by Jimmy Fox
Nick called the company, but he did no better than the reporter. A recording said all client service representatives were busy and politely suggested he try again later, or “select one of the following options.” He slammed down the pay-phone handset. Voice menus drove him nuts. He would just have to make his own appointment time, unilaterally.
Must be lots of worried people trying to get through, he thought; then again, it might just be electronic stonewalling.
Good thing he’d put his money in bottles of fine Burgundy.
When he got to the lakefront driveway of Armiger’s property, he noticed the guard in the gatehouse was still missing. What the hell, he thought, a few more dents couldn’t hurt. He stomped the gas pedal and crashed through the gate, leaving clumps of his car clanging on the ground behind him.
He sped down the winding road and parked in front of the elegant little building. The blond goon limped toward him, his gun drawn. One arm was in a sling, three fingers of the other hand were wrapped securely. Tape and plastic hid his nose, and what Nick could see of the rest of his face looked like a well-bruised melon.
“Easy, pal,” Nick said, stepping from his car, his hands raised, as if approaching a skittish alligator. “I’m not armed. She asked to see me. The gate was open, so I just–didn’t she notify you?”
“No. No she didn’t.” He seemed confused, probably still seeing stars from his recent run-in with Shelvin and Ronald. Maybe it was the painkillers. “Come ’ere.”
He stuffed his gun in his pants waist and frisked Nick perfunctorily, wincing from what Nick suspected were broken ribs.
“It shoulda been you, motherfucker,” he said to Nick. “Okay. Go on in.”
He limped back to his car and gingerly sat down on the hood.
Inside, Nick felt surrounded by a disturbing new species of silence that brought to his mind images of a suspended heartbeat, a blade raised, or a gun cocked.
There was a new glass case upstairs. He walked up to it, and wasn’t surprised to see the documents he had stolen from Natchitoches, the documents Una had stored in the departmental safe a bit too long.
All these silent witnesses thus imprisoned strengthened Nick’s determination to get Armiger out of the genealogy business–forever.
Natalie Armiger sat in her accustomed place behind the ornate desk. The silver frame and the gold pillbox were there, too. The chair seemed too big for her now, though, slumped and indrawn as she was. Her elbows supported her on the arms of the chair, and her hands gripped each other before her face.
“Praying, Mrs. Armiger? Not your style, exactly. You usually just place an order with God, a market transaction.”
Nick thought that mouth of hers seemed less malignant than pitiable now, a jagged, fatal wound. He had no pity for her. She was a murderer, of human beings, of genealogy.
“You should not have come back,” she said. “I had envisioned a happier fate for you.”
“Mrs. Armiger, you don’t direct fate. You never did. The past and the future are beyond your control. Your delusion is a convenient excuse to do what you want–save this one, kill that one, as if the world were your personal ant farm. You don’t really believe that, do you? Maybe it’s worked so long that you do. I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. You have to pay for what you’ve done.”
She seemed momentarily amused. A brief smile played across the surface of her lips and was gone, like fugitive sunlight on a cloudy, windy day.
From her lap she lifted an elaborately inlaid, silver-and-gold double derringer. Nick thought it might have belonged to Euphrozine, her great-grandmother, or to Jacob Balazar; it might even be the one Ivanhoe mentioned in his diary. But he didn’t doubt it was capable of a modern killing.
“Justice, payment for our sins, ‘a divinity that shapes our ends,’ I believe Hamlet says. What a quaint archaic concept of life, Nick.”
He wanted to point out that she was the one who’d named her company after a Greek goddess, but his mouth was too dry.
The weak spots in her armor, he kept telling himself, hoping his poker face was better than his cards.
“Zola and I will survive our difficulties, lawsuit or no lawsuit, here in New Orleans or elsewhere. You could have lived to know how lucky you were to have occupied a brief space in our hearts–and our checkbooks. Now you are the one who has overreached; in your delusion, you are an agent of Nemesis. When the media report your death, it will be something like this: crazed Artemis investor with a petty grievance breaks into Armiger estate, where he is shot dead by security guards. Don’t worry, we’ll open an account for you.”
