The Emperor of Ocean Park Page 9

  I take a moment to think. I know I must get this precisely right.

  “Uncle Jack, look. I appreciate you being here. I’m sure the whole family does. And I know it would mean a lot to my father. Please believe me, I would help you if I could. But I—I just don’t know what you are talking about.” I can feel myself botching it. “If you would just tell me what arrangements you mean.”

  “You know what arrangements I mean.” This in a hard tone, with a touch of the fire I saw a minute ago, just enough to remind me that I am dealing with a dangerous man. The day is growing darker and my head is beginning to pound. “You appreciate that I am here? Excellent. Now I would appreciate the information.”

  “I don’t have any information!” Finally losing my temper, for nothing causes quite so sharp a red aura as condescension. “I told you, I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about!” I am so loud that heads turn among the mourners who have not yet departed, and the bodyguard looks ready to grab Uncle Jack and make a run for it. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that longsuffering Kimmer is striding heavily toward us. It occurs to me that it would be best to finish this conversation before she arrives. “I’m sorry I raised my voice,” I tell him. “But there is nothing I can do to help you.”

  A long silence as the eerily dancing eyes search mine. Then Jack Ziegler shakes his head and purses his thin lips. “I have asked my question,” he whispers, perhaps to himself. “I have delivered my warning. I have done what I came to do.”

  “Uncle Jack—”

  “Talcott, I must go.” His hot glare fixes briefly on Addison, standing ten paces away, who frowns and turns toward us as though aware of scrutiny. Jack Ziegler crowds closer to me, perhaps afraid of being overheard. Then the skinny hand snakes out again, once more amazing me with its speed, and I take another step back. But he is holding only a small white card. “Beware of the others I have told you about. And when you decide that you would like to talk about . . . about the arrangements . . . you must call me. I will come to any place you name, at any time you name. And I will help you in any way that I can.” A pause as he waits, frowning. “I do not usually make such promises, Talcott.”

  Now I get it. He expects me to thank him. I hate that.

  “I understand,” is all I can bring myself to say. I pluck the card from his fingers.

  “I hope so,” he says sadly, “for I would not want to see you harmed.” All at once he smiles, inclining his head toward my advancing wife. “You or your family.”

  I cannot believe what I have just heard, and the red is suddenly very sharp and bright. My voice is more gasp than objection: “Are you . . . Is that a threat?”

  “Of course not, Talcott, of course not.” He is still smiling, except that it is more an ugly rictus than a sign of happiness. “I am warning you of the thoughts of others. For me, a promise is a promise. I promised to protect you, and so I shall.”

  “Uncle Jack, I don’t really know what—”

  “Enough,” he says sharply. “You must do what you must do. Allow no one to dissuade you.” For a long moment, the dark, demented eyes bore into mine, making me lightheaded, as though part of his insanity is crossing the two feet between us, burrowing down my optic nerve into my brain. And then, very suddenly, Jack Ziegler gives me his back. “Mr. Henderson, we are going,” he snaps at the bodyguard, who favors us with a final suspicious glance before also turning away. Mr. Henderson steadies his master. They walk off along the shadowy path through the marching headstones, turn a corner, and soon are lost in the deeper shadows, as though they are ghosts whose time in the world of the living is done and who therefore must return to the earth.

  Still stunned, I feel Addison’s steadying hand on my shoulder. “You did great,” he murmurs, knowing, perhaps, that I doubt it. “He’s a fruitcake.”

  “True.” I tap the card against my teeth. “True.”

  “You okay?”

  “Sure.”

  My brother gives me a look, then shrugs. “See you at the house,” he promises, and heads off to look for his weird little poet or whatever she is. I take a step nearer the grave, unable somehow to believe that my father, casket or not, was able to lie quietly through the entire exchange with Uncle Jack. His silence, perhaps, is the best evidence that he is actually dead.

  “What was that all about?” asks Kimmer, now at my side.

  “I wish I knew,” I say. I consider telling her what Jack Ziegler said about Marc Hadley, but decide to wait; better she be pleasantly surprised than cruelly disappointed.

  Kimmer frowns, then kisses me on the cheek, takes my hand again, and leads me down the hill. But as I ride back to Shepard Street in the limousine, clutching my wife’s cold hand, Jack Ziegler’s words run like a mantra through my troubled mind: The others. Beware of the others . . . . I am warning you of the thoughts of others. For me, a promise is a promise.

