Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  “How do you know that?” I ask, my earlier nervousness sharpening my tone. I am not reassured by the fact that McDermott said roughly the same thing: You and your family are perfectly safe … from whatever might come. I have the sense that everybody else shares some crucial bit of knowledge that I have been denied. Yet the fact that Freeman Bishop’s murderer is under arrest makes me feel safer … safer for my family. A little bit, anyway. “If you haven’t found him, how do you know he’s harmless?”

  “Because we see this type all the time. They lie to get information, they follow people, they weasel this and that. But that’s all they do.” A hesitation. “Unless, of course, you have some kind of evidence to the contrary. About McDermott, I mean.”

  “No.”

  “You’ve told me everything?”

  “Yes.” As I did in my meeting with Sergeant Ames, I have the sense of being under interrogation, but I have no idea for what.

  “Well, then, it’s like I said.” Winding up. “You have nothing to worry about. You can go on with … well, whatever you’re doing.”

  “Agent Nunzio …”

  “Fred is fine.”

  “Fred. Fred, look. You’re down in Washington. I’m up here. McDermott is here. I would be lying if I didn’t admit, that, uh …”

  “You’re worried.”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand. But my resources are a little bit limited. And, well, it’s not as if this McDermott character has threatened you … .”

  “No, he just dropped by to impersonate an FBI agent.”

  I can almost hear him thinking, not only logistics, but politics: who owes what to whom and for what.

  “Tell you what. I really don’t think you should be worried. I want to emphasize that. But, if it will make you feel better, I’ll make a couple of calls. We don’t have much of an office up there, but I’ll see what I can do. Maybe have the police take some extra cruises by your house till we track McDermott down.”

  I know I am being mollified, and I also know there is little reason to worry, but I am grateful all the same.

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “My pleasure, Professor.” A pause. “Oh, and I hope things work out for your wife.”

  Only after we have hung up does it occur to me that I did not tell him about the pawn. But, then, perhaps I never meant to.

  (III)

  WHICH LEAVES ME BONNIE AMES.

  Having acquired a first name, the sergeant is less daunting. Still, once I track her down, she is so brusque that I marvel she asked me to call in the first place. Either she is still feeling Uncle Mal’s pressure or she is feeding a need to gloat over just how far wrong our suspicions were. The arrests in the “torture slaying” (as the reporters are calling it) of Father Freeman Bishop were made early this morning, she says: no Klansmen, no skinheads, no neo-Nazis, and no fake FBI agents either, but a Landover, Maryland, crack dealer, a small-timer—a nobody, the sergeant calls him—a twenty-two-year-old named Sharik Deveaux, street name Conan, and a member of his crew. Even as I listen to her account, I am skimming the story on the USA Today Web site. Sergeant Ames takes particular pleasure in informing me that Conan is black, which I already guessed. “So, no possible racial motive”—as though it was I, rather than the media, who proposed one. Mr. Deveaux, the detective continues, admits selling the precious little rocks to Father Bishop on a regular basis. Naturally, he denies the murder. But the other gangbanger—the sergeant’s word—says he helped Conan dispose of the body once the ugly deed was done, and somebody else heard Conan bragging about it. “And he has a history of this kind of thing,” she adds without elaboration.

  For the barest instant, I see it happening: Freeman Bishop, bound or gagged or in some manner restrained as the two of them burn and cut and stab his twisting, helpless form, his desperate pain the very purpose of the exercise, his faith finally tested on the wretched rack of swiftly nearing oblivion: Between thy judgment and our souls. At that instant when the end is inexorable, we all of us, believers and agnostics, sinners and saints, discover what we truly embrace, what we truly know, what we truly are. What would I, with my shaky and intermittent faith, at that instant become? Better to suppress those thoughts.

  “Is this going to stand up in court?” I ask timidly.

  Sergeant Ames is more amused than annoyed. The case is overwhelming, she assures me, but it will never come to that. Sooner or later, she says, Deveaux will allow his lawyer to persuade him to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty.

