Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  “What do you think of this business about Marc?” Ethan asks over his shoulder as he piddles around in the drawer. “Think it’s true?”

  “I don’t know.” I keep my voice neutral. Having spoken to Theo, I have little doubt that Marc did exactly what he is accused of doing, even though he has not yet formally taken his name out of the hat. But I am interested to see which way Ethan the great politician plans to jump. Ethan, who probably knows nothing of my wife’s candidacy, is noncommittal by nature. Since joining our ranks, he has avoided controversy the way a cat avoids water. He enjoys debating proposals of only two kinds: those that pass unanimously, and those that are withdrawn without a vote.

  “It’s a sticky wicket,” Ethan agrees, for he decided somewhere along the way that the occasional Britishism, even if a mere cliché, makes him sound statesmanlike. “I suppose one wants to see all the evidence first, hmmm?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Mustn’t leap to conclusions. Very unscientific,” he admonishes. “Gotcha,” he adds, straightening up with a thin manila folder in his hand, and, for a silly instant, I imagine I am still in Theo’s office as he pulls out the proof of Marc Hadley’s sin.

  “Colin Scott?”

  Ethan nods. “The very same.” He walks back toward me, but this time he perches on the corner of his desk, which, like the rest of the office, is so neat that a casual visitor might be excused for supposing that no work goes on here. The obligatory photographs of his wife and infant daughter are so perfectly aligned that he must have used a ruler. The signed photographs of prominent Washington figures are quite a bit larger.

  “Now, Misha, we have something of a problem here,” he begins apologetically, and I know a lecture on confidentiality is coming, for, although Ethan Brinkley possesses no ethics to speak of, he has the politician’s knack of talking as though he has plenty. “This information is technically the property of the federal government. If I were to show you this piece of paper, we could both wind up in prison.” Ethan’s bland face puffs up with pride at the idea that he controls so sensitive a document, even if he did steal it.

  “I understand.”

  “But I can tell you the contents.”

  “Okay.” I see no legal difference between the two scenarios, and I doubt that Ethan does either, although he would doubtless swear under oath to a grand jury that he thought he was within the rules: If I don’t read the actual words on the page, if I only summarize or paraphrase, I am not precisely divulging the contents of the document, and so I’m outside the statutory prohibitions. Legal hairsplitting of that kind tends to make the public angry, but it is often a good way to escape responsibility for breaking the law. Politicians are fond of it, except when a member of the other party does it. We law professors teach it to our students every day as though it is a virtue.

  “Colin Scott, Colin Scott,” he muses, pretending to read it all for the first time. “Not a very nice man, our Colin.”

  “Oh? Not nice in what way?”

  Ethan will not be hurried. He hates to relinquish center stage, even for a second, and is constantly rehearsing for the big chance that is on its way.

  “He was with the Agency, of course. Well, you knew that.” I didn’t know, not for sure, and not even Uncle Mal, who knows everything, saw fit to tell me, but if the fact were a complete surprise, I would not be here. Still, the confirmation is a second strike against Mallory Corcoran. “A long time,” Ethan continues. “Mmmm. Foreign postings … Well, I don’t suppose I can tell you that. He was there in the old days, when they used to have what was known as the Plans Directorate. I see you never heard of it. Nice euphemism, isn’t it? They call it Operations now. The people who are out there, overseas, doing things. Well, well.” Still examining his pages. “This was back in the sixties, Misha. Large blank areas, pretty large. Not unusual with the gentlemen from Plans. Don’t know the full scope of his activities. But he was dirty, and the Agency dumped him. This must have been … yes, after the Church hearings. New broom and all that. He was old-school. A dangerous man to have around.”

  “Why dangerous?”

  But elfin Ethan prefers to dole out his precious little surprises one by one and wait for a reaction. “Colin Scott is not his real name, you know.”

  “As a matter of fact I didn’t know, but I can’t exactly say I’m astonished.” When I am around Ethan, I seem to lapse into the same portentous constructions that are his only means of communication.