Nick could see her finger beginning to move the trigger. He found his tongue. “If you kill me, Zola will find out about her adoption, what you allowed to happen to her parents.”
“I told you never to mention that again!” Her outburst drained her; she panted as her wild eyes searched the room for the strength to continue. Her caftan seemed to be devouring her, inch by inch. “You’re bluffing. You have no proof. You merely put together some odds and ends, some coincidences. No, that story died with Max. The immediate danger has been”–she seemed to lose her thread–“has been…neutralized. And one day, I will gather those records, as well. Those, as well…. But now, your threat will die with you.”
“Odds and ends, coincidences, vague patterns–genealogy defined,” Nick said, talking rapidly, all the while looking down at her finger on the trigger of the derringer, three feet away. “So spread out, so powerfully free, that not even you can gather them in to your glass cases of revisionism. I put Zola’s story on a dozen computers, timed to be released online–if I don’t live to stop it. No matter where she is, it will follow her. At first not many will notice, just the cybergeeks. But eventually thousands of people will start to ask thousands of questions. One day, maybe years from now, she’ll turn on her computer or pick up a magazine, and there will be her real past, pointing the accusing finger at you.”
In all Hawty’s rhapsodies about the information superhighway, something had stuck in his memory. He hoped it sounded convincing.
A sudden pain made Armiger inhale sharply; she fought it. Each sign of her increasing anguish made Nick bolder.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. But he could see she did.
The gun drifted slightly. She was calculating profit and loss.
After a moment’s reflection, she asked, “For the sake of discussion, if you are telling the truth, what do you propose?”
“My quaint archaic concept. All is chance and necessity, Democritus said. Ancient Greece again; you should feel right at home. What do I propose? Has your chance reached the limit of necessity? Have the things you can alter met the things you can’t? Let Fate–with a capital f–decide our contest here.”
Something twisting her insides made the veins in her neck stand out.
“The legal system you mean? I am to turn myself in, confess? Do you really believe that I would be indicted for anything more serious than jaywalking? My means are not inconsiderable, even now.”
She picked up the pillbox and tried to open it as she continued to cover Nick with the pistol. Her trembling hands fumbled with the box, revealing to Nick the depth of her crisis. But her finger never left the trigger.
That pill, she needs that pill!
“The legal system’s not what I had in mind,” Nick said. “Allow me.” He stepped forward and took the pillbox from her unresisting hands.
“If you live long enough to do what I propose, you’ll have earned my silence.” He slipped the box in a pocket of his corduroys. “I’ll accept that judgment.”
“How do you know I don’t have more medicine here?”
“You would be reaching for it now. Here’s my deal. Make a settlement with the heirs of Ivanhoe Balzar–immediately. Fifty million dollars. Next, establish a foundation at Freret University for the study of the Holocaust. Another fifty million. Donate the documents in the display cases out there to the foundation–call it the M
aximilian Corban Foundation. Finally, leave the past alone–never again damage the historical record. That’s it. I drive a hard bargain, remember?”
“You have thought of everything, Nick. I cannot kill you…” Her words trailed off into rapid breaths.
“And you’re having a heart attack,” he said, finishing the analysis of the royal flush he’d laid down.
He wondered if she’d heard him.
At last, she met his gaze. Nick saw in her eyes the helpless power of a dying lioness. Her voice was faint, barely audible.
“You would stop this…broadcasting, this revelation? I have your word?”
“The word of a third-rate hack and a plagiarist? Yes. Zola will never know the truth from me, and I’ll do nothing to make it more likely that she’ll ever find out.”
She put the gun on the desk and dragged her hand from it.
He had beaten her–for Corban, for Ivanhoe, for Ronald, for Shelvin, for everyone whose past she had sought to erase.
She listed to one side like a sinking ship. “I have always thought that fear of financial ruin was exaggerated. One is never truly bankrupt while dignity remains. Death is a broken bench, too, the ultimate bankruptcy. You will allow me to retain my dignity, Nick?”
