Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller

by Clifford Irving

  “What she loves best,” I said, “is the thrill of the hunt. Any brand will do. What do I say to her?”

  “Just go through your act. If you feel like laughing or smiling, that’s fine. Act natural. But we’d prefer that you don’t speak.”

  “You mean I don’t have to say that Fruities are better than Life-Savers?”

  No, they said. Button up.

  They shot the scene with quite a few flavors and from quite a few angles. Iphigenia went after the Fruities with plenty of enthusiasm. But after about an hour and a half I called a halt. “That’s enough, please.”

  The director said, “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want her to get sick.”

  “We still haven’t done lemon and coconut.”

  “Then we’ll have to do them another day.”

  “Billy, the deal is for all eight flavors.”

  “I didn’t say no to eight flavors. I just don’t want her to eat all eight flavors in one session and then throw up.”

  The man from the ASPCA cleared his throat. You could see he was ready to earn his pay.

  I wanted to make the creative team feel better. I said, “She likes this candy. It’s got a lot of sugar in it. I didn’t realize she’d like it so much. Tomorrow, or later, why don’t I ask her why she likes them? Then I could pinch her, so that no one sees, and she’ll squeak at me, and I could say, ‘Oh, I see! You like Fruities because they taste so delicious.’”

  They explained that that kind of message would all show in writing on the screen, or be narrated by a professional announcer.

  “Isn’t it better if they hear it from me?”

  The director had left.

  Someone else said, “Eddie, call the limo for the kid.”

  The finished product, with Iphigenia grabbing and gobbling cherry and lime, was shown in Atlanta and San Diego to a few of what were called focus groups. Max Russo phoned me one day after school. “Billy, the children in the audiences laughed out loud. Some of the adults applauded. This commercial could win an award. We’re going to kick off next week with a spot on Friends. You’ll be in thirty million American homes.”

  “Really?”

  “You don’t sound very excited.”

  I was thinking about privacy. I valued my privacy. I wasn’t too happy that thirty million American families would know my face. I’ll just stay home, I thought. Become a recluse.

  And in those days, anyway, what was really on my mind was my plan for Amy. I said I’d help her and I intended to do it. Do or die.

  Chapter 13

  On good-weather school days Amy and I had lunch on the baseball field on Newtown Lane, or in the Brothers Four pizza parlor if it was cold or raining. I told Amy about my rock climbing and that one day I was going to climb Everest. “People’s lungs bleed at 24,000 feet, they get terrible headaches, and frostbite can make them lose fingers and toes. So if you want to come, you’d better wait for me in a tent at base camp.”

  “How cold is base camp?”

  “It’s at 17,200 feet.”

  “Have a nice trip.”

  The kids giggled and whispered that we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Amy and I paid no attention. After school we walked through the village. It was that time of year when the leaves from the dogwood and oaks fell with such determination that you couldn’t rake them up fast enough. We crunched them underfoot. When it had rained and the leaves got wet, we skidded on them and pretended we were ice skating.

  Amy went round to see the people at social services, because, she said, Carter had concluded that if she didn’t go they would hound him to death. “Just don’t let these snoops do a government con job on you. Because if you screw up, your darling mother goes to jail, and who knows what she’ll say so she can cop a plea. You might wind up a ward of the state. You know what kind of a rotten life that is?”

  Amy lied to the two interviewers. When it was over, the woman, a Mrs. Dury, told Amy that they were always there for her, and she could call a hotline number day or night.

  Amy didn’t tell Carter she was spending all that time with me. I understood. Fathers don’t like boys hanging around their daughters all the time.

  “Aren’t you worried that your mom’ll get mad at you again? That she’ll hurt you?”

  “That won’t happen. After that other time Carter grabbed this gun of his and stuck it into Ginette’s mouth. ‘Bitch,’ he goes, ‘you hurt that girl just once more, the dogs’ll have your brains for supper.’ Ginette looked seriously scared.”

  That was like out of a movie. “You saw Carter put a gun in Ginette’s mouth?”

