The Emperor of Ocean Park (75 page)

“That I paid this Scott for his work for your father.” Jack Ziegler enunciates the words slowly and clearly, as though offering me the opportunity to retract my testimony.

“Yes.” I may be stirring the hornets, but at least my voice is calm.

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because you and my father were old friends. Because you were his daughter’s godfather.” I force the next words out, knowing he will never tell me which version is true. “Or maybe you helped him because you . . . you wanted my father to owe you a favor. A favor you could later ask him to repay.”

Jack Ziegler makes the spitting sound I recall from the cemetery. His long fingers stroke the dying flesh of his chin.

“Maybe there are no checks to the late Mr. Scott because your father did not pay him anything. Maybe he did not pay him anything because Mr. Scott did not work for him.”

“I don’t think that’s it. I think there are reasons why my father could not write him checks. I think that Mr. Scott . . . well, let’s say he didn’t exactly have the kind of background with which a federal judge could afford to be associated.”

“So?”

“So my father had to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Maybe, even then, he was thinking about the Supreme Court.” When this evokes nothing but the same hard-eyed stare, I continue. “Besides, I’m not even sure my father could have afforded to pay him. Not on a federal judge’s salary, especially in those days.”

Jack Ziegler is wonderfully relaxed. “What else do you think, Talcott? This is really quite intriguing.”

I hesitate, but it is a little late to turn back.

“I think Colin Scott did do a report about the accident. I think he figured out who did it. I think he gave it to my father. But I don’t think my father ever took it to the police, did he? I think, when he saw what was in it, he asked Mr. Scott to do something for him, and, when he said no, my father brought the report to you and asked for your help.”

I stop. The next words simply will not emerge. It is not that I am too frightened to speak them; it is that I am less sure than I was two hours ago that I want to know the answer.

But Jack Ziegler refuses to let me avoid the rest. “You say your father came to me for my help? I see. And what is it that you suppose happened then?”

Well, this is what I flew up the mountain to discuss. This is the moment toward which I have been working, through all the conversations with Wallace Wainwright and Lanie Cross and all the memories I have teased from Sally and Addison and even Mariah, through all the evidence I have assembled, with and without their help, up to and including the missing scrapbook. If I am not going to say it, all the months of work are wasted. So is the trip to Aspen.

To be sure, if I do say it, there is a nontrivial possibility that I will never see my wife and child again. But I have, as so often, the courage of the fool.

“I think, somehow, you got Colin Scott to . . . to take care of the problem for him.”

So there, finally, it is out in the open.

Jack Ziegler shakes his head slowly, and a bit sadly, but his eyes angle away from me, gazing out on the vertiginous view. “Take care of it?” He snickers. Then coughs. “You sound like a bad movie. Take care of what?”

“You know what I mean, Uncle Jack.”

“I know what you mean, Talcott, and, frankly, I am insulted by it.”

His tone is low, almost caressing, and it chills me. Once again, something vaguely threatening thickens the air between us.

“I’m not trying to—”

“You are accusing your father of a crime, Talcott. You use silly euphemisms, but that is what you are doing, eh? You think your father paid this man Scott to do a murder.” He is growing less and less simple by the moment. “That is bad enough. But now you are accusing me of helping him.”

Once you stir the nest,
the Judge told me,
you had better keep on burning, because you can never outrun the hornets if they get loose.

“Look, Uncle Jack, I know how you make your living.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” His mouth puckers and he holds up a twisted hand. He pokes a shriveled finger in my face. “Oh, I know, I know, you
think
you know. Everybody
thinks
they know. They read the newspapers and those imbecilic books and whatnot. Those fool committee reports. But nobody really knows. Nobody.” He struggles to his feet. I have the good sense, for once, not to offer to help. “Come with me, Talcott, I want to show you something.”

I follow him as he pads in his slippers across the long room, passing in front of that amazing window with the dizzying, panoramic view of Aspen, and out into the stainless-steel kitchen, where a stout Slavic woman is preparing lunch. Now I see the source of that zesty smell, for she is pouring powder into a pot. My host snarls at her in some language I do not recognize, and she smiles thinly and disappears. The back wall of the kitchen shares the same view through huge windows. On the far side, the room opens into a greenhouse. I follow Jack Ziegler inside, where a bewildering variety of plants perfume the air. I wonder how the intermixing aromas affect the taste of the food.

