The Emperor of Ocean Park Read online

  Dana, three years older than I am, has survived, even transcended, the minor scandal of the way her marriage broke up. Eddie, whose life around the university was lived largely in his wife’s shadow, left us last year to return to his native Texas, where, he insists, the kind of thing that happened to him in Elm Harbor would not be allowed. (He does not say who would stop it.) His departure reduced the law school’s black faculty by twenty-five percent. Dana left him for a woman named Alison Frye, a nervous, fleshy New Yorker, all carroty hair and burning anger at the world. Alison is a novelist of slight accomplishment and runs a Web site full of airy but erudite social commentary, most with a “new economy” spin. Her courtship of Dana was a more or less public event, at least among the techie crowd. Three years ago, back when their affair was still secret, Alison posted on her site a composition entitled “Dear Dana Worth,” a love letter of sorts, which was downloaded and e-mailed all over the world, and, more important, all over the campus—Dana likes to say that Alison mortified her into falling in love. Many of us have adopted the essay’s title as a teasing nickname, although her husband understandably missed the humor. When Dana and Eddie were married, Kimmer and I hung around with them a lot, for Eddie and I played together as children. Eddie’s parents are old family friends, and he may even be a distant cousin on my mother’s side, although we never quite worked it out.

  The end of the Dozier-Worth marriage two years ago soured my friendships with both partners. Eddie has become a stranger, his politics driven even further to the right. As for Dana, I truly like her, but she and I have serious differences on countless matters, the way she treated Eddie chief among them. Misha, please, you have to try to look at it from my point of view, she begged me in that last, hurtful argument before she left him. No, I don’t, I stormed back at her, unable to be charitable. Perhaps I feared I might be seeing in the disintegration of her marriage a prefiguring of the end of my own. Nowadays, Dana and I try to be friends, but, to quote Casey Stengel, sometimes it doesn’t always work.

  Watching Dear Dana, I remember her tears at my father’s funeral. She admired the Judge, her onetime boss, perhaps loved him a little, even though he never quite made his peace with the gay rights movement. But, then, neither has Dana, who likes to insist, in her pedantic way, that she is far more interested in her freedom than in her rights. Dana opposes rules to tell property owners whom to rent to or businesses whom to hire, for she is a radical libertarian right down to her pedicured toes. Except on the question of abortion. After the Judge’s funeral, Dana joined the procession to the cemetery in her snazzy gold Lexus with its dual-meaning bumper sticker—ANOTHER LESBIAN FOR LIFE, it proclaims—which tends to confound people.

  Dana likes to confound people.

  “Dana,” I say softly as she continues banging on the door. “Dana!”

  She turns in my direction, one tiny hand to her throat in the familiar gesture of generations of wounded Southern ladies. Her short black hair glistens in the dim light of the hallway. But her face startles me. Dear Dana Worth is always pale, but today her whiteness is unusually . . . well, unusually white.

  “Oh, Misha,” she moans, shaking her head. “Oh, Misha, I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m betting this is more bad news,” I say slowly, my speech inhibited by the block of ice that has formed around my heart.

  “You don’t know.” Dana is surprised. Panicky. For a moment, she seems to be at a loss, which hardly ever happens. Sufficiently gutsy is Dear Dana that she spends most Sunday mornings at a small, conservative Methodist church twenty road miles and a thousand cultural ones away from the campus. I need to be there, she tells the few colleagues who dare question her.

  “What don’t I know?” I ask, a little panicky myself.

  “Oh, Misha,” Dana whispers again. Then she gathers herself. She grips my arm as I unlock the door, and we enter my office together. She points to the small, sleek CD player on the shelf above my computer. Kimmer bought it for me on one of her trips. My wife hates to spend money, so, whenever she buys me an expensive gift, I think of it as a second-place trophy, Kimmer’s own version of guilt money. “Does that thing have a radio?” Dana asks.

  “Well, yes. I don’t use it much.”

  “Turn it on.”

  “What?”

