Loot the Moon

by Mark Arsenault

  “Jesus Christ!” Martin screamed. He bolted up. Ash clung to his suit. He tried to wipe away the stain, but his bare hands refused to touch it.

  A few minutes before the opening of the will, Billy met the judge’s brother.

  He was everything Gil Harmony had been, except less.

  Judge Lincoln G. Harmony, six years younger than his brother, sat on the bench of the traffic tribunal, a maligned fiefdom of the judiciary, despised by Rhode Islanders summoned there for motor vehicle violations. Traffic court was the sweatshop of justice, where people waited hours on pine benches under buzzing fluorescent lights in steamy rooms with fake paneling on the walls, before their cases were brusquely called and disposed of with the grace of an assembly-line production.

  “So you work for Martin Smothers?” Lincoln Harmony said. He had a big shock of wavy gray hair, and a sweaty palm. Billy freed himself from their handshake and casually wiped his hand on his pants.

  “I help him out from time to time,” Billy replied.

  Lincoln Harmony wasn’t listening. “Because I never imagined that Martin Smothers earned enough to hire full-time help,” he said. His skin was pink and rough, as if scrubbed by a hard brush. His oily face gleamed wet under the hot lights in the law office. He struck Billy as a small-minded man of immense self-importance. He was accustomed to having his butt kissed by lawyers and clerks and bad drivers, in the small pond of the traffic court.

  “Sorry about your brother,” Billy said, mostly to change the subject.

  Lincoln Harmony waved a hand, as if to shoo some bug from around his head. “Tragic. Senseless. And beyond our power to change. What did the wise one say? ‘The future, present, and the past. Fly on proud bird. You’re free at last.’ That was Confucius, I believe.”

  “I think that was the Charlie Daniels Band.”

  “Oh, whatever, Povich,” he snapped. “The point is, Gil lived high and mighty, and now he’s gone. If there is an afterlife, my brother has finally realized that money can’t buy security, and accolades won’t stop a bullet. He was mortal, like the rest of us. Imagine his shock.”

  He paused, smiled, showed teeth. Billy caught a whiff of alcohol, very faint, like the echo of an odor. Vodka, maybe?

  “Don’t look at me that way, Povich,” he said in a low voice. “I loved my brother. Don’t you think I know what I owe him?” He pointed to himself with a thumb. “I’m on the bench because I’m Gil Harmony’s kid brother. I work four days a week, I got a pension coming my way in a few years that’s worth more than most people will ever see. But I’ve known for a long time that Gil was going to get knocked off Mount Olympus. He’d been up there too long. It’s a shame he had to be knocked so hard.”

  Lincoln Harmony suddenly clapped Billy on the shoulder, as if telling him to buck up! He excused himself and wandered away, clipping his elbow on the door frame on his way out of the conference room. He recovered without a sound, and disappeared around the corner into the receptionist’s hallway, where the world’s slowest elevator made its stops on this floor.

  Billy pulled out a winged leather chair on wheels and sat at the head of a long table that would fit a dozen people, though there were just seven chairs.

  This would have been Gil Harmony’s chair, he figured.

  Though the judge had left the firm when he had been appointed to the bench, the law offices of Harmony & Thybony still carried his name. Billy had expected chandeliers and marble tile in Gil Harmony’s law office, and was surprised by creaky floors and wall-to-wall carpet. This was a utilitarian space, on the mid level of a three-story, brick-faced building, discreetly tucked among the office towers in Providence’s financial district. Between the tall buildings, the sky was a strip of gray. Rain was on the way.

  The conference room windows looked out to an intersection paved in cobblestone. Across the square, a stone sultan hung like a gargoyle above the arched entrance of the Turk’s Head Building. The statue glowered at Billy and made him feel like he was being watched.

  Billy closed one eye and pretended to aim a gun at the squinting stone statue, which had been chiseled nearly a century ago with angry features and a drooping mustache.

  Lincoln Harmony had looked up to his brother all his life. Not that he had a choice.

  When you drive past Respect, how far is Jealousy?

