Quests of Simon Ark (12 page)

“Here’s his name,” I pointed out to Simon. “Conrad Mara. He apparently was running for his second term as county judge.”

Simon Ark grunted. “Conrad Mara … A most significant name.”

“Significant? What’s significant about it? It’s not too uncommon a name.”

“It is significant nevertheless. Let us look further and see what happened to Conrad Mara.”

We looked and read; we followed the day-by-day activities of Maple Shades all through the month of October, through the fires and births and deaths, and all the common little things that happened in any small town.

Finally we came to Election Day, and the day after.

There was my father’s picture, smiling out at me from the printed page, and there was Uncle Philip smiling next to him. They had won; they had been re-elected to another term in office.

But there was no picture of Conrad Mara.

There was no mention of Conrad Mara.

We looked at the tabulations and found his name, but he had run far behind his opponent; there was no mention of him elsewhere in the paper.

Simon closed the heavy volume and returned it to the librarian. “Maybe you can be of some assistance,” he told her. “We’re seeking information about Conrad Mara. He used to be a county judge here …”

“No,” she replied, “I’m afraid I can’t help you. I know nothing of Conrad Mara.” She turned away from us and walked quickly to the rear.

Simon Ark sighed and I followed him out into the street. “Where to now?”

“Back to the funeral parlor, to see if we can find anyone who wants to tell us about Mara.”

“But why is he so important, Simon?”

“My friend,” he answered slowly, “as you know, I have pursued Satan and his works for many centuries, and I have seen him in a variety of guises. I have seen him as a desert chieftain and a crusading knight, and even as a baldheaded monk. He comes, and he lives among people for a time, and then he goes.”

I was used to hearing Simon talk like this, and I knew that it was not just talk. Whether he was a mortal man like the rest of us, or something more, I’d probably never know. But when he talked like this I listened.

“Are you trying to say that this Conrad Mara was the devil in disguise?”

“I don’t yet know for certain. But something brought the evil to Maple Shades, something brought the evil that struck down your father and sister. Because evil comes like a wet summer wind, clutching at a town, seeping into every crevice until no one is safe from it.”

“But why Conrad Mara more than anyone else?”

“Because he is no longer here. Because he has moved on, as Satan always must, after his work is done.”

“But why Mara?”

“My friend,” he answered, “do you know who Mara was?”

“Who he was?”

“Not this Mara, but the original one—many centuries ago.”

“Mara? No, I’m not familiar with the name in history.”

“‘Mara’ was the name given to the devil in writings of Buddha …”

“Oh, come on now, Simon! Mara is a fairly common Italian name; you’ll find it in almost any phone book.”

“And perhaps, my friend, Conrad Mara is just a simple Italian judge. But then again, perhaps he is more. We must wait and see.”

He was excited now, in that quiet way I knew so well. He was on the trail, on the trail of something big and very evil. The memory of his original purpose in visiting Maple Shades was now buried deep in his mind, and he was the man I’d first known, so many years ago.

We reached the funeral parlor and while I spoke briefly to the few visitors I still remembered, I noticed Simon motioning my uncle into the next room. When I could break free I joined them in time to hear Uncle Philip saying, “I have nothing to say, Mister Ark. Judge Mara is gone and that is all you need to know. He left town well over a year ago, and could have no possible connection with the accident.”

Simon Ark sighed. “Is that all you have to say?”

“That’s all,” said my uncle, and hurried back to join his wife and the other mourners.

“Now what?” I asked Simon.

“We must find out,” he answered. “I’m convinced that Conrad Mara was the cause of the evil here.”

“It does seem strange that no one will talk about him. Look, there’s Hallison James. Let’s ask him.”

Hallison joined us, glad to relax from the tiring chore of greeting visitors. “Where have you fellows been?”

“At the library, Hallison,” I said. “Trying to find out something about the third Judge of Hades, Conrad Mara.”

Hallison’s smile faded. “We’d rather forget about Mara.”

“Why?”

“It’s not something we discuss here in Maple Shades,” he said, and there was a note of finality in the words.

“Well, can you tell us where he went when he left here?” Simon asked.

