Too Near the Edge (24 page)

“If you wait until I seat these people, I can
call him,” she said, motioning a party of six to follow her to a
booth. She got them set and returned to her hostess desk. “What did
you say your name was again?” she asked, picking up the phone.

“It’s Cleo, but he doesn’t know me. Tell him
it’s about his brother, and it’s very important.”

The hostess spoke to someone on the phone,
who relayed the information to Harry. “Can you come back at 2:30?”
she asked me.

“Sure. That will work. Thanks for taking time
to call him.”

I headed back out to Nicollet Mall to find
something to do for a few hours. The food smells in Harry’s had
brought on some hunger pangs, so I decided to look for a place to
eat. At a nearby bakery café, I filled up quickly on a huge spinach
salad, a generous slice of cheese and mushroom focaccia bread, and
an enormous iced tea. I suspected that large portions might be a
Minnesota tradition to help locals stoke up for the long
winters.

After lunch, I wandered through Marshall
Field’s, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Big city shopping is
a novelty for me, as Boulder doesn’t have these department stores
in town, and I don’t often go to Denver or its suburbs to shop. The
hours passed quickly, and it was soon time to walk back to Harry’s
Grill.

The hostess recognized me when I walked in.
“Harry’s over at the bar,” she said pointing to a dark-haired man
wearing chinos and a white shirt, seated on a barstool and talking
intently with the bartender. I walked over and stood next to him
until he finished his conversation, turned his head in my direction
and looked at me. He looked amazingly like Erik, except nowhere
near as fit. He was medium height like Erik, but stockier, without
the muscles. He had Erik’s dark eyes and curly brown hair, but his
face was marred by a two-inch scar on his left cheek.

“Are you Harry Honigman?”

“That’s right. Are you Cleo from Colorado?”
He was still seated facing the bar, looking sideways at me.

“Yes. Could you spare a few minutes to talk
about your brother?

I guess his name is Horace, but I know him as
Erik.”

Harry looked bored, his eyes half-lidded.
“I’ve spent way too much time in my life talking about my brother.
What do you want to know?”

I decided I needed to get his attention
quickly, or at least get an answer to one of my questions, so I
said, “Who are Amber and Melissa?”

Harry spun his bar stool around to face me.
His eyes were wide open now, boring into me. “He told you about
Amber and Melissa?”

“No, Jenny said we should ask him about
them.”

“Jenny’s been dead for over a year. Why are
you here now?” He sounded like I was trying to sell him a used car,
but I ignored his suspicious tone and answered in my calm-therapist
voice.

“It’s a long story. Could we talk somewhere a
little more private?”

He motioned me over to a booth. “Would you
like something to drink while we talk?”

“Water would be great,” I said, scooting into
the middle of the booth.

As Harry joined me in the booth, the
bartender brought over a couple of bottles of Evian, two ice-filled
glasses and a tiny dish of lime wedges. As I poured some water into
a glass, I speculated as to what it would be like to have your own
bartender.

“Jenny was a sweet lady,” Harry’s face had
softened. “How did you know her?”

“My grandmother lives at the nursing home
where she worked. Jenny was Gramma’s favorite nurse.”

“So what did Jenny tell you about Amber and
Melissa? And have you talked to Horace about them?”

“It’s complicated. I’ve only known Erik—or
Horace—for about a month and he insists he’s never heard of Amber
or Melissa. In fact, half the time he denies having a brother, says
he has no family at all. Are Amber and Melissa your sisters?”

Harry sighed. “No, they were Horace’s first
two wives.”

“So he’s divorced from both of them?”

He stared off into the distance as if trying
to recollect long-forgotten details, then looked back at me. “Not
exactly. It’s a long story, but I need to hear more about your
involvement with Horace before I tell it.”

I told him about Adam’s death, Erik’s
friendship with Adam and with Sharon and Nathan, Erik’s nutrition
and herb-growing business, what Erik had told me about his belief
that Adam’s death was suicide, and how he told conflicting stories
about his background. When I got to the Contact Project part, and
described Sharon’s contact with Jenny, he looked skeptical, but
kept listening. I finished by saying, “So after I found out that
you really do exist, I decided I needed to meet you to find out if
you have any idea what Jenny was trying to tell us.”

