According to Their Deeds (15 page)

“How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
. How funny! We did try so hard, didn’t we?”

“But we succeeded anyway.”

“It was all you, Charles.”

“I think not. I could never run a business, and you could in your sleep.”

“But there wouldn’t be a reason. It’s my occupation, but it’s your dream.”

“That’s what I do in my sleep. Well, two more books. This one is the hard one.”

She took it anyway. “
A Separate Peace
. I wondered what you would have.” She stared at the cover for a while. “I was thinking the other day whether I had regrets.”

“Do you?”

“I would still do it all over again.”

“I would, too,” he said. “My current regret is that I didn’t talk with him more. Have I forgotten? We must have talked over dinner, and about his schoolwork.”

“I’m afraid I mostly remember the arguments,” Dorothy said.

“And compare that to Angelo, who never says anything.”

Dorothy handed the book back. “I am so glad that you brought Angelo into the shop.”

“Does he still remind you of William?”

“Now that I know him, he’s his own person.”

“Do you like Angelo?” Charles asked.

“I do!” Dorothy laughed. “As little as he says, he does have a personality. I don’t know what he would be like if he was more open. I think I’d like him even more.”

“I hope we have a chance to, eventually. Here’s the last book.”

He handed her
From Here to Eternity
.

Then, for a while, they sat silently and watched the water, while the sun set behind them, firing the far shore orange and red and then leaving it a dark ashen black. The windows of the buildings along it were bright sparks left from the burning; and all around where they were sitting were the bright lanterns of the riverfront and restaurants and streets.

And finally they started for home.

“I looked at the papers this morning.”

The last of a simple dinner was between them on the dining room table.

“Were they bad?” Dorothy asked.

“Yes. Very bad.”

“What?”

“One of them is about Patrick White.”

Charles waited while she worked out what it meant. “About what he did in school?”

“Yes. It isn’t obvious. It’s just a cover page from a University of Virginia honor court. It doesn’t say anything about Mr. White, just a page number, but it’s from a year when he was a student there.”

“It doesn’t have his name?”

“It’s him. I’m sure it is. A person would have to know that the paper was important, and then dig in to find what it meant. But if I were to send that paper to the
Washington Post
and tell them they could find a scandal behind it, then the damage would be done.”

“But who did send it?”

“Maybe Derek Bastien. Or maybe someone else, but Derek had it. Dorothy, it is obvious to me that Derek was collecting incriminating documents about people.”

“What were the other papers?”

“The checks to Karen Liu; the woman who killed her husband; the page from the University of Virginia; then there’s the list of letters and numbers and dates, and a short article about police in Fairfax breaking up a drug gang.”

“But you don’t know what those are about.”

“No, I don’t. And there’s one more. A copy of a court order releasing eight men from a prison in Kansas, from twenty years ago.” He sighed. “I had Morgan look it up, and the men were released because the prosecutor at their trials had done something wrong.”

“By mistake?”

“Apparently not. And it doesn’t say who the prosecutor was, but John Borchard mentioned to me that he had been a prosecutor in Kansas long ago.”

“That seems obvious,” Dorothy said.

“It seems.”

“It’s difficult, isn’t it?”

“Very difficult,” Charles said. “Who would want to have a list of other people’s sins?”

“Do you mean that literally?”

“I meant it rhetorically. But there is a literal answer in this case, isn’t there?”

“I wish you could give it all to someone else,” Dorothy said. “But I understand why you don’t want to.”

“When I looked at those papers this morning,” Charles said, “I felt like a burden was coming down on my shoulders.”

He stood from the table and carried his plate to the kitchen. Dorothy followed.

“How can you decide what to do?”

“I want to find out about Derek and why he had the papers, but I’ll still have to decide what to do with them. I want to know the people themselves.”

“But even then, what would you do?”

“I wonder . . .”

“What?”

“If there will be anything I can do to help them.”

“I’ve been reading a volume of Jeremy Bentham’s correspondence.”

