“You don’t know how to be a king? You can learn.”
“I don’t know why to be a king.”
“There’s no answer to that, Jason.” She was speaking very gently, holding in her own frustration. “You were born into your family. Your father made his decision and wrote his will. That’s why.”
“It isn’t. It’s no reason I have to accept it.”
“I was hoping we were past that.”
I held out my hand to her, and she took it. “We are,” I said. “Somehow it happened.”
“I will always be with you,” she said.
“But I need a reason to live this life that’s been dropped on me. It won’t work unless I know why I’m doing it.”
“What would a reason look like? What reason did you have before?”
“I’ve never had one. I just can’t ignore it anymore.”
“What reason did your father have?”
It was time. “Melvin was murdered.”
Her mouth dropped. “By who?”
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if an innocent person’s first thought would be about the victim or the killer.
But she was shaking. It was all too much. I had my arms around her, and one of us was sobbing, or maybe both of us. I wanted so much to get out of it, to go back, but I couldn’t.
Instead I was compelled to fight back. And through the night, I slowly realized how strong that compulsion was.
8
Wednesday morning at nine o’clock I sat in Fred Spellman’s smoke-free office planning the destruction of the governor. Not everyone in the room was in agreement.
“Jason. There is no cause for reckless behavior.” Fred’s glare was withering. Too bad he was a minority of one.
“He started this war.”
“He did not . . . this is not a war. I told you this is simply a negotiation.”
I was a majority of one. “I’m not interested in negotiating. I want to take him down.”
He leaned back in his chair, and I could feel the whole building lean with him. He shifted the glare from wither to pierce. “All right, then. First. Do you even have any idea how to overthrow a powerful politician entrenched in office?”
“No.”
“Second. Have you thought through the consequences? Who do you expect to take his place? What if a prolonged fight shuts down your state contracts? What about Senator Forrester?” He leaned forward a little. “And what if you lose?” Then back again. “Those are just a few questions, and I could list more. You’ll be letting a bull loose in a china shop. An angry bull.”
“We’ll deal with whatever happens.”
“We will?” He moved forward, his wide, angry face jutting toward me. “We will? You have no idea what forces would be unleashed.”
“Then I’ll find out.”
His eyes went cold. “Third. Why? This is not necessary. We can make a deal. That’s what he wants.”
“I said I’m not interested.”
“You should be.”
“I don’t want a deal.”
“You’ve only been in this position less than a week. You are not ready to make a decision like this.”
I stood up from the armchair and looked down on him. There was some point over his desk where our glares met, and it must have been pretty hot there.
“First,” I said. “I’m not going to be weak. He started it. Let everyone see what happens if they cross me, and no one else will. Second. He’s messing with me and my family.”
“This is politics, Jason,” Fred snapped. “If you’re going to get your poor little feelings hurt, you have no right to attempt anything this serious.”
“I’ve got five rights, Fred—B, O, Y, E, and R. And a billion more, too. You’re the one who told me I had no choice, that I had to take Melvin’s place. Well, I am, my own way. Bright might think that threatening me with a murder investigation is just a friendly game, but I don’t take it that way.”
“I’m sure he would settle for a deal. A different division of construction profits, your pledge to continue to support him. Clinton Grainger would know exactly what he would accept.”
“That would be a surrender.”
“It would be a deal.”
“Until he tries the next thing. If a man has a gun and he’s trying to kill you, and you’re locked in a room with him, you can either dodge bullets forever or kill him first.”
“No. You can deal. There is always a deal.”
“I don’t trust him.”
Fred rolled his eyes. “What do you care about trust? Do you expect to meet anyone at this level you can trust? No, we make the deal but tighten the screws everywhere else. We arrange a nice public meeting between you and Senator Forrester. The next time the state awards a major contract to a competitor, we make sure they have enough labor problems to be an embarrassment. That’s how your father operated.”
“And he was murdered.”
“Perhaps. I don’t think you are contributing to your own longevity. More likely the opposite.”
Was that a threat? “Here’s my third reason,” I said, sitting back into the deep chair. “I want the investigation stopped.”
“Why? Do you know who killed him?”
“No.” Second time in less than twelve hours I’d been asked that.
“If you struck a deal, the investigators would be instructed to leave you alone.” He shook his head. “Just days ago you wanted nothing to do with any of this. You were going to be rid of the money and power. Now you can’t wield it fast enough.”
“I’m still going to be rid of it. But I’m going to take care of this first.”
We were both somewhat exhausted, and we took a short break to breathe and think. Fred studied me. “Do you want to know who killed your father?”
“He’s dead. It doesn’t matter how.” I couldn’t imagine knowing. I didn’t want to know. “If he really was murdered.”
“Do you think he wasn’t?” Fred asked.
“Of course he was. An accident would have been too trite.”
He nodded. “All right. Let me think about all of this.”
“I’ll be back this evening,” I said. “I have a lot to do today, and I don’t want to waste time.”
