Loot the Moon (7 page)

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Authors: Mark Arsenault

BOOK: Loot the Moon
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“Is my bother-in-law here?” she asked crisply.
They both turned to Billy, who nodded.
“Don't let him touch my hat,” she said, and then turned sharply and walked away, deeper into the office. Her feet thumped heavily on the carpet. Brock followed a step behind. He had a limp, as if favoring a gimpy right foot.
Martin closed the door behind them, then collapsed against it and sighed.
Billy picked up June Harmony's hat and flipped it onto the table. “At least you didn't throw it out the window,” he said.
Martin pounded his temple with his palms. “Why does that woman make me so goddamn nervous? It's gotten worse since Gil died.” He paced to the window, looked to the street, frowned, and then yanked the cord for the blinds. They fell with a clang on the sill. “Never take a friend's widow as a client.”
“She doesn't like her bother-in-law,” Billy said. “Why?”
“Did you meet Lincoln Harmony today?”
“He's drunk.”
“Linc and June never got along. Some old feud there, goes back a long way.”
“We don't pick our parents or our in-laws. How's the judge's kid?”
Martin stepped closer, rested one ass cheek on the table, and passed a hand over his scalp. He seemed pained. “Brock is morose. Polite. Wounded. In denial.” He thought a few moments. “Sealed off from the world. Unreachable, at least by me.”
“I'll try him.”
“Gently,” Martin commanded.
“I need to know what he remembers about that night. Something he might have overlooked when he gave his statement to the cops. Or something the cops didn't bother to include. Physically, he's getting better. Maybe he'll remember more details, too.”
“Be discreet. June didn't want any more people here than necessary.” He glanced to the door, and then lowered his voice, so Billy could barely hear him. “I told her that you were a clerk for me, to help with the paperwork.”
Billy leaned close. He was about to needle Martin for lying, but then blurted, “What's this shit in your beard?”
Martin looked straight down. “I'm too farsighted. Can't see a thing from this close …”
“Some kind of gray dust? Are you flicking cigar ash into your own scruff?”
“What … ? Oh, Jesus Christ!” Martin yelped. “It's in my beard!”
Billy put his hands up. “Whoa! Easy now, Dusty.”
Martin popped to his feet and ran around the conference table, furiously pretending to comb his fingers through his beard, without actually touching it. “Get it out! Get it out!”
“What's the matter with you?”
Martin turned to him. His eyes squeezed shut. “Get it out!”
What the hell is wrong with him?
Billy grabbed two handfuls of hair, just below Martin's chin, and shook furiously. The beard released a cloud of gray dust, and half an empty pistachio shell. “Look at this mess,” Billy marveled. “You ought to do this at least once a year.”
“Just shake it out!”
The door flew open. Billy and Martin froze in place, beard in hand, a cloud of dust settling around them.
“When you gentlemen are ready to begin,” said Mr. Thybony, a wizened white-haired Yankee lawyer, who gave no hint that he was startled by the scene in his conference room, “I believe all the invitees are in attendance.”
A
s an employee of Martin Smothers, and not a party to the ritual opening of the will, Billy sat alone in a corner of the conference room. Fine with him; he could watch everyone at once, though he could feel the stone eyes of the Turk's Head poking the back of his head through the window.
People settled into seats, three on each side of the table, and the scene looked like a negotiation was about to break out.
Martin sat closest to Billy. He picked intently at his beard like a chimp inspecting itself for fleas.
Next to Martin sat June Harmony. She spun her chair sideways, placed her elbow on the table and her hand in the air with two fingers spread in a narrow V, as if she held a cigarette. She looked like a former smoker who had quit the habit but had unconsciously retained the mannerisms.
At his mother's side, Brock Harmony slumped, hands in his lap, eyes glazed, lips parted, and breathing through his mouth. He stared across the table to a blank wall. Occasionally he glanced to the
grandfather clock in the corner and gave little sighs that seemed to beg,
When will this end?
Another trio faced them from the other side of the table.
Lincoln Harmony pushed his chair an arm's length from the table. He slouched, feet planted far apart, and stared at June. She would not look at him, he refused to look away, and this seemed like some kind of contest.
Linc Harmony's lawyer sat next to his client. He was a doughy lump in a chalk line suit. His eyeglasses were as thick as coffee-table glass.
Next to the lawyer sat a compact woman, midthirties, who had arrived last, and whom Billy had not had the chance to meet. Her name was Kit Bass, according to Martin, and she had been Judge Harmony's law clerk. As the judge had cut back his trial schedule and eased into semiretirement, Kit had worked with other judges, too, unless Harmony was presiding over a trial. She had worn a simple cotton sundress, and Billy's gaze lingered on the stripe of freckles across her shoulder, which carried his eye to the cuts of her sharply developed biceps.
