The Emperor of Ocean Park (51 page)

The telephone is ringing.

My eyes jerk open and, automatically, I grab for the baseball bat. I stare, disbelieving, at the instrument that woke me from my doze, then turn to look at the clock, its red digital readout barely visible behind a stack of books on my desk. Two-fifty-one. In the morning. Nobody has ever called at two-fifty-one in the morning with good news. The caller-ID screen tells me only that the number is blocked.

Not a happy indicator.

Still, I grab the receiver, on the second ring, so as not to wake my wife. My heart is beating too fast, my grip on the baseball bat is too tight, and I have shifted my gaze back to the street, as though the ringing is the signal for an assault on the house.

“Yes?” I demand softly, for I will not even pretend to be glad to get a call in the wee hours. Besides, my adrenaline is still pumping, and I am a little frightened . . . for my family.

“Is this Professor Garland?” asks a calm male voice.

“It is.”

“The problem is taken care of,” the voice assures me, the tone voluptuous, almost hypnotic. “I regret what happened earlier tonight, but now everything is fine. Nobody will bother you again. You and your family are safe, just as promised.”

“What? Who is this?”

“And, of course, you should make no mention to anyone of this call.” I can think of no one I would dare mention it to. On the other hand . . .

“Suppose my phone is tapped?”

“It isn’t. Good night, Professor. Sleep well.”

I hang up the phone, my mind a confused admixture of puzzlement, relief, and a fresh, more profound fear.

Everything is fine. The problem is taken care of. Nobody will bother you again.

Maybe a crank call, maybe a bad joke, or maybe, just maybe, it is something far worse.

Maybe it is the truth.

I am shuddering as I climb the stairs, wondering if I heard what I thought I did just before I hung up: the distant click as my wife, trying to be quiet, put the upstairs extension back in its cradle.

CHAPTER 28
TWO NEWS FLASHES

“I
HEAR YOU HAD A LITTLE TROUBLE
,” says the great Mallory Corcoran, who has at last condescended to speak to me again. In fact, he called me this time, rather than the other way around.

“You could say that.” Carrying the portable phone down the hallway, I rub my bruised face, smiling ruefully at my image in the narrow gilt-edged mirror that hangs across from the dining room, a hideous artifact given Kimmer by some distant aunt on the occasion of her first marriage. It is past eleven in the morning, but Bentley is still up in his bedroom, sleeping off the exhaustion of last night. One of the great advantages of the academic life is that it is possible to take a morning off for little things like loving a child.

“The police are faxing Meadows a copy of the report. Is there anything you’d like me to do? Any way I can help?”

“I don’t think so, Uncle Mal. I’m fine. Just a little shaken up.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” I mutter as I stand in the kitchen window, looking out on the pummeling rain threatening to drown our small but family-friendly back yard. Hedges close it in on two sides, a high wooden fence on the third, and then there is our own house making the fourth wall. We let Bentley spend all the time he wants out there, often unsupervised. “I think I have things . . . pretty well under control.”

“Do you have any idea what they wanted?”

I hesitate. I told the police that the two men took the package, but not that they kept on asking about
the arrangements
as they pummeled me. I have told nobody about the phone call that came in the middle of the night, and light-sleeping Kimmer has not asked.

For some reason, I believe the phone call. It just feels . . . plausible, maybe.

“I don’t know, Uncle Mal,” I sigh. The pain is back, weakening my voice, but it is not yet time to take another Advil. “I don’t really know.”

“You don’t sound so good.”

“Oh, that’s just my jaw.”

“They broke your jaw?” Alarm. Incredulity. But also some amusement, the tone of a man who has seen it all.

“No, no, nothing like that. It just hurts, that’s all.”

