Regina's Song

by David Eddings

  “It’s the best one for Twinkie, that’s for sure. But after what you just unloaded on me, I might need some place to get my head on straight too, and I’m fairly sure the nuns wouldn’t accept my application.”

  “You’re a nice guy, Mark,” he said, grinning. “Maybe they’ll bend a few rules for you.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” I said sourly.

  “Aw, forget it, good buddy.”

  Mr. Rankin called Trish on Monday morning, and she came back into the kitchen with a troubled expression on her face. “Judge Compson’s going to announce her final decision this afternoon,” she told us. “I don’t think we’re going to like it very much, but we’d probably better be there.”

  Maybe it was just me, but that morning seemed to drag on forever. It was raining and blustery outside and that seemed to make things worse.

  We didn’t talk much on our way downtown to the courthouse. What was there to say?

  I was surprised to see Father O’Donnell in the courtroom with Les Greenleaf when we entered. He gave me a quick grin, and then he winked at me.

  What was that all about?

  Then the two attendants brought Renata—assuming that she really was Renata—into the courtroom. She was still murmuring to herself and wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to anybody else in the room.

  At one o’clock—on the dot as usual—the bailiff said, “All rise,” and we stood up as Judge Compson entered. Her face was set in a stern expression, but something seemed to be bothering her.

  “You may be seated,” she told us. “This won’t take us very long.” Then she paused. “This case has troubled me greatly from the very beginning,” she told us all. “I can only hope that I’ve made the right decision. It’s been obvious that the defendant is not even aware of her surroundings and that she’s profoundly disturbed. This being the case, my judgment of her incompetence was obviously the correct one. The final disposition, however, was not quite so simple. Miss Greenleaf is beyond punishment, obviously. She must be placed somewhere where she can receive custodial care and attention of a sort that goes somewhat beyond the capabilities of an ordinary mental institution. It is, therefore, the judgment of this court that Miss Renata Greenleaf shall be placed in the care of a religious order of her faith for the balance of her life.” Then Judge Compson rapped down her gavel. “This court stands adjourned,” she declared.

  That really jolted me. How was she going to force the sisters to take Renata in if they didn’t want to? Something strange was going on here, and I was fairly certain that I knew who might be able to explain it.

  As soon as the judge left the courtroom I zeroed in on Father O’Donnell. “You’ve been pulling some strings again, haven’t you, Father?” I demanded.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go quite that far, Mark,’ he said. “The mother superior of the Sisters of Hope needed just a wee bit of information, that’s all, so I gave it to her.”

  “You told her?” I exclaimed. “I thought your bishop ordered you to keep your mouth shut about it.”

  “He was talking about outside the family, Mark. The mother superior and I are old friends, so I was almost obliged to let her know about something that significant. It helped her to make the right decision.”

  “You guys play by a complicated set of rules, don’t you, Father?” I accused him.

  “It’s OK as long as it gets the job done, Mark,” he said smugly. “I have it on the very highest authority that everything’s fine and dandy now, dontcha know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The press release Judge Compson issued that afternoon was very terse, and it made no mention of a religious order. That left the news media high and dry. There wasn’t going to be a trial or much of anything else for them to babble about. Burpee was still in jail for contempt of court, and nobody else involved would answer any questions.

  The reporters didn’t think that was very nice at all.

  To make things even worse for them, Renata was transferred from the university medical center to Doc Fallon’s sanitarium that same evening, before the reporters even knew what was going on. She was still technically being held in custody, but Fallon was now her custodian. The idea was to give the impression that Fallon’s institution was going to be her final home. Then things would have time to cool off before she was quietly transferred to the cloister.

  It looked good on paper, but we started running into snags almost immediately. Some blabbermouth at the medical center told a reporter about the transfer the following morning, and a dozen or so reporters showed up at Doc Fallon’s gate. The guard wouldn’t let them into the courtyard, of course, but they camped outside and didn’t show any signs that they planned to leave at any time in the near future.

