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

by Clifford Irving

  One May afternoon, some fishermen stood on the banks of Three Mile Harbor Road and took a bunch of alewives in their nets. Most of the shoal slipped through, however, but the ospreys were waiting for them.

  I was there on Three Mile Harbor Road, watching, when a horn honked. I turned, and my eyes locked with those of Carter Bedford, my private osprey, grinning at me from behind the wheel of his Toyota pickup. He kept raising his ginger-colored eyebrows, like he was trying to signal.

  “Billy! Come on over here.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Come on, Billy, I’m not gonna do you no harm.”

  I shook my head. No way, Carter.

  “Jesus. All right. Daisy, stay.”

  How did he find me? It might have been coincidence, or he might have trailed me from school: up Three Mile Harbor Road past the marinas and the dockside restaurants all the way to the narrow end of the road. Daisy stayed in the cab while Carter jumped down from the truck and with deep purpose strode across the road toward me. I wasn’t afraid that he would do anything to me, because the fishermen were close by, casting their nets for the silvery alewives, But I couldn’t forget what had happened the last time we’d met, and he’d pulled out his Airweight. I was ready to run.

  When he got near I noticed something else: he was wearing a khaki shirt and, around his neck, aviator fashion, he sported a yellow polka-dotted silk scarf. My dad hadn’t misplaced it.

  “Nice scarf,” I said, when Carter came up to me on the road, where I straddled my bike.

  “Yeah, ain’t it? It was my Christmas present to myself. Bought it at that fancy men’s clothing store on Newtown Lane.”

  I realized that he’d lie even when he knew that I knew he was lying. Or else he’d come to believe the lie was the truth, which is what they say happened with O.J. Simpson.

  “I want to talk to you,” Carter said.

  “No one’s stopping you.”

  “Not out here in the street. Somewhere private.”

  “Forget it, Carter.”

  “Lighten up, Billy. I’ll run you down to the beach. Throw your bike in the back of my truck. I’ll put Daisy back there, too. What are you scared of? You don’t trust me?”

  I laughed at him.

  “Ooooh… you’re really pissed off.” Carter wagged his head up and down. “But you gotta see things from my point of view. My little girl runs off, I’m crazy with worry, I don’t know where she is. And then I think, well, maybe, who knows, maybe she’s at Billy’s place. I go to Oak Lane, I see her footsteps in the snow on the porch. And that dumb Puerto Rican maid keeps tellin’ me, ‘Go way, she’s not here, I’m gonna call the cops.’ I’m her father. Imagine how I felt.”

  I knew half of it was lies. Amy had squeezed through the hedges, and her footsteps hadn’t been on the porch, and Inez had never told him Amy wasn’t there. But all that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Carter was a madman.

  “Look, Billy, maybe I go overboard sometimes. I say things I shouldn’t. Nobody’s perfect. Shit happens.”

  “Like Ginette stabs Amy with a knife?”— I said it before I could stop myself. “And you tell everyone Jimmy did it?”

  He wasn’t angry. Not even surprised.

  “Billy, I have to live with that every day. Think about it — what am I supposed to do? I can’t kick Ginette out into the cold, can I? Let the law deal with her? She wouldn’t survive. Worse’n that, they could take Amy from me. They’d say, ‘Bedford, you got a job pays a lousy eight bucks an hour, no medical benefits, how can you handle all those kids by yourself?’ They could say, ‘This here one’s got a screw loose and needs medication, and we’ll turn the other two into wards of the state, shove ‘em into these homes that are like prisons.’ That happened to me when I was a kid. You think I want my kids to go through that hell, too? Put yourself in my shoes.”

  I tried to do that. It gave me a feeling of hopelessness. No, I wouldn’t want to be Carter Bedford.

  I took my foot off the bike pedal. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  “About Amy. What did you think?”

  He had me. He had swung his net in the right direction and I was caught. How could I back off?

  “What about her?”

  “Not here. We’ll go down to the beach. I give you my word, nothing will happen to you.”

