Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  “Talcott! Talcott, wait!” But faintly, more an echo than a voice.

  I turn toward the back of the cemetery, where bare trees cast lengthening shadows in the late-afternoon sunlight. A low mist is gathering, so the vista has lost a bit of its crisp brightness. At first, I see only shadows and more shadows in the direction of the voice. Then two of the shadows detach themselves and turn, wraithlike, into people, two men, both white, striding in my direction.

  I recognize one of them, and the autumn sky goes gray.

  “Hello, Talcott,” says Jack Ziegler. “Thank you for waiting for me.”

  (II)

  THE FIRST THING I notice about Uncle Jack is that he is ill. Jack Ziegler was never a very large man, but he always seemed a menacing one. I do not know how many people he has killed, although I often fear that it is more than the numbers hinted at in the press. I have not seen him in well over a decade and have not missed him. But the changes in the man! Now he is frail, the suit of fine gray wool and the dark blue scarf hanging loosely on his emaciated frame. The square, strong face I remember from my boyhood, when he would visit us on the Vineyard, armed with expensive gifts, wonderful brainteasers, and terrible jokes, is falling in on itself; the silver hair, still reasonably thick, lies matted on his head; and his pale pink lips tremble when he is not speaking, and sometimes when he is. He approaches in the company of a taller and broader and much younger man, who silently steadies him when he stumbles. A friend, I think, except that the Jack Zieglers of the world have no friends. A bodyguard, then. Or, given Uncle Jack’s physical condition, perhaps a nurse.

  “Well, look who’s here,” Addison seethes.

  “Let me handle this,” I insist with my usual stupidity. I discipline myself not to speculate about what Mariah suggested as we sat in the kitchen Friday night.

  “All yours.”

  Before Jack Ziegler quite reaches us, I warn Kimmer to stay down by the car with Bentley, and, for once, she does as I ask without an argument, for no potential judge can be seen even chatting with such a man. Uncle Mal steps forward as though to run the same interference for me that he does for his clients as they leave the grand jury, but I motion him back and tell him I will be fine. Then I turn and hurry up the hill. Mariah, of course, is already gone, which is just as well, for this apparition might push her over the edge. Only Addison remains nearby, just far enough away to be polite, but close enough to be of help if … if what?

  “Hello, Uncle Jack,” I say as Abby’s godfather and I arrive, simultaneously, at the grave. Then I wait. He does not extend his hand and I do not offer mine. His bodyguard or whatever stands off to the side and a little bit behind, eyeing my brother uneasily. (I myself am evidently too unthreatening to excite his vigilance.)

  “I bring you my condolences, Talcott,” Jack Ziegler murmurs in his peculiar accent, vaguely East European, vaguely Brooklyn, vaguely Harvard, which my father always insisted was manufactured, as phony as Eddie Dozier’s East Texas drawl. As Uncle Jack speaks, his eyes are cast downward, toward the grave. “I am so sorry about the death of your father.”

  “Thank you. I’m afraid we missed you at the church—”

  “I despise funerals.” Spoken matter-of-factly, like a discussion of weather, or sports, or interstate flight to avoid prosecution. “I have no interest in the celebration of death. I have seen too many good men die.”

  Some by your own hand, I am thinking, and I wonder if the other, rarely mentioned rumors are true, if I am talking to a man who murdered his own wife. Again Mariah’s fears assail me. My sister’s chronology possesses a certain mad logic—emphasis on the adjective: my father saw Jack Ziegler, my father called Mariah, my father died a few days later, then Jack Ziegler called Mariah, and now Jack Ziegler is here. I finally shared Mariah’s notion with Kimmer as we lay in bed last night. My wife, head on my shoulder, giggled and said that it sounds to her more like two old friends who see each other all the time. Having no basis, yet, to decide, I say only: “Thank you for coming. Now, if you will excuse me—”

  “Wait,” says Jack Ziegler, and, for the first time, he turns his eyes up to meet mine. I take half a step back, for his face, close up, is a horror. His pale, papery skin is ravaged by nameless diseases that seem to me—whatever they are—an appropriate punishment for the life he has chosen to live. But it is his eyes that draw my attention. They are twin coals, hot and alive, burning with a dark, happy madness that should be visited on all murderers at some time before they die.

