The Emperor of Ocean Park (97 page)

I say nothing. I am no longer capable of surprise where the Judge is concerned. But it is easy to see how the Judge might have enticed him. The poor boy from Tennessee trailer trash makes good. A rich wife?
Perhaps the fruits of two rich decades of taking bribes, laundered through his wife’s family. Something. Too sophisticated, I am sure, for me to figure out, but the result is the same: Wallace Wainwright, the great liberal, the man of the people, got rich from fixing cases.

At least, if motive matters, my father did it for love.

“He was like a devil, your father. You have no idea how persuasive he could be! And quite thoroughly corrupt. Is that cold enough for you? Taking his orders from Jack Ziegler. Voting the way he was told. Think about that, Misha. But he was so clever that nobody knew. And when he approached me, he was very cagey, he talked his way around to it slowly . . . . Never mind. A love of money is the root of all evil, isn’t it? I wanted to do good and do well, and your father . . . exploited that.”

I am about to protest that my father never took money; and then I hold my tongue, for I see it as part of his evil genius that he kept this fact from Wallace Wainwright. I will never know just how the Judge seduced the future Justice, but I notice how Wainwright’s self-pitying diatribe has caught the cadence of Washington: he took the bribe, but it was all the fault of the briber.

Wallace Wainwright seems to realize how he sounds, for he calls a halt. “We have spent too much time on memory lane, Misha. Now, the disk, if you please. Just put it on the table.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’m not afraid of you. You don’t dare hurt me.” Desperation. “You saw what Jack Ziegler did to your drones.”

“Ah, yes, my drones. Good word. Drones. Yes.” A tone of pride. If I can just keep appealing to his vanity, I can keep him talking. “It’s not that easy, you know. To find drones, I mean.” That crooked smile. “I am, after all, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. You have no idea what risks I took. I had to go back to my contacts from the old days, in the Marines . . . . Never mind. It was a risk, but that chain is broken. Yes. The drones never knew who hired them, and nobody can trace it back to me.”

That chain is broken.
Perhaps Wainwright himself has removed the key link. With, say, the very gun he is holding on me.

“I see.” Just something to say. The casual admission that he, in his position, has recently murdered somebody has left me in little doubt about my own fate.

“No, you don’t see.” Reaching across the table with the gun, then
drawing it back before I can figure out whether to try to grab his hand. He is unaccountably angry. The wind blows something against the porch. “You don’t agree. You think if you were in my position you would have made a different choice.”

“I just know the choice you made.”

Without warning, Wainwright explodes. “You’re judging me! I don’t believe this.
You’re
judging
me!
How dare you! You’re even worse than your father!” He gestures wildly with his gun hand, which gets my adrenaline pumping harder. “You probably think I should have done something noble, like turning myself in. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you have any idea who I am? For the last decade, I’ve been the only hope, do you realize that? The Constitution is dying, in case you didn’t notice. No. It’s being murdered. It’s fine for you to cast stones, you sit in your office and write articles that nobody reads. I’m the one who’s been up there fighting for freedom and equality in this reactionary age! I’ve been leading a whole wing of the Supreme Court!” His voice softens. “And they needed me, Misha. They did. The work we’ve done up there for justice is too important to let it be derailed by . . . by something like this. I couldn’t quit, Misha. Even if Jack Ziegler would have let me go, I didn’t have the right. The Court needed me. The nation needed me. Yes, all right, I’m not a saint, I made some compromises a long time ago, I know that. But the issues matter, too! If I had left the Court, if my wing had lost its leader, the law would be inestimably worse. Don’t you see that?”

Yes, I see it. I am dizzied by his hypocrisy, but I see it. Temptation, temptation: Satan never changes.

“So you . . . couldn’t resign.”

“No, I couldn’t. This was bigger than me. My fate didn’t matter, only the issues. It was a calling, Misha, the fight for justice, and I had no choice but to heed it. The Court needed me. To preserve some vestige, however small, of decency and goodness up there. People believe in the Court. If I had allowed scandal to damage the image of the Court, real people would have been hurt.” He is back to the beginning and seems exhausted by his own argument. “Real people,” he says again.

“I see.”