  “Does Maryland execute murderers?”

  “Not often. But Mr. Deveaux was stupid enough to kill Father Bishop in Virginia. He just rolled into town to dump the body.”

  “Why?”

  “You’d have to ask him that. And don’t even think about actually trying.”

  “What sentence would he get? If he pleads guilty, I mean?”

  “Life without parole is the best he can hope for. If he wants a trial down in Virginia? Something like this? They’ll probably give him the needle.”

  Her casual confidence is chilling. “And you’re sure he did it? You’re very sure?”

  “No, down here we try to arrest people at random. Especially for murder. We worry later on about making the evidence stick. Isn’t that what they teach up in the Ivy League?”

  “I didn’t mean any disrespect …”

  “He did it, Mr. Garland. He did it.”

  “Thank you for …”

  “I have to run. Say hello to your sister for me.”

  I call Mariah to share my relief that the killing of Freeman Bishop had nothing to do with the Judge, and the housekeeper (not to be confused with either the au pair or the cook) tells me that my sister is back down in Washington. I call her cell phone and leave a message. I try Shepard Street, but there is no answer. Maybe it is just as well that I cannot reach her: she would likely tell me that the arrest is a setup, part of the conspiracy. So I try Addison in Chicago and, to my surprise, actually reach him at his townhouse in Lincoln Park. He is more saddened than delighted by the news. He whispers something I do not quite follow about the Hindu god Varuna, drops in a quotation from Eusebius, and warns me to take no pleasure in the pains of others, even those who sin. When it is finally my turn to speak, I assure him that I am taking no pleasure in any of this, but Addison tells me he has no more time to talk just now, because he has to catch a plane, which is probably a lie. I suspect, on no evidence other than history, that there is a woman in his bed. Maybe Beth Olin, although two weeks would be a long time for my brother to stick with the same girlfriend.

  “We should get together soon,” he murmurs so solemnly that I almost think he means it. “Call me next time you’re in the Midwest.”

  “You never return my calls.” The plaintive younger brother.

  “My people must misplace the messages. I’m sorry, Misha.” My people. If only Kimmer could hear that one.

  “Actually, there are a few things I’d like to talk to you about,” I persist.

  “Right, right. Listen, my brother, I’m kind of in a hurry. I’ll call you later.”

  Then Addison is gone—perhaps his people have arrived to take him to the airport. I have no opportunity to mention that most of the messages I leave are at his home.

  CHAPTER 14

  VARIOUS FREEDOMS OF SPEECH

  (I)

  AFTER LUNCH ON TUESDAYS, I meet with the members of my seminar on Legal Regulation of Institutional Structure. The seminar covers everything from securities regulation to canon law to the rules that govern student-council elections, always playing the semiotic game, trying to figure out not what each rule means, but what it signifies, and how that signal is related to the purpose of the institution. The course draws some of the brightest students in the law school, and probably I enjoy it more than any other class I teach. This afternoon features a delightful, good-natured clash between two of my favorites, brilliant if slightly addled Crysta Smallwood, still struggling to figure out
when the paler nation race is going to expire, and the equally talented Victor Mendez, whose father, a Cuban émigré, is a power in Republican politics, which probably puts him to the left of Victor himself. I play referee as Victor and Crysta contend across the seminar table over the question of whether sexual harassment represents a failing of institutions or of individuals. When I finally call time as the class ends at four, I award the round to Crysta on points. Crysta grins. The dozen other students laugh and pound her on the back. I remind them that we will not meet next week because I will be in Washington at a conference, and admonish them to turn in the first drafts of their term papers to my secretary before I return. With students of this caliber, there is no whimper of complaint.

  Oh, but there are days when I love teaching!

