addison sounds more frightened than irritated. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “I think you do. Remember the day we buried the Judge? You were up there by the grave, and I came over to talk to you? Remember what you said? You said you wondered if we’d ever find the folks who were in the car that killed Abby. That’s what you said, the folks.”

  “You heard me wrong,” he says after a pause.

  “I don’t think so. There isn’t any word I could mistake for folks. No word that’s singular.” Silence. “All these years, Addison, everybody in the family has talked about finding the driver of the car. Mom used to say it before she died. And Dad. And me and Mariah, and you, too. But at the cemetery you knew there were two people in the car. I think you knew because you read the report.”

  “That’s a little thin,” Addison announces, but I can tell his heart is not in the quarrel he is trying to provoke. “Maybe I just misspoke. Maybe I was guessing. You can’t make anything out of it.”

  “Come on, Addison, don’t play games. You know I’m right. Either the Judge gave you a copy or you just took it from his files. But I know you’ve read it. And I’d like to know what’s in it.”

  Another pause, longer this time. I hear what might be a voice in the background, then Addison’s whispered reply. He seems to be telling somebody to give him a minute. Maybe somebody he took to Argentina with him. Or somebody he didn’t.

  Then my brother is back.

  “Shit,” he says.

  (II)

  ADDISON IS UNHAPPY. I am complicating his life. He would rather be off lecturing on a college campus or looking at property in South America or doing his talk show, even if it is getting a little old—anything other than spending emotionally costly time with a member of his family. All three Garland children have spent our adulthoods fleeing from our father, but Addison fled the furthest, which might be why he was the one the Judge loved best. Until the last couple of months, I have always admired Addison, but the way he has been avoiding me has tested my fraternal commitment.

  “Look, my brother, I don’t actually have a copy of the report. I never had a copy. I just read it once.” Another pause, but he can find no escape. “Dad showed it to me.”

  I draw in a breath. Addison sounds so nervous that I am not sure whether to believe a word he says. “Okay. So, what was in it?”

  “You don’t want to know any more about it, Misha.” Addison’s voice hardens. “You really don’t.”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “You’re crazy. You’re as crazy as he was.”

  Probably he means the Judge, but I suppose there are plenty of other candidates as well. A week and a half ago, I finally got a call back from Special Agent Nunzio. Without mentioning Maxine, I told him I thought Father Bishop was murdered by mistake. He thanked me coolly for my idea and promised unenthusiastically to look into it. Could have been worse.

  “I just want to know the truth,” I tell my brother calmly.

  Addison sighs. “I don’t understand you, Tal. You’re a Christian, right? And I think it says somewhere you’re supposed to make your life a work of forgiveness, not a work of vengeance.”

  This sets me back even further. I thought Maxine left me at sea, but this must set some kind of record for the most Delphic reply.

  “I’m not seeking any vengeance.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s what you say. But maybe it’s bullshit.” Addison loves vulgarity, believing, I suspect, that it makes his otherwise cultured Garland speech more authentically black. Actually it sounds forced, like a child playing with a new vocabulary. “You might think you don’t want vengeance, but you might be wrong. You don’t really know what’s in your heart making you act this way. You need to ask God to heal your heart, bro.”

  I have long since stopped eating. I am ruining my appetite trying to fight through all the verbal smoke Addison is blowing across the miles; and to understand why he is doing it.

  Addison, meanwhile, is quoting Scripture. “‘Bless those who persecute you,’ Paul tells us in Romans 12. Remember? ‘Do not repay anyone evil for evil.’ And if you read the story of Samson …”

  I cut him off, something I have hardly ever done since childhood. “I’m not trying to return evil for evil, Addison. Come on. I’m not trying to do anything to anybody. I’m just trying to find out what’s going on.”

  “Yeah, you say that. But, see, it could be that there’s shit that, if you knew, you would want a piece of somebody.”

  “Addison, please. I’m not trying to hurt anybody.” Because it has occurred to me that the vengeance my brother is discussing might have something to do with himself. “I just need to know what was in the report.”

  “No, you don’t. Believe me. You don’t need to know, you don’t want to know. You want to leave the past in the past, bro, and move on to the future. You want to love your wife and family and take care of business at home. You want to face the world with a whole lot of forgiveness in your heart. But you absolutely do not want to know what was in that report.”

