The Nature of My Inheritance

by Bradford Morrow

  Wisely, I never spoke with Harrison about the genesis, as it were, of my involvement in my father’s onetime sub rosa business. All we discussed was books, payables, receivables, and a number—there were many more than just that one Claude—of code-named collectors and dealers. Claude? As it turned out, all of our buyers were named Claude. Because transactions were cut in cash, I never saw a personal check, never saw a driver’s license or any other form of identification. I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know the real names of these fellow addicts. Claude was a perfect moniker, I thought, since, I mean, please, was anybody in the history of the world ever really named Claude?

  And in my father’s gone but not forgotten footsteps, I wound up keeping some of the books I should have passed along for my commission but could not part with. All more or less on the up and up, for the record, since I paid Harrison for what I kept, cash out of my savings from the middleman fee, and just told potential buyers that the book wasn’t available after all, instead offering them one of my father’s books I didn’t care to keep any longer. Sure, I ran into disappointment now and then, but, knock wood, not suspicion. Between the reverend’s sterling reputation among the various parties and my own winning youthful earnestness—weird that the less innocent I was, the easier it became to make myself look innocent— all moved forward without a hitch. At the same time, I didn’t let my immediate family, or anyone else, know about my trove. It was a challenge, but though I didn’t increase the number of volumes in my little collection, I systematically increased its value. By the time I was in my early twenties, still living at home after Andrew himself had headed off to college, or, well, community college, my smuggler’s Bibles housed rare books that were worth upwards of two and a quarter million dollars in retail value. That family acquaintances thought I was an underachiever who sadly lost his footing after his father’s death was flat-out wrong but worked sweet as punch for me. I bagged groceries at the local store and eventually worked my way up to manager, just for show, but was making clandestine gelt hand over fist, or maybe hand under fist would be the more apt metaphor. Either way, an illness, an obsession, a passion— forgive me, my Amanda—for which there was no clear cure had taken me over.

  I did figure out ways to funnel money to my mother for household expenses over the years, sometimes considerable amounts that surprised her, covering my tracks by lying that I had hit lottery jackpots, a grand here, a few thousand there. She bought it since she didn’t have much choice, and was grateful in her poker-faced way. I also clenched my teeth and tithed to the church, whose new pastor delivered sermons that moved me not one bit more than my father’s had. But I attended services anyway, partly to accompany my mom, partly to make Harrison happy, since he wanted me to maintain as virtuous an image as possible. But mostly because Amanda, who worked as a bank teller during the week and, having moved on from her Sunday school teaching, sang in the choir on Sundays, even taking over conducting whenever the regular director—Mrs. Thoth, a nice lady with a pear-shaped face, who had worked with my father for many years—was absent. She, Amanda I mean, had grown more and more fine as the years went by. Age became her, at least to my Amanda-consecrated eye. In all truth, she was a beautiful young woman with a warm smile and ready laugh, a prize many would consider worthy of far better than the lanky likes of me. But that wasn’t a roadblock that could stop my heaven-ordained pursuit.

  If I was Dante, Amanda was my Beatrice. After some initial hesitation on her part, we began taking walks after services. Walks that were, for many months, opportunities to get to know one another. I think she began to see me less as the minister’s son and more as a real person, well-meaning if quirky, devoted if shy—shy at least around her. As for me, my adolescent longings were eclipsed by her simple presence, the presence of a truly decent human being. We spoke of our love of music, hers, and books, mine. She started reading some of the masterworks of literature and philosophy that interested me most—some of which I secretly owned as first editions—as well as a few novels by Lawrence and Henry Miller that I considered classics. And I went over to her house to listen to recordings with her of her favorite music. I might never have guessed that, along with Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, her most cherished composers were Maurice Ravel and, yes, Claude Debussy. That she also liked Prince made me fall for her all over again.