  “Uncle Jack, I’m s-sorry,” I manage. Did I actually stammer? “I have—I have to get going—”

  “Talcott, I have traveled thousands of miles to see you. Surely you can spare me five of your valuable minutes.” His voice has a terrible wheeze in it, and it occurs to me that I might be breathing whatever has made him this way. But I stand my ground.

  “I understand you’ve been looking for me,” I say at last.

  “Yes.” He seems childishly eager now, and he almost smiles, but thinks better of it. “Yes, that is so, I have been looking for you.”

  “You knew where to find me.” I was raised to be polite, but seeing Uncle Jack like this, after all these years, brings out in me an irresistible urge to be rude. “You could have called me at home.”

  “That would not be—it was not possible. They know, you see, they would consider that, and I thought—I thought perhaps …” He trails off, the dark eyes all at once confused, and I realize that Uncle Jack is frightened of something. I hope it is the specter of prison or of his obviously approaching death that is scaring him, because anything else bad enough to scare Jack Ziegler is … well, something I do not want to meet.

  “Okay, okay. You found me.” Perhaps this is forward, but I am not so frightened of him now; on the other hand, I am not very happy about spending time in his company either. I want to flee this sickly scarecrow and retreat to the warmth, such as it is, of my family.

  “Your father was a very fine man,” says Uncle Jack, “and a very good friend. We did much together. Not much business, mostly pleasure.”

  “I see.”

  “The newspapers, you know, they wrote of our business dealings. There were no business dealings. It was nonsense. Trumped-up nonsense.”

  “I know,” I lie, for Uncle Jack’s benefit, but he is not interested in my opinions.

  “That law clerk of his, perjuring himself that way.” He makes a spitting noise but does not actually spit. “Scum.” He shakes his head in feigned disbelief. “The papers, of course, they loved it. Leftwing bastards. Because they hated your father.”

  Not having exchanged a word with Jack Ziegler since well before my father’s hearings, I have never heard his opinions about what happened. Given the tenor of his comments, I doubt he would be interested in mine. I remain silent.

  “I hear the fool has never been able to get a job,” says Uncle Jack, without a trace of humor, and I know who has been pulling at least a few of the strings. “I am not surprised.”

  “He was doing what he thought was right.”

  “He was lying in an effort to destroy a great man, and he is deserving of his fate.”

  I cannot take much more of this. As Jack Ziegler continues to rant, Mariah’s nutty speculations of Friday seem … not so nutty. “Uncle Jack …”

  “He was a great man, your father,” Jack Ziegler interrupts. “A very great man, a very good friend. But now that he is dead, well …” He trails off and raises his hand, palm upmost, and tilts it one way, then the other. “Now I would very much like to be of assistance to you.”

  “To me?”

  “Correct, Talcott. And to your family, naturally,” he adds softly, rubbing his temples. The skin is so loose it seems to move under his fingers. I imagine it tearing away to leave only an unhappy skull.

  I glance over at the cars. Kimmer is impatient. So is Uncle Mal. I look down at my baby sister’s godfather once more. His help is the very last thing I want.

  “Well, thank you, but I
think we have everything under control.”

  “But you will call? If you need anything, you will call? Especially if … an emergency should arise?”

  I shrug. “Okay.”

  “With your wife, for instance,” he continues. “I understand that she is going to become a judge. I think that is wonderful. I understand that she has always wanted this.”

  “It isn’t certain yet,” I answer automatically, surprised that the secret has spread up into the Rocky Mountains, and also not wanting Jack Ziegler anywhere near her nomination. He has already spoiled one judicial career too many. “She isn’t the only candidate.”

  “I know this.” The burning eyes are gleeful again. “I understand that a colleague of yours believes the job to be his for the taking. Some would call him the front-runner.”

  I am thrown, once more, by the breadth of his knowledge; I choose not to wonder how he knows what he knows. I am glad that Kimmer is not within earshot.

