A Lethal Legacy (2 page)

 Gary was as handsome
as ever. My ex-wife Kelsey said he reminded her of Rock Hudson, but to me, he
was just Gary.

"This is my
friend Rick," Gary said as a young man in his twenties approached from the
hallway.

"Hello, Ed.
Heard a lot about you." He grabbed my hand before I could think of a
response. I’d never heard of Rick before this moment. The last time I talked to
Gary he had been living with someone else.

We walked into the
living room just as the phone rang. Gary answered it.

Rick and I tried to
start a conversation, but both realized that our whole reason for being
together in this apartment revolved around the person on the phone. We tried to
talk about the view of Royal Street from the balcony, but both of us failed as
we kept our ears finely tuned to the voice emanating from the other side of the
room.

"Yes, this is
Gary Townsend. Who's this?" Gary asked.

"Kristina? Kris?
My daughter?" Rick and I looked at one another in astonishment as we heard
Gary's questioning voice. It had been fifteen years since Gary had any contact
with his daughter from his first marriage.

"Of course, I
want to see you. I've thought about you every day for the last fifteen years.
Yes, yes, really. I want to see you." he repeated. There was silence for a
moment. "Sure, don't worry, I'll make the arrangements tonight. Give me
your phone number. Right. OK, got it. And Kristina? Thanks for calling."
He hung up the phone.

Gary turned toward
us. "That was Kristina."

"What did she
want?" I asked. The feeling of dread I that left when I entered the
apartment, suddenly returned.

"She wants to
fly here this weekend, if I can arrange it." Gary said.

"That's
wonderful, Gar," Rick said as he embraced him.

Gary shrugged off
Rick's embrace. I could tell he was embarrassed by the open affection in front
of me. Rick must have sensed it too because soon afterwards he made his excuses
and left for his own apartment for the night.

"How did she
find you?" I asked after Rick left.

"We didn't
really discuss it. Maybe Pam?"

"Pam? Have you
kept in touch with her?"

"No, but it
wouldn't have been hard to trace me. Who cares about all that? She sounds great
and wants to see me. That's all that matters."

 "Are you going
to call Claire and Philip?" I asked. Claire's heart had been broken when
Pam took away her only grandchild so abruptly years earlier.

"No, I think
I'll wait until after we meet. Be sure everything's OK, you know. Besides if
it's not, Dad will find some way to blame me." Gary plopped his body down
on the couch.

"What's wrong,
Gary?" I asked.

"Nothing,
really. Just a little overwhelmed. It's been a long time. Who knows what Pam
has told her?"

He looked down at his
hands as his forefinger began digging into his thumb. "Geez, I haven't
done this in a while," he said in amazement as his fingers remembered the
old ritual. So far, he hadn't drawn blood.

"Maybe she
hasn't told Kristina anything. Gary, I probably should tell you
something," I said.

"What?"

"I never told
you this, but I promised Pam and I..." I paused as I searched for the
words to explain.

"Come on, Ed,
just say it."

"Pam used to
call me after the divorce. But she would never tell me where they were. When I
left Ann Arbor, she didn't know how to reach me anymore, so I haven't heard
anything for ten years or so." I looked at Gary to get his reaction.

"I wish you'd
told me before now," he said.

"I wanted to,
believe me, but I promised Pam."

"Yeah, you take
your promises pretty seriously, don't you? That's something we don't have in
common. What do you think about Rick?" he asked.

"Rick?" I
hadn't expected that question. "He seems like an all right guy, I guess.
We only talked for a few minutes. What happened to John?" John had been
Gary's partner for the past several years, and I had been waiting to ask Gary
where he was.

"I guess even when
I'm living like you always said I should, I still can't keep my promises. John
got fed up just like everyone else and left." Gary stared at the floor.
"I can't seem to be faithful for very long."

"Even
Rick?"

"It's too soon
to tell, Cuz." Gary dug deeper into his thumb pulling back skin at the
edge of the nail. "Sorry, Ed; but I need to go to bed. Make yourself at
home. The guest room is quite comfortable." Gary patted me on the shoulder
sadly, and then turned to walk down the hallway to his room at the end.

I sat for a long time
with the lights low. I thought about Kristina's call and what Gary said about
his inability to remain faithful. My mind began to drift back through the
years. I wondered if Pam told Kristina why they left Gary. My uneasiness with
Kristina's arrival was reinforced by something I remembered Pam telling me when
she left Gary back then.

I asked Pam if she
was certain that she wanted sole custody of Kristina since she had never been
very maternal with her young daughter.

"You bet, Eddie.
She'll be my trump card if I need one in the future," she said.

Gary tried to book a
flight from Las Vegas to New Orleans the next day, but since it was
Thanksgiving, it was impossible. The best he could do was book a red eye flight
leaving Las Vegas at midnight, arriving in New Orleans around 8:30 Friday
morning.

