Chain of Fools (6 page)

Timmy and Janet were about twenty feet farther out than Dale and I. I thought I heard a light
whomp
as I dived, and when I surfaced, about halfway back to the dock, Janet was nowhere in sight. But I saw Timmy and Dale come up and take a quick look around—the skier had made a U, spotted us, and was speeding back our way—and then Timmy and Dale gulped in air and dived again. I did the same. My heart was pounding and I was sick with fright for Janet as I swept through the murky lake water, but when I broke the surface again ten feet from the dock, Janet came up ahead of me, unhurt, and scrambled gasping up the ladder onto the dock. The Jet Skier was zooming away now, up the birch-lined shoreline. Timmy and Dale shot up like two whales dancing, though not so gracefully, and swam toward the dock—Timmy lagging behind a bit—where I joined them.

"It was that guy!" Janet yelled. "It was that same mean-eyed homicidal creep!"

I clambered onto the dock and hollered to Janet, "Let's go! Up the shore! In my car!"

We sprinted up past the lodge and jumped into my Mitsubishi. Janet directed me out the driveway and up the shore road. The clutch pedal was sharp under my bare left foot, and the gas pedal felt weightless and weird under my right. We could hear but not see the skier, and then Janet caught a glimpse of him through the trees, and she yelled, "He's cutting out across the lake! Shit, we'll never catch him now!"

I said, "Who lives over there? Anybody you know?" I did a quick, gravelly turnaround in somebody's driveway.

"The Stebiks
¹
I'll call the Stebiks and tell them to see where the guy docks that thing."

Back at Janet's, she tore into the house, me at her heels. She leafed frantically through her address book, then punched in a number. She

waited, pacing, peering out at the kitchen window, dripping lake water.

"Hell. No answer. They're not home."

"Do you know anybody else over there?"

"No. Not in that area. Shit."

We raced back outside and saw the maurauding Jet Ski disappear behind a long dock a good two miles on the far side of the lake. We picked out landmarks—a house with white dormers, a red outbuilding—for locating the dock where the Jet Ski landed.

I said, "Don't you have a power boat?"

Janet shook her head. "Don't let Dale hear you say that."

We headed back out toward the dock, where Dale yelled at us, "Hey, I could use a little assistance here!"

Timmy was still in the water, clinging to the ladder, shivering and grimacing with pain.

"The thing hit his foot," Dale said. "Apparently when he dived to get out of the way, the side of the Jet Ski hit his foot. I've been down to check, and it's intact, but I think it's broken."

Timmy gasped out, "That jerk!"

Dale and I hoisted him up onto the dock and helped him lie on a towel Janet had spread out. Janet said, "I'll call the ambulance."

Timmy said, "What for?"

"You're going to have to get this foot set and immobilized," Dale said, "if you ever hope to do the hokey-pokey again."

"That guy was actually trying to kill us!" Timmy blurted out. Under his sunburn, he looked pale and feverish and as vulnerable as I'd ever seen him. A wave rolled through me, and it occurred to me that one day Timmy would die.

Janet, slumped and gray-faced too, said, "I think that vicious jerk was trying to kill
one
of us. Me, obviously."

None of us contradicted her, and it was Dale a moment later who went inside to report the attack to the sheriff's office and to request an ambulance for Timmy.

Janet said,
"I
guess I'd better go talk to Dan fast—and to Mom."

Squatting by Timmy, my hand behind his wet head, I told Janet, yes, she should get to both of the pro-good-chain Osbornes—the sooner the better.

5

We followed the ambulance in two cars to the Eden County Hospital. By the time Timmy was wheeled into the ER, his right foot was the size and color of a small warthog, and the ambulance crew had him so drugged up against shock and pain that he had begun to babble.

He told the nurse, "I'd like to be in Skeeter's room."

I said, "Okay, but that's down in Albany, and you'll have to hop there on your right foot."

"What's your name?" a man with a clipboard yelled in Timmy's ear.