“I haven’t sold you one, Derek.”

“Ha! No, Charles, this is a modern version. But he certainly believed that people are controllable by innate laws.”

“And his prison reforms prove him wrong. He was also firmly against the idea of innate, inalienable human rights.”

“ ‘Nonsense on stilts.’ ”

“Exactly. Locke would not have been proud of him as a disciple. I wonder that you’re wasting your time, Derek.”

“I like to be provoked, Charles. He was voted an honorary citizen of the French Revolution.”

“Not the best character reference.”

“I am interested in his ideas of punishment. If someone commits a crime, why do we punish him by taking months or years of his life? You’ve stolen a loaf of bread, we seize ten years. What does it accomplish?”

“It is a deterrent threat.”

“But for the one who isn’t deterred?”

“I suppose it prevents them from stealing another loaf, at least for the next ten years. And, Derek, time is one thing everyone has. They might not have money for you to take from them, but they do have time.”

“Bentham said that prison should be for correcting the individual, not punishing them. The Enlightenment had found its way into prison.”

“I don’t think he knew how to correct a person.”

“If you had to decide a person’s punishment, Charles, how would you do it?”

“I don’t think a person can be corrected, Derek. I think he can only be redeemed.”

SATURDAY

MORNING

Charles wandered down the stairs to the showroom. Dorothy was behind the counter talking with a middle-aged, upper-class lady with a large middle and larger upper.

“Mrs. Stratton,” he said. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Mr. Beale,” the woman said in a properly fruity voice. “Dorothy and I are discussing the banquet this evening.”

“We’re looking forward to it.”

The front door opened.

“Good morning,” Dorothy said in a bright greet-the-customer voice, and Charles turned to look toward the door, and then down slightly.

“Congresswoman Liu! What an honor!”

“Good morning, Mr. Beale.” She nodded toward the ladies at the counter. “Good morning!”

“Dorothy!” Charles said. “Roll out the red carpet. This is her! An honest-to-goodness congresswoman!”

“Oh, Mr. Beale. Please!” Karen Liu beamed her searchlight-strength smile and without any hint of embarrassment. “Thank you!”

“This is my wife, Dorothy.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Beale!”

“And our dear friend, Mrs. Wilhelmina Stratton.”

“A congresswoman?” Mrs. Stratton said. “How do you do!”

A few tangled moments passed, of ebullient greetings and fulsome praises and self-effacing protestations, and of Mrs. Stratton seizing opportunity with both hands. But finally the air cleared and extraneous personalities realized they were no longer needed. Only Charles, Dorothy and the fully introduced congresswoman were left.

“And what an interesting shop!” she said as she finally had a chance to see it.

“Oh, it is,” Charles said, “and I’m so glad to have you here. Let me show you around.”

“Let me just look at it all first.” They stood for a moment in the room’s center, Karen Liu completely inflated, her eyes sharp and darting; and Charles and Dorothy respectfully silent.

“Now show me something.”

“Of course,” he said. He led her to the shelves under the stairs. “Books,” he said. Dorothy watched from the counter.

“May I look at one?” Karen Liu said.

“Please.”

She touched a spine and then a few more, reading the titles. “I thought you sold old books.”

“These are a little bit old,” he said. “The very old ones are downstairs. But even middle-aged books can be very interesting and valuable.”

She slid one volume out. “Fishing?”

“A popular section.”

Then her eyes got very big. “Two hundred dollars?”

Charles nodded. “
Fishing Salmon and Trout
, 1889. It’s a fifth edition and the leather is still in excellent condition. Cholmondeley-Pennell is a standard for people who collect in fishing.”

“What makes it worth two hundred dollars?”

“That people are willing to pay two hundred.”

“There are people that would.” She handed it to him. “But I wouldn’t.”

“It depends on what a person values,” he said. “But books can be valuable in so many ways.”

“The only use I would have for a book is to read it.”