  “It’s one of his names, of course,” Ethan presses on. “He has several. Look at this. Mmmm, yes. You see, Scott was a name they gave him, along with a new identity, after he was drummed out of the Agency. Set him up, let’s see, yes, he opened a little detective agency in South Carolina. Well, you knew that. But South Carolina was not his first stop postAgency, and Scott was his second new name. Seems some old friends, not the friendly kind, rumbled to his old one. His old new one, I mean.”

  “You mean enemies.”

  “Well, yes.” Ethan is annoyed that I have broken into his narrative. He is having fun teasing me.

  “What was his real name?”

  “Oh, Misha, naturally, if it were up to me I would tell you, but, you know, national security and all that. Sorry, but rules are rules.” Apologizing self-importantly. All at once this mystery is awash in people who could help me understand what is going on but climb up on their principles to explain their refusal.

  “What did he do in the Agency?” I ask, really just to keep the conversation going; in truth, I have just about run out of ideas.

  “He floated.” Ethan smiles at my blank look. He loves jargon. “He was in Plans, as I told you, but he also worked for Angleton, who ran counterintelligence until he cracked up. Later on he did a little of the paramilitary thing in Laos, had lots of contacts up in the Shans—well, let me not bore you with any of these details. Point is, if there was a whiff of Communism, a fire to be put out, Mr. Scott was the kind they called. Not a fanatic, mind you. Not a Bircher or some such. That kind tends to go into politics, not intelligence, and, in truth, intelligence doesn’t really want them. No, our Mr. Scott was more your spear-carrier. One of your technocrats, let’s call him that. Totally devoted to getting the job done. The kind who followed orders, even if the orders were, shall we say, not the sort of thing that should ever see the light of day. A dangerous man, as I said, for just that reason. Past his time, of course. Dinosaur. Relic of an era the passing of which we do not exactly lament.” Implying that we do not exactly lament his death, either, whoever we are.

  And implying something else, something I have feared but buried almost from the night when Uncle Mal first told me that Agent McDermott was a fraud; a fear that wakened rudely when I heard Sally’s story; a fear that clawed its way to the surface once Addison explained that dollar was really daughter.

  “You’re saying he … uh, he killed people.”

  “I cannot confirm that, of course,” says Ethan primly. “Let us just say that he is, or, rather, was, a dangerous man.”

  I mull this over. A dangerous relic, a dinosaur, drummed out of the Agency, talking to my father in his study in the middle of the night, the Judge telling him that there are no rules where a daughter is concerned. A daughter, not a dollar. Then showing up a quartercentury later, pretending to be in the FBI, looking frantically for something or other, maybe trashing Vinerd Howse, then drowning at Menemsha Beach.

  I am overlooking something, and I have a hunch it is something obvious.

  Then I have it.

  “Just one more question, Ethan. When exactly was Mr. Scott, or whatever his name was, thrown out of the Agency?”

  Ethan assumes a pious pose. “Oh, well, I hardly think it would be proper for me to share actual dates with you, Misha. The law, is, well, the law is what it is.”

  “But it was after the Church hearings, right? And the Church hearings were—when?—’74? ’75?”

  “Around then, yes.”

  So Colin Scott was already ou
t of the Agency by the time Sally and Addison heard him arguing with the Judge. About daughters, not dollars.

  Already out of the Agency. Recently out of the Agency. Bitter? Desperate? Ready to be seduced by Jack Ziegler’s rantings? And by the chance to—

  “Ethan, one last thing.”

  “Anything, Misha. Anything within the law, that is.”

  “When the Agency first set him up as a private detective, where was that?”

  “Maryland. Potomac, Maryland. Right across the river from Langley, you see.”

  “And what name did he use then?”

  “Oh, well, I hardly think—”

  “Never mind.” I am on my feet. I cannot sit here for another second. “Thank you, Ethan. You’ve been helpful. If you ever need anything.”

  “I appreciate that, Misha, I really do,” he murmurs, all the sympathy back on his face as he offers that practiced political handshake once more.

