The Emperor of Ocean Park (27 page)

I am actually humming a bit of Ellington as I turn to the message slips and discover that one of my favorite people in the world, John Brown, has been trying to get in touch with me. John, a college classmate who now teaches engineering out at Ohio State, is the steadiest man I know. I call him back at once, hoping to hear the details of the visit he and his wife and children will be making to Elm Harbor in a few weeks. We exchange a few pleasantries, he tells me how much his family is looking forward to their stay with us, and then he discloses the reason for his call: an FBI agent dropped in yesterday, doing a background check for a possible “high-ranking federal appointment” for my wife. John wants to know what it is all about, and why he and his wife, Janice, have to be the last to know.

The only trouble is, Mallory Corcoran has assured me that the background check has not yet begun. The day that has been so peaceful and bright begins to turn dreary once more.

“John, listen. This is important. Please tell me that the agent who interviewed you was not named McDermott.”

My old friend laughs. “Not to worry, Misha. It wasn’t Mcanything. I’m pretty sure he said his name was Foreman.”

I try not to alarm him. I tease out a few details, suppressing the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I cannot lie to John. I tell him that the man called Foreman is not really with the FBI, that he is some kind of private investigator, and that he is breaking the law by pretending otherwise. I tell him that the real FBI will probably want to talk to him, because they are looking for Foreman. I wait for John to turn chilly on me, but instead he asks if I am in some kind of trouble. I tell him I doubt it. I promise to explain what I can when he and his wife come visit. When we finally hang up, I put my face in my hands, feeling the weight of depression pressing down on my shoulders. I sit shaking my head, wondering how I could have been stupid enough to think it was all over.

And that is where Mariah tracks me down, still at my desk, to tell me the exciting news about the way the Judge was murdered.

(II)

“B
ULLET FRAGMENTS
,” I repeat, making sure I have heard my sister correctly.

“That’s right, Tal.”

“In the Judge’s head.”

“Right.”

“Fragments that the autopsy somehow overlooked.” I am clicking frantically with my mouse, trying to find the Web site Mariah is describing over the telephone with such gusto. This is the last thing I need. There are about eleven hundred things I would rather be doing just now, but, as Rob Saltpeter likes to say, obligation to family is nonrefundable.

“On purpose, Tal.” Mariah is suddenly impatient. “Not by accident. They didn’t want us to know. They didn’t want anybody to know.”

“They
in this case being . . .”

“I don’t know. That’s why I think we need some help.”

“So why wasn’t there any blood in the house?” I am proud of myself for asking a reasonably intelligent question. The quarrel with Mariah has at least distracted me from the possibility that McDermott and Foreman are still on the loose.

“They cleaned it up.”

Of course.

“Or moved the body,” I suggest facetiously, but Mariah takes it at face value.

“Exactly! There’s lots of possibilities.”

The university loves investing in its science departments, but the law school’s cut-rate technology includes ancient computers, and the download of the supposed photographs of my father’s autopsy is taking forever. I need to hurry, because it is almost time to pick up Bentley from his preschool. I mentioned this to Mariah, who told me that her news would only take a minute. Still waiting for the computer, I stand up and stretch. For the past two weeks, I have been listening to my big sister’s ever-wilder theories about what actually happened. Despite an unambiguous autopsy result, Mariah continues to insist that so many powerful people wanted the Judge out of the way that some combination of them is bound to have brought him down. She has been reading up on drugs that can cause heart attacks. For a few days it was potassium-chloride poisoning: the medical examiner did not search properly for needle marks. Then it was prussic acid: the ME did not do an oxygen-saturation test. Each time it turns out that she is wrong, my sister comes up with something else. And, when pressed, she almost always concedes that her source is some Internet site. I remember something that Addison, proprietor of several sites, likes to say about
the Web:
One-third retail, one-third porn, and one-third lies, all of our baser nature in one quick stop.

“What kind of help do you think we need?” I ask her now.

