Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 03 - THE SPRING -- a Legal Thriller (39 page)

“And two explosive charges are missing from that hut and you know
that.
You used them, goddam it. We can’t find any evidence of it yet, but by fucking August, when the snow’s melted, we sure as hell will.”

Loosening his brace a little, Dennis flexed his knee; they had done arthroscopic surgery the day before at Aspen Valley Hospital.

“But do you think,” he asked, “that in fucking August you’ll find any evidence that the charges caused an avalanche back in fucking April?”

The sheriff sighed. “You intend to keep practicing law here in the valley?”

“I haven’t made up my mind.”

“Well, I hope you do, because I’m a man who believes in letting a hen lay her egg in her own time. But if you don’t tell me the truth one day soon, and you stick around this valley—friend or no friend—I’ll make your life miserable.”

Four men were dead, and the village of Springhill was in mourning. It took a week to recover all the bodies. The funerals were held all at one time on a Saturday morning. Dennis did not go, but took the children to an ice hockey game at Aspen High School. Sophie drove up to Springhill early that morning and parked her Blazer among the other cars and trucks on the snow-covered road by the cemetery. When she approached the groups clustered by the open graves they moved to one side or turned their heads away from her. Edward Brophy showed her his back. His nephew Oliver’s body had been the last one recovered from the chaotic snowpack at Devils Rockpile.

Sophie stayed for the ceremony, and then drove over to her parents’ house off Quarry Road.

“It was strange,” she said to Dennis later, when they were walking slowly from the Aspen post office along the trail by the side of the Roaring Fork River. “They were glad to see me but they were almost afraid to be seen talking to me. I felt that, and it was horrible. I didn’t stay long. I told them we weren’t coming back, and I was selling the house and I asked them if they wanted the money, because they had given the house and the land to me. They said no, they didn’t want the money. I asked them, ‘What
do
you want?’ And then my mother began to cry. Because she doesn’t know, Dennis. Neither does my father. Neither of them knows anymore. And no one in town knows either. They just know that a terrible thing happened and that some people went a little crazy. They don’t know what was right and what was wrong about what happened. I guess they’d like to forget about it, to turn back the clock. But they can’t do that. They could live nearly forever into the future if they wanted, but they can’t erase any part of the past. My mother walked me out to the car and she said, ‘We always thought the spring was our blessing. That’s what Larissa taught us, and that’s what you always say, Sophie dear. But now some of us have begun to wonder if it’s become our curse.’ “

Dennis was silent for a while as he limped through the mud and scattered snow. “And what are they going to do about it?” he asked.

“What can they do? The spring is there. The water is what it is. That hasn’t changed, and the secret is still their secret. They asked me about that. My father wondered if you were going to tell the world, or anyone for that matter. I told him what you told me. I told him no.”

“Did he believe you?”

“Yes, he did. And no one will come looking for us, he said. That’s in the past.”

“And they’ll go on just as before.”

“Of course. What else can they do? What else
should
they do? Their reasoning wasn’t perverse or evil, it was just flawed. It bumped up against human nature. The only remarkable thing is that it hadn’t happened before. I mean, it
had
happened, down in Mexico with Julian Rice, and up at Pearl Pass with the Lovells, but there was never any reckoning, never any terrible price for the village to pay. This time Springhill paid a price: four young men. That’s a lot. It’s a lot anywhere, but in a village of such small size it’s worse than you can imagine—it’s crushing. Everyone was related to at least one of those men. It took the heart out of everybody.”

“Let’s sit awhile,” Dennis said.

“Your leg hurts?”

“Some. But I’m supposed to use it.”

They sat on two large flat rocks near the river’s edge. “What about Harry?” Dennis asked. “What do they have to say about him now?”

“That’s odd too. They seem to have forgotten about Harry. It doesn’t matter, now that those young men are gone. My father mentioned it to me. He said, ‘We’re not worried about Harry anymore. We’re sorry about what happened to his hands, and we wish him well. We know he never meant to harm any of us by leaving.’ “

Harry would not paint again. How long would he keep on living if he couldn’t paint? Dennis wondered about that. Then he said, “How do you feel, Sophie, about never going back to Springhill?”

