the Osborne tradition of defiant rugged individualism. On the other hand, June, the social-climbing ditz, was never appreciated for who she was. And of course as Chester’s tendencies toward violence surfaced, that didn’t particularly endear him or add to his opportunities in the family dynamic.”
“And you think it’s possible that what Chester experienced as psychological abuse in your parents’ home was so traumatic that he passed it on in his own home as physical abuse?”
She said, “I’m afraid so.”
I asked Janet if I’d heard correctly the day before when I thought she said that Chester had “disowned” Craig—meaning presumably that their disaffection was so complete that they no longer had any contact with each other at all.
“That’s the impression I have,” she said. “It’s certainly the impression Chester leaves on those rare occasions when anybody dares mention Craig’s name in Chester’s presence.”
I said, “Then why would Chester have visited Craig at Attica twice in the last twelve weeks?”
She stared hard. “He did? Chester visited Craig in prison?”
I nodded. “It’s important to my source, a good guy who wants to keep his job, that you don’t repeat this.”
“All right.” I could all but hear the wheels whirring inside her head.
To protect the Attica warden’s informant, I did not repeat the—possibly unreliable—hearsay evidence of Craig telling the prison snitch that there was more to Eric Osborne’s death than the investigators knew and that at least one homicide had been commited by a member of the family other than Craig. But I did say: “With his criminal history and criminal connections—and now with these unexplained visits from his suddenly not-so-alienated father—Craig at least bears looking into. I may drive out there and interview him myself.”
She still looked dumbfounded. “Well … I just don’t know what to think.”
“If somehow Tidy is unable to serve on the Herald board of directors,” I said, “and Craig can’t do it on account of being locked up, who’s next in line to move on to the board? Anybody helpful to the good-chain cause?”
“It would be Tidy’s brother, Tacker Puderbaugh. But he’s no factor, believe me, Don. Tacker has no interest whatever in the Herald He’s
could have saved Craig from wrecking his life. Twenty-five years ago, of course, child abuse wasn’t as recognizable as it is today, or taken as seriously by the law or society. Back then, a parent could get away with treating his child in a way that, if he treated anybody else’s kid that way, he’d be convicted of assault and sent to prison for years. Still, some of us did suspect what was going on, and now I wish we’d tried to intervene.”
I said, “Physical abusers were usually abused themselves when they were young. Was that true of Chester?”
Janet blushed and said, “Uhn-uhn. No.”
“You’re sure?”
She shuddered. “I’m sure. Your suggesting it is disconcerting, though. Neither Mom nor Dad was particularly affectionate toward— or effusive in their expressions of approval of—any of us. And Dad was particularly hard on—even cold with—Chester. Chettie was the oldest, and when it turned out he had no interest in the journalism profession—acquisitiveness was Chester’s main interest in life from about the age of three—Dad had no more use for Chester. I think I can safely say he didn’t like him. And it showed. Dad’s characteristic way with Chester was either to ignore him—that’s the way it was most of the time—or to snap at Chettie over niggling matters.
“Was there physical abuse? No. Can you term what I just described as psychological abuse? Maybe. Although, if it is, the legislatures had better not make it a felony without first spending billions of dollars on more prison cells. From what I’ve observed, as a style of parenting it comes dangerously close to being the norm in this country. Not that the current Congress is about to outlaw it, of course. Among the traditional family values cherished by the religious right, emotional abuse is surely high up in their pantheon, if their own biographies are any guide.”
I said, “Your overall assessment of family life in America, Janet, seems to me unduly bleak. Anyway, you and Eric both turned out emotionally healthy. That must have come from somewhere in the Osborne family.”
A wistful smile. “I guess so. They say every child experiences the same family differently. Eric’s and my peculiarities—and our interests—were much more in tune with Mom’s and Dad’s than Chester’s were, or June’s. Even our both turning out gay seemed to fit in with
the Osborne tradition of defiant rugged individualism. On the other hand, June, the social-climbing ditz, was never appreciated for who she was. And of course as Chester’s tendencies toward violence surfaced, that didn’t particularly endear him or add to his opportunities in the family dynamic.”