  “Turn on the news.”

  “Why can’t you just tell me . . .”

  Dana’s gray eyes are troubled and sad. One of her great weaknesses has always been an inability to deal with the emotional pain of others. Which means that whatever she wants me to know is going to hurt. “Please. Just turn it on.”

  I swallow a retort about how much I hate these games because I can see that she is genuinely upset. I walk over to the CD player, always tuned to our local National Public Radio affiliate, which, when I switch it on, is playing insipid classical music—the Fanfare for the Common Man, I believe. I change to the all-news station, which comes in as clearly in Elm Harbor as it does in New York City. The anchor is waxing mournfully self-righteous about the latest act of racist violence, a black preacher who was tortured to death. My insides churn: stories of this kind are like a blow to my most sensitive parts. I always want to buy a couple of guns, grab my family, and run for the hills. And this time a preacher! I listen to sound clips, voices of national outrage: Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume, the President of the United States. Two children discovered the body in the tall grass behind the swings in a playground earlier today.

  I turn to Dana. “Is this what you wanted me to hear?”

  She nods and perches on the edge of my desk, her voice faint. “Keep listening.”

  I frown. I do not get it. But I listen a bit longer. The man was found with cigarette burns on his arms and legs and several fingernails missing. He was tortured, the announcer explains. Death itself apparently came from a single gunshot to the head, and was probably a blessing. I close my eyes. A horrible story, true, but why does Dana think—

  Wait.

  The victim’s body was found in a small town near Washington, D.C.

  I turn the volume up.

  A frightening lassitude begins in my toes and climbs slowly upward, until I am dizzy and swaying on my feet. The air grows heavy and oppressive, my stomach heaves, and my furniture begins to turn a ghastly, asphyxiating red.

  Beware of the others . . . . I would not want to see you harmed.

  The name of the murdered preacher is Freeman Bishop.

  CHAPTER 10

  A TRAGIC COINCIDENCE

  (I)

  “IT DOESN’T HAVE anything to do with your father,” says Sergeant B. T. Ames, tapping a thick manila folder against the metal table.

  “I don’t see how you can be so sure,” replies Mariah, sitting next to me on one of the hard wooden chairs in the small chamber off the police squad room. A single small window at about shoulder height lets in so little light that the day looks gruesome; it is hard for me to remember the bright autumn beauty I left behind just twenty minutes ago when we walked into the building. It is Thursday morning, one week and two days since the Judge’s funeral, and both of us are scared . . . although both our spouses think their spouses are being silly. I think maybe our spouses are right, but Mariah begged me to accompany her. We met at LaGuardia Airport a few hours ago and flew down together on the shuttle. Mariah, who can better afford the expense, rented a car, and we drove out to the Maryland suburbs for this meeting.

  “It’s my job to be sure,” the detective deadpans.

  “Somebody killed one of them,” Mariah says to the sergeant’s raised eyebrow, “and then somebody killed the other.”

  Sergeant Ames smiles, but I can see the exhaustion. Obtaining this interview with a busy Montgomery County detective required Mallory Corcoran to make several calls from Hawaii, urged on by Meadows, who was badgered by me. The sergeant, leaning against the austere metal desk, has made clear that plenty of actual police work awaits; we can have only a few minutes.

  We will take whatever time she can gi
ve.

  “I’ve looked at all the reports on your father,” says Sergeant Ames, waving a sheaf of faxes. “He died of a heart attack.” She raises a large hand to forestall any protest. “I know you doubt it, and you are entitled to your doubts. I happen to think the reports are correct, but it isn’t in my jurisdiction. The Reverend Freeman Bishop is in my jurisdiction. And he was murdered. Maybe he was murdered here, maybe he was murdered someplace else and then dumped here. Either way, Freeman Bishop is my case. Oliver Garland is not my case. And what I am telling you is that the cases do not have anything to do with each other.”