She held his arm more tightly. “Bad,” she said quietly. “Like part of me is gone. Like Harry’s fingers.”

“Do you want to stay here in the valley? In Aspen?”

“I thought I did at first, but now I know I don’t. It would be too close to Springhill. Let’s go away, Dennis. Can we do that? Could we go back to Connecticut, where you lived? It was pretty there. The seasons are lovely—I remember in the fall the leaves turn all those wonderful colors. Could you practice law there, up in the country?”

“Yes,” he said, “I could do that.”

“Lucy and Brian would like it. We can go to the pound there and find new kittens for them.” She smiled sadly. “Kittens that won’t be taken away by horned owls.”

“Yes, they’d like it.” He touched her cheek with his hand; he loved its softness. “But when we met, you said if you didn’t live in Springhill you would be a different person. You said your life was there. How has that changed?”

“Everything has changed,” Sophie said.

“Except us. Isn’t that so? You and I will live good lives now. If we’re lucky, we’ll grow old together.”

She clasped his hand, and in that instant he saw the wise and calm Sophie he had always loved, the Sophie who had braved the storm and led them to safety in the hut: he saw her spirit emerge from the careworn woman of the last months.

She said, “You’ve forgotten something.”

He frowned. “What have I forgotten?”

“Look ahead thirty or forty years. If you don’t get hit by a bus, Dennis, or develop an incurable cancer, you’ll be a truly old man. You’ll need help and a lot of loving care. On the other hand, I’ll be well over a hundred years old. And if I take care, I could be not very different from what I am today.”

Dennis shook his head stubbornly, like a man emerging from a nightmare. “I know all that, Sophie. I believe it, and yet it still doesn’t seem possible. All the business about the spring has become a myth in my mind. I wake up in the middle of the night—and I wonder if its powers really exist. Do they, Sophie? Or was it a hallucination with generations of an entire town as its victim?”

“They exist,” Sophie said. “You might find it easier to deny and forget, but the myth is real, Dennis. The other reality is that human nature doesn’t know how to handle the gifts the world offers. Are you worried about growing old?”

“No more than anyone is.”

“And that’s probably a great deal. But I’ll take good care of you. Think about it, Dennis. I’ll grow old—unless I have bad luck and the bus hits
me
, I’ll grow
very
old. There’s no one anymore to bone me or make me depart.” She stayed silent for a minute, letting him absorb the idea. Then she said, “None of us knows the outer limits. No one’s tried to go all the way.
I
could. Who knows? I could live to be older than anyone’s ever dared dream. What will the world be like? Think of it. I may find out.”

Rising in one supple motion, she looked down at him for a few moments with great tenderness. Then she gripped both his wrists in order to help him to his feet, the way she might have helped an unsteady old man.

“Oh, Dennis,” she said wistfully—the sadness of all that had happened, all they had lost, welling up so that her eyes clouded, then blurred with tears—”what a shame you won’t be there with me.”

***

(continued …)

Dear Reader,

If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends about it. And if you have a few moments, you can post a review. Thoughtful and positive opinions encourage a writer.
 

And, yes, they help sales. Writers have to live and eat (just like real human beings).
 

Other good books by Clifford Irving are available. Here are the titles. They link to Kindle.
 

TRIAL
 – A Legal Thriller

“The courtroom scenes are breathtaking … gripping suspense … riveting!”   —
Publishers Weekly

FINAL ARGUMENT
 – A Legal Thriller

“A courtroom thriller, a mean streets thriller, a Florida cracker thriller, a gritty prison thriller, and an Everyman study of good and evil all rolled into one. And every part of it is terrific. What a wonderful piece of storytelling!”— Donald Westlake,
The New York Times

DADDY’S GIRL
: A True Thriller of Texas Justice

“Irving builds suspense with skill and makes the people come to life … a fine book.” —
Houston Chronicle

Clifford Irving’s PRISON JOURNAL (a/k/a JAILING)

“A tale of intelligent triumph under remarkable stress. It has the ring of truth and is highly recommended.” —
Times of London

TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA
 – a Romance of Revolutionary Mexico and the early-20th century American West 