  He turned when he heard the elevator bing. The steel doors crept open. Martin Smothers burst out as though he were shoved. He turned to a woman and a young man in the elevator and blurted, “Claustrophobia! It comes and goes.” They followed him off the car. The woman sighed and pulled off a wide-brimmed safari hat. “I’ll take that,” Martin said, snatching it from her. He looked around for a table or a hat rack, or something, and saw Billy.

  “Povich!” he shouted. He flung the hat, Frisbee style, in Billy’s general direction. It sailed over the table and crashed into a set of Venetian blinds.

  “Povich!” Martin shouted again. “You could have dived for it.”

  “Had this been a playoff game, I would have,” Billy deadpanned. He stared at the woman, who watched him back, expressionless. She was very tall, close to six feet, with dark brown hair, nearly black, wound into a tight bun. Her cheekbones pressed sharply from beneath the skin; her mouth was an arch of red lipstick. Her light eyes hovered over blood-blue dark circles—the stains of stress or tears or insomnia. Her face looked tightened by emotion. Anger maybe? Even in anger, she was stunning. She looked to be chiseled by the same artist who had done the Turk’s Head across the street.

  June Harmony, of course.

  The dark-haired young man at her side was in his early twenties, a few inches shorter than June, with similar bone structure, similar eyes—this was her son, naturally. Billy’s eyes widened at the black slash up the young man’s face—a row of surgical stitches like train tracks that began at the jawbone, climbed past his ear, and disappeared under a baseball cap. The brown remnants of a fading shiner lingered under his eye.

  Judge Harmony’s son, Brock, was still recovering from the car crash that had killed his kidnapper and sent Stu Tracy to intensive care. Brock kept his hands in his pants pockets. He glanced around the office without looking anyone in the eye.

  The woman said to Martin, “Do we wait in here?”

  Martin pressed his hands together, as if praying. “You know your way around this firm. Why don’t you check in with Mr. Thybony, in his office, so he knows we’re here.” He chuckled, sounding nervous. “I’ll get your hat.”

  “Is my bother-in-law here?” she asked crisply.

  They both turned to Billy, who nodded.

  “Don’t let him touch my hat,” she said, and then turned sharply and walked away, deeper into the office. Her feet thumped heavily on the carpet. Brock followed a step behind. He had a limp, as if favoring a gimpy right foot.

  Martin closed the door behind them, then collapsed against it and sighed.

  Billy picked up June Harmony’s hat and flipped it onto the table. “At least you didn’t throw it out the window,” he said.

  Martin pounded his temple with his palms. “Why does that woman make me so goddamn nervous? It’s gotten worse since Gil died.” He paced to the window, looked to the street, frowned, and then yanked the cord for the blinds. They fell with a clang on the sill. “Never take a friend’s widow as a client.”

  “She doesn’t like her bother-in-law,” Billy said. “Why?”

  “Did you meet Lincoln Harmony today?”

  “He’s drunk.”

  “Linc and June never got along. Some old feud there, goes back a long way.”

  “We don’t pick our parents or our in-laws. How’s the judge’s kid?”

  Martin stepped closer, rested one ass cheek on the table, and passed a hand over his scalp. He seemed pained. “Brock is morose. Polite. Wounded. In denial.” He thought a few moments. “Sealed off from the world. Unreachable, at least by me.”

  “I’ll try him.”

  “Gently,” Martin commanded.r />
  “I need to know what he remembers about that night. Something he might have overlooked when he gave his statement to the cops. Or something the cops didn’t bother to include. Physically, he’s getting better. Maybe he’ll remember more details, too.”

  “Be discreet. June didn’t want any more people here than necessary.” He glanced to the door, and then lowered his voice, so Billy could barely hear him. “I told her that you were a clerk for me, to help with the paperwork.”

  Billy leaned close. He was about to needle Martin for lying, but then blurted, “What’s this shit in your beard?”

  Martin looked straight down. “I’m too farsighted. Can’t see a thing from this close …”

  “Some kind of gray dust? Are you flicking cigar ash into your own scruff?”