“There are lots of people who want to help,” Mariah proclaims happily, if cryptically. “Lots and lots of people.” I grimace, wondering what has been going through her head as she sits all day with all those children in her palace, as Kimmer calls it, in Darien. Mariah has probably received the same bizarre calls I have, a variety of hard-right organizations dedicated to demonstrating conspiracies whenever they lose, and, certainly, when one of their most valuable assets is so prosaically struck down. Real men are murdered. Heart attacks are for wimps.

“What exactly do they want to do, kiddo?”

“Well, for one thing, they are going to run newspaper ads calling for an investigation.”

“Great. When do they plan to go public with that brilliant idea?” Hoping that I can get Uncle Mal or some other of my father’s wiser Washington acquaintances to prevent it.

“Don’t take that tone, Tal. Wait until you see the pictures.” A beat. “Have you looked at them yet?”

“In a minute.” I return to my chair. “When is the announcement, Mariah?”

“Soon,” she murmurs, no longer sure I am an ally.

“Mariah, you know . . . Okay, hold on.” The download is at last complete, four rather gory photographs, and I see no reason to think that any one of them is authentic. Three of the four do not show the face of the corpse, but the build does not resemble the Judge. Nor does the skin color, in every case too dark. The one that clearly is my father is sufficiently grainy that it is not clear why it is even there, which conspiracy it is supposed to prove. I frown and lean closer, pushing my glasses up onto my nose with a finger. One of the nonfacial shots does indeed show the black specks that Mariah called to tell me about. I suppose they could be bullet fragments, if I knew how bullet fragments look. Only . . . wait. . .

“Mariah.”

“Hmmm?”

“Mariah, I think . . . couldn’t that just be dirt on the lens?”

“See? That’s the same thing the medical examiner said.”

I remind myself that Mariah is my big sister and I love her. “Mariah, kiddo, please tell me you didn’t ask the ME about this.”

“Oh, no, Tal, of course not.”

“Good.”

“I didn’t have to ask. Her statement is in this morning’s paper.”

Oh, great. In the newspaper. The Judge must be spinning in his grave. I wonder if Kimmer has heard. “Well, if the ME says it was just dust . . .”

“You can’t believe
her.
”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, she’s a Democrat.”

The thing is, Mariah isn’t joking.

So, glancing at my watch, I say what I know she wants me to say. “I’ll call Uncle Mal and ask him to look into it.” Not telling her that the great Mallory Corcoran hardly ever takes my calls any more, which means that I will be kicked down the ladder to Cassie Meadows. Or that Meadows herself is probably tired of me too, and will likely spend no more than one phone call on the matter.

I am hoping that is all it is worth.

(III)

T
O MY SURPRISE
, not only is Meadows free to talk, but she has good news: the FBI has tracked down the mysterious McDermott. He is, indeed, a private investigator, based down in South Carolina. He has been bothering people who knew my father, especially around Washington, asking about a woman named Angela. He is well known to his local sheriff, who considers him persistent and perhaps a bit underhanded, but certainly not dangerous. He even has a real name, but the Bureau would not tell Meadows what it is.

“Why wouldn’t they tell you?”

She hesitates, wanting to be a Washington player like Mallory Corcoran, and thus loath to admit that she is outside certain circles of knowledge. “They said we didn’t need to know,” she finally confesses.

“Did they say why?”

Another pause. “I didn’t ask, to tell you the truth. Maybe I should have pressed . . . .”

“It doesn’t matter.” I sketch for her the substance of John Brown’s call. “Did they tell you anything about Foreman?”

“Foreman works for him. He’s some kind of private investigator too, and, yes, Mr. Garland, he is also considered harmless.”

At last I allow myself a ripple of relief. “Anything else?”

“Only that the two of them have fled the jurisdiction. Left the United States. They apparently heard the FBI was looking for them and headed for Canada.”

“Canada? What is the FBI after them for, that they would go to Canada?”

“That’s what they told me.”

Puzzled but relieved, I remember why I called in the first place. I tell Meadows about Mariah and her bullet fragments. Meadows laughs.

“What’s funny?” I glance at my watch, worry about my son waiting.

“I’ll add it to the file.”

“What file?”

