The Forgers (20 page)

How dearly I wanted to ask Atticus if Slader knew I had purchased
The Tower
from him but I assumed he did, given the charming-like-a-fox geniality Slader had mimicked in order to get information he needed about me, my wife, our whereabouts. I wouldn't have put it past the tawdry bastard if he even bought that doomed
The Winding Stair
from Atticus. Fell into the did-not-need-to-know category.

“One last thing, though, Atticus.”

“Talk to me.”

“If Henry or for that matter anybody else comes around enquiring after me and Meg, I would like to request you just play ignorant. We're trying to start a brand-new life here after all the heartache we've both experienced and you're one of the only people we want to be in touch with. You and the kids at the bookshop in New York. Hope you understand.”

“I respect that,” he said. “Sorry if I was a little loose-lipped with Slader. Didn't seem at the time there was any ill will, quite the opposite. But we're good. How're Meghan and the little one on the way doing?”

“Fine, wonderfully,” I said and we finished the conversation on a very cordial note, although the minute I set the phone down, I bellowed at the top of my lungs a string of angry obscenities, directed at everybody, at nobody, mostly at myself. Slader knew everything. And Slader was here. That second call to Dublin I didn't bother with. Whether
The Winding Stair
, a stair down which I wished I could shove Henry Slader, came from Providence or Dublin or Timbuktu didn't matter any more. I had serious trouble on my hands and no good move to make.

Back in the stationer's, I did my best but failed to keep my mind from wandering away from my work. Meghan had stopped by during her lunch to find me gone, and was told I'd gone home and why, so went about her business with the tacit understanding I would drop by at the end of my workday as usual. Eccles had me running the press, which was for the best given that it kept me in the back room, away from our customers. I couldn't be sure I would be able to disguise my dismay about what I saw as an inevitable confrontation, and, besides, the repetitive labor involved with working the Vandercook had a meditative effect, cleared the mind at least temporarily. As a result, the afternoon hours quickly melted away, and sooner than expected my boss told me it was closing time. I cleaned the press, stacked the finished sheets neatly on the worktable, made sure the tins of ink and solvent were closed, and went to the bathroom to wash up.

Walking past the small industrial guillotine we used to trim business cards, menus, invitations, and all of our other print jobs, I thought of Adam's missing hands and the accusatory bloody gloves recently planted in our yard. What I felt was not fear or shame or inspiration or anything as emotional as all that. Numbness might best describe my feelings at seeing the sharp blade that we used almost daily and which, for whatever reason, I hadn't much thought about before. In the bathroom I shook my head while soaping my own hands and rinsing them under a stream of very hot water. Fortunately, there was no mirror in the employee restroom. I wouldn't have liked to see the look on my face just then. Not that I know what my demeanor might have been. Whether a scowl or smile, I didn't need to witness it.

I dried my fingers, knuckles, palms, wrists, and held them before me. Mad as it may sound, I considered them, fronts and backs, for all the refined work they had accomplished over the years. All of us, I realized, had done very bad things with our hands, even those whose lifetimes were largely spent laboring in the sunnier fields of ethical goodness. Mine were just another such pair, with acts virtuous and sinful in their past. What they might do in the future I couldn't know, although I swore that because of my wife and our coming baby I would do everything in my power to restrain them from erring in some destructive direction.

Outside, a south wind freshened the already nippy air. It tasted a touch of tidal brine as it often did, I had noticed, before rainstorms came in off the Kenmare River, a bay estuary where the freshwater Roughty meets the salty Atlantic beyond. I shoved those hands of mine, still warm from the faucet water, deep in my jacket pockets and strode down to the post office—no letters, thankfully—then up toward the bookshop. Unlike days past, I didn't bother to look over my shoulder or search the pedestrians ahead for a face that should not have been as familiar as it was, given how few times I had actually met Slader. He would present himself when he felt it was opportune to do so, and since there was nothing I could logically do about it, I thought it best to conserve my strength by not devoting further energy to the matter.

