The Fortune Teller's Daughter

by Lila Shaara

  “I’ve never seen one like that,” he said. “My God, it’s huge.”

  “It’s a pileated woodpecker. You don’t see them much. They’re shy.”

  Harry wondered why anyone who would know a pileated woodpecker from any other bird would be considered retarded by her coworkers. They started walking again, then Maggie said, “Why’d you say ‘Lawrence’ like that, on our porch?”

  “Lawrence is my brother,” he said.

  “Josie told me,” she said. “Why did you say his name like that?” “He’s dead,” Harry said.

  He expected the usual response—oh, how terrible, how did it happen, I’m so sorry—but all she said was “I know.”

  “He was murdered,” he said. He hadn’t meant to be dramatic, but there was no way not to make it sound that way. “Being drunk, I think I was going to ask Josie to channel him.”

  “She doesn’t do that.”

  “So she said.” He panted a bit, then went on. “I did a story for my paper.” He didn’t know whether if he said that it had been The Washington Post she would see him as name-dropping, or whether she wouldn’t be familiar with it. “I was a reporter. Am a reporter.” She was looking at the trees, so he couldn’t judge her reaction. “The story was about a federal judge who was taking bribes. It was kind of a big deal.” He glanced at her again. This time she looked back, still expressionless. “The story killed his career. He was prosecuted and disbarred and went to jail. He’s out now, but he did eighteen months. I got a raise.” They came to a section of the path where the sun broke through the canopy, blinding him, then the trees blocked the light as they kept moving, and he was blinded again for a moment by the sudden return to darkness. “The judge had a crazy son. The crazy son came to our house to kill me. I was’t there, but my brother was, and the crazy son didn’t know him from me. We looked a little alike. Not that much, but enough. He shot Lawrence in the face when he opened the front door.”

  He expected her condolences, something about how it was’t his fault. Instead she continued her silence, but a sadness had spread over her face that looked at home there. He added, “I never had a drinking problem till after his funeral. Now I usually don’t drink at all because, when I do, I can’t seem to stop.”

  They broke into another small garden area, this one also circular, although in the center was a boxwood carved into the shape of a giant teardrop. The flowers surrounding it were well-tended and beautiful, purples and whites, and Harry stopped for a moment to look at them. Maggie stopped, too, then jumped back as a bee rose from a snapdragon blossom, gently approaching her with a soft buzz. She watched it with great attention as it swooped and rolled in slow curls through the air, then dropped down again into the snowy flower bed. She moved back to the path, which was now almost perpendicular to where they’d emerged from the trees. Harry followed her.

  He was startled when she spoke. “This winds back to the cemetery eventually. What was your brother like?” Conversational bumper cars, thought Harry. I never know when I’m going to get whacked by a question.

  “He was younger than me by three years. Athletic, handsome. We didn’t look that much alike.” He tried a smile, but he suspected it came out wrong. “He was the popular one. You know, the one good at sports, better with girls, that sort of thing. Our parents named him Lawrence because they thought it would be funny to have sons called Harry and Larry. But he was never called that, for some reason. It was always Lawrence. My wife saw him get shot.” He made a point of not looking at Maggie now. “We got divorced not too much later.”

  “She thought it was your fault?”

  Harry said, “She never said so.”

  “Any children?”

  “I have a son. Dustin. He lives with her now. In Orlando. He’s fourteen.”

  She seemed to be done with questions, so he decided to turn the conversational tide. “How old is Charlotte?”

  A pause. “She’s eight.” Then, silence. She obviously was’t interested in reciprocating life stories. Harry thought, God, she must have been a teenager when she had Charlotte, and remembered what it was like to have an infant around. He felt sadder still; a straitened life indeed. All he said was “Is the other little girl her sister? I don’t know her name.”

  “Tamara. No, she’s Charlotte’s cousin.”

  “Ah.” He couldn’t think of a way to talk about the poor girl’s teeth without sounding mean, and he couldn’t think of anything more noticeable about her than that, so all he said was “She seems like a sweet kid.”

  There was no answer, and Harry realized that he hadn’t actually asked a question. When Maggie did speak, it had nothing to do with Charlotte. “Why are you here?”

  “You mean in Stoweville?” At her nod, he went on. “I quit my job a little while after Lawrence was killed and was at loose ends. My wife, my ex-wife, Ann, moved to Orlando for a job and to be nearer to her parents, and a friend of mine is on the law school faculty here, and pulled some strings and got me a position. I have a law degree. The job’s temporary. Visiting professorship. This year and next year. After that, I don’t know. It’s possible I could stay. Or I could move further south, to be closer to Dusty. I don’t know. Teaching’s okay. I’m trying to write a book.”

  “What about?”

  “That’s a good question. I have no idea.” He debated how much to say for just a second, then said, “I’ve written two others.”

  “What about?” she repeated.

  “One was about how pharmaceutical companies are dictating medical treatment, not only in this country but in lots of the world. I compared a few companies to robber barons of the early twentieth century. It upset some people. But that’s good for book sales.”