And now it was time for the hard part. I pointed the car toward home and dialed a number.
Eric answered right away.
“Jason! What’s up?” I could hardly hear him, there was so much noise. The phone in his helmet was pretty poor considering how much it had cost him.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Uh . . . I don’t know. I’ll see a sign in a minute.”
“Come to my house—we need to talk.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“No problem. See you in a while.”
In contrast, I did have problems. I drove past a police car parked beside the road, clocking the traffic. By reflex I checked my speed, the universal guilty reaction of any driver. Could that radar pick up other crimes? Corruption, bribery, extortion? Blackmail? Breaking my own resolve to not be Melvin? I slowed down because I was cautious, not because I was law abiding.
I had lunch with Katie in the back garden. She hadn’t been down for breakfast, and it was the first I’d seen her. She had questions about Melvin and the police, but I put her off.
“Let’s wait for Eric.”
He must have been far away, because two hours later he had still not appeared. I was in my office reading papers Pamela had sent me, educating myself about my possessions. The new monitor had a bigger screen than the old one and there was no sign of the gouge in the wall. I’d have to give Katie a raise. It must have been hard getting people here that quickly.
It was three thirty, and I was on the phone with Stanley Morton discussing how to manage general publicity concerning my family concerns, when the little brother part of my family finally showed up. There was a roar in the driveway and two minutes later he was standing in the o
ffice doorway, head to toe in motorcycle leather, his helmet under his arm.
“Did you have lunch?” I asked.
Tough question. He wrinkled his forehead, thinking. “No. I came straight here when you called.”
“You want something, or just wait for supper?”
“I’ll eat.”
I found Katie and Rosita and put in an order. Then I led everyone in the world I was related to by blood out to the garden.
It was warm, the tricky heat of October. Eric shed his leather. Underneath he was dressed half decent for once, in jeans and a dark blue turtleneck.
For a while we just sat on a bench, surrounded by chrysanthemums. Most of the annuals were failing, massacred by an early frost. We were surrounded by casual death. I thought about the past spring, when the flowers had been planted, and now most of them were gone. The first color was showing in the leaves.
Eric was the image of blissful ignorance. I was tired of wearing suits and formality and maturity and what was happening to me.
“Have you been looking at your mail lately?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Those letters with little windows in front that you see your name through.”
“Huh? . . . Oh. Jason, it’s no problem. I’ll get everything paid off now.”
“Do you even know how much you owe?”
Talk about a sheepish look. “Not that much.” Baa, baa. It was good for him there was no spaghetti close by.
“Does a hundred eighty thousand sound familiar?”
He was alarmed. “No way. No.”
“What have you been spending it on?” He didn’t live that richly. His apartment was expensive, but it was just that and his cars. Certainly not clothes.
“I don’t know.” He looked at the heap beside him. “The leathers were three thousand, I think.”
“And that doesn’t include any sharks that don’t report to credit agencies.”
“None of those, Jason. I did a couple times back in college. Now I’ve got credit cards.”
“Rule number 83—don’t take money from anybody who doesn’t own a building in Manhattan. Rule number 84—until you’ve got the cash under control, don’t buy anything with a price more than three digits. Rule 85—don’t be stupid, Eric.”
He grinned. “The first one’s easy, the second one maybe. Eighty-five would really cramp my lifestyle.”
“So would breaking it. Things are different now.”
“I don’t get it. I mean, the difference is we’ve got a lot more money.”
“You don’t know how big a difference that is.”
“You’re getting way too tense, Jason.” He was sitting next to me. He put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed, just being a friend, a brother. “Come on. It’s okay.”
For five seconds I almost broke open. I had always taken care of him, through school and life, and now I needed someone to take care of me. I wanted to tell him what my life had become, and what I hated about it. I wanted to tell one person about how I didn’t know what I was doing and I was afraid, and I wanted someone to tell me why I was here. Just tell me why.
The man who could have told me wasn’t there. We’d buried him a week ago.
There was sound from the path behind us. I turned, and maybe I was even expecting it was him. It was Katie.
She was also in jeans, and I felt even more out of place in that comfortable, informal place; she sat at my left and Eric at my right. I have very few moments that are intimate, where I know I am in love; and I loved both of them then, my wife and my brother. If only money could have kept the rest of the world away from us. But instead, it drew the world in.
“Have you told him?” she asked me.
I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to tell Katie, except in anger. I regretted that I’d told her abruptly the way I had. And I couldn’t get angry enough at Eric to hurt him that way. I’d rather drown a puppy than tell this puppy his daddy had been murdered. It didn’t make any difference to me that it could have been either of them who did it.
“What?” Eric said.
I took a deep breath. “Last night I talked with a man from the police. He said that Melvin’s accident . . . wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t an accident?”
“That’s what they think.”
He stared right at me for a long time. “Someone killed him?”
“That’s what they think,” I said again.
“Do they know who?”
