Last Ditch (11 page)

"Gentlemen,"
she began. "We've been at this for the better part of an hour to little
or
no avail. I can see no practical purpose to further discourse. As far
as I am
concerned, this meeting is concluded."

She
saved her
final comment for me.

"Young
man. On one hand, I find your loyalty to your father and his memory to
be quite
laudatory. Such old-fashioned notions as loyalty and family are all too
often
missing in this modem world."

When
I nodded
my agreement, she continued.

"On
the
other hand, however, I find your unwillingness to allow the facts to
speak for
themselves to be quite childish and vain."

"We
don't
have any facts," I said evenly. "When we do, I'll be sure to let them
speak for themselves."

I
think that if
she'd had a pitcher and a bowl, she'd have washed her hands of me.
Instead, she
gave me a long stare, more of pity than of disdain, and then rustled
off toward
the door.

H.
R. McColl
and Mark Forrester trailed her across the room like a brace of dogs
trained to
heel. When the door clicked behind them, I turned to Pat. "What in hell
is
the matter with you?" I asked.

"Me?"
He looked incredulous. "What's the matter with me?"

"Yeah.
You. What in hell did you think you were doing?"

He
stepped in
closer. I could smell his breath mints.

"What
I
was—for your information—trying so desperately to accomplish was to get
a
handle on this thing. If you'd kept your big mouth shut ..."

"If
I'd
shut up and let you handle it, you'd have copped a goddamn plea."

We
were
nose-to-nose now. He spread his arms.

"What
did
you expect? Your father's ... my brother's worst enemy is found buried
in his
backyard with a bullet in his head ..."

"I
expect
you to be defending my father . . . your brother, that's what I expect.
Period.
End of discussion."

"On
what
grounds? For pity's sake . . . what do you imagine I might claim?
Coincidence?
Syncronicity? Divine intervention? What sort of rationale did you have
in mind,
Leo?"

"You
claim
whatever it takes, man. You do whatever you have to do. You make sure a
bunch
of strangers don't get away with pissing on your brother's grave."

"Grow
up,
Leo. This isn't never-never land. We're never going to know what your
father
did or didn't do. That's the past. This thing is here and now and it's
going to
be played out on the field of public opinion. It's bad enough that
you've been
plastered all over the front page with this Brennan thing."

"What's
bad about that?" I demanded.

He
made his
disgusted face. The one where it looks like sheep dip has just been
passed
beneath his nose.

"The
press," he scoffed.

"I
see
your picture in the society pages about twice a week; you don't seem to
have
any objection to that."

"I
don't
suppose it's occurred to you that Brennan and your father used to do
quite a
bit of business with each other. Brennan knows where the bodies are
buried,
Leo. Lots of them. What if he reads the papers and decides he can trade
a
little inside information on your father's dealings for a plea bargain?
What
then?"

"He's
a
convicted murderer, Pat. His testimony and a buck will get you on the
bus."

"Whatever
lies he tells will still be on the front page."

"So
what?"

He
took several
measured breaths.

"We
have
to appear reasonable. Possibly even contrite. If we do that, this thing
will
fade. Something else will catch the public fancy. Unreasonable denials
will
merely add fuel to the fire."

"Who
says
denials are unreasonable?"

"Denial
merely prolongs the agony."

I
poked him
solidly in the chest with my index finger.

"Maybe
you're willing to give him up as guilty, but I'm not" I had a terrific
urge to poke him again but instead lowered my voice. "You make one
public
statement that even sounds like you think he's guilty and Emily Morton
and that
shithouse newspaper and your precious social position will be the least
of your
fucking worries. I'll completely redefine agony for you, you little
prick. If
you don't feel like you can bring yourself to come to your brother's
defense,
then just shut the fuck up. You hear what I'm saying here, Pat?"

He
took a short
step backward and put his hands on his hips.

"Are
you
threatening me?"

"You
bet
your ass," I said.

He
sneered.
"Like father, like son."

I
SUPPOSE that
if you wanted to be a fanatic about it, you could maybe say I bed. But
just
maybe. And only a little. Technically speaking, I had kept my act
together
during the meeting. I hadn't yelled at anybody. I hadn't cursed or
threatened.
What happened with Pat afterward . . . well ... the way I saw it. . .
that was
sorta like a whole different meeting altogether. Something more akin to
private
therapy than public theater. You know what I mean. Anyway, that's what
I'd
settled on for my story, and I was sticking to it.

Rebecca,
possessed of that nurturing instinct found only among the fairest of
the fairer
sex, knew precisely what to say next.

"Pat's
probably right," she offered. "Mucking around in this thing will just
stir it up."

As
far as I was
concerned, the only thing Pat was right about was how I was more like
my old
man than I generally liked to admit. Mood I was in, though, I wasn't
about to
admit to that either.

"Et
tu,
Duvall?" I said in mock despair. "How sharp as the serpent's tooth
the ungrateful significant other."

She
brought her
hand to her bosom and narrowed her eyes.

"Oh,
Gomez
. . . you know what poetry does to me . . ."

"It's
not
funny," I protested.

"Listen
to
yourself. Mr. Irrepressible telling me something's not funny." She
walked
over and threw an arm around my waist, drawing me tight against her.
"Besides that, big fella ..." She rubbed her breasts against me.
"... who says I was kidding." She nuzzled her face into my neck and
began kissing me.

"I'll
give
you a half an hour to stop that," I said.

When
she
redoubled her efforts, I gently pulled away.

