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

by Clifford Irving

  From a distance, in class on Monday morning, I kept looking at Amy.

  You’re for rent. The price is ten thousand dollars. And you don’t even know it.

  When Mrs. Ostrow called on me with a question about the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, I said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ostrow… I wasn’t listening.”

  “I know, Billy.”

  Amy turned toward me. When I caught her eye, she started to giggle. She couldn’t stop.

  Mrs. Ostrow’s frown deepened. “What exactly is so funny, Amy?”

  Amy shrugged, and resumed her stony face.

  All day long, in my mind’s eye, I held that image of her giggling. But it didn’t take me all day to work out what was behind it. She knew what had happened at the jetty at Georgica Beach. She just didn’t know what Carter and I had been arguing about.

  It was right then that I saw what I had to do, and I began to plan it.

  Our service drained and refilled the pool, and my mom called a landscape contractor to clean up the lawn on an emergency basis — this was not something that Mr. Papademetriou could handle. From Tallahassee my dad had already called the East Hampton police chief, and on Saturday morning he went to see him.

  That evening, at dinner, my dad said, “The garbage company manager insists that his trucks are locked up in a yard all night long. He also claims they’re emptied in the town dump on the Old Sag Harbor Turnpike every day after the pickups. The police chief says there’s no evidence. So there’s nothing he can do.”

  “Carter used his own pickup,” I said. “And he could have got one of his friends to help him with a second pickup. They went to the town dump in the middle of the night and they loaded up.”

  My dad slowly nodded. “I should have asked the chief if they checked Carter’s pickup for garbage smears.”

  “Carter would have hosed it down,” I explained.

  “I might go have a talk with this man,” my dad said.

  My mom looked alarmed. “Jack, the guy may be a looney-tune, but with the police sniffing round now, he’s not going to dump garbage a second time. Why antagonize him?”

  After dinner, my dad took me outside on the porch. The evening was cool, and you could smell brine from the ocean. We sat on my mom’s favorite antique school bench.

  “What exactly was this proposition that Carter made to you about Amy?”

  I told him.

  “I can hardly believe that, Billy.”

  “There’s a lot I tell you that you don’t believe, like about Tom Egan flying me to Denver and Uncle Bernie not knowing. It’s all true.”

  My dad said, “This man Bedford is despicable.”

  “Are you going to go out there to see him?”

  “I’d like to break his neck. But Mom’s right when she says I’d be asking for trouble.”

  “What about what I just told you?”

  “I’m going to think out loud.” He did that from time to time, so we were used to it and didn’t interrupt. “We could file a complaint to the state under the Child Protective Services Act. They encourage people to do that. I’d go with you, Billy, but anything I say is hearsay. You’re the witness. They bring Carter in. He says, ‘This kid’s making it up. He has a crush on my daughter and she rebuffed him. He’s a violent kid. He threw me in the water at the jetty. He came after me and hit me on the head with a rock.’ Billy, we could have the juvenile authorities out here.”

  “Dad, you almost always have a reason why not to do something.”

  His eyes shifted back and forth, like he was watching a tennis match. “Lawyers are often accused of that. We try to keep people from going out on a limb. Especially where the limb might break off.”

  “Climbers aren’t blind,” I said. “They can see which limbs might break.”

  He reached out to hug me. I didn’t back off the way I backed off when he’d told me I couldn’t go rock-climbing anymore. This time I hugged him back. He was my dad. I knew he loved me, and he wanted the best for me.

  And I knew he’d miss me.

  There were only three more weeks of school. Once the school year ended, unless some drastic changes occurred, I wouldn’t see Amy until September. And by then the Bedfords could be gone to Sayville or to Florida.

  I sent out rays of light and will. I pictured what I wanted to happen. I breathed deep. I shut my eyes and tried two or three different mantras until my mind was pretty much a blank. I stood in tadasana, the mountain pose. I stood in the wu chi position that the Tai Chi masters recommended. I smiled the Inner Smile down into my center, into my core, which is a few inches below the navel, and the seat of power.