It’s more than you did for anybody else.
He watched a moment more. Then he turned and unhurriedly walked toward the doorway, half-expecting to feel a bullet. But if this worked, it would have to work his way.
After all, he was entitled to some dignity, too–dignified revenge.
The blond goon now sat in the driver’s seat of the car, reading the sports section. The door was open. He wasn’t all that interested in Nick’s exit from the chateau.
A human being with the silicon soul of a computer-game demon, Nick thought: he kills only on command. Armiger had not yet instructed him to get rid of the pesky genealogist–and never would, now.
Nick walked past the front of the car. As if a thought had suddenly occurred to him, he took a few steps back.
“Hey, you know CPR?” Nick asked, casually.
“Huh? Yeah. Why?” His head snapped toward the chateau; then he hoisted himself to his feet and ran growling with pain into the building.
Nick removed the pillbox from his pocket and drew his arm back to throw it into the meandering pond of a restful Japanese garden extending back from the parking area. The engraving on the pillbox caught his eye. “Genesis 27,” he could barely make out on the cover. The tiny scene depicted Jacob kneeling at his father Isaac’s bed, receiving the blessing meant for his brother, Esau.
He let it fly. There was no way to be sure, but he wanted to believe that the box, too, had belonged to Jacob Balazar.
28
“The rumor is he can’t buy a new Mercedes-Benz this year,” Una said.
“Tragic, tragic,” lamented Dion, from deep in his glass of Young’s Old Nick Ale.
The bizarre label on the bottle of English brick-red brew pictured the devil in Edwardian evening clothes.
They had all ordered one to toast the flesh-and-blood Nick on his recent triumphs. The Folio featured hundreds of such odd beers from around the world; for years, Nick and Dion had been trying to drink their way through the list.
“Here’s to Nick,” Hawty said. “Our lucky devil.”
“Lucky to have such pals,” Nick added, choked up as they drank.
Natalie Armiger had not outlasted the wail of the ambulance siren that ushered her to the emergency room. Soon, official inquiries uncovered startling facts about Artemis Holdings. Armiger had been a loose cannon not only in her private life, but also in business affairs. The catalog of her securities transgressions and other crimes over the course of several decades ran to more than a hundred pages.
Her death and, in the following weeks, the implosion of Artemis Holdings would not have been earthshaking news in the insular world of Freret University–another high-roller benefactor would be found–except that a professor of high rank in the English department was among those who had lost the savings of a lifetime in the debacle: Frederick the Usurper Tawpie. The student-run newspaper did a hard-hitting issue on the scandal, and the word was that Tawpie lurked about campus confiscating any stacks of the free publication he found.
It was two months after the crash.
“But there is something good that’s emerged from these ashes,” Nick said to his friends. “The lawyers have salvaged a generous deal for the Balzars. Twice, the old man, has cable television and all the ice cream he can eat; Erasmus has better health care; and Dora has a new kitchen.”
“And Shelvin’s much better,” Hawty added. “I visited my family over Thanksgiving break, and I stopped by Natchitoches. I think the boy’s gone crazy, but now he wants to be a cop! He’s already applied to the police academy here in New Orleans…can you believe it? After what those”–she clamped her mouth shut until her anger allowed her to continue in civil language. “After what they did to him and Ronald.” She looked intently at the beer bottles on the table, perhaps to hide the mistiness in her eyes; but after a moment, she sniffed away the outward signs of her sorrow. “Dora puts fresh flowers on Ronald’s grave every Sunday, rain or shine.”
Ivanhoe’s heirs had indeed won a substantial settlement; though considerably less than the fifty million Nick had demanded from Armiger, it was an impressive figure, nevertheless. There was to be no Max Corban Foundation; but Nick hoped that, through his efforts, the old man’s soul was now at peace.
In a separate matter, the state highway department had re-examined a certain land deal in Natchitoches and had discovered old and more recent fraud. Several Chirkes were headed to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. An anonymous call–from a K&B payphone–to the attorney general’s office had done the trick.
