The Emperor of Ocean Park (92 page)

“You can’t trust anybody around this place,” Dana chortles.

“Except you.”

“Maybe me. Maybe not. This place is a regular den of iniquity.” Another snicker. “You sure you want to come back?”

“No,” I tell her honestly, although the other half of the truth is that I have nowhere else to go.

Walking along the Inkwell with Bentley half an hour later, watching the financially advantaged of the darker nation at play, I fill in the rest of the story for myself. Theo told me that the Judge would have known Lynda Wyatt from his service on various alumni committees. But that service took place mostly under Stuart’s deanship, before my father’s fall. Stuart, not Lynda, was the Judge’s friend. Stuart might at some point have shared with him the story of Marc’s plagiarism; might even have consulted him from the beginning. For all I know, the final deal between Theo and Marc could have been my father’s idea. Either way, the Judge could have turned around and mentioned it to Jack Ziegler, maybe in passing, perhaps forgetting that Uncle Jack would catalogue every misdeed of every person of prominence on whom he could get his hands. Which would explain how Uncle Jack knew.

Bentley is chasing seagulls, his arms outstretched as though he, too, can fly. I keep turning the facts over in my mind, seeking another fit. Jack Ziegler, I remind myself, is a man of his word. He said he would not interfere with my wife’s nomination, so I have to believe—
have
to believe—that Stuart, not Jack, tipped off the White House about Marc’s plagiarism. Because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. I do not want to think of what might have happened had Kimmer reached her goal, of how Jack Ziegler, or some surrogate, would one day have marched into her chambers and told her who got her the job, as well as who protected her family in a dangerous time, and what her new responsibilities were, and what would be revealed to the world if she tried to shirk. Turning her into the Judge’s successor.

I tremble for the wife I still adore, and am suddenly thankful that Kimmer failed.

(II)

I
DO NOT KNOW
why the telephone will not leave me in peace. I field two calls from the law firm where I have been consulting, and one from Cassie Meadows, with the news that the Bureau has no leads on the second gunman, but I do not need the Bureau to tell me who it was. Then Cassie whispers that Mr. Corcoran is worried sick about me.

“Good,” I tell her.

“Try to see it from his point of view . . . .”

“No, thanks.”

“But, Misha . . .”

“I know he’s your boss, Cassie, and you look up to him. But I think he’s a liar and a sneak.” Surprised, she asks what I mean, but I am too worked up to explain.

Calls from the Registrar, reminding me to grade the rest of my ad law exams, and calls from two literary agents, asking if I want to do a book.

Shirley Branch phones, but she does not have any news. Mainly, she says, she just wants to see how I am doing. And to tell me how much she still misses Cinque, her vanished terrier. I ask after Kwame. She sings his praises for a few minutes, exults about how no other mayoral candidate can save the city, although she does not specify what it needs saving from. Then she sighs heavily and confesses that Kwame is so busy campaigning for the role of municipal savior that they really do not see much of each other any more. Oddly cloying, the significance, when you are lonely, of hints so faint and tiny they may not be hints at all.

But most of my attention is still lavished on Bentley. I teach him to fly a kite, badly, and how to swim, reasonably well. We check out a stack of beginner’s books from the public library at the top of Circuit Avenue; we might as well get started on reading, too. As we walk back toward Ocean Park, Bentley carrying most of the books like the big boy he is all at once becoming, I wheel in my tracks, sensing unwanted attention, but the sleepy side street lined with tumbledown Victorians seems no different on this sunny July afternoon than on any other, and if people are watching me, I will never pick them out.

Bentley, eyes wide, asks if I am okay.

I ruffle his hair.

