The Emperor of Ocean Park (40 page)

And of how to escape it.

Probably better that I not know.

We fly through the complicated intersection and turn hard onto Massachusetts. The green car is stuck at a light, and in the wrong lane. Its passenger door whips open, just as we swing around the corner behind the gray building.

“Slow down for a second,” I tell the driver as soon as the green car is out of sight. I know it will catch up momentarily, the passenger, who can slide between stopped cars, even faster. I have only seconds. I slip the driver another bill, a ten: I have no more twenties.

He is shaking his head, but he slows. I push open the door and climb, crouching, from the still-rolling car. “Now go!” I call, slamming the door.

I do not need to tell him twice.

As the taxi squeals around the next corner, I am already darting into the narrow alley separating the back of my former office building from an old townhouse next door, home to some private institute or other. The alley dead-ends at the building’s service entrance. Cameras of doubtful working order guard the scene. I crouch behind a drab green Dumpster just as my pursuer, now on foot, hurries by. My eyes widen, and I fight down a sudden trembling in my extremities. I wait, instinct telling me that we are not through yet. I check my watch. Three minutes pass. Four. The alley stinks of old garbage and recent urine. I notice for the first time that I have company: a homeless man, his possessions heaped around him in plastic bags, is fast asleep near the loading dock of the office building. I keep watching the street. The green car finally slithers past, moving slowly, the invisible driver probably checking hedges and doorways—and alleys. I wonder why they are not chasing the taxi. They must have seen me get out. I sink farther back into the shadows. The green car is gone. I still wait. A flurry atop the Dumpster draws my attention, but it is only a mangy black cat, gnawing on something foul. I am not superstitious. At least I don’t think I am. I wait. The homeless man mutters and snores, a fibrous alcoholic sound I remember from the days when the Judge used to lock the door of his study. Ten minutes pass. More. Sure enough, the passenger from the car passes me again, having evidently walked all the way around the block. The green car reappears. The door swings open. They appear to argue. The passenger points down the street, vaguely in the direction of my hideout, then shrugs and climbs in. The car drives away. Still I wait. I remain crouched in the alley for close to half an hour before I slide out and join the stream of pedestrians. Then I sneak back in and stuff my other ten-dollar bill into the homeless man’s pocket.

More guilt money.

Back on the sidewalk, I cross Massachusetts Avenue and mosey into Dupont Circle, pausing at the stone chess tables, pretending to watch the games, but really craning my neck to see whether I spot the green car or its furtive passenger. I drift from one table to the next, glancing at the positions on the boards. The players are a true rainbow, a random mix of ages, races, languages. Few of them seem very strong, but, on the
other hand, I am not giving their games much of my attention. A crazy old man yells at a younger woman who just defeated him. The woman, who looks about as healthy as my customers at the soup kitchen, wears a hairnet and glasses repaired at the temple with a Band-Aid. She points a quivering finger at her vanquished opponent. He slaps it aside, baring brownish teeth. The kibitzers take sides. Other games lose their audiences. The crowd around the stone table grows raucous. Lawyers with cell phones at their hips jostle with slender bicycle messengers as everybody seeks a better view of the hoped-for tussle. I lose myself inside the throng, trying to peek in every direction at once. I cannot remember when my senses have been so open, so absorbent. I am not even scared. I am exhilarated. Every color of every branch of every tree is so crisp and clear I can almost breathe its hue. I feel as though I can examine the face of every one of the hundreds of pedestrians who walk through the park every minute. Another half-hour elapses. No sign of the green car, no sign of the passenger. Forty-five minutes. Eventually, I slip away and walk north, toward the Hilton.

Then I change my mind. There is another stop I want to make first, for I have a new question to ask, and I know where to ask it. I look for a bank, find a cash machine, and withdraw another hundred dollars from our dwindling checking account. I will explain it to Kimmer somehow. I find a public telephone and make a quick call. Then I hail another cab and give the driver instructions.