"Timothy Callahan."

"Have you got any coverage?"

"I prefer to pay cash."

I said, "He has excellent insurance," and showed the man Timothy's New York State Assembly employee's health insurance card, which I had located easily in his wallet, the slender purse of a fiscal ascetic.

A physician showed up, groped around, ordered
X
rays, and told us in due course that Timothy's injury appeared to be a simple fracture. If the
X
rays confirmed that, the fracture would be set and Timmy would be shoved out the door with a fiberglass cast and a pair of crutches in a matter of hours. I asked, Didn't they want to keep him for a week or ten days? But they said no. I told Timmy I'd be back to collect him later and left him with a copy of
Guns and Ammo
that I'd found in the waiting room.

I rejoined Janet and Dale in the parking lot, and rode in Janet's car to her brother Dan's apartment in a building next to the Eden House, the old Victorian hotel in the center of town. Dan Osborne and his

girlfriend, Arlene Thurber, lived on the second floor in what had been two apartments. They had knocked down a wall to create a long, high-ceilinged salon with six windows overlooking Edensburg's Main Street and enough shelf space to hold their sizeable collection of leftist political history and analysis, from Bukharin to Fanon to Carlos Fuentes. There were lots of posters and photos too of Che and Fidel and a recent selection of Zapatistas wearing masks, but no Erich Honecker or Mengistu Haile Mariam that I was able to make out.

When we arrived, Dan and Arlene were just about to leave to drive down to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs to see that evening's double feature in a Godard series,
Alphaville
and
Les Carbiniers.
Dan and Arlene seemed happy to have Janet and Dale show up, and they tried to persuade us to join them at the movies—until Janet told them why we had come by unannounced.

"It looks as if somebody is after me," Janet said. "And I guess it stands to reason that they might try to get at you too, Dan. I think you're going to have to be on your guard."

When Dan and Arlene looked more bewildered than alarmed, Dale spelled it out. "Not 'after' her, not 'get at.' What Janet means is, somebody is trying to
kill
her. And if the whole thing has anything to do with you-know-what, they might try to kill you too, Dan. Arlene, you're probably safe, theoretically, since you haven't got a vote on the
Herald's
board of directors. But since you two are joined at the hip, Arlene, you could conceivably suffer what the Pentagon likes to refer to as collateral damage—that is, end up just as dead as Dan."

Dan was tall and gangly, like all the Osbornes, and he slumped a little when he heard this. He had a Fidel-style beard that was honey colored with some gray in it, making him look less like Castro than Gerry Mulligan, and his wide mouth dropped open beneath it. Arlene, busty, braless, and languid in purples and reds and Navajo silver, stiffened and exclaimed, "Dale, what kind of crazy shit are you laying on us? Are you serious?"

"Last week, somebody tried to run Janet over with a Jet Ski," Dale said, "and today he came back and tried to bash her again. There were four of us out in the lake this time, and Don's boyfriend, Timothy, got whacked on the foot. He's over at County right now having it set."

"That is too much!" Arlene said angrily.

"This happened just now?" Dan asked, looking dazed. His surprise

was understandable, although his mind may also have been mildly fuddled by marijuana. Its
weedy
aroma hung in the room, a sweet cloud of sixties deja vu for me and—judging from the numerous tiny roaches in the ashtrays—a routine nineties air freshener for Dan and Arlene.

"It happened about an hour ago," Janet said, "and the sheriff's department is supposedly trying to track the guy down I'm alerting you two, for what it might be worth, and I really think I have to tell Mom because—well, you know. First Eric is killed and then this, and—it does seem possible that somebody is trying to change the outcome of the board vote on InfoCom and Griscomb."

Dan glanced at me uneasily—as if to say, This is private family business, and who is this bozo, anyway'—and then snapped at Janet "Why am I just
now
hearing about this?"

"Because," she shot back, "it just now
happened,
Dan. That's why we're
here."

