Jack of Spades (13 page)

22 The Guilty Party

Strange how, when I could not work as Andrew J. Rush, and could not sleep, I could write for hours in a kind of delirium as Jack of Spades.

Pages whipped past. My breath was quickened.

You have tapped the jugular!

No turning back.

Strange too, how I thought most guiltily of Esdra Staples and not of C. W. Haider whose skull I cracked with the crude dull edge of the ax.

Or, rather, Haider’s skull had been cracked with the plunging ax whose handle my hands had gripped. I could recall no volition, no decision to strike the woman even in self-defense.

This happened, and I was the agent. But I did not cause it to happen.

As long ago I had crept out onto the high diving board at the Catamount quarry to goad—to touch—lightly!—my brother Evan with just two fingers in the small of his back.

His screams on the (brief) way down. His screams that have split my skull but only emptiness has streamed out.

By late November the caretaker Esdra Staples had been arrested in the Tumbrel Place ax murder. Much of (white) Harbourton had come to assume that the (black) man was the murderer.

What a pity!—a (hyper-vigilant, racist?) Tumbrel Place neighbor reported to police that she had seen a “shadowy, dark-skinned figure” making his way up the front walk of the Haider house on the night of the ax-murder, to knock at the door . . . My dark-clothed disguise had persuaded the old fool to imagine that I was myself
dark-skinned
; and
dark-skinned
could only mean, in the ambiance of mostly white Harbourton, the suspect Esdra Staples.

“Esdra! I am
so sorry
.”

Soon after the news broke, Grossman called me.

I’d known that Grossman would call eventually. My jaws ground my back teeth in exasperation and fury, there was no way to prevent the unwanted intrusion from the brash Manhattan lawyer.

“Andrew, what a surprise! I saw the item by chance, online. ‘Haider’—the name wouldn’t have meant anything to me otherwise.”

Vaguely I murmured a reply. Yes. That is—no.

My mouth had gone dry. It was very difficult to speak.

I’d broken into the woman’s place to return her books, not to steal her books. I’d broken her skull not to kill her but to prevent her killing me.

Please believe me!

(I had not fantasized confessing to Grossman—had I?)

(Jack of Spades would not allow such cowardice!)

Grossman was marveling at the bizarre murder, of so bizarre an individual.

“One of the family employees killed her, police think? Probably couldn’t take it any longer, the old witch giving him orders.”

Grossman seemed to be inviting me to laugh with him but I remained silent. I had answered the call reluctantly seeing the lawyer’s name on the ID screen. In my writing room I was sitting on a chair leaning far forward, elbows on my knees. My face was contorted, my jaws moving. I had to hope that I wasn’t saying anything to Grossman that I didn’t want the lawyer to hear.

Grossman said, marveling, “Only in one of the longer news articles was it mentioned that Haider had sued so many writers. Of course, it was Stephen King who was named—poor Steve! Next thing, a rumor will circulate that Stephen King came secretly to Harbourton, broke into her house and killed his stalker.”

Grossman laughed, cruelly. But why was this funny?

“Elliot, it’s a terrible situation. I’m very sorry that that poor woman had to die in such a way. Of course, I suppose I’m relieved—as I’m relieved that my name hasn’t turned up yet in the news articles. There’s an advantage to being less famous than Stephen King . . . But here’s my concern: the caretaker is an elderly black man who’d worked for the family for thirty years. He’s certainly innocent. If an employee of Haider’s wanted to rob her he could have done it at any time, and not when she was in the house. And not in the middle of the night, or whenever this happened. And not with an ax. For why murder Haider at all, if all he wanted was her money?”

Grossman must have been impressed by this outburst, or astonished. For the first time in my experience with the lawyer he had no ready reply. Quickly I continued:

“And so I was thinking, Elliot—the man needs a lawyer to defend him. He’s black, he’ll be railroaded into a conviction. I don’t know Esdra Staples—of course—I never knew
her
—but whoever killed Haider, he’d have had to be from the outside, not an employee; the killer came through a window he’d forced open, which the caretaker wouldn’t have had to do.” I paused, breathing hard. How clever I was! For the window had not been “forced open” as I well knew—it had simply been opened. And when I’d fled in a panic, I hadn’t returned to shut the window which had been pushed open sufficiently to have allowed an adult male to crawl through.