We pass the Hilton and then cut east on Columbia Road, passing through the loud, colorful, ethnically complicated neighborhood of Adams-Morgan, where, following law school, I lived for several years in a tiny walkup apartment with my books and my chess set and an unadorned mattress on the floor, my diet consisting almost entirely of apple juice and Jamaican meat patties from a shop down the block, until, at Kimmer’s urging, I moved to far more expensive quarters in a dreadfully modern building much further up Connecticut Avenue. Sitting in the back of my fourth taxi of the day, I shake my head ruefully, for she was still married to André Conway when she began complaining about how I lived. The cab passes my old building, and I soften with sentimentality. We hit Sixteenth Street, where we turn north toward the heart of the Gold Coast. Along the way, I remain alert for any sign of the green car or the passenger who searched for me on foot.

A very familiar passenger. The passenger of my dreams.

The roller woman.

CHAPTER 22
CONVERSATION WITH A COLONEL

(I)

V
ERA AND THE
C
OLONEL
were surprised to hear from me, not least because, despite ten years of entreaties, I hardly ever just drop in when I happen to be in the District on business. Their modest house on Sixteenth Street is set in the middle of the Gold Coast; the Judge’s larger place, Mariah’s now, lies on the border with the paler nation, as did his public career.

My in-laws welcome me effusively, banishing the dogs to the yard because they know I suffer from allergies, a fact that Kimmer’s father holds against me, for he thinks it betrays a fundamental lack of toughness. From the number of hugs we exchange, I almost believe they are happy to see me. Then I remember the chilly Thanksgiving dinner two weeks ago in this very house; I remind myself of the tendency of Madison moods to swing, usually without warning. They lead me into the small family room at the back of the house, a converted sun porch, the decor a suffocating mix of cheap souvenirs from ports around the world and photographs and citations from the Colonel’s days as a leader of men, as he likes to describe himself. Vera serves cheese and crackers and asks us what we want to drink. The Colonel scowls at the platter and sends her back to the kitchen for a bowl of nuts.

The shelves sport a whole series of pictures of Kimmer and her sister, Lindy—Marilyn at birth—from infancy to the present, and you can see, even in the early teen years, a hint of smoky challenge in the way the fleshier Kimmer glares at the camera, whereas willowy Lindy is, early on, more remote, less giving. The Madisons, like the rest of our
set, were always puzzled at my apparent preference for Kimmer. Her parents certainly remember that I dated both their daughters, albeit not at the same time. What they do not realize is that only Kimmer dated me back.

Vera returns with the nuts and our drinks.

We sit surrounded by bric-a-brac and chintz, the Madisons as nervous as I, pretending that we are having a grand time, that we do this every day. The Colonel is drinking Scotch straight. A cigar smolders in an ashtray pilfered from a cruise line, for the Madisons seem to be off sailing somewhere every five minutes. Vera sips white wine. I stick with my usual ginger ale. I am never sure how to begin a conversation with my in-laws, whose skeptical eyes and querulous manner often make me wonder whether they blame me for ruining Kimmer’s marriage to André Conway, Perhaps they believe that, if not for the nefarious and wily Talcott Garland, their daughter would have been a faithful wife, and they would have a son-in-law who makes films and is always on television rather than one who professes law and is always in his office. They ask a question or two about Kimmer, just for form, but the subject is awkward and we hastily move on. The Colonel asks how Elm Harbor is doing these days, for he has heard that speculators are buying up the broken neighborhoods, and is wondering if he should get in on it; Miles Madison owns empty houses, to hear him tell it, in half the cities on the East Coast, waiting for real estate to take off. Some places it has. Kimmer is always at pains to explain that, since her father has no tenants in the dying areas where he buys, he is not a slumlord.

When we have exhausted the subject of Elm Harbor real estate, Vera, perfect hostess, makes polite inquiries about the law school—she has, of course, seen Lemaster Carlyle on television quite often, and asks what he is like, and I burn a bit but answer as politely. Then my in-laws grow effusive as they ask about the marvelous Bentley, for Lindy, the darling of the Gold Coast in her youth, made a single bad marriage and has yet to give them any grandchildren. Now she is just another unmarried black woman in her forties hoping for lightning to strike, a pattern all too common in the darker nation as intermarriage, violence, prison, drugs, and disease combine to decimate the pool of eligible males.