  She didn’t return his smile. “What about the second one?”

  “It was about a few historical doomsday cults. I compared them to modern mainstream Christian fundamentalism. That one bugged a lot of people, too.”

  She looked at him from under the hat. Her face was speckled with the light that came through the holes in the straw. She asked the titles. When he told her, she nodded. He didn’t know if that meant she’d heard of either of them or not.

  He could see now that they were heading south again in a roundabout way. Maggie said, “What’s your son like?”

  “The greatest kid who’s ever lived.” Then he smiled, and she gave her ghost-smile back. “Ann had hopes that he’d be like Lawrence, or like her. But unfortunately for him, he takes after me. The biggest thing he gets in trouble for is reading during class.” His smile went away. “Ann loves him, but she gets frustrated with him, for the wrong reasons. Well, I would say that.” He tried another smile but failed. “I wanted him with me, but the schools there are better, and she has more money. He needed to spend more time with her anyway. I wish I liked Orlando better.” Then he added, “I don’t want to move there.”

  “The schools here aren’t that bad,” she said, surprising him again. “Especially in your part of town. People with money always get good schools.”

  “I don’t have that much money,” Harry said, embarrassed that she might see him as some smug fat cat. “Of course, it’s not like I’m below the poverty line.” He gave a jokey smile, meeting her plain crystal gaze under the bizarre straw hat, and had an uncomfortable thrill as he thought, She might actually live under that line and it might not be so hilarious to her. He looked away, thankful for the sudden flight of an energetic blue jay across the path.

  The moan of cars from the highway had been slowly growing, and now the path broke into the cemetery again, ending in a swath of grass through headstones. Harry said, “I guess I should let you get on with your day.” He waited for her reply, but there was’t one. “Thanks for letting me join you. Sorry for talking so much, but thanks for letting me tell you my troubles, and about my son.” He tried smiling at her again, but she didn’t smile back.

  Then she said, “You know, just because you wanted your brother dead doesn’t mean you killed him.” Sh
e got into the Celica and started the engine, leaving Harry standing by his car, his hand over his mouth. Then he got into his own car, and soon they turned in separate directions onto Highway 21.

  9

  KING OF CUPS

  REVERSED

  A man of power, but with two faces

  It was after four o’clock by the time Harry got back to his house, and he had a message on his voice mail from Frank Milford. Milford was in his office on campus and was willing to discuss Charles Ziegart over coffee. By four-forty-five Harry was in the campus coffee shop talking to the head of the physics department at North Florida University.

  Milford was tall and heavy, with thick fingers and a straining belt, a bald head the size of a basketball. Imposing, but not the least like anyone’s stereotype of an egghead. Maybe the egg of a pterodactyl, thought Harry, though he had no idea how large a pterodactyl egg was. Harry assumed Milford was some sort of genius, since as far as he could tell, all physicists were. At least he figured their average IQ was above that of journalists or attorneys, or the government lackeys he’d met in Washington who called themselves scientists. Here, thought Harry, is the real thing, even if he looks like a sumo wrestler.

  “Call me Frank,” said the enormous physicist.

  · · ·

  Harry bought a small bowl of greasy vegetable soup and a cup of black coffee. He carried both to a table on a tray shaped like a stealth bomber. Milford had a salad along with a tall glass of iced tea. The salad was piled high with strips of cheese and ham, chickpeas, peanuts, olives, and croutons. There was a small plastic bowl on the side of the plate containing a lumpy white paste that Harry assumed was salad dressing. “Ziegart was a brilliant guy, there’s no doubt about it,” Milford said as he poured the dressing onto the salad. It fell in greasy clumps. Harry couldn’t look away.

  “I’m not surprised,” he said, letting the department chair in on his theory about the intellectual superiority of physicists.

  Milford laughed. “Well, there are all kinds of intelligence. All my colleagues are pretty good at calculus, but a few of them have a hard time putting their pants on right.”

  “Was there anything to the rumor that Charles Ziegart stole the idea of the Ziegart effect?”

  Milford pulled a packet of sugar from a little basket of condiments in the center of the table. “I don’t know. It could have been the work of one of his students.” He opened the packet and poured sugar into his tea.

  “But wouldn’t everyone around him know that? It seems like a big risk to his reputation,” Harry said.

  Milford poured in a second pack of sugar. “You’ve worked in the private sector until now, right?”

  “Yes,” Harry said.

  “Well, in most universities, graduate students do research under the guidance of a professor, usually responsible for a section of a larger research project. Basically, all the data belong to that professor. Dissertations get written about that student’s piece of the puzzle, but it doesn’t belong to him.” He was now on his fourth packet of sugar.

  “That doesn’t seem terribly fair. Or legal.”

  “Oh, it’s perfectly legal.” Milford leaned back in the cheap plastic chair, causing it to give small screams of pain. “As to fair, it depends on your point of view. Figure the student wouldn’t have access to lab facilities or other resources without his adviser. Usually the student is carrying out experiments thought up by the professor in the first place, so it’s perfectly appropriate that the main credit go to the senior researcher. And the student often does get the credit, sometimes even first author on the published results.”

