Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  The sun is setting over the town of Aspen, the snow turning a magnificent orange-red. Down below, the skiers will begin on the nightlife phase of their day; I wonder when they sleep.

  “I know you are angry, Talcott. I know you are disappointed in your father.” He casts his moist eyes toward me, then slides them swiftly away. “You think you have caught him at something terrible. Well, tell me, then, what would you have done? Your daughter is dead, the police do nothing—and you think perhaps you know who killed her. What would you have done?”

  Now he waits. I have turned the same question over and over in my mind ever since Mariah’s visit started me thinking along this road. Were someone to do harm to Bentley, and were the law to offer no justice, would I go out and hire a killer? Or do the job myself? Maybe. Maybe not. No one, I suspect, can answer with confidence as long as the question is abstract. Only when something is at stake do we test the principles we so proudly parade.

  “I know what he did,” I finally say.

  Jack Ziegler shakes his thin head. “You think you know. But what do you know, really? Tell me, Talcott: what do you really know?”

  His sudden directness takes me by surprise. His eyes are boring into me now. I look away. I wonder why Uncle Jack is not worried about the bugs any more, but as I replay our conversation in my mind, I realize that the only incriminating lines have come from me, and they all involve the Judge, who is already dead … and that Uncle Jack has maneuvered me into a position in which I am smearing my own father’s memory for the benefit of the FBI’s listeners.

  So be it.

  “He hired a killer,” I finally say, wanting to match Uncle Jack’s directness with some of my own.

  “Pah! A killer! The man who mangled your sister was a killer, Talcott. And yet he was walking around free.”

  “The man my father thought did it. He was never convicted.”

  “Convicted? Pah! He was never arrested, never charged, never truly investigated.” His chilly eyes never waver.

  “Then how could my father know for sure that he had the right man?”

  “It is an error, Talcott, to think of this matter as a proposition, true or false.” A moist, ragged cough. “To be a man is to act. Sometimes you must act on the information available at the time. Perhaps it is accurate. Perhaps it is erroneous. Still you must act.”

  “I am not quite following you.”

  “And I am not able to enlighten you further.”

  Except that he has not enlightened me at all. I almost say this, but he has resumed the tone and didactic style of the lecturer. “Some of your questions have no answers, Talcott, and some of them have answers that you will never know. That is the way of the world, and our inability to discover all that we wish we could is what makes us mortals.” The oracular side of Jack Ziegler bothers me, perhaps for ethical reasons: What right has a murderer to lecture on the meaning of life? Does he perhaps know things we weaker mortals do not? Or is all of this oratory simply obfuscation, so that the bugs, if there are any, will never catch him admitting a crime? “And some of your questions do have answers to which you are entitled. I believe that your father wanted you, more than the other children, to have the answers. Because he always lived in some awe of you, Talcott. Some awe, some envy. And, always, he wanted your approval. More than he wanted Addison’s, more than he wanted Mariah’s.” I am not sure if I believe any of this. I am quite sure I do not want to hear it. “And so your father arranged for you to receive some of the answers. But you must also find them for yourself.”

  “Which means what?”

  “The arrangements, Talcott. You must discover the arrangements.” He frowns. “I do not know where your father buried the answers, but he buried them so deeply that only you would know where to look. That is why so many people have bothered you. But remember always that none of them can harm you.” A curt nod. “And that you must not abandon the search, Talcott. You must not.”

  “But why is the search so important?” The question I tried to ask Maxine, whose real name is unlikely to be Maxine.

  “Let us say … for your peace of mind.”

  I think this over. That cannot be quite all of it. Uncle Jack wants me to find whatever there is to find. It may even be, from his insistence, and Maxine’s, that somehow his … his ability to protect me … is linked to a promise that the search will succeed. Frowning again, wanting to escape this horrible room, I fire off my last shot.

  “And if I do discover the arrangements? What then?”

