Gossip (41 page)

“You never told Jeb Weiss?”

“No,” she said. “Billy’s friend? No. Why should I?”

“It was his apartment. He’s smart. He’d know what to do.”

She hesitated, her eyes darting and shifting, as if she were trying to hear something in her head.

The front door loudly jerked open.

I jumped up and stepped back, facing the hall. It had to be the murderer. It was too late to flee. Should I play dumb? My hands closed into fists.

He stumbled in from the hallway, a weary, burly man with a red supermarket blazer on his arm. A bow tie hung at his open collar. He was startled to find someone in the kitchen with his wife. But hadn’t she just phoned him?

“Hello?” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t know we had company.” He automatically smiled at me before he turned and saw his wife.

“This is Ralph Eckhart,” she told him. “The boy arrested for Billy’s murder.”

He stared at her, then swung his heavy face at me. The blood rushed into his neck and cheeks. “What the hell are you doing here? Haven’t you brought us enough pain?”

Here he was, the killer himself, yet all I saw was an unhappy middle-aged man in glasses. I was afraid of him, but it was like the residual fear and respect I felt for my own father. “I didn’t kill your son, Mr. O’Connor. And you know I didn’t.”

Mrs. O’Connor sat still, her eyes fixed on her husband.

“I want you out of my house this minute! Or I’m calling the police!” He turned on his wife. “Damn it, woman. What’re you doing talking to this man? Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“Bill. He knows.” There was a hint of triumph in her voice.

The color went out of Mr. O’Connor’s face. “What’re you talking about? Nothing to know.”

“He knows about the accident.”

“What accident? What did you tell him? What did she tell you?”

“Everything,” I said. “How you beat him against a wall and then made it look like a robbery.”

“That’s ridiculous. Nobody would believe that. You’re a fool to believe her.”

She glared at her husband. “The newspaper said he choked to death from his head injury. He may have lived if we’d called an ambulance.”

“We don’t know that! You make it worse by thinking that!”

“I wanted to call an ambulance,” she said plaintively. “But you insisted we call Jeb, that Jeb would know what to do.”

“He was dead, Helen! Already dead! You have to accept that!”

“No!” she cried. “You wanted him to be dead. You decided he was dead. Your own flesh and blood.” Her anger flared up. “But I was the one who had to undress him. You wouldn’t. You could kill your son but were too manly to undress him. My child. Who I’d undressed until he was old enough to undress himself.”

“Shut up, woman! Shut up! Do you want to go to prison? Do you want us both to go to prison?”

His words hit her like a slap. “No,” she said softly. “But I can’t live with this either. I thought I could but I can’t.”

You want to know everything, and then you do and it’s overwhelming. I was a spectator to a nightmare in broad daylight. They were monsters, yet I felt pity as well as fear for them, even Mr. O’Connor, who had cried so freely at his son’s funeral.

The doorbell rang. We were suddenly back in a house in the suburbs, in a kitchen with a purring refrigerator.

“Jeb,” murmured Mrs. O’Connor. “I called him as soon as I understood how much the Eckhart boy knew.”

Mr. O’Connor charged out to answer the door. Mrs. O’Connor remained in her chair.

“Mrs. O’Connor? Mrs. O’Connor?” I whispered.

She closed her eyes, refusing to admit I was still here, terrified by everything she’d told me.

There was a rapid exchange of whispers in the hall. Then Jeb Weiss strolled into the kitchen, short and wide in his gray suit but no tie; he must live in gray suits. The smile over his chin beard was bizarrely warm and chipper.

“Ralph, right?” he said, pretending not to be sure, feigning friendliness like a psychiatrist come to save a family from a psychopath. “There, there, Helen,” he said, laying his hand on a shoulder. “It’s all right. Not to worry. What’s done is done.”

I stared at him, thinking: I’d been right all along. I’d been wrong but I’d been right: Jeb Weiss
was
involved. I could despise him without pity.

“He came busting in here!” charged Mr. O’Connor. “Talking garbage to my wife and getting her all upset!”

“Calm down, Bill. No cause for alarm,” said Weiss. He saw the hate in my eyes. “A tragedy, Ralph. A terrible tragedy.”

“That you made even worse,” I said.

“Now, now. Don’t think like that,” he chided. He spoke to me as he spoke to the O’Connors, like pets. “We should leave these poor people in peace. Can I give you a ride back to D.C.?”

“What? You going to bump me off too?”

