Book Case

by Stephen Greenleaf

  I gestured toward the picture. “Were you on the Sebastian varsity?”

  Jane Ann looked momentarily puzzled.

  “You play in the infamous Balboa game?”

  “How’d you know about that?”

  “Emma Drayer told me.”

  My knowledge of Jane Ann’s sporting career seemed to disturb her. “I don’t know why you’re here,” she said. “Am I supposed to?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “It’s time to talk.”

  “What about?”

  I glanced at the couch, where Lloyd still lounged in headset seclusion. “Can we do this in private?”

  She looked around the room. “This is a loft. Privacy’s not included.”

  “Maybe Lloyd would like to go out for a doughnut.”

  “Lloyd never goes out in the daytime.”

  “If we tied a bag over his head, he’d never know.”

  She wanted to laugh but wouldn’t let herself. I reached for her hand and tugged her back the way we’d come, then closed the door behind us. “Which do you want, toilet or tub?”

  She hesitated, then turned down the toilet lid and sat on it. I kicked off my shoes, climbed in the tub and stretched out as fully as its chilly dimensions would allow.

  “Is this about Bryce?” Jane Ann asked as I was still getting comfortable.

  “This is about a lot of people. Including you.”

  “But—”

  I held up a hand. “Hear me out a minute.” I rolled to my side to relieve the pressure on my coccyx. “Ordinarily I don’t reveal a client’s confidences to anyone. Not even a daughter.”

  “Stepdaughter.”

  “Right. But I’m going to make an exception in this case, because I think you know most of it already.”

  “Most of what?”

  “First of all, you know about the book.”

  “What book?”

  I met her eye. “Your fingerprints were on the title page, Jane Ann. This is going to take all day if we spend the first two hours dancing with each other.”

  “I … okay. I know about the book.”

  “Thank you. I thought for a while you might have written it, actually, and I still think it’s a possibility.” I waited for a denial or a confirmation but she didn’t give me either. “But let’s just say you were prowling around Bryce’s desk, the way kids do with their parents’ papers, and this time you found a prize. And you told Lloyd, and he told your father.”

  When I looked at her, her eyes were closed. “You don’t know anything about this,” she said, so softly I almost didn’t hear her, the admonition so similar to the one Lloyd had brought to my office they must have been rehearsed. “You don’t know what’s at stake.”

  “What did you think when you read it?” I went on cavalierly, deliberately ignoring her comment, trying to inject emotion into the situation. “Kind of a Russian tone to it, I thought. Dostoevski, maybe—he was a prisoner like Linton, wasn’t he? Or maybe Kafka. That was Lloyd’s suggestion, but I haven’t read much Kafka except for the story about the guy who turned into a cockroach. So what do you think? Critically, I mean. Is Hammurabi a great book or not?”

  “I thought it was derivative and sentimental.”

  I continued to tease, trying to make her angry, on the theory that anger spurs paroxysm and encourages revelation. “There was some of that, all right,” I said. “But what about the plot? The sexual thing? That’s certainly topical these days—old men taking advantage of young girls?—it’s apparently as common as colds. So the commercial possibilities are exciting, wouldn’t you say? And the frame-up. Vengeance always sells, they tell me. Those Charles Bronson movies? Very big. Plus it was true to life, didn’t you think? Bryce says its attention to detail reminds him of Capote.”

  I looked at her till she was forced to answer. “I didn’t think it was any of that.”

  “Really? How did you find it flawed?”

  “This is America. No one gets put in jail for something they didn’t do.”

  “You sound like the Republican I know. And the cop I know also, come to think of it.”

  Although her face was red and her eyes were hot, she didn’t take the bait.

  “Come on, Jane Ann, let’s cut the lit chat. A lot of people are hooked into this book already, to the point that someone’s life may be in danger.”

  She blinked. “What did you say?”

  “The rest of the manuscript turned up. What happens is, the schoolteacher gets out of jail and hunts down the person who framed him. You might want to know what happens then.”

  “What?”

  “He puts a bullet in his brain.”

  “Whose brain?”

  “The man who really molested the girl. It’s an eye-for-an-eye type thing.”

  “The Code of Hammurabi.”

  “Babylonia. Right. Eighteenth century. B.C.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Maybe. And maybe it’s fantasy, fiction, fable, whatever. But I can’t afford to take the chance. And neither can Bryce.”

  She tugged at one of her suspenders, stretched it to its limit, then let it snap back. “What do you want from me?”

  “Just a name.”

  “What name?”

  “The real name of the Amanda Keefer character in the book.”

  She looked perplexed. “Amanda who?”

  “The girl who was assaulted at Sebastian.” It was time to press her. “You know what I’m talking about—who was it, Jane Ann?”

  She shook her head and clasped her knees.

  “I need to know. Right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because her father could be in danger.”

  Her eyes were vacant and unknowning. “Why?”

  “According to the book, her father’s the one who molested her, then put the frame on Linton.”

  Jane Ann stood up, the back of her hand pressed against her lips, as though another word would cause her world to shatter. “I … How can this be happening? Who’s doing this to me?”