  “Why, then, everybody will be satisfied.” He falls silent, but I understand it is merely a pause: I even know what is coming next. And I am even right. “Perhaps, when you find what your father left, you should not examine it yourself. That would be a mistake. I think it would be best … yes. I shall expect you to share it with me first. Naturally.”

  “Naturally,” I mutter, but too softly for him to hear. Mallory Corcoran, Maxine of no last name, now Uncle Jack: When you find it, bring it to me! Yet Jack Ziegler, unlike the others, pronounces his demand with a sense of entitlement. Suggesting, perhaps, that I will simply be returning to him his own.

  “That is a fair exchange, I think.” Meaning, in return for his promise to protect me and my family.

  “Uh, sure. Yes.” His tone suggests that I am about to be dismissed. I have the frantic sense of having omitted something important. Before I can control my voice, I hear myself raising the one subject I had buried deep inside, covered with the heavy earth of other mysteries, and promised myself I would not mention. “Uncle Jack, my father told … someone … that he talked to you the week before he died.”

  “And?”

  “And I would like to know if he did.”

  I hold my breath, waiting for the hornets to attack, but the answer comes back so fluently that he has probably been planning it for months. “Yes, I saw Oliver. Why do you ask?”

  “Did he call you or did you call him?”

  “You sound like a prosecutor, Talcott.” He smiles peacefully, so I know he is annoyed. “But, since you ask, your father called me a few weeks before and said he would like to see me. I told him I would be in Virginia in the middle of September and we could meet then. We had a nice dinner, purely social.”

  “I see.” I have no doubt that his recitation matches precisely what the FBI has on its tapes of my father’s telephone call. But there are no recordings of the dinner conversation: Uncle Jack would have seen to that. I sense a growing unease in Abby’s godfather; I have struck close to the heart of what he most wishes to keep from me. Something happened at that dinner. Something that sent my father back to his shooting lessons? I know Jack Ziegler will never tell me. “I see,” I repeat, mystified.

  “And now our time is up, Talcott.” He coughs wetly.

  “If I could just ask one more—”

  He holds up a restraining hand and bellows for Henderson. I wonder how he decides which bodyguard to summon for which purposes.

  “Wait, Uncle Jack. Wait a minute.”

  Jack Ziegler’s head swivels slowly back toward me, and I can almost hear the creaking. His pale eyebrows are elevated, his sable eyes wary. He is not accustomed to being told to wait.

  “Yes, Talcott?” he says quietly as Henderson appears.

  I glance at the bodyguard, then incline my head and lower my voice. “You know that the man who was competing with my wife for that judgeship … that, um, a scandal killed off his chances.”

  That look of hot glee. “I told you there was a skeleton rattling around.”

  “Yes. Well. But I don’t quite understand … how you knew.” This is not all that I was going to ask, but as Henderson floats closer, the room seems to close in, the view from the window dizzying me once more, and I am suddenly sure I must not press further. “About the skeleton, I mean.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jack Ziegler whispers after a moment. “You must concentrate on the future, Talcott, not the past.”

  “But wait. How did you kn
ow? Only two people knew. And neither of them would ever …” Tell somebody like you, I do not quite say.

  Jack Ziegler knows exactly what I am thinking. I can read it in his tired face as he lays a wizened hand on my shoulder. “Nothing is ever known to only two people, Talcott.”

  “Are you saying somebody else knew? Somebody else told you?”

  He has lost interest. “Mr. Garland is leaving us, Henderson. Drive him to the condo where he will spend the night. One of the older ones down by the library, the ones with the blue doors. I do not recall the number, but Mr. Garland will show you which.”

  “I didn’t tell you where I was staying.” My objection comes out slowly, for a sudden thrill of fear has made me lethargic.

  “No, you did not,” agrees Abby’s godfather. He does not smile, his feeble voice and clouded expression never waver, and yet I know he has chosen, just for an instant, to show me the tiniest corner of his power. Maybe his goal is to persuade me to trust him, to believe he will protect me, and to bring him what I learn. If, on the other hand, his goal is to frighten me … well, in that he has succeeded.

