Stephen L. Carter

by New England White

  She knew what Lemaster would say, but, this once, it was not his call. Vincent Brady had suggested that they show more faith in Vanessa, and Julia decided to give it a try. “Okay, honey. We’ll be out in fifteen minutes. Maybe less.”

  “I’ll meet you at the car.”

  “Promise?”

  Vanessa clapped her mother on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I said I’ll meet you. And I will.”

  “Okay.”

  But she didn’t.

  It was another ten hours before they tracked her down.

  PART III

  CLEARING THE MARKET

  Market Clearing—In economics, the process through which markets seek equilibrium, as supply grows to meet increased demand, or as demand shrinks because of high prices. Most economists accept that market clearing occurs with little need for outside intervention, but many believe that, absent regulation, today’s complex markets often will not clear efficiently. Debate remains fierce on whether intervention tends to make markets work better or worse.

  CHAPTER 40

  AGAIN BOSTON

  (I)

  “I TOLD YOU not to have kids, Julia,” whispered Byron Dennison, agony tautening the powerful face.

  “Oh, Bay, you did not.” Cleaning his mouth with a cloth napkin. Much against his formidable will, he was back in the hospital, and helpless, several bodily systems having decided simultaneously to err on the side of failure. No doubt his family members would be flocking to his side, if he had family members. Politicians and celebrities had shown up long enough to have their pictures taken and lie about their deep affection for the cantankerous old so-and-so, but the deathwatch had been left largely to a tiny handful of acolytes, most too busy with their careers to do much watching. Lemaster had been up three times this week. “All you said was that there are two kinds of people in the world, people who are parents and people who have fun.”

  He coughed, and laughed, and sputtered. A hand jerked but went nowhere in particular. His suite was private, and fancy, and expensive, but still smelled of all those things we avoid hospitals to avoid smelling. Though his body was dissipating, his single good eye sparkled, and his clever mind seemed sharp as ever. “And do you have fun? You and the Little Master? See? I was right.” He shifted position. Julia helped with the pillows. She had just returned Aaron to school and was detouring to Boston for a couple of days, specifically to see Byron, but also to meet Mary Mallard. “He loves you, Julia. You have to remember that. He loves you as much as he can. Listen to me. He’s a wounded man. Hell, we all are. The Little Master’s a wounded man, I’m a wounded man. All right, you’re a wounded woman, but it’s different for women. You’re allowed to be wounded. We’re not.”

  “That’s a little bit outdated, Bay.”

  “I’m a little bit outdated. Lemaster’s a little bit outdated. He’s eight years older than you are, Julia. Those eight years are huge. He’s a different generation. Don’t let yourself forget that. And here’s the biggest difference between men then and men now. We don’t wear our wounds like medals. We wear our medals like wounds. Do you understand?” The left side of his mouth did not close properly. She cleaned it again. “When I say he loves you as much as he can, I mean that. He would never hurt you. Never. You or the children.”

  “Anybody, in the right situation—”

  “You mean the wrong situation. And he’s not just anybody. He’s Little Master. He’s a man so caught up in duty and obligation that he doesn’t have a spare minute to think of who he is. If he betrayed you, you’d know the next day. He wouldn’t be able to function. You’re his wife, but I’ve known him a lot longer than you have. You keep the Little Master’s world together, Julia. End of speech.”

  And it was. He drooped, his eyes fluttered, his breathing grew harder. One of the many monitors changed the rate at which it was beeping, and she wondered if she should call the nurse. He was permitted only one visitor at a time, but nobody was waiting, and, besides, Bay had asked her to stay awhile.

  She said, “Do you need anything?”

  “Just a bribe for Saint Peter.” Julia smiled. The good eye sought her out. “See? See? That’s the kind of thing I could never say to the Little Master. He hates jokes about his faith.”

  “He can be a little…pompous.”

  “Balls. The Little Master isn’t pompous. He just doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

  “Bay—”

  “I know. I know. This other business.” His hand rose abruptly, dropped onto hers. She held the cool flesh, pressed it in her warmth. “My advice is to forget about it.”

  Julia was surprised. “Forget about it?”