  I glance at my sister, but she is looking at the floor. Her designer pantsuit is black, as are her shoes and her scarf, and the choice strikes me as a little melodramatic. Well, that is Mariah’s way. At least she appears relaxed. I am stiff and uncomfortable in the least seedy of my three tweed blazers, this one vaguely brown.

  In any event, it now seems to be my turn. I throw what I hope is a congenial smile onto my face.

  “I understand your point, Sergeant, but you have to understand ours. Father Bishop was an old friend of the family. He performed our father’s funeral just a week ago. You can see how we’d be a little bit . . . shaken up.”

  Sergeant Ames puffs out a great gust of air. Then she stands up and walks around the wooden interrogation table to peer out the tiny window, where she blocks what little sunlight the window admits. She is a member of the paler nation, a broad yet graceful woman with a square, angry jaw and curly brown hair. Her size seems mostly muscle, not fat. Her dark blazer and cream-colored slacks are rumpled in the way that police fashions always are. A badge dangles from her breast pocket. Her florid face is chipped, from years of bad weather or years of bad diet or possibly both. She could be thirty. She could be fifty.

  “We’re all shaken up, Mr. Garland. Mrs. Denton. This was a brutal crime.” She is still lecturing us from the window, giving us her back. “Kill a man this way, dump him in a public park.” She shakes her head, but the facts don’t change. “I don’t like to have this kind of thing in my town. I grew up here. I have my family here. I like it here. One reason I like it here is that we don’t have these problems.” Racial problems, she means. Or maybe she just means black people: the town, after all, is nearly all white.

  “I understand that—” I begin, but Sergeant B. T. Ames (we do not know her first name, only the initials) holds up her hand. First I think she has something to say, but then I realize that she has heard knocking that I missed, because she walks over to the door and opens it. A uniformed officer, also white, gleams at us suspiciously, then whispers to the sergeant and hands her another fax for her collection.

  When the door is closed again, Sergeant Ames returns to her window.

  “They found his car,” she says.

  “Where?” Mariah asks before I have the chance.

  “Southwest Washington. Not far from the Navy Yard.”

  “What was he doing down there?” Mariah persists. We are both frustrated. All the sergeant has really told us so far is what the newspapers reported: Father Bishop had a vestry meeting scheduled for seven on the night he died. He called to say he would be a little late because he had to visit a member of the parish who was having problems. He left home in his car about six-thirty, and his neighbors swear he was alone. He never made it to the church.

  The detective swings toward us, but leans against the wall, crossing her arms. “I’m afraid I have to get back to work,” she says. “Unless you have some information that you think will help us find Father Bishop’s killer.”

  I spent my childhood being summarily dismissed, usually by the Judge, and have never been able to bear it as an adult. So I protest—as so often, without first thinking. “We told you we think there’s a connection . . . .”

  Sergeant Ames takes a step toward me, her heavy face unwelcoming. She seems to be growing larger, or perhaps I am shrinking. I am suddenly reminded that she is, after all, a police officer. She is not interested in our theories or our meddling.

  “Mr. Garland, do you have any evidence of a connection between the murder of Freeman Bishop and the death of your father?”

  “Well, that depends on what you mean by evidence—”

  “Did anybody tell you that this crime was connected to the death of your father?”

  “No, but I—”

  “Do you know of your own knowledge who killed Freeman Bishop?”

  “Of course not!” I am offended but also a little bit scared, the ambiguous relationship of black males to the nation’s police departments being what it is. I remember that this tiny room is used for the interrogation of suspects. The furniture begins to emit a soft red glow. Mariah puts her hand on my arm, warning me to calm down. And I get the point: we are here, after all, and the sergeant has a job to do.

  “Did anybody tell you who killed Freeman Bishop?” Sergeant Ames continues.

  “No.” I remember, far too late, what we used to tell clients facing depositions: Keep it simple, say yes or no, and never, ever volunteer anything, no matter how badly you want to explain.

  And stay calm.

  “Did anybody tell you that he or she knows who killed Freeman Bishop?”

  “No.”