  Somewhere in one of my smuggler’s Bible books, there must be written a theory that would explain the things that came together all at once during that misty May of my twenty-first year. Well, not the things themselves. But how those things were connected by taut invisible strings which that gnarly puppet master known as god had decided in his great wisdom to pull. I can try to explain, since god certainly would never bother and even my beloved Boethius might not have been equal to doing.

  Amanda had floored me when, the year before, she allowed me to kiss her during one of our walks. A long, tender kiss beneath a secluded tree, a kiss I had never believed in my heart of hearts would ever translate from fantasy to flesh. Who knows, maybe rubbing elbows with my learned librarian friend Harrison—who I suppose had become a bit of a father figure for me—gave me an air of sufficient sophistication that Amanda, over half a dozen years my senior, considered attractive. Perhaps having more money stashed under a scrap heap of laundry in my closet than all my neighbors had, added up times two, afforded me an adult confidence. Maybe it was because I actually finally succeeded in reading Nabokov and even tried my hand at understanding paperback translations of the works I owned in Greek and Latin, French and German. Who knows. Why ask why?

  What happened was that our Sunday walks developed into shared evenings, dinners and movies, a train ride now and again into Manhattan to go to Carnegie Hall and hit some museums, and it wasn’t long before she and I were spending lots of time together, more than I had ever hoped for back in my lusting tenderfoot years. In all seriousness, I was astonished to find that my daydreams, my wet dreams, my longing boyhood dreams were not wasted on some kind of delusion, and that the girl I thought I loved back in my youth turned out to be the woman I truly loved later. Cynical and defensive as I had been when I was younger, I always figured what I was experiencing was pure fiction, not the real deal like my father’s death, my mother’s decline. Such joy was, I knew, dangerous since it was fragile and rare. As fragile and rare as any of my hidden rarities.

  Because the reverend had always adored Amanda, never privy to my filthy thoughts, of course, it was easy for my mother to embrace her current presence in my life. Deep down, I think my mom would have given up a dozen of me and my brother to have had just one daughter, not that I could blame her, for all the minor scuffling trouble Drew and I brought into her life over the years. A daughter would have made her time with my starchy pater a little more gently rumpled, and I mean that in a good way. Well, to some degree, Amanda filled that daughterly role for her, helping her make a pot roast after church some Sundays, advising her about hair colors when the old lady wanted to get a dye job, stuff like that. And it couldn’t have made me happier for both of them, since it turned out Amanda’s mother was no picnic, another story for another day. My courtship, a term my mom actually pulled out of the mothballs of her mind to describe my dating Amanda, was going better than I might ever have imagined possible. Not only did we say we loved each other, but Amanda claimed she liked me more than anyone she’d ever met.

  She one day said it like this. “I’ve always had a secret crush on you, the handsome son of the handsome preacher. I guess you could say I’ve always loved you from afar. But I really like you, too. Silly as it sounds, I’m in like with you.”

  I don’t think I could honestly claim that anybody I’d ever known, Harrison included, my family included, might be able to make the same statement. Oh, that Liam fellow? Now there’s someone I truly and sincerely like. Forget about it.

  During one of our Sunday afternoon suppers, I think it was lamb chops and new potatoes on the table, the doorbell rang unexpectedly and I went to answer
.

  “Hello, Liam,” Reynolds said. “How’s all and everything?”

  Acting unsurprised as I could manage, though he probably wouldn’t have been surprised to see me surprised since he hadn’t stopped by in years, I told him all and everything was fine, thanks.

  “I was just driving by the house and thought I’d check in on you and your family.”

  No choice but to let him in. “That’s really nice of you.”

  “Who is it, Liam?” my mother called from the dining room.

  “Detective Reynolds is here,” I answered, praying she wouldn’t ask him to join us.

  “Ask him on in to join us if he’d like.”

  “No, tell her that’s okay, Liam. I don’t want to bust in on Sunday dinner, especially unannounced like this.”