“Some people use, and some collect.” Charles opened the book in his hand and softly turned the pages. “It means something to own a book. If a person enjoys fishing, this book can re-create that enjoyment. And this book, with its own collectible value, adds to the enjoyment. Some people collect antiques as an investment, but most do it because it enriches them in deeper ways.”

Suddenly the charm and smile turned off. The change was striking.

“Do you have any books that are valuable because of what they say about people?” She was looking at him, not the book in his hand.

“What kind of things would they say?” he asked.

“Things they wouldn’t want said.”

Dorothy busied herself at the counter, actively not participating in the conversation.

“I have books about human nature,” Charles said. “Some of them come to very bleak conclusions, and many people would rather not hear what they have to say. Is that what you mean?”

“It might be. What books did you sell to Derek Bastien?”

“Classic authors of the Enlightenment, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were books about government and law and human thought.”

“Were they the kind you just described?”

“Some of those authors had a bleak view of mankind, but mostly they were hopeful.”

The congressional brows furrowed, but the hearing room atmosphere had eased. “What if I wanted to buy something? What would you recommend?”

“I’d have to know what you value, Ms. Liu.” He smiled. “I have to know who you are.”

“All right.” She was back to smiling, but a superficial one. “Pretend I wanted to buy something. Find out who I am.”

“Do you have any hobbies?”

“Hobbies! Me?” The indignity was genuine.

“That’s where some people start. Fishing, camping. Sports. Baseball is popular.”

“I don’t have time for hobbies.”

“Do you have favorite authors?”

“Mr. Beale, I don’t even remember the last time I read a book just to read it. I only read reports.”

“Let’s step back from reading. What would you like to experience?”

“Experience?”

Charles’s own smile had faded. “What drives you, Congresswoman?”

She answered as seriously. “Struggle, Mr. Beale.”

“For what?”

“For justice.”

“I prefer mercy,” he said.

She folded her arms and leaned her head. “Mercy is a whim. It is doled out by the powerful when they choose for a moment to lighten their oppression of the weak. Justice is equal and blind.”

“Justice means getting what you deserve,” Charles said. “I hope I don’t.”

“Some people just wish they could.”

“Well.” He sighed, and took a book from a different shelf. “You might like Sinclair Lewis. Or William Faulkner.”

“They’re old. The dead past doesn’t interest me. I live in the present.”

“Faulkner said, ‘The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.’ I think you would be fascinated by these stories because you would recognize everything in them and you would see how these characters dealt with the same struggles you have. You must know, Congresswoman, how tied our present is to our past. We’ve each gotten to where we are now through our past.”

“It’s been a hard road,” she said.

“Just think how decisions you’ve made in your past affect your present,” Charles said.

“Mr. Beale.” She had returned to her hardest expression. “I don’t know what that statement means. What exactly does it mean?”

“It was a general statement about all of us. I’m sure we’ve all made mistakes.”

“Are you trying to say something specific about me?” She wasn’t showing any emotion, just extreme attention. There was a short pause of measuring each other.

“I didn’t mean to be, and I didn’t mean to give any offense.”

“I’m not taking offense. I’m just trying to understand what you mean.”

He answered carefully. “I mean that I prefer mercy over justice.”

She thought carefully. “Then I do, too.”

“And my point,” he said, picking up the speed of the conversation, “is that authors like these have explored that conflict. As I said, you might be fascinated by the ways they resolve it.”

She joined the quicker flow. “I might just have to wait for the movie to come out,” she said with her standard smile. “Did you really just want to meet me because I was a friend of Derek’s? Was that the only reason?”

“Was that the only reason you let me come?”

“Let’s say yes, Mr. Beale, to both of those.”

“Let’s do.” He placed the books back on the shelves. “I had an interesting visit the other night. Pat White. He mentioned your name.”

She frowned, but only some. “We’ve been good friends for a long time. I feel very sorry for him.”

“Now, is that a case of injustice, or mercy losing to justice?”

“That, Mr. Beale, would be a very long answer, and I think I must have taken up quite a bit of your morning already.”