Harry sighed again, but this time he gave me
a tiny half-smile. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know. But you may
need something stronger than water to hear this story. We’re famous
for our martinis. Or maybe you’d like some single malt scotch?” He
jumped up and started toward the bar, looking back to check on my
order.

I was tempted but I decided I needed to keep
all my faculties sharp. “Thanks, but I’ll stay with the water for
now.”

He got himself a drink of something on the
rocks, came back to the booth, settled in, and began his story.
“Well, first of all, we lived with our parents, who did not abuse
us, when we were growing up in L.A. Dad was a construction worker,
Mom was a waitress. We weren’t poor, but certainly not rich—just
comfortable. I’m six years older than Horace, and we got along fine
when he was really little. He looked up to me, and I enjoyed
teaching him stuff. But, by the time he was six and I was twelve,
that changed. His true character was coming out. He made a game of
getting me to let him use my stuff, even when he didn’t really even
want the stuff. And sometimes he’d break or damage my things on
purpose, just for the heck of it. Like the time he dropped some of
my best baseball cards in a mud puddle in front of the house.”

Harry stopped and looked down pensively, as
though he could still see those precious cards floating in the
muddy water. He took a long sip of his drink and went on.
“Sometimes I’d go after him and fight with him. He was
vicious—that’s how I got the scar on my face. But usually when I
got mad, Horace would cry and pretend to be really sorry, and I
would let him get away with it. I kept thinking I could get him to
change.”

I began to see why Harry didn’t like to talk
about his brother. “Didn’t your parents do anything to stop
him?”

“My parents tried, but Horace was immune to
punishment. He lied and stole like a pro and nothing worked to
change his behavior. It was like he knew the difference between
right and wrong, but he didn’t care because he was special. He saw
no reason to feel sorry about the pain and destruction he caused.
Sometimes he’d pretend to feel remorse but they knew he was faking.
So they pretty much gave up.”

I began to feel kind of stupid for ever
finding Erik attractive or feeling sympathy for him. Maybe Pablo’s
take on him was more accurate than mine. But Erik had managed to
convince three women to marry him, and Sharon liked him. “He has a
way of attracting women,” I said.

“Oh man, does he ever!” Harry rolled his
eyes. “I was always amazed that as a teenager, Horace could have
his pick of girls, even though he was really bossy with them. Like
one girl in high school who liked pleasing him, and the harder he
made it the more she liked it. Sometimes Horace would make demands
just to see how far he could push her. Then, after he had her
totally under his thumb, he dropped her with no warning. She kept
calling him begging him to tell her what she had done, but he
refused to talk to her at all.”

“Did that happen a lot?” I wondered how Jenny
had done with that.

Harry swirled the ice around in his drink and
shook his head. “Actually, I wasn’t around much while he was in
high school. I know most of that from what my mom told me. I moved
up to San Francisco to study at the California Culinary Academy and
then I apprenticed at some restaurants up there to get experience.
So during that time I was mostly only seeing Horace at vacations.
But in 1988, I got a great job offer at a restaurant in L.A., so I
moved back there. Horace was involved in some multilevel marketing
scam where they got people to buy supplies to assemble holiday
decorations at home that they could supposedly sell back to the
company. But the supplies were crummy and the directions were worse
and when the people tried to get paid, the company told them the
products were no good and refused to pay. So Horace and his partner
were making money selling supplies but no one else got
anything.”

“Hmm…that sounds a lot like the herb growing
kits he’s selling right now,” I said.

“I’m not surprised. Horace just keeps on
using people. He told me once that most people lead such silly
little lives, it’s stupid not to take advantage of them. He said
it’s like they are some sort of wind-up toys set on a path to chug
along. They just go until they run out of steam and then stop, dead
in their tracks. And all the time they are going along, they don’t
even see what is going on around them.”