  Not wanting to shout back and forth, I said to him, “That’s all right, come on in why don’t you. I’m sure she’d love to say hello. My girlfriend’s here, too.”

  “You have a girlfriend now, do you? That’s great,” he said, but didn’t budge an inch farther into the house. “I hate to be rude, but it was you I wanted to talk to if you had just a moment.” He looked at his watch, a fakey-fake gesture that sent up, as my father used to put it, all the red flags in China.

  “Hang on,” I told him, then went to the dining room to say the detective wanted to have a word with me privately and I’d be back right away.

  “Something about your dad?” my mother asked, setting her fork down on her place, voice fluttering like a buckshot bird falling out of the sky.

  “No idea,” I said, and looked at Amanda, who had picked up on my mom’s nerves and clearly shared her concern. “Don’t worry. Just go on eating and I’ll see what he has to say.”

  Back in the foyer, Reynolds tipped his head to suggest we step outside. I grabbed my slicker off the coat rack and walked with him into a mist so fine that it looked like it was raining upwards instead of down. Parked at the end of the walkway was that same dark blue unmarked Chevy he was driving when I first met him.

  “Guess you like that car,” I said, breaking the ice, if ice it was between us that caused the silence.

  “You got a good memory, Liam,” he said with a light laugh. “I’m still wondering why you didn’t become a detective like I thought you might. You have all the smarts it takes to solve mysteries. God knows, you probably have more smarts than the job requires.”

  I thought it best not to thank him.

  “Plus, it might beat working in a grocery store.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” was all I could think to say. It annoyed and worried me that he knew where I worked, since I had never once seen him in our aisles.

  “So, it’s been quite a while since we talked about your father, how he passed.”

  “Yeah,” I said, as we turned onto the sidewalk and ambled down the street away from the house.

  “I hope you don’t mind me bringing it up again, hope I’m not opening old wounds.”

  “I guess not,” I said, looking away from him toward the window of our neighbor’s house next door. Why was it their curtains were always drawn, no matter what the weather?

  “Well, I didn’t want to get your mom’s hopes up but I think we may have a possible break in his case. After all this time, it doesn’t happen that often. I mean, for a cold case to suddenly get warm again.”

  That same strange feeling of guilt, like I had killed him myself, came over me then. It wasn’t a feeling I liked one bit, a ridiculous sensation since I was sitting right there with my little brother and mom when the accident happened. But I felt it anyway. I just hoped that Reynolds, who was sharp as ever and curiously intimidating, couldn’t feel it, too.

  “How so? What happened?”

  “There’s a man, his name doesn’t matter, who passed away a few months ago, died of natural causes. Lived with his wife on the Upper East Side of New York. An advertising exec, did well in his career, made good money.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who would push a minister down some stairs.”

  Reynolds paused, took in a deep breath, exhaled. “Well, you’re right. At least partly right. You see, this man was a collector. Collected all sorts of things from coins and stamps to paintings and books. He had great taste, to say the least, and as it’s beginning to come clear to those who were tasked with probating his estate, it looks like his taste went way beyond his income, which was already pretty hefty.”

  I naturally had already made the possible connection, but said, doorknob dumb, or trying to be, “I’m not seeing what this has to do with my dad yet.”

  “Well, I’ll get to that now. You see, it looks like he was working with some dealers, suppliers of fine art stuff, not all of them totally legit. For instance, turns out one of his best paintings, a portrait of some girl by Degas—”

  Reynolds mispronounced the name so it rhymed with Vegas, but I kept my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. I didn’t like the direction any of this was going.

  “—was stolen from a museum in Austria. And there were other items, not by any means all of them, by the way, that seem to have come from institutions here and there. So, here’s the bit that bothers me regarding your father. His address and phone number, both at the church and your house, were in a little book this collector kept in a wall safe.”

  “That’s nuts,” I said.

