The Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  “A book,” I mumble, clawing at the dirt, trying to rise.

  Another punch, right in the eye. The night flashes green. My face seems to split and splatter, and the pain is an icy blade down my cheek.

  “Stand him up,” the same hissing voice demands, and, obligingly, the other man pulls me to my feet.

  “The police are coming,” I mutter.

  A pause as the two of them look at each other. Then that iron fist comes flying in once more, this time catching me in the ribs, the same spot as the kick, and my whole body sings a hymn of agony. Another punch, this one in the stomach. I fold over. A hand grabs for my shoulder.

  Using a barely remembered move from my old self-defense classes, I duck and shove upward and shrug free of the grip. Then I turn away, stumbling down the hill toward the base of the library scaffold. I hear the two men whispering to each other, maybe arguing over which is going to follow me onto the construction site. I do not look back. A low metal bar blocks my path to the scaffold, a sign warning me not to trespass. Considering the alternatives, however, I think I should. Beyond the bar is an angled ladder, precisely one story high. The scaffold is full of such ladders, running all the way up the side of the library, with landings at each floor for the construction workers. I hold on to the bar, because I am woozy and nauseous from the beating. Swallowing hard, fighting the waves of anguish, I glance back. One of the two men is coming down the slope. The other has disappeared, which would worry me if I had any time to worry. I climb awkwardly over the bar and reach the ladder just as my pursuer begins to run down the slope. My ribs are aching from the kicks and the punches, and my face feels squishy and twice its normal size, but I make it to the second level. My head pounds. I sag against the ladder leading up to level three, my arms suddenly on strike, refusing to pull me up any farther.

  From below, a hand snakes out and grabs my left ankle. The hand yanks, very hard, and I tumble to a sitting position.

  His head emerges, and I see something glinting in his hand: brass knuckles, perhaps, or a small knife. All of that fine talk about how I cannot be harmed, and now this! Gathering what strength I have left, I draw my right leg back, then brace myself against the ladder and kick out, putting all my weight into it. I strike flesh: his face? his hand? He cries out in pain and releases my ankle as his head pops down and out of sight once more. I force myself to my feet and, over the objections of my shoulders, resume my climb. My pursuer does not seem to be following, but I have been wrong too often lately. I keep my feet moving on will alone, one above the other, as I make the third level, then the fourth. I pause and look down. The fourth level of the scaffolding seems dizzyingly high. I support myself on the dark metal rail. I can see several blocks of the campus. I can see the law school. I do not see the man who was chasing me, even directly beneath. I am about out of energy but do not want to take any chances. He could, after all, be invisible on the ladder below. I force myself up one more level and then stop on the fifth landing, leaning against the rail, breathing hard. I hear voices, louder this time, and I see flashlights at the end of the alley. I cannot make out any details, for it is still dark down there, and the beams dazzle me as they advance, slowly, and then angle upward, toward the scaffolding.

  I duck behind the ladder, but too late.

  The lights have me.

  Still I try to withdraw into the shadows, except that there are no shadows left, the illumination from below is too bright, almost blinding now, like a searchlight.

  And, from below, an amplified voice: “This is the university police. Come down the ladder, very slowly, and keep your hands in sight.”

  Aching but relieved, I follow the instructions precisely, climbing carefully down the ladder, my trembling feet occasionally uncooperative, the light following me down, a second light, much brighter, joining the first, so I suppose a squad car must now be in the alley; or, from the sounds I hear, more than one. I cannot remember when I have been so happy to see the police.

  Determined not to show weakness before my rescuers, I hop the last few rungs to the ground, nearly spilling again in the process, before turning into the glare. I blink hard, shielding my eyes, aware for the first time of how I must look: a disheveled black man in a dark windbreaker climbing up the side of the library in the middle of the night, obviously guilty of every crime on earth.

  “All right, sir,” says a heavy white voice from behind the light. The way the officer pronounces the word sir, although not quite mocking enough to constitute a clear insult, is definitely in the ballpark. “Let’s just keep our hands in front of us, shall we?”

