The Touch of Treason (13 page)

Play for Ed now became the realization of a secret ambition, to try to read all the worthwhile books in the world, starting with those that Sam had mentioned. Some were difficult, but he read books about those books, which he bought with money his mother slipped to him for other things. Once he made the mistake of leaving one of the books face down and open on the hallway table where his father glanced through the mail when he came home at night.

“Jenny,” he shouted to his wife, “have you seen this garbage Edward is reading?”

Jenny Sturbridge had come in from the living room and said, “He’s trying to find his way. All kids read a lot that doesn’t stick. He gets good grades, that’s what counts.”

“If he keeps reading junk like this,” his father said, “he’ll turn into a goddamn commie.”

When she answered him she sometimes ducked her head a little deferentially. But this time her eyes and body were unswerving. “I think he’s trying to become a decent human being,” she said, then turned to where Ed was standing until Malcolm Sturbridge turned his head and saw his son.

*

Ed didn’t know if it was his father’s embarrassment at having been overheard or the fact that his pacemaker had to be replaced and he was in bed for a few days contemplating the possibility of his own death again that resulted in their having a frank talk.

Malcolm Sturbridge looked lonely propped up on pillows in the big bed, no longer imposing, pale, probably frightened. Ed had come in because his mother had said he ought to at least say hello to his father, but when he saw what his father looked like he sat down on the edge of the bed. Ed expected to be ordered off, told to pull up a chair, but instead his father just nodded as if to declare a truce before saying something he had been saving up.

“I’m glad you stopped in, Edward,” he said.

Ed wanted to say to him
Will you ever call me Eddie or Ed before you die?

Malcolm Sturbridge said, “It’s been a very long time since we had a peaceable talk.” He paused for a moment to gather strength, or was it courage? “You’re a very bright young man. I think you inherited your mother’s sharp mind without her passivity about using it. Can you focus on a question I’ve been thinking about?”

Ed said nothing, waiting.

“What do you think, Edward, is the chief difference between yourself and me? I’m not talking about physical things. I mean character.”

“That sounds kind of heavy, Dad,” Ed said.

“The doctor put no limitations on my thoughts, just on my physical activity. What difference do you see?”

Once Ed had feared that if he gave his father an answer he didn’t want he’d reach out and slap him. That time had passed.

“In the world of business,” Ed said, “the end is profit, the impulse greed. If you spend your life in it, I suppose you become part of it.”

Sturbridge sighed. “I suppose that is intended to characterize me. What about you?”

“I’m concerned about the people, trying to puzzle out answers we don’t yet know. My feelings,” Ed said, “are with the perpetually powerless.”

Sturbridge took a sip from his bedside water beaker through the bent glass straw.

“Businessmen are said to look at the world with a cold eye,” he said, touching a tissue to his lips. “I know your heart bursts with demands for justice. Ask yourself, where do the poor remain poor despite the most radical changes in government, here or there? Your mother says you’re aiming to become a specialist in Soviet affairs. Will you be able to look at the causes of poverty there as well as the alleged causes of poverty here? If you do, you will gain some remarkable political insights.”

Ed had always wanted to learn to argue with his father successfully but instead felt his face flushing with anger. “I’m on the side of peace,” he blurted out. “What side are you on?”

Perhaps because he was sick, Sturbridge didn’t snap back at Ed. He said quietly, “The greatest cause of war is naiveté. Even a superficial view of history has to acknowledge that the appeasers gave Hitler his chance. Churchill saw that, and yet the moment we ostensibly won the war, Churchill got thrown out and the appeasers came flooding back into power. Doesn’t it strike you as ironic that when the Churchills were no longer in charge that we began getting into the game of escalating arsenals on both sides of the Atlantic? All appeasement gets you is a bigger fight when you’re less prepared for it.”

Ed’s mother came into the room. Ed didn’t know whether it was because she heard his slightly raised voice or thought it unusual for him to be in there for more than a minute. “What are you two up to?” she said.

Malcolm Sturbridge said, “We have decided that we are both on the side of peace.”

Ed thought his father was trying to disarm him. He was trying to win him over. And so he said, “Why did you fire Mr. McAllister? He wasn’t a thief.”

Jenny Sturbridge watched her husband’s dehydrated lips. Would he look away? His gaze lifted to meet Ed’s. He said, “Because he stole you from me.”

*

You couldn’t erase the memory bank even after all these years.

Ed stared at the ceiling.

If only Sam McAllister were alive somewhere.

If only Fuller were still alive.

Thoughts like that came from lying in bed too long. It was time to get up. His gaze wandered over the bookcase closest to the bed. He reached over and pulled out Fuller’s book. Oh how they’d joked about it in grad school, the seminal work on the revolutionary ovum. Ed never joked about it after Fuller inscribed his copy:

Dear Ed, as a scholar be loyal to your senses, to your memory, and to objectively verifiable fact.
As
a passionate human being, be loyal to friends and to the innocents who depend on your knowledge. With affection, Martin Fuller.

Ed hoisted himself to his feet. His reluctant body felt ten times its normal size, moving against the tremendous force of gravity. He sat back on the bed. How much had he smoked? Had he popped any pills? People died sleeping in the snow. Up from the bed he struggled once more, made it to the bathroom, raised the toilet seat with his toe and let his stream splatter into the water of the bowl, poisoning it with yellow.

In the mirror his face told him he had not shaved for two mornings. The stubble seemed like decay. To shave is to start clean. He stung preshave on his cheeks, got his Phillips rechargeable, pushed the “on” button. Nothing happened. Had he allowed the battery to go dead? He got the AC adaptor and plugged it into the outlet at the mirror. Nothing. What a time for it to fail!