  I wheeled my bike over to the truck, picked it up and slung it in the back along with my book bag from school. While I was doing that he hauled Daisy out of the cab and led her round to the back of the truck on the other side. She was too fat to jump so he had to pick her up in his arms and dump her on top of some old tarpaulins. He did that easily; he was strong. “There, girl,” he muttered. “Don’t you fall out.”

  I got in the cab. The smells of dog and fish still filled the air, but now I could roll down the window. Carter turned the key and we drove back along Three Mile Harbor Road.

  “So how you been, Billy? Whatchoo been doin’?”

  I hadn’t seen him since my birthday in December, and now it was May. I’d seen Amy, of course, every day in class at the middle school, but we exchanged hardly a word since that January morning on Oak Lane when my dad had kicked her out and forbidden me to see her.

  My wrist had mended, and my nose when it healed didn’t look any different. I’d read a lot that winter: I read Bullfinch’s Mythology, Benjamin Franklin, Machiavelli, most of Mark Twain, and books of philosophy by Plato, Lao-Tsu, and Jean-Paul Sartre that were hard to understand but I plowed through them because I sensed that they were wise and I wanted that to rub off on me. I read Le Petit Prince in French and Cien Años de Solitud in Spanish. I climbed on the indoor wall at the high school with Duwayne Williams. I got fan mail from kids all over the country asking me about my life and what was my monkey’s name, and I wrote back to every one of them. I watched my mutual funds fly off the charts. When residual payments came in from the commercials, I put them into the fund. I looked into a few books about the stock market and I decided the best thing was to be in a bull market and to be lucky.

  I missed Amy. It didn’t help that I saw her in school. It made it worse, because she was there in front of my eyes, but she might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.

  My mom said, “Would you talk to Aunt Grace? Or some professional person whom Aunt Grace might recommend?”

  What could I talk about? They’d just tell me to get involved in other things and to get over it. I was doing that. I was trying. So I said, “No, thanks, Mom. I’m okay.”

  The really good thing that happened was that in March my legs started to hurt. That lasted about a week. At the end of the week, when I measured myself, I’d grown half an inch. I was closing in on four and a half feet.

  “Hey, by the way,” Carter said, when we reached Main Street, “I forgot to tell you that I watched the Super Bowl. I saw you and the chimp. You were terrific.”

  “She’s not a chimp, Carter.”

  “And then I saw you again on Friends. I heard you were on some billboards. So, if you don’t mind my asking, how much money did you make out of all that?”

  No one was ever bold or brazen enough to ask that question except Carter.

  “A lot,” I said.

  We went down Lily Pond Lane, and rattled in the pickup past the parking lot for Georgica Beach.

  I turned my head. “Hey, isn’t this where we’re going?”

  “Farther down is prettier. I like those dunes off West End Road. And the jetty.”

  West End Road was the narrow private road that ran along the beach on one side and Georgica Cove on the other, where all the houses were called cottages even if they had twenty rooms and a clay tennis court. It dead-ended in the dunes and if you tramped westward you came to Wainscott Pond and then Sagaponack.

  “So how much is a lot?” Carter said. “More than a hundred thousand? I got a friend knows about TV commercials and he says that’s the least you should have made. Yes or no?”

  “I got that much,�
� I said.

  “Sure you did. I asked if they paid you more.”

  “Is it so important for you to know?”

  “Yes.”

  There was an eloquence to that one bare word that went beyond any long-winded explanation he could have given me as to why it was important to him.

  “I made more,” I said.

  “I thought so. This guy says, for the Super Bowl alone, you would have picked up a quarter of a mil. Is that a good ballpark figure?”

  “Carter, how are we going to get onto the beach? These are all private roads.”

  “Leave it to me, Billy boy.”

  “And what about Amy? You said you wanted to talk about Amy.”

  “And I will. But first I need to know the answer to that question. And then to one more. And then, Scout’s honor, we’ll get to Amy.”

  “Scout’s honor?” I laughed at him. “You were never a Boy Scout.”

