New England White (48 page)

“Blackmail,” Julia breathed. “You’re talking about blackmail.”

“I don’t know that for sure, Julia Anne. It’s possible. All I know is, the Empyreals developed this idea that what they needed was to own powerful Caucasians, to put them into positions where they would have no choice but to help our people. That was Grandpa Vee’s idea. At least I think it was.”

“Are you saying the Empyreals owned Adlai Stevenson?”

A long moment’s hesitation, Mona’s aged eyes gazing into the mirror of her youth. “Adlai was a good man. A decent man. A man of integrity. I don’t think it was possible to own him.” Focusing on her daughter again. “No, dear. I’d be very surprised if the Empyreals owned him. But it’s possible they thought they did.” A sad chuckle. “Those connections go way, way back, dear. The old families. Ours. Theirs. Black and white. Decades. More. It didn’t all have to be coercion. Some of it was more…mutual self-interest.”

Julia perked up. “Are you talking about passing? That some of the old white families are really old black families?” She could scarcely take it in. “Is that what you mean?”

Mona shook her head. “Oh, no, no, dear. Not at all. Oh, it could be. It’s possible. Back then, conditions were just so terrible. If you had the chance to flee from the darker nation and join the whiter world—yes, it could be. But that isn’t my point. I’m just saying that there could be commonalities of interest. Old white families and old black ones might wind up working together. Don’t assume it’s the Empyreals alone.” That laugh again, like a nervous spectator at a tragedy. “I’m an old woman, Julia, and an old fool. You shouldn’t take me too seriously. The mind plays tricks at my age.” Wobbly on her feet now. “I’m tired, Julia. I have to get back and get to bed.”

“We’re almost at the car.”

“I don’t want to talk any more.”

“Please. Just one more thing.”

“Take your hand off me, Julia Anne.”

“I’m sorry. Sorry.” She had not realized that she was holding her mother’s arm—gripping it, really, tightly, in anger, the way she used to squeeze Kellen’s when he looked at her the wrong way, or didn’t. “Mona, please. Just tell me. You’re saying Empyreals used to gather information on powerful people, and they’d use it to—to improve the condition of the community? Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what Amaretta told me.” Mona shook her head. “I don’t think anybody really knows.”

“But it has to be true, Mona. Byron Dennison was in the Landing a week and a half after Gina Joule was killed, pretty much giving the orders. Why else would he be there?”

“I was a married woman by then, dear. Living in New Hampshire. I wouldn’t have any idea.”

“Come on, Mona. You used to date him. Are you saying he never mentioned some kind of plan?”

The smile was once more dismissive and grandmotherly. “If Bay Dennison was the kind of secret manipulator you seem to think, dear, why would he let himself be seen? It’s all very strange.”

They were at the car. Mona asked her daughter to take the wheel, and Julia, who never drove a stick shift except when she visited her mother, agreed. The car jerked and shuddered all the way back to the house. Mona never complained. Her eyes were tightly shut, and if she was not actually asleep, she was happy to pretend to be.

(III)

J
ULIA WOULD NEVER KNOW FOR SURE
. Lying abed that night, searching for a comfortable position on the ancient, sagging mattress, Julia marveled at how much of the life of the darker nation took place behind a veil of ignorance. Of the existence of the old families, with their money and education and tradition, most black Americans and nearly all white ones knew nothing. Of the secrets of their exclusive fraternities and sororities, outsiders knew far less than they thought they did. Of the Empyreals, most exclusive of all, nobody knew a thing. It all swirled through her mind. The Grand Paramount. Adlai Stevenson. Bubba. Kellen Zant, promising to blow the lid off the election, then being shot. She dozed, half woke, half dreamed, shuffling the events of the past three months.

And then she saw it.

Not all of it. There would be plenty of loose ends to tie up. But, lying there in the overheated guest room on the first floor of her mother’s crumbling manse in Plaisance-du-Touch, Julia Veazie Carlyle saw the shape of the Empyreals’ plan, and understood at last what Kellen had thought he knew. The only question was whether he was right.

She slept poorly, and dreamed of snow.

(IV)

L
EAVING
M
ONA IN THE MORNING
was more difficult than Julia had expected, not because mother showed remorse but because daughter was shot through with it. Mona offered no assistance in apologizing. She behaved as though yesterday’s argument had never taken place. Over breakfast, Hap hovering as usual, Julia suddenly saw her mother as both more and less than she had always imagined. Mona was old, she was weakening, she was dispirited. Hap took care of her, and Mona, whatever her liveliness in youth, was of an age when being cared for was all she really wanted.

And what was so terrible about that?

“I’m sorry, Mona,” she said, hoping not to sound wooden.

“For what, dear?”

“For the way I…talked to you yesterday. I’m sorry.”