  “What … ? Oh, Jesus Christ!” Martin yelped. “It’s in my beard!”

  Billy put his hands up. “Whoa! Easy now, Dusty.”

  Martin popped to his feet and ran around the conference table, furiously pretending to comb his fingers through his beard, without actually touching it. “Get it out! Get it out!”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  Martin turned to him. His eyes squeezed shut. “Get it out!”

  What the hell is wrong with him?

  Billy grabbed two handfuls of hair, just below Martin’s chin, and shook furiously. The beard released a cloud of gray dust, and half an empty pistachio shell. “Look at this mess,” Billy marveled. “You ought to do this at least once a year.”

  “Just shake it out!”

  The door flew open. Billy and Martin froze in place, beard in hand, a cloud of dust settling around them.

  “When you gentlemen are ready to begin,” said Mr. Thybony, a wizened white-haired Yankee lawyer, who gave no hint that he was startled by the scene in his conference room, “I believe all the invitees are in attendance.”

  nine

  As an employee of Martin Smothers, and not a party to the ritual opening of the will, Billy sat alone in a corner of the conference room. Fine with him; he could watch everyone at once, though he could feel the stone eyes of the Turk’s Head poking the back of his head through the window.

  People settled into seats, three on each side of the table, and the scene looked like a negotiation was about to break out.

  Martin sat closest to Billy. He picked intently at his beard like a chimp inspecting itself for fleas.

  Next to Martin sat June Harmony. She spun her chair sideways, placed her elbow on the table and her hand in the air with two fingers spread in a narrow V, as if she held a cigarette. She looked like a former smoker who had quit the habit but had unconsciously retained the mannerisms.

  At his mother’s side, Brock Harmony slumped, hands in his lap, eyes glazed, lips parted, and breathing through his mouth. He stared across the table to a blank wall. Occasionally he glanced to the grandfather clock in the corner and gave little sighs that seemed to beg, When will this end?

  Another trio faced them from the other side of the table.

  Lincoln Harmony pushed his chair an arm’s length from the table. He slouched, feet planted far apart, and stared at June. She would not look at him, he refused to look away, and this seemed like some kind of contest.

  Linc Harmony’s lawyer sat next to his client. He was a doughy lump in a chalk line suit. His eyeglasses were as thick as coffee-table glass.

  Next to the lawyer sat a compact woman, midthirties, who had arrived last, and whom Billy had not had the chance to meet. Her name was Kit Bass, according to Martin, and she had been Judge Harmony’s law clerk. As the judge had cut back his trial schedule and eased into semiretirement, Kit had worked with other judges, too, unless Harmony was presiding over a trial. She had worn a simple cotton sundress, and Billy’s gaze lingered on the stripe of freckles across her shoulder, which carried his eye to the cuts of her sharply developed biceps.

  At the far end of the table, Mr. Thybony placed a flat-screen computer monitor to face his guests, with a sleek laptop computer and a single bookshelf speaker. He stood behind the computer screen and silently reviewed his audience.

  “You’ll forgive an old man for indulging himself with a few words,” Thybony said. His voice had that particular hollowness that is caused only by age. “Bertrand Russell told us the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.” He smiled, looked away, gathered himself for a moment. “My friend Gil Harmony was the exception.” He looked at Martin. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Smothers?”

  “You knew him well,” Martin said.

  For the benefit of the rest of the audience, Thybony explained. “I was the fortunate lawyer who replaced Mr. Smothers when he left this firm more than thirty years ago.” He pinched his rubbery nose for a moment and seemed to force back some emotion. “I’m not ashamed to admit that my mentor in this business was a wee bit younger than I am.” The words snagged on his grief, but he got them out. “Gil was stolen from us in a barbaric manner. I would have liked to see his killer come to trial, but the Lord decided that the perpetrator would not face a jury. A pity.”

  Billy looked out the window. He could feel Martin’s eyes on him. They poked harder than the Turk’s Head.