  “With my own two eyes.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live in a house where things like that could happen. Now I understood better why she wanted to leave him as well.

  “What if she gets drunk again?”

  “She’s not drinking. Just smoking dope. That makes her mellow.”

  One Friday morning on the steps at school, Amy said, “Carter got himself a Sunday job, cleaning boats up at Sag Harbor. He wants to save money for Florida. Want to hang with me Sunday?”

  On Sunday morning the sky was blue and we roamed the beach. A few other people were out strolling and jogging, and on a day like that everyone smiles and says, “Good morning.” We walked from Main Beach past Georgica Cove to Wainscott, through those long stretches of sand that from June through September are full of striped umbrellas and kids yelling and surfboards splashing, and now it was quiet and you felt it all belonged to you and a few privileged others.

  Amy glided, and sometimes she bounced, and I always had a hard time keeping up with her. We walked out the rock jetty west of Georgica Beach, where the surf burst all around us. It was noisy but I didn’t care — I decided this was the time.

  “I promised to help you,” I said. “And I’ve worked out a plan.”

  “What is it?”

  “You still want to leave home?”

  “Definitely.”

  “This is it,” I said. “You could live in our house. There are plenty of extra rooms up on the third floor. You’d be snug as a bug in a rug. We’d be like brother and sister.”

  Her eyes rolled in their sockets and she said, “Billy, are you crazy?”

  “Why is that crazy? It’s unusual, that’s true. But why is it crazy?”

  “If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”

  “That’s so dumb.”

  Her brows knitted in anger and she strode off the rocks. “Don’t ever call me dumb.”

  I ran after her. “I didn’t call you dumb, Amy. You’re not dumb. You’re smart and you’re clever. What you said was dumb, that’s all. See the difference? And why is what I said crazy?”

  “Billy, you can’t do things like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “For starters, Carter wouldn’t let it happen. No fucking way.”

  “That’s my point. We’d back him into a corner. I’ve looked all this up online and I know the law. Ginette stabbed you, and Carter waves a gun around when you’re there. If a minor child is abused by her parents, he or she has the right to leave and seek independence and be brought up and educated elsewhere. That’s the law.” I saw the look on Amy’s face when twice I used the words the law, so I raised one hand to head her off. “I’m not saying you’d ever have to get as far as social services and a court ruling. You would just tell Carter and Ginette that you were leaving, and if he yelled and said no, you’d threaten to bring charges and make a court case out of it. What can he do? He won’t dare to go that far. He’ll give in. It will take a little time, and you’ll have to be strong, but it will happen. My dad would help you if you want. He’s very persuasive.”

  Her eyes grew dark and hard. “Did you tell him what I told you, Billy?”

  “Not a word, I swear. But if I ask him, I know he’ll help. He helps convicted murderers. Why shouldn’t he help you, too? You didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I’ve never even met him,�
�� she said.

  “You will. And you’ll meet my mom, too. They’re terrific people.”

  “Billy, it’s still crazy. It won’t work. You don’t know Carter. And your parents will laugh at you. Don’t you get it?”

  “No, I don’t. Everyone laughs at new ideas. This is a new idea. Without new ideas, there’s no progress. This is a step forward. This is your saying you want to be free and that you have the right. It takes getting used to, that’s all.” She kept shaking her head. “If you had no place to go,” I said, “it wouldn’t work. But you do. You see? You will, anyway, as soon as I settle all that with my mom and dad.”

  She looked weary, and she said, “Do you want to do something for me now?”

  “You know I do.”

  “How about finding me some food? I’m hungry.”

  We’d been walking for a long time. I said, “We’ll go to my house.”

  “What if your parents are home?”

  “Then you’ll meet them. That’s got to happen. And why not now?”

  “I look a mess.”

  When I started to laugh, Amy asked me what was so funny. I told her that she’d sounded just like my mom.