  I trip happily up the stairs to Dorothy Dubček’s office, where I collect messages and faxes, then bounce down to my own little corner of the law school. Outside my office, I trumpet a cheery hello to aging Amy Hefferman, my Oldie neighbor, who was in law school with my father. She blinks her tired eyes and tells me that Dean Lynda is looking for me, and I nod as though impressed. Safely inside, I toss everything onto my desk while I check my voice mail. Nothing important. A reporter, with a question, miraculously, about tort law, not the Judge. American Express—I am late again. And one of Lynda Wyatt’s assistants: the Dean, as Amy mentioned, wants to speak to me, presumably about Kimmer’s competition with Marc Hadley. No thanks. Instead, I call the day-care center to make sure Bentley is okay, and the head teacher’s irritation blasts through the telephone. I smile at her annoyance: as long as she is angry, my son is doing fine.

  My mood surprises me. I should, by rights, be dispirited. It is one week since my encounter with Not-McDermott, one week since the delivery of the pawn to me at the soup kitchen, one week since the arrest of Sharik Deveaux. Five days ago Kimmer came home from San Francisco and lovingly calmed me down. I am jumping at shadows, she murmured, kissing me gently. I have to look at things rationally, she said, cooking me a nice dinner. If the pawn was really a message and not somebody’s tasteless joke, then whoever sent it will tell me sooner or later what it means, she whispered, head on my shoulder, as we sat up together and watched an old movie. What is there to be afraid of? she asked me softly as we lay in the darkness of our bedroom, surprisingly comfortable together. The murderer is in jail, and McDermott, who has come and gone, has been declared harmless by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Day after day Kimmer has repeated the same arguments. She has been both comforting and persuasive. I have gone from frightened to worried to merely concerned. I have been trying to reach serene. I have been trying not to suspect that the real reason my wife wants me to relax is in order to keep her potential judgeship on track.

  Nothing can quite drag me down. The weather has turned fair: temperatures in the fifties, and here it is the middle of a New England autumn. My mood has lifted along with the temperature. Today, for the first time since the death of the Judge, I am actually feeling like a law professor. I am enjoying the classroom; and so, it seems, are my students. (Except for Avery Knowland, whose attendance at my torts class has grown spotty and who has largely ceased to participate. I need to do something about him.) I remember that I chose this profession more than it chose me, and that I have been reasonably successful at it.

  I am actually humming a bit of Ellington as I turn to the message slips and discover that one of my favorite people in the world, John Brown, has been trying to get in touch with me. John, a college classmate who now teaches engineering out at Ohio State, is the steadiest man I know. I call him back at once, hoping to hear the details of the visit he and his wife and children will be making to Elm Harbor in a few weeks. We exchange a few pleasantries, he tells me how much his family is looking forward to their stay with us, and then he discloses the reason for his call: an FBI agent dropped in yesterday, doing a background check for a possible “high-ranking federal appointment” for my wife. John wants to know what it is all about, and why he and his wife, Janice, have to be the last to know.

  The only trouble is, Mallory Corcoran has assured me that the background check has not yet begun. The day that has been so peaceful and bright begins to turn dreary once more.

  “John, listen. This is important. Please tell me that the agent who interviewed you was not named McDermott.”

  My old friend laughs. “Not to worry, Misha. It wasn’t Mcanything. I’m pretty sure he said his name was Foreman.”

  I try not to alarm him. I tease out a few details, suppressing the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I cannot lie to John. I tell him that the man called Foreman is not really with the FBI, that he is some kind of private investigator, and that he is breaking the law by pretending otherwise. I tell him that the real FBI will probably want to talk to him, because they are looking for Foreman. I wait for John to turn chilly on me, but instead he asks if I am in some kind of trouble. I tell him I doubt it. I promise to explain what I can when he and his wife come visit. When we finally hang up, I put my face in my hands, feeling the weight of depression pressing down on my shoulders. I sit shaking my head, wondering how I could have been stupid enough to think it was all over.

  And that is where Mariah tracks me down, still at my desk, to tell me the exciting news about the way the Judge was murdered.