“Humph.” Mallory Corcoran obviously doubts my claims to be okay. I do not really blame him, but the more important pains I am suffering are not physical. This morning, aching bones and all, I made breakfast for Kimmer and myself and then tried to get her to sit still and listen to the whole story. I planned to tell her everything, everything I know, everything I have guessed, everything I am worried about. Dressed beautifully for work in a navy chalk-stripe suit, my wife shook her head wearily.
I don’t want to hear it, Misha, okay? I trust you, I really do, but I don’t want to hear it.
I protested, but she shook her head again. She put her fingers gently over my lips. Her eyes, serious and questioning and worried, held mine.
I just want to ask you three questions,
she said.
First, is our son in any danger?
I had spent half the night, even after the telephone call, considering the same question, so I had my answer ready. I told her what is true, that I am sure he is not. She took this in and then asked,
Am I in any danger?
Again I told her no, of course not. Still regarding me solemnly, Kimmer asked what she really wanted to ask all along:
Are you in any danger?
I turned this over in my mind and then shook my head.
I don’t think so.
She frowned.
You’re not as certain.
I shrugged and told her that I was as certain as I could be. And Kimmer nodded and stepped into my arms and kissed me for a while and then put her head on my chest and told me to remember that I have a family who needs me.
You do what you think you have to do, Misha, but think about what happened last night and remember the rest of your obligations.

Then she went off to work, leaving me with an unexpected smile on my face.

Later in the morning, Don and Nina Felsenfeld stopped by from next door, delivering casseroles and kindness, nearly smothering me with their fluttering worry, but warming me as well. How they found out what happened last night I have no idea, but Elm Harbor is, as my wife keeps pointing out, a very small town.

“Well, if you think of anything the firm can do to help,” Uncle Mal is saying, with a forced bonhomie, “you be sure to get in touch.”

He means get in touch with Meadows. He is tired of me again. I can tell.

“I will.” I make myself say it. “And thanks for calling.”

Mallory Corcoran actually laughs. “Oh, Talcott, wait a minute. Don’t hang up. We haven’t even gotten to why I called yet. I was going to call you anyway, even before I heard about what happened.”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

Another potent laugh booms over the miles. “No, no, everything’s just fine. Listen, Talcott, on this judge thing? Your wife must have a secret admirer.”

“A secret admirer?”

“That’s right.”

“Meaning what?” I ask uneasily, no longer thinking about last night’s assault, worrying now that the White House has discovered something about my wife’s possible extramarital activities, the ones concerning which I promised Dr. Young I would give her the benefit of the doubt. Then I realize Uncle Mal is suggesting that Kimmer’s chances are getting better, not worse.

“My sources tell me that the President’s people are souring a bit on Professor Hadley. He isn’t out of the running yet, but he’s teetering. The Republicans had him down as a Felix Frankfurter type, this big political liberal who was also a judicial conservative, because that’s what you can glean from what little he’s written. They liked that combination, figured they could make the Democrats happy and warm their own right wing at the same time. That’s the line somebody sold them, anyway.”

“I see.”

“Not a bad idea, either. The President has had some rocky confirmation fights, and I think he’d love a smooth one.”

“I’m sure.” I have carried the portable phone into my study, absently massaging my wounded ribs. The front window shows the same endless rain as the back. Hobby Road, as usual in midmorning, is pretty much empty, for children are at school and parents are at work or the supermarket or aerobics or wherever parents go these days.

“That was the idea, anyway,” he continues. “But I hear that somebody’s been feeding them transcripts of these after-dinner talks Professor Hadley has given here and there, and now they’re thinking they have a crypto-liberal at the top of their list. He may not publish this stuff, but, well, some of his ideas look pretty screwed up.”

“I see,” I say slowly.

“Whereas in Kimmer’s case . . . well, Talcott, given your father . . . let’s just say that the President has a right flank to please, and nominating the daughter-in-law of Oliver Garland would have a certain . . . cachet. Plus she’s black. A black woman. A three-fer.”

“Lest we forget.”

“You sound upset, Talcott.”

“No, no.” There is no way to explain to Uncle Mal how his last comments have stung me, and how they would sting my wife even more were I to share them, which I will not. A Garland marriage without secrets would probably be too happy, and that the family could never abide. “No, but . . . you said somebody’s feeding them the transcripts?”

“Somebody from Elm Harbor, I hear.”

“From Elm Harbor?”

“From the university.” His voice is harder now.

