Abel Baker Charley

by John R. Maxim

  “On what basis, Jared? That this is America? That we live in a nation of laws? That we live in a world where evil is punished and virtue is rewarded and the innocent are protected? I pray you, do not look to the legal process for protection. Or your salvation. And certainly not for justice.”

  “We're not talking about the world,” Baker answered. “We're talking about one hack judge in one Connecticut county who may or may not peddle his position. We're also talking about a man who's flying on one wing because of what happened to his son.”

  “We're talking about power. He has it and you don't. We're talking about ruthlessness, which you don't have either. This is not a man to cut his losses, Jared.”

  Baker sighed wearily and rose to his feet. Sonnenberg saw the disbelief on his face as well as scorn. Baker didn't bother to reply. Instead, he looked out across the Sound and the scattering of boats that coasted lazily in all directions. Now we're talking killers, he told himself disgustedly. Another cup of coffee and we'll be talking Mafia. Christ! A week ago, he thought, he was just like everybody else out there in those boats. Now he was in more trouble than he'd ever dreamed of and he had Meister and then Sonnenberg telling him it was even worse. Damn, how he'd love to climb on one of those boats and never stop until he hit Liverpool. Oh, lordy, would that be nice. Sell the damned house, buy a boat, grab Tina, and go. The minute Tina can walk, I'll—

  “You'd like to walk away from it all, wouldn't you, Jared?”

  Baker turned and stared.

  “No.” Sonnenberg smiled. “I'm not a mind reader. Flight is an altogether human impulse. Particularly among friendless felons who stand in boats gazing at the horizon.”

  Baker didn't return the smile. “You're about to tell me why I need you. Is that right, Doctor?”

  “I'm about to suggest a solution.”

  Sonnenberg poured a second cup of coffee.

  “What if you really could walk away from it, Jared? All of it.”

  Baker's face showed he did not understand.

  “You read the papers,” Sonnenberg said offhandedly. “You know that there are people who have left old lives behind and started new ones. People with far less reason than Jared Baker have cast off their old worlds the way a snake sheds its skin. Surely you've heard of such things happening.”

  Baker nodded slowly. “I've heard of it being done with government witnesses. Mobsters, mostly, who've agreed to testify.”

  ”A drop in the bucket, Jared.” Sonnenberg brushed those aside with what Baker took to be a look of contempt. “For every private detective who specializes in finding missing persons,” he went on, “there's another who teaches people how to be missing. Very often, they're the same private detective. Beyond those, think of the Vietnam draft evaders and the network that delivered them to Canada and Amsterdam and later provided them with false papers that permitted their untroubled return. Add to these the many thousands who obtain a poor man's divorce by running away, or the women who vanish to escape abuse and neglect, or even senior citizens who seek an escape from the humiliation of a dependent existence. The rankest amateur, Jared, can make an adequate new life for himself and be rarely seen again. A few, a very few, are able to create new lives that are satisfying beyond their wildest dreams.”

  Baker sat down slowly. “Is that what you do, Dr. Son-nenberg?” he asked. “You put people in new lives?”

  “Among other things, but yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can, Jared.”

  “That's not a reason.”

  Sonnenberg met his eyes. “The truth is often simple.” The doctor clasped his hands and leaned toward Baker. “Except this, perhaps,” he said. ”I don't much like the world we live in, Jared. The power, including such power as Judge Bella-fonte's, is too much in the hands of a few. Most men exist to serve them, to be exploited, and to be crushed if they become troublesome. If you doubt that, try refusing to pay your annual tribute to the government. But until they are either needed or troublesome, they live under the happy illusion that they are free men. I could not have said this to you, Jared, even one week ago. You would have called me a cynic at best and a lunatic at worst. But one week ago, you hadn't yet become bothersome, had you, Jared?”

  Baker stared at him in silence for several moments. It was all preposterous. He knew that. The thought of leaving all that was familiar, all evidence that he had made a life, friends ... yet people did it all the time. Ordinary people. Career people who got uprooted every couple of years. Military families. But they didn't change their names and pretend to be somebody else. Except what if they did? They'd still be the same. They'd still be who they were. And they'd be left alone. Baker's right eye began to water.