  So we walked back to Oak Lane and walked in the front door, which wasn’t locked. It was Inez’s day off and the house was silent. My dad, I remembered, my dad was playing in the quarter-finals of an indoor doubles tournament in Quogue. Amy and I slouched in the kitchen, where I was whipping up the eggs for a mushroom and cheddar cheese omelette, and toasting some croissants in the oven, when my mom strolled in, humming a happy tune. She had her tortoise-shell reading glasses hanging from a gold chain around her neck, and she was wearing rust-colored jeans and a brown cashmere sweater and red running shoes, and had a pen behind her ear, so I knew she’d been working in the pool cabana. She stopped short, her sneakers squeaking on the Mexican tiles.

  “I didn’t hear anyone come in,” she said.

  I jumped up, kissed her, and then said, “Mom, this is my friend Amy Bedford.”

  A funny look crossed my mom’s face. Then I remembered that all she knew about Amy was that she’d been stabbed in the shoulder by an idiot brother, that I’d visited her in the hospital without asking permission, and that her father and his two berserk dogs had wrecked our living room. I also remembered that her last words to me on the subject had been: “Please have nothing to do with this man or his daughter anymore.” I’d forgotten that. Well, I’m no different from anyone else; I most easily forget what I don’t like to remember.

  But my mom was polite and friendly, and Amy was even more polite and kept her mouth shut most of the time. My mom’s eyes raked Amy from head to toe. Amy sat with her toes turned inward. Under her windbreaker she usually wore a sweater and old blue jeans, but that day she had on a purple blouse, pink stretch pants, and — I noticed this for the first time there in the kitchen — white shark earrings. Her nails were painted a bright pink to match her pants. I could tell my mom didn’t appreciate the style of the outfit, and I saw her sniff.

  “You want some omelette, Mom?”

  “That would be nice. Smells good.”

  So she joined us, and she asked a lot of questions to Amy about her family. Amy’s answers were always as short and as dull as the questions. Adults tend to talk to kids like they’re sub-humans, never like people. That’s why they usually get such gloopy answers.

  “And do you like middle school, Amy?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “And do you like your teacher?”

  “Hairy Mary? She’s okay.”

  “Is that what the children call Mrs. Ostrow?”

  “Some do,” Amy said. “I don’t. I shouldn’t have. She has hair growing on her nose, but she can’t help that.” She turned her head in the general direction of the school, cupped her hand around her mouth and called: “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ostrow.”

  My mom smiled. “Do you have an ambition, Amy?”

  I couldn’t stand it. “Mom, what are you, from the Gestapo?”

  “Billy, it was a well-meant question.”

  Amy ignored my objection and said, “I want to be a homemaker. And a bull rider.”

  My mom looked confused and amused at the same time. No doubt I looked that way, too. Amy had never mentioned these ambitions to me.

  “I saw it on TV,” she said. “They had this rodeo, where this girl rode the bull. She was good at it and it looked fun. So I guess I’d have to live on, like, a ranch out west, where they had horses. And bulls. And that would be my home. You see what I’m saying?”

  With lunch finished, Amy got up, cleared the table, and ran the hot water.

  “Amy, we have a dishwasher,” my mom said. “Just leave them.”

  “I don’t mind,” Amy said. She began to scrub the plates.

  “Please don’t trouble yourself,” my mom said, and her tone changed, not much, but you could hear it: like she’d downshifted from Drive to Second. “We prefer them done in the dishwasher. Just leave them.”

  “Whatever you say, Mrs. Braverman.”

  Amy put the dishes and the silverware back in the sink. The cutlery clattered on the plates, and my mom winced.

  After lunch my mom threw Amy another false smile and me another kiss, said, “Thanks for the yummy lunch,” and went back out to her office by the pool.

  “Let’s go up to my room,” I said. “I’ve got a terrific new drawing program I’ll show you. You can use it.”

  Amy stuck her nose right up against the computer screen. Her fingers flew around the keys. After a while she said, “Billy, I’ve got a headache. Can I lie down?”