“Look,” says Uncle Jack, pointing at something on the other side of the glass wall. “See what I mean? Everybody.”

Now it is my turn to be confused. “Uh, everybody what?”

“Everybody thinks they know. Look!”

I look. I throw a serious expression on my face, hoping Uncle Jack will mistake my befuddlement for concentration, as I have not the faintest idea what he is talking about. I follow the path of his trembling finger. I see his sweeping lawn, the crisp snow sparkling in the rich mountain sun, I see high hedges, and the narrow road winding upward toward the ever-more-ostentatious homes of film producers and software entrepreneurs even wealthier than my baby sister’s godfather. A minivan rumbles by: Kimmer hates them, considering them matronly, and refuses to let us buy one. A power company truck is parked a hundred yards up the hill as the uniformed crew, one male, one female, does something clever up on the pole. A bit closer in, a muscular woman in black boots and yellow spandex, evidently heedless of the cold, walks what my untutored eye decides is a Doberman. A battered red pickup bearing the logo of a lawn-care firm wheezes past, ferrying a trio of snow-blowers.

Jack Ziegler stands next to me like a statue, his finger pressed to the glass. I do not know what he is pointing at. I do know that the plants are starting to make me gag.

“Okay,” I say carefully. “I’m looking.”

“Well, do you see them?” His senility has made a sudden return, and I wonder again whether it is feigned. “Do you see them watching us?”

“See who?”

He grabs my shoulder. His fingers, hot with fever, dig into the muscle like talons. “There! The truck!”

“The truck? You mean the one over by the pole?”

“Yes, yes, do you see it?”

“Okay, yes. I see the truck.”

“Well, then, you understand. You have no idea how they harass me—”

“Who? The power company?”

Uncle Jack looks at me hard, and for an instant the clouds seem to dissipate. “Not the power company,” he says in a reasonable tone. “The FBI.”

I look again. “It’s a power company truck—”

“It is only a cover. They are here to harass me.” He laughs unexpectedly, and his eyes darken and roll. His gleeful madness has returned. “The power goes out up here at least twice a month. Do you know why?” I shake my head. “So they can send their trucks and listen
in on my telephone. So my alarm systems won’t work and they can plant their bugs.”

“Bugs—”

“Right here, in my house, in my
kitchen,
there are bugs!” To my astonishment, he produces a fly swatter from somewhere and whacks a spot on the wall. “Take that!” he cackles with such glee that for a moment I think that I might have misunderstood him, that he really is talking about insects. “And that!” he cries, turning away to smack the refrigerator, then one of the dark green granite countertops. “That’ll rattle their earphones!” he hoots.

He tosses the fly swatter vaguely toward a closet, slips an arm around my shoulders, and leads me back into the great room, as he calls it. “They want to know what I do for a living. They think I am a criminal, for goodness’ sake!” He pauses at his immaculate desk and scribbles something on a pad. “Like you do,” he mutters. “Like you do.” Then he coughs wetly, not bothering to cover his mouth.

Embarrassed, I make my typical retreat. “Uncle Jack, I, uh, I didn’t mean—”

“But I’m on to them,” he giggles, talking right through me. “And so, when the power goes out, do you know what I do?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you what I do,” he says, his expression crafty as he slips his arm around me once more.
“I go around with a flashlight and kill their bugs!
”

“I see,” I say, wondering whether I have come on a fool’s errand.

“No, I don’t think you do see,” he mumbles. Then he tilts his face sharply upward and bellows: “Harrison!”

The skinny bodyguard materializes at once. “Yes, sir?”

This is it. They are throwing me off the side of the mountain. Kimmer, I forgive you. Take good care of our boy.

“Is this house bugged, Harrison?” Abby’s godfather demands.

“Occasionally, sir.”

“And do we kill the bugs?”