Gary cooked a gourmet
Thanksgiving meal unlike anything we'd ever had growing up in Michigan. Instead
of turkey, we had roast duck, and instead of pumpkin pie, we had a pumpkin
soufflé. The Townsend women would have been clucking and buzzing over this
meal, for sure.

He and Rick invited
several friends over for dinner. During the meal, a festive atmosphere reigned.
Gary participated and told jokes, and to everyone but me, it looked as if he was
having a carefree time. But I noticed the distant look in his eyes while the
others talked. And he continued to pick at his thumb until it was raw.

Late in the afternoon
while Rick and the others cleaned up Gary's fanciful mess, I asked Gary if we
could go out and walk around Bourbon Street. Whenever we spent time together
with both our families when we were younger, a walk around the block became our
ritual. Usually at the Townsend gatherings, we left to escape our fathers.
Today, we just wanted time alone.

"So how do you
think Kristina found you?" I asked as we stepped out into the late
afternoon shadows and headed down Royal.

"Pam must have
told her something. I didn't really think to ask when she first called, and
when I called her back about the flight, I forgot. I'll be honest with you, I'm
a little uneasy about her visit, even though I'm anxious to see her."

"Is Rick going
to the airport with you?"

"I don't think
so, Ed. I thought it'd be better if you came. If you're there, we might get
through those first awkward moments a little more easily. You're family, and you
were friends with Pam. Something no one else in the family managed. Do you mind?"
Again, he turned to me.

"No, I suppose
it would be better to have a third party. I’m honored. By the way, did she
mention a stepfather?"

"No, we really
didn't talk about her life. Why?"

"In one of Pam's
last calls, she mentioned that she was getting married again to an Oscar
Timmons."

"Maybe Oscar
could make her happy."

"Or maybe no one
could," I said.

We turned onto
Bourbon Street still keeping up our usual pace.

"I'd take you to
my favorite bar, but it's not open on the holidays. All those gay boys go home
and play normal on Thanksgiving, you know," Gary said without bitterness,
and then he winked at me. "Instead I'm taking you to the classiest joint
on Bourbon Street."

"And the girls
will still come and dance just for you." I poked his ribs. He threw back
his head and laughed heartily.

"That's right,
Cuz. Wacky world, ain't it?"

We spent the next
hour in a strip club drinking beer and reconnecting. It never took Gary and me
very long to go back to that relationship we had always shared. The strippers
did pay more attention to Gary than to me. We finally decided that we had given
the others enough time to get the place cleaned up, so we downed the last of
our drafts. With a wink in my direction, Gary slipped a bill into the G-string
of the stripper performing just for him before we walked out the door and into
the nightlife of Bourbon Street.

As I did every night before falling asleep, I wrote in my journal,
not about my life, but about ideas for my next novel. This night in New Orleans
where the uneasiness remained on my shoulders, I pondered several ideas before
settling on one that I had tossed around on a previous visit to New Orleans.

When he stepped down from the stage, groping hands reached to
possess him. He smiled warmly, looking in the audience for that one person
whose opinion mattered. Finally, he spotted him walking away toward the exit,
sadly shaking his head.

The next morning, I
could hear Gary moving around the apartment before dawn. Once I smelled the
rich chicory coffee brewing, I knew sleep would be impossible for me, too. We
left for the airport earlier than needed, but waiting there for an hour seemed
easier than pacing in the apartment.

Gary told me that he’d
given Kristina a detailed physical description of both of us so it would be
easy for her to find us when she came off the plane. Gary need not have wasted
his breath. The minute we saw Kristina, we both knew her. She looked exactly
like a female version of Gary with her dark hair and chiseled jaw line and high
cheekbones. She had Pam's blue eyes and the beginnings of her voluptuous body,
but that was the only resemblance between mother and daughter. However, no one
would doubt the familial relationship of the father and daughter as they walked
toward one another.

At first, they shook
hands, but then Gary saw how ridiculous that gesture seemed. He reached out
with both arms to embrace his daughter. Kristina returned the hug. Then Gary
held her at arm's length looking into her eyes.

"I can't believe
it, Kristina. No matter how many times I tried to imagine you, I just
couldn't," Gary said.

"Please call me
Kris."

"OK, Kris, this
is my cousin, Ed Townsend."

"Kris, it's good
to see you again, although the last time I saw you, I was a little
taller." I tried to keep my tone light, although seeing a female version
of Gary left me shaken.

"Nice to meet
you, Ed." Kris reached out to shake my hand. "You know I think I have
a vague memory of talking to you on the phone once. Is that possible?" She
reached up and touched the side of my face as she had done sixteen years ago
when she was just two. I shuddered.

"Good memory.
Yes, we did talk once when you were about seven. I tried to explain who I was,
but I don't think you understood." It surprised me she remembered and
seemed so little changed when she made that one gesture with her hand.