“Fabulous, big, rawboned wild-blooded adventure tale that gives the sights and sounds and smells of a turn-of-the-century world real enough to touch. Clifford Irving has written a novel to make any writer proud and many readers grateful.” —
Los Angeles Herald Examiner

Clifford Irving’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD HUGHES

“It’s almost impossible to know where fact leaves off and fiction begins, if indeed that distinction should be made. This is a hypnotizing narrative, a brilliant study of money’s power to corrupt absolutely.” — Robert Kirsch,
Los Angeles Times

THE ANGEL OF ZIN
 – A Holocaust Mystery

“Exciting, dynamic, and marvelously written.”—
Publishers Weekly

FAKE!
 – the Life of the Master Art Faker of the 20
^th
Century

“The wild, true story of three men who raped the art world … one of the most sophisticated suspense sagas of our time … fantastic.” —
Chicago Tribune
 

THE SPRING
 – A Legal Thriller

“An extraordinarily entertaining and thoughtful combination of
Lost Horizons
and
Presumed Innocent
. Not only is it a mystery—on at least two levels—but it poses troubling questions concerning prolonged life and its ultimate value.”—
Booklist

STRANGER TO THE KINGDOM
 (formerly THE VALLEY) – a mythic novel of the Old West

“A superb novel that grips the reader from start to thrilling finish. Its solidity is that of a Greek myth.” —
Times Literary Supplement

PROJECT OCTAVIO
– the Rise and Fall of the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax

“Brilliant.” –
Newsday       
“A masterpiece.” –
CBS Radio

THE DEATH FREAK
 – A CIA Thriller (an Eddie Mancuso and Vasily Borgneff novel)

“A suavely persuasive, anti-Establishment thriller with the bitter aftertaste of Campari and vodka. A clever, cynical, and compelling novel.” — Time Magazine
  

THE SLEEPING SPY
 – A CIA Thriller (an Eddie Mancuso and Vasily Borgneff novel)

“A dazzling combination of high suspense and hijinks, and some most unusual killings.” —
Los Angeles Times

THE 38TH FLOOR
 – A Thriller of International Politics 

“Some smashing skullduggery, with shadowings, chases, and a marvelous climax.” —
Sunday Telegraph

THE LOSERS
  – A New York Thriller

“A serious book built out of thriller elements.” —
London Sunday Times

CLASH BY NIGHT
 (formerly ON A DARKLING PLAIN) – A first novel

“A fine debut.”  — New York Times

THE BATTLE OF JERUSALEM
 – A Personal History of the Six-Day War, 1967

“Clifford [Irving] was there, he saw what happened, and he tells it the way it happened.”  – Irwin Shaw

BOY ON TRIAL
 – A Legal Thriller

not yet reviewed

(continued …)

Author’s Bio:

(at the request of some readers)

Hello. I’m Clifford Irving, a man who’s had an eventful time on the planet. I was once on the cover of Time Magazine, and Hollywood made a movie about part of my life. Richard Gere played me.

I traveled twice around the world before most people living in it today were born; I stood guard in an Israeli kibbutz, crewed on a 56’ three-masted schooner that sailed the Atlantic from Mexico to France, smuggled whisky from Tangier to Spain, and one spring I lived on a houseboat on Dal Lake in Kashmir from where I rode horseback intoTibet.

Growing up in Manhattan, I studied painting at the High School of Music & Art. At Cornell University I chased beautiful but unconquerable Ivy League coeds, rowed on the crew, and dreamed of becoming a great writer. I sailed to Europe, settled on the decadent Mediterranean island of Ibiza, and wrote my first novel. I sent it to a literary agent in New York. G. P. Putnam’s Sons published it.

Was it really as easy and as quick as that? Of course not. I was lucky. And determined.

I taught at UCLA graduate extension school, with Betsy Drake and Cary Grant among my pupils. I became a correspondent to the Middle East for NBC. And I kept writing books.

In 1970, I created a writing event which became the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax. Many believe that the threat of the book’s publication, with its revelations of the Hughes-Nixon bribes, caused Nixon to approve the Watergate break-in.

My reward in 1972 for these accusations (and lunacy) was 16 months in three federal prisons.