The Emperor of Ocean Park (11 page)

“I understand that your father swore you to secrecy. That was sensible of him. But you surely must see that your vow does not include me.”

I spread my arms wide. “Uncle Jack, look. I’m sorry. I don’t think I can help you. There just aren’t any arrangements that—”

In a movement almost faster than I can follow, his skeletal hand snakes out and grabs my wrist. I shut up. I can feel the heat of his illness, whatever it is, coursing beneath the papery skin, but his strength is amazing. His nails furrow my arm.

“What arrangements?” he
demands.

As I stand, mouth open, my wrist still trapped in Uncle Jack’s thin fingers, Addison moves a worried step closer, so does the bodyguard, and I sense more than see the two of them sizing one another up; something primal and male is suddenly in the air, a mutual scenting, as though they are beasts preparing for battle, and I see the first faint tinges of red beginning to blot out the trampled green grass.

“Please take your hand off me,” I say calmly, but the hand is already off, and Uncle Jack is looking down at it as though it betrayed him.

“I am sorry, Talcott,” he murmurs, speaking, it seems, more to the hand than to me, and somehow sounding not so much contrite as cautionary. “I ask what I ask because I must. I do so for your sake. Please understand that. I have nothing to gain, except to protect you, all of you, as I always promised your father I would. He asked me to look after his children if anything happened to him. I agreed to do so. And”—this almost sadly—“I am a man of my word.” He shoves the offending hand into his pocket. The lunatic, gleeful eyes lift slowly to meet mine. Off to the side, Addison relaxes. The wary bodyguard does not.

“Uncle Jack, I . . . I appreciate that, but, uh, we’re grown-ups now . . . .”

“Even adults may require looking after.” He coughs softly, covering his mouth with his fist. “Talcott, there is not much time. I love you and your brother and your sister as though you were my own. I ask you now for help. So, please, Talcott, for the good of the family we both love, tell me of the arrangements.”

I take a moment to think. I know I must get this precisely right.

“Uncle Jack, look. I appreciate you being here. I’m sure the whole family does. And I know it would mean a lot to my father. Please believe me, I would help you if I could. But I—I just don’t know what you are talking about.” I can feel myself botching it. “If you would just tell me what arrangements you mean.”

“You know what arrangements I mean.” This in a hard tone, with a touch of the fire I saw a minute ago, just enough to remind me that I am dealing with a dangerous man. The day is growing darker and my head is beginning to pound. “You appreciate that I am here? Excellent. Now I would appreciate the information.”

“I don’t have any information!” Finally losing my temper, for nothing causes quite so sharp a red aura as condescension. “I told you, I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about!” I am so loud that heads turn among the mourners who have not yet departed, and the bodyguard looks ready to grab Uncle Jack and make a run for it. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that longsuffering Kimmer is striding heavily toward us. It occurs to me that it would be best to finish this conversation before she arrives. “I’m sorry I raised my voice,” I tell him. “But there is nothing I can do to help you.”

A long silence as the eerily dancing eyes search mine. Then Jack Ziegler shakes his head and purses his thin lips. “I have asked my question,” he whispers, perhaps to himself. “I have delivered my warning. I have done what I came to do.”

“Uncle Jack—”

“Talcott, I must go.” His hot glare fixes briefly on Addison, standing ten paces away, who frowns and turns toward us as though aware of scrutiny. Jack Ziegler crowds closer to me, perhaps afraid of being overheard. Then the skinny hand snakes out again, once more amazing me with its speed, and I take another step back. But he is holding only a small white card. “Beware of the others I have told you about. And when you decide that you would like to talk about . . . about the
arrangements . . .
you must call me. I will come to any place you name, at any time you name. And I will help you in any way that I can.” A pause as he waits, frowning. “I do not usually make such promises, Talcott.”

Now I get it. He expects me to thank him. I hate that.

“I understand,” is all I can bring myself to say. I pluck the card from his fingers.

“I hope so,” he says sadly, “for I would not want to see you harmed.” All at once he smiles, inclining his head toward my advancing wife. “You or your family.”

I cannot believe what I have just heard, and the red is suddenly very sharp and bright. My voice is more gasp than objection: “Are you . . . Is that a threat?”

“Of course not, Talcott, of course not.” He is still smiling, except that it is more an ugly rictus than a sign of happiness. “I am warning you of the thoughts of others. For me, a promise is a promise. I promised to protect you, and so I shall.”

