Innocence: A Novel (8 page)

And in respect of Gwyneth, I endeavored to maintain just enough distance between us to be sure that I did not accidentally touch or bump against her.

Until she told me, I had not realized that the art museum across the broad avenue from the library was a subsidiary of it, constructed decades later. Both institutions were among the most richly endowed of their kind in the country.

She said, “Their vast and priceless collections are both in the care of J. Ryan Telford, thief that he is.”

“You said rapist.”

“Would-be child rapist and successful thief,” she said. “I was thirteen when he first cornered me.”

I didn’t want to dwell on what he had almost done to her, and so I said, “Who does he steal from?”

“The library and the museum, I imagine.”

“You imagine.”

“Their collections are broad and deep. He might muddy the records of what’s in storage, collude with the auditor, sell off a very valuable piece now and then through an unscrupulous dealer.”

“ ‘Imagine’ … ‘might.’ You don’t seem like a girl who would want to bear false witness.”

She sat in the chair at the Makassar-ebony desk, swiveled 180 degrees to the computer that stood on a separate table, and said, “I
know
he’s a thief. He stole from my father. Given his position here, he couldn’t resist the temptation.”

“What did he steal from your father?”

“Millions,” she said, as she switched on the computer, and the word echoed off the Deco surfaces as had no other word before it.

THE OFFICE FELT SUMPTUOUS EVEN IN NEAR DARKNESS
. It reminded me of certain photographs by Edward Steichen: velvet shadows deepening into moody gloom, here and there a form suggested by a reflection of light on a radius of polished wood, the mysterious gleam of Tiffany glass in the pendant shade of a lamp not lit, the room implied rather than revealed, yet known as well as if it had been enraptured by sunshine instead of barely kissed by the ghost light of the haunted city beyond the windows.

The fragrance of the curator’s spice cologne lingered in his absence.

Painted by the glow of the computer screen, Gwyneth’s face acquired an Asian aspect, largely because her pale skin and dramatic black makeup reminded me of the mask of a Kabuki actor.

She didn’t seem to be a rich girl. Of course, I had never before known a rich girl, and had no experience by which to determine if she might be a familiar type among the wealthy. I thought not.

“Your father has millions?”

“Had. My father is dead.”

“Is that who you meant, the only one who could ever help you?”

“Yes.” She scrolled through the directory on the screen. “My father understood me. And protected me. But I couldn’t protect him.”

“How did he die?”

“In so many words, the autopsy said, ‘Accidental death by honey.’ ”

“Honey like bees?”

“My grandfather, Daddy’s father, had apiaries, hundreds of hives. Rented them out to farmers, then processed and bottled the honey.”

“Is that where the family fortune came from?”

A brief soft laugh escaped her. Though she was amused by my ignorance, the sound was as appealing as any music I had ever heard. I thought that I might like nothing better than sitting with her as she read a comic novel, just sitting and watching her laugh.

“My father married late in life, and I never met my grandfather. But in my family, beekeeping was a passion, not a money machine.”

I said, “Well, I don’t know a lot about money. I don’t need much of it.”

From an inner pocket of her leather jacket, she produced a memory stick, inserted it into the computer, and began to download documents.

“My father’s the one who hit it big in real estate, but he grew up in the bee business, and he loved artisanal honey. He had a farm outside the city, and he kept a lot of hives. He also traded honeys with beekeepers in other parts of the country, because they taste different depending on the plants from which the bees harvest the nectar. Daddy loved every kind of honey—orange blossom from Florida and Texas, avocado honey from California, blueberry honey from Michigan, buckwheat and tupelo and fireweed honey.… He bottled lots of flavors and blends for himself and friends. It was his hobby.”

“How can honey accidentally kill someone?”

“My father was murdered.”