  “Okay, but they’re getting away . . . .”

  “Please stand still, sir.”

  Evidently, the policeman does not know that I am a professor, so I decide to enlighten him.

  “Officer, I should tell you that I teach . . .”

  “Not a word, please, sir. Please walk toward me, slowly, hands out in front of you, palms toward me.”

  I point toward the end of the alley. “But I teach at the . . .”

  “Keep your hands still!”

  “But I’m not the one who . . .”

  “Please stand where you are, sir. Hands out. Good. That’s it.”

  I do as I am told, holding out my blameless, trembling hands for the officers to see. I want to be calm, in the best Garland manner. I am not. I am frightened. I am seething. I am humiliated. The chilly Elm Harbor night burns bright red. I feel a peculiar weakness in my groin and, despite my many pains, an amazing surge of strength in my limbs: my fight-or-flight reflex seems fully activated. I can now make out the two officers, both variations on white, as they make wide half-circles toward me. Neither one has actually drawn a gun, but each has a hand on his hip and his holster unstrapped, and both are carrying those long police flashlights up high in the air, the barrels extended well past their fists, so that they can swing them as clubs without cocking. The officers move slowly, but not without vigor. I cannot take my eyes off the flashlights. I have heard stories about this kind of thing but have never experienced it. For a moment, I envision a second beating, this time by the campus police. A hot shame rises in my cheeks, as though I have been caught on the brink of a terrible deed. I actually feel guilty, of whatever they like. Not budging, I watch the two officers watching me. Their lassitude has a purpose, I decide: they are trying to wait me into a foolish move or a smart crack or a nervous laugh, maybe an excuse to use those flashlights. Or maybe they are only doing a tough and dangerous job and prefer to take no chances. Either way, I have never felt so helpless, so unable to influence my fate, as I do at this moment. At my father’s feet, I learned to cherish will. He was always quite unforgiving of those who seemed to him to lack it. But now I face a moment when my will is quite irrelevant. I have never experienced our nation’s ruthless racial divide with quite this vigor. I wonder what the Judge would have done.

  One of the officers beckons. “Take a step forward. Good. Now lean forward, put your hands on the wall, right there, feet apart, good.”

  I comply. Light spills from a couple of windows of the dorm at the far end of the alley, and the electronically locked gate swings open: excited students coming out to watch with approval the ethnic purification of the campus.

  “That’s fine, sir, right, that’s fine,” says the officer who has, so far, been doing all the talking. “Now, let’s see what we have here.”

  My voice is cold. “You have a tenured professor, that’s what you have here. I’m the one who called in the alarm.” I pause, breathing hard in my fury, wishing I could see their faces behind the blazing flashlights. “I was attacked.”

  “Can we see some identification, sir?” asks the same officer, and, this time, the sir sounds like he just might believe me.

  “You may,” I tell him with pedantic emphasis.

  At that moment, as I am finally allowed to pull out my wallet and prove that I am who I say I am, my eyes fall on the spot where the assault took place. I realize that I
will have to go back to the chess club and experience Karl’s abuse all over again, as I explain to him how somebody beat me up in the middle of the campus and stole his old chess book.

  (II)

  TWO-THIRTY-THREE IN THE MORNING. I am sitting in my study overlooking Hobby Road, a baseball bat near my right hand, trying to figure out what went wrong. Once persuaded that they had erred, the police took me to the emergency room of the university hospital, where a young resident hummed an old Broadway tune while stitching up my face and taping my bruised ribs. An hour later, I left the hospital with Kimmer and Bentley. Already sick with worry, my wife was sobered—not to say frightened—by my appearance. She managed a certain grace nevertheless, and was gentle and solicitous all the way home, kissing my battered face and assuring me that all would be well, even though I never asked. But perhaps it is Kimmer herself who needs the reassurance, for having your husband beaten and nearly arrested outside the university library is not the sort of thing that helps your chances for the bench. I have not, yet, shared with my wife the details of the assault. I have told her only that they stole Karl’s book of chess problems. She has, I think, enough worries. I suppose I will explain it all in time.