  That’s what the books I’d read told you to do.

  Of course there were other books that told you couldn’t do anything, that you were the seeker but not the doer. All events were God’s will, preordained by a higher view of what we mistakenly called time. There was no time. There was just change. All human actions, just like the actions of skunks, trees, hurricanes, comets, were no more and no less than a function of the universe — or even the multiverse — chugging along on the ordained physical path.

  My head spun.

  Sometimes I believed that if there were intelligent life out there in the billion other galaxies, which seemed like a good bet, they would look down on human beings and see us the way we saw ants. We didn’t know one ant from another. We only see ants in the plural. I felt like one of those nameless, featureless ants you see scurrying in the dirt—back and forth, back and forth — doing important ant business.

  People were so certain of what they believed—certain that they believed it, and certain that what they believed was true—and even more certain of what they told you they believed. On the other hand, I wasn’t certain of anything. But I was only twelve years old.

  I wound up saying to myself, “If I have the ability to desire it, the universe has the ability to deliver it. If I point myself in the right direction, and start moving, I’ll get to where I want to be and where I want to be is where I should be. Not in one big leap, but step by step. I don’t care what anyone else has done in the past — I’m the creator of my own experience. I have the power. I allow myself the power.“

  I biked off to school on a sunny morning when the air was heavenly warm and yellow butterflies fluttered along the street like little dancing flames. I biked along, wandering with my bike from one side of the street to the other side. It was too early for traffic. A perfect time of a perfect day that made you glad you were alive.

  In class, Mrs. Ostrow talked about spring, the regeneration of plants and flowers, the life cycle. I looked over at Amy. She was talking to herself.

  Even as I watched, Amy closed her mouth and looked directly at me. She looked into my eyes and I looked into hers. I saw right into the depths of her eyes where a wind blew half a gale out of an ocean with whitecaps like teeth.

  Then the storm clicked off. Amy’s eyes seemed at peace and grave with wonder. She nodded to me — what did that mean? — then turned away.

  She slipped her notebook and pen in her backpack. She got up from her seat. Without a word to Mrs. Ostrow or anyone, she walked out of the classroom.

  Because it was a warm morning, the door was open. Amy walked through it, turned down the corridor, and vanished from sight.

  I got up from my seat, too. Mrs. Ostrow’s eyes, which had followed Amy in a deeply puzzled stare, switched over to me. What’s this? I grabbed my backpack, stuffed everything into it, said, “Sorry about this, Mrs. Ostrow,” and hurried out after Amy. I didn’t think much about it. I just did it.

  I ran down the empty hallway toward the big door that led outside. For a few seconds the light of the day was blinding. Amy was halfway down the steps on her way to Newtown Lane. I caught up with her.

  She turned and said, “Hi, Billy.”

  “You ran out.”

  “You did, too.”

  “I did. After you.”

  “Well, maybe you had to do it. And maybe
I had to do it.”

  “Why, Amy?”

  “Because it’s all so…” She searched for the word, and found it. “So irrelevant.”

  I absorbed that, and then asked, “How’s Carter?”

  “Got a big cut on his ear where you hit him. Ginette told him to go to the hospital and get stitches. He wouldn’t do it”.

  “Where are you going now?”

  “Nowhere in particular. What about you?”

  “With you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to stand here all day on these steps.”

  Once we were walking up Newtown Lane in the direction of the railroad station, I said, “Amy, I have a plan. I’m going to tell it to you. I think it could work. And then everything will be good for you. You’ll have a chance for a good life. Okay?”

  She didn’t nod or say okay. But she didn’t shake her head no, either, and say she didn’t want to hear it. We walked to the end of Newtown Lane and then up Long Lane to Stephen Hands Path, where the forest began, and where the clover and the blue chicory grew in the summer. From time to time a wisp of cloud passed overhead, looking like a small handful of wool.