  “Hell I wasn’t. Buffalo Patrol, Troop 592 in Montauk. ‘Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.’ Pretty good, huh? Never made Eagle Scout but came darn close. I told you I was a foundling, I never told you where I got dumped. Was on the steps of a church out there, never mind which. Minister’s wife found me, seven a.m. on a winter morning could of froze your nuts off. Her name was Betsy. My so-called dad, the minister, that was Bob Buck. Bob and Betsy, the all-American couple. Had three other kids, three girls. Bob always wanted a boy, and I came along on the doorstep to make his dream come true. He was the one made me join the Boy Scouts. He coached Little League, so I had to play shortstop for him. He wanted me to be the home run king of Suffolk County but I was only a base-stealer. He’s dead now. A real prick. The only person I hated more than him was Betsy. That bitch is alive somewhere but I don’t know where and I could care less.”

  Taking his eyes off the road, Carter swiveled his head to me. “You know, I never told how I hated them to a living soul, except Ginette, not until now. You suck the secrets right out of me, Billy. You’re real special in my life, and you don’t know why, but I’m gonna tell you. Carter Bedford’s a name I picked for myself when I was sixteen and finally had the guts to get the hell out. I hated my name. Bob Buck Jr. I was. Fuckybucky, the kids called me. I picked Bedford because, I told you this, I know my real parents came from England. How do I know that? My blood talks to me.”

  “Carter, watch out —”

  He had almost swerved off Springs Fireplace Road last December, but this time the road was narrower, barely more than a single lane, and he’d made a longer speech. This time the wheels of the Toyota bounced off the macadam into the sand and the dune grass, and the truck slid to a sudden halt on West End Road. Both Carter I were thrown forward, but he wasn’t going fast so I was able to brace myself against the dashboard, and he had the wheel to grip.

  He gunned the engine, he spun the wheel, he jerked the truck into reverse, then first gear, then reverse again. No traction, just flying sand. We were well and truly stuck.

  “Oh, shit on a popsicle,” he said. “Why me?”

  Because you’re an asshole, I thought, and you don’t look where you’re going.

  He jumped out. So did I. Here we go again. I remembered that night coming back from Southampton Hospital.

  “Could have been worse,” he said. “Let’s get out on the beach and breathe some fresh air and when we come back I’ll figure out what to do. Knock on one of these doors. Get the butler and the chauffeur to come out and push, or they can tow me out with the Rolls. Sound good to you, Billy?”

  It was quiet on West End Road and the wind blew softly through the dunes. You couldn’t see much of the houses because they had leafy trees and gates and the land sloped up to a long berm between the road and the beach.

  Daisy whined.

  “No, bitch, you stay here,” Carter said, “so’s if anyone comes by, they’ll know this is no abandoned vehicle.”

  “Carter, how will we get to the beach?”

  “Watch.”

  He took my elbow and guided me down the road and up a driveway that passed by a cottage with what looked like a four-car garage. The people were at home because a dark blue Lincoln Navigator SUV and a shiny red Ford truck sat out in the driveway, half in shadow, half in sunlight. Carter just walked right by the Ford and around the side of the house, through its shadow, and up over the raw saw grass dunes where you weren’t supposed to go because the roots of the grass were so fragile, out onto the late afternoon light of the beach. I followed. It was a broad beach stretching for miles in both directions. Far away I could see a few people walking.

  “I got a genius for navigation. Must be my English blood.”

  We headed westward toward the jetty. A dead fish lay in the sand, green and bloated.

  “So, Billy, you didn’t answer my last question. I asked you if a quarter of a mil was a good ballpark figure for the Super Bowl.”

  He never gave up. Neither would I.

  “Carter, I don’t want to talk about that. You said you had something to tell me about Amy.”