“Mr. Corcoran had me open a file for stuff like this. We’ve got every nutty letter, every Internet posting, every right-wing pamphlet, every wild talk-show host’s theory about your father. It’s a very thick file, Mr. Garland.” Another chuckle. “We already have lots of alleged autopsy photographs in there.”

“So what’s the funny part?”

“Oh, well. I have a whole subfile full of e-mails from your sister.” Meadows lowers her voice. “I haven’t even bothered Mr. Corcoran with them.”

“You’ve . . . heard from Mariah?”

“Would you believe twice a week?” Another laugh, except that this one is humorless. “I guess she figures, you know, being as how she’s Mr. Corcoran’s goddaughter and all . . .” Meadows trails off, then adopts a more serious tone: “Somebody has to do something about her, Mr. Garland. My friends on the Hill tell me that if she doesn’t cut this stuff out . . . well, your wife won’t stand a chance.”

CHAPTER 15
TWO ENCOUNTERS

(I)

B
ENTLEY
! H
OME
! Two of my favorite words!

I arrive twenty minutes late to pick up my son because of my time on the phone with my sister, and I endure the unemotive glares of the teachers—all women, all white—whose grim silence informs me that they are prepared to call the Department of Family Services to report the Garland-Madison team as far too frequently tardy and therefore unfit to parent. I take some solace, however, from the fact that Miguel Hadley is still there, too, his parents therefore every bit as unfit as Bentley’s. Miguel, a pudgy little boy, is an amazingly bright child but never an ebullient one. He seems particularly solemn today. He hugs Bentley to say goodbye. The school encourages hugging between boys in the service of some unarticulated ideological goal—making sure they don’t grow up to be the kind of men who drop bombs on innocent civilians, perhaps. But I am not sure why the teachers bother. University kids are far more likely to grow up to be the kind of men who sit in the White House ordering others to drop the bombs, in between hugging their constituents.

Standing off to the side, waiting for the two little boys to finish their embrace (the school preaches that we mere parents should never separate them by force), I gaze out the window toward the parking lot, hoping, through this device, to avoid having to make small talk with the teachers who staff the school. They are hopelessly well-meaning, in the manner of white liberals of their class, but because they believe they have transcended racism (which afflicts only conservatives) they remain blissfully unaware of how their disdainful elitism is perceived by the few black parents who can afford the school. Nor is there any point in
enlightening them: their desperately sincere apologies would only make matters worse, signaling, as liberal apologies tend to, that the members of the darker nation are so weak of character that there can be no greater sin than insulting one.

White liberals, of course, believe themselves to be made of stronger stuff. That is why they so often support rules punishing nasty comments made by whites about blacks but readily forgive nasty comments made by blacks about whites.

I shake my head, struggling against the angry red direction of my musings. Does any of this diatribe actually represent what I believe? I scratch at the fading outline of a flower sticker in the corner of the window, wondering why these teachers, with their cultlike grins of welcome to every dark face, bring out the worst in me. And why I condemn liberals alone. The racial attitudes of conservatives are no better; often they are worse. These teachers, for all the arrogance of their sympathy, are not the ones scrawling
KKK with
cheap paint on the lockers of black high-school students or sending money to the National Association for the Advancement of White People. What is the source of my vitriol? Is it possible that I am just recalling, albeit dimly, some furious article or speech by the Judge? Odd how difficult it is becoming to tell the difference, as though my father, in death, owns more of my mind than he ever did in life.

I wonder whether I will ever escape him.

As I brood in the corner, waiting for the teachers to decide that Bentley has learned his anti-war, anti-macho, pro-hugging lesson for the day, I notice a trapezoidal black Mercedes minivan streaking and thumping across the potholes of the pitted lot. Dahlia Hadley, Miguel’s mother, has arrived in her usual heedless rush. She bustles inside, a tiny, slender whirlwind of smile and energy, and the teachers, so unnerved by my presence, begin to beam again, because everybody loves Dahlia; it’s like a rule.

“Talcott,” she murmurs breathily, as soon as she has waved to her son, “I am
so
glad you are here. I was thinking of calling you. Do you have a minute?”