Past Due (37 page)

I
T WAS ALL
coming into focus, what had happened twenty years ago and what was happening now, it was all coming into focus. The only question was what to do about it.

“I can’t tell you,” I said as Slocum and I drove back toward the hospital, where my car was parked. “We were lawyer-client.”

“Did he pay you?”

“I’m treating it as privileged. But he’ll tell you everything as soon as he can. I made sure of that. Do you have a meeting set up?”

“The feds are guarding their time like a jealous lover. But, day after tomorrow, McDeiss and I have been given a couple of hours to question him about twenty years ago.”

“Good. That should give me enough time to find out what I need to find out.” My query had been sent to California, but no telling how long before I heard back, and I had a quicker way of finding out the truth. “Make sure you ask him in detail about what actually happened to the body. And make sure you ask him who it was who hired him.”

“Interesting?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Will I want to hear the answer.”

“Oh, no.”

“Damn it. I got a big enough headache as it is. Did anything else happen up there? Did you say anything to get him upset?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. He looked a little peaked when he came down the stairs.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, yes.”

And Slocum was right, he did. Derek Manley was positively pale when he followed me down the stairs, his eyes bulging, his hand shaking ever so slightly. It was like I had passed him a virulent flu with the utterance of one simple word.

I had thought long and hard about whether I should pass that word along. I didn’t want to do Dante’s bidding, and I considered telling Slocum about what Dante had asked me to pass along before I climbed those stairs, but in the end I decided to handle it as I handled it. Whatever game Derek Manley was playing, he thought he could see all the angles. Dante was using me to tell him that there were angles he hadn’t anticipated, dangers he hadn’t sidestepped. It wasn’t up to me or Slocum or the feds to decide what risks Manley was willing to take. Derek Manley was a big boy, he was making the decisions, he should know the price he would have to pay, what precautions he would have to take. So after he had told me all I needed to know, and I told him what I thought had happened that night twenty years ago, I also told him I had a message from a friend, and I leaned over and placed my lips to his ear and whispered the single word.

His face, when he heard that word, was like a time-lapse film of the wilting of a flower, an ugly bulbous flower, true, but still a flower, losing its bloom in the blink of an eye.

“Magnolia.”

It took me a while to figure it out. Was it code? Was there a particular tree? Was it the name of one of Manley’s strippers?
Gentlemen, get ready to open your hearts and wallets for the jolt from Georgia, a walking heart attack who puts the hospital in Southern hospitality, the one, the only, Magnolia DeLight.
It took me a while to figure it out, but I did, finally. And Manley himself had given me the clue. For Dante, in a desperate situation, would have threatened Manley at his softest point. And the only soft point Manley appeared to have was a son, in troubled health, stashed away somewhere in New Jersey. All
it took was a quick look at the atlas and there it was, between Barrington and Somerdale, between Kirkwood and Runnymede, the little hamlet of Magnolia, New Jersey. Dante was threatening Manley’s boy, and he was using me to do it. But you tell me if Manley didn’t deserve to know.

“Where are you heading now?” said Slocum as he dropped me off in front of the hospital’s parking garage.

“Home. To sleep. Perchance to dream.”

“You sure?”

“I could use some.”

“Look, Carl, I respect that you promised Manley not to tell us what he told you. I don’t know if privilege is really attached, and we could probably get a judge to force it out of you except that we’ll hear it from the horse’s mouth soon enough. But whatever he told you, if it really did have something to do with that fire the other night, you should let McDeiss and me take care of it.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “You’re the pros.”

“Yes, we are.”

“And I’m basically a coward.”

“That’s one of the things I most admire about you.”

“Much appreciation,” I said, “though you shouldn’t slight my ignorance. That deserves your admiration too. Along with my general lack of physical prowess.”

“Not to mention you’re as ugly as the wrong end of a dead dog.”

“Thank you for that.”

“So you’re going to go home now, right?”

“Right.”

“To sleep?”

“Heaven knows I need it.”

“Good. I’ll be in touch.”

I watched as the Taurus drove away, then wandered around the parking garage looking for my car, which didn’t bother me much since I decided I would wait a bit before I drove out anyway, just to make sure Slocum was gone. While I waited I called a number Derek had given me, 609 area code, and gave the woman on the other end of the phone a message I didn’t understand: “That time
on the way to the beach, it’s that time again.” Then I called Beth. There was no answer so I left a message on her machine, saying I had news, big news, and I would tell her everything tomorrow morning at Lonnie Chambers’s funeral.