“Hormones,” her mother said, as she used to when Julia was a teen and they were at each other’s throats. Only Mona laughed.

Over the meal, Hap played referee, careful to ensure the conversation turned to nothing that might further upset his beloved. Afterward, Mona pronounced herself exhausted. “I’m still glad you came, dear.”

“So am I.”

Julia walked beside her mother along the short hall with its cracked parquet. The door to the master suite needed paint. She wished, idly, for the winning lottery ticket, so that she could care for Mona as she deserved. Then the empiricist took charge, reminding her that wishes were not horses, and most people in the world lived a good deal worse than this.

Mona took her daughter’s hands, pressed strengthlessly, smiled. She said, “You shouldn’t listen to me, dear. At my age there is a certain tendency to ramble. And to know everything.”

“I thought seventy was the new fifty.”

“Is it? Because just now it feels like the old ninety.”

“I love you, Mom,” Julia blurted.

Mona looked vaguely pleased, the way we are when we hear that a distant relative has remarried. “I love you also,” she said, the hazel eyes still far away. “Now, listen to me, dear. I have no idea what’s going on in…America. I don’t understand the country. I don’t know if I ever did. But I do know this much. It’s not a good place for our people. Negroes. The darker nation. African Americans. Not a good place. Never was and never will be.” She held up a hand to forestall her daughter’s objection. “You’re part of the Clan, dear. It feels to you like a kind of freedom. But it’s like that mirror over there.” She pointed. “The people in the mirror aren’t free at all, are they? They just do what the people on this side of the mirror let them do. We move, and they move the same way. We talk, they talk. We stop, they stop.”

“I think Lewis Carroll wrote that already.”

“Listen to me, dear. What Granny Vee told me, about the Empyreals? About their grand design? You’re right. She wasn’t herself. I have no idea how much was fact and how much was fancy. Fantasy, even. But, Julia dear, if it’s true? If the Empyreals aren’t dying? If they’re hiding in the shadows somewhere in the mirror where you can’t see, plot-ting and plotting, trying to make the Caucasians do what’s right?” An exhausted shrug. “I’m just wondering, dear: who’s to say they’re wrong?”

Abruptly, she released her daughter’s hand and, closing the door behind her, retreated once more into her chosen exile.

(V)

U
NSATISFIED
but knowing she was doomed to remain so, Julia finally departed, Hap returning her to Toulouse and the station as she puzzled pointlessly over his true relationship to Mona. At the barrier, he hugged her clumsily and handed her a shopping bag, the forgotten Christmas gifts for the children, wrapped beautifully. Julia asked him to thank Mona, but suspected he had bought them himself, and recently. The train left fifteen minutes late: for France, a national disaster. The ride was six hours, and once more she slept most of the way, swatting away the efforts at conversation from a friendly young American couple who sat across from her and resembled closely the lovers she and Mona had twice passed on the path in Montech. In Paris, she stayed at the same hotel, and suddenly the clerk behind the counter and the man reading the newspaper in the lobby and the smiling elevator operator seemed part of a single vast conspiracy. The boy who brought her breakfast kept eyeing her sideways as she stood in her robe waiting for him to finish, and she wondered whether it was her legs that drew his admiration, or if somebody owned him.

Leaving the country turned out to be harder even than leaving Mona. She saw the officer’s eyes widen when he ran her passport beneath the scanner. A guard led her to a small room off the main floor, where two uniformed women went through her luggage, under the watchful eyes of two men in business suits, one of them from the American embassy, who said he was there to safeguard her rights but kept his eyes on the table. The women went through her cosmetics and dirty underclothes. They even unwrapped the tardy Christmas presents, which turned out to be unimaginative touristy gimcracks. The only thing they did not search was her person—they seemed willing, but the man from the embassy forestalled them—and that was a good thing, because it was on her person that Julia had hidden the contents of the long manila envelope she had found squeezed into the shopping bag among the gifts.

Finally they allowed her, with Gallic reluctance, to depart. The man from the embassy apologized, and snapped at them in French, but Julia remembered that the American ambassador was one of the President’s most trusted cronies. As if in recompense, the airline bumped her to first class. She dozed for an hour, restraining her natural tendency to rush, because they could still be watching. Then she took herself off to the restroom, where she withdrew from their hiding place the three pages from the envelope. She read through the legal document for perhaps the fifth time since last night. Back in her seat, she returned the pages to their envelope and slid the envelope into her carry-on. She rang the flight attendant, and they discussed what wines were on board: this being Air France, there was a nice selection. She drank two glasses before her hands stopped shaking.

The document was a confession to the accidental killing of Gina Joule on or about February 14, 1973. It was signed by Lemaster’s third roommate in Hilliman Suite, the late Jonathan “Jock” Hilliman.

