Graveland: A Novel (37 page)

That was the understanding, at any rate.

“No,” Vaughan then says, shaking his head. “This situation cannot be allowed to develop. It is
not
acceptable.”

Beth Overmyer nods in agreement. “Absolutely.” She pauses and straightens out a crease in her skirt. “What would you like me to do about it?”

Vaughan thinks about this for a while, swiveling in his chair. But there’s only one thing he can do, isn’t there?

“Don’t worry about it,” he says eventually, standing up from the desk. “I’ll take care of this.”

“O-kay.”

“But in the meantime can you get me a copy of the damn thing? Of this stupid
book
?”

“It should be possible, yeah. But Mr. Vaughan, is that really a good idea—”

“Yes. It is. I want to see what he’s written.”

“Very well. I’ll send it to you as soon as I get my hands on a copy.”

“Good.”

He remains there for a moment, distracted, gazing at her legs.

“Mr. Vaughan?”

“Er, yes.” He looks into her eyes. “Thank you. That’ll be all.”

She stands up, but seems reluctant to move.

“Okay, okay,” he says to her. “I get it, I get it. I just have
one
phone call to make and then I’m leaving.”

*   *   *

Ellen spends a lot of Tuesday on the couch in front of the TV, flicking between analysis of the Frank Bishop story and live coverage of the Connie Carillo murder trial. When the analysis becomes unbearable, either too convoluted or just too close to the bone, she switches to the murder trial. And when the trial becomes too much, with its longueurs and its overreliance on trivial detail—Ray Whitestone’s signature technique—she switches back.

She feels bad for Frank. She feels she should have seen this coming, and done something. She did see it coming, in fact, but not soon enough. And anyway, what
could
she have done?

This has all just compounded her general sense of uselessness. The thing is, instead of vegetating on the couch, she should probably be working on her next piece for
Parallax,
the one on West Virginia congresswoman Jane Glasser. But it’s not happening. There’s nothing in the tank to kickstart
that
story.

“Now, Mrs. Sanchez, could you kindly describe for the court the exact layout of the kitchen?”

Ray Whitestone is getting closer here, finally, to the heart of the matter. This is where the murder took place. Or at least it’s where Howard Meeker’s naked body was found.

In the kitchen, on the floor.

A lot of people will be relieved that the prosecution’s case seems to be entering its final phase—though no one is quite sure yet where this massive accumulation of detail Whitestone has built up is leading. So far no motive has been established, no tearing apart of Connie’s character has taken place—there’s been no real drama, in fact. The appeal of the trial, weirdly, appears to lie in its very banality, in this slow-burn, slightly soporific, almost tantric quality. It’s as if the promise of an explosive resolution is what has been carrying everyone forward.

Appropriately drowsy, Ellen stares at the screen.

There are only three fixed angles allowed in the courtroom. One takes in both the prosecution and defense teams, with Connie Carillo herself sometimes visible, sometimes obscured, at the far end. The second angle is of the witness box, which provides virtual close-up shots of those giving evidence, and the third angle is of the bench and of the fifty-eight-year-old presiding judge, ex–Olympic shot-put silver medalist J. Shelley Roberts.

“Well, first off, Mr. Whitestone, let me tell you, it’s a
big
kitchen, specially when you got to clean it…”

Ellen flicks over.

“… to be honest, what this sap did, what his daughter did—and I’m not condoning it, obviously, God forbid—but I don’t understand why there hasn’t actually been
more
of it, because when you look at the situation, when you consider the
scale
of what’s been perpetrated on the American people…”

And back.

“… the countertop, that part of the island, it’s of marble, I guess, I don’t know, a kind of dark, black marble, and it has these light fixtures hanging over it, they’re made with copper, I think…”

“… I mean really, were we all asleep at the
wheel
when these bozos passed the bill in 2000 exempting toxic assets like CDOs, repos, and swaps from regulation? Were we smoking
crack
when the ratings agencies declared that junk mortgages were as safe as Treasury bonds? I mean come
on
…”

After a few more rounds of this, Ellen has had enough and flicks the TV off. She goes over to her desk and calls up the
House of Vaughan
file.