  “Imagine it, Jared.” Sonnenberg rubbed his hands. “Imagine yourself running a ski lodge in Vermont, or a charter boat on St. Croix, or living in a lakeside cabin painting landscapes and even selling them. Just you and your daughter, Baker, in a world of your creation. A world of almost unlimited freedom and fulfillment.... and of peace.”

  Baker didn't have to imagine. Sonnenberg had just named the most persistent of his dreams. Except, perhaps, for the part about painting. That was more fantasy than dream. Baker knew that he hadn't the talent. Still...

  “You know a lot about me, Doctor.” Baker wanted to be angry at the intrusion but he could not manage it. He was fascinated. And a part of him was thrilled. Eager. Baker wiped away the moisture from his eye and tried to blink that part away. There was no reason for that feeling. This was stupid. Impossible. A stranger comes from nowhere and says he'll help me walk away from all the sorrow and pain out of the goodness of his ... “Why, Doctor? Why me?”

  “Was I correct, Jared? Did I touch upon your dreams?”

  ”I think you know damn well you did,” he answered. ”I think you know me inside out.”

  ”I know pieces.” Sonnenberg spread his hands in a show of candor. “After all,” he pointed out, “I'd never heard of you until yesterday's newspapers. But there are files on you here and there. Credit bureaus, executive recruiters, and the like. I admit that I've had access to them. The rest is largely guesswork. And a little insight. I'm a behaviorist, you see, Jared. I teach certain people to understand their behavior, to adjust to it, and sometimes to alter it. You, Jared, are a more interesting subject than most. And that, sir, is the long and the short of my interest in you.”

  “There's nothing special about me.”

  Sonnenberg smiled at him. Baker saw his eyes drift toward the moisture on his right cheek and linger there a moment before they fell.

  “You don't really believe that, do you, Jared Baker?”

  Sonnenberg watched him leave. He watched Baker walk slowly through the maze of the dock like a man in deep thought. He watched him climb a gangplank steepened by a falling tide toward a waiting Benjamin Meister. He heard a clatter of plastic behind him.

  “What do you think?” he asked, not turning. The clatter stopped and he heard Emma Kreskie's feet shuffle to his side. They watched until they heard the growl of Meister's engine. The woman turned toward him and nodded.

  ”I think so too,” Sonnenberg answered. ”I think it will work this time.”

  Look at him, Sonnenberg said to himself. A tormented man trying desperately to make some sense out of what has happened to him. Of what he's become. Of what he is. But you'll know the answer soon, Jared. You'll know what I know already. I have found my Chimera.

  Who'd have thought it, Jared? Who would have looked for a Chimera in this . . . suburbanite, this mower of lawns and rider of trains. Who would have thought that you were three totally different men? But you are, you know.

  You are only the host, but the others are there. They are there in everyone. The almost beings that float unformed within every human brain. The shadow creatures kept un-whole by the brain's own division. The stunningly different visages that are evident in the separate halves of every human face.

  But in you, they became incarnate, Jared
. Somehow the pieces stopped floating and like attracted like and the Chimera was formed. The horror that shattered your gentle life seems to have thrown an arc across the neuron soup inside your skull and called forth at least one of them. The primal one.

  “You know,” he said distantly, “this would all be so much tidier if there were no daughter.”

  The woman's eyes blazed at him.

  “No, no. Just an idle thought.” He raised a hand in appeasement. ”I would never harm the child. But she may very well do violence to Baker's concentration. On the other hand, her death might devastate him to the point of uselessness. No, Mrs. Kreskie. I'm quite convinced that the daughter must be protected. And most immediately from any extravagant behavior on the part of the bereaved Bellafonte person.”

  The woman nodded.

  “Bellafonte!” His expression was distant again. “Has it struck you, Mrs. Kreskie, that the judge's surname sounds remarkably like Bellerophon?”

  She looked blankly at him.

