by Sol Stein
“I hope you don’t mind my asking you a few more questions,” Perry said.
Porter sat down on the edge of the bed as if his legs had suddenly become untrustworthy.
“Are you all right?” Widmer asked.
“I’ll be all right.”
Perry said, “Mr. Randall says you were Professor Fuller’s favorite acolyte.”
“He used that word?”
“Student, friend, the term isn’t important.”
“We worked the vineyard together. That is, he led, and I helped wherever I could.”
“Were you involved in the manuscript he was writing?”
“Oh no,” Ed Porter said. “I told Mr. Randall nobody got near that. By the ‘vineyard’ I meant Professor Fuller’s work in general.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Sure. Most people in polisci—political science—aren’t very scientific. They just line up events to fit the pattern of their prejudices. Professor Fuller was a genius at studying track records and political moves for the purpose of trying to predict the likely course of future actions by the same people.”
“Is that important?” Perry asked.
Widmer thought It is impolite to pretend ignorance. He corrected himself. Perry wasn’t carrying on a conversation. He was digging.
“Fuller was worth an army,” Porter said.
“You ran down naked?” Perry asked.
Widmer had to admire Perry’s arrogance, relaxing the young man, fortifying his ego, and then the flash of an unexpected question.
“What do you mean?” was all Porter could bring himself to say.
“This morning,” Perry said. “You ran down without any clothes on is what I mean.”
“The screaming was awful. I didn’t take time to throw something on.”
“You wanted to see if you’d been successful?”
In the silence, Widmer heard an old clock in the corner registering the seconds until Porter, his voice uneven, his eyes brimming again, said, “What are you talking about, sir?”
“You know damn well what I mean. Didn’t you try to open the door of his study while the rescue squad was taking him out to the ambulance?”
“You’re crazy!”
“You’re the crazy one, Porter. A signal went up on the board. It’s a two-sided key that only works with the right side up. How did you expect to get the manuscript? The safe is locked.”
“I don’t know what you people are talking about,” Ed Porter said. “I loved the old man. He was my teacher. I worshiped him.”
Perry leaned over him. “What does that mean?”
“I was closer to him than…”
“Than who?” Perry pressed. The kid seemed suddenly frightened. “Than who?”
“My father.”
“Who is your father?” Perry asked, as if he already knew the answer.
“I’d rather he were left out of this,” Porter said, smearing the tears out of his eyes with the back of his right hand.
“You brought him up. What’s his first name? Where does he live?”
“Connecticut. I haven’t seen him in three years.”
“His first name?”
“Malcolm.”
“Malcolm Porter?”
Air escaped from the young man’s lungs. “Malcolm Sturbridge.”
“The Malcolm Sturbridge?”
Porter nodded.
“Are you his stepson?” Perry asked.
“What’s he got to do with any of this?”
“You have a different name.”
“I use my mother’s name.”
“What’s your father’s phone number?”
“I don’t remember. It’s unlisted.” He hesitated only a second. “Of course that won’t keep you people from getting it. Can I go now?”
“You stay put like the others. In this room.”
“Can I talk to Mrs. Fuller?” Ed Porter asked.
“If you want to say anything, say it to us,” Perry said, ushering the others out before him and closing the door.
One of Randall’s men was standing at the head of the stairs. “The police are on the phone from the hospital. A detective named Cooper. He’s ordered an autopsy.”
“No autopsy. Tell him it was an accident.”
“I did. He says an accident is an accident when it’s proven to be an accident. He’s coming over here. He’s damn mad we didn’t call in the locals four hours ago. He says we’re obstructing justice.”
“Jesus, one of those.”
They were surprised to find Leona Fuller sitting alone in the living room. Randall went over to talk to her quietly. Widmer could see her shaking her head.
Leona Fuller addressed all of them. “I want to know what’s going on?”