At the far end of the table, Mr. Thybony placed a flat-screen computer monitor to face his guests, with a sleek laptop computer and a single bookshelf speaker. He stood behind the computer screen and silently reviewed his audience.
“You'll forgive an old man for indulging himself with a few words,” Thybony said. His voice had that particular hollowness that is caused only by age. “Bertrand Russell told us the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.” He smiled, looked away, gathered himself for a moment. “My friend Gil Harmony was the exception.” He looked at Martin. “Don't you agree, Mr. Smothers?”
“You knew him well,” Martin said.
For the benefit of the rest of the audience, Thybony explained. “I
was the fortunate lawyer who replaced Mr. Smothers when he left this firm more than thirty years ago.” He pinched his rubbery nose for a moment and seemed to force back some emotion. “I'm not ashamed to admit that my mentor in this business was a wee bit younger than I am.” The words snagged on his grief, but he got them out. “Gil was stolen from us in a barbaric manner. I would have liked to see his killer come to trial, but the Lord decided that the perpetrator would not face a jury. A pity.”
Billy looked out the window. He could feel Martin's eyes on him. They poked harder than the Turk's Head.
“Gil didn't believe that bad people somehow got whichever curse they deserved,” Thybony continued. “For him, there was no justice outside of a courtroom. And though he left this firm years ago for the bench, he maintained an office here, did his research in our library, and prepared lessons for his students on this conference table around which we now gather. Gil traveled back and forth from New York twice a week to teach law because he thought sharing what he knew was an obligation to the next generation of great lawyers.”
Lincoln Harmony burped a stream of air, and then tapped a fist on his chest. The distraction brought Mr. Thybony back to his duty.
“Let me now do,” Thybony said, “what Gil had asked of me.”
He loaded a disc into the laptop, explaining as he worked the computer mouse: “Gil's formal will is in document form, of course, and I've made copies for the attorneys here today. Throughout his life, Gil set up a multitude of charitable trusts, and his will contains several lengthy sections concerning the eternal maintenance of those trusts. What I'm to play for you today is the abbreviated version of the will, the part that concerns the people here in this room.”
While the program loaded, Billy thought of his father's will. Did the old man even have one? What would it say?
To Bo, I leave my collection of World's Fair memorabilia, and my perfect blue eyes, which you have already received … . To my son, Billy, I leave
an Autocrat coffee can with two hundred dollars stuffed inside, all the money I have in the world, plus I leave you my addictive personality, my lack of patience, the childhood scars from my serial philandering, and the eternal mystery of our fucked-up relationship … . I'm outta here, my boy! … Enjoy!
The computer screen flickered and then lit up with an image of Gil Harmony—square jawed, clean shaven, pure white hair swept across his forehead, wind-scrubbed complexion from sailing the bay, a regal look that reminded Billy of an eagle. He wore an open-collared polo shirt and a light cotton sports jacket.
“Good day,” said the image, in a baritone sounding slightly robotic in digitized audio. Gil smiled on the screen.
Martin gasped. People around the table shot glances at each other. June Harmony instinctively grabbed Martin's arm. Lincoln Harmony muttered, “Self-indulgent son of a …” He seemed to suddenly realize his mouth was broadcasting his inner monologue, and he cut himself off.
“This is my last will and testament,” the image intoned, “which I covertly rerecord each year with the help of my good friend Ken Thybony, my lawyer, my old partner, my videographer, and the keeper of my secrets.”
Mr. Thybony responded with a sad smile. He dabbed the corner of his eye with a pinkie.
“You all recall my annual fishing trip with Ken every June? Well, before we hunt down the stripers each year, we also make a new video, and then I chuck the old one off the boat.” Gil grinned on the screen.
Billy and Martin exchanged a glance. This recording was just four months old.
“Ken is my executor and he'll enforce my full last will in accordance to the documents, but I wanted to address the people watching this recording in a more personal way.”
“Seems remarkably upbeat for a dead man,” Lincoln Harmony observed.
Kit Bass shushed him.
“Whaaaat?” Linc persisted. His lawyer tapped his hand to shut him the hell up.
What an asshole
, Billy thought. Though he couldn't argue … Gil Harmony did seem chipper for a corpse. But why not? He was a few minutes from chasing the bluefish on the bay. Saltwater fishing is so deeply carved into the history of Rhode Islanders, the right to use the bay is guaranteed to each resident in the state constitution. How many times had the judge rerecorded this video? Only to have to do it again the next year?
On the screen, Gil Harmony looked away for a moment, then stared hard into the camera. “To my wife, June, I fear the pain you must be suffering right now.”