In the middle of our second week on the Vineyard, a nor’easter batters the island, and we lose electricity for nearly two days. Bentley is chipper, not at all bothered by the darkness of early evening as we eat supper by candlelight. For my son it is all an adventure. Now that he has some command of the language, he is storing up memories fast, and even talking about events that apparently occurred before he could speak. I allow him to sleep in my bed—no, I
require
him to—and, watching my son’s peacefully slumbering brown face before I blow out the ancient hurricane lamp I found in the attic, I marvel at how a few short months can change everything. For, if this were January instead of July, I would have fled from the Island rather than risk a night without electric lights—and without an alarm system to warn me if the dangers lurking in the shadows draw too close to the house. But those fears died down in the Old Town Burial Ground with Mr. Scott, even if the mysteries that generated them did not. I lie awake, thinking of Freeman Bishop and Agent Foreman—really an agent, even if not really a Foreman—and marvel at God’s providence.
Your sons will take the place of your fathers,
says Psalm 45. The thought of Bentley as my successor on earth fills me with awe and hope.

Protect the family,
Jack Ziegler instructed me. Well, I’m doing my best. Only there is more left to do.

On Bentley’s last day with me, we picnic boldly at Menemsha Beach, watching the sun drop beneath the most beautiful horizon on the East Coast. The same beach where Mr. Scott drowned another poor soul so we would think he was dead. I dare any of the ghosts of the past nine months to show themselves. Sitting on the blanket, I hold my boy so close that he begins to squirm. I cannot seem to let go. My eyes fill. I recall the night he was born, how both he and Kimmer almost died. My terror after the doctors forced me from the delivery room. The joy we felt when it was over, both of us, mother and father, on our knees praying for our son, making all the promises to God that people hardly ever keep after they get what they want. I catch myself wondering how it all slipped away, and that is when I know it is time to go home.

The next morning, I pack up the car, and Bentley and I sit in the short standby line for the early ferry. It is time to return Bentley to his mother; to his home. And time, finally, for me to confront my demons.

CHAPTER 58
A PLAUSIBLE ACCOUNT

M
ALLORY
C
ORCORAN’S SUMMER PLACE
is a wrecked farm sprawling over two hundred acres near Middlebury, Vermont: a restored eighteenth-century clapboard house, half a dozen outbuildings, plenty of meadows rented to locals to graze cattle, and tangled woods where Uncle Mal likes to hunt. The farm is not difficult to find—it almost jumps at you, spreading across the road, as you head down Route 30 toward Cornwall. I have not been here since I was a second-year law student, when he invited me for Memorial Day weekend, while also entertaining the Secretary of State and a couple of Senators. I suppose he was trying to recruit me—
Someday this all could be yours!
—and it might even have worked, except that his friendship with my father already scared me, even if I did not, yet, know all its dimensions.

We sit on aging bentwood rockers on the front porch, lawyer and client, sipping lemonade, while Edie plays with a couple of grandchildren and a horde of dogs and cats out in what real New Englanders call the dooryard. Uncle Mal is wearing dirty jeans, work boots, and a checked shirt: very much the gentleman farmer, or what a Washington lawyer trying to be one looks like. I am in my usual summer attire of khakis and windbreaker. My cane lies on the floor next to me, guarded by another of the many huge dogs they keep, but I want Mallory Corcoran keenly aware of its existence.

“How much have you figured out?” he asks when we have exhausted the small talk.

“I know you left the note at Vinerd Howse.”

“Not me. Meadows.” He smiles without apology.

“That’s why you had her sit in that first time. She was already involved.”

“She was already involved,” he agrees. “But we had to do it the way we did it. We were carrying out the last wishes of our client. Your father. He left us one of those, ‘In-case-anything-happens-to-me-open-this’ letters.”

I remember the morning I left Aspen. “And he gave you the code to turn off the alarm at Vinerd Howse. So nobody would be the wiser.” Uncle Mal nods. But I am confused. “So why didn’t he just have you tell me what he wanted me to know? Why all this crazy rigamarole?”

Mallory Corcoran sips his lemonade, strokes another large dog between the ears as it rumbles at his side. He is not intimidated by me. He was not reluctant to see me. By his own lights, he acted honorably and has nothing to hide. “I think your father wanted you to know some things, but I am not sure he wanted to put them into ordinary language. I think he was . . . he was afraid that somebody else would come across it. So he made his arrangements and then hid them where only you could find them.”

“A year ago,” I murmur.

“I would say, almost two years.”

I nod. “It’ll be two years this October since he gave you the letter.”