  “It is nuts, you’re right. Especially since, so far as the authorities working on all this have been able to determine, a number of the other names and contact info listed in his book could be traced to dealers in coins, stamps, art, and various collectibles like that. Now some of them have checked out, but others are under investigation. And as you can imagine, all the assets of the estate are frozen until his collections can be gone through with a fine-toothed comb to see what’s what.”

  I made my first mistake ever with Reynolds when I said, “I’m lost here.”

  “Well, I have to doubt that, Liam,” glancing over at me as the heavy mist turned to light drizzle. “I can imagine you wouldn’t want to think your father, being a preacher and all, could be caught up in anything even slightly illegal. But there are some questions about why he was in this man’s address book that will have to be answered at some point. Whether your dad found himself involved in any of this, which I seriously doubt, by the way, isn’t really my ballywick. But his death was and is.”

  I said nothing, not wanting to say something wrong. Tongue glued, tongue glued.

  “Did you ever know your father to be interested in collectibles at all?”

  “No, sir,” now finally lying.

  “People used to like stamp collecting a lot. My grandfather had a humongous collection of stamps and when he passed away, we had them appraised, since he had always talked about how valuable they were and that we could all retire on it. Well, turned out his stamps were basically worthless, moneywise. The whole value was in his enjoyment cutting them off of envelopes and buying them out of catalogues for nickels and dimes.”

  “I never saw my father collect anything”— no, I didn’t slip up and say, except for Bibles— “and that even included collecting enough during services to keep his church fixed. He and my mom sat around all the time worrying about money. Collecting would have been about the last thing on his mind.”

  “Well,” Reynolds said, taking me subtly by the elbow and turning me around with him to head back toward my house. “If anything comes to mind, anything at all, that might explain what your dad’s info was doing in this man’s possession, would you let me know?”

  “I doubt I’ll come up with anything, but you can count on me to call if I do.”

  “You still have my card?”

  “I’m sure I do.”

  “Look there. You have the instincts of a collector as well as a detective,” he said, the wiseass. “Let me give you another one, just in case.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You sure you wouldn’t like to come in for dessert? Amanda, that’s my girlfriend,
makes a mean pecan pie.”

  “I’ll raincheck that, but next time for sure, okay?”

  “You got it,” I said, and shook his hand with the best smile I could summon from my slim arsenal of smiles. I turned to head back up the walk as he opened his car door. “Am I supposed to keep all this stuff to myself? Should I ask my brother anything?”

  How I hoped he would say yes even as he said, “No. Just keep it to yourself for now.”

  “What am I supposed to tell my mom when I go back in?”

  That did seem to throw him off a little. Hadn’t thought that part through, I guess. “I don’t know, just say I wanted to check in, catch up a little for old time’s sake. I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

  My thoughts chasing in circles, I used Reynolds’ excuse on Amanda and my mom, having no better bright idea.

  That night, in bed, having driven Amanda home, my worries only darkened. I wanted to call Harrison but feared that my phone might be tapped. I wanted to get my Bibles and their precious charges to a safer place than my closet, but where in the world could I stow them until any danger passed? Above all, I desperately wanted not to believe my father had been pushed down those stairs to his death because of some sort of book deal gone sour. This last desire was the toughest of the three because it never seemed more plausible that this was exactly what had happened. I went through the faces of all the Claudes I had met over the years, wondering which Claude might have been this attorney who was fishier than sushi, but had no way of sorting out one from the next. That was how it was meant to be, of course. Just for occasions like this. If nobody was connected with anybody else, then nobody would take a fall simply because somebody else did. No game of dominoes here. And no one was ever supposed to have written anything down, which is why the reverend had his cost code and the Claudes were all blank slates. I never asked Harrison where he had deaccessioned all these books from, what library’s rarely visited shelves were a little emptier than they had been, their onceupon- a-time presence having been erased forever, like some calculus equation a stupid schoolboy solved incorrectly on the chalkboard. The only common link was, like my father before, me.