  “Gil didn’t believe that bad people somehow got whichever curse they deserved,” Thybony continued. “For him, there was no justice outside of a courtroom. And though he left this firm years ago for the bench, he maintained an office here, did his research in our library, and prepared lessons for his students on this conference table around which we now gather. Gil traveled back and forth from New York twice a week to teach law because he thought sharing what he knew was an obligation to the next generation of great lawyers.”

  Lincoln Harmony burped a stream of air, and then tapped a fist on his chest. The distraction brought Mr. Thybony back to his duty.

  “Let me now do,” Thybony said, “what Gil had asked of me.”

  He loaded a disc into the laptop, explaining as he worked the computer mouse: “Gil’s formal will is in document form, of course, and I’ve made copies for the attorneys here today. Throughout his life, Gil set up a multitude of charitable trusts, and his will contains several lengthy sections concerning the eternal maintenance of those trusts. What I’m to play for you today is the abbreviated version of the will, the part that concerns the people here in this room.”

  While the program loaded, Billy thought of his father’s will. Did the old man even have one? What would it say?

  To Bo, I leave my collection of World’s Fair memorabilia, and my perfect blue eyes, which you have already received … . To my son, Billy, I leave an Autocrat coffee can with two hundred dollars stuffed inside, all the money I have in the world, plus I leave you my addictive personality, my lack of patience, the childhood scars from my serial philandering, and the eternal mystery of our fucked-up relationship … . I’m outta here, my boy! … Enjoy!

  The computer screen flickered and then lit up with an image of Gil Harmony—square jawed, clean shaven, pure white hair swept across his forehead, wind-scrubbed complexion from sailing the bay, a regal look that reminded Billy of an eagle. He wore an open-collared polo shirt and a light cotton sports jacket.

  “Good day,” said the image, in a baritone sounding slightly robotic in digitized audio. Gil smiled on the screen.

  Martin gasped. People around the table shot glances at each other. June Harmony instinctively grabbed Martin’s arm. Lincoln Harmony muttered, “Self-indulgent son of a …” He seemed to suddenly realize his mouth was broadcasting his inner monologue, and he cut himself off.

  “This is my last will and testament,” the image intoned, “which I covertly rerecord each year with the help of my good friend Ken Thybony, my lawyer, my old partner, my videographer, and the keeper of my secrets.”

  Mr. Thybony responded with a sad smile. He dabbed the corner of his eye with a pinkie.

  “You all recall my annual fishing trip with Ken every June? Well, before
we hunt down the stripers each year, we also make a new video, and then I chuck the old one off the boat.” Gil grinned on the screen.

  Billy and Martin exchanged a glance. This recording was just four months old.

  “Ken is my executor and he’ll enforce my full last will in accordance to the documents, but I wanted to address the people watching this recording in a more personal way.”

  “Seems remarkably upbeat for a dead man,” Lincoln Harmony observed.

  Kit Bass shushed him.

  “Whaaaat?” Linc persisted. His lawyer tapped his hand to shut him the hell up.

  What an asshole, Billy thought. Though he couldn’t argue … Gil Harmony did seem chipper for a corpse. But why not? He was a few minutes from chasing the bluefish on the bay. Saltwater fishing is so deeply carved into the history of Rhode Islanders, the right to use the bay is guaranteed to each resident in the state constitution. How many times had the judge rerecorded this video? Only to have to do it again the next year?

  On the screen, Gil Harmony looked away for a moment, then stared hard into the camera. “To my wife, June, I fear the pain you must be suffering right now.”

  June Harmony lifted her chin toward the image, as if offering a dare. Go ahead. Hit me. I can take it.

  “Please believe me, June, that I didn’t intend for it to happen, all this hurt you’re feeling. Some things are, well, just larger than ourselves. We can’t control them. Marriage isn’t always easy. Everybody knows that. But my love for you has never faded, and I suspect my last conscious thought was of your face.”

  His delivery is off, Billy thought. Sounds more like a pickup line than an eternal good-bye.

  June did not flinch.

  Across the table, Kit Bass, the judge’s clerk, pressed a crumpled tissue to her eye.

  Lincoln Harmony chewed air like a cow with its cud.