  Fallon conferred with Les Greenleaf by phone, and on Wednesday morning several burly and unfriendly security guards showed up. They informed the reporters in no uncertain terms that they were trespassing on private property, and that they’d better get the hell off the grounds. The reporters sullenly retreated back down the driveway and reestablished their camp at the side of the public road beyond the sanitarium grounds—where they tried to stop every car that was entering or leaving.

  Fallon told his entire staff that he’d fire anybody who talked to a reporter about anything—even the weather.

  The reporters were still clustered around the entrance to the driveway, though, so Doc Fallon took the next logical step. One of his golf buddies was a Snohomish County judge, and he got a restraining order—no loitering within a quarter mile of the entrance to the sanitarium.

  There was a lot of screaming about that, and several reporters, claiming “freedom of the press,” deliberately ignored the order. They ended up in jail for contempt of court.

  The whole thing was starting to turn into a comedy—or even a farce.

  I didn’t laugh very much, though. By Friday of that week, it was obvious that waiting the reporters out was going to take longer than any of us had anticipated. Father O’Donnell advised us that the mother superior of the Sisters of Hope was having second thoughts about the whole thing.

  We’d hit the quarter break at the university, and I probably should have enrolled in a couple of seminars, but as long as this other thing was still hanging fire, I knew that there’d be no way that I could concentrate, so I took a pass for now. That gave me all kinds of time to worry about the possibility James had raised. “Either/Or” suddenly became very significant for me. It probably wouldn’t have made much difference in the final outcome. Twinkie—whichever one she was—would be quietly transferred to the cloister, and that’d be the end of it. Still—

  Spring quarter classes were scheduled to begin on the sixth of April, and the rest of the gang was busy with registering, buying textbooks, and all the other minutiae that clutter up registration week. Oddly enough, though, we didn’t see much of Charlie. Knowing him as well as we did, we were all fairly sure that he was “up to something.” Charlie had almost made a career out of being “up to something.”

  He showed up on the Sunday before classes began, and Trish immediately climbed all over him. “Where have you been, Charlie?” she demanded, “and what have you been doing?”

  “Just working, Mama Trish,” he replied, faking wide-eyed innocence.

  “Here we go again,” Erika said. “Give up, Charlie. We’re not going to let up on you until you come clean. You should know that by now.”

  “You guys are taking the fun out of this,” he complained.

  “Fun-schmun, Charlie,” Erika said bluntly. “Talk.”

  “Well—” he said, “we seem to have this little problem with Twinkie.”

  “No kidding,” I said dryly. “What a brilliant observation.”

  “All right,” Charlie gave up. “Our problem has to do with logistics. Twinkie’s at point A—Fallon’s nuthouse—and we’ve got to move her to point B—the cloister.”

  “All right,” James agreed. “That’s fairly specific.”

&nb
sp; “The main problem is the pack of newshounds camped on Fallon’s front door, right?”

  “You’re going to round them all up and put them in the dog pound?” Erika suggested.

  “That’s a slick idea,” he said, “if we could get away with it. The pound would hold them for seven days, then put them to sleep.”

  “I could live with that,” I said darkly.

  “So could I, but we’d probably get yelled at if we tried it. I’ve been working on something that might just pull it off without too many fatalities.” Charlie frowned slightly. “I’m not too clear on a couple of technicalities, though.” He looked at Trish. “Maybe Rankin could give us an OK, but I’ve got a hunch that maybe we ought to clear it with Judge Compson before we jump in with both feet. My game plan has a couple things involved that might be technically illegal, so let’s not rock the boat if we don’t have to.”

  “I’ll speak with Mr. Rankin,” Trish told him.

  “That’s it? You’re not going to give us anything more specific?” Sylvia objected.

  “I’m still working on a couple things, sweet cakes,” he said. “Give me some time to get it all down pat before I spread it out for you guys.”

  “Sweet cakes?” she said archly.

  “It’s an expression,” he replied defensively. “I’m not breaking any rules—yet.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Trish told him flatly.