  When we got to Stephen Hands Path I had finished a detailed outline of my plan.

  Amy looked at me. “That’s a good plan, Billy. Not easy to do, though.”

  “But do you want to do it with me?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Really? I mean, you really, really want to do it?”

  “Really.”

  “It will take me a while to arrange things.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Two or three weeks, I think. Maybe more. Can you wait?”

  “I can wait. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yes you are. Think positive thoughts. You have to connect with the plan. Be there in your mind. The rest of you will follow, Amy. That’s what I learned when I climbed Crab Rock.”

  She took my hand. That was the first time she’d ever done that. I knew she didn’t like to be touched. I’d often wondered about that, and in the end decided I would have to learn to live with it, and that in time it would change, because I liked to hold her hand and it was a friendly thing to do and made me feel good. So hand in hand we walked along Stephen Hands Path and then back to town on Cedar Street to where she could catch her bus to out Springs Fireplace Road.

  Chapter 24

  I didn’t want a record showing up on the monthly phone bill at Oak Lane, so I went out to a public phone booth on Pantigo Road close by the police station and used my Modern Age debit card to make the call. I loved technology; it was one of the few things in this world that didn’t discriminate between adults and kids.

  Uncle Bernie was home in his painting studio. I told him what I needed.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, “that’s a lot to ask of me.”

  “You said you’d do anything. You said you owed me.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I? Jesus Christ. But your mother will kill me if I do this for you.”

  I was silent. I let him stew.

  “For how long, Billy?”

  “Only a few days.”

  “And how big will the check be?”

  “Between eighty and a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Jesus Christ. Billy, do you know what you’re doing?”

  “I hope so.”

  “What do I say if Diana calls me?”

  “She won’t call you until I get there. Then I’ll deal with it.”

  *

  I remembered how much fun my mom and I had choosing Dianaskid and Billysloot as user name and password. I logged into Modern Age and typed them in to see how I was doing.

  Back in January, when the advertising agency had paid me for the Super Bowl commercial, my 25% net of the gross had been $65,287.50. There was a lot more in the trust, but that sixty five thousand and change was the money they’d agreed to let me invest on my own. I’d put it into all the high flying funds to keep company with my original $900 and the extra $700 in cash from my socks. In five months my money had nearly doubled to more than $120,000.

  My mom never looked at the statements anymore; she just asked me, “How are we doing, kiddo?”

  I always said, “Good.”

  I dug out my calculator and began pushing buttons. I figured out that at this rate of increase, if I let the money ride, in two more years I would have almost $2 million, and in five years my investment would reach a cool billion. I had a pang of regret — it would have been fun to watch my paper profit soar steadily up and up and up. I don’t think I wasn’t alone in those thoughts back then.

  So I punched in the numbers and instructed Modern Age to sell us out of the stock funds at the close of business that day, and to deposit all of the proceeds into the money market fund. If I had been allowed to maintain a bank account where I could write checks and withdraw cash I would have transferred the whole sum into that account, but the law didn’t allow kids to handle money without their parents’ approval.

  Three days later, after school let out, I took one of the money market fund checks that my mom had signed and filled it out to Bernard M. Adler for ninety thousand dollars. I biked over to the FedEx office in East Hampton and sent it overnight for delivery by 10:30 a.m. the next morning.

  On the way home I stopped at a drive-in bank on Pantigo Road that had an ATM machine. I put my debit card in the slot, punched in the PIN, and asked for five thousand dollars. The machine grumbled,, and finally came back with its answer: EXCEEDS THE LIMIT.

  I tried twenty five hundred. Still too much. I tried a thousand. No good. This machine was a real miser.

  Finally, after I’d worked my way down to $500, the crummy machine agreed to cooperate. It spat out ten almost-brand-new $50 bills. I slid them into a manila envelope and stuffed the envelope into the deepest, darkest part of my backpack.