  Her panic was real and surprising. Despite her mother’s fears, I hadn’t expected Jane Ann to be personally involved in the Linton business, though I did expect her to know something about it. I’d expected to learn that something—the names of the players, if nothing else—without much trouble, because why would she resist telling me if she knew her silence could be jeopardizing someone’s safety?

  “Was it you, Jane Ann?” I asked softly.

  She shook her head.

  “Were you the student who was molested?”

  Her eyes were wet and wretched. “There wasn’t anything like that, I … Please stop, Mr. Tanner.”

  “I don’t know that much about this, Jane Ann. But I do know if you make a man spend six years in jail for something he didn’t do, he’s likely to lose focus on the distinction between right and wrong. I don’t know what Linton’s going to do, but if I was his lawyer I’d plead temporary insanity to any crime he commits from this point on.” I got out of the tub and stood before her with what I hoped was compassion. “Was it Gillis? Did your father abuse you sexually, Jane Ann?… What did he have on Linton that let him stick Linton with the blame?”

  Jane Ann curled forward in a convulsion of denial. I was still trying to come up with an effective approach when the bathroom door opened and Lloyd stood outlined by the back light of the loft, headset loose about his neck, skin as bloodless as the tiles that surrounded us. “Tell him, Jane Ann,” he ordered.

  We waited for her to speak, but she didn’t move a muscle beyond the one that loosed her tears. Lloyd’s sneer turned her way, branded her with its verdict, then returned to me. “Carrie,” he said, as though he were identifying a corpse. “Carrie Devlin’s the one he nailed.”

  When I looked at Jane Ann, her eyes were locked on a square of tile, as black as doom beneath her feet.

  “Tell him,” Lloyd insisted again.

  As
slowly as a sunrise, Jane Ann raised her head and nodded. Satisfied, Lloyd plugged the headset into his ears and returned to the couch. As Jane Ann began to sob, I climbed out of the tub and headed for the elevator.

  When it was on its way to get me, I looked back. “Why did they call you Fishy?”

  She sniffed. “Gillis … gills … get it?”

  “Do you like the name?”

  “I hate it.”

  “Was Lloyd around the loft this morning?”

  “Probably, but I was at my art lesson. Why?”

  “I thought maybe he went for a walk in the park.”

  “It doesn’t sound like him,” she said. “But then what does?”

  “Fingernails on a blackboard,” I suggested, then entered the elevator and pressed button number one.

  When I found her, finally, Amanda Keefer was alternately brazen and apologetic, braggart and penitent. Her changeableness was such that I began to fear for her sanity, and indeed she advised me that she had been getting therapeutic help.

  It was hours before she began to talk truthfully, and hours more before I got it all. After I had it, I went out and bought a gun, the type recommended by my cell mate. “No way they walk away,” he promised.

  Then I went looking for her father.

  Homage to Hammurabi, p. 289

  25

  After I left Jane Ann and Lloyd, I found the nearest telephone. If Hammurabi was actually autobiographical, and if Carrie Devlin was the real-life counterpart of the fictional Amanda Keefer, then Wade Linton could be on his way to Stockton to find her father. But when I called Noe Valley I didn’t get an answer. Since I didn’t know Bridget Devlin well enough to try to track her down, I recycled my quarter and called the clerk of the Superior Court in the person of one of his assistants, my old friend Sadie.

  “Well, well,” Sadie commented after they’d managed to track her down. “We don’t see you around this way much anymore.”

  “I’m hanging out with a better class of person.”

  “No more criminals?”

  “They’re criminals, all right; but they’re not the kind that get caught.”

  I got a sour reproof instead of the laugh I sought. “That’s nice to hear; I was afraid it was something personal.”

  “You’re still my favorite female in the federal building.”

  “Okay, Marsh.” She sighed resignedly. “What can I do for you this time?”

  She’d succeeded in making me feel like what I’d aspired to only hours before—a tramp. “I need a peek at a file.”

  “Well, come on down to City Hall and—”

  “Not an active file, a closed one. Criminal case—docketed in ’eighty-three or maybe ’four. People versus Linton.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a number.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s probably in storage, and you know our vault—people have gone down there and never been seen again.”

  “If there was another way, I’d use it, Sadie.”

  “If there was another way, I’d make you use it.”

  “All I want is the best you’ve got.”

  “I don’t bring that to the office.” Her tone thickened with intimacy. “How come when you had it three years ago, you decided it wasn’t enough?”

  “That’s not the way it was,” I protested, though I couldn’t remember if she was right or not. The recent reappearance of both Betty and Sadie in my life was making me feel like Scrooge, haunted by the ghosts of romance past. “The breakup was mutual and you know it.”

  “Breakups are never mutual,” she ventured, then scurried back to business. “I’ll check the index and give you a call.”

  After I’d chewed over Sadie’s outburst long enough to establish my blamelessness in the matter of our parting, I tried the Devlin number a second time. There was still no answer. I thought there might be a Stockton phone book among my collection back at the office; if so, it might let me bypass the intermediary, which is always a good idea when the intermediary is an ex-wife.