  “If his boss is generous enough.”

  “Well, yes. On the other hand, working for someone with a big name can get you pretty far by itself, so the student benefits a great deal by doing his mentor’s scut work. The more well-known and well-thought-of your adviser, the better the job you’re likely to get offered after graduation. Even if you’re a tiny cog in a big, prestigious research project, you still get that reflected glory.”

  “So it’s worth it.”

  “Most of the time. And most of the time, it’s fair.” He caused the chair to emit distress calls again. “Some people in our department think we should institute a policy where our students can control some of the data they produce. If we do, it will be pretty unusual; only a few other programs have anything like it, and no whole universities that I know of.”

  Harry said, “So, if Ziegart poached an idea, it was probably from a student. But no one would consider that unusual or unethical. So the rumor is spurious.”

  Milford sipped his tea, stalling, then said, “Well, I don’t know about that.” Harry felt himself moving back into old work habits. The “train-crossing” method of interviewing: stop, look, listen, let your subject fill an uncomfortable silence. Maggie Roth, he thought, was a natural at it. Milford finally said, “I don’t know any particulars, remember, but I imagine that Ziegart, being such a big deal in electromechanics, probably had a lot of projects going on at any given time. But that means that he was probably spread pretty thin, so he may not have been doing much work himself. He was a bit of a celebrity, you know, good-looking and articulate, and was kept busy with interviews, PBS documentaries, even a few TV talk shows. His students probably were doing most of the actual work. Maybe even all of it. So the likelihood of there being some real unfairness was greater in his case than most.” He shifted in his squeaking chair again. “I’m just speculating.”

  “I understand,” said Harry. “I’m not going to publish any speculations. I just want to get a sense of how such a thing might have happened. If it did, of course.”

  “You know,” said Milford, adding salt to a salad already overburdened with roadblocks to arterial health, “Ziegart was working in a combined physics and engineering department. An awful lot of what he was involved in had commercial applications. Most of his grants were probably funded by the government or by private industry. So what was at stake with a lot of his work was’t just academic respect and fame.”

  “Money.”

  “Yes, from grants and royalties from patents.” Milford ate a bite of his salad. “He did have a reputation as a bit of an egomaniac. I don’t want you quoting me on any of this. I don’t know any details, most of it is rumor, and I’m not comfortable saying anything nasty in print about someone who can’t defend himself.”

  Harry reiterated his assurances that he was taking nothing as fact as yet. The big man went on. “When the Ziegart effect paper was being reviewed for publication, there were three names on it. I know because a friend of mine was asked to review it. One of the authors was a student of Ziegart’s named Doug McNeill. McNeill died before the paper was published, which a lot of folks thought was convenient, because there was a patent issued soon after and the royalties were probably considerable. Are probably considerable. You know anything about this?”

  “Not really. Superconductivity.”

  “Yes. Some metals can conduct electricity with almost no resistance at all if they’re supercooled close to absolute zero. But applications of this process are somewhat limited because of the difficulty in maintaining your conductor at those temperatures. But Ziegart developed an alloy that would retain superconductivity at close to normal temperatures. The process involved placing supercooled tungsten in a superdense magnetic field. Very tricky, but he got it to work.”

  “That’s the Ziegart effect?”

  “Yes. The applications have been huge, and the military is all over it.”

  “In other words,” Harry said, “lots of money.”

  “Yes, for Ziegart and for the university.”

  “But not for the other authors of the original paper?”

  “Well, as I said, Doug died before the paper came out. When the final version was published, the only name on it was Ziegart’s.”

  “Hence the name, the Ziegart effect, not the Ziegart-McNeill-Whoever effect.”

  “Well, the irony of that wa
s that the first author on the original paper was named Ziegart, but it was’t Charles. It was his wife. She was also his student.” Milford took the last bite of his salad, wiping his mouth daintily with a napkin.

  “He married a graduate student? How original,” Harry said, trying to imagine marrying Julie Canfield, and perhaps stealing her work. The thought was actually chilling. He thought, Good thing I have no sex drive left.

  Milford nodded. “It’s the primary pool that many of us select our wives from, I’m afraid.” He washed his salad down with a slug of tea. “Not me. My wife and I were in college together. But she’s an M.D., so we don’t talk shop that much.” He shifted in the menaced chair and said, “Serge tells me you met your wife in college, too.”

  “Ex-wife, and we met in law school,” said Harry, circling his hand around a cup of coffee, now cold. He could see Milford creeping up on an apology, but he waved it aside and said, “Did Ziegart’s widow get the royalties after he died?”

  “I don’t know,” said Milford. “The university usually gets the better part of royalties anyway. It’s possible that she was’t entitled to any credit. Maybe her name on the paper was his wedding present to her and for some reason he changed his mind. I never met her; in fact, I only met Charlie Ziegart himself once and that was twenty years ago, long before he married Emily.”