  “Did anybody tell you that anybody else knows who killed Freeman Bishop?”

  “No.”

  “Then maybe you don’t have any information for me.”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “Wait.” Spoken softly. The detective has taken command with remarkable ease. My intimidated students wouldn’t recognize me, but Avery Knowland, I am sure, would have a grand time watching.

  Mariah and I wait as instructed. Sergeant Ames, to my dismay, actually opens her manila folder. She pulls out a sheet of yellow lined paper and reads some handwritten notes, her tongue poking around her mouth as she concentrates. She grabs a ballpoint pen from the table and makes a couple of check marks in the margin. For the first time, I realize that the detective is not just questioning me for show. Mariah recognizes it too; her hand tightens on my arm. Sergeant Ames knows something, or thinks she knows something, that is leading her to ask these questions.

  And she is asking only me, not my sister.

  When the sergeant speaks again, she is looking at her notes, not at me. “Are you aware of any threats received by Freeman Bishop?”

  “No.”

  “Are you aware of anybody with a strong dislike for Freeman Bishop?”

  “No.” Again I cannot help elaborating: “He was not the sort of man who generated, uh, strong emotions.”

  “No enemies of whom you are aware?”

  “No.”

  “Have you had any recent conversations with Freeman Bishop?”

  “Not since the funeral, no.”

  “Prior to the murder, but after the funeral, have you had any conversations with any person about Freeman Bishop?”

  I hesitate. What is she driving at? What does she think happened? But hesitation in an interrogation is like a red flag to a bull. Sergeant Ames lifts her intense gaze from the manila folder and settles her eyes on me. She does not repeat the question. She waits, terrifying in her patience. As though expecting me to confess. To a conversation? To something more? Does she think that I . . . surely she doesn’t think . . .

  You’re being ridiculous.

  “Not that I can recall,” I say at last.

  She gazes at me a moment longer, letting me know that she recognizes the hedge, then looks down at her notes again.

  “Have you recently noticed any peculiar behavior by Freeman Bishop?”

  “I didn’t know him that well.”

  She glances up. “I thought you saw him last week, at your father’s funeral.”

  “Well, yes . . .”

  “And did you notice any peculiar behavior?”

  “No. No, I didn’t.”

  “He seemed the same as always?”

  “I guess so.” I am puzzled by her questions now, not scared.


  “Did anybody else recently tell you about any peculiar behavior by Freeman Bishop?”

  “No.”

  “Did anybody tell you anything that could have a bearing on this murder?”

  “Don’t hurry. Think hard. Go back a couple of weeks if you have to. Months.”

  “The answer is still no, Sergeant. No.”

  “You said you think there is a connection between your father’s death and the murder of Freeman Bishop.”

  “I . . . we wondered, yes.”

  “Did your father ever talk about Freeman Bishop?”

  This one puzzles me again. “I guess. Sure, lots of times.”

  “Recently?” All at once her voice grows gentle. “Go back, say, six months from your father’s death?”

  “No. Not that I remember.”

  “A year. Go back a year.”

  “Maybe. I don’t recall.”

  “Was it your father’s wish that Freeman Bishop perform his funeral?”

  Mariah and I exchange a glance. Something is up. “I don’t think he ever talked about his funeral,” I say, once it becomes clear that Mariah is not going to speak. “Not to me.”

  Sergeant Ames turns her attention to the folder once more. I wonder what she could be reading in it. I wonder what she did when she learned that we were coming to see her, where she went for information, what information she found. I wonder where these questions are coming from. I am sorely tempted to violate the rules every lawyer lives by . . . and just ask.

  Instead, I ask something else.

  “Do you have any leads?”

  “Mr. Garland, you have to understand the way this kind of thing works. The police usually are the ones who ask the questions.”

  Pushing my buttons: nothing galls me as much as being patronized.

  “Look, Sergeant, I’m sorry. But, you know, this is the man who just did my father’s funeral. Nine years ago he performed my wedding. Now, maybe you can see why I would be a little bit upset.”