  And Bentley! My happy, mischievous son, so shocked by his father’s appearance that he curled up and went to sleep the instant we strapped him into his car seat. I would trade it all for the chance to give him back his childhood; the past few weeks have surely been harder on him than on Kimmer and myself. Right now, slouched at my desk with one eye on the street and one on the Internet, where I am lurching more than surfing from chat room to chat room, I wish I knew what my father had left behind and who precisely wanted to know, so that I could give them whatever it is and get myself and my family out of this mess.

  The arrangements: what are they? The Excelsior: why chess?

  The disappearing scrapbook, the reappearing pawn, the delivery at the soup kitchen, far too many mysteries for good health.

  Or safety. You and your family are perfectly safe. Oh, sure. Tell that to the two men who went after me tonight. I would like to meet them again. On my terms. I stand up in the small room, grip the baseball bat like a hitter, swing it smoothly, as though to meet a fastball, and, on the follow-through, I come within inches of demolishing my computer. Actually, I have not struck a human being in anger since an inconclusive skirmish on the playground when I was in eighth grade and the school bully, furious at me for some witticism or other, made a serious effort to punch my lights out. Swinging the bat more carefully now, standing in the gloom, I let the memories flow, memories of a happier time, when Abby still lived. The bully, an angry white pre-teen whose name, I believe, was Alvin, aimed for my nose but missed, splitting my lip instead. Flailing in pain and fear, I hit him back, flush on the jaw, which astonished him more than hurt him, and then I threw a hard right into the center of his astonishment, and he went down with a grunt. I backed away, and then Alvin was up again, tackling me, and we were on the ground, striking each other with the short, pointless blows of many a schoolyard battle, until separated by a teacher. Oh, but the Judge got after me! Not for fighting, but for failing to finish what I started. He quoted me the old saw: If you strike at the king, you must kill him. Fighting a bully to a draw, he warned, is never enough. When my three-day suspension ended, I returned to school warily, wondering if Alvin was lying in wait somewhere. Alvin. Yes. I sit at my desk once more, laying the bat on the floor. That is what the fight may have been about, his name, for he required us all to call him Al, and I was never the sort to allow others to impose their will on me—other men, anyway. As it turned out, I did not have to fight Alvin again. He did not return to school, not then, not ever. I smile and swivel my chair away from the desk, toward the window, where the street is quiet and empty. It was one of my heroic moments, for a rumor spread through the school that it was Al’s savage beating at the hands of the shrimpy Tal Garland, derisively nicknamed “Poindexter,” that drove him away. The bully was gone, and, for about a week, I was even popular, an unaccustomed phenomenon that has not been repeated in my life. Of course, I had barely held my own in the fistfight, and the truth was more prosaic. It turned out that poor Al, during his own enforced vacation, had performed some egregious act involving an automobile that did not belong to his family, and was headed for a “special” school—the euphemism of the day for the vocational schools, many of which were little more than warehouses for the unwanted, the unwashed, the unwilling . . . the . . . the . . .

  The telephone is ringing.

  My eyes jerk open and, automatically, I grab for the baseball bat. I stare, disbelieving, at the instrument that woke me from my doze, then turn to look at the clock, its red digital readout barely visible behind a stack of books on my desk. Two-fifty-one. In the morning. Nobody has ever called at two-fifty-one in the morning with good news. The caller-ID screen tells me only that the number is blocked.

  Not a happy indicator.

  Still, I grab the receiver, on the second ring, so as not to wake my wife. My heart is beating too fast, my grip on the baseball bat is too tight, and I have shifted my gaze back to the street, as though the ringing is the signal for an assault on the house.

  “Yes?” I demand softly, for I will not even pretend to be glad to get a call in the wee hours. Besides, my adrenaline is still pumping, and I am a little frightened . . . for my family.

  “Is this Professor Garland?” asks a calm male voice.

  “It is.”

  “The problem is taken care of,” the voice assures me, the tone voluptuous, almost hypnotic. “I regret what happened earlier tonight, but now everything is fine. Nobody will bother you again. You and your family are safe, just as promised.”