I tried to remember: what had I first said when Wilcox told me?
“I don’t think they do.”
“Who would want to?”
Did he really mean that? Was he that innocent?
“That’s what the police will try to find out.” I couldn’t tell if it was worse for Eric that Melvin had been killed, or just that there might have been someone who would have wanted to kill him. He really didn’t grasp what kind of man Melvin had been.
“How would they have done it?”
“The policeman said it was the brakes.”
“The hydraulics or the pads?”
This was a puppy with a degree in mechanical engineering. “He said the lines had been drained.”
He frowned. “How could they tell?”
“I guess they were empty.”
He shook his head. “But I saw the car. The front axle was so smashed that the hydraulic lines were torn off. There’s no way to tell if they’d been empty before the crash. And he would have known right away that something was wrong. Do they think it happened at Mr. Spellman’s house? It couldn’t have been low on brake fluid for very long.”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out soon.”
He put his chin on his hand and stared. “I . . . I wonder who would kill him.” Then he was quiet. At least that was done.
It wasn’t, though. Katie had a question. “What about Angela?”
“She could have killed him.” No, I didn’t say that, but only barely. Instead I said, “One of us needs to tell her.”
“We should go over together.”
Yes, we should. It was an hour to the big house, an hour to tell her, an hour back. I could get to Fred’s office by eight. I had one more word for Eric.
“This is not public yet,” I said. “Don’t talk about it, okay?”
“Who would I talk to?” The kid must have some friends.
“If someone calls. A reporter maybe. Just hang up and call me.”
“Okay.”
“That’s Rule 86—don’t talk to anyone about it.”
I left Eric to the hamburger Rosita had fixed for him and went back to my office, and dialed.
“Yes, honey?”
“Pamela,” I said. “Would you please pay Eric’s bills for me?”
“I’ll do it this afternoon. Do I still have access to the personal expenses account?”
“I think so. Thank you very much.”
Twenty minutes later Katie had changed into a somber dress and her pearls, and we were waving good-bye as Motorcycle Man shattered the peace of our neighbors. Then we were on the roads I knew so well, away from the city and down the coast. It wasn’t that I had driven them with such frequency, but rather with such portent. It had been the Road to Melvin. What was this the road to now?
My card still worked at the gate, of course. We circled around the front lawn and into the courtyard, the endless brick walls surrounding us. The wings on either side were two stories, and the monolithic mass in front was three. Forty-eight windows looked down on us as we stepped out of the car. I used to count them every time I came home from boarding school.
Angela was expecting us. We were shown in to a feathery front parlor that Melvin had never used. It had always been hers. The rest of the house hadn’t changed, but it had the feeling of a corpse at a viewing—the soul was gone. Angela had some of that feeling about her, too.
She watched me with her wide eyes, her fluffy lashes flittering about them. We smiled and exchanged just a few
pleasantries, but she knew there had to be something unpleasant lurking. And Katie was looking at me.
“Angela,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I have some bad news.”
“I was afraid it must be,” she whispered.
“The police believe that Melvin’s death wasn’t an accident.”
Little tears glistened under the lashes, but not surprise. “Oh dear. I was so hoping it would just be over.” She sighed. “When you called, I knew what you were going to say.”
Well, it wasn’t the same thing everyone else had said. “You suspected?”
She smiled, so sadly. “He had always been afraid that this might happen.”
“He said that?” I had never before spoken abruptly to Angela, for fear of something breaking.
“No. But Emmanuel, the gardener, was really a bodyguard. Melvin never told anyone, but I knew.”
Emmanuel had been there for years. “Did you have any idea who he was worried about?”
“No. And I wouldn’t have asked, of course.”
Of course. Poor Angela. Mr. Wilcox of the morbid mustache was going to give her a hard time. But she could defend herself.
She was not interested in brake fluid or other details, so I asked if I could look around a little. I left her and Katie to talk while I went on a nostalgia trip.
To me, the house had been an official place, for the formal occasions and staged events that made up our family relations. I found it uninteresting. I stood in the echoing foyer with the stairs on either wall. I wandered the halls, looked into the vast ballroom that he had never once used. Then I came to his office—a room of wood paneling and deep carpet, shelves lined with books he had never read. The walls were hung with original paintings, lesser known works by American luminists—cragged mountains by Kensett, storm-swept seas by Lane. A huge antique globe on a stand and his massive antique desk and wooden armchair sat before a wide window.
Later, Katie and Angela found me sitting at the desk, looking through drawers. It was a little awkward, but I apologized.
“I should have asked,” I said.
“No, no,” Angela mewed. “It’s right for you to be here. This is your place now.”
“I’ll need to come back and go through his papers,” I said. I’d found a few of the details that Fred had mentioned concerning Melvin’s contract business with the state—the ‘other legal framework’ that I should be thankful was already in place for me. It was going to take a while to go through these drawers, and I didn’t know where else he might have papers stashed.
The Heir Page 7