“Uncle Jack, I don’t really know what—”

“Enough,” he says sharply. “You must do what you must do. Allow no one to dissuade you.” For a long moment, the dark, demented eyes bore into mine, making me lightheaded, as though part of his insanity is crossing the two feet between us, burrowing down my optic nerve into my brain. And then, very suddenly, Jack Ziegler gives me his back. “Mr. Henderson, we are going,” he snaps at the bodyguard, who favors us with a final suspicious glance before also turning away. Mr. Henderson steadies his master. They walk off along the shadowy path through the marching headstones, turn a corner, and soon are lost in the deeper shadows, as though they are ghosts whose time in the world of the living is done and who therefore must return to the earth.

Still stunned, I feel Addison’s steadying hand on my shoulder. “You did great,” he murmurs, knowing, perhaps, that I doubt it. “He’s a fruitcake.”

“True.” I tap the card against my teeth. “True.”

“You okay?”

“Sure.”

My brother gives me a look, then shrugs. “See you at the house,” he promises, and heads off to look for his weird little poet or whatever she is. I take a step nearer the grave, unable somehow to believe that my father, casket or not, was able to lie quietly through the entire exchange with Uncle Jack. His silence, perhaps, is the best evidence that he is actually dead.

“What was that all about?” asks Kimmer, now at my side.

“I wish I knew,” I say. I consider telling her what Jack Ziegler said about Marc Hadley, but decide to wait; better she be pleasantly surprised than cruelly disappointed.

Kimmer frowns, then kisses me on the cheek, takes my hand again,
and leads me down the hill. But as I ride back to Shepard Street in the limousine, clutching my wife’s cold hand, Jack Ziegler’s words run like a mantra through my troubled mind:
The others. Beware of the others . . . . I am warning you of the thoughts of others. For me, a promise is a promise.

And the rest of it:
I would not want to see you harmed. You or your family.

CHAPTER 6
THE PROBLEMIST

(I)

A
LTHOUGH IT IS
no longer our home, Washington is very much Kimmer’s city. With the Congress, the White House, a gaggle of federal regulatory agencies, countless judges, and more lawyers per capita than any locale on the face of the earth, it is a place for those who like to make deals, and making deals is what my wife does best. My wife’s first task when she arrived in the city was to build a base camp, complete with laptop and portable fax machine, in the guest room of her parents’ home, on Sixteenth Street up near the Carter Barron Theatre, a half-mile or so north of Shepard Street. She spent Monday, the day before the funeral, lining up appointments for Wednesday, the day after, one meeting over at the Federal Trade Commission on behalf of a client, the rest in furtherance of her candidacy for the court of appeals. And so this morning she leaves her parents’ house early, for breakfast with another old friend—“the new girls’ network,” she gushes, although some are men. This particular friend is a political reporter at the
Post,
a woman appropriately named Battle, a buddy from Mount Holyoke, who is said to be connected.

Kimmer has always cultivated the press and is frequently quoted in the pages of our local newspaper, the
Clarion,
and, now and then, in the
Times.
I have a different attitude toward journalists, one I have exercised frequently over the past few days. When reporters call me, I have no comment, no matter what the subject. If they persist, I simply hang up. I never talk to reporters, not since the press savaged my father during his hearings. Never. I have a student named Lionel Eldridge, a onetime professional basketball star who, having ruined his knee, now hopes to be a lawyer. Kimmer and I know him and his wife a little bit,
because he worked at her firm last summer, a job I helped him to obtain at a time when other firms, vexed by his grades and trying to prove they were not awed by his celebrity, turned him down. Lots of journalists still do stories about “young Mr. Eldridge,” as Theo Mountain likes to call him—I think in jest, for Lionel may be half a century younger than Theo, but he is almost a decade older than the rest of the second-year students. In any event, the media still adore young Mr. Eldridge, and love to chronicle his doings. Once a reporter was foolish enough to call me. She was writing a profile of Sweet Nellie, as he was called in his playing days, and wanted, she said, to capture his eagerness to master this new challenge. She had spoken to Lionel, who had identified me as his favorite professor. I was flattered, I suppose, although I am not in this business to be liked. But still I had no comment. She asked why, and, as she caught me at a weak moment, I told her. “But this is a
nice
piece I’m writing,” she wailed. “I write
sports,
for goodness’ sake, not politics.” As though the distinction would reassure me. “I hate sports,” I told her, which was a lie, “and I’m not a nice man,” which is the truth.