  “Listen to me. You have your daughter to take care of. You have your little one. Your job, your marriage—a million other things to do. There are people who waste their lives trying to get a little bit of lever-age to influence a political campaign.” His cough was hollow and wet and rattling. “Leave that work to them, Julia.”

  “I’m not thinking about politics. I’m thinking about justice.”

  “Justice.” Not quite a sneer but almost. “Let me tell you something. People who want justice cause more horror in the world than all the rest of—Never mind. Never mind. I’m old. I’m mostly dead. Ignore me.”

  Ignoring him was the last thing Julia wanted to do. She craved his advice mostly because he was, unlike most adults her own age, a grown-up. Outside the wide windows, the afternoon sun was setting in a clear, perfect sky. “If one of the candidates killed that little girl—”

  “You know what Lincoln said? In politics, the statute of limitations should be short.”

  “Come on, Bay. We’re not talking about having sex with the wrong woman or fiddling on your taxes. We’re talking about somebody who killed a teenager and covered it up. And if one of them did it, even if he’s a Senator or President—”

  “If. Maybe. Might have. Possibly. A source says. That’s what’s wrecking our democracy, Julia. Everything’s conditional. Everything’s a rumor. But it’s on television or it’s on the Internet, so it must be true. At least, if it helps our side, it’s true. If it helps the bad guys, why, then, it’s dirty, nasty partisan politics, isn’t it?” To her astonishment, he managed to sit halfway up. One of the machines launched a loud protest and persuaded a second to join in. “If you have facts—not rumors, not ideas, not guesses, but actual facts, evidence—then take your facts to the authorities. The FBI. The CIA. I don’t care who.” He settled again, exhausted. “But if you don’t? If all you have is rumor, innuendo, unnamed sources, all that crap? Don’t take it anywhere. Forget about it. That’s my old-man’s advice. You can ignore it for free.” He closed his eyes.

  Hiatus, because the nurse came in and fiddled and fussed and started making notes with a stylus on a handheld computer. Bay flirted without enthusiasm. The nurse smiled tiredly. The break was welcome, at least to Julia, because she did not know what to say. The authorities! Well, of course, Bay would think that, having long been part of the power structure himself. Julia remembered, when she was at Dartmouth, how the black students, herself included, would sit around and condemn any members of the darker nation who wielded real influence, on the insidious theory that their success was itself evidence of their disloyalty.

  Representative Byron Dennison, in particular, was whispered to have powerful white backers, rich men who furthered his career, never mind that there was no other way to get into Congress. But now, when Bay mentioned the authorities, Julia’s first panicky thought was of Vanessa, whose relationship with Kellen the authorities would surely explore. Beyond that, Byron Dennison seemed to be taking Lemaster’s side in a dispute Julia and her husband had rehearsed a dozen times. Her husband’s faith in officialdom had over the years been a matter of occasional contention between them. Julia, like so many raised to privilege and prospect in African America, sensed within herself a reflexive suspicion toward the apparatus of government. Perhaps it was the influence of Mad Mona, who continued preaching to her many aco
lytes that the United States was the source of most of the world’s evil. Perhaps it was the influence of the public-relations trade, which, in one of her many other lives, Julia had thought to ply. Or perhaps—as Lemmie himself always seemed keen to argue, no matter how he wounded her—it was Julia’s way of identifying her own fortunes with those of the less fortunate among the community, with whom she had had almost no contact while growing up in New Hampshire and precious little since.

  When the nurse was gone again, Byron Dennison settled back, breathing with difficulty.

  “Bay?”

  “Still with you.”

  She licked her lips and wished she had a way to moisten her throat. “The thing is, Bay, I can’t go to the authorities. I can’t.” Her voice was, momentarily, faint. “I’m sorry.”

  “Your call, not mine. I told you, ignore my advice if you want.” This time his cough was dry, the sound inestimably worse. “Tell you another secret. If the girl won’t tell you where she was, well, she has her reasons. Smart girl. Always liked her. So she slipped the reins a little. Well, that’s what Thoroughbreds do, Julia. And your Vanessa’s a Thoroughbred. Good genes. Never mind. Don’t listen to me. I’m tired.”