I was stunned. Was this actually Erik’s
philosophy of life? He sounded like a sociopath. I needed to hear
more. “That’s amazing,” I said. “He gives the impression that he
genuinely cares about people. Or about Sharon and Nathan at least.
So what was the story with Amber and Melissa?”

Harry drained his drink, set his glass to one
side, and said, “Okay, here’s the story. Amber was Horace’s first
wife. He married her in 1990, when he was 24. She was one of those
clumsy fat girls who thought she’d never get a man, much less a
good-looking guy like Horace. But her father, Jim, was a widower
who had tons of money. Amber was an only child, and he doted on
her. A perfect setup for Horace. The father was suspicious at
first, but Horace turned on the charm, and in no time he convinced
Jim that he was earnest, sincere, hard-working–whatever Jim wanted
to believe. When Horace and Amber got married, Jim gave them a
house and a bunch of stock. And he took Horace into his
construction business as a full partner. A few years later, Jim
died from a bad fall from the top of a building they were working
on. Horace took over the business. Amber was never the same after
her dad died. She got more and more depressed until she overdosed
on pills and booze. Most people thought Horace was heartbroken, but
from my view all was going according to Horace’s plan. He was only
28—took his inheritance and moved on.”

The story shocked me, but I didn’t react
because I didn’t want to distract him from the telling. “So, how
long ago was that?” I asked.

“About ten years ago, and it was the last
time he lived anywhere near me,” Harry said. “I had met Loretta by
then, and we were getting married. She didn’t want to stay in
L.A.—thought it was too plastic. And her family lived here in
Minneapolis. I was lucky enough to find a good chef position here,
so we moved. We decided to stay, I opened Harry’s Grill, and we’ve
been here ever since. I haven’t had much to do with Horace except
when he’s showed up here—always to ask for money—or as he puts it,
to let me in on an incredible investment opportunity. I never bite,
so I don’t know why he keeps trying.”

I felt more and more alarmed about what Erik
might have in mind for Sharon, but I kept a poker face and made no
comment. I was after information—which I was getting—and I didn’t
want to interrupt the flow.

Harry looked increasingly disgusted as he
continued his summary. “Horace has lived all over, had all kinds of
businesses. I couldn’t tell you much about them. I do know he
married again in 1994. Her name was Melissa. I don’t know much
about that marriage, except that Melissa left him a couple of years
later and disappeared. I don’t know whether or not they ever got
divorced. I hope they were divorced before he married Jenny. I
guess you know they were only married two years before she died.”
He stopped and looked at me inquiringly.

“Yes,” I said, “that was so tragic—her
forgetting her inhaler and having that asthma attack when they were
backpacking. She was only

34. When did you meet her? I’m guessing
Erik—or Horace—didn’t bring her here to meet you, since he didn’t
want her to know anything about him or even his real name.”

Harry nodded. “You’re right. Horace never
brought her here. I only met Jenny once. It wasn’t long before she
died. She came up here alone to see me, without telling Horace. It
was …” A crash of glasses from the bar behind us interrupted Harry
in mid-sentence. As Harry jumped up, I heard a woman yelling
obscenities from the other end of the restaurant.

I sat where I was, trying to revise my
impression of Erik in a way that incorporated this new
information—and hoping Harry would come back and finish the
story.

After twenty minutes went by, I started to
worry about the time. My flight back to Denver was at 7:30, so I
figured I needed to leave for the airport by 5:30 to allow for
traffic delays, airport security and all. It was already 4:30, and
there was more I needed to find out from Harry.

Just then he showed up carrying a tray with a
bottle of chardonnay, two wine glasses, and a plate of crab-stuffed
mushrooms. “I can’t let you leave without tasting anything,” he
said with a grin. “And a little alcohol usually helps anyone who is
talking about Horace.”

I couldn’t refuse, and I was so glad I
didn’t. The fruity wine was the perfect complement to the spicy
cheese-topped crab filling nestled in the hot mushrooms. I savored
the flavors and relaxed into the moment.

After I’d devoured two mushrooms and half a
glass of wine, I decided to get back to business. “So you said
Jenny came to see you before she died?”