She’s not sure if she’s ready for this either, but she wants to finish it. The last chapter she read was a vivid account of how James Vaughan’s grandfather, Charles A. Vaughan, was one of the seven men who met in secret at a remote hunting lodge on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia in 1910 to plot the creation of the Federal Reserve System. The book’s final chapter then takes the reader back to Vaughan’s youth decades earlier and describes how he effectively came out of nowhere and got started in business.

The really surprising thing, as far as Ellen is concerned, is the detailed account of an incident that Gilroy chooses to close the book with, an incident that seems to identify—and with pinpoint precision—the very beginnings of the Vaughan family fortune. As she’s reading it, fully awake now and engaged, two aspects of this strike her as significant. One, the story is nothing short of incendiary—but kind of deceptively so, as it describes something that happened way back in late August of 1878. And two, in the unlikely event of the book ever being published, and sparking controversy, debate, or even litigation, Gilroy has built a pretty solid and impressive firewall around it in the form of multiple primary and secondary source citations. These include newspaper reports and contemporary eyewitness accounts.

The incident in question, which was quick and brutal, involved Charles Vaughan himself and Gilbert Morley, a renowned Wall Street speculator, as well as, indirectly, Arabella Stringham, the daughter of dry-goods magnate “Colonel” Cyrus T. Stringham.

When Ellen has finished the book, she gets on the phone and calls Gilroy up.

“Hi, Ellen.”

“Jimmy.” She whistles. “I’ve just finished
House of Vaughan
.”

“Oh.” Flicker of insecurity, standard issue. “And?”

She gives it to him straight—largely positive, one or two things she’s not sold on, one or two editorial suggestions. But her most enthusiastic comments she saves for last. The closing section of the book, she tells him, is fantastic, an absolute bombshell of a thing. She quizzes him for a few minutes on his methods, how and where he managed to dig up this material and how confident he would be about defending it.

Completely, he says. The ironic thing is that Vaughan’s subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to sabotage the project effectively drove it underground, causing a shift in focus, and steering Jimmy’s gaze ever deeper into the past—so that instead of trying to research and interview contemporaries of Vaughan’s, he ended up bunkering down in various basement libraries and trawling through, for the most part, old newspaper archives.

They then discuss the killing of Craig Howley and all the publicity surrounding it, but Jimmy guesses that for most publishers the link with Vaughan and his family history would still be too tenuous to justify acquiring the book and putting it out there. Vaughan
really
needs to stick his head above the parapet, Jimmy says, and that’s pretty unlikely at this stage.

But he’s fine with it.

The relief of getting the book finished has been liberating, and he’s looking forward to moving on.

“Okay,” Ellen says, “but you’re not giving up, right?”

“No. Certainly not. The way I see it, you know … it’s a long game.”

Yeah, Ellen thinks, as she’s putting the phone down a few moments later, you can say that again.

*   *   *

“Can I make another call?”

His first one, last night, at Central Booking, was to Deb. Not to apologize exactly, or even to explain, it was just to connect. And he has to give Deb her due, she let him. After the initial shock, she didn’t launch into an attack or go off on a rant or anything. In fact, she spent most of the time trying to persuade him to let Lloyd bring in a partner from the law firm to represent him.

Seymour Collins. Here now in the cell.

“Yeah,” he says, “we can arrange that. Who to?”

Collins is businesslike, very direct, no bullshit. He’s mid-fifties, well fed, well dressed, well groomed, but he clearly knows what he’s doing, knows his way around the system, and talks everyone’s language. At the arraignment this morning, even though he must have known it wouldn’t be granted, he made very convincing arguments for bail. When the judge then ordered that Frank be transferred to Rikers Island for his pretrial detention period, Collins successfully argued that given the high-profile nature of the crime his client should at least be granted protective custody.

Which means that Frank is being kept in the West Facility and away from the prison’s general population.

So again, thank fuck for Lloyd.