June Harmony lifted her chin toward the image, as if offering a dare.
Go ahead. Hit me. I can take it.
“Please believe me, June, that I didn't intend for it to happen, all this hurt you're feeling. Some things are, well, just larger than ourselves. We can't control them. Marriage isn't always easy. Everybody knows that. But my love for you has never faded, and I suspect my last conscious thought was of your face.”
His delivery is off
, Billy thought.
Sounds more like a pickup line than an eternal good-bye.
June did not flinch.
Across the table, Kit Bass, the judge's clerk, pressed a crumpled tissue to her eye.
Lincoln Harmony chewed air like a cow with its cud.
“Our home in Charlestown, with both our names on the deed, is already yours, as well as our liquid assets in the joint accounts,” Gil Harmony said from the next world. “So I leave you, June, something of purely spiritual value. My gavel. The only one I've ever used. The
varnish has worn off the handle but it's still a good piece of hickory.” He smiled, sadly, as if it had finally dawned on him that the only way anyone would see the video was upon his death. “I've wielded that gavel to strike down the guilty, and to offer them mercy. Use it as you see fit, but I pray you choose mercy.”
June suddenly realized she was still clutching Martin's arm. She released him as if he had been electrified, and then nodded some vague apology.
On the monitor, Gil Harmony paused for twenty seconds. For what? Applause? For the rest of the gathering to congratulate June? When he spoke again he addressed his brother.
“Lincoln …”
Linc Harmony leaned forward in his seat and answered the screen with a sarcastic, rolling “Yeassss?”
“There isn't much you need from me, my brother, that you haven't already received. I had high hopes that when I left the superior court bench you'd be ready to assume my place, but that's not the way things have worked out, have they?”
“Skip to the punch line,” Linc Harmony murmured.
“To you, Linc, I leave my law texts, including the complete General Laws of Rhode Island, which I have studied nearly all my life.”
“Those books are online now,” Linc argued.
“I leave you my copy of the United States Constitution, a mere eighteen pages in which history's greatest nation was born.”
“Defendants quote it all the time in traffic court,” Linc replied bitterly.
“And I leave you this—” Gil Harmony fished inside his coat pocket and withdrew a tiny nip bottle of whiskey. He continued, “This is my last drink. I bought it twenty-five years ago when I gave up booze, and I've kept it in my desk that whole time. Imagine, they still made the bottles out of glass back then. I promised myself if I ever needed another drink, this would be the last one. I've never needed it.”
“Fuck you,”
Lincoln Harmony muttered under his breath.
He rose to leave, but his lawyer pulled him back down, cupped a hand to his client's ear, and whispered into it.
Linc replied to him out loud, “Books and a goddamn lecture? He's worth
millions
.”
The lawyer shot him a hard look, which Harmony seemed to understand. Linc snorted like a racehorse, nodded in agreement, and settled back into his chair.
They're going to sue
, Billy guessed.
“Brock, my son,” the image called out in a sudden burst of cheerfulness.
Brock shrank from the screen, and then turned slowly to face it. He looked lobotomized, with the scar on his head and the detached way he floated through the event.
“How are you, my boy!”
He's trying too hard
, Billy thought
. Like my old man did when I was Brock's age.
“Son, I set up a trust for you that will become available when you're thirty-one. It might seem like a long time away, but I think it's good for a man to live without a net for a while, to make it on his own. Like I did. In the meantime, your mother will be living at the beach house, so I want you to have the town house in downtown Providence. Hmm? How's that sound?”
The image waited, as if for an answer. Brock gave none.
“Um, it's all paid for,” Gil Harmony continued, as if trying to talk his son into accepting. “And I'm sure your mom can help with taxes and that sort of thing, till you get on your feet. I like the town house because it's close to the court. But it's close to the art school, too. I was thinking, mmm, maybe you could live there and finish up your degree? You're so good at what you do! Your teachers said you're the best they've ever seen. As I always say, find something you love to do, and be great at it. Just like your old man.”
Brock lifted his head, exhaled suddenly, and blinked a few times, as if waking from a coma. To Mr. Thybony, he said, “May I step outside a moment?”
“Of course, Brock.”
He got up gingerly, and rested a hand on his mother's shoulder a moment. Every pair of eyes in the room followed as he limped out.
“To you, Kit,” Judge Harmony continued brightly, undeterred on video, “the best clerk any judge ever had …”
 
 
Billy found Brock Harmony sitting on the steps of the historic Arcade Mall, leaning a shoulder against a granite pillar and picking his cuticles. He noticed Billy but looked away and said nothing. Billy sat beside him, on a granite step laid long ago by the sons of the men who had fought Cornwallis. Millions of footsteps over nearly two hundred years had eroded a saddle into the rock.

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