Slowly I backed out of my space, followed the painted arrows down the ramps, paid my fee, all the time checking my rearview mirror. I kept checking it even as I pulled out of the lot, turned right and then left and then right and then left again, driving through the narrow North Philly streets as if through a maze, making sure I wasn’t followed. Satisfied, I headed south, not up Broad, where I would be expected to drive, but up Nineteenth, again checking behind me. I would go home to get some sleep some time that night, just as I had told Slocum, but not just yet. I had someplace first to visit. See, it was all coming into focus, and it was focusing on one man. Up Nineteenth, across the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Around Rittenhouse Square, and then again up Nineteenth until I found a parking spot.

“What the ’ell do you want?” came the familiar voice over the intercom speaker.

“I’m here to see Mr. Dean.”

“Mr. Dean has retired for the night.”

“Tell him I’m here. Tell him I’ve got a question for him.”

“You’ve got a question? That’s a surprise, isn’t it? Solicitors are always full of questions. Like a cow is full of shit.”

“Tell him I’m here.”

“Ever seen a slaughtered cow split right down the gut. The shit slides right out onto the ground. I wonder if it’s like that with solicitors, slit their bellies and the questions come sliding out, slapping down on the floor, along with their intestines, small and large.”

“Thank you for that image. You should write children’s books.”

“You’ve got a question. I’ve got your answer right here. Bugger off.”

I rang the bell again.

“You didn’t ’ear me?”

“Oh I heard you. Tell your boss I’m here.”

“Climb into your bung hole and get lost.

“Do we have to keep doing this? Isn’t it getting tedious, this little
give and take? Because in the end you’re just a servant boy, working for the boss. So be a good little servant boy and let your boss know I’m here.”

“I already said he’s asleep.”

“Or maybe he’s standing right behind you, whispering in your ear. Either way, I think he’ll want to see me. Tell him I’m here. Tell him I have a question. About the Dane.”

“H
AMLET?” SAID
E
DDIE
Dean from the doorway.

I was in the parlor once again, with the red walls, the grand piano, the paintings of horses, the model ship, farther along in construction than before, but still incomplete. I was standing by the shelves of books, holding the volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies, opened to
Hamlet
. I looked up to see Eddie Dean, in his paisley dressing gown, with his dead face, his ascot, his cigarette and long blond hair, looking like a ludicrous mannequin from a long-gone age. He belonged on that dead ship he was so concerned about, I thought. They both were ghosts.

Behind him stood the glowering Colfax.

“You told us
Hamlet
was a great favorite of yours,” I said. “I’ve been reading it myself and I find I have a question.”

“This late at night?”

“Literature doesn’t keep banker’s hours, does it? I have a question and I thought you’d be the perfect person to ask.”

“I’m no expert,” he said, a false modesty stretching his voice.

“Don’t slight yourself.”

Maybe my voice was a bit harsh, because Eddie Dean’s chin rose for a moment before he turned and nodded at Colfax. Colfax stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him. Dean walked toward me. “Fire away, then, Victor. What part of the play can I elucidate for you?”

“See, here’s my problem,” I said. “I’ve read it over a couple times now and each time I can’t help wondering why it is that Hamlet dithers so.”

“It is part of his nature. A fatal flaw so to speak. It is simply what Hamlet is.”

“A dithering fool?”

“Not a fool. But a man, perhaps, who is unable to act with great force because his mind goes off in too many directions.”

“When it should be focused on the one.”

“Precisely.”

“Revenge,” I said.

“Yes, well, remember, Victor, it is, at heart, a simple revenge play after all.”

“And Shakespeare was such a simple writer.” I looked down at the book, carefully turned a page. “So you believe Hamlet is right to seek a bloody revenge against his uncle, the king?”

“The king killed Hamlet’s father, he married Hamlet’s mother, he usurped Hamlet’s crown and wealth. What else is to be done?”

“Ergo murder.”

“I believe in the law it is called justifiable homicide.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “Revenge is not a legal justification for anything. A man named Lonnie Chambers was killed a few nights ago. His funeral is early tomorrow morning. It turns out he was an old friend of Tommy Greeley’s.”