  “Why not?”

  “Temptation. Do you want to be led into temptation? Because that report was full of temptation to sin, believe me.”

  Setting me back even more. But I have made it this far. I press on.

  “Addison, please. At least tell me when Dad showed it to you.”

  Another pause as the wheels go round in that subtle, manipulative mind. “Say a year ago. A little more. Yeah. Last fall.”

  I have the sense that he is coloring the truth, shading it, shifting it in a comfortable direction, the way witnesses often do. I decide to settle in for a long game, concealing my own impatience while allowing his to grow. Having taken a deposition or two in my time, I understand the virtue of circling gradually to the main point, and pretending to be bored when you get there.

  “Do you know why he showed it to you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, can you tell me how he came to show it to you?”

  Again my brother makes me wait. I do not understand what is worrying him so, but I can feel its effects through the telephone line. “Like I said,” he begins, “it was maybe a year and a half ago. Dad called. He was coming to Chicago to give some speech, and he wanted to know if we could get together for dinner or something. I said yeah, sure, whatever. I mean, you know, I’m not into his kind of politics, but he was my father, okay? So we had dinner, over at his hotel. One of those elegant little private places downtown. Not in the dining room, up in his suite. Naturally he had a suite. Huge. Two bedrooms, like he needed them, right? But, you know, all those right-wing crazies he always used to speak to, they loved him. They never spared any expense. Listen. He got these huge fees, right? Thirty thousand dollars a pop? Forty? Sometimes more. How come? So his audience could go back to the country club and tell their golf buddies that a black man agreed with their right-wing craziness, which meant that it was true, right?” I have never heard such hostility in his voice. Or maybe I just never realized quite how much Addison hated the Judge.

  “So, anyway, we have dinner up in his suite. He says he doesn’t want anybody to hear what we’re talking about. So I’m joking around, okay, and I say, ‘Well, what if they bugged your suite?’ And he doesn’t laugh. He takes it very seriously. He looks at me and he says, ‘Do you think they might have?’ Or something like that. And I’m, like, uh-oh. So I tell him I was only joking and he says he changed suites once already just to be on the safe side. And I tell him yeah, that was a smart move, but I’m thinking that he’s, you know, maybe he’s … well, you know. Maybe there’s some kind of problem. Are you sure you wanna hear this?”

  “Yes.” My voice is tight.

  “Okay. You asked for it. We sit down to dinner at the table—the suite had like a dining area. And he has a couple of folders, and I’m thinking we’re gonna talk about the family finances. You know, like, Here’s where all
the money is if anything happens to me? And he has that really serious look on his face, the one he used to use when he was gonna give us one of his lectures, you know, about right and wrong, keeping your promises, all the bullshit he used to talk to us about. And he gets real excited and he says to me, he says, ‘Son, we have to talk about something important,’ and I’m, like, yes, I was right. He says it might be a little tough to take, and I just sit up straight and nod, and he says there’s a part of his life he’s never really talked to the family about, and I nod, and he says he’s coming to me because I’m the eldest child, and I nod my head again.”

  My face burns at this—the old, familiar jealousy over Addison’s favored place in the Judge’s heart—but I have the wit, for once, to remain silent.

  “And so now I think he’s gonna tell me about the money, but, instead, he opens the folder and he pulls out a sheaf of papers, five or six pages, and he says to me, ‘I want you to read this. You need to know.’ I ask him what it is. I’m thinking it’s like an investment plan or something. And he says to me, ‘This is Villard’s report.’ And so I ask him who Villard is. I wasn’t goofing, I really didn’t remember. And he gets mad and he says, ‘Son, I told you to read it, so just read it.’ You know what he could be like. ‘Just read it.’ So I did.”

  Addison clams up. He has no sense of leaving a story unfinished. I asked how he came to read the report and he has told me.

  “Did he say why he wanted you to read it?”

  “He had some story. I don’t know. Something had spooked him.”

  “Spooked him?”

  “I don’t know, okay? I mean, I really didn’t listen that closely. I wasn’t interested.”

  “Not interested? Addison, he was our father!”