  Henderson is standing on the stairs to the entryway, my coat draped over his arm. I thank Uncle Jack for seeing me. He offers his hand and I take it. He does not let go.

  “Talcott, listen to me. Listen with care. I am not a well man. And yet there are many who are interested in the state of my health. I take my measures, but they send their trucks and plant their bugs. I do not believe that you should try to get in touch with me again. Not unless you have uncovered your father’s arrangements.”

  “Why not? Wait. Why not?”

  Jack Ziegler almost smiles. It is a near thing. I do not think he is fighting the urge exactly; he simply lacks the energy. He waves to me instead, not speaking, then collapses in a fit of coughing. Mr. Harrison, instantly at his side, takes his arm and leads him away.

  On the way down the mountain, I glimpse headlights in the side mirror, but that need mean nothing: everybody in Aspen has a car. I wonder whether Jack Ziegler was right about the power company truck. I wonder how long it will be before Agent Nunzio learns of my visit, or if, perhaps, he was listening in all along. I glance at the mirror again as we turn sharply through a switchback, but the lights are gone.

  Henderson asks me if I had a good visit … and, all at once, I know where I have heard his velvety voice before. I could kick myself for not realizing the truth earlier. Mr. Henderson spoke to me on the telephone at two-fifty-one in the morning, sitting up after my beating, as he assured me with quiet confidence that my family and I would not be bothered again. Because his job is protecting Uncle Jack, he most likely called me from Aspen. But Elm Harbor is only a plane ride away, and the tools needed to cut off two men’s fingers are surely available at any hardware store.

  CHAPTER 45

  A CALL TO ARMS

  (I)

  THROUGH THE LIVING-ROOM WINDOW of John and Janice Brown’s small time-share, I watch the Range Rover glide deftly out of the parking lot. I walk around the place, turning on plenty of lights, and remembering the last time I was here, all those years ago, when my marriage was reasonably happy. I wonder whether there is any hope it can be happy again; if, for example, the man who telephoned that drizzly morning to call my wife baby is going to ruin our lives, or whether he is simply going to disappear, as, in the past, Kimmer’s men have always done.

  Or whether, this time, she will make me disappear instead.

  The condo is two floors, the first a narrow living-dining room with attached kitchen, the second two bedrooms, each with its own bath. I rummage in the refrigerator and find nothing but bottled water, and I decide that whoever left it will not mind if I treat myself to some. I have not eaten, and there is no food, so I check the telephone book and call a pizza delivery service and discover, on this exciting Aspen winter night, that the wait is ninety minutes or more.

  I tell them ninety minutes will be just fine.

  I return to the front window, wondering, as I did on the drive down the mountain, whether the breath I sensed on the back of my neck was imagination or a shadow, somebody tailing me. On Red Mountain, with only a couple of roads, it is not easy to tell. Another car can follow you all the way up or all the way down, and there is no real way to sort the sinister driver who means you ill from the resident of the place who is simply heading in the same direction that you are.

  I console myself that Henderson seemed unworried.

  I prod the lacy curtain to one side and peer out into the lot. A few drunken revelers stumble about, an occasional car swishes in or out, but I have no idea whether I am being watched—or, if I am, who is doing the watching. A defiant, tangled part of my imagination hopes that Maxine will stride boldly up to the door, but the more rational part of my mind proposes it is far more likely to be an agent of the FBI, even a fake one, like Foreman, who is, as Maxine reminded me on the Vineyard, very much alive.

  As there is no way to tell, I determine not to worry.

  Instead, I return to the kitchen and call home to tell Kimmer I am safe.

  I reach only the answering machine.

  There could be a thousand reasons for her absence, I warn myself. It is just past six here, so it is just past eight there, and my wife could be out shopping, Bentley of course with her. Naturally. Shopping, running some other errand: it has never been in Kimmer’s nature to share the details of her schedule with me.