Then it is time to get down to business, and Vera can tell whom my business is with. “I’ll leave you men alone,” she murmurs and withdraws. She always defers to her husband, although, in other respects, she is like her daughter: no shrinking violet, few skills of self-effacement.

“So, Talcott,” says the Colonel expansively, waving the Cuban cigar in his stout hand. He has offered me one, but I have declined. Unlike André, I neither smoke, drink, nor curse; the Colonel, accordingly, considers me less manly. His smooth, hairless dome glistens. “What can I do for you?”

I hesitate for a moment, my mind spinning back absurdly to my flight around Dupont Circle an hour ago. I wonder, for a silly moment, if the roller woman might be lurking in the bushes outside the window, perhaps holding a directional microphone that can pick up voices from vibrations in the pane. I force my concentration back into the room, meet the Colonel’s challenging stare.

“My father owned a gun,” I tell him flatly. His yellowing eyes widen slightly, the intricate motions of his cigar hand grow more extravagant, but he shows no other reaction. So I continue. “I checked . . . . I hear it’s easy to buy them in Virginia.”

“It is. I’ve bought a few.”

“Well, that’s the thing. I don’t believe he bought it there.”

“You don’t.”

“I just can’t imagine my father sneaking over the Memorial Bridge in the dead of night with an illegal handgun hidden in the trunk. It just . . . wouldn’t have been his kind of thing.”

A faint smile creases his pudgy face. He finishes his drink, glances around for his wife to fix him another, then remembers she has left the room and goes to the wet bar to get his own. He waves the ginger ale bottle vaguely in my direction, but I shake my head. “You’re probably right,” he murmurs as he returns to his lounger.

“It’s not that he wouldn’t have kept an illegal handgun. It’s more that he wouldn’t have taken the chance of getting caught.”

“Mmmm.”

“On the other hand, you have quite a collection of guns down in the basement.”

“It’s not a bad one,” agrees my host, who has failed many times to get me interested in his hobby.

“Well, this is what I was thinking. If my father wanted a gun, I guess I could see him borrowing one from you.”

The smile broadens. “I could see that, too.”

I finally exhale. “So I guess what I was wondering was . . . when exactly he asked you for a gun, and why he said he wanted one.”

The Colonel shifts comfortably in his seat. He inhales, blows a few
rings, but not at me. “I would say it was . . . oh, a year ago. Maybe a little more. Say, October a year ago, because we were just back from . . . from . . .” He turns his head slightly, shouts: “Vera! Where did we go last October?”

“St. Lucia!” she shouts from the next room, over the television. Vera’s Jamaican accent has grown faint over the years; the Colonel’s is all but impossible to detect.

“No, not this October. Last October.”

“South Pacific!”

“Thanks, doll.” He grins sheepishly. “Old gray cells aren’t what they were. Yes, just back from the South Pacific. Seems to me we invited you folks to come . . . .”

“No.”

“No? Maybe it was Marilyn. But I could have sworn we called Kimberly, Weren’t you on leave from the law school or something? We thought you’d have free time.” He sees the answer the same time I do: they invited Kimmer, and she declined without troubling to mention it to me. Maybe even lied to her parents and said I was the one who said no. Being cooped up on a ship for two weeks with her father, her mother, and her husband would be my wife’s notion of hell on earth. He rushes on to cover his faux pas. “Well, we were back, oh, say four, five days when Oliver called. Came over at night, sat right where you’re sitting, asked could he speak to me alone. He wasn’t the sort to mince words”—looking right at me, as though implying that I am—“and he told me what he wanted.”

“What did he say exactly?”

“Said he was getting a little worried about safety at his age, and could I help.”

“Safety? His own safety?”

The Colonel nods, blows more rings. I am being brusque, in my half-remembered litigation mode, but it comes back to you, like riding a bicycle. Kimmer’s father does not seem to mind being interrogated. He is having fun. His tiny eyes gleam. “That was my impression. He was kind of—” Suddenly he spins in his chair, the light selecting a different angle to reflect off his bald head. “Vera! Hey, Vera!”

She is in the room at once, hands folded at her waist. Probably she has been listening from the alcove.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Damn cigar’s no good. Be a doll, go down to my desk, get me another.”