  I was counting the Devlin listings in the Stockton book and gnawing on a day-old bagel when the phone rang. “I been after you for an hour; it would help if you’d go cellular.” Charley was sufficiently irascible to indicate he had a problem. “You better get out here.”

  “The park?”

  “The school.”

  “Sebastian?”

  “That’s the one. I found your buddy Linton.”

  “And?”

  “He’s dead.”

  I swore. “How?”

  “Some janitor clubbed him.”

  “O’Shea?”

  “You know him?”

  “Some. How did it happen?”

  “Apparently your guy Linton was trying to break into the school earlier this evening and O’Shea had to club him to stop him. Clubbed him hard, clubbed him often.”

  “What do you mean ‘apparently’? What does O’Shea say about it?”

  “He’s not around. The stiff just turned up a while ago—it was in a light well by the gym; some kid found it chasing a Frisbee.”

  “Shit.”

  “That’s what I said when I ripped my goddamned sportcoat climbing in there. Which was mild compared to what I said when I saw him—his skull looks like frigging aspic. You got any idea what he was up to?”

  “Not for sure.”

  “I better not find out that’s a lie, Tanner; my stomach’s too delicate for gore.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” I dug my car out of the lot and drove out to C. Hollow.

  Whatever else he had done in life, for good or ill, Wade Linton had touched me with Hammurabi, had become both kindred spirit and inspiration, so I was feeling something akin to the loss I felt when other friends, more of them than I cared to think about, had died unexpectedly. Linton’s demise seemed particularly tragic—the wasted years in jail, the achievement with the book, the obsession with a wrong whose rectification would likely return him to prison, all while living homeless and alone and separated from his son. If you see life as essentially ironic, it could easily seem inevitable that Linton would be found dead in a bludgeoned heap back where it had all begun.

  A part of my mood was reserved for Arthur O’Shea, whose itchy sparring with his militaristic past would not let him live easily with what he’d had to do to Linton. But my sympathy was reserved for J. Alfred Prufrock’s young namesake. I could still hear the way he had spoken about his dad—the reverence and warmth in his tone, the longing for reconciliation—and I wondered who would break the news to him. I hoped it was someone more magnanimous than his mother seemed to be.

  Yellow police lines stretched across the playground like the trappings of a school yard game—Red Rover, maybe, or Flag Tag—but the faces within the boundaries were anything but playful. The investigation was still active, so no one paid much attention when I ducked into the square of officialdom. I saw a couple of detectives I knew slightly, along with a uniformed patrolman and the assistant ME. I was about to ask if Charley Sleet was around when he came around the corner of the building.

  “I love the hell out of finding dead people, Tanner. That must be why I look forward to doing your work for you.”

  “Sorry, Charley. I didn’t envision this.” I reached in my pocket. “But I can save you some time with the evidence.”

  I pulled out the buckle I’d torn off Linton’s coat as I’d gone under. “Don’t waste time looking for this puppy—I’m the one who took it off him, not the killer.”

  Charley took the buckle and examined it. “You got this how?”

  “Like I told you—when I trailed Linton to his place in the park he was lying in wait for me. He clubbed me from behind, but just before I checked out I made a grab for him. This was all I came up with.”

  “And this was when?”

  I looked at my watch. “About six hours ago.”

  Charley shook his head. “I examined him myself. There was n
o buckle missing from anything he’s wearing now, and from the look of him he didn’t have a wardrobe that let him change outfits twice a day.” My expression spurred Charley to defend himself. “If you don’t believe me, ask Savin. He’s catching the case for Homicide.”

  “I believe you, Charley,” I said, and shook my head. Every time I reached a conclusion in the case, it turned out to be wrong. I said as much to Charley, then tried to readjust the facts. “Someone must have been lying in wait for Linton; I may have chased him into the trap. Any chance he was killed in the park and then dumped here?”

  Charley shook his head. “All the ingredients were over in that frigging light well.” He pulled a plastic bag out of his coat and dropped the buckle in it and took it over to a technician, muttered some words of advice, then came back to where I was standing.

  This time when he saw my look Charley patted me on the shoulder. “It happens that way sometimes. I could have saved a thousand lives over the last thirty years, except I’m not psychic. My guess is, neither are you.”

  “Good guess.” I looked at the school building. It was as oppressive as ever, unfazed by what had transpired beneath its aristocratic gaze. “What was Linton trying to do, did anyone know?”

  Charley shrugged. “Get in the building is all I know so far.”

  “Who have you talked to?”

  “Just the only teacher who was around when the kid found the corpse. Plus I called the headmaster.”

  “Finner.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What’s he say about it?”

  “He chose to reserve comment till his boss showed up.”

  “Marvin Gillis,” I said.

  Charley looked at me. “So that’s no surprise to you, either.”

  “Nope.”

  “What does a heavy hitter like Gillis have to do with this joint?”

  “He’s chairman of the board of the Sebastian trustees. He loves it like a son—he lights up like a freebaser every time he talks about the place.”

  “Think he knows anything about this Linton thing?”

  I never lie to Charley; well, hardly ever. But sometimes I tell him less than unexpurgated truth. “If he does, he won’t tell you about it.”