  (II)

  “BULLET FRAGMENTS,” I repeat, making sure I have heard my sister correctly.

  “That’s right, Tal.”

  “In the Judge’s head.”

  “Right.”

  “Fragments that the autopsy somehow overlooked.” I am clicking frantically with my mouse, trying to find the Web site Mariah is describing over the telephone with such gusto. This is the last thing I need. There are about eleven hundred things I would rather be doing just now, but, as Rob Saltpeter likes to say, obligation to family is nonrefundable.

  “On purpose, Tal.” Mariah is suddenly impatient. “Not by accident. They didn’t want us to know. They didn’t want anybody to know.”

  “They in this case being …”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I think we need some help.”

  “So why wasn’t there any blood in the house?” I am proud of myself for asking a reasonably intelligent question. The quarrel with Mariah has at least distracted me from the possibility that McDermott and Foreman are still on the loose.

  “They cleaned it up.”

  Of course.

  “Or moved the body,” I suggest facetiously, but Mariah takes it at face value.

  “Exactly! There’s lots of possibilities.”

  The university loves investing in its science departments, but the law school’s cut-rate technology includes ancient computers, and the download of the supposed photographs of my father’s autopsy is taking forever. I need to hurry, because it is almost time to pick up Bentley from his preschool. I mentioned this to Mariah, who told me that her news would only take a minute. Still waiting for the computer, I stand up and stretch. For the past two weeks, I have been listening to my big sister’s ever-wilder theories about what actually happened. Despite an unambiguous autopsy result, Mariah continues to insist that so many powerful people wanted the Judge out of the way that some combination of them is bound to have brought him down. She has been reading up on drugs that can cause heart attacks. For a few days it was potassium-chloride poisoning: the medical examiner did not search properly for needle marks. Then it was prussic acid: the ME did not do an oxygen-saturation test. Each time it turns out that she is wrong, my sister comes up with something else. And, when pressed, she almost always concedes that her source is some Internet site. I remember something that Addison, proprietor of several sites, likes to say about the Web: One-third retail, one-third porn, and one-third lies, all of our baser nature in one quick stop.

  “What kind of help do you think we need?” I ask her now.

  “There are lots of people who want to help,” Mariah proclaims happily, if cryptically. “Lots and lots of p
eople.” I grimace, wondering what has been going through her head as she sits all day with all those children in her palace, as Kimmer calls it, in Darien. Mariah has probably received the same bizarre calls I have, a variety of hard-right organizations dedicated to demonstrating conspiracies whenever they lose, and, certainly, when one of their most valuable assets is so prosaically struck down. Real men are murdered. Heart attacks are for wimps.

  “What exactly do they want to do, kiddo?”

  “Well, for one thing, they are going to run newspaper ads calling for an investigation.”

  “Great. When do they plan to go public with that brilliant idea?” Hoping that I can get Uncle Mal or some other of my father’s wiser Washington acquaintances to prevent it.

  “Don’t take that tone, Tal. Wait until you see the pictures.” A beat. “Have you looked at them yet?”

  “In a minute.” I return to my chair. “When is the announcement, Mariah?”

  “Soon,” she murmurs, no longer sure I am an ally.

  “Mariah, you know … Okay, hold on.” The download is at last complete, four rather gory photographs, and I see no reason to think that any one of them is authentic. Three of the four do not show the face of the corpse, but the build does not resemble the Judge. Nor does the skin color, in every case too dark. The one that clearly is my father is sufficiently grainy that it is not clear why it is even there, which conspiracy it is supposed to prove. I frown and lean closer, pushing my glasses up onto my nose with a finger. One of the nonfacial shots does indeed show the black specks that Mariah called to tell me about. I suppose they could be bullet fragments, if I knew how bullet fragments look. Only … wait…

  “Mariah.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Mariah, I think … couldn’t that just be dirt on the lens?”