  And the rest of it: I would not want to see you harmed. You or your family.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE PROBLEMIST

  (I)

  ALTHOUGH IT IS no longer our home, Washington is very much Kimmer’s city. With the Congress, the White House, a gaggle of federal regulatory agencies, countless judges, and more lawyers per capita than any locale on the face of the earth, it is a place for those who like to make deals, and making deals is what my wife does best. My wife’s first task when she arrived in the city was to build a base camp, complete with laptop and portable fax machine, in the guest room of her parents’ home, on Sixteenth Street up near the Carter Barron Theatre, a half-mile or so north of Shepard Street. She spent Monday, the day before the funeral, lining up appointments for Wednesday, the day after, one meeting over at the Federal Trade Commission on behalf of a client, the rest in furtherance of her candidacy for the court of appeals. And so this morning she leaves her parents’ house early, for breakfast with another old friend—“the new girls’ network,” she gushes, although some are men. This particular friend is a political reporter at the Post, a woman appropriately named Battle, a buddy from Mount Holyoke, who is said to be connected.

  Kimmer has always cultivated the press and is frequently quoted in the pages of our local newspaper, the Clarion, and, now and then, in the Times. I have a different attitude toward journalists, one I have exercised frequently over the past few days. When reporters call me, I have no comment, no matter what the subject. If they persist, I simply hang up. I never talk to reporters, not since the press savaged my father during his hearings. Never. I have a student named Lionel Eldridge, a onetime professional basketball star who, having ruined his knee, now hopes to be a lawyer. Kimmer and I know him and his wife a little bit, because he worked at her firm last summer, a job I helped him to obtain at a time when other firms, vexed by his grades and trying to prove they were not awed by his celebrity, turned him down. Lots of journalists still do stories about “young Mr. Eldridge,” as Theo Mountain likes to call him—I think in jest, for Lionel may be half a century younger than Theo, but he is almost a decade older than the rest of the second-year students. In any event, the media still adore young Mr. Eldridge, and love to chronicle his doings. Once a reporter was foolish enough to call me. She was writing a profile of Sweet Nellie, as he was called in his playing days, and wanted, she said, to capture his eagerness to master this new challenge. She had spoken to Lionel, who had identified me as his favorite professor. I was flattered, I suppose, although I am not in this business to be liked. But still I had no comment. She asked why, and, as she caught me at a weak moment, I told her. “But this is a nice piece I’m writing,” she wailed. “I write sports, for goodness’ sake, not politics.” As though the distinction would reassure me. “I hate sports,” I told her, which was a lie, “and I’m not a nice man,” which is the truth.

  Even though my wife keeps telling me otherwise.

  But Kimmer thinks her newspaper friend can help her, and perhaps she is right, for my wife has a nose for knowing who might be able to boost her closer to her g
oal. Later, she will meet with the Democratic Senator from our state, a graduate of the law school, to try to cajole him out of Marc Hadley’s corner and, at minimum, onto the sidelines: a meeting I went hat in hand to Theo Mountain, the Senator’s favorite teacher, to arrange. She is lunching with Ruthie Silverman, who warned her that everything about the process is confidential but at last agreed to see her anyway, for everybody who knows Kimmer develops the habit of doing what she wants. After lunch, my wife will visit the chief lobbyist for the NAACP, an appointment arranged by her father, the Colonel, who is also connected. Then, in the late afternoon, Kimmer and I will join forces, because the great Mallory Corcoran himself has squeezed the two of us into his calendar at four; Kimmer and I will see Uncle Mal together, in the hope that he will agree to put a portion of his considerable influence her way.