I looked carefully at Eddie Dean’s face. It was a mask, frozen, inscrutable, hideous. “I didn’t know.”

“This Lonnie Chambers might also have betrayed Tommy. Lonnie was supposed to guard his old friend the night Tommy was killed. He obviously failed, but maybe by design. He was upset that Tommy was sleeping with his wife.”

“Very interesting, Victor.”

“Except you knew that last part already, because I told it all to your vice president of external affairs.”

“Did you?”

“There’s a famous line in the play that troubles me, when the ghost of Hamlet’s father says—where is it?” I paged back through the play, being careful to touch only the gold gilt on the edge of the
pages. “Yes, here. The ghost says,
‘Murder most foul as in the best it is.’
Even assuming that murder for revenge is the best kind of murder, it still is characterized, even by the ghost who is urging it, as being most foul.”

“Obviously he’s not referring to the killing of his own killer.”

“Obviously?”

“Maybe you should go home and read it again.”

“I returned my copy to the library. May I borrow this?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, be my guest.”

“Babbage. Ever hear of a man named Babbage?”

His frozen face didn’t change, but he hesitated a moment before he said, “Cabbage?”

“Babbage.”

“No. Can’t say that I have.”

“He was the man whose testimony drove a stake through the heart of Tommy Greeley’s organization and would have put Tommy in jail. Babbage died just a few weeks ago. Heart attack.”

“Pity.”

“Although,” I said, tapping my head, “a clump of hair was missing, so the heart attack might have happened while someone was in the process of interrogating him quite forcefully. Maybe the same way Joey Parma was interrogated quite forcefully.”

“I hardly think so.”

I nodded, stepped back and then forward again. “But why does he dither? I’m talking of Hamlet again. If killing the king is so obviously the right thing to do, why does he hesitate? There is a moment when he no longer has any doubts about what his uncle has done, and he spies the murderer kneeling, and he unsheathes his sword, but he can’t bring himself to use it.”

“Because the uncle was praying, Victor. You must not have read the text very carefully.”

I started looking through the play, turning a page, scratching my head.

“Give the book to me,” he said as he grabbed it away. He licked his thumb and paged through the volume until he found the scene he was looking for. He traced his finger down one page and then the opposite and then tapped the line in victory. “Yes, Hamlet
doesn’t want to kill his uncle when his uncle’s thoughts are turned toward God. He says,
‘A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven?’
He decides to wait, so that he can catch him in a more compromising position and send him to hell. See?”

He turned the book toward me, pointed at the line. I took the book and started to read the section and then stopped. “Okay,” I said. “I see.” I laid the silk marker in the page and then closed the book. “Maybe you’re right. Or maybe Hamlet is rationalizing because a part of him, the best part of him, doesn’t want to do it at all, knows it is wrong, knows a bloody revenge can end only in his own physical and moral destruction.”

“What is that, Victor, the Quaker interpretation?”

“Or the author’s, because that’s pretty much what happens to our hero. I mean, it’s not a tragedy simply because Hamlet dies in the end, is it? Hamlet at one point describes himself as
‘crawling between heaven and earth.’
It seems to me he’s split, one side wants to kill, but the other side yearns for something better, finer, more spiritual, maybe more moral. I wonder if it is that split which causes his hesitation.”

“The man killed his father, Victor. The killer deserved to die. What would you have him do?”

“Use the law, maybe.”

“But the killer was king. The law wasn’t available to Hamlet.”

“Then let God and conscience take care of it.”

“Which means doing nothing. Sometimes nothing is not an option. He had to do something. He had a duty to do something.”

“Duty? And who imposed such a duty? A ghost, covered head to toe in armor.”

“The ghost of his father.”

“The ghost of a murderous pirate, of a criminal, the ghost of war, the ghost of violence. If Hamlet had a duty, it was to remain true to the best part of himself, the part that loved art, that loved Ophelia, that worshiped life, not death.”

“You simply don’t understand. You can’t understand.”

I stopped, stared. It was as if an emotion was struggling to form
itself in the lifeless flesh of his face, something dark and bitter and wholly personal.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe I’ll never understand the play the way you can. What happened to your face?”

His features smoothed back toward their bland frigidity, as if what I had seen had been merely a phantom of emotion overlaid on lifeless wax, and he turned away slightly. “There was an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“It is time for you to go.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I was out of town. Paid a visit to the Shoe City of the World. I visited Tommy Greeley’s mother. Sad lady, but I did see something extraordinary. In her china hutch, saved as if they were presents from a god. Twenty bottles of gin. She gets one each year on Christmas.”

