Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller (9 page)

We were almost to the village of Water Mill when he flicked his eyes toward me. “So you got a crush on Amy?”

I felt my face burning.

“Hey, when I was your age I had a crush on this girl lived up the street. Jeannie Nolan. Her dad was a fireman. Her and I used to… no, I ain’t gonna tell you that story, ‘cept to say that she got my dick tender. Don’t want you to get any ideas.” And he laughed, but not with mirth or even cheer; it was a sound like stone grinding on concrete.

“How old are you, Billy?”

“Eleven.”

He swiveled his head to look at me, and I reddened even more.

“Almost twelve,” I said. “I skipped a grade.”

“Well, never mind what I said about crushes. You’re too young for that. Weenie’s hardly grown, right? You beat your meat yet?”

I felt bright red from my neck to my ears.

The fact is, I had done it twice. Once in bed, once in the bathroom. But each time, nothing came out. It took about a minute, and I felt this big rush — a
whoosh
— but I couldn’t shoot. Nothing there.

“That’s private,” I said to Carter.

He hammered me on the shoulder with a horny palm.

“I like that answer, Billy. You don’t let people push you around. That’s what people say about me, so I respect it in someone else. When I have something private in my life, I keep it to myself. Unless I feel like telling it, which I do, right now. You want to know something private about me, something hardly anybody else knows?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“I’m a foundling. You know what that is?”

“A baby left on a doorstep.”

“Right. Like in
David Copperfield
. And Moses in the bulrushes. The thing is, some people look down on foundlings. They call them bastards. Here’s the big thing. These kids, the foundlings—I prefer that – sometimes they’re left by some rich person who can’t afford to admit that she gave birth to the kid. You follow?”

The truck swayed from side to side in the rain, while I clutched the door handle with one hand and Iphigenia’s gym bag with the other. We surged out of Bridgehampton, heading east. I looked at the speedometer — coming up on sixty.

Something bright red zipped by the window on my side.

“Carter, we just passed a police car.”

“Bullshit.”

“Off the road, on the Sagaponack turnoff.”

“Doing what?”

“Stopping another car.”

“Then he don’t care about us. Pay attention. Years later, the rich woman finds out where the foundling lives. Some lawyer knocks on the door, says, ‘Here’s this inheritance.’ That happens. No bull. I read about it in
USA Today
. They got a column, ‘Across the USA.’ That happened in Virginia and California. It could happen to me.”

“Carter, why is her real name Amnesia?”

I could see him flex the muscles in his back. “How’d you find that out?”

“It’s on her hospital admissions card.”

“Ginette did that without my knowing. And the reason’s none of your business.”

The pickup jolted and swerved off to the right. I heard a
whack-whack-whack
sound coming right up through the seat.

With a curse, Carter guided the pickup off to the right, onto the shoulder of a wet stretch of road east of Sagaponack. I think he would have kept driving on the flat tire if he could have, but we were already riding on the rim. Orange sparks shot out into the black rain.

We ground to a stop, and both dogs raised their heads. Carter banged open the glove compartment and snatched a flashlight. Its beam was dim.

“Daisy, don’t move. Penalty of death.” He wrenched open the door on the driver’s side. “You don’t mind, Little Lord Fauntleroy, I could use some help. Hold this flashlight.”

I was halfway out the door when I remembered what Carter had said about Pablo and Daisy eating through leather. If they could eat through leather, they could eat through canvas, and canvas was all that protected Iphigenia from their deadly jaws. I grabbed her travel bag, hugged it to my chest, and jumped.

I didn’t dare to let Iphigenia get wet. I slipped out of my suede windbreaker and wrapped it around the bag, and tied the sleeves together; then I shoved the bag under the truck where the rain couldn’t get at it.