The next few minutes
were taken up with the incidentals of traveling. Kris certainly wasn't
traveling light. We picked up four suitcases off the carousel before heading
out to the car.

"Have you ever
been to New Orleans?" Gary asked Kris as we settled into his Prelude.

"No, I've never
been this far east before," Kris answered.

"You have; you
just don't remember. There's time for all that later though." Gary seemed
unsure of what to say next, and Kris didn't offer anything more.

For the rest of the
trip, I talked about my drive from Gainesville, my writing, my mother, Claire,
Philip, Aunt Susan, anything to permeate the silence. Both Kris and Gary
responded or asked questions, probably relieved that I was filling up the dead
air.

Once back in the
apartment, Gary and I helped Kris settle into the guest room. Since I planned to
leave on Sunday, I moved my things out of the spare bedroom to make room for
Kris' baggage. I left my luggage in Gary's room to give Kris as much privacy as
she needed.

We gathered back in
the living room. Gary filled us in on some of the happenings in town during the
weekend, trying to get a feel for what Kris might want to do. She wasn't
interested in art, but the mention of some of the old cemeteries in town seemed
to get her attention.

"I'd really like
to walk down the famous Bourbon Street tonight," she said. We looked at
her with surprise.

"Bourbon Street
really isn't for young ladies with two old men," I finally said.

"Come on, Cousin
Ed, you're not old." The way she said "Cousin Ed" made it sound
like she was flirting with me.

"Why don't we
just go out tonight for dinner and then see what happens," Gary said.
"And I guess it wouldn't hurt anyone if you saw your first strip club
while visiting New Orleans."

"I hate to break
the news to you, but it won't be my first strip club. I grew up in Las Vegas,
remember," Kris said.

"What was it
like? Growing up in Vegas?" I asked.

"It's all I
know; I guess it's not a typical environment from what I've seen on TV and in
the movies."

Kris then told us
something about her childhood. When she mentioned her mother, her face turned
into a hard mask, and the eyes glistened. Her jaw became like the rocky edge of
a cliff and gave away her bitterness. A nerve twitched at the back of her jaw,
near the ear.

She talked mainly to
me, occasionally touching my arm and looking at me with wide eyes during some
of the more poignant moments. She touched my heart as she used to when she was
only two. Back then, I would pick her up in my arms, and she would gently touch
my face. I felt the same way I had then; I wanted to protect her. When Pam took
her away, I lost my opportunity. Now I had a second chance. Through much of her
story, I forgot about Gary.

When she wasn't
looking at the floor, her eyes met mine. Gary sat beside her on the couch also
looking at the same spot on the floor, shaking his head from time to time. He
looked as guilty as the little boy caught with his hand in his mommy's penny
jar. He wouldn't leave his thumb alone. I wondered briefly if he would get an
infection in the now open wound.

Pam never made it to
California as she planned. Kris said she didn't remember anything about
Michigan. She only remembered living in Las Vegas. At first, Pam worked as a
stripper, but her heavy drinking and smoking finally took its toll on her body
and face. She began dealing blackjack then. Kris often came to the clubs with
her.

She could remember
the other strippers babysitting for her while her mom did her show or dealt
cards. Then when Kris was around seven, Pam began dating Oscar Timmons, owner
of the club where she worked. The year Kristina turned eight, Pam and Oscar were
married. Timmons adopted her soon after, giving Kris his last name.

"What name had
you gone by until then?" I asked.

"My mom's maiden
name," she said. "Oscar never liked me when I was a kid so I'm not
sure how Mom convinced him to adopt me. Probably a fifth of vodka had something
to do with it." Kris clenched her jaw and looked at the floor before
continuing.

Oscar liked to slap
Pam and Kris around some, we learned as she continued. Nothing that Kris did
was ever right according to her stepfather, and Pam mostly sided with Oscar.
After a year of marriage, Pam became pregnant and when their son was born, Kris
ceased to exist for both Oscar and Pam. Oscar didn't even bother to slap her
anymore.

Kris became a child
of the streets by the age of twelve. Around that time when she did come home,
Oscar often came into her bedroom at night, she told us. He mostly liked to
watch her. Sometimes he would try to kiss her, but Kris said she managed to
hold him off with insults to his manhood, and he'd leave angry. However, the
older Kris got, the more he pushed.

Her eyes filled with
tears at the memory of those times. She refused to tell us anything more about
Oscar. Instead, she told us about the streets of Las Vegas for a young,
good-looking girl.

"Didn't your
mother have a curfew for you?" Gary asked as the tales of Kris' exploits
became more and more unbelievable.