“Let’s not forget the diary,” Una said, bragging about Nick’s latest literary feather in his cap.
He’d persuaded Coldbread to finance publication. The day before, he’d received a letter from the quixotic, crotchety scholar, who was in Paris, hot on the trail of his obsession. Coldbread had found that the man he was searching for had actually been called Balayeur, not Balazar; a series of transcription errors was responsible for centuries of misidentification.
“Thus, you must not expect half, or indeed ANY, of MY TREASURE!” Coldbread had written Nick. “However, if OUR book about Ivanhoe Balzar does well, I would be amenable to employing you on other such NON-SENSITIVE projects.”
Dion leveled a searching gaze at Nick. “You’re going to have to tell us one day. We can’t be put off forever. Were you working for the Bad Witch or the Good Witch or the family in Natchitoches or the old Holocaust survivor? Come now, we’re your friends.”
“Yes, and how did you know so much about the old man’s demise?” Una said.
The two goons were arrested not long after Armiger’s death. Nick had given a tip to the detectives working Ronald’s murder; Hawty later provided positive ID on the suspects. They were, in fact, rogue cops, with reputations much worse than the tarnished norm of NOPD. Now they were ratting on each other, competing for plea bargains on murder raps and a few dozen other charges. There would be cells at Angola or a federal prison waiting for them, as well.
Nick had scrupulously kept Zola’s name out of everything.
“Hey, I plead client-genealogist privilege,” he said.
His three questioners groaned in disappointment.
A series of beeps emanated from Hawty’s new chariot.
“E-mail,” she said. “For you, Nick. The computer system we ordered is ready. The shop wants to know when we’ll be at the office for delivery.”
Una and Dion looked at Nick in silent raillery.
“Your apostasy shocks and grieves me,” Dion said. “How many times have I been witness to your philippics against the growing hegemony of the Almighty Gizmo? Yea, even here in our beloved Folio, in this hallowed retreat”–he spread his arms wide in practiced Shakespearean hyperbole–“the very
name of which suggests our guiding humanistic ideal of the unique glory of the individual in history. Nick, you were one of us, once! Have you now abandoned us, your erstwhile fellow humble servants of knowledge?”
“Forgive him,” Una said. “He hasn’t been able to flex his rhetorical muscles today. His first class isn’t until this afternoon. But tell us, seriously–you haven’t mentioned your Miranda. What happens to her now that she’s cast out of her island paradise?”
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “I got a letter about two weeks ago, from one of her secretaries. She wanted to know the appropriate places to send all that genealogical source material I told you about, all the stuff in those cases. Since then, nothing.”
“Oh, so it was a professional matter?” Una said. “You aren’t…seeing each other?”
“Seems that way,” Nick replied, making sure to give a lovelorn sigh.
“Look,” Hawty said. “Is that who I think it is?” The Usurper, in a dark far corner, gesticulated impressively in intimate conversation with an enthralled female student probably less than half his age.
Nick caught the attention of a waitress. She wore the current youthful uniform of drab castoff clothing hanging from her like skin in the process of being molted. There was a shiny ring threaded through a hole in her nostril.
“See that red-haired man way over there?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Please take him and his companion another round, and leave whatever money’s left.” He gave her a bit too much money for the drinks, along with a generous tip. “And tell him–now this is important–‘Keep the change. You need it.’ You got that?”
“Uh-huh.” She wandered off.
“Hey, you three,” Nick complained, “what’s happened to the communicative skills of the students since I left? They’re sliding back into a pre-verbal stage. You’re teachers of English, remember? Aren’t you supposed to be the life preservers keeping our civilization afloat in the rising tide of imprecision, claptrap, and technobabble?”
“Thomas Carlyle lives!” Una said. “Would you, sir, consider lecturing my classes on your theories of social decline? That is, if we can disguise you sufficiently to get past dear Frederick, who hates you almost as much as you hate him.”