“You said—”

“The autopsy report said accidental.
I
say murder. He ate some creamed honey, spread it thick on scones. It was contaminated with cardiac glycosides, oldedrin, and nerioside, because the bees had harvested the nectar from oleander bushes, which are as poisonous as anything on Earth. Considering the dose he received, a few minutes after finishing the scones, he would have broken into a sweat, vomited violently, passed out, and died of respiratory paralysis.”

As she found another document that she wanted to add to the
memory stick, I said, “But it does sound accidental, doesn’t it? To me, it does, anyway.”

“My father was an experienced beekeeper and honeymaker. So were the people he exchanged honey with. It can’t have happened. Not with all their experience. The deadly honey was the only contaminated jar in his pantry, the only one containing poison. That was wholesome honey once, and later someone added oleander nectar.”

“Who would do that?”

“A piece of human debris named J. Ryan Telford.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

In its silken gloom, the murderer’s office retained its air of elegance, of privilege waiting to be enjoyed, of authority waiting to be exercised. But now the sensuous lines of the lacquered furniture, revealed largely by reflections of pale light along the sleek curves of exotic woods, suggested a room as sinister as it was elegant.

More than eighteen years since I’d seen it in the store window, the tuxedoed marionette rose again in memory. The most strange and disquieting conviction overcame me: that if I were to switch on the lights just then, I would discover the loose-jointed puppet sitting on the sofa, watching me as I watched Gwyneth at the murderer’s computer.

THAT NIGHT IN THE LONESOME OCTOBER, IN THE
early weeks of my ninth year, with Mother dead by her own hand, the body perhaps not yet discovered, I arrived in a manufacturing
district, cradled in machinery of unknown purpose. The trucker parked his rig in a fenced lot, and after listening and observing for half an hour to be sure the way was safe, I slipped from under the tarp, climbed the chain-link, and set foot in a city for the first time in my life.

The scale of the human accomplishment all around me, seen previously only in magazines and a few books, inspired in me such awe that I would have scurried along those streets with my head down, humbled and heart pounding, even if I had not needed to hide my face to protect myself. I had not known where the truck would take me. I had not prepared myself for the shock of civilization in such an insistent form as this metropolis.

The industrial buildings and warehouses were immense and seemed for the most part old, dirty, worn. Dark windows, others broken and boarded over, suggested that a few of those structures might be abandoned. Occasionally a streetlamp was out, and those that worked were dim because their globes were filthy. Litter collected in the gutters, billows of foul-smelling steam rose from a grate in the pavement, but the scene was no less glamorous for all of that.

I was at the same time fearful and exhilarated, alone in a place as alien as a world at the farther end of the galaxy would have been, yet electrified by a sense of possibilities that might transform in positive ways even a life as hedged with threats as mine. A part of me thought that it would be a miracle if I survived a day here, but another part of me nurtured the hope that in the countless thousands of buildings and byways, there would be forgotten nooks and passages where I might hide and move about, and even thrive.

At that hour, in that year, few of the factories ran graveyard shifts, and the night was quiet. Except for a passing truck now and then, I proceeded all but alone through that rough district. The nearly deserted
and dimly lighted streets gave me more cover than I had expected, although I knew that I would eventually come to a more lively—and potentially deadly—neighborhood.

In time I crossed an iron bridge that accommodated both vehicles and pedestrians. On the broad black river far below, the running lights of barges and other boats appeared fantastic to me. Although I knew what they were, they looked less like vessels than like luminous creatures of the water, gliding dreamily past not on the surface but just beneath it, on journeys even more enigmatic than my own.

As I walked, I kept my attention mostly on the river, because ahead of me rose the lighted towers of the city center, a sparkling phantasmagoria at once enchanting and flat-out terrifying, which I could handle only in quick glimpses. On and on they went in serried ranks, stone and steel and glass, of such great mass that it seemed the land beneath them should sink or that the whole world should be tipped by their cumulative weight into a new angle of rotation.