“To hell, I imagine,” James replied.

“You mean he’s dead?”

“No, no, he still lives; I think he’s in Cincinnati somewhere.”

“And where did he come from?” Simon asked, his face tense as he waited for the reply.

“Well, that’s a long story. Philip could probably tell you more about it than I could.”

“Philip won’t talk,” I told him.

“Then I’ll tell you as much as I know. Philip and your father met Conrad Mara in Havana, back in 1937. You were still in your late teens then, but you’ll remember that they went down to Havana for the first Daiquiri Bowl football game on that New Years’ Day. Rita went along, too, but your mother was too sick to go; she stayed home with you and Stella.”

I remembered. It was nearly twenty years, but I remembered. The details of those last few years at home still stood out clearly in my mind.

“Well,” Hallison continued, “as you probably remember, there was a huge sports carnival in Cuba that month, just after Battista took over the government. Villanova and Auburn, I think, were the teams who played in that one and only Daiquiri Bowl game. Anyway, somewhere during the festivities the two judges met this Conrad Mara, a widower living in Havana with his ten-year-old son. He had a small law practice, but apparently he was interested in coming back to the States. After Philip and Richard returned, they kept corresponding with Mara, and pretty soon he did come up here, to Maple Shades. He’d found some people to take care of his son, and he came up here to set up a law practice. And before long he was a judge, along with the other two …”

“Then what happened?”

“I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. He was defeated in the last election and he moved to Cincinnati. That’s all I know …”

I sighed reluctantly and turned to Simon. “That answer your questions?”

Hallison James left us, and Simon stood for some minutes watching the visitors entering and leaving the house of the dead. I took a minute to call the hospital and ask about Frank Broderick’s condition. He was in fair shape, and they were just keeping him overnight for observation. He’d be released in the morning.

Next I found Shelly in the undertaker’s office with Rita.

“Hello, dear. Sorry to be away so long.”

“I’m used to it by this time,” she smiled. “What did Simon find out?”

“Not too much, I’m afraid.” I thought of asking Rita about Mara, but decided she’d tell me no more than my uncle had. She was in one of her unfriendly moods, and left the room when she saw I was going to remain with my wife for a while.

“How’s your brother-in-law?” Shelly asked.

“He’ll live, I guess. They’re letting him out of the hospital in the morning.”

Simon Ark joined us and I could see a new thought had crossed his mind. “Could we go out to your father’s house? I’d like to look around.”

“Well … I suppose so. Wait a minute, and I’ll get the key from my uncle.”

I returned with the key and we were off again—this time with Shelly too, because she couldn’t take any more of facing my aunt and uncle without my support.

A cab dropped us at the big house that was so familiar to my childhood. I tried to look at it objectively, not thinking about all the good times. And all the bad times. But it was still my house, and I couldn’t get away from that simple fact.

The inside was much as I’d remembered it, with the long, wide staircase and the lighted portrait of my mother over the fireplace.

“You mean he lived in this big house all by himself?” Shelly asked me.

“He was that kind of a man,” I answered simply.

“I wish I’d known him better.”

“No you don’t; nobody who really knew him ever did,” I told her.

Simon Ark paused in his reconnaissance of the house to face us by the broad silent stairs. “My friend, before we proceed any further in this investigation, I think it would be well for you to tell me just why you hate your father so much …”

It was out in the open now, and somehow I was glad he’d put it into words. And yet I retreated, still subconsciously fighting the thought. “Where did you get that idea?”

“It’s been quite obvious from the first. You want it to be your father who was responsible for that auto crash; you don’t want it to be your sister because you loved her.”

Shelly came to my side and the three of us stood there in silence, alone in the big house that had once been home to me. I realized that they were both waiting for me to speak, and I asked through dry lips, “Do you know which of them caused the crash?”

Simon Ark hesitated and then replied. “I’ve known that for several hours now, but the question that remains unanswered is why. Why, after all these months—and even years—of hatred between your father and your sister, did it suddenly boil to the surface?”

“Do you think you know why?”

“I believe the answer lies with the third judge, Conrad Mara.”