CHAPTER 53

ARRIVAL

(I)

B
UT
L
EMASTER DID NOT BELIEVE
a word of it. After all these years, she could distinguish the cool sobriety of admiring surprise from the gentle rationality of cautious skepticism. He had met her outside security, smiled and waved, and handed her a flower Jeannie had made in school that told her how much she was loved. Now, in the car, she had told him bits and pieces of the tale, wondering at last how far she could trust him; and how far he trusted her back.

“Those men are friends of mine,” he said gently when his wife was done. “I want to make that clear. Well, you know already, but I want to emphasize it. I might be biased, but I’ve known all three of them for more than thirty years. Well, less for Jock, seeing as how he’s no longer with us.”

Julia looked at him as the Mercedes purred through the night. Mile-posts clicked past on the Hutchinson River Parkway, small and shining green in the headlights, sharply etched against the trees and endless white beyond. She had called him before boarding the flight, asking him to cancel the limousine and meet her at the airport. She asked him to come alone—that is, without Mr. Flew. She did not want to say why over the telephone, and, for a blessing, Lemaster did not inquire. But she knew the time had come, as Granny Vee used to say, to make a clean breast.

Or moderately clean. She had told her husband about being searched, and knew from his reaction that the American observer would soon be transferred to a post in some mosquito-infested back-water. She had told him about the confession but had omitted, for the moment, the Empyreals, on the theory that he would refuse to talk about it.

“Are you saying I shouldn’t believe it?”

“Don’t you think it’s terribly convenient, Jules? Your mother just happens to have a signed affidavit by Jock Hilliman lying around in case you ever ask.” He sighed and shook his head, the way he always did when he mentioned Mona. “And as for Mal and the President, well, yes, okay, they’re not perfect men. They’ve done things they should be ashamed of, yes. Terrible things.” He hesitated. “The kind of things Astrid wondered about. Mal and Scrunchy are equally…guilty. They’re not saints or angels. They’re fallible, sinful human beings, the way we all are.” A firm nod of the head, as if to drive the point home, perhaps to himself. He turned around, one palm lifted in open appeal. “Terrible things, Jules. Both of them. And, yes, things about which they have sought my advice from time to time. Things I can’t talk about. But, Jules, what you’re suggesting isn’t a venial sin or a childish prank. You’re talking about murder. Or, if it was an accident, maybe manslaughter. Still, the taking of a human life. The most profound crime on the books of any civilized society.”

She pinched her nose and rubbed her eyes, wondering if her brain was especially logy after the rushing back and forth over the Atlantic, or whether perhaps her husband was being especially opaque. Was he going to discuss the evidence or not?

“Jules, look. I can’t imagine any of them doing what you’re suggesting. Not now. Not then.” He changed lanes to pass a slow-moving minivan. His tone remained calmly affectionate. For once the raging hip-hop was not in evidence. The radio was tuned to classical music. “And if one of them ever did something like that, maybe by accident, I think he would have been so suffused with guilt and horror that he could scarcely have functioned. Everybody would have known something terrible had happened.”

“You weren’t here,” Julia reminded him. “You were studying at Oxford. This was February. You got back in June. That’s four months to calm down.”

But she had run up against the stubbornness in him, the Everest needing freshly to be climbed. “All right. Granted. I’m not omniscient. I could have misjudged them. They could have fooled me. If they did, well, the obvious answer is that Jock did it.” He tapped the envelope resting on her lap. “You have his confession, and you seem to believe it’s genuine. From what you tell me, his Jaguar was wrecked the night Gina died, and Bruce Vallely thinks his family covered it up. So, if I’m wrong, the chances are I’m wrong about Jock.” Julia sat perfectly still in the tropically warm car, saying nothing, the doubts assailing her, the carefully worked hypothesis falling to pieces under the assault of her own uneasiness, for her great skill was decisiveness, not confidence. What kept her going was her suspicion that Lemaster’s doubts were assailing him, too. “All right. But then take the other point of view. Jock’s confession is too convenient. Then you’re back to the theory that it was Mal or Scrunchy. That means one of them, and Heaven knows how many other people, have spent all these years successfully hiding a murder committed in college. And could have known where to hire a gunman to kill Kellen Zant when he got too close to the secret.” The smile was back, not the warmly delicious welcome to a more peaceable world with which he had seduced her two decades ago, but the brash and even cocky scholar who was never wrong, and wanted you to know it. “So, yes, Jules, one possibility is a secret conspiracy to hide a terrible crime all these years. But surely this is where we might apply Occam’s razor. Let’s not introduce unnecessary entities. Let me suggest a simpler explanation for what you found—even though it leaves Kellen in a less flattering light.”

Julia knew her husband could feel the swift tension in her—had even stirred it deliberately. She waited for him to knock her argument down, the way he always did.