  Next stop was the first bank in Amagansett. I got this electronic cheapskate to part with another five hundred in not-so-crisp fifties, and I put them into the manila envelope.

  I biked along to the next bank, the only other one in the village. The ATM wouldn’t work. I went back to the second bank. It wouldn’t work, either. Disgusted, I went inside, told a teller what I’d done, and asked what was the problem. She looked down and smiled at me as if I was a dog who had stood up on its hind legs — they always smile that way at kids who ask questions about money, as if it’s cute but has nothing to do with real life — and explained that ATMs had a daily limit of a thousand dollars per debit or credit card.

  “Would you give me cash against this debit card?”

  “I will when you turn eighteen, young man.”

  Turning eighteen made you worthy of trust. Tell that to the people who ran the prisons. What could I do? Only one thing: go back every day and coax the machines into spitting out two lots of five hundred.

  That worked. And then on the fifth day, on a cloudy afternoon in front of the bank on Main Street Amagansett, just as the ATM gurgled and began regurgitating fifties, someone grabbed my arms from behind. I almost pissed in my pants. Instead, I yelped. I twisted, ready to fight to the death for my money.

  It was Aunt Grace — her office was on a side street only half a block away — her big eyes aglow with the pleasure of surprise. But she let go of me pretty quick when she felt my panic.

  “Billy! Hi, honey! Ooooh, you’re so strong. Wha’d you think, I was a mugger? What are you doing? Where is this huge wad of dinero headed for?”

  I hadn’t expected to be caught. You never do. I couldn’t think of an excuse.

  “Aunt Grace,” I begged, “please don’t tell my mom.”

  “Oh, Billy…” She meant: how can I not tell her?

  “Aunt Grace — please.” I saw my whole plan going up in smoke. And then suddenly her eyes widened.

  “Oh, Billy. Her birthday, right?”

  Diana’s forty-third was coming up in late June. I was a little early, but that was only a detail.

  “I want it to
be a surprise,” I said.

  “But that’s a lot of money you’ve got there. What in heaven’s name are you getting her?”

  “Aunt Grace, please don’t ask me anymore.”

  She didn’t know what to do. So she wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, you’re so cute, I could just eat you up.” It was five o’clock in the afternoon. I could smell alcohol on her breath and heavy-duty perfume in the folds of her neck.

  I was antsy for a while after that, but my mom never said a thing. Maybe Aunt Grace told her, maybe she didn’t. In any case, by then I had $15,000 in fifty-dollar bills sucked from the guts of the ATMs and safely hidden in my sock drawer and old Leggo set.

  Uncle Bernie deposited the $90,000 check. He told me that it made him nervous to have that much cash around the house, so he left it all in the bank and we wrote out an I.O.U. that he put in an envelope. On the envelope he wrote: FOR BILLY BRAVERMAN IN CASE OF THE DEATH OR INCAPACITY OF BERNARD M. ADLER. He gave the envelope to Ginger Casey and she tucked it away in the safe at her law office.

  It was another warm, dark night, and I couldn’t sleep. I got up to open the window wider. A quiet current of fresh salt air wafted in from the ocean and I sucked it deep into my lungs. I couldn’t even hear Iphigenia breathing. I moved closer to her cage and put my nose between two of the bars. She opened one eye to look at me.

  “Sleep,” I whispered.

  Iphigenia shut her eye.

  I felt wide awake, even though it was two o’clock in the morning, so I sat down at my computer to write the letters that I’d been composing in my head for more than a week.

  Dear Mrs. Ostrow:

  Please excuse the fact that Amy Bedford and I are not there in school for the last week of the term.

  I know we are going to miss the final history test. If you would mail us the test and let us take it on the honor system, I would appreciate it. We give you our words of honor that we won’t look at the test before taking it, and we won’t look at books or notes during the test. We could mail the test back to you and you could mark it and figure out a final grade for us.

  We don’t know if we will be back in middle school in September. If we are not back, we’ll be somewhere else in school.