All this, I told Grossman, I’d been reading in the
Harbourton Weekly
. No one was talking about anything else here in Harbourton—the last violent death had been in 1971, and that had been manslaughter.

“Could you help me with this, Elliot? Find a good lawyer for the caretaker, and I’ll pay his fee?”

How lavish I was feeling! At least, it was a good, buoyant feeling for once.

Grossman responded dubiously. A lawyer for a stranger? Why’d I want to be involved?

“Because it’s the right thing to do. I know that the man will be railroaded into a conviction here in Hecate County and I want to prevent that if I can.”

“But you say you don’t know him—?”

“How would I know Haider’s caretaker? You know—I’ve never met
her
.”

This was true. I had spoken, pleaded, with C. W. Haider on the phone, and I had wrested an ax from her fingers and split her skull with it, but I had not met her.

I told Grossman that the murder had surely been by chance—someone had broken into the house, looking for money, and Haider had confronted him, unwisely. “The police have no leads so they’ve arrested poor Esdra Staples. Supposedly, he was the last person to have seen Haider alive except for the killer.”

Grossman was silent. I broke into a sweat worrying that in my zeal to defend Esdra Staples, I had exposed a fatal vulnerability in myself. Grossman would become suspicious, and his suspicions would turn upon
me.

Except, Grossman said, thoughtfully: “Or—it’s one of the heirs. A relative in the old woman’s will, impatient for her to die.”

We talked for a while longer. Grossman agreed to contact a New Jersey lawyer skilled in criminal defense to take on the case, if the caretaker agreed.

After we hung up, I felt as if a great weight had been lifted from me.

Staggering to my feet, weak-kneed, but suffused with hope.

23 Predator

“Satan! Go back to hell where you belong.”

Running behind the house with my newly purchased .22-caliber rifle aimed at the sleek black creature thirty feet away daring to pause at a corner of the barn, to glare back at me with mocking eyes, and I stumbled in the ice-stiffened grass, turned an ankle and fell hard and the shot rang out loud enough to deafen me for a stunned moment thinking—
Am I shot? Am I alive—or still dead?

24 Unrepentant Son

“Andrew, I’m afraid there’s bad news. Your father is not doing well.”

With care Irina chose her words. For Irina well knew how sensitive I’d become these past several months.

“Your mother called just now. She’s saying she hopes that we will come to see your father in the hospice before—it’s too late.”

Hospice?
There is no exit from
hospice
except one.

Irina saw the shock in my face. And also the distrust, suspicion.

“But why didn’t you tell me earlier, Irina?—you and Mom?”

Strangely comforting to utter the word
Mom
. For a man who’d just turned fifty-four.

“But I did tell you, Andrew. I tried to tell you . . .”

“When?”

“When your father had those tests back in April—you know, at Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center. And then the surgery, and the chemotherapy . . .”

“No. No one told me.”

“But, Andrew—I’m sure that I told you, your father was moved to the Falls Ridge hospice last week . . .”

Pleadingly Irina regarded me as if she might inveigle the reasonable husband Andrew to conspire with her against the unreasonable husband Andrew—
me
!

“I said—
no one told me
. At least, no one kept me informed on Dad’s progress. Or lack of progress. Or how serious it all was—is. You certainly didn’t, darling.”

Yet, was this true? Vaguely I seemed to know that my father
was not doing well
for some time.

Driving on our country roads you see the carcasses of animals—raccoons, deer—lying at the roadside, killed by vehicles. But you don’t turn your eyes that way
,
by instinct.

Not doing well
can mean so many things. Best not to inquire.

But I did recall, so vividly that my heart began to pound with resentment, how, the last time we went to visit my parents—(Christmas? birthday?)—who lived only seven miles away, there was some problem with my father who hadn’t been home.

Or, if Dad had been home Dad hadn’t wished to see us.

That is, hadn’t wished to see
me
.

My face began to flush at the memory, pounding with heat. Why was this disturbing memory forced upon me, like something ugly shoved into my mouth?

She wants to unsettle you. The woman.

Wants to emasculate you. Like the other—the enemy.