  So I plug in my laptop and play online chess for half an hour or so, then check my e-mail, but find, as usual, nothing of consequence. My office voice mail reveals that Visa, too, is now interested in when precisely the next payment will be received, and I wonder how long I will be able to balance all these trips on a budget stretched thin to keep us in a house we cannot really afford.

  Seven o’clock, nine in the East. I unplug the laptop and call home again, and once more am treated to the answering machine. Odd, because it is Bentley’s bedtime. Maybe he is in the bath, I tell myself, and Kimmer cannot hear the phone ring or does not want to leave him. Except that she always takes the portable into the bathroom.

  The errand ran late, I decide.

  When, half an hour later, there is still no answer, I can no longer hold back the more ominous musings that have been clamoring for attention.

  For example, the fact that Colin Scott may be dead but Foreman is still alive.

  My family is in no danger, Uncle Jack just assured me again, and I believe that he believes it, but I am not supposed to be in any danger either, and somebody assaulted me in the middle of the campus. True, somebody who sounded just like Henderson called later to apologize, but he called later.

  Eight o’clock, ten in the East. I try Kimmer’s cell phone. I try her office. Then I try my home number again. When there is still no answer, I do something I almost never do, which is to call Dear Dana Worth at her house, two blocks from mine on Hobby Road. I suppose I do not call because Alison makes me uneasy, or maybe I am the one who makes her uneasy. Either way, we do not get along. So it is Alison, of course, who answers the phone.

  When I apologize for calling so late, Alison trots out the tired old joke, that she had to get up anyway because the phone was ringing. Her tone tells me that she is half serious, that she is annoyed that I called, so perhaps it is an awkward moment, a proposition on which I would as soon not speculate.

  When I ask for Dana, Alison asks why.

  “Because I need to talk to her.”

  “About what?”

  “It’s … it’s private.”

  A brief, furious silence over the line. “Well, she’s not here right now.”

  “Do you expect her soon?”

  “I have no idea,” Alison grumbles, and the anger in her tone tells me that the two of them have been fighting again, as they often do.

  I can hardly ask Alison, who has no reason to like me, to do what I had planned to ask of Dana—to go by the house and see if Kimmer and Bentley are home and safe—so I make my excuses a
nd hang up.

  Another call home. Still the answering machine.

  I cross to the living-room window again. There is little furniture in the place: a glass-topped dinette with six imitation leather chairs, an ugly green sofa and matching loveseat, two beanbag chairs on which, in a pinch, someone could sleep. The sofa, I suppose, also folds out into a bed. I push the curtain aside once more. Dark in Aspen. Dark on Hobby Road. More worried than ever, I return to the kitchen and try Don and Nina Felsenfeld, next door.

  No answer. No machine. I remember that they have gone to visit a daughter down in North Carolina for a few days. And it is ticking fast toward ten-thirty back East.

  I am beginning to tremble.

  Who else can I call in the neighborhood? Peter Van Dyke, who lives right across the street, scarcely knows I am alive. Tish Kirschbaum, my next-nearest neighbor from the law school, has a house right around the corner, but we are not close. Theo Mountain, who resides one street over, is surely asleep. Within a couple of blocks are Ethan Brinkley and Arnie Rosen and a few other colleagues, but on all of Hobby Hill, there is nobody, with the exception of Dear Dana, fellow outcast, I can imagine waking to help me scare away the bogeyman. If there is a bogeyman.

  Nothing is wrong, I keep telling myself. Everything is fine. Kimmer is asleep, I try. But the answering machine is right next to the bed. So she fell asleep downstairs, maybe in the family room, watching television and drinking wine. Except that Kimmer never drinks herself to sleep: it was the Judge who used to do that. She is at the office, then, finishing some urgent project, Bentley sleeping on the floor as she works, but the notion is insane, and, besides, I tried there already. So she is stuck in a traffic jam. Dead in a traffic accident. Maybe I should try the university hospital? She is out in the yard, being tortured by Foreman.