“Oh. Oh, I see.” I keep my tone neutral. Plainly, Uncle Mal thinks I am the one doing the feeding, and his attitude tells me what bad taste he thinks it is for a man to use his Washington connections to promote his own wife’s candidacy for the bench. Although, if he were to take a moment to consider the matter, he would remember that I have no Washington connections other than the one to whom I am currently speaking.

“But, Talcott, the thing is, shoveling dirt on somebody this way can backfire.”

“Backfire?”

“What I mean is, whoever is feeding the White House those transcripts? Well, okay, maybe they can do Professor Hadley enough damage that he won’t get the seat. But, you know, there isn’t any kind of guarantee that the feeder’s candidate will get it, either. This kind of thing can hurt. If A is slinging mud at B, sometimes A and B both get so dirty that they’re knocked out of the . . .”

“I get the idea.”

“And even if it doesn’t backfire? Even if it works? Well, still, it’s just plain wrong.”

Wrong.
Now, there’s a word likely to die during the new century. “I agree.”

“I’d find a way to put a stop to it if I were you.”

“Uncle Mal, it isn’t me!” I blurt, feeling just as I did last night, the innocent black man looking guilty in the eyes of white power.

“I never suggested that it was,” he intones piously.

“Will you tell them?”

“Tell who what?”

“Tell the White House that it isn’t me.”

“Well, if you really want me to,” he murmurs dubiously, implying that he is not sure they would believe him, or that they should.

“Please.”

“I will,” he says, but he means he won’t. “So, anyway, stay tuned.”

“Right.”

“Good. That’s what we’re here for. Oh, and let us know if there is anything the firm can do.”

“Of course,” I tell him.

Stuart, I am thinking as I hang up. That pompous idiot, Stuart Land.

CHAPTER 29
AN ENJOYABLE EVENING

(I)

“A
RE YOU OKAY
, T
AL
?” asks Shirley Branch, pecking me on the cheek as I step across the threshold of her condo. She peers sympathetically at the still-visible bruise under my eye. Outside, the wet New England winter wind carries on its annual December argument with those who prefer warmth. “I heard you almost got arrested. Let me have your coat. Where’s your wife?” One question stumbling over another, because Shirley possesses the kind of disordered brilliance that cannot keep up with itself.

I shake my head and hand Shirley my parka, answering the first question for about the tenth time in the past two days and the second for about the hundredth time in the past year. No, I was not almost arrested, I tell her; a minor misunderstanding, nothing more. And Kimmer could not attend the dinner party because the sitter came down with the flu, which is true enough, even though, had the sitter been well, Kimmer would have found some other excuse. Dinner with law school faculty is, for my wife, a little bit like being stretched on the rack, only without the health benefits. Kimmer, who at surprising moments decides she likes my company, suggested that I should stay home, but when I told her I thought that was a very good idea, she changed her mind, citing the very arguments that persuaded us to accept Shirley’s invitation to Saturday dinner in the first place: Shirley is the school’s first black female professor, and there is such a thing as solidarity, even in these fractured times. Shirley is my former student and research assistant, and there is such a thing as loyalty, even in these selfish times.

But I think the real reason Kimmer wanted at least one of us to go
was in order to spy on Marc Hadley, who is also on the guest list. Kimmer and Marc have not been in the same room since they became contenders for the vacancy on the court of appeals, and my path and Marc’s have barely crossed at the law school, not least because I have spent so much time away. I think Kimmer, who is a good deal less intimidated by my colleagues than she thinks she is, decided that it is time to take his measure.

Until it turned out we had no sitter: then she sent me on alone.

“Have you seen Cinque?” Shirley asks hopefully in her gentle Mississippi accent—Cinque being the quite formidable name of the quite unformidable terrier which now and then accompanies her to her small office in violation of numerous university rules. “He got out somehow.”

“I’m afraid not,” I tell her.

“Are you really okay, Tal? I’m not sure you actually know everybody. You’ve met Reverend Young, right? No? Oh, you have? He’s my pastor. Your eye looks terrible. Are you sure you didn’t see Cinque out there? He’s not really a winter dog.”