  “I suppose so. But, look, I have to—”

  “Listen, Talcott. Are you listening?” He has drawn close to me again. “I do not think he has the staying power, this colleague of yours. It is my understanding that a fairly large skeleton is rattling around in his closet. And we all know what that means, eh?” He coughs violently. “Sooner or later, it is bound to tumble out.”

  “What kind of skeleton?” I ask, sudden eagerness overwhelming my caution.

  “I would not concern myself with such things if I were you. I would not share them with your lovely wife. I would wait patiently for the wheel to turn.”

  I am mystified, but not precisely unhappy. If there is information that would kill off Marc Hadley’s chances, I can hardly wait for it to—what did he say?—tumble out. Even though Marc and I were once friends, I cannot resist a rising excitement. Perhaps America’s obsession with the use of scandal to disqualify nominees for the bench is absurd, but this is my wife we are talking about.

  Still, what can Jack Ziegler possibly know about Marc Hadley that nobody else does?

  “Thank you, Uncle Jack,” I say uncertainly.

  “I am always happy to be of assistance to any of Oliver’s children.” His voice has assumed a curiously formal tone. I am chilled once more. Is the skeleton something that he has somehow created? Is a criminal maneuvering to help my wife attain her longed-for seat on the bench? I have to say something, and it is not easy to decide what.

  “Uh, Uncle Jack, I … I’m grateful that you would think to help, but …”

  His disintegrating eyebrows slowly rise. Otherwise his expression does not change. He knows what I am trying to say but has no intention of making it easy.

  “Well, it’s just that I think Kimmer … Kimberly … wants to have the selection go forward so that, um, the better candidate wins. On the merits. She wouldn’t want anybody to … interfere.” And I am suddenly sure, as I say the difficult words, that what I am telling him is true. My smart, ambitious wife never wants to be beholden to anybody, for anything. When we were students, she made a name for herself around the building with her outspoken opposition to affirmative action, which she saw as just another way for white liberals to place black people in their debt.

  Maybe she was right.

  Uncle Jack, meanwhile, has his answer ready: “Oh, Talcott, Talcott, please have no fear on that account. I am not proposing to … interfere.” He chuckles lightly, then coughs. “I am only predicting what is to occur. I have information. I am not going to use it. Nor do you need to do so. Your colleague, your wife’s rival, has many, many enemies. One of them is certain to unlock the door and allow the skeleton to tumble out. The service I am doing for you is simply to let you know. Nothing more.”

  I nod. Standing up to Jack Ziegler has drained me.

  “And now it is your turn,” he continues. “I think perhaps you, Talcott, might be of assistance to me.”

  I close my eyes briefly. What did I expect? He did not travel all this way to tell me that Marc Hadley’s candidacy is going to collapse, or to pay his last respects to my father. He came because he wants something.

  “Talcott, you must listen to me. Listen with care. I must ask you one question.”

  “Go ahead.” I want suddenly to be free of him. I want to share his odd news with Kimmer, even though he told me not to. I want her to kiss me happily, overjoyed that she seems to be on the verge of getting what she wants.

  “Others will ask this of you, some with good motives, some with ill,” he explains unhelpfully in his mysterious accent. “Not all of them will be who they say they are, and not all of them will mean you well.”

  I forgot Uncle Jack’s eerie, unfathomable certainty that all the world is conspiring, but he evidently has changed little from the days when he used to drop by the Vineyard house with gifts from foreign ports and complaints about the machinations of the Kennedys, whose irresolution, he used to say, cost us Cuba. None of the children knew what he was talking about, but we loved the passion of his stories.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “And so I must ask what they will ask,” he continues, the mad eyes sparkling.

  “Well, fire away,” I sigh. Over by the limousine, Kimmer is glancing at her watch and raising her hand, beckoning, to urge me to hurry. Maybe she has another telephone meeting coming up. Maybe she, too, is scared of Jack Ziegler, whom she has never quite met. Maybe I need to get this over with. “But I really only have a few minutes to …”

  “The arrangements, Talcott,” he interrupts in that wheezy whisper. “I must know everything about the arrangements.”