“Do you, Misha?” Waving the gun again. “I wish I could fight on, I really do. But I’m tired, Misha. I’m so tired.” A sigh. “Now, please, Misha, give me what I came for.”

Still reeling from his diatribe, I muster a final bit of pluck: “And
then what?” When he says nothing, I say what I am thinking: “You didn’t just come here for the disk. You came here to kill me.”

“True. I did. I won’t lie about that. I wish there were another way. But, Misha, you still have a choice to make. I don’t want you to suffer unnecessarily. Your death can be swift and painless, a bullet in the back of the head, or it can take time—if I shoot, say, your knees first, then your elbows, then maybe your groin. Hurts like hell but won’t kill you for a while.” He gestures with the gun. “Now, give me the disk.”

“No.”

“I killed people in Vietnam. I know how to use a gun, and I am not afraid to do it.” I remember the photo in his office, a much younger Wainwright in Marine dress uniform. I have no doubts.

“You might be willing to shoot me,” I try, “but you won’t do it in the house, because there’s too much chance of leaving some forensic evidence.”

Outside, crunches and crashes as everything is dumped against everything else. The hurricane is, incredibly, getting worse. But maybe the eye has passed over us and we are getting the back part of the wind.

“I am perfectly willing to shoot you in the house,” Wainwright says calmly.

“Then why haven’t you?”

“Because that little bear might be another bluff. I am not about to underestimate you. You bluffed an expert in the cemetery. But we have talked enough. In thirty seconds, I am going to shoot off your kneecap, unless you give me the—”

A tremendous crash rattles the house, stunning us both. Pictures fall from the walls, crockery shatters in the cupboards. Justice Wainwright, no New Englander, is startled. He does not know what I know: that the bone-jarring impact was the sound of the chimney, blown loose by the hurricane, falling over flat against the sloping roof. Wainwright automatically looks up, alarm on his face, perhaps wondering whether the whole house is coming down.

The moment he is distracted, I dive, still clutching George Jackson, through the kitchen door and out into the storm.

CHAPTER 63
THE WATER BABY

T
HE KITCHEN DOOR
opens onto a wooden stoop leading down into the tiny, pitted strip of browning grass that passes for a back yard. I leap down the steps and land with both feet in the marsh that the yard has become. I splash around the corner into the narrow alley that runs along the side of the house toward Ocean Avenue. I know Wainwright will follow me, because he has no choice, and I also know that my plan to use the hurricane has backfired in the worst way: I can run and shout as much as I want, but, even if I could be heard above the storm, there is nobody, not even a police officer, around to help.

For a moment, I am startled, almost overwhelmed, by the sheer majestic size of the angry clouds swirling low in the sky. Then I hear a gunshot smash into the side of the house next door, and I get my feet moving. Wallace Wainwright may be firing wildly, but that is bound to change, and I know too little about guns to figure out how many bullets he has.

Move!

My Camry, with its sparkling new rear bumper, sits parked on the verge, useless to me, because my keys are inside the house, in the pocket of my jacket. As I dart across the street, I hear Wainwright shouting and cursing somewhere behind me, but I dare not look back. He has nearly all the advantages. He has a rain slicker and a hat, while I am wearing sweats that are already sticking to my skin. He is wearing boots, and I am wearing sneakers that are already sloshing with water. He has a gun. I have a bear.

Emphasizing the point, a bullet thwangs off the pavement behind me. He is finding the range.

I have two advantages of my own, I remind myself as I slosh my way across the park, where the ground is saturated and water is simply collecting, nearly an inch deep, on the grass. One is that, ever since I was small, I have loved being outdoors in the weather when a storm strikes, at least on the Vineyard; my mother used to call me her water baby. My second advantage is that I am three decades Wainwright’s junior. On the other hand, I have been shot a good deal more recently than he has, and I do not have my cane.

In the middle of Ocean Park, a gust of wind knocks me flat against the white bandshell, and, pressing away from the wall, I turn to look. Wainwright is a shadow in the storm, still negotiating the wooden rail fence lining the road, but he will soon gain on me, because I have few places to which to flee. I feel sutures separating, muscles freshly pulled. I am exhausted, my legs aching from the effort of this short run. Even as out of shape as I am, I should be able to keep well ahead of the aging Justice. Unfortunately, my leg has not yet recovered from Colin Scott’s bullet, and I am hobbling, slowing inexorably as the trembling ache spreads outward from my wounded thigh.