When there was no more river below to distract me, only quay, I could no longer avoid facing the dazzling scene before me. As the humpbacked bridge sloped down, I looked up boldly, directly, and came to a halt, abashed at the splendor and wealth before me. I was an outcast with little knowledge, a child with no accomplishments to justify myself, standing now at what seemed to be the gates of a city of powerful and magical beings, where beauty and talent were required for admittance, where such as me would not be tolerated.

I almost turned back, to live like a rat among the rats in one of the abandoned factories on the farther side of the river. I was compelled, however, to go forward. I have no memory of descending the pedestrian walkway as it sloped down toward the shore, the open railing to my left, a four-foot-high concrete wall to my right, between me and the occasional passing car. Nor do I recall turning north at the
foot of the bridge and following the quay for a considerable distance upriver.

As if waking from a trance, I found myself in an outdoor mall paved with herringbone brick, lighted by ornate iron lampposts, furnished with benches, shaded by trees in massive pots. The mall was lined on both sides with shops and restaurants, all closed at a quarter past three in the morning.

Some of the store windows were dark, but others were softly lighted to display their most appealing wares. I had never before seen a retail outlet of any kind, had only read about them or marveled at pictures of them in magazines. An entire shopping area, at the moment deserted but for me, was no less magical than the panorama of the bejeweled city viewed from the bridge, and I moved from business to business, amazed and thrilled by the variety of merchandise.

At the antique-toy shop, the contents of the display window were artfully arranged and lighted, the key items carefully pin-spotted, others illuminated only softly by spillover from the spots. Dolls from various periods, mechanical coin banks, cast-iron cars and trucks, a Popeye ukulele, a fanciful hand-carved rocking horse, and other articles captivated me.

The tuxedoed marionette sat in the softer light, its face white except for its black lips, a single red bead, like blood, upon the lower one, and the big black diamonds that angled around its eyes. From one nostril hung a silver ring fashioned as a serpent eating its tail. The head leaned forward slightly and the lips were not quite together, as though it might impart a secret of great importance.

Initially, I found the puppet to be the least interesting of the items on display. But the window was long, and the contents were so delightful that I moved from the left end to the right and then all the way back again. When I returned to the marionette, it sat where it
had been before, but now the pin spot brightened its face instead of the rocking horse behind it.

I doubted that I was mistaken. The light previously had been focused on the horse. The eyes in the center of those diamond shapes, which had been merely black when in shadow, were now, in the brighter light, black with thread-thin scarlet striations that radiated from the center pupil to the outer edges of the irises. They stared straight ahead, so strange and yet with the depth and clarity and something of the sorrow of real eyes.

The longer I met that gaze, the more disquieted I became. Once more I moved from the left toward the right end of the large window, imagining what fun it would be to play with many of those toys. At the midpoint of the display, I glanced back to the marionette and discovered not only that the pin spot still brightened its face but also that its eyes, which had been focused straight ahead, had now turned sideways in their sockets, to follow me.

No strings were attached to the tuxedoed figure; therefore, no puppeteer could be manipulating it.

Instead of continuing to the right, I returned to the marionette. The eyes gazed toward where I’d been a moment earlier.

At the periphery of my vision, I thought the toy’s left hand moved. I was pretty sure that it had been palm down, but now it lay palm up. I watched it for a long moment, but it remained motionless, pale and without fingernails, the white fingers hinged in two places instead of three, as if this were an early prototype of humanity, rejected for inadequate detail.

When I looked again, the black eyes with fine red filaments now almost as bright as neon were staring directly at me.

As centipedes seemed to crawl the nape of my neck, I stepped away from the window.

Back then, I didn’t know cities or outdoor malls or antique-toy stores, and therefore I couldn’t say for sure that such displays as this weren’t routinely motorized or otherwise tricked up to keep the browser intrigued. But because, of all things in the window, only the marionette moved, and because the sight of it had troubled me even before it had become animated, I decided that something lower than a sales technique was at work and that continued study of the toy would be dangerous.

As I walked away, I heard what seemed to be a rapping on the inside of the window glass, but I assured myself that I either misinterpreted or imagined the sound.