  “The arrangements,” I repeat stupidly, aware that my sister is not as crazy as I have been hoping, and that my brother, sensing that something is going on but not sure what, has moved half a step closer to us, in the manner of a protector or a wary parent—very often the same thing.

  “Yes, the arrangements.” The hot, joyful lunacy on his face sears my own. “What arrangements did your father make in the event of his death?”

  “I’m not sure what you—”

  “I believe you know precisely what I mean.” A hint of steel: here, for the first time, is the Jack Ziegler about whom everybody was reporting back in 1986.

  “No, I don’t. Mariah told me you called and asked her the same thing. And I have to tell you what I told her. I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  Uncle Jack shakes his sickly head impatiently. “Come, Talcott, we are not children, you and I. I have known you since you were born. I am your sister’s godfather, may she rest in peace.” A gesture toward the plot. “I was your father’s friend. You know what I am asking, I think, you know what it means, and you know why I inquire. I must know the arrangements.”

  “I’m still not quite sure what you mean. I’m sorry.”

  “Your father’s arrangements, Talcott.” He is exasperated. “Come. The arrangements he worked out with you in the event of his, ah, unexpected demise.”

  I do not make Mariah’s mistake: I am sure he does not mean funeral arrangements, not least because the funeral just ended. And then I see what I did not when Mariah grabbed me on Friday night. He is thinking about the will. The disposition of my father’s estate. Which is odd, because, although my father was hardly poor, Jack Ziegler is quite rich; or so say the newspapers.

  “You mean the financial arrangements,” I say softly, with the confidence of a lawyer who has worked it all out. “Well, we haven’t had the official reading of the—”

  “That is not what I mean at all and you know it,” he hisses, spraying me with his old man’s spittle. “Do not fox with me.”

  “I’m not foxing.” Allowing him to see my irritation.

  “I understand that your father swore you to secrecy. That was sensible of him. But you surely must see that your vow does not include me.”

  I spread my arms wide. “Uncle Jack, look. I’m sorry. I don’t think I can help you. There just aren’t any arrangements that—”

  In a movement a
lmost faster than I can follow, his skeletal hand snakes out and grabs my wrist. I shut up. I can feel the heat of his illness, whatever it is, coursing beneath the papery skin, but his strength is amazing. His nails furrow my arm.

  “What arrangements?” he demands.

  As I stand, mouth open, my wrist still trapped in Uncle Jack’s thin fingers, Addison moves a worried step closer, so does the bodyguard, and I sense more than see the two of them sizing one another up; something primal and male is suddenly in the air, a mutual scenting, as though they are beasts preparing for battle, and I see the first faint tinges of red beginning to blot out the trampled green grass.

  “Please take your hand off me,” I say calmly, but the hand is already off, and Uncle Jack is looking down at it as though it betrayed him.

  “I am sorry, Talcott,” he murmurs, speaking, it seems, more to the hand than to me, and somehow sounding not so much contrite as cautionary. “I ask what I ask because I must. I do so for your sake. Please understand that. I have nothing to gain, except to protect you, all of you, as I always promised your father I would. He asked me to look after his children if anything happened to him. I agreed to do so. And”—this almost sadly—“I am a man of my word.” He shoves the offending hand into his pocket. The lunatic, gleeful eyes lift slowly to meet mine. Off to the side, Addison relaxes. The wary bodyguard does not.

  “Uncle Jack, I … I appreciate that, but, uh, we’re grown-ups now … .”

  “Even adults may require looking after.” He coughs softly, covering his mouth with his fist. “Talcott, there is not much time. I love you and your brother and your sister as though you were my own. I ask you now for help. So, please, Talcott, for the good of the family we both love, tell me of the arrangements.”

  I take a moment to think. I know I must get this precisely right.

  “Uncle Jack, look. I appreciate you being here. I’m sure the whole family does. And I know it would mean a lot to my father. Please believe me, I would help you if I could. But I—I just don’t know what you are talking about.” I can feel myself botching it. “If you would just tell me what arrangements you mean.”