Randall deferred to Perry. Perry said, “We’re investigating the causes of the accident. We believe—”
Mrs. Fuller cut him short. “I feel sorry for Randall. He went to so much trouble for so long to avoid something like this.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I just wish they hadn’t used such a horrible means.”
Widmer said, “Who is they?”
All three of them looked at him. Widmer felt a fool.
*
As soon as Leona Fuller had retired, to her bedroom in the back, Widmer said to Perry, “I can’t be her spokesman unless I have some better inkling of what’s going on.”
“Understandable,” Perry said. They huddled around the end of the coffee table.
“What happens to the manuscript that Fuller was working on?” Widmer asked.
“It will be turned over to the national security adviser personally before the close of business today.”
“As the attorney for the estate,” Widmer said hesitantly, “I have to ask, will the manuscript be copyrighted in Fuller’s name?”
“That manuscript will never be sent to the copyright office for registration.”
“Mrs. Fuller has the right—”
For a second Perry seemed to lose his patience. “Fuller was an employee-for-hire under the terms of his contract. At the moment of his death he ceased to be an employee. The work belongs to the government.”
Perry saw the shocked expression on Widmer’s face. “I’m sorry, Ned,” he continued. “That sounds raw. This thing is getting to me, too. I’m sure Fuller’s widow will be taken care of discreetly, to supplement her insurance, of course.”
“That’s very kind.”
“One of the better uses of taxpayers’ money.”
Widmer preferred the expected smile. Then he said, “All the complex security came to nothing.”
“I wouldn’t be that pessimistic, Ned. We’ll have what he did so far. Someone else will continue the work.”
“What if the manuscript had been copied somehow for the Soviets without your ever knowing it?”
Perry looked at Randall. They were getting beyond the need to know. But they did need the confidence of people who helped out, like Widmer, even in minor ways.
“Let us make an assumption. That’s always safe. Let’s assume—hypothetically, of course—that in the first section of Fuller’s work there was one paragraph, just one, that was fitted in at our request. If that paragraph reached the Russians, they’d immediately cut off contact with a certain agent whom we’ve turned. We’d know in a minute that they’d got their hands on a copy.”
“My God, that’s beyond chess.” Widmer wrung his hands.
Perry and Randall were looking at Leona Fuller, who had come back into the room and was waving away their help as she let herself down into a chair. “I can’t rest.”
“Please try,” Widmer said solicitously.
“I’m the living half of all this. I need to know what’s being planned.”
Randall looked at Perry.
“Of course,” Perry said.
Leona Fuller’s good left hand adjusted her bandaged right on the chair’s armrest. “Ned,” she said, and when he heard his name he felt the windchill of fright that h
e was going to hear something private. He wished he were alone in the room with Leona.
“Long, long ago, Ned, when Martin and I were on the other side, we were so often on the run we didn’t dare have a child. Once the movement got word to us in Mexico that the Federalistas were looking for a couple that fit our description. I went to stay with friends in Guadalajara and Martin lost himself in Mexico City. We were apart four months. I loved him so much. When we finally risked getting back together, it was as if we were struck by lightning while holding each other. We were flooded with insight. It was easier to avoid the authorities than our own former comrades. The authorities wanted to arrest us. Our former comrades wanted to kill us. To us, it wasn’t as if we had switched sides. We’d been forced to confront the imperfect ability of the human race.” Suddenly Leona was looking down at her lap. “I don’t mean to lecture,” she apologized. “When we finally met you, Ned, your innocence was a saving grace for Martin and for me. He needed to know that not everyone had worked in the jungle the way he and I did, and Mr. Perry and Mr. Randall still do.”