  “What? Who is this?”

  “And, of course, you should make no mention to anyone of this call.” I can think of no one I would dare mention it to. On the other hand . . .

  “Suppose my phone is tapped?”

  “It isn’t. Good night, Professor. Sleep well.”

  I hang up the phone, my mind a confused admixture of puzzlement, relief, and a fresh, more profound fear.

  Everything is fine. The problem is taken care of. Nobody will bother you again.

  Maybe a crank call, maybe a bad joke, or maybe, just maybe, it is something far worse.

  Maybe it is the truth.

  I am shuddering as I climb the stairs, wondering if I heard what I thought I did just before I hung up: the distant click as my wife, trying to be quiet, put the upstairs extension back in its cradle.

  CHAPTER 28

  TWO NEWS FLASHES

  “I HEAR YOU HAD A LITTLE TROUBLE,” says the great Mallory Corcoran, who has at last condescended to speak to me again. In fact, he called me this time, rather than the other way around.

  “You could say that.” Carrying the portable phone down the hallway, I rub my bruised face, smiling ruefully at my image in the narrow gilt-edged mirror that hangs across from the dining room, a hideous artifact given Kimmer by some distant aunt on the occasion of her first marriage. It is past eleven in the morning, but Bentley is still up in his bedroom, sleeping off the exhaustion of last night. One of the great advantages of the academic life is that it is possible to take a morning off for little things like loving a child.

  “The police are faxing Meadows a copy of the report. Is there anything you’d like me to do? Any way I can help?”

  “I don’t think so, Uncle Mal. I’m fine. Just a little shaken up.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” I mutter as I stand in the kitchen window, looking out on the pummeling rain threatening to drown our small but family-friendly back yard. Hedges close it in on two sides, a high wooden fence on the third, and then there is our own house making the fourth wall. We let Bentley spend all the time he wants out there, often unsupervised. “I think I have things . . . pretty well under control.”

  “Do you have any idea what they wanted?”

  I hesitate. I told th
e police that the two men took the package, but not that they kept on asking about the arrangements as they pummeled me. I have told nobody about the phone call that came in the middle of the night, and light-sleeping Kimmer has not asked.

  For some reason, I believe the phone call. It just feels . . . plausible, maybe.

  “I don’t know, Uncle Mal,” I sigh. The pain is back, weakening my voice, but it is not yet time to take another Advil. “I don’t really know.”

  “You don’t sound so good.”

  “Oh, that’s just my jaw.”

  “They broke your jaw?” Alarm. Incredulity. But also some amusement, the tone of a man who has seen it all.

  “No, no, nothing like that. It just hurts, that’s all.”

  “Humph.” Mallory Corcoran obviously doubts my claims to be okay. I do not really blame him, but the more important pains I am suffering are not physical. This morning, aching bones and all, I made breakfast for Kimmer and myself and then tried to get her to sit still and listen to the whole story. I planned to tell her everything, everything I know, everything I have guessed, everything I am worried about. Dressed beautifully for work in a navy chalk-stripe suit, my wife shook her head wearily. I don’t want to hear it, Misha, okay? I trust you, I really do, but I don’t want to hear it. I protested, but she shook her head again. She put her fingers gently over my lips. Her eyes, serious and questioning and worried, held mine. I just want to ask you three questions, she said. First, is our son in any danger? I had spent half the night, even after the telephone call, considering the same question, so I had my answer ready. I told her what is true, that I am sure he is not. She took this in and then asked, Am I in any danger? Again I told her no, of course not. Still regarding me solemnly, Kimmer asked what she really wanted to ask all along: Are you in any danger? I turned this over in my mind and then shook my head. I don’t think so. She frowned. You’re not as certain. I shrugged and told her that I was as certain as I could be. And Kimmer nodded and stepped into my arms and kissed me for a while and then put her head on my chest and told me to remember that I have a family who needs me. You do what you think you have to do, Misha, but think about what happened last night and remember the rest of your obligations.