He was looking in the cabinet for the throwaway razor he’d kept when he heard the knock on the door. As he went to the door he looked around. God the room was a mess.

“Who is it?” he shouted through the door, but he knew.

When he opened the door, Cooper said, “This time I have a search warrant.” He waved the piece of paper in front of Ed.

“Isn’t this out of your jurisdiction?”

“This is a New York City search warrant. And that’s a New York City cop behind me.”

“Why are you picking on me?” He looked at Cooper’s protruding belly. He had no respect for people who couldn’t control their appetites.

“That was your button I found in the garage, wasn’t it?” Cooper said. “You had a button missing from your jacket, didn’t you?”

“You’re going to arrest me because of a button? You know you’ll be held responsible for false arrest.”

“Listen, big brain,” Cooper said, pointing a finger at Ed’s face, “you used the downstairs bathroom during the night, didn’t you?”

Ed said nothing.

Cooper said, “There’s a bathroom up there on the second floor. Why’d you use the downstairs bathroom?”

“Out of courtesy. That’s something you wouldn’t know about. The upstairs bathroom is between Troob’s and Melling’s rooms.”

“There’s a door from the hallway.”

“That door was locked,” Ed said.

“Not when I checked it.”

“I’m talking about the middle of the night. Melissa or Scott must have opened it in the morning.”

“We found traces of an inflammable fluid on the floor near your bed.”

“I spilled it filling my lighter. You’re wasting your time.”

“Mister, I don’t waste time. Where’s your lighter?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere around.”

“Look for it.”

“I’ll look for it when you get out of my hair.”

“Don’t get fresh with me, kid. I don’t like your attitude.”

“When you start behaving like a public servant, I’ll change my attitude,” Ed said.

Cooper, his face reddening, tried to control his voice. “You smoke?”

“Sure.”

“Where are your cigarettes?”

“Somewhere around.”

“Where somewhere? Show me. I don’t see a lighter, I don’t see cigarettes. What was that hip flask doing in your closet?”

“I don’t drink.”

“You saying that flask wasn’t yours?”

“I said I don’t drink.”

“That hip flask, mister, was empty, but my nose said it had been filled with an inflammable fluid. Do you fill your lighter from a hip flask? Don’t answer.”

Cooper would be damned before he’d pull out a plastic card and read the Miranda. “You’ve got a right to remain silent,” he told Ed. “Anything you say can be used against you.” Then he said, “Can we come in now?”

“I want to read that warrant.”

Cooper put it in front of Ed’s face without letting go. Ed read it through word for word. He needed time to think.

“I want to call my lawyer,” he said.

“It’s your dime,” Cooper said.

Ed looked in his wallet for Thomassy’s number.

*

The phone in Thomassy’s office was answered by a secretary, who said Thomassy was in court, could she help?

“Can you get word to him? This is Ed Porter. Tell him Detective Cooper is here with a warrant. Yes, the same address I gave him for billing me.”

After Ed hung up, he asked Cooper, “What if he doesn’t call me back?”

“He’ll find you in the station house.”

“You’re arresting me? I thought the charge was dropped the other night.”

“This isn’t grass. It’s murder.”

Ed put his hands on his belly. “I think I’ve got diarrhea,” he said.

Cooper pointed in the direction of the bathroom. “Don’t lock the door.”

In the bathroom, Ed tried to organize his thoughts, shake off whatever was cluttering his brain.

“Hurry up,” Cooper yelled from the other room.

Ed looked in the mirror. Thomassy would hate the fact that he hadn’t shaved.

Ed had to sit in the chair in the corner and watch the two of them, Cooper and the man in uniform, going through everything. The grass was in the refrigerator in a plastic container, under leftovers Ed would never eat. They didn’t look in the refrigerator.

Cooper spotted Fuller’s book on the bed, opened it, found the inscription to Ed that ended
With affection, Martin Fuller.
Cooper looked at him as if he always suspected that eggheads had a hole in their brain and this was proof.

The shrill phone rang.

Cooper jabbed a finger at Ed and then at the phone.

Ed picked the phone off the cradle.

“What’s up?” Thomassy asked. “I’m in a phone booth. Make it fast.”

Ed tried to tell him, Cooper, the warrant, the New York City cop with him. Thomassy sounded exasperated, as if Ed was taking too much time. “Give me Cooper,” he snapped.

Ed held the phone out to Cooper.

All Ed could hear was Thomassy yelling at Cooper just like he’d yelled at him. Cooper said, “Sure it’s a search warrant. But I’ve got probable cause for an arrest.”

Cooper listened, his face reddening. “Look, Mr. Thomassy, the form is he goes to the station house to get booked. You want to talk to him, you talk in the station house.”

Cooper glanced over to make sure the other cop was at the door. “I know how you feel about station house interviews,” he said to Thomassy, “but I can’t bring him to your office. You want the captain down my throat? He’ll think I’m on the take. No, no, no, I don’t want you talking to the captain. I’m running this. You deal with me. Don’t give me that false arrest shit, Mr. Thomassy, I’m too old for that. You what? You can’t do that.”

Cooper turned away. He didn’t want Ed to see how angry he was. “Sure I know you’re an officer of the court. You’re making a lot of trouble for me. Suppose—”

Ed still couldn’t hear anything Thomassy was saying, but his voice was less strident, as if he had stopped yelling and was giving instructions.

“Okay,” Cooper finally said, “okay.” When he hung up, he said, “Shit.” Then to Ed, “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Thomassy’s office.”

Ed couldn’t help saying, “Is that usual?”

“I don’t want any extra grief from that son-of-a-bitch,” Cooper said, grabbing Ed’s arm.

“Then,” Ed said, “let my arm go. If you’re angry at him, grab his arm.”