Even though my wife keeps telling me otherwise.

But Kimmer thinks her newspaper friend can help her, and perhaps she is right, for my wife has a nose for knowing who might be able to boost her closer to her goal. Later, she will meet with the Democratic Senator from our state, a graduate of the law school, to try to cajole him out of Marc Hadley’s corner and, at minimum, onto the sidelines: a meeting I went hat in hand to Theo Mountain, the Senator’s favorite teacher, to arrange. She is lunching with Ruthie Silverman, who warned her that everything about the process is confidential but at last agreed to see her anyway, for everybody who knows Kimmer develops the habit of doing what she wants. After lunch, my wife will visit the chief lobbyist for the NAACP, an appointment arranged by her father, the Colonel, who is also connected. Then, in the late afternoon, Kimmer and I will join forces, because the great Mallory Corcoran himself has squeezed the two of us into his calendar at four; Kimmer and I will see Uncle Mal together, in the hope that he will agree to put a portion of his considerable influence her way.

Washington, as I said, is Kimmer’s city. It is not, however, mine, and it never will be; it is far too easy to close my eyes and remember all the long, bleak hours of hearings as my father sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee, first confident, next disbelieving, then angry, and finally sullen and defeated. I remember the days when my mother sat
behind him, the days when I did. How Mariah was too upset to attend after the scandal broke, and how Addison, often summoned, never showed, to my father’s distress. How the Judge’s distress irritated me when I was so loyal and so ignored and Addison, as usual, so flighty and so loved: the prodigal son indeed. I remember the television lights, after the hearing was moved down the hall to a larger room, and everybody sweating. I had no idea that television lights were so hot. Senate staffers dabbed the members’ foreheads; my father dabbed his own. I remember his grim refusal to accept any coaching from Uncle Mal, from the White House, from anybody who might help. I remember looking up at the Senators and thinking how distant and high and powerful they seemed, but also noticing how they read most of their long, pompous questions from cue cards, and how some of them grew confused if the conversation wandered too far from their briefings. I recall the baize on the tables: until I had the chance to touch it, I never realized it was simply stapled in place, a kind of special effect for the cameras. In reality, the tables were plain wood. I remember the crowds of reporters in the hallways and the entrances, shouting for attention like preschoolers. But most of all, like everybody else, I remember the dreary and repetitive and ultimately necessary questions:
When did you last see Jack Ziegler? Did you meet with Jack Ziegler in March of last year? What was the subject matter of the discussion? Were you aware of the pending indictment at that time?
On and on and on. And my father’s dreary, monotonous answers, which sounded less and less convincing with every repetition:
I don’t know, Senator. No, I did not, Senator. I do not recall, Senator. No, I had no idea, Senator.
And, finally, the beginning of the end, which always starts with friends running for cover and with the same signal to the now disgraced nominee, usually spoken by the chairman:
Now, Judge, I know you to be a decent man, and I have a great deal of respect for your accomplishments, and I would really like to believe that you are being candid with this committee, but, frankly . . .

Nomination withdrawn at nominee’s request.

Nominee and family humiliated.

Grand jury convenes.

Fade to black.

Or, as I might have said back in college, during my more overtly nationalist days, to white.

Even now I shudder at the memory. But there is no escaping it, at least not here in Washington. Last night, Kimmer and I sat up with her
parents, watching the eleven o’clock news. When the anchorwoman reached the funeral of Oliver Garland, about the third story in, there, suddenly, were scenes not of today’s events but of the humiliation of many years ago, my father seated before the Judiciary Committee, his mouth moving soundlessly as the reporter continued to talk. Cut to footage of Jack Ziegler in handcuffs following one of his many arrests: a nice, if biased, touch. Cut to the Judge giving a fiery speech before one of the Rightpacs as the reporter chattered about his later career. Cut to the rueful face of Greg Haramoto, interviewed outside the church just after the funeral, expressing his sorrow at the passing of “a great man” and extending his condolences to the family—although he made no effort to condole us in person, or by telephone, or even by note. Greg turns out to be the only attendee whose post-funeral comments made the news; but perhaps he was the only one the journalists found worth interviewing. Just as he was, before the Judiciary Committee in 1986, the only witness who mattered.