“Charming.”

“And I also visited an old friend of Tommy’s, a man named Jimmy Sullivan. He gave me something he had been saving all these years.”

Eddie Dean cocked his head slightly, as if waiting for some revelation.

“Some sort of tool chest that Tommy had given him to hold,” I said.

“How intriguing. Maybe you should hand it over to me for safekeeping.”

“It’s pretty safe where it is. I know who betrayed Tommy Greeley.”

“For certain?”

“For pretty damn certain.”

“Tell me, Victor. Tell me who.”

“Not yet,” I said. “Not until I get the answers I’m looking for.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know who killed Joey Parma.”

“That again. I can’t help you. I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

“Truly, I don’t.”

“Okay.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to find out. So how do you think it turns out in the end? The play, I mean.”

“Oh, pretty well, I would say. The father is avenged, the king is dead.”

“Yes, but so is Hamlet, and his mother, and his love, and all that his father had won with blood on the battlefield is turned over once again to his enemies.”

“A warning against indecision.”

“Somehow I don’t think so.” I lifted the Shakespeare volume, said, “Thanks for the book,” and then headed past him, along the long wall of bookshelves. As I passed a specific collection of volumes I stopped. I pulled one out, looked at it. It was part of a set, all in fine leather bindings, the collected works of Alexandre Dumas.

“By the way,” I said, “the Dumas novel you loved as a child, the one that gave you the greatest reading experience of your life, that wasn’t
The Three Musketeers,
was it?”

“No,” said Eddie Dean.

“It didn’t come to me until just now. The Count of Monte Cristo’s faithful and devoted servant was named Jacopo, wasn’t he?”

“If you say so.”

I turned, faced him as I slid
The Count of Monte Cristo
back into its place. “See, here’s the problem with using literature as a guide for life, Eddie. From everything I’ve learned about him, it’s pretty clear that Tommy Greeley was not the innocent and noble-hearted Edmund Dantes. And Alura Straczynski, I can tell you with utter certainty, is not the fair and loyal Mercedes. And Hamlet, well, in the end what can you say except that our pal Hamlet, despite all his evident talents and depths, was a careless son of a bitch who royally screwed the pooch.”

I banged on the door. It was late and he was most likely asleep and so I banged hard enough to shatter his slumber. Through the little glass peephole I saw a light switch on, then be blocked by a peering eye.

“Oh,” said Jeffrey Telushkin when he finally opened the door.
“It’s you.” He was wearing pajamas and a robe, his hair was mussed, his little beady eyes red beneath his round glasses. He wrapped his robe more tightly around himself. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Is it too late for a visit?” I said.

“What do you want?”

“A dance?”

“Are you serious?”

“No, just tired. Do you still have a contact in the FBI?”

“Maybe.”

“A contact you trust, a contact who can move quickly on evidence you give to him.”

His eyes narrowed behind his thick lenses and his lips curled in curiosity. “Yes, I do.”

“Don’t get too excited, we’re not getting married here.”

“What do you have?”

I handed him the leather-bound volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies. He looked at it for a moment and started to open it.

“Don’t,” I said. “Treat it like you would a fragile piece of evidence. Put it in a bag and give it to your contact to take down to the lab. Have them check the inside for fingerprints, especially the pages where the silk marker sits. Then compare what they can lift to some old prints you might still have hanging around.”

“Old prints?”

“You know.”

His head jerked up. “Is he alive? Have you found him?”

“That’s why I came here,” I said. “For you to tell me. The person whose prints are in the book is named Eddie Dean. He’s living for the time being in a rented town house on the southwest corner of Rittenhouse Square.”

“Does his reappearance have something to do with the eminent jurist whose relationship to these matters we discussed?”

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

“But his involvement could have far-reaching consequences. Any revelation would have national importance. It is most vital.”

“Not to me. But if you’re going to move on Eddie Dean, you better move fast.”

He turned the book over in his hands, the eyes behind his thick
glasses glistening now with excitement. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll be quick as snakes.”

“I bet you will. Call me when it’s done. But be warned. He has a goon with him, name of Colfax, so if you find a match, you might not want to show up alone.”