  Washington, as I said, is Kimmer’s city. It is not, however, mine, and it never will be; it is far too easy to close my eyes and remember all the long, bleak hours of hearings as my father sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee, first confident, next disbelieving, then angry, and finally sullen and defeated. I remember the days when my mother sat behind him, the days when I did. How Mariah was too upset to attend after the scandal broke, and how Addison, often summoned, never showed, to my father’s distress. How the Judge’s distress irritated me when I was so loyal and so ignored and Addison, as usual, so flighty and so loved: the prodigal son indeed. I remember the television lights, after the hearing was moved down the hall to a larger room, and everybody sweating. I had no idea that television lights were so hot. Senate staffers dabbed the members’ foreheads; my father dabbed his own. I remember his grim refusal to accept any coaching from Uncle Mal, from the White House, from anybody who might help. I remember looking up at the Senators and thinking how distant and high and powerful they seemed, but also noticing how they read most of their long, pompous questions from cue cards, and how some of them grew confused if the conversation wandered too far from their briefings. I recall the baize on the tables: until I had the chance to touch it, I never realized it was simply stapled in place, a kind of special effect for the cameras. In reality, the tables were plain wood. I remember the crowds of reporters in the hallways and the entrances, shouting for attention like preschoolers. But most of all, like everybody else, I remember the dreary and repetitive and ultimately necessary questions: When did you last see Jack Ziegler? Did you meet with Jack Ziegler in March of last year? What was the subject matter of the discussion? Were you aware of the pending indictment at that time? On and on and on. And my father’s dreary, monotonous answers, which sounded less and less convincing with every repetition: I don’t know, Senator. No, I did not, Senator. I do not recall, Senator. No, I had no idea, Senator. And, finally, the beginning of the end, which always starts with friends running for cover and with the same signal to the now disgraced nominee, usually spoken by the chairman: Now, Judge, I know you to be a decent man, and I have a great deal of respect for your accomplishments, and I would really like to believe that you are being candid with this committee, but, frankly . . .

  Nomination withdrawn at nominee’s request.

  Nominee and family humiliated.

  Grand jury convenes.

  Fade to black.

  Or, as I might have said back in college, during my more overtly nationalist days, to white.

  Even now I shudder at the memory. But there is no escaping it, at least not here in Washington. Last night, Kimmer and I sat up with her parents, watching the eleven o’clock news. When the anchorwoman reached the funeral of Oliver Garland, about the third story in, there, suddenly, were scenes not of today’s events but of the humiliation of many years ago, my father seated before the Judiciary Committee, his mouth moving soundlessly as the reporter continued to talk. Cut to footage of Jack Ziegler in handcuffs following one of his many arrests: a nice, if biased, touch. Cut to the Judge giving a fiery speech before one of the Rightpacs as the reporter chattered about his later career. Cut to the rueful face of Greg Haramoto, interviewed outside the church just after the funeral, expressing his sorrow at the passing of “a great man” and extending his condolences to the family—although he made no effort to condole us in person, or by telephone, or even by note. Greg turns out to be the only attendee whose post-funeral comments made the news; but perhaps he was the only one the journalists found worth interviewing. Just as he was, before the Judiciary Committee in 1986, the only witness who mattered.

  Even after all these years, knowing that the committee might have been right does nothing to assuage the pain of my father’s disgrace. Strangers accost me at conferences: Aren’t you Oliver Garland’s son? I mutter banalities through thick curtains of red and flee as quickly as I can. So it is just as well that I do not accompany Kimmer on her Washington rounds; my pain would hinder her and, in the end, might injure her. Besides, Bentley and I have made other plans for the day. In a little while, we will head over to Shepard Street and then off with Mariah and her crew for a morning of in-line skating at some suburban rollerdrome. Miles Madison, whose professional life now consists of occasional conversations with the managers of his various properties, has left for the golf course, despite the rainy weather. “If they can’t play golf,” sighs Vera Madison, “they’ll just play cards and drink all day.” My mother-in-law, who always asks me to address her by her first name, has all of Kimmer’s handsomeness and height but is a good deal thinner; my wife’s breadth comes from the Colonel, who has grown buttery since his retirement, and who, on his good days, allows me to call him Mr. Madison. Vera has offered to watch Bentley if I need to talk to my sister. I decline. I am keeping my son very close to me until I figure out what Uncle Jack was talking about. Probably nothing, but still. I have not yet told Kimmer, unsure how she will react, but when I asked her before she left this morning to please be careful, she looked at me hard—Kimmer misses little—and then kissed me lightly on the lips and said, “Oh, I will, Misha, I will.” I was smiling at Kimmer when she walked out into the cold morning drizzle. She was smiling too, probably in anticipation of her day.