  “Bay—”

  “Hush. I’m sleeping.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He smiled, eyes still tightly shut. “Where did you say you found her? A dance club?”

  “Actually, it was the director of campus safety. He found her at a club. Her friend Smith—Janine Goldsmith—picked her up from the church and drove her to the train station. Vanessa went to New York. She won’t say where. She says she didn’t find what she was looking for, but she won’t say what she was looking for. She took the train back, she took a taxi to the club—”

  “Maybe she just needed a break.”

  “Maybe.” Julia steadied herself. She had lost her temper severely. So had Lemaster, but at Dr. Brady, not Vanessa. He planned to fire the man as soon as they could line up a new therapist. “But I don’t think so. I think it had to do with—Never mind. The point is, Vanessa is seriously grounded. She can’t see Janine, can’t talk to her, instant-message her, anything.” Julia stopped, because the room was wavering and the machines were roaring in her ears, but probably it was her own blood. “Anyway, Bruce Vallely tracked her down at the club, dancing with guys twice her age. She said she just wanted to have a little fun before she got too old. The fun Gina never got to have.” Again she needed a moment to collect herself, remembering how all Vanessa would say was that she had no choice. “Oh, and she was underage to be admitted to the club, even if she didn’t drink anything. I imagine by now Lemmie’s had their liquor license pulled.”

  “Good for him.”

  “You taught him that, didn’t you?”

  “Taught him what?”

  “About power. How to use it. When.”

  The good eye rolled open. Sweat stood out on the gray flesh. “I told them all. Use power any way you want. Get rich. Help the poor. Whatever. The important thing is to use it and keep using it. If you leave it lying around, somebody else will pick it up. Power has to be used, or it’s not real.” Cough. “If you use it, people decide you’re a powerful person, they get accustomed to doing what you want, and that gives you more power. Just don’t ever start trying to use it for justice. People are real, justice is abstract. Abstract is when the killing starts.”

  Julia, the empiricist, hated abstractions, which was one reason she had hardly ever stepped inside a classroom since starting work at the divinity school. Chafing as she listened, she nibbled her lower lip. “Bay, ah, the only other thing is—”

  “Don’t tell Little Master what we talked about. I remember.”

  “I’m sorry to put you in this position, Bay. Especially now.”

  “I’m the keeper of lots of secrets, Julia. That’s what people like me do for a living. We keep secrets.” A gurgle. “I’m outdated. I was taught you take your secrets to your grave. People today, give them a secret, all they can think of is which reporter to call first. No integrity. No honor. And, God knows, no loyalty. Can’t keep their mouths shut. Just want to see their names in the paper, even if their names are ‘unnamed source’ or ‘person with knowledge of the situation.’ Reporters are just as bad. Have it backward. Seem to think the fact that somebody won’t go on the record proves he’s telling the truth. As if an honorable man betrays the trust of his colleagues. Sorry. End of speech. Ignore me.”

  She had scarcely heard him. “It’s just that Lemaster is under a lot of…strain. I don’t think he’d understand why I have to do this.”

  A quiet, labored guffaw. “Don’t worry, Julia. I understand. Now, listen to me. Are you listening?”

  “Of course.” Squeezing his hand, because she was suddenly not sure Bay could see her.

  “If I were you? What I’d want to know?”

  “Yes?”

  “Not where my little girl spent those hours in New York. Why my little girl spent those hours in New York. I told you, she’s smart. And she’s single-minded, like her mother. I wonder if she had any—”

  The eye closed again, and he slept.

  (II)

  “WHAT EXACTLY DID KELLEN TELL YOU about his Black Lady?” asked Julia. She and Mary were sitting in a booth at a Cambridge restaurant across the square from the Inn at Harvard, where Julia was staying overnight. She had tried without success to reach her son Preston and had chosen the hotel to be near him, but had a shrewd suspicion that he was not answering the phone until she left. “Before he got himself arrested, Tony Tice was interviewing Ladybugs. Presumably he thinks one of us must be the Black Lady.”