The
fact that I
could practically hear my blood redistributing itself merely served to
heighten
my sense of gloom. Lately, the smug assurance of women as to the
predictability
of my reactions gives me the occasional urge to demur, as, if nothing
else, a
symbolic means of reclaiming some long-lost territory of my soul. At
least,
that's what I tell myself. Truth be told, however, despite my best
intentions,
even the slightest physical entreatment, real or imagined, sets into
motion
within me an urging engine, which drags my best intentions along in its
wake
like a rusted chain of burned-out cars. I used to beat myself up about
it, but
have come to see it as inevitable and merely an accident of the blood.

"Sorry,"
I said. "I guess I'm a little off my feed." She leaned over and
kissed me on the cheek. "Can't say as I blame you. This is pretty
rough." I did the manly thing. I changed the subject. "Have you seen
the keys to the attic?" "What's in the attic?"

"I
was going
to see if I could find my father's daybooks from about the time
Peerless Price
disappeared."

For
much of his
public life, the old man had weathered a veritable hail of independent
investigations, fact findings, closed-door hearings and internal
audits, all
instigated by Peerless Price. The barrage of litigation had forced my
father to
document his each and every move. Every hour of his professional life,
every
reimbursable expense, every mile of official business driven by the
city
vehicle in his possession. All of it. My father kept track of this
torrent of minutia
in a series of small blue notebooks which were, when I look back at it
now, the
precursor to the day planner. He filled up three or four a year, marked
the
dates of their inclusion on the spine and then filed them
chronologically, in
preparation for the next audit. He called them his daybooks and never
left home
without one in his pocket.

I
could tell
from Rebecca's expression that she wanted to say something but was
holding
back. "What?"

She
jammed her
hands into her pants pockets and shook her head.

"You
think
I'm being stupid, huh?"

"I
think
it's a thirty-year-old case," she sighed. "I think high-profile cases
like this are like quicksand. The more you wiggle around in them, the
faster
you sink."

My
turn to
sigh.

"As
you
already so kindly pointed out, that was more or less Pat's point of
view."
She shrugged. "Sorry," she said. "I've got to do
something." "I know."

"I
mean,
it's not like I expect to find some little notation . . . you know . .
. like .
. . July third, nineteen sixty-nine, ten-thirty P.M., kill Peerless
Price, or
something like that. I just thought maybe I'd look and see what my
father was
doing and then maybe check with the paper and see what Peerless Price
was
working on and you know ... see if . . ." I let it go.

"There's
a
big ring of those old skeleton keys in the front part of the drawer
with the
silverware. It's probably one of those."

When
I didn't
move, she stepped over and took me by the hand.

"Come
on," she said. "I'll show you."

WHAT
I REMEMBER
most about my parents' house was the silence. How, in every room, from
floor to
ceiling, for as long as I could remember, the butt ends of whatever
they had to
say to each other but couldn't bring themselves to utter had floated
about like
airborne dust. Even as a young boy, I had come to realize that
something within
that silent space had swallowed their love and ripped them asunder.
Why? Who
knows? I guess the answer depends on whether you're more inclined to
believe in
miracles or in mistakes.

I
STOOD AT the
bottom of the fold-down stairs, looking up into the semidarkness,
brandishing a
black rubber flashlight like a scepter.

"You
wanna
come up?" I asked.

"You
want
me to?"

"No,"
I said. "I know where they are. Shouldn't take long."

"You
sure?"

I
didn't like
the expression on her face. "What? You think I'm afraid of the dark?"
"I didn't say that."

I
lifted one
foot and placed it carefully on the first tread.

"I'll
be
right back," I said with a bit more bravado than I felt. I began to
climb.
I climbed fast and without looking back, putting one foot above the
other,
until I stood on the rough board floor at the head of the stairs. I
turned and
pointed the thin yellow beam back toward the square of light at my
feet, and
then I realized I'd been holding my breath. I took in some new air and
looked
around.

On
my left, two
small triangular windows flanked the chimney, throwing wide shafts of
light out
on the far end of the room. Behind me, the three gables of the front
facade
divided the remaining interior into alternating patches of dark and
light. I
switched off the flashlight.

I
saw what I
was looking for. The four brown file cabinets into which my father's
life had
been squeezed were huddled together down by the chimney. As I looked
down the
length of the room, it struck me that some unknown force in the attic
had
divided my parents' afterlives along precisely the same lines which
they
themselves had chosen to divide things during their tenure on earth.

On
the left was
the guy stuff. The folding Ping-Pong table. The croquet set and
volleyball net.
The bent basketball hoop that used to grace the front of the garage.
And of
course, all the boxes upon boxes of Christmas ornaments and lights,
which,
every holiday season, he and I had struggled to hang from every eave
and bough
on the property. When I was young, it was my father hanging from the
ladder and
crawling across the roof. My lot was merely to fetch and tote. Later, I
did the
high-wire part of the act, while he stood on the ground, smoking cigars
and
waving his long arms. Later still, in the years after she died, he
hired it
out, and we stood together on the frozen grass, shoulder to shoulder,
drinking
whiskey and stamping our feet while the workmen wrapped the place in
Yule-tide
cheer.

On
the right, a
wide-hipped mannequin lorded over the wretched refuse like an indoor
scarecrow.
They'd removed the round mirror from her walnut dresser and pushed it
back up
under the eaves. The antique wicker baby carriage—she always called it
a perambulator—sat
atop a pile of old windows, next to an ornate wooden birdcage big
enough for a
California condor. We'd always had the cage. Never had a bird. But
always had
the cage.