  Kimmer headed into town in her mother’s midnight-blue Cadillac, so Bentley and I take the rental car—a prosaic white Taurus—for the five-minute drive down Sixteenth Street to Shepard. Our journey takes us through the heart of the Gold Coast, a lovely corner of Northwest Washington where, over the middle decades of the twentieth century, hundreds of lawyers and physicians and businessmen and professors of the darker nation created an idyllic and sheltered community for their families in the midst of racial segregation. The lots tend to be large, the lawns manicured to perfection, and the houses spacious and beautifully furnished; in the white suburbs, they would sell for double or triple their value in the city. On the other hand, the ritzy black enclave of the Gold Coast might be integrating: Jay Rockefeller, for example, now lives on a vast estate that sprawls from just beyond Shepard Street down to Rock Creek Park. Perhaps for aesthetic balance, many rising black professionals who would once have purchased homes here are now busily integrating the suburbs.

  Stopping briefly for a red light, I peek at my son in the rearview mirror. Bentley is a good-looking boy. He has my thick black hair, pointy chin, and deep chocolate skin, along with his mother’s huge brown eyes, striking eyebrows, and full lips. He is also a quiet and very serious child, given to shyness around others and introspection when alone. Our son talked late: so late that we consulted pediatricians and even a pediatric neurologist—some friend of some cousin of Kimmer’s—all of whom assured us that, although most children have spoken a few words midway through their second year, and some much earlier, it is neither unusual nor a sign of an impending mental deficiency for a child to start talking later. Just wait it out, everybody told us. And Bentley made us wait. Now, half a year past his third birthday, he has begun to babble in that peculiar mixture of proper English and mysterious prelinguistic code that so many toddlers discover shortly after turning one. He is talking it now, sternly lectu
ring his new dog, fiery orange and filled with stuffing, a gift from Addison, who never misses a chance to create a fan: “And no and doggie no said no cause Mama red you uh-oh doggie bad okay go home now go no no dare doggie Mama no no said dare okay no no okay dare doggie bad dare you . . .”

  I interrupt this string of gorgeous gibberish:

  “You okay, buddy?”

  My son shuts up and eyes me warily, his pudgy hands clutching the yet unnamed dog as though he fears it might disappear.

  “Dare doggie,” he whispers.

  “Right.”

  “Dare you!” he bursts out happily, for he adds new words and phrases just about daily. I wonder which television show he picked this line up from. “Dare don’t!”

  “Okay, buddy. I love you.”

  “Wuv you. Dare you.”

  “Dare you, too,” I answer, but this only puzzles him, and his laughter subsides into uneasy silence.

  I shake my head. Sometimes Bentley makes us uneasy, too—Kimmer especially. She spoils him hopelessly, unable to bear his unhappiness for an instant, because she has always blamed herself for whatever is wrong with our son, if, indeed, anything is. His first morning outside the womb swung rapidly from exhilarating to terrifying. Laboring in one of the brightly colored birthing rooms at the university hospital’s sparkling maternity wing, pressing down when ordered, holding back on request, working on her breathing, doing all of it exactly right in typically splendid Kimmer fashion, my wife suddenly started to bleed very heavily, even though the baby’s head had hardly crowned. I watched in amazement as the white sheets and green hospital gown turned bright, viscous red. The jolly, encouraging midwife who had been supervising the event all at once lost her jolliness and stopped encouraging. From my coaching perch on a wooden stool, I asked if everything was all right. The midwife hesitated, then offered me a wobbly smile and said that pregnant women can easily afford to lose a lot of blood, because their blood supply doubles. But she also whispered to a second nurse, who hurried from the room. The bleeding continued, a coppery red sea, as the midwife tried to deliver the baby’s head. Her gloved hands slipped and she cursed. Kimmer felt things going awry, then looked down and saw all the blood and screamed in terror, which I had never heard before and have never heard since. I had never seen so much blood either. Our baby’s little head was awash in it. The fetal monitor began braying a series of desperate objections. A doctor I had never seen before materialized to replace the midwife. She took a quick look and barked a series of swift orders; without further conversation, I was pressed physically from the room by two nurses as a phalanx of blue gowns converged on the bed, leaving me all alone in the modern, soulless waiting area to contemplate the possibility that I would lose both wife and son on what should have been the happiest day of my life.