  She curled up on my bed and fell asleep in about one minute. I put my favorite old blue cotton blanket on top of her. I read some more of my book and then I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The door, which wasn’t closed all the way, swung open, and there was my dad, wearing a blue headband and white wristbands, a tennis racket under one arm.

  “Billy —”

  I put a finger to my lips and pointed at the bed. He saw the white face and the coppery hair swirled on the pillow. He was holding some tennis balls and he dropped them on the carpet. While they were silently bouncing, he looked at me. Then he looked back at Amy, and then at me again. I pulled him into the hallway outside the room.

  “Is that anyone I know, Billy?”

  “Amy Bedford, Dad.”

  “She bring her father’s dogs?”

  “They’re playing in Mom’s walk-in closet.”

  He squeezed my arm. He looked back at Amy; he could still see her through the door, sleeping. I could tell there were a lot of thoughts running through his mind, and a lot he wanted to tell me, and even more he wanted to ask. But he didn’t, he just pinned me a searching look, as if he was seeing something in me he hadn’t seen before, and then he patted me on the head, and walked off down the hall toward his bedroom.

  Later when Amy woke up she found one of the tennis balls. She sat cross-legged on the floor, threw the ball in the air, clapped her hands three times, then caught it. She did that about fifty times in a row. When she finished, I applauded.

  In the late afternoon I walked her into the village so that she could catch the bus down the Montauk Highway and then out Springs Fireplace Road.

  “You can forget about that crazy idea, Billy. Your mother doesn’t even like me.”

  I didn’t know how to counter that, because I’d seen that it was true. I let it go.

  The next Sunday was cold and cloudy; after we met in town we decided not to walk on the beach. I brought Amy back to our house. My mom was in town at her pilates class. Jack was playing in the semi-finals of the tournament in Quogue. Simon was out; you could count on that. I took Amy upstairs and this time I showed her how to boot up and go online and do a search in Yahoo! We looked up everything there was about lobsters, and I printed it out for her.

  I cooked lunch again; I was trying to get her used to eating here, trying to make her feel that she was at home. My dad, in stained g
ray sweats, put his head in the kitchen at one point. I was cooking cheese blintzes and I’d churned up a huge purple fruit smoothie with apple, banana, blueberries, and grapefruit juice.

  I asked my dad if he wanted to join us and have some and he looked at me in the same puzzled way as the week before, and then he said thanks, but he needed to shower, and he was trying to keep to two meals a day. “But you two kids enjoy yourselves. I’m very glad to have met you, Amy, even so briefly.”

  When he was gone she said, “Well, at least your dad likes me.”

  “Of course he does. But how do you know?”

  “Men always like me,” she said.

  The next evening I heard a shriek from my mom’s bedroom. I hurried in, expecting a dump from Iphigenia in the walk-in clothes closet. What my mom had found, however, was her missing Queensland opal and diamond bracelet. She stared up at me from where she sat cross-legged on the carpet, the bracelet dangling from her fingers, and said, “Oh, Billy, look. I feel awful.”

  She’d taken the bracelet on a business trip to Atlanta, and left it for two whole months in the zippered side pouch of her leather overnight bag. “I was sure that your girlfriend’s father had stolen it that night he broke in with his dogs. I didn’t report it to the police because I thought you’d be too upset…”

  “Did Dad find his yellow silk scarf?”

  “No, but now I suspect it’ll turn up.”

  “You don’t like Amy, do you, Mom?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  When you ask a question that people don’t want to answer, they always ask you a question back, so they can have time to figure out how to wriggle out of the first one.

  “Amy felt it,” I said.

  “Billy, it’s not a matter of like or dislike.”

  “Then what is it a matter of, Mom?”

  “She’s very pretty. Glorious white skin. And I’m sure she has a sweet side to her.”

  “So what is it that you don’t like about her?”

  My mom sighed. “My answer will upset you, darling.”

  “I can take it,” I said, although I wasn’t so sure.

  “I think she needs a bath,” Diana said, “or a lesson in feminine hygiene. I don’t like the way she dresses. And I find her a little coarse.”