It was always unsettling when Irina entered my writing room even when she’d knocked quietly at the door. When she had something of such urgency to tell me she didn’t feel she could send an e-mail or use the intercom phone.

But I’d come to hate a ringing phone. It was rare that I would consent to answer a ringing phone even if my editor was calling.

Hadn’t I tried to explain to Irina that I preferred her to contact me via e-mail rather than barge into my solitude and disrupt my work?—but this was a special situation, I suppose.
My father is dying and has refused to see me for years and I am expected to care?

Fact is, I did care. I was feeling weak and ill, with caring.

“Irina, the last time I tried to see Dad, remember he’d ‘gone out for a walk’ and didn’t return.”

“Yes, but—your mother thinks he would like to see you now . . .”

“He doesn’t want to see me. He’s pretending to be demented.”

“Andrew, you gave up too soon when he started behaving the way he did. It is ‘dementia’—but he has interludes of lucidity, your mother says. I’ve talked to him myself, on the phone . . .”

“
You’ve
talked to him? Since when?”

“I’m sure you’ve known, Andrew. I keep in touch with your parents—I’ve told you. Your mother and I are very close.”

“Since when?”

“Well, since—the past few years . . .”

“Is it my mother who says that I ‘gave up too soon’ with Dad? Am I supposed to crawl like a penitent and kiss his foot? Beg to be forgiven for something that didn’t happen, forty-one years five months ago?”

My voice was aggrieved, anguished. The voice of the twelve-year-old of whom it was whispered behind his back
That’s him. That’s the one.

“Your mother thinks that now, now that he’s in the hospice, he will be more realistic about seeing you. We could go together tonight.”

“Tonight! Not possible.”

“Well—tomorrow . . .”

“Look, Irina—for thirty years it was all right between us. I mean—Dad had behaved as if it was all right. He accepted it had been an accident with my brother—he knew how devastated I was—so why’d he change his mind? That’s what infuriates me.”

“He’s an elderly man, Andrew. It was the beginning of the change in him, when he began to”—Irina paused, searching for the most diplomatic way of expressing my father’s sudden repugnance for the sight of my face and the sound of my voice—“feel less comfortable around you. Your mother thinks he’d had a stroke that went undiagnosed, about six years ago . . .”

Irina spoke carefully. Defending my father.

Yet, because she loved me, at the same time defending
me
.

Of course Irina knew about Evan. All there was to know about Evan.

One day, I’d had to tell her. Confess, confide in her.

When we’d decided to get married. When it was clear that, if I didn’t tell her, someone else would.

Midway in my telling, my words had seemed to give out.

There was no way to speak of it. There had never been any way to speak of it.

He lost his balance on the high diving board, and fell.

It was an accident, no one was to blame.

We’d been swimming in the quarry at Catamount Park and then I climbed up over the rocks to a place where the water was deeper and there was a makeshift diving board about fifteen feet above the water.

Older guys hung out there. Never any girls, or kids Evan’s age.

Why’d he follow me! I told him to go back.

Most of the guys didn’t dive but just jumped off the board. That was all I did—held my nose and jumped. And Evan was going to jump but at the end of the board he froze. Guys were yelling at him to jump and I was embarrassed of my kid brother and started out onto the board but I wasn’t going to push him of course. I’d been just kidding of course. Had not pushed him—of course.

If I’d touched him it was just with two fingers in the small of his back to give him a little nudge he was taking too long.

Must’ve panicked and lost his balance and fell sideways and hit his head on the edge of the diving board, hit the water at an angle that exacerbated the fracture—skinny kid who could swim like a fish but limp now, lifeless—sinking in the deep quarry water like a rock—never breathed again.

Witnesses said different things but the ruling was, accident.

Rush brothers. Twelve, ten.

Andrew, Evan. Where both were beloved, now there was but one.

In the end, Irina went alone to the hospice.

Could not risk being rejected by my father another time.

Is it lonely, yes it is lonely. Through the years it has been lonely.

I think of how Evan would have loved many things in the world he had not yet seen. And it was not my fault but yet—it was my fault.

The fact is, it was ruled an accident.

No one blamed me.

No one blamed me to my face.