  It took Mr. Rankin a couple of days to set up an appointment with Judge Compson, and he finally passed the word that she wanted to see us in her office at the courthouse at seven-thirty on the evening of Tuesday, the seventh of April.

  I went to the phone in the living room to check in with Les Greenleaf. “Charlie isn’t talking, boss,” I told him, “but he’s got something cooking that might get those damned reporters off our tails. If I know Charlie, it’s probably fairly complicated, and we might have trouble sneaking it past Judge Compson. Is the mother superior still willing to go along with this?”

  “Only if we can guarantee the security of the cloister, Mark,” he told me. “That’s her major concern. If you and your friends show up at the gate with a dozen reporters hot on your trail, she won’t open the gates.”

  “That’s what Charlie’s working on, I think. I’m sure he’s got some sort of scam cooked up that’ll confuse hell out of those reporters.”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “How’s Inga doing?”

  “Not good, Mark,” he told me sadly. “Her doctor’s got her on some heavy-duty tranquilizers. I think it’s going to take her a long time to come out of this.”

  “She’s not alone there, boss. I doubt I’ll ever get over it.”

  “We’ve lost both of my girls, haven’t we?” he said then, and there were tears in his voice.

  What the hell could I say? I stepped around it. “Do you want to sit in, boss?” I asked him. “Judge Compson might want to ask you a few questions.”

  “You’re right, Mark,” he agreed. “I guess I’d better be there.”

  I tried to work on my Hemingway paper, to clear one of my incompletes from winter quarter, but I couldn’t concentrate, so I put it aside so that I could worry full-time. Every time I turned around, “Either/Or” kept hitting me in the face.

  Charlie still wasn’t talking, and that irritated the hell out of me. I wasn’t in the mood for fun and games.

  Tuesday rolled around—eventually—and by then we were all wired up pretty tight. Even now, Twinkie was at the center of our attention. The girls were waspish with Charlie at supper, but he still refused to give us any details.

  “Let’s take the station wagon again,” James suggested after supper. “It’s sort of the official vehicle by now, and after Erika’s little demonstration with pepper spray, every reporter in King County knows that we’re loaded for bear.”

  “Thou shalt not look, neither shall ye touch—lest ye die,” Erika announced.

  “That’d make a great bumper sticker, wouldn’t it?” Charlie said with a certain enthusiasm.

  Erika shrugged. “It gets right to the point,” she said.

  The walls of Judge Compson’s office were lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves and law books. Lawyers and judges don’t have to spend much money on wallpaper, that’s for sure.

  Mr. Rankin, Les Greenleaf, and Mary were already there when we arrived, and Bob West showed up before we even got seated. “What are you up to now, kid?” he asked Charlie.

  “Sit tight, Bob,” Charlie replied. “I want to dump it on everybody at the same time, so I won’t have to keep repeating myself.”

  “It better be good,” Bob told him.

  “Trust me.”

  “Oh, sure.” Bob’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “Is everyone here now?” Judge Compson asked us. She wasn’t wearing her black robe, and she looked almost motherly in her print dress.

  Mr. Rankin looked around. “I think that’s everybody, Alice,” he said familiarly, “unless you think Mr. Fielding should sit in?”

  “I think we can get along without him for now, John,” she replied. “If there’s anything you think he ought to know about, you can pass it on to him later.” She looked around at the rest of us. “This is an unofficial meeting,” she said. “I’m here to listen—and possibly to pass along some advice. Go ahead, John.”

  “Bob West’s younger brother wanted to bounce an idea off you, Alice,” Rankin said. “He hasn’t given any of us the details, so we’re as much in the dark as you are.”

  “It’s in your court, then, Mr. West,” the judge told Charlie. “Fire away.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning at her colloquialism. “I’ve been kicking this idea around since you handed down your decision. I think I’ve plugged up all the holes, but if anybody spots something I’ve missed, let me know. What this all boils down to is a security problem. We need to transfer Twinkie from Doc Fallon’s loony bin to that cloister, without picking up a convoy of reporters along the way. Is that pretty much the problem?”