Leona lifted her eyes and looked over at Perry and Randall. “I don’t mean to derogate what you do. I hope you win your game. For Martin, and for me I must add, it was something different.” She turned to Widmer. “Please don’t misunderstand what I am about to say. Martin never put on blinders to the faults in our zoo. He was a specialist in their menagerie. He knew so much about how creatures in the totalitarian state leach, turn, twist, rise, fall, rise again. He understood Lenin’s Who Whom. For Martin the twentieth century hit bottom the day the Hitler-Stalin Pact was announced because he knew it would happen.” Leona turned to Perry and Randall so as not to exclude them from her final words. “But it wasn’t the bottom. In the pit were Gulag and Auschwitz. Ned, everywhere Martin saw Christian cheeks like yours turning, finding hope somewhere. His books were written for you.”
Leona struggled to complete her thought. “Martin saw himself as a soldier who studied the shapes of the enemy the way air-raid wardens studied the outlines of planes.” She coughed into her good hand. “Please go on with your talk, gentlemen. I won’t interrupt again.”
Widmer felt the silence as pain.
It was Perry who broke it, offering, “We have to deal with the three people up there. And the police. And the press. Are you sure you want to hear any of this, Mrs. Fuller?”
She sighed. “I’m eavesdropping for Martin. I’ll be quite all right. You see, I don’t need revenge. I suppose to appease society you must do something about this crime, but I’d rather the energy was devoted to protecting the living.”
For a fleeting moment, Archibald Widmer wished that his Priscilla, thirty years younger than Leona Fuller, was more like that woman. Priscilla, alas, was like himself.
“Since I’m the declared innocent,” Widmer said, directing his comment to Perry, “may I ask what’s to keep any of the three up there from bolting?”
“Their knowledge that if they do they’ll be communicating something they may not want to. Ned, Mrs. Fuller,” Perry said, “I won’t be able to talk as freely once the police are here. We’re hoping that the whole thing goes down as an accident.”
“I understand,” Leona Fuller said.
“I don’t,” Widmer said.
“If it looks like Professor Fuller was killed,” Perry said, “there’ll be hell to pay. Our territory will be compromised. Everybody knows Irish terrorists operate with impunity in Britain. Arabs and Armenians and Turks work Paris all the time. In Italy they kill statesmen as easily as policemen. In Germany, there isn’t a high-level businessman who isn’t afraid. If you’ve read Claire Sterling’s book…”
“I haven’t,” Widmer said.
“It shows how all the strings ultimately run to Moscow. Right now our turf seems safe. The FALN lets a bomb go once in a while. Quaddafi’s had a hit or two here, but it quickly passes from memory. If Fuller’s death is seen as an assassination—particularly if it’s by an American and pulled off here—it’ll make us look helpless to the rest of the world.”
“I’m interrupting again,” Leona Fuller said. “Mr. Perry, don’t you think Americans are sick of cover-ups, which never work anyway?”
“Someone must be punished,” said Widmer.
“Oh Ned,” Leona Fuller said, “I’m glad you’re not a Muslim.”
Perry sighed. “I didn’t say whoever did it would escape punishment. We don’t want to see a public trial. If there has to be one—the police are going to be all over the place soon, and all they want are arrests and convictions—that’s where you come in, Ned. We’ll need your help in finding a local litigator who’s clever enough to get the case thrown out, or if it’s tried, to be sure there’s no conviction. We want to avoid appeals and all the attendant publicity. We want this buried.” He turned to Mrs. Fuller. “I’m sorry.”
Widmer was silent for a moment. Then he said, “What ever happened to our sense of law?”
“Nothing,” Perry said. “It’s always been an adversary system—them and us.”
“I suppose you don’t see this as cynical.”
“I see this as practical.”
“Who knows about these decisions? Is it at cabinet level?”
“I assure you we’re not free-lancing.”
“If I’m to have any further involvement, I insist you tell me who knows about this.”
“The President.”
In the stillness, Leona Fuller rose from her chair. Widmer rushed to help her. To Perry she said, “Please tell them Martin put most of the things that are important in the first third of the book.”
Widmer, holding her arm, saw the relief on Perry’s face. To Leona he said, “He knew this might happen?”