He only chuckled. “Give me some credit, Ralph. I’m nothing like that. I only want to explain the situation.”

“I want to call the police.”

“All in due time. But let’s talk first. You’re sore over what happened to you, and for good reason. We need to talk.”

I hated Weiss, but I wasn’t afraid of him. I needed to escape this nightmare house. The temptation to know the rest of the truth, his truth anyway, was strong.

Mrs. O’Connor withdrew deeper into herself. “I can’t live with this,” she mumbled. “I can’t, I can’t.”

“Get him out of here!” shouted Mr. O’Connor. “Before I forget where I am and lose it.” He struck the counter behind him with his fist. “I can, you know. You know I can!”

“Cool down, Bill. We’re going. Aren’t we, Ralph?”

I had to get out of there. Mrs. O’Connor couldn’t protect me and it was two against one here. Weiss was at least sane. “Okay.”

“Step aside, Bill. We’re leaving,” said Weiss. O’Connor obeyed him.

Weiss followed me down the hall and out into the daylight. Birds twittered over suburban lawns and there were children playing down the street. My fear was cool, distant, not quite real. I peered into his car to make sure that no thug sat in the backseat waiting for me.

“Get in, Ralph. I’m not going to bite,” said Weiss. “I just want to talk.”

I could have kept walking, down the street to the highway and a pay phone, but I had to hear the rest of the story. I climbed into a smell like new shoes. It was not just a Lexus like Bill’s, but the Lexus that Bill had driven. As we backed out the driveway, I rolled down the electric window, wondering if I could shout for help from a moving car.

Weiss drove with both hands lightly on the wheel, resting his head in chewy black leather. “Sad, sad story,” he began. “Those poor people. The tragedy they suffer. You should’ve heard them the night they called and told me what happened. It would’ve broken your heart.”

“Why didn’t you tell them to call the police?”

“I had to protect them. Wouldn’t you want to protect them?”

My fear did not silence me. He wasn’t stupid and I gained nothing by playing dumb. “You weren’t afraid how it would look that Bill was killed by his own father? Family values and all that? It could make you and your friends look bad.”

“Yes. There was that to consider,” he admitted with a smile.

“So you took their private tragedy and turned it into political capital.”

“On the contrary. I needed to keep other people from making capital out of it.” He maintained a sarcastic calm, daring me to believe him.

“And then you stuck the crime on me.”

“Now
that
was an accident. Believe me, Ralph. Although I admit it was a happy accident from our point of view. You made a beautiful symbol. But I had nothing to do with that. I never mentioned you to the cops. A little bird told them Bill had been traveling with a rough-looking radical who must be the murderer.”

“Ren Whitaker?”

He smiled again. “Maybe. Just maybe.”

“What does he know about this?”

“You can never tell what Ren does and doesn’t know. Cagey little fellow. He’s tight with someone in the D.C. prosecutor’s office, but his influence goes only so far. When the FBI hand-delivered you, however, D.C was sure they’d found their man. Where the FBI got their tip, I don’t know, but that wasn’t me either. All I did was keep mum. So there was no conspiracy, Ralph. Half knowledges and sins of omission, accumulated. Nasty, but no court’s going to convict anyone. Except the O’Connors.”

“You’re an accessory. You just said so.”

“They’d have only your word in court. I’ll call you a liar. You have reason enough to lie. Helen was upset today, but she’ll settle down again. She won’t want to hurt me.”

If she could hate her husband, she must hate the man who’d trapped her with this crime. Except hatred left her traumatized and unpredictable.

We were on the interstate now, surrounded by cars coming home from work, a floating crowd sealed up in public privacies. A highway sign assured me that we were headed toward Washington, but I suddenly felt trapped, not just because there were no stoplights where I could jump out but because Weiss remained so calm, so unafraid of what I knew. He kept his eyes on the road, his lower lip tucked under his upper lip to form a soft beak like he was smiling to himself.

“What do you intend to do with me?” I nervously asked.

He chuckled. “No, Ralph. The question is, What are you going to do with the O’Connors? They’re my only concern. I’m hoping you and I can reach an arrangement.”

“Money?”

“If money will sweeten the deal. But I assume empathy will be the operative factor. You had a taste of jail. Can you imagine how that would affect Bill Senior? Or what the shame of being dragged through the papers would do to Helen? Nice people. Both of them. Would you want to hurt two nice people?”