"Are you
kidding? She was just glad I wasn't around to cause problems with Oscar and
Oscar Junior. She was jealous of Oscar and me. She knew he visited my room
sometimes. But most nights when I did come home, she'd be so smashed that she
didn't even know who I was. One night she even tried to get into bed with me,
calling me 'Gary.' That's when I got curious about my real father. That and the
night that Oscar . . ." She stopped, and we both looked at her. I didn't
want to hear anymore. I doubt Gary did either. Neither of us asked for details.

I had no idea what to
say to her. I only had a burning desire to kill this Oscar Timmons jerk,
wherever he might be. Instead, I put my arm around her shoulders and held her
close until she found the strength to continue.

She said Pam never
told her anything about Gary. When Kris asked about her father, Pam would say,
"He's dead. Now shut up about it." But Kris had a sneaking suspicion
that her father was alive, especially after the incident in the bedroom. She
knew she didn't look much like her mother except the eyes, so she began
wondering whom she did look like.

She began by snooping
through her mother's things. Finally, after weeks of going through the house
when Oscar and Pam were either out or passed out, she found a cigar box tucked
away in the top of her mother's closet. There were wedding pictures of a much
younger version of Pam with a young man who looked very familiar. Then she
found some newspaper articles about Miss America of 1974 and a wedding
announcement from 1975 for Elizabeth Jackson, former Miss America, and Gary
Townsend of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The article gave Gary's place of employment,
parent's names, and just enough information for Kris to begin searching for the
man she was beginning to believe was her father.

"I called a
couple of places like General Motors. The article said you were an ad exec
there. I told personnel I was an old college girlfriend. They bought it and
told me you had moved to New Orleans, but they said they couldn't give out any
other information. Luckily, your number is listed in the New Orleans directory.
So, you were married to my mother and had a daughter named Kristina?" she
asked needlessly, although she looked as if she did need this final
confirmation.

"Yes. When we
divorced, she forced me to sign some papers she had drawn up. One of the
conditions for her to keep quiet about my personal life was having me give up
my parental rights." Gary paused not sure how to justify or apologize for
his actions, which seemed cowardly in light of the life that Kris had been
forced to live for the past fifteen years.

"Why did you do
that?" Kris asked as she turned to look directly at Gary for the first
time since she had begun her story.

"I don't expect
you to comprehend, Kris. I just ask that you try to understand. Times were
different then, you had to know my parents . . ." Gary stopped and began
his vigil with the floor again.

He seemed incapable
of continuing, so I gave Kristina a bit of our early history. A memory from
1959 stood out in particular.

I remembered running down the field clutching the football under
my arm. The shouts in the stands sounded like one loud roar. I crossed the line
to make the touchdown that put Ypsilanti High School in the state championship
game. I knew cheering loudest would be Gary who attended all of my games. He
was my biggest fan. Even though it meant that he had to suffer through the
painful accusations from his father whenever I excelled on the athletic field,
he still came to applaud for me.

My parents and I
lived in Ypsilanti, just down the road from Ann Arbor, but miles apart socially
and economically. Ypsilanti, whose motto was, "The town that works,"
housed several automobile factories on the eastern or Detroit side. Eastern
Michigan University formed the boundary on the Ann Arbor side. In between lived
the blue-collar class created in the years just before and following World War
II.

On the other side of
the tracks, Ann Arbor housed the white-collar professional class that had grown
out of the large medical and scientific research facilities at the University
of Michigan.

As a senior, I was
finishing the football season with a bang, but I was happy my career as an
athlete was ending. I preferred gentler pursuits such as reading and writing. However,
I kept my preferences private from the rest of the family because they wouldn't
understand. Gary already received his share of abuse and ridicule for not
having the athletic abilities and inclinations of his father and now me.
However, he made up for those deficiencies by becoming a leader at Pioneer High
School and dating all of the prettiest girls in his class, although he refused
to tie himself down to just one steady girlfriend. He also managed to look the
part of the athlete by lifting weights obsessively, even when he and I just
hung out in his room after family dinners. Philip always approved of that and
kept buying him more and more equipment. It was the only thing the two of them
had in common.

I looked up into the
stands where I knew my father and Uncle Philip would be sitting side by side
each analyzing and criticizing my every move while bragging to those around
them about their star athlete. Uncle Philip would be trying to take all the
glory by saying I had inherited his genes, and my father, quieter and grumpier,
would make sure everyone knew I was actually his son. Aunt Susan, their sister,
would be trying to referee as Aunt Claire and my mother ignored them.

When I came out of
the locker room after the game, they all waited to take me out for a victory
dinner. It looked like I wouldn't be going out with my girlfriend after all. I
wouldn't put her through a dinner with the whole family just yet. We hadn't
been dating long enough. Besides, I wasn't ready for her to meet Gary. Without
even trying, Gary attracted every girl I ever dated and left me wondering if
they only went out with me to get a little closer to the handsome and elusive
Gary Townsend.