  “Bellerophon,” he repeated. ” ‘And Bellerophon rode Pegasus there to find the Chimera and there did slay the beast.’ ” Sonnenberg chewed on that awhile. ”A troublesome thought,” he said at last.

  Mrs. Kreskie nodded.

  Ben Meister signaled a right turn onto Baker's street. He nudged Baker who was lost in thought, when the white colonial house came into view.

  “Looks like someone's been tidying up,” Meister said.

  Baker sat up in his seat. The burn marks on the outside wall, which he'd dreaded seeing again, were almost gone. The charred paint had been scraped away and a coat of white primer covered all but a grayish outline. Two boxwoods and a tall juniper had been trimmed to remove all evidence of the fire. The driveway had been coated with a layer of blacktop sealer. The marks were gone where Macduff had died and where he had destroyed the face of ... Baker bit his lip. Looking away, he saw Sam Willis's ladder lying on its side against the foundation.

  “You have nice neighbors,” Meister took in what must have been a solid two days' work by more than one person. “What’ll you bet there's a tuna casserole in the kitchen?”

  Baker didn't answer immediately. His throat felt hot and he did not trust his voice. “Are you hungry?” he managed finally.

  “I'll grab a steak up the road. You said you wanted to get to the hospital.”

  Meister stopped the car past two empty sealer cans that blocked the driveway. Baker made no move to get out. “What happens next?” he asked.

  “We get ready for trial. You start soon on a round of psychiatric testing, first with their shrink and then with my shrink. I start interviewing the witnesses to make sure they remember it right.”

  Baker nodded. “In court, you said their statements wouldn't support the charges. What did that mean?”

  “They're on your side.” Meister shrugged. “They tried to put the best face on what happened. You won't look so good under cross-examination, though, unless I drill them pretty good.” Meister squirmed in his seat to fish an object from his hip pocket. “Listen, I'll be in touch. In the meantime, Sonnenberg wants you to have these.” He held out a set of silver keys.

  “They're for Sonnenberg's boat. He says to tell you it's stocked with provisions and it's yours to live on any time you like. Go down there if being here gets to you or if anyone bothers you. There's a radiophone on the boat. If you want to talk to Sonnenberg, just flip on the radio switch but don't touch the dials. He'll know you're there.”

  “Am I allowed to leave the state?” Baker asked doubtfully.

  “Don't worry about it.” Meister placed the keys in Baker's hand.

  Baker hesitated as if making up his mind, then dropped them in his pocket. “Ben?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How long have you known Sonnenberg?”

  “We go back a few years.”

  “Is he straight?”

  “Compared to what?”

  “Come on, Ben.” Baker sighed. “You know what he wants me to do. You were setting me up for it all day.”

  ”I was preparing you, Baker. Setting up isn't the same thing.”

  “What Sonnenberg was suggesting ... Is it possible?”

  “You mean about you and your daughter walking away from all this and never being touched? Yeah, it's possible. It's even easy.”

  “Do you know people who've done it?”

  ”A few, yeah.”

  “He said something about me making a living as an artist. That part can't be possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “It's a hobby. I'm just ordinary at it.”

  “You don't know Sonnenberg.”

  Something in Ben Meister's voice made Baker turn his head. It was in Meister's eyes too. The breeziness that was part of the big man's manner was gone, only for a moment. “I'll give you a hint,” Meister said, looking deeply into Baker. “You could even make a living as a lawyer if you wanted.”

  It was a few minutes past sunset. The streetlights had not yet blinked on. A Ford sedan drifted silently down the dark street by Baker's house. The driver could see without slowing that Baker's car was gone. The house was unlit. A single bulb burned inside the open garage. He nodded, satisfied, and the Ford coasted on before turning right at the end of Baker's street.

  “That was the guy's house?” the other man asked. He was younger than the driver and half again as large. He spoke through thickened lips and his eyebrows had been torn and stitched a dozen times until the skin had a glassine shine to it. His mouth was twisted in a street tough's sneer and it hung partly open even as he chewed noisily on a wad of gum. Stanley Levy despised being with him. He nodded once but said nothing.