“There’s been nothing but nice people involved. And look what happened.”

“Yes. Painful. Very.” His beard wiggled as he worked his jaw back and forth. “Don’t think that I’m a heartless man, Ralph. I’m not. I liked Billy. He was good company. It broke my heart, what happened. When I flew into town that morning and knew how I’d find him, it upset me more than you can imagine.” He shook his head. “No, I was a better father to him than Bill Senior ever was. His sex life didn’t concern me in the least. A few years from now, it won’t concern anyone else. But when in Rome—” He shrugged. “He should’ve kept his mouth shut. That was your doing, you realize. Knowing someone like you confused him. Before he met you, he felt exactly as I do, that it was nobody’s damn business. But you changed him, Ralph. You made him feel bad for being in the closet.”

The clever bastard was trying to make me feel guilty. “You’re saying it’s my fault his father killed him?”

“No. I just want to point out your involvement.”

His cool logic was a smoother, more insidious version of Nick’s, with no strong emotion to tangle him in knots.

“You should meet a friend of mine,” I said. “Only he’s an amateur where you’re a pro. And he had good reasons for pulling the shit he pulled.”

“We all have our reasons.”

“What’re yours?”

He shrugged. “I’m no fanatic, Ralph. But I like winning. I like being at the center. I enjoy being part of the future.”

“But this could fuck your future.”

“Not mine. Only the O’Connors’.”

“Uh-uh. Ren Whitaker and the rest will drop you in a minute for fear of how this can hurt them.”

He frowned, then touched the signal and changed lanes.

“Where we going?” I asked.

“Wherever you like. I was thinking we can continue this at my apartment.”

The scene of the crime. Was he really as invulnerable as he pretended? I decided to call his bluff. “No,” I said. “Let’s go to the Willard Hotel.”

“What’s there?”

“Michael Diaz. My attorney.”

Weiss snorted humorously. “Don’t think for a minute that I’ll tell him what I just told you, Ralph.”

“Then you can drop me off there. I need to talk with him before I go to the police.”

He did not scare. “You have an ace in the hole. You should use it to get something you want.”

“But there’s nothing I want that you can give me. I’m going to Diaz and we’re going to the police.”

“Are you absolutely sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry you feel that way, Ralph.” He took his foot off the gas. We drifted toward the breakdown lane. “I tried to reason with you. Tried to let you know what was at stake here. You want to hurt those poor people, so be it. But I’ll be damned if I’ll deliver you to the cops.”

We slowed down alongside a coffered concrete bulkhead. We were in a sunken stretch of highway, a six-lane canyon with an overpass up ahead. Traffic exploded past on our left, the elongated shadows racing across the concrete wall.

My senses were alert, my mind quick and emotionless. I watched his hands, ready to grab them if he reached under the seat or dashboard for a weapon. If he shot me here, would any of the people rushing past see it?

He hit the brake and the car slammed to a halt.

“Go on. Get out,” he said.

He kept both hands on the wheel.

“You heard me!” he snapped. “Get out damn it!” His smoothness was gone. He was helpless, furiously helpless. “Just get the fuck out of my car!”

I opened the door and jumped out. I slammed the door. “See you in court!” I cried even as my body leaped back, my muscles still expecting him to run me over. The Lexus shot straight ahead, spitting gravel. No, he wasn’t a killer and didn’t know what else to do with me.

I stood in a hard corridor of concrete and orange sunlight, the rush-hour traffic roaring by. I took deep breaths of burned, poisoned air. Emotion poured up like adrenaline: a fear I didn’t know was so strong until I was safe enough to feel all of it; and an overwhelming awe like joy. I fell against a pebbled cement panel, wanting to laugh at the overload, then letting go with a dazed comical moan.

My God, I thought. My God. I had all the pieces of my metaphysical It, my malevolent God. And they were all human: shockingly, pitifully human. I alone had all the pieces: Weiss, the O’Connors, the police, the FBI and Nick. A logjam of half-truths, fuckups and bad faith. What did they mean? What could I do with them? Knowledge gave me power and terrible responsibility.

I would go to Diaz and we’d go to the police. My pity was not so sentimental as Weiss hoped. The law would deal with the O’Connors. I wanted to go after Weiss. I’d enlist Nancy there, and maybe Nick and Maura, if they could play by my rules. We were starting over. One more time. Had I learned nothing from all I’d been through? Could I actually jump back in? Would we be able to change anything now that I had the truth?