  Mary picked at her grilled-chicken-and-arugula salad. It was not on the menu, but she had charmed the waiter into creating it. Like many heavy smokers, she ate with care. The students crowding the next table were reassuringly raucous. Mary had assured her that the best place not to be overheard was a crowd.

  “Only that the Black Lady was helping him with his research. Oh, and that she was one of his old stories.” A tight smile. “Don’t worry, it couldn’t be your Vanessa, because Kellen said the Black Lady had been around awhile and seen things.”

  Julia chewed thoughtfully on her sloshy burger. “That’s the other reason you thought it was me? Because I’m one of his old stories?”

  “Unless he’s slept with another Sister Lady.” She saw Julia’s face. “Sorry. I’m pretty blunt.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Mary lifted a bite of arugula on her fork, then thought better of the urge and returned it to her plate. “But then I decided I was wrong. It was pretty clear to me that the Black Lady who was helping in his research and the New York girlfriend who would take on the inventory risk for him were two different people.”

  “One of his old stories,” said Julia, an idea beginning to form, although not one she was prepared to share with Mary. “Now tell me about Tice’s connection to Kellen,” she commanded.

  “You’re really bossy, do you know that?”

  “You have no idea,” said Julia, thrilling secretly to the new her, much more like the old her than the one who shared Lemaster’s bed and board. Semi-Precious was gone. Jewel was back.

  “Well, all I know is what Kellen told me. Tony had a client who was interested in bidding for the surplus. I got the idea that the client was on the shady side, and if Kellen could prove what he thought he could prove, well, you can see why it would make sense.”

  “People say Tony’s clients are Mafiosi or terrorists or—”

  “Or a coalition of Texas oilmen or Silicon Valley tycoons. They’re every bit as dangerous, Julia. Every bit as corrupt.” Mary was entirely serious. “Don’t be fooled by arbitrary labels telling us what’s legal or illegal. No matter who his clients are, anybody who’d pay for the surplus is dangerous.” She stirred her salad, managed to find a mushroom of which she approved. “I mean, somebody killed Kellen. And maybe your friend Boris, too. God knows who else.”

  Julia
nodded, although not in agreement. She stuffed a French fry into her mouth. She heard wild conspiracy theories in her inner-city beauty parlor and on Kwame Kennerly’s radio show, and it was easy to forget that white people, too, were capable of believing anything.

  “Did Tony go to Kellen initially, or did Kellen go to Tony?”

  “Good question. I asked Kellen the same thing. Unfortunately, he never answered,” Mary said, shoving her salad aside. “The thing is, Kellen told me he was planning an auction for his inventory. What he called an ‘all-pay auction.’ Do you know what that means? I had to look it up. It’s an auction where you pay your bid whether you get the item or not.”

  “Why would anybody do that? It’s nuts.”

  “No, it isn’t, if you think about it. People will bid less, because they know they lose the money if their bid isn’t the highest. So, if you can guess other people’s bids, you’ll get the thing for less in an all-pay auction than in the other kinds. The crazy part was Kellen thinking once he started putting out feelers the whole thing would stay secret. Are you done?”

  Julia grinned. She understood. Five minutes later, they were strolling through the chilly night across Harvard Yard, most of the gates now locked at night, windows brightly lighted in the massive Georgian dorms. Mary was working on her second cigarette already.

  “I’ve met a couple of times with Bruce Vallely,” Julia said. “Trevor Land suggested it. And you know what? He’s not so bad. He’s clumsy, but kind of nice.”

  “Hubba-hubba.”

  Julia elbowed her. “Cut it out. He’s actually shared some useful information. I’ve even put together a sort of chronology.”

  “Tell.”

  “On the night she died, Gina was seen talking to DeShaun. Okay. But here’s the thing. One witness—a teacher—said she saw Gina alive after she was supposed to have gotten into the car with DeShaun. Then she changed her story. Said she was mistaken.” Julia shivered. “According to Mitch Huebner, though, she didn’t just see Gina. She let Gina in her house to make a phone call. Half an hour later, a sporty-looking car showed up in the driveway with two young men inside. One of the guys got out. Gina argued with him, but finally the three of them drove off. And that was that.”