Carter was wearing his yellow fisherman’s jacket. He pulled the hood up over his head so that he looked like he was bent to the deck of a boat in a storm. I held the flashlight and raindrops glistened in the bright tunnel made by the beam. Carter jacked the truck up in less than a minute. He spun the lug wrench, wrestled the ripped tire off the front wheel, threw it in the back where it rolled and clanged, and in another minute he had the spare in place, he’d spun the nuts, and he kicked the jack out from under and tossed it in the back—another huge clang.

“Good work, partner. Christ almighty… looka you!” The light had been shining on him all the time so he hadn’t seen me. “You’re kind of wet, amigo. Where’s that fancy coat of yours?” He turned toward the truck.

I yelled, “Don’t start the engine! Iphigenia’s under there!”

I squirmed under the chassis. Iphigenia weighed so little that the bag felt empty. My windbreaker had been pressing against the truck’s axle and was full of grease.

I squeezed into the front seat, beating Pablo down to the floor with a fist until there was enough room for me. I put my hand in the bag to feel Iphigenia. She trembled.

“I’m late,” I said, more to myself than to Carter, but he heard it.

He yelled, “Hold tight, chief!” He floored the gas pedal, taking the truck up to sixty, and a minute later, in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone coming up to Skimhampton Road to Indian Wells, we heard
wah-oh-wah-oh-wah-oh,
and I saw red flashers in all the rear-view mirrors.

Chapter 10

The cops wore shiny black raincoats with hoods. One cop held a huge black umbrella over both cops’ heads and shoulders. East Hampton police didn’t like getting wet unless it was in the surf on the Fourth of July.

Carter began to argue before they could say a word..

“Sir, I’ve got this soaking wet boy here who I’ve got to deliver to his folks in Amagansett so he don’t die of pneumonia. Not to mention three animals — one of which you can’t see, but it’s a rare breed of African monkey — and they’re all soaked, ‘cause we just now had a flat. This is a night meant for fish and alligators, and I ask you to have a little mercy and let me deliver this kid to his lawyer dad before he starts to fade before our eyes.”

One cop, a yellow-haired young man who wore blue sunglasses even though it was a rainy night, handed Carter back his driver’s license. “May I see the insurance card, please?”

“Officer, let me explain —”

The vehicle was insured, but Carter had left the card at home on top of his TV because he’d just found out that his little daughter was in Southampton Hospital and he’d rushed to get there — they could check on that — and now this boy who was in his care, the son of the lawyer, was coming down with pneumonia.

The second cop wrote out a speeding ticket and handed it to Carter.

Carter said, “How much is this gonna cost me?”

“One hundred and fifty dollars.”

I saw the veins in Carter’s neck start to bulge.

The second cop wrote out a second ticket for driving with one headlight.

“And how much for that?”

“Sixty dollars.”

“Oh, a fucking class-A bargain,” Carter said.

The cop told Carter to show up the next day at the police station with his insurance card. “Failure to do so will result in another violation. And get that headlight fixed soon, sir, and until then don’t drive after twilight.”

Carter yelled, “I’m a working man, not a goddam New York City rich sonofabitch. Either of you assholes hear a single word I said about why this happened?”

The cops had already sniffed his breath and knew he wasn’t drunk. They walked away. If Carter had been alone, I decided, they would have hauled him off to a night in jail.

It was five minutes past seven
.
I didn’t know what I was going to tell Aunt Grace, who might have been on the phone to these same police right now
. “A few inches over four feet tall, about sixty-five pounds, brown eyes, brown hair that stands on end, no visible scars, has a nice smile…”

Carter missed the shortcut and screeched off Main Street on to Oak Lane.

“I’ll pay half the speeding fine,” I said.

No lights were burning in the house. Simon was still out somewhere with his buddies. Aunt Grace’s Thunderbird wasn’t in the driveway.

“Where are your folks?” Carter asked. “Out to some cocktail party?”

“My mom’s in Washington. My dad was at Yankee Stadium. My Aunt Grace was supposed to be here.”

“Yankee Stadium? The World Series? Today? Your dad watched the Yankees whip ass
?
“

“I don’t know who won the game.”