“Whenever we can, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harrison, that will be all.” Uncle Jack hands him the scribbled note, and the butler-valet-nurse-bodyguard withdraws. I begin to breathe normally once more. This is how they communicate in a house where any word might be overheard: they write each other notes. Now I understand what Henderson meant about Uncle Jack’s
popularity—and how everybody would know I am coming to visit. “Bugs everywhere,” says Jack Ziegler, shaking his head sadly.

(III)

J
ACK
Z
IEGLER IS FADING
. His lips quiver. The excitement seems to have worn him out, for his face has grown slack, the energy depleted. “Let me lean on you, Talcott,” he murmurs, slipping a thin, feverish arm around my shoulders. We walk back into the main part of the house, Uncle Jack’s feet sliding on the floor. He feels as light as a child against my body.

“Listen, Talcott,” he says. “Are you listening?”

“I’m listening, Uncle Jack.”

“I am not a hero, Talcott. I know that. I have done things in my life for which I am sorry. I have some associates who are sorry as well. Do you understand?”

“Not really . . .”

“I have made choices, Talcott. Hard choices. And choices have consequences. That is, I think, the very first rule of any just morality. Choices have consequences. All choices. I have always accepted that. I have made good choices and benefited from them. I have made bad choices and suffered for it. All of us have.” He lets this sink in, too. I realize that he is truly angry underneath the politesse. The hornets are buzzing away.

“I understand what you—” I begin, but he interrupts swiftly.

“Consequences, Talcott. An underused word. We live today in a world in which nobody believes choices should have consequences. But may I tell you the great secret that our culture seeks to deny? You cannot escape the consequences of your choices. Time runs in only one direction.”

“I suppose so,” I assure him, although I do not.

Jack Ziegler’s wet, tired gaze flicks over my face, bounds off toward the wall—is he thinking about the bugs again?—then settles on the giddying vista of Aspen beyond the two-story window. He begins a fresh lecture: “None of us who are fathers are quite what we wanted to be for our sons. You will learn that, I think.” I remember that he has a son of his own, Jack Junior, a currency trader who lives halfway around the world—Hong Kong, maybe—to escape his father.

I wonder whether that is far enough.

Jack Ziegler continues to wax philosophical, as though the purpose of my trip is to comprehend his notion of the life well lived. “A father, a son—this is a sacred bond. All through history, the headship of the family is passed on that way, father to son to son of the son, and so on. Head of the family, Talcott! That is a mission, you see. A responsibility that a man may not shirk, even should he so desire. Nowadays, on the campuses, I know, such ideas are dismissed. Sexist, they say. You know the words better than I. Patriarchy. Male domination. Pah! My generation, we lacked the luxuries of yours. We had no time to wallow in such arguments. We had to
live,
Talcott. We had to
act.
Let others worry about why God spoke to Moses from inside a burning bush instead of a sycamore tree or a Wal-Mart store or a television set. Who had time to care? Yours is the generation of talkers, and I wish you well of it. Ours was the generation of doers, Talcott, the last the nation has seen. Doers! You do not understand this, I know. You have never lived a life in which there is no time to discuss, to debate, to litigate, to
analyze your policy options
—isn’t that what they say now? We did not go on the radio and moan about the difficulties in our lives. We did not derive our self-worth from establishing how badly others had treated us. We did not complain. We had no time. My generation, we actually had things that we had to do, Talcott. Decisions to make. Do you see?” He does not care whether I see. He does not care whether I agree. He is determined to make his point . . . and, at this instant, sounds exactly like the Judge. “And this was the generation that spawned your father, Talcott. Your father and myself both. We were the same. We were heads of families, Talcott. Men. The old-fashioned kind, you would say. We knew what our responsibilities were. Provide for the family, yes. Nurture it, certainly. Guide it. But, above all, protect it.”

The sun is setting over the town of Aspen, the snow turning a magnificent orange-red. Down below, the skiers will begin on the nightlife phase of their day; I wonder when they sleep.

“I know you are angry, Talcott. I know you are disappointed in your father.” He casts his moist eyes toward me, then slides them swiftly away. “You think you have caught him at something terrible. Well, tell me, then, what would you have done? Your daughter is dead, the police do nothing—and you think perhaps you know who killed her. What would you have done?”