  ”I fought a guy named Baker once,” Vinnie Cuneo said, squinting.

  “Maybe you'll get to fight this one.” God should be so good, Levy said to himself.

  ”I think his name was Ronnie.” Cuneo's brow wrinkled into tight folds. “No, Randy. Randy Baker. A southpaw.”

  The homely little man wasn't listening. Ahead of him, his lights picked up the edifice of a church. The parking lot would be around to the side. It didn't seem right, he thought, doing this near a church.

  “We were the featured undercard before a Joey Giardello fight out in Sunnyside Gardens. That was only three fights before Giardello took the title from Dick Tiger. I beat the shit out of him.” He poked an elbow at Stanley Levy.

  “Giardello?” Levy asked absently.

  “No, Randy Baker. We had an all-light heavy card that night except for two spics fightin' bantam. I ruined him. Closed up both his eyes with my laces before I really went to work. In those days, the ref didn't jump in as fast as now.”

  “I'm sure you were a credit to your race,” Levy droned.

  Vinnie Cuneo turned his head toward the smaller man and stared for a long moment through hooded eyes. “What was that? Was that some kind of crack?”

  Levy did not reply. He guided the car into the deepest shadows of the parking lot and shut off the motor. Vinnie reached toward Levy's arm and poked it.

  “Why do you always treat me like I'm nothin'?”

  Levy rolled his eyes. “Just an observation, Vinnie,” he said. “No offense intended.” He looked away and tried to ignore the sounds of air being forced through the bigger man's ruined nose. He wished he had a book to read.

  “Don't talk to me no more like I'm nothin',” Vinnie pressed. He swatted Stanley's shoulder with the back of his fingers. Levy turned to the hoodlum and smiled. Perhaps Vinnie would touch him again, he thought. Perhaps Vinnie would make a fist and draw it back. Then no one could blame Stanley Levy. Tortora would have to understand that Stanley Levy had had no choice.

  A pair of headlights washed halfway across the church and then went out. Stanley put his hand over his own lips as if to dismiss the matter as he pointed. “Please step into the back seat, Vinnie.”

  Vinnie hesitated. “I'm gonna talk about this some more,” he said.

  “To business first, you thug. This is a judge
coming. Be respectful.”

  Stanley wondered for the dozenth time about the upbringing Vinnie must have had. His mother must have died in childbirth. If God was merciful, she never lived to have her heart broken. Vinnie wheezed sullenly as he slid from the car and climbed into the back seat. He did not acknowledge Judge Lawrence Bellafonte or look at him.

  The judge had been drinking. In the brief glow of the dome light, Levy saw the damp and florid face and the look of sly yet stupid cunning that seems common to drunks who try to think. He knew at once that the judge would not respond to reason. Just as well, he thought.

  Bellafonte barely glanced toward the shadow that slouched behind him. “This is the muscle?” he asked, jerking a thumb at Vinnie.

  “My associate,” Stanley answered.

  He smiled his satisfaction. “Please convey my respects to Mr. Tortora and give him my thanks for his swift assistance in this regard.” The old man said the words by rote and slurred some of them.

  “Mr. Tortora acknowledges your friendship,” Stanley intoned, as if reciting a boring ritual, “and he expresses the hope that you will be guided by his advice.”

  Bellafonte began to nod and then stopped. What was this about advice?

  “Mr. Tortora,” Stanley continued, “deeply feels your grief. He reminds you that your son Andrew has been a valued friend of his own son, John. He understands your desire for justice but regrets that he must ask you to be patient. In other words, I think he has different plans for the guy, Baker.”

  Bellafonte's face darkened. “Baker is mine” he said. “The injury has been done to me.”

  Stanley shrugged. “This is Mr. Tortora's message.”

  Bellafonte was silent for a long moment. He turned in his seat to face the blackness outside the window. “Did Mr. Tortora give instructions concerning the daughter of this man?”

  Stanley was afraid that he knew what was coming. “All other matters are left to my discretion, ” he said.

  “Then if the man who injured me is to be under the protection of Domenic Tortora, he should at least know of my suffering and my grief.”