“The Yankees did. I caught some of it on the radio. And your dad was
there
. I think you should pay the whole ticket.”

“The whole ticket?”

“You went, ‘Step on it,’ right? I was trying to be the good guy, which is almost always a mistake.”

“Carter, you were already flooring it in Sagaponack.”

“Because you kept looking at your watch and making me nervous.”

You always think later what you should have said, and you’re always brilliant. However, all I did was sneeze. And Iphigenia was cooling down, beginning to shiver. There was no heat in the front seat of the truck unless you counted the steam coming from Pablo’s wet jaws.

I reached for the door handle. “This monkey’s in trouble,” I said.

“And these dogs are dying of thirst. Would you mind getting a bowl of water? Two bowls, so they don’t fight over it.”

“They can’t come in the house.”

“Did I say I wanted them in your goddam house? You want them to lap up water from the gutter? Jesus, I’m arguing with an eleven-year-old kid. Just show me where the kitchen is. Later we can talk about who pays the ticket.”

Clutching Iphigenia’s bag, I climbed out of the truck. Carter jumped out the other door and slammed it shut. Daisy, trying to wriggle out behind him, yipped in pain when it rapped her nose.

“Now you made me hurt Daisy.”

I took off my muddy sneakers and dropped them on the porch. Carter was inside with me before I knew it. There was nothing I could do about it. I switched on lights, heading through the living room toward the kitchen. I heard Carter, behind me, suck in his breath.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

From under the crystal chandelier in the entrance hall, you could go either through a teak sliding door to the den or under a high white stone arch to the living room. A carpeted staircase led up to the second and third floors. Except for the den, which had the forty-inch TV and music cabinet and bookcases, full of sets of Dickens and Conrad and book club selections, floor to ceiling, and a maple floor with thick Tibetan rugs in front of the easy chairs, the house was carpeted for the most part in pale gray Berber. Persian rugs were thrown here and there over the Berber.

Carter strolled into the fifty-foot-long living room, where my parents had some of their art collection, their Tiffany lamps, and Diana’s treasure of heart-shaped silver frames with photos of the various Bravermans and Adlers going all the way back to the 19th century in Berlin and Schwabia. The photos sat on glass side tables, and on the mantel above the fireplace, and on a Steinway baby grand. None of us could play it, although Simon gave the keys a daily pound with his fist when he came home from school and passed it on his way to the kitchen.

I put the gym bag, with Iphigenia in it, on top of the Steinway.

The first thing I saw in the breakfast nook in the kitchen was the red phone button blinking.

Pick me up!

All right, all right…

The first message was from Aunt Grace.

“
C’est moi
, stuck in Atlantic City. Having a fab time at this conference. Ba-aaaad Gracie! Can you survive without your naughty auntie? … kiss kiss hug hug.”

I erased that one.

The next was from my dad.

“Boys, if you’re screening calls, pick up. I’m in a taxi on the Throg’s Neck Bridge, headed for the Stadium. I’ve left my leather briefcase at home, probably in the den. Please find the briefcase, take the sandwiches out of it, and put them in the fridge. Then call me on my cell.” Static followed. “— something wrong with… love you both…”

I saved that one.

The last was a woman who didn’t identify herself and whom I didn’t know. “I tried your cell three times, you rascal.” She pronounced the word as
rah-scal
. “Call me. And make sure you erase this before she gets back from Washington.”

In a hurry, I filled two big plastic bowls at the kitchen sink.

I heard a crash — the house shuddered. I knew right away that it was a doorknob smashing full force into the rubber stopper that prevented it from breaking into the drywall. Carter had shut the front door, but not tight enough, and one of us hadn’t shut his door of the truck, and Daisy and Pablo had slammed their way into the house.

I opened the door to the living room. Both dogs were drenched and Pablo was covered with mud. He shook himself twice on my mom’s Berber carpet.