Another gunshot, faintly heard beneath the roaring thunder. The storm is still my friend: the wind is ruining his aim.

I ran the wrong way, I realize. I should not have headed across Ocean Park, where I will be a sitting duck if he ever finds the range. I should have headed down the block, toward the stores—one might be open!—or the police station—a lone officer might be on duty! But Wainwright, the Vietnam combat veteran, has anticipated the tactic, circling in that direction, cutting off any hope I might have of running anywhere except toward the beach.

I will have to make my legs move if I want to see my son again.

And so I begin a sort of loping half-run, half-walk, beginning to hobble now because of a fresh searing pain in my abdomen, rushing toward the ocean, praying that the wind that keeps knocking me off stride and the drenching, buffeting rain that has already saturated my clothes will continue to keep him from aiming properly.

I cross Seaview Avenue, and a gunshot hits the metal railing separating the sidewalk from the beach. Wallace Wainwright is seventy-one years old and gaining on me.

For a moment I stand atop the rickety wooden stair running down to the Inkwell. Below me, savage waves lash the sand, stealing some of it forever. The jetty that usually marks the division between the life-guarded
and unlifeguarded parts of the beach is invisible. Most of the waves are spilling nearly all the way to the seawall before falling back.

I do not want to go down there.

Wainwright is behind me, and I have no choice.

I struggle awkwardly down the steps, longing for my cane to help with balance, and with the pain.

I hear Wainwright shouting.

Hurrying, but wary of the raging sea, I reach the bottom step.

Which, old to begin with and now weakened by the storm, immediately splits in two under my weight. I go sprawling into the waves covering the sand, and George Jackson goes flying, landing in the water a dozen feet away, where he bobs tantalizingly.

My entire body is singing with pain. I want to stay down here in the cold water, let it carry me away.

Wainwright is descending the steps, but carefully.

I climb awkwardly to my feet and splash toward Abby’s bear, but the next wave knocks my legs out from under me again.

I struggle up again, lean into the water, stretch out my hand as something else tears, and then I have George Jackson in my arms again. But the chilly, whirling water is almost up to my waist, the waves are knocking me this way and that, and my energy reserves are nearly gone. The horizon is lost in angry gray-black clouds.

“All right, Misha, you did well.” Wainwright, a couple of yards away, in shallower water. His voice sounds ragged. “Now, let’s have it.”

I look at him, in his blue rain slicker and boots, so practical, so well prepared, never fooled by me for a minute, never tripped up by the box in the cemetery. He knew I returned to the Vineyard, knew why I waited for a hurricane. He knew everything. I am dizzy now, from the cold and the pain, and my will is simply too weak. His brilliance, his patience, his planning have beaten me. Still clutching Abby’s bear, I look at the small glittery gun, I look at Wainwright’s coolly confident white face, and suddenly I simply cannot do this any more. I have given what I can. I am worn out. Emotionally as well as physically. Maybe he will shoot me. I am too tired, too cold, too miserable to care. Sorry, Judge.

The saga of the arrangements is finally over. I know I am going to give him the bear.

I take a stumbling step toward the beach, holding George Jackson out in front of me, and I see Wainwright’s eyes go wide, and he backs away as though somebody is creeping up behind me, rising from the
ocean to intervene at the last minute, Maxine or Henderson or Nunzio or some other armed avenger, but when I turn, what I see instead is a six-foot-high wall of black water, curling swiftly toward us.

Wainwright is already running for the ladder. I try to go after him, and then the wave crashes into my back and knocks me down. For a couple of seconds, my face is buried in the sand and there is water above me. I have lost track of the bear, of Wainwright, of everything, and if I do not move, pain or no pain, I am going to drown.

With what little energy I have left, I burst to the surface, only to tumble backward into the riptide, the giant wave drawing me helplessly along with it, and I have nothing left to fight with, so I ride the water, waiting to go under, until another wave replaces it and carries me to the beach once more.