"But Dale said it happened
lastweektoo
I know nothing
about
that."

"Well, now you know, Dan. As I said, that's why we're here. That's why we
came
here To
tell you
about it. Now the question is, What do we tell Mom?"

"What makes you think," he said, his beard flapping, "that this has anything to do with the sale of the paper? Where did you get
that
idea?"

"I don't
know that
there's a connection," Janet said in a sneering tone I hadn't heard her use before she had come into the presence of her brother. "I am merely surmising it from the rather startling sequence of events over the past three months. The paper is put up for sale and two conflicting offers are made, putting the family at one another's throats. Then Eric is killed. Then two attempts are made on my life. I'm just adding two and two together and coming up with four. When you add two and two, what do
you
come up with, Dan?"

Making a show of struggling for control, Dan took a deep breath and said, "Yes, the timing
is
suspicious, Janet. That I can see. What I'm having a lot of trouble accepting is that InfoCom would go so far as to actually try to kill an Osborne. God, imagine how it would make them look if they were caught. Does the sheriff have any leads? Who's investigating this, Ken Stone?"

"It's Ken," Janet said, "but it looks as if the attacker got away both times. He's obviously someone who knows the homes on the lake."

Arlene
 
looked
 
suddenly
 
horrified
 
and
 
said,
  
"It's
 
like
 
Karen

Silkwood! Dan, we'd better make sure your mother is safe. Crewes-InfoCom would off an old lady if they thought she was going to interfere with their bottom line. They'll stop at nothing to protect their corporate profits."

Dan didn't react to this. He just peered our way with his watery blue eyes. It seemed now as if they were no longer focused entirely on those of us in the room, nor was the mind behind them. Finally Dan said to Janet, "Tell me again what happened, and why you think these episodes were deliberate attempts to—to attack you. This Jet Ski run-over-attempt thing actually happened twice?"

Dale nodded slowly and held up two fingers, and Janet described once again the attack the previous week and the attack a few hours earlier that had landed Timmy in the emergency room.

"Now, who's this Timmy again?" Arlene said.
  
■

Dale said, "He's Don here's boyfriend. Don is a private investigator from Albany who we're hiring to clear everything up, including Eric's murder. We're giving him about four days to produce results."

"You're a private eye with a boyfriend? How cool," Arlene said. "Are you bisexual?"

Before I could reply, Dan said without hesitation, "I'm not sure that's such a great idea. I mean bringing in someone from outside."

This was addressed to Janet and I let her answer it. "Why is it such a terrible idea? The police have made no progress at all toward solving Eric's murder. And if somebody is trying to kill me too, there's at least a good chance that the same person is behind it—or people. But convincing Ken Stone of that, or even the staties, is going to be tough with no real evidence to go on. And Don has an excellent reputation, according to Eldon, who's an old friend of Don's boyfriend."

"How's Eldon doing?" Arlene asked.

"I'm sure Don's C.V. is impressive," Dan said to Janet, dismissing my resume with a little wave. "But that's not my point. My point is, by bringing in someone who's outside the paper and outside the family at this sensitive juncture—someone who's going to take months just to gather background—you run the risk of having him going around stirring up people's suspicions and exacerbating an already tense situation without gaining anything positive. If there is some kind of plot against you or me or even Mom, we can hire a security service to protect us. If anybody asks why, we can just say Eric's murder freaked us out, and

having protection for a while makes us feel more secure. Don," Dan said, looking me in the eye for the first time since we'd been introduced, "are you associated with a firm that does security work? If you and your firm could confine your work to guaranteeing the safety of Janet and myself and our mother for a month or so, that could be extremely useful to our family, and I think we might be able to do business."

I was about to reiterate to Dan that I had already been hired by Janet, Dale, and Timmy to conduct a full investigation of Eric's death as well as the two Jet Ski attacks on Janet, and that Dan's view of the matter was interesting but of peripheral concern to me. Before I could, Janet, her face red and her neck muscles taut, laid into her brother.