  “Yes,” the judge said. “If by ‘Twinkie,’ you’re referring to Miss Greenleaf. So what’s your solution, Mr. West?”

  “Right at first, I thought that maybe a helicopter might be the best way to go,” Charlie replied, “but then I remembered that a couple of the TV stations have helicopters of their own. They might not be right there on the scene, but I didn’t want to take any chances. We’re probably going to have to stay on the ground, and that means that we’ll need decoys. An unmarked delivery truck might work, but that’s still a little risky. We’ll only have one shot at this, so we’ve got to get it right the first time.”

  “I think we all get your point, Mr. West,” Rankin said.

  “OK,” Charlie said, “let’s say that along toward evening on some rainy afternoon, five identical black limousines wheel into the courtyard of Doc Fallon’s place and stop there.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if they came in after dark?” Bob asked.

  Charlie shook his head. “No. We want those reporters to see those limos. That’s part of the scam. A duck has to see the decoy before he’ll land on the pond where you and your shotgun are waiting. OK, we’ve got five identical limos in the courtyard. Next we’ll need five more or less identical tall blond girls to be led out through the front door of the nuthouse. They can all wear sweatshirts with the hoods pulled up but with a lock or two of blonde hair showing, so that the long-range TV cameras can pick it up. Then each girl gets into the backseat of a different limo. Are we OK so far?” He looked around.

  “I still think you should wait until it gets dark,” Bob told him. “The reporters will just split up and follow every one of the limousines, won’t they?”

  “I sure hope so,” Charlie said. “OK, now we’ve got five limos with those tinted windows that make sure that nobody can see inside. They drive out and scatter to the winds—one goes toward Snohomish, one to Everett, one heads north toward Bellingham, one goes east toward Steven
s Pass, and the last one just wanders the back roads around the lake. The reporters have to split up to follow each one separately.”

  “I don’t see where that’s going to make any difference, Charlie,” James said.

  “I’m coming to that,” Charlie replied. “OK, now we’ve got five limos scattered all over the place, with a gang of reporters trailing each one. The idea here is to get those reporters away from any side roads or driveways. That way, they’ve got to stay on the road we want them to be on.”

  “Right behind the limo that we don’t want them to be following,” Bob said. “Brilliant, kid. You’ve got a mind as sharp as a pile of limp spaghetti.”

  “I ain’t done yet, big brother,” Charlie told him. “OK, we’re in Snohomish County, right? And Twinkie’s dad pulls a lot of weight up there, right? Doesn’t that mean that the sheriff and the state patrol are going to be on our side this time?”

  “Maybe,” Bob admitted. “What difference will that make?”

  “This is where it gets interesting,” Charlie said with a smug grin. “We tell the cops exactly which road each limo’s going to follow—like before noon on D-day. Then the cops ease quietly on out to some lonely spot on each one of those roads. They set up five of those ‘sobriety checkpoints.’ Each one has a roadblock with cops at the back end, to make damn sure that some smart reporter doesn’t wrap a U-turn and make a run for it. The cops wave the limo through, and then they check everybody in every single car behind the limo for blood-alcohol level. The cops don’t have to hurry. I mean, they’re protecting the public from drunk drivers, aren’t they? A well-run cop stop with breathalyzers and making everybody get out of the car to find out if he can walk a straight line should hold the vultures in place for a least a half hour, so all five limos get away clean. The reporters won’t have the foggiest idea which limo’s carrying Twinkie, and they won’t know where any of the limos have gone. The real Twinkie car can drop her off at the cloister and take off again. Then we have all five limos wander around western Washington until about noon on the following day—stopping for gas here, buying a Big Mac there, getting a ticket for speeding someplace else, and all kinds of stuff to attract attention to places that don’t mean a damn thing. Then they all go back to the limo garage, and we all go home and get some sleep. Can anybody see any holes in that one? The way I see it is that the news vultures are going to get so many conflicting reports that they won’t have the foggiest idea of where Twinkie went.”