“And you think it’s possible that what Chester experienced as psychological abuse in your parents’ home was so traumatic that he passed it on in his own home as physical abuse?”
She said, “I’m afraid so.”
I asked Janet if I’d heard correctly the day before when I thought she said that Chester had “disowned” Craig—meaning presumably that their disaffection was so complete that they no longer had any contact with each other at all.
“That’s the impression I have,” she said. “It’s certainly the impression Chester leaves on those rare occasions when anybody dares mention Craig’s name in Chester’s presence.”
I said, “Then why would Chester have visited Craig at Attica twice in the last twelve weeks?”
She stared hard. “He did? Chester visited Craig in prison?”
I nodded. “It’s important to my source, a good guy who wants to keep his job, that you don’t repeat this.”
“All right.” I could all but hear the wheels whirring inside her head.
To protect the Attica warden’s informant, I did not repeat the—possibly unreliable—hearsay evidence of Craig telling the prison snitch that there was more to Eric Osborne’s death than the investigators knew and that at least one homicide had been commited by a member of the family other than Craig. But I did say: “With his criminal history and criminal connections—and now with these unexplained visits from his suddenly not-so-alienated father—Craig at least bears looking into. I may drive out there and interview him myself.”
She still looked dumbfounded. “Well… I just don’t know what to think.”
“If somehow Tidy is unable to serve on the Herald board of directors,” I said, “and Craig can’t do it on account of being locked up, who’s next in line to move on to the board? Anybody helpful to the good-chain cause?”
“It would be Tidy’s brother, Tacker Puderbaugh. But he’s no factor, believe me, Don. Tacker has no interest whatever in the Herald. He’s
already got enough money from his trust fund from Grandmother Watson’s estate to meet his minimal needs—a bathing suit and a supply of surfboard wax, as I understand it. And anyway, Tacker was ten thousand miles from Edensburg, the last I knew. He spent one semester at the University of Hawaii in 1990, then started drifting southwestward, and he just kept on drifting.”
“Do you have his current address?”
“I can get it from—Tidy would be the best bet. If I asked June, she’d be suspicious.”
“I think we need to confirm that Tacker is in fact halfway around the world and uninvolved in the struggle here. Any financial interest he might have in the Herald’s disposition would be indirect—through June—but real enough. After Tidy and Tacker, who’s next in line for a board seat?”
“That’s it as far as the family is concerned. None of us were big followers of the Holy Scriptures, and the Osbornes don’t seem to have gone forth and multiplied at a rate anywhere near the world average. The company by-laws state that if no direct descendant of Daniel Lincoln Osborne is able or willing to serve on the Herald’s board, the existing board can fill a vacancy with a nonfamily member of the
board’s choosing. The board as it’s now constituted, of course, would pick somebody who’s pro-Griscomb. But that’s all academic, isn’t it? Tidy is in good health, as far as I know, and it’s unlikely he’ll meet a violent end in the grillroom at the country club. Even if Tidy got one, a puncture wound from the toothpick in a BLT is rarely fatal.”
When I’d entered her office twenty minutes earlier, Janet had shut off the ringer on her office phone and activated her voice mail. The voice-mail light had been blinking for several minutes, and now a tiny woman with a pixie cut whom I recognized from the newsroom stuck her head in Janet’s open door and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but Dale wants you to call her at your mother’s house. She said to tell you that your Mom is okay, but there is some kind of urgent situation.”
“What kind? Is June out there with a lawyer?”
“No, she didn’t mention that It has something to do with Dan. He had a close call this morning, Dale said.”
“Oh, hell, that nails it,” Janet said. She snatched up the phone with one hand and her handbag with the other.