Instead, I dropped into a charming little boutique of handmade women's clothing where Meghan often stopped us to window shop whenever we happened by, and bought her two beautiful scarves—wool for winter soon upon us, silk for spring to come—intending to give them to her for Christmas. As the shop girl began to wrap them, though, I changed my mind and asked her not to use the holiday gift paper but just some plain silver foil they had.

“It's for a birthday, not Christmas,” I needlessly added.

Walking more briskly now, because I was running late and also the wind had picked up, I decided that tonight would be a surprise second birthday party, one that would make up for Saturday's debacle and the crazy-making nocturnal disturbances that followed. So much of what stability and happiness I possessed came directly from my devotion to Meghan, and hers to me. Hairline cracks in the usual fortress-strong wall of her affections for me seemed to have widened a little recently, or so I had perceived them. To say the least, this worried me. No, I needed to admit it terrified me. Without her I would be lost, bereft, and I knew it. Not that I could bandage those ostensible cracks with a couple of scarves no matter how pretty they were. Still, I felt I had to do something to smooth things over.

She was standing, arms crossed, on the front porch of the bookshop, which was in a house set back from one of the main roads in town.

“You have a girlfriend or something, mister?” she asked, not entirely joking.

“What?” was all I could manage.

“Well, you weren't at work during lunch break when I came by. They said you had to go home to fetch your wallet, which I know you had on you this morning because you gave me money when we got to the village. Now you're late to pick me up and you're never late. Seems like you have some explaining to do.”

Relieved, I laughed, handing her the shopping bag from the boutique. “I'm late because I made a quick stop at Eileen's to get you another birthday present, which, if you'll allow me, I'd love for you to open at the restaurant of your choice tonight. And it's true, I lied to Eccles about my wallet because I wanted to go home and phone Atticus about that
Winding Stair.
As for a girlfriend, I already have one and that would be you. Do I hear an apology?”

Meghan's face changed, its hard edges softened, the tightness around her lips relaxed. It was as if subtle light, like that of a waxing moon, suddenly illuminated her from within. She thanked me for the present, assured me it was entirely unnecessary, and apologized more earnestly than her harmless accusation warranted.

We were fortunate to get a table near the open fire in our favorite pub—well, we had several by this time—the rain having started coming down in steady gusts before we arrived. Nothing fancy like Kinsale, here we dined happily on clam chowder and fish pies. Meghan's mood had, it seemed, returned to normal, and when she asked me what Atticus had said about the Yeats book, I truthfully told her he knew nothing about it—knew nothing because I hadn't mentioned it, yes, but my answer was honest enough. After a second pint, I entered a pocket of time in which life seemed good, secure, not threatened by the past or “things to come.” I knew I had been living on a kind of sine curve, a rolling wave of ups and downs, now hopeful now doomed, now asleep now insomniac, now cocksure now deeply uncertain. If such a roller coaster of moods and dispositions had taken its toll on me, I thought, imagine what it must have been like for Meghan in recent months.

When my wife excused herself to go to the ladies room, I found myself staring at the prancing citron and orange flames in the fireplace and made a decision I truly aspired to hold myself to fulfilling. If—when—Slader approached me for another round of hush money, other than kill him, which I had no intention of doing, what could I do but somehow pay it without complaint and expeditiously as possible? It occurred to me that I could transfer all further income from Atticus Moore's sales of my father's books—only about half of which had sold, and many of those purchased on time payments stretching out for as many as a few years—to an account I could open without Meghan's knowledge, one from which I could in turn pay Slader. That would be a goodly sum, enough for him to buy himself other obsessions besides me. I could also promise Slader I would never cross him again, although I doubted my word would carry weight. Twice burned and all.

Mesmerizing as the lively fire was and calming as was the stout, I understood this might not be sufficient to rid myself of the man. But at least, I thought as Meghan returned and took her seat, I had my response in place when he came calling. Over coffee, Meg finally opened her presents, which she loved so much she wore them both home that night wrapped around her graceful shoulders and neck.