  I cross the hall on rubbery legs, unlock my office, slam the door behind me, and collapse into one of the shaky side chairs. I lack the strength to make it to my desk, so I will have to weep here.

  For now I know what should have been obvious, what I should have understood all along but suddenly can see with a horrid crystal clarity. Colin Scott, also known as Special Agent McDermott, indeed used the name, sometime earlier in life, of Jonathan Villard. When he had to disappear, the Agency created the story of Villard’s death from cancer.

  No wonder the police have no copy of Villard’s report. Maybe the Judge never gave it to them. Maybe he never intended to. Maybe he lied to the family when he said otherwise.

  My father’s opponents were right from the start. He did not deserve a seat on the Supreme Court. But not for the reasons they thought: not because he had too many lunches with Jack Ziegler or, their true motive, because of his disagreeable political views.

  They were right because the Judge knew Colin Scott.

  They were right because, when Abby died and the police failed, the Judge did not simply hire a detective.

  He hired a killer.

  PART III

  UNPROVIDED FLIGHT

  Unprovided flight—In the composition of two-move chess problems, a square to which the Black king can move without immediately suffering a checkmate. The would-be solver will naturally focus on finding a way to checkmate on this square, making the problem too easy. Unprovided flight is considered a serious and perhaps fatal aesthetic defect in composition.

  CHAPTER 38

  A DOMESTIC INTERLUDE

  (I)

  TUESDAY IS TRASH DAY. I drag the cans down to the curb underneath a wrathful sky, then take a short jog along Hobby Road, which is all my body can bear: three blocks west, which takes me toward the campus, three blocks back, then three blocks the other way, which takes me to the edge of the Italian working-class neighborhood that borders Hobby Hill, and then, just as the cold winter rain begins to spatter, three blocks home. Twelve blocks total, probably less than a mile.

  I have slept poorly during the week since my conversation with the diminutive Ethan Brinkley. I know what has to be done next, but I am loath to do it. And not only because my wife is all but begging me to stop. The truth is, I am afraid of learning anything else about my father. I have discovered that the Judge paid somebody to do murder, and hiring a killer is a capital offense in most of the United States. The rest can amount to no more than variations on a theme.

  For several seconds, I try very hard to hate my father, but I lack the capacity.

  Instead, I run harder. My muscles, considerably out of shape, set fire to my tendons in protest, but I press on. Nice and easy, nothing too strenuous, but keep moving, keep moving, you can run for miles if you just forget to stop! I pass my house again, cozy and warm, and temptation yawns before me, but I decide to run on. The air is crisp, good jogging weather, with little hints of distant spring on every breeze. I run and I think.

  A sedan—not green and muddy like the one in Dupont Circle, not a Porsche like the one John Brown and I saw behind the house—zips through a puddle and sprays me with dirty water. I hardly notice. I am reviewing my colleagues in my mind, face by face, the kind ones and the haughty ones, the bright ones and the dim ones, the ones who respect me and the ones who despise me, trying, with no success, to figure out who among them might have betrayed me—if you call it betrayal when the only obligation broken is the obligation of humanity. For someone around the building seems to be keeping a close eye on me, knowing when I am off to the soup kitchen and when I am heading for the chess club. Who is the unseen enemy? An ambitious youngster on the rise, like Ethan Brinkley? A member of the old guard, like Theo Mountain or Arnie Rosen? Why not Marc Hadley, my wife’s rival? We were friends once, but that has been a while. Or the great Stuart Land, who thinks he still runs the law school? Goodness knows what fantastic calculations are masked by his plastic smile. Must the spy be male? Dean Lynda seems to have taken a powerful dislike to me … although I have made it easy for her. Must the spy be white? The distant Lem Carlyle, in the best Barbadian tradition, keeps his true opinions to himself … and he has been evasive around me lately. But guesswork will solve nothing. My wife spent the entire weekend in San Francisco: the deal, she says, is coming to a crucial point. I spent the entire weekend with my son. I did no work of any description, just cared for my boy. When a weary Kimmer returned yesterday afternoon, she sat in the kitchen sipping Chardonnay while I tried to talk to her about the events of the past week, but she cut me off: Please, not now, Misha, I have a headache. Smiling at her own witticism to hide the basic truth that she is tired of listening to me on this theme. Instead of hearing me out, Kimmer walked around the counter and kissed me for a while to shut me up, then rummaged in her bag and handed me my latest second-place trophy, a goldrimmed quartz desk clock, signaling me that her latest transgression was huge. I thanked her unhappily and hurried out the door, rushing to make an evening lecture by a law school classmate who now teaches at Emory, where she has become the nation’s leading expert—possibly, the nation’s only expert—on the Third Amendment. I returned home three hours later to discover that Kimmer, despite her exhaustion, had waited up for me, and we made the hopeless, passionate love of clandestine paramours who might never see each other again. Later on, just before falling asleep, my wife told me she was sorry, but she never said for what.