I didn’t understand his constant talk of this third judge, who was no longer even living in Maple Shades; but I knew from the past that Simon Ark was a wise man.

We searched briefly through my father’s study, looking for something, yet not really knowing what we’d find. Simon seemed to disregard my father’s legal papers, and even the stack of correspondence got only a brief glance from him. But finally he found what he apparently sought, and he showed it to us.

“What is it?” I asked. “A business card?”

“It’s in Spanish,” Simon replied. “It’s the card of a firm of private investigators in Havana.”

“What does that tell us?”

“Perhaps that your father was investigating the past life of Conrad Mara …”

We looked further, and soon Shelly came upon some dusty campaign posters. “Look!” she exclaimed, holding one up. “Here’s your father, and Philip … and here’s a picture of Mara, too!”

Simon and I were at her side in an instant, looking down at the smiling face before us.

“He looks so young,” Shelly commented.

“He can’t be much under fifty if he had a ten-year-old son back in 1937,” I said.

“His face looks vaguely familiar in some way,” Shelly said, frowning at the campaign photo.

“The face of evil is always familiar,” Simon Ark spoke quietly. “It is the face of Judas at the Last Supper; of Genghis Khan charging across the Asian plains; of John Wilkes Booth as he shot Lincoln. It is the face of the serpent in Paradise, of the ultimate evil, the devil himself.”

“Perhaps,” I said, borrowing Simon’s favorite word. “If you’re right, and Mara did bring this evil to Maple Shades, then he must be found and destroyed.”

Simon Ark nodded in agreement. “Let us search further. If your father was interested enough to dig into Mara’s past, it’s quite possible he knew where he went after leaving here.”

And so we searched.

But there was nothing. Whatever reports my father might have received from the private detectives in Havana, there were no traces of them now. And even his address book contained no hints as to Judge Mara’s destination, after leaving Maple Shades.

Finally, almost in desperation, Simon picked up a Cincinnati telephone book and glanced through it. We all stared as the phone book fell open to a page with a folded corner. There, halfway down the column, one name and number had been circled, the Southern Gateway Hotel. And next to the number, in my father’s familiar scrawl, was the single word “Mara” …

We were going back, back along the broad pavement of U.S. Highway 50, back to the sprawling confines of Cincinnati. We were crowded into the back seat of a taxi, and not one of the three of us spoke. Shelly’s face was white and drawn and I was beginning to be sorry we’d brought her along. On the other side of me Simon sat tense and expectant. I had a feeling that the end was near, but the end of what?

“I never even looked inside the coffins,” I mumbled, half to myself. “I don’t even know for sure that it’s them inside.”

“It’s them,” Simon Ark said. “I already considered and rejected the possibility that the whole accident was faked for some reason.”

“Then what’s the answer?” I wanted to know. “Which one of them was it? Which one of them caused the accident?” The questions had been becoming more important as the hours drifted past, and now they were the most important thing in my life—more important than my job, or Simon, or even Shelly. Because if it was Stella whose mind had been warped by this evil thing, then somehow I had failed. I had run away and left Stella at the mercy of the family, at the mercy of my father and Uncle Philip and Aunt Rita.

It had to be my father. It had to be …

We came in Seventh Street, past the New Telephone Building, and Shillito’s, and all the other familiar and unfamiliar landmarks of a city that was no longer mine. The cab turned right, glided two blocks south into Fountain Square and Government Square, then into Main Street and south toward the river.

The Southern Gateway Hotel, when we finally reached it, was a run-down three-story structure almost at the river’s edge. Already the night shadows were slipping in around us, and from the hotel’s lounge came the mighty wail of a jazz trumpet, splitting the evening air with a mournful note. We passed through the lounge, noting the young kids and their girls, getting an early start on a Saturday night, because perhaps the Southern Gateway was not the type of place you came to later in the evening.

And I remembered them, because I’d been one of them twenty years earlier. I’d been one of the kids with pimples on their faces, escorting the girls with the jutting jaws or the pushed-in faces, and kidding themselves that they were out with the most beautiful girl in Cincinnati.