  He snorted and swallowed it. “What is it with people? You push the right button, they’ll tell you all their secret stuff — they dye their hair, they beat their wife, they shoot dope, they got put in jail for whatever — but you ask them about their goddam money and they clam up like that’s the one thing in the world is super-private. The big no-no. Like, if you know how much they got, oooh, they gotta watch out for you. Don’t sweat it, Billy. If I ever asked you for money it would only mean it was because you owed it to me, like with the speeding ticket you never paid me for. I just asked you a simple question. You want to get tight-assed and go, ‘No, Carter, my goodness, I can’t let you know how much I got paid for that Super Bowl commercial, because that’s a secret I’m taking with me to the grave,’ I’ll say, ‘Okay, whatever melts your butter.’ I won’t respect it, but I’ll live with it.”

  We were approaching the jetty, and beyond it the dark blue Atlantic was churned by the wind. Carter had a way of battering me until I just didn’t care anymore.

  “It’s a good ballpark figure,” I said.

  “I figured that. And this is really the key. Do you control that money?”

  “Some of it,” I said, not wanting to hear another diatribe.

  “That’s smart. The rest of it comes to you when you’re twenty-one and you know better how to handle it – right?”

  “Right.”

  “There. Was that so tough? You enlightened me, and I’m grateful. You got anything you want to ask me?” He grinned, and sunlight ricocheted off his false teeth.

  We began to walk out the Georgica jetty into the roiling ocean. I halted, planting my heels into the wet dirt between the rocks. “What is it that you have to tell me about Amy? I’m not taking one step more until you tell me.”

  “A lot,” Carter said, “but let’s just start with this. She really misses you.”

  My heart fluttered like a fan.

  “She does? Really?”

  “Damn straight she does. She really likes you, Billy.”

  “But she won’t talk to me anymore. Do you know what happened?”

  “Jacob Braverman kicked her out of his house.”

  I nodded gloomily.

  “She was hurt, but she don’t blame you for that. In fact, I think she loves you.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t know what he meant. You loved your parents, your parents loved you. That other love was for people like my Uncle Bernie and Ginger. But not for me, not yet.

  The muscles around Carter’s eyes seemed to tighten. “Do you love her, too, Billy?”

  I couldn’t stand the man. I didn’t want to let him into my feelings. But he was the person in the world who was closest to her. He was the way back.

  “I like her a lot,” I said. “She was my best friend.”

  “Oh, she still is. She’s at least that.”

  “Well, if she doesn’t blam
e me for what my dad did, and she likes me, then why won’t she talk to me?”

  “Ah, well. She’s a woman,” Carter said. “No, excuse me, not quite a woman. A girl. Any case, a female. They go through these things. They’re tied to phases of the moon. Half the time they don’t know what the hell they want to do. And besides, I told her she couldn’t talk to you or date you. She obeys me.”

  We walked farther out on the jetty, which was really just a bunch of boulders with big flat wet stones piled on top of them. You had to watch your step. You wouldn’t want to be out there in half a gale with a big sea building from the Atlantic.

  “Billy, here’s another question. Pay attention.”

  “I am.”

  “Do you believe that I have a strong influence on Amy?”

  “I know you do.”

  “Right. There was a time, just after your birthday, when I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to see so much of you. I told her that, in no uncertain terms, and she cried. But when her tears dried, she said, ‘All right, Carter. I’ll do what you say, because my mom’s a nut but you’re my dad and you know what’s best for me.’ And that’s her attitude now. Carter knows best.”

  I remembered that time after my birthday. And Amy had said the same thing.

  “Billy, you know why I didn’t think it was a good idea that her and you see so much of each other?”

  “She said that you said I’d be a bad influence.”

  “Well, you and me talked about sex… you remember that, don’t you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Come on, we talked about copping a feel in a movie house, and hitting a triple, and you said you’d never done any of that stuff. And never kissed Amy, except once or twice. And I said, ‘I trust you, Billy, and I believe you.’ You remember?”

  “It was just once, on the cheek.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  I had a hard time looking him in the eye. Now I saw that his eyes glinted like waves with the sun glancing off them. And when I looked at the real waves, and the sky above them, I saw that it was getting steel gray, with wind clouds swooping in from the Atlantic. The beautiful day was gone. A storm was building and headed our way.