  (II)

  MY LUNGS ARE SIGNALING that they have had enough. Running more slowly now, I cut through a side street four blocks from my house. This route takes me past the sprawling campus of Hilltop, the stuffiest of the city’s several private elementary schools, and I remind myself that just about a year from now we will be making an appointment so that Bentley can have his interview. To see if he is good enough for the Hilltop kindergarten. Interview. At all of four years old! I jog onward, not quite believing that we are going to put our little boy through this nonsense. Once upon a time, all the university kids got in, but that was before rising costs, and their eternal partners, tuition hikes, forced Hilltop to go in search of the children of the region’s commercial class. Last year the school rejected the youngest of my colleague Betsy Gucciardini’s three shy daughters, and for the next month Betsy wore her frustration and despair like twin veils of mourning, seeming to equate failure to gain a place at Hilltop with the end of her child’s productive life. I wonder, not for the first time, what has happened to America, and then I remember that my old buddy Eddie Dozier, Dana’s ex, is about to publish a book advocating the abolition of the public schools and rebates of all the tax dollars that support them. The market, he assures us, will provide a plentiful supply of private replacements. So every child in America can have an interview before starting kindergarten. Swell.

  “Focus on what matters,” I wheeze, slowing finally to a walk.

  By the time I stumble through the door, it is past seven. Kimmer has bacon and eggs ready—usually my job—and she even kisses me lightly on the lips. She is so sweet that the last few mont
hs might never have happened. She apologizes: not for refusing to listen to me last night, but for the fact that she has to go to the office this morning. She hoped to work from home today, but too many things have come up. I smile and shrug and tell my wife I understand. I do not tell her that I am wounded. I do not tell her how sure I am that the main thing that has come up is that I told her that I might work from home, too, so we could spend the day together.

  Instead, I smile.

  “What are you so happy about?” Kimmer asks, her arm surprisingly around my waist. In response, I kiss her forehead. There is no safe answer to her question, even though there are many true ones. I realize that I have finally bested the Judge: I am his equal at hiding my feelings, and his superior in pretending to be delighted when I am miserable.

  Over breakfast, we leaf through our two daily newspapers, the New York Times and the Elm Harbor Clarion, each of us, for very different reasons, searching for articles about my father. I am deep inside the Clarion sports page, mulling over the latest injuries to players on the university’s hapless basketball team, when I decide that the time has come to tell my wife the one last thing I must do. I do not expect her to like it.

  I fold the newspaper carefully and look at her exquisite face, the bright brown eyes intense behind her glasses, the lines of middle age deepening above her cheeks with every passing month. Her mouth is drawn up in a little bow. I know she knows I am watching her.

  “Kimmer, darling,” I begin.

  She flicks her gaze at me, then drops it once more to the Times editorial page. “Wanna hear a funny op-ed about the President’s tax plan?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s really clever, though.”

  “No, Kimmer. I mean, not just now. We need to talk.”

  Eyes rolling in my direction, rolling back to the paper. “Is it important? Can it wait?”