Uncle Mal is too savvy a lawyer to ask me immediately how I figured this out. But he does not know the story I heard from Miles Madison, my father-in-law.

“That sounds right,” says Mallory Corcoran, still playing with the dog.

I nod. Earlier this summer, I consulted with my colleague Arnie Rosen, an expert in professional responsibility, who explained over lunch that an attorney’s obligation survives the death of a client. The lawyer may no longer act in the name of the client, of course, but should generally carry out any deathbed instructions, as long as they propose nothing illegal or outside the scope of the lawyer’s duties, and as long as the client is in his right mind. If what is asked seems wrong, the lawyer might try to dissuade the client or might even refuse to do it; but, if the lawyer accepts the task, the obligation exists. In other words, what Mallory Corcoran did in delivering the Judge’s letter to Oak Bluffs was within his ethical responsibility to my father—whatever its twisted morality.

Why was it necessary to trash the first floor of Vinerd Howse? I ask. Or to break the glass?

He shrugs. “To make sure that you would be the only one to venture upstairs and find the note. Your father’s idea.”

“Meadows did that, too?”

“I didn’t ask for the details.”

“What if I had just waited for the police before going upstairs?”

“I don’t know. I suppose they would have found the note and given it to you. The same if the caretaker—can’t remember his name—had been the first one to find it. I must confess, however, I’m not sure your father considered the possibility that Kimberly might see it before you did. I suppose it all could have gone wrong. Or maybe he just figured you were too much a gentleman to send your wife to check upstairs after a break-in.”

I cannot tell whether I am being complimented or mocked, so I drop the subject and, instead, ask the first of the two questions that brought me to Mallory Corcoran’s dooryard. “Did you know what my father was doing? Why he left you the note?”

“Let me anticipate. You are asking me whether I know what his arrangements were, or exactly why he wanted you to know whatever he wanted you to know. The answer, Talcott, is no. I’m afraid I didn’t know. I still don’t.”

“Do you know why he chose me and not Addison?”

This time the answer is longer in coming. “It was my impression that your brother was . . . oh, out of favor.”

“Out of favor?”

“Your father seemed to think your brother had betrayed him.”

This one puzzles me. But one look at Mallory Corcoran’s super-lawyer face tells me I will get no more. So I ask the second question: “Did you know what was really going on? Between my father and Jack Ziegler?”

He has his answer ready. He has probably had it ready since the day the housekeeper called the firm to say the Judge was dead: “Your father was my partner and my friend, Talcott, but he was also a client. You know it is impossible for me to divulge what he told me in confidence.”

“I take that as a yes.”

“You should not construe it either way. You should not assume anything.”

“Well, I’m your client, too. That means you have to keep my secrets.”

“True.”

“All right. Let me speculate for a moment.” Uncle Mal is a statue. “I don’t know exactly what my father and Uncle Jack were up to, but I
know they were up to something. I don’t know how much of it you guessed, but I don’t think he would have told you very much, because . . . well, because he craved your respect.”
And didn’t quite trust you,
I think but do not say, for I am pouring on the butter here.
The Judge didn’t fully trust you, which is the real reason he gave you only that one cryptic note and hid his arrangements someplace else.
“But I’d like to tell you what I think happened.”

“I’d be very interested in hearing that, Talcott.”

And so I tell him. I tell him I think at first it was reasonably innocent. Probably the Judge went to Jack Ziegler to find a private investigator, and Jack Ziegler recommended Colin Scott because Scott had been a colleague at the Agency and needed work. I doubt that my father was, at first, looking for a hired killer. Perhaps Jack Ziegler meant to put temptation in his path. Perhaps it just came together at the right moment. Either way, when my father received Scott’s report, he decided not to share it with the police.

“Why not?”

“Because of who it named.” But there is nothing in Uncle Mal’s experienced face to tell him whether the Judge shared that particular truth. For my part, I have not shared it with Dear Dana—and never will.

Instead of going back to the police, I continue, the Judge asked Scott to kill the driver of the car. Scott refused. That was the argument overheard by Sally and Addison:
No rules where a daughter is concerned,
my father argued, or begged.