“Of course, my dear,” she said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Detective Cooper was glad April had come. People didn’t realize how much outside work a detective had to do. Just writing down license numbers of cars was a pain in glove weather. He didn’t need gloves to write down the numbers of the cars parked outside the Fuller house. Federal types ought to bodyguard the President or whatever else they did and stay off his turf.
He rang the doorbell twice, and engaged in his most common reflex, pushing his belly up with the back of both hands. Detective Cooper had been at least thirty pounds overweight for more than half of his forty-four years. The door was opened for him. He dropped his cigarette on the stone step outside and crushed it with his shoe before stepping into the house. He knew by heart what the surgeon general had said about cigarettes, but continued to smoke two packs a day. At night, in bed, he’d sometimes have conversations with the surgeon general. “If I stop,” he said, “I’ll be sixty pounds overweight.”
Cooper showed his ID to Randall, then asked to see theirs.
Randall produced his.
Cooper said, “I thought you guys were all in Washington. Where’s yours?” He was looking directly at Perry.
“He’s my boss,” Randall said.
“Where’s yours?” Cooper asked Widmer.
“I’m the family lawyer,” Widmer said.
“How come the lawyer gets called before the cops?” Cooper asked.
Cooper had blue eyes and black hair, a combination his wife, Meg, found attractive. She kept telling him he was really a very good-looking guy except for his overweight. Once she gave him a clipping from the paper about some new low carbohydrate-something-or-other diet and he’d said, “My mother was fat, my father was fat, it’s genetic. My mother liked herself so she married a guy who looked like her. If she’d hated herself she’d have married a real skinny like you, Meg, so I’d have had a chance. I married, you, skinny, to give our kids a chance.” His problem insoluble, he concentrated on solving other people’s problems.
“Who’s in the house?” Cooper asked.
“Mrs. Fuller,” Randall said.
“Anybody besides Mrs. Fuller?”
Randall told him about the three overnight guests.
“The de
ceased work for you guys?” he asked.
“He worked for Columbia University,” Randall said.
“You fellows always show up when a teacher dies?” Cooper asked.
Perry looked at Randall.
Randall shrugged. It’s not my fault this cop is a pain in the ass.
Perry, his voice resonant with senior reason, said, “What we have here, Mr. Cooper, is a tragic accident in which perhaps the most accomplished man in his field, in the middle of important work, had his life cut short. It’s a blow to his wife, of course, but also to the people counting on his finishing the work. However, what happened happened, nothing will reverse it, and the sooner we tidy this up, the better for all concerned.”
“Nice speech,” Cooper said. “What’s this work Fuller was doing?”
“It’s really not relevant to the fact of his accident, is it, Mr. Cooper?”
“We don’t know that yet,” Cooper said. “Or do you? I don’t have to be a doctor to tell you he didn’t die of smoke inhalation. I saw the body in the hospital. He wasn’t singed. Parts of him looked like grilled steak. A guy don’t stay to get third-degree burns unless he can’t help it or unless it gets him all over at once, like in an explosion. I talked to the medical examiner. I ordered an autopsy.”
Cooper went to the door. Beyond the parked cars in the driveway, two policemen in uniform waited. Cooper motioned them to come in, stepped aside so they could enter.
“Mrs. Fuller doesn’t want an autopsy,” Perry said.
Cooper ignored him. “Please show us where it happened,” he said to Randall.
Cooper spent several minutes in the bathroom, then motioned Perry and Randall over to him. “If the fire was confined to that small space, and help came within a minute, and he was scorched like he was at Hiroshima, it doesn’t sound like an ordinary fire to me. I’ve seen people who were torched. Anybody in this precinct dies of natural causes, that’s not my bailiwick, but burning to death in a contained flash fire is not, in my book, a natural cause. I checked with Columbia from the hospital, Mr. Perry,” Cooper said, his whisper gone. “Fuller was no teacher. He was eighty-two years old. He was on the retired list. You fellows aren’t telling me everything you know. I’m here to do a job. What are you guys here for?”