14
It was exactly like Karen Silkwood,” Arlene Thurber said, as she accepted the joint Dan passed to her and took a deep toke. Then she offered the reefer around the Osborne back porch where six of us were seated. One by one, Timmy, Dale, Janet, and I shook our heads no thanks. Elsie the housekeeper was upstairs helping Ruth Osborne clean out a closet; just as well.
“It was sooo weird,” Arlene went on in a voice that was faster than slo-mo but not quite normal speed, either “I mean, it was just yesterday I was saying that all this crazy shit that’s going down—I mean Eric getting killed and that Jet Ski attack—that all that shit sounds exactly like Karen Silkwood. I said that yesterday, and then—holy smokes!— what happens? Somebody tries to run Dan and me off the road and take us out, just like Kerr-McGhee did to Karen Silkwood! Can you believe this crazy shit?”
Dale said, “We can believe it.”
Arlene had just described how she and Dan had been driving early that morning on a rural county road. At a spot where the road ran along a woodsy hillside, a large pickup truck had sped up behind them and repeatedly banged into the rear of Dan’s Range Rover. It was obvious, Arlene said, that the truck was trying to force their car off the right shoulder down a steep embankment. Constantly in danger of losing control, Dan was able to keep the vehicle on the road for a half mile before he veered too far into the oncoming traffic lane, did lose control, and ran off the left side of the road and along a ditch.
The car ended up nose down in the basin next to a drainage culvert. Dan and Arlene had been wearing seat belts and were unhurt,
but the Range Rover was badly damaged, probably totaled, Dan thought. The pickup truck had then sped on up the rural road. Ten minutes later, a man on his way home from an early-morning trout-fishing excursion came along and drove Dan and Arlene to a main-road gas station, where they phoned the State Police. Two officers soon arrived and took them back to the crash site, questioned them there, and then brought them back into town. A tow truck had been dispatched for the wrecked Range Rover.
I said, “Did you mention to the cops our ideas about a possible connection between Eric’s murder and the Jet Ski attacks and now this?”
“I certainly did,” Arlene said, her voice full of mellow outrage. Dan sat slumped in a wicker chair, his head back and his eyes squeezed shut. “Dan thought maybe we should cool it,” Arlene went on, “on account of where we’d just been when the attack happened. But I thought no, we don’t have to mention that, but we can still be up front about this other bad shit. I mean, how else can the cops help us if we don’t share our thoughts and feelings with them?” Arlene nudged Dan, who opened his eyes and accepted the smoldering joint from her. Timmy had on a mild huff-huff look, but he kept his lip buttoned. Dale must have noticed this, for at one point she did accept one toke, exhaling grandiosely in Timmy’s direction.
Janet said, “So, where had you two been when the attack happened? Not burglarizing hunting cabins, I hope.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Dan said disgustedly.
“I’m only asking because Arlene said you couldn’t tell it to the police. Any suggestion that you were involved in something illegal this morning is not ridiculous at all, Dan.”
“We’d just been out to see our dealer,” Arlene said good-naturedly, waggling her eyebrows and indicating the reefer. “We had two ounces of sensi buds stashed under the backseat. The way the cops would have acted if they’d found it—you’d think we were criminals or something. Anyway, we left the whole stash in a tree near where we crashed. We’ll have to go out there later and pick up the sensi before some animal gets at it.”
I said, “Were you able to get a look at the truck and driver? I realize your focus was on the road in front of you and trying to stay on it.”
“That’s right, it was,” Dan said sarcastically. “Taking notes somehow slipped our minds.”
“The truck was red,” Arlene said. “That much I can remember. Dan had his eyes glued to the road, naturally, but I looked back a couple times, and the truck had a black grill with horizontal bars. I couldn’t see the driver because the truck was right on top of us, and our back window is low, and he was too high up. And then when we ran off the road we were bouncing all over the place, and by the time we got stopped, the truck had gone around a bend. But I do remember that it was big and it was red.”