H
IS LETTER ARRIVED
at the post office the next day, as punctual as if it were scheduled on some malign calendar. Oblivious to the cheerless damp morning weather, to the leaden sky stretched low and claustrophobic overhead, I sat down on a public bench in the village square and read it on the spot. Its lack of greeting or signature at the end were all too familiar to me by now, and that it was scribed in W. B. Yeats's hand rather than that of Henry James or Arthur Conan Doyle was equally routine. None of it nearly as disquieting as Slader's earlier letters had been back in the day when I had no idea who I was dealing with. These expected details aside, the letter offered nothing by way of comfort, nor was it so intended.

What is a dead poet to do with you? You have created with your greed and craziness a problem that requires resolution. This is your own doing. You had your chance to leave us squared away. But you do not seem to appreciate the honor of surrendered defeat. In my kindness, I can try to spare you and your family one last time. My instructions will arrive soon. Follow them to the letter unless you want your baby to be raised in an asylum for foundlings.

No Yeats, but the man did have his way with words—although, rather than wince at that final antiquated image, I sneered at its self-importance. Most aggravating was that his instructions would “arrive soon.” Why not now, why dally? Was Slader merely a sadist or had he not yet figured out what he wanted from me? These questions were as baffling as they were frustrating, yet I clung to my earlier pact with myself to remain as calm as I could under the circumstances and react only when the situation presented itself.

That afternoon when the stationer's closed, I went home rather than wait the hour or so for the bookshop to close. Meghan told me she wanted to walk, get some exercise for herself and the unborn. “Too much yummy fattening pub food,” she joked that morning at the breakfast table. I told her I would see her at home, that I had some straightening around the cottage I wanted to do, maybe read a bit.

As I pulled into the drive, I thought I saw that black-and-brown mongrel out at the edge of the field, a yard or two in from the tree line. Son of a bitch, I thought, and considered grabbing a rock, nonchalantly strolling out there, and, when I was close enough, hurling it right at his insouciant head. Put him out of his misery and mine, too. But I thought the better of it, turned the engine off, and withdrew inside, carrying a paper bag with the can of solvent I had borrowed from work, locking the front door behind me. I shuffled out of my trench coat, knocked off my muddy shoes in the foyer, and went straight downstairs to rummage out those gloves. After carefully pulling away the burlap that concealed the plastic bags in which I'd hidden them, I was dismayed to find that the bittersweet, acrid odor of death, however faint, lay in the still mildewed air. Taking the bags over to the slop sink, I set to scrubbing out the caked red-brown blood staining the calfskin. I never intended to use them, of course, but when I threw them away in a public receptacle, as I planned to, I wanted them to be as cleansed of telltale blood as possible. Not, of course, that this particular blood had a tale to tell that anybody besides Slader and I, unwilling and loath conspirators, might ever decipher.

They cleaned up better than I'd anticipated, and more quickly, as did the plastic bags, although they now smelled of solvent, which, after running them under a stream of alternating cold and hot water, also dissipated. I dried off my hands after wiping down the metal sink and headed back upstairs. Another plastic bag from the kitchen, a furtive scan out the back window to see if that mangy mutt still skulked around—seemed to have disappeared, good—and soon enough I was back in the car, this time driving across Cromwell's Bridge away from town, to a small marina on a fjord-like lake whose water glistened like India ink. Meg and I had come here once on a ravishing midsummer day to watch the windsurfers in their gaudy-bright wetsuits tacking surreally back and forth. That day the dock was crowded, the parking lot by the shoreline full. This evening, no one was about and I made my rather innocent deposit in the nearest covered trash bin. Before driving back to the cottage, even though time was tight and Meghan would be home soon, I took a moment to breathe the sweet, mist-rinsed County Kerry air deep into my lungs, inhaling with the lusty urgency of a terminally ill patient. I breathed in and out, assuring myself as I did that things would work out, life would settle into a routine of domesticity and parenthood and calm. Then, a bit lightheaded but sharp enough to drive, I made my way along the winding, tree-canopied road back home.