But as for who Frank wants to call? Well, Collins has just spent the last hour telling him about what’s in the papers today and what’s being said about him on TV and online. Frank Bishop, domestic terrorist, sick ideologue … epic fuckup as a father, epic fail as a man. Can’t even hold down a shitty job in retail.
If this guy doesn’t plead insanity,
one blogger wrote,
then he’s obviously insane
. Now, while one part of Frank agrees with all of this, and wholeheartedly, another part doesn’t—the same part that insisted on entering a plea of not guilty at the arraignment. That’s the position he’s taking. He’s prepared to admit that he shot and killed Craig Howley, but not that he’s guilty. This is why he’s being kept on remand, and why there’s going to be a trial, and why—given the nature of the coverage—he’s going to need an ally, someone to tell his side of the story.

“Ellen Dorsey,” he says.

Collins does a double take. “The journalist?”

“Yes.”

Frank has no real reason to trust Ellen Dorsey. But he has no reason to distrust her either. All he has to go on is his instincts.

“You sure that’s a good idea, Frank? I think maybe you ought to let—”

“No. Believe me, it’s a good idea.”

Actually, what Frank isn’t sure of right now is how long Seymour Collins might want to stick around. Because who knows, for a firm like Pierson Hackler this whole thing could very easily turn into a PR nightmare. Deb’s initial impulse to help could become a liability. They could lose clients.

But something tells Frank that with Ellen Dorsey it’ll be different, that she’s just too fucking stubborn to turn her back on this, and that consequently any chance of a fair hearing in the media lies with her. And he means a fair hearing not just for himself—maybe not even for himself at all, in fact—but for Lizzie. Because really, that’s what he wants to see, something written about
her
that’s honest and that tries to make sense of what happened without resorting to lies and hysteria.

“How well do you know this person? Can you trust her?”

This person
.

He and Ellen drove down from Atherton together. A week later they sat in a diner for about an hour. They’ve spoken briefly a couple of times since. It’s not much—but not much is all he’s got left.

“Yes, I can.”

Collins paces back and forth. The cell isn’t very big. “Okay, so what do you have in mind?”

Frank explains. He keeps it simple. The idea is to enlist the support of someone with a bit of integrity who can set the record straight.

Can’t hurt, can it?

“Very well,” Collins says. “Be careful what you say, though. The call will be recorded.”

A while later, as Frank is being escorted to where the phones are in the recreation area, he wonders what he really meant when he used the phrase
set the record straight
.

Because Lizzie was involved in two murders.

And
he
carried out a third.

What could be straighter than that? All the rest is noise, and will soon be forgotten.

Just like he’ll soon be forgotten.

And this is a thought that occurs to him now with clockwork regularity. It’s like a new heartbeat, dull, thudding, relentless. Prison is all he will know for the rest of his life—damp walls like these, and awful smells, and shitty food, and restricted access to everything, and constant, gnawing fear. He’ll never again make eye contact with that Asian woman who works at the Walgreens, never again experience that frisson of excitement as a possible future opens up before him.

Never be free of self-pity, either.

The guard escorting him indicates which phone Frank should use. He goes to it, picks it up, and huddles in.

This is potentially something, though, isn’t it? A chance to talk, to remember, to put it all down for posterity.

A link with the past, a link with the future.

He has Ellen’s number written on a piece of paper. He punches it out, and waits.

*   *   *

Thursday is Vaughan’s first day in a month without this new medication. He took the last pill yesterday, and spent a good part of the morning walking in Central Park and most of the afternoon sorting through some old archives. But his irritation at not being able to contact Arnie Tisch—who has apparently been transferred, or has had himself transferred, to Eiben’s main office in Beijing—is mitigated slightly by a determination not to let himself be ruled by this.

It’s only a stupid pill, after all.

He’s
James Vaughan.

But he’s not giving up on it, either. If he has to, he’ll go straight to Paul Blanford, Eiben’s CEO, and find some way to scare the living daylights out of him. Because what’s the big deal? It’s not like they’re conducting illegal clinical trials in some third-world hellhole and are afraid of getting caught. He’s
volunteering
to take it. You’d think they’d be happy to get the feedback.