“Like the pickup somebody saw speeding away from the lake yesterday with the Jet Ski in the back,” Janet said, and we all nodded gravely and considered this data.
Dale asked, “Who knew you’d be out on that road early this morning, Arlene?”
“Just Liver,” Arlene said.
When she seemed to have nothing to add to that, Timmy said, “Your marijuana dealer’s name is Liver?”
“Liver Livingston. His real name is Samuel. He told us his family used to have a railroad or a canal or something, but now he says they all sell dope.”
Dale said, “Was he nicknamed Liver because he loves life, or after the organ?”
Arlene made a “beats me” face, but Dan said, “I once heard his nickname came from his favorite food. In any case, I doubt that Liver would appreciate our sitting around discussing him in connection with somebody trying to kill Arlene and me. In fairness to Liver, let’s just try to leave him out of this.” Arlene relit the joint while Dan held it with a roach clip he’d pulled out of the pocket of his work shirt.
I said, “Are you telling us, Dan, that if somebody asked Liver for a schedule of when you might be traveling the isolated road out to his place, he’d have refused to provide it?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Yes.”
“You have every reason to trust him, and no reason not to?”
“Liver Livingston and I,” Dan said solemnly, “have been friends for more than twenty years. Not just friends—brothers. We’ve worked in the cane fields of Cuba together. We went to the mountains of
Nicaragua together. We are companeros Does that answer your question?”
I said, “I can understand why you trust Liver. But the man is in what I think you’ll concede is an iffy line of work. Rightly or wrongly, Liver’s trade is a criminal enterprise in the state of New York. People who do what he does make enemies. Even if you accept the idea that there’s no chance he would ever have set you up, isn’t it possible that another dealer might be attempting to muscle in on Liver’s territory by scaring away his customers?”
Arlene blurted out, “What an asshole that would be!”
Dan seemed to roll this idea around in his head for some seconds, as if he was interested in the sound of it but couldn’t quite bring himself to endorse the theory. Finally, he said, “No, I would seriously doubt that. Liver is a small-time guy whose gross is peanuts. He takes in enough to get by—it’s just Liver and Patsy and their old dog out there— and he sees himself predominantly as a good citizen p
roviding a public service. Who could possibly want to use violence to take over an operation like that?”
I caught Timmy’s eye—I guessed we were both wondering what Liver’s dog’s name might be—and then I looked at Dan and said, “Given what’s happened to you and Janet lately—and to Eric in May— I share your opinion that the incident today had nothing to do with Liver. What it looks an awful lot like is another episode in a plot to alter the Herald board of directors’ vote on September eighth. But to be sure, I wish you’d get in touch with Liver, Dan, and describe your close call today and ask him if anything like it has happened to any of his other customers. Ask him too whether he’s heard anything like what happened to you and Arlene happening to other people who travel that road.”
Dan sniffed and said, “Oh, sure. I’ll call him. Why not? Since you and Janet are running the Osbornes’ family affairs now, I guess I’d better just do as I’m told.”
Janet slapped the wicker table next to her and barked, “Damn it, Dan, that is so unfair—”
But Dale was holding up a traffic-cop hand and saying, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.”
Janet shut her mouth and sat back stewing while Dale went on to make the case that we were all in this together, and ultimately our best
interests and highest goals were the same: staying alive and saving the Herald. Dale argued that she and Timmy once had had “an ugly run-in with grim consequences for American society,” and that since they were managing to get along despite the “moral chasm” that separated them, the rest of us could damn well find a way to get along too.
“What did you two guys fight over?” Arlene asked Dale and Timmy. “I’m surprised. You’re both such nice people.”
Timmy said, “Good question, Arlene.”
“I’ll fill you in later, Arlene,” Dale said. “Right now we need to concentrate on what happened to you and Dan today, and on how we’re going to make sure nothing else like it happens to any of us. Don’t you agree, Don?”
Chain of Fools Page 11