“The conspiracy could be a lot smaller, Jules, and it could have nothing to do with what really happened thirty-one years ago.” His eyes were locked on the road ahead. His small, competent hands moved on the wheel with quiet authority. “Your evidence comes from three sources. Kellen Zant, Mona Veazie, and this Mary Mallard. Correct?”

“I guess so. Yes.”

“And which one of them is widely considered a reliable source?”

This got to her, as perhaps it was supposed to. “All right, smarty. If the three of them conspired together—God knows how—then why did they do it? What’s the object of the conspiracy?”

“Money,” said Lemaster.

“What?”

“Money, Jules. Think about it.” He pulled smoothly into a rest stop and stated his needs imperiously to the insolent white clerk, who began to fill the tank. Lemaster turned to his wife, touched her on the cheek with such soft and surprising affection that she gasped. “Jules, listen to me a minute. No, listen. The men you’re talking about—not Jock, but the others—if they’re associated, even by implication and innuendo, with the murder of a teenaged girl, well, their careers are over.”

“Are you saying that Mary and Kellen and Mona were planning blackmail?” she spluttered. “Manufacturing evidence? Spreading rumors? Using me and Vanessa to help?”

“I know it sounds far-fetched. I’m not saying I believe it. But I think it’s a lot more plausible than this guilty silence of thirty years, which would have had to involve so many people that there’s no way it could have stayed secret. I’m trying to envision how large the cover-up would have had to be, and I can’t even fathom the numbers. Plus, there’s the matter of planting evidence to implicate DeShaun Moton—”

“I don’t see how one conspiracy is worse than the other,” she said, sullen and, as perhaps he intended, confused.

“Not worse. Less likely.”

“Then how do you explain Anthony Tice? Astrid? Astrid said Kellen had evidence that would—”

“Change the outcome of the election. Yes. But that would be true even if the evidence was manufactured.” He paid the rude clerk and even gave him a fair-sized tip, because the Lemaster Carlyles of the world tip everyone, even if the currency is not always cash. He pulled back onto the highway. “I’m not saying I believe it. I don’t know what to believe. I’ll tell you what I do believe, though. I do believe that Kellen was up to no good. I do believe that Tony Tice was up to no good. And now I believe that this Mary Mallard is up to no good, and I’m going to have to do something about her.” His tone grew fierce. “I’m sick of this. Not of you. Of them. Nobody treats my wife that way. And not just my wife. It’s time for the Caucasians to stop, Jules. I don’t care how powerful they are. The era is over when they can just—”

“We’re being followed,” she said.

(II)

I
F YOU LOOK CAREFULLY AT NIGHT
, headlights are distinctive. These had the bluish tint of xenon and were set closer together than on most cars, suggesting something low and sporty. A pair of fog lights shone between them and lower down. The trapezoidal pattern could hardly be missed. She had seen it as they left the airport, and again on the Van Wyck, and even a couple of cars back in the toll line at the bridge. She had seen the same set of lamps hanging back in the shadows of the rest stop. There comes a time when coincidence is not coincidence any more. Having told her husband, she nibbled on her knuckle, the way she had as a child until Mona painted it with iodine, and waited for him to deride her.

He said, “How long?”

Julia, astonished, sat up straight. “What?”

“How long have they been following us?”

“Since JFK. They were in the gas station too. Lemmie—”

“Which one?”

“The xenon lights—”

“Got it.” He slipped smoothly into the passing lane and accelerated. Relief caressed her. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I thought you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Silly.” He reached over and mussed her hair, then floored the pedal. The Mercedes leaped ahead, the speedometer inching toward ninety, the car barely shuddering. Julia turned her head. The other lights were falling behind. She looked ahead and cried out. A sharp curve beckoned, and he tapped the brake, then hit the gas again, and the car, fishtailing only a smidgen, did as commanded.

“Lemmie, slow down!”

“Hold on.”

“We’ll get pulled over—ah!”

Before the car following them reached the curve, Lemaster threw the wheel over hard right, surprising another driver he cut off, and then the other driver, too, was left behind, and he streaked down the exit ramp. They were off the parkway and on city streets somewhere in Westchester County. As she caught her breath, he tucked them neatly beneath the overpass so that the car was invisible from above, waited ten or fifteen seconds—an eternity at high speed—then proceeded past fast-food restaurants and service stations until he saw a small bar.

“Let’s get a drink,” he said.

“Lemmie, we should call somebody.”

“No, we shouldn’t. Come inside. We have to talk. And, believe me, we’ll both need a drink.”

She looked at his face. Had being followed upset him so much? Or had he been humoring her again? “Lemmie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

His smile was soft and assuring. Again he touched her face, and when he spoke, she knew why he had been so warm since meeting her, why he had been so gentle in arguing with her about the conspiracy, even why he had cooperated in eluding a car he did not for a moment believe was following them.

“There’s been an accident,” he said.