“Charles.”
“The Inferno.”
“Charles!”
“What?”
The room was dark. Dorothy was beside him. He sat up awake.
“You were dreaming. You were saying something.”
The clock said 3:40.
“I know who it is,” Charles said.
“What?”
“I know who killed Derek.”
The telephone rang.
Or was it sirens? He was still disoriented. He found the screaming telephone.
“Hello?”
“Is this Charles Beale?” the voice said.
“Yes, it is.”
“This is Alexandria Emergency Services. We have a call that your building on South Fairfax street has a fire.”
“In the building?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve dispatched trucks.”
“Fire?”
Dorothy gasped.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Mr. Beale, the Fire Department trucks are just leaving now. They’ll be there in two minutes. Stay away from the building.”
“Yes, yes. But I have to go.”
He put down the telephone. Dorothy was up from the bed getting dressed very quickly.
They did hear sirens.
He ran. The streets were empty and black. He didn’t even think of driving until he was already on the sidewalk running, panting, then walking, then running and coughing and pushing.
The streets were black and red and blue and white. The colors flickered ahead. An infernal world was before him and he raced to it as fast as his slow, uncooperative legs could.
He turned the last corner and it was all before him, bright and screaming.
The grinding lights filled everything and they were still coming.
There was sound, sirens as demonic as the lights.
He was close and he didn’t know how to stop running. But he was halted by a wall of smoke and everything else was unreal; the smoke was real. And the smoke was born of burning.
The smell told him what was burning, not just bitter and choking but horrible with the taste of forest and of old linen. He stumbled closer.
He was stopped by arms and voices, and then he couldn’t move at all but was made stone by the smoke and red light that was inside.
Dorothy stood beside him.
The white spotlight glare made the beautiful old building grotesque and drowned the red light inside. There was only smoke. He choked on the smoke.
It was gray and poured out in an upended waterfall, gushing from windows and streaming from everywhere else. Terrible smoke, full of fragments of pages; they were tiny glittering sparks, scattering everywhere. Scattering everything. Everything that they were.
All of the books.
The men were breaking open the front door. The flames in the window flared and forced out huge planets of smoke. The whole street was smoke.
Water poured in, but the flames were unquenchable. All the windows were full of flames, every story of the building was in flame. Every story in every book was in flame.
The top floor was in flame. Angelo’s window was filled with smoke.
Men with hoses pushed through the smoke at the front door.
Something central inside surrendered and broke apart and fell, and waves of heat and smoke and fire crashed against everything. The men fell back from the door.
Now the whole building was a chimney, pulling in oxygen at the base and feeding itself to the inferno. The flames were insatiable.
Something central inside Charles surrendered and broke apart and fell.
Rivers of water rained in, and how could the fire still burn?
Despair crashed against everything and minutes or years passed.
The flames faltered under the onslaught, finally, or because everything was consumed. The men renewed their attack on the door. There were shouts above the siren howling. There was nothing but smoke; everything was only smoke now. Everything that had been was only smoke now.
More men were in the front door. Why would so many go in? There was no end of the smoke. Charles could smell every book in it, and everything else that was in it. What else was in the smoke?
The men came back out. They were carrying something. It took three of them.
Charles could move again, but he was stopped, held back.
“Who is it?”
The men carrying didn’t hurry once they were out from the smoke. They carried to an ambulance. They laid on a stretcher, slowly, and covered with a sheet and set up into the open doors and the ambulance drove off.
All of the men had come out of the building. Water still rained down on it. There was no flame, only smoke.
“There’s a basement,” Charles said. “It’s a fireproof room.”
“It’s too dangerous,” they said. “We have to wait.”
It was 4:30 in the morning.
Dorothy stayed with him. He stood and waited.
The hoses stopped. The smoke only oozed now, swamp-like. The street cleared. Only a few men stayed.
A police car arrived and a grim man from it came to him. The man wore a jacket, and Charles shivered. It had been so hot before.
“Mr. Beale?”
“I’m Charles Beale. I own the building.”
“Yes, sir.” The man spoke with the weight of death. “Detective Mondelli. We recovered a body from the fire.” The man wasn’t weighed down by it, though. He was doing his job.
“I saw them,” Charles said.
“Can you help us identify it?”
Charles walked away. The man went to Dorothy, but she was crying. Charles took her away and the man waited.
Charles and Dorothy stood and looked at the smoke and black window holes and the black door hole. A fireman stepped up to it and looked in.
“I want to get to the basement,” Charles said to a fireman.
“I don’t think-”
“Now!” Charles pushed him away. “I’m going in. Are you coming with me?”
They did come. Three of the four firemen still there came. Charles crossed the threshold into the black gaping hole.
The fire still raged inside, but a fire of silence and blackness and an unbreathable sopping smoky stench. It was much worse than the fire of heat and light.
He didn’t stop. He didn’t stare at the charred walls and open ceiling or anything else the flashlights touched. It was too different from what it had been to possibly be the same room. The floor held.
He hurried to where the stairs had been. The upper stairs had fallen but the stairs down were still passable.
“Watch out!”
But he didn’t care. He had to get to the bottom. The steps held.
The lights fell onto the door. The knob wouldn’t turn. The walls and door weren’t burned. He used his key and the knob was free, but the door still wouldn’t open.
He pushed but it did not yield. The bottom landing was filled with water, over his shoes.
He was pulled back and stronger shoulders went against the door.
It moved a little and then an axe came down on it and it cracked and fell inward.
Heavy, evil smoke roiled out. The lights could not penetrate. They fell back from Hadean gate coughing and daunted and the smoke came and came, darkness itself.
Charles abandoned hope. Without hope, he still went on.
He dropped to his knees and crawled under the smoke. He felt it running over his back like sand. His eyes were closed. His face was just over the face of the waters and sometimes dipped into them.
His head rammed into something hard as above him came a cracking and then a heavy, rigid weight came down on his back, forcing him down and submerging his face. He pushed up against it, choking and drowning.
The weight was pulled off. He sputtered, forcing water out of his lungs but filling them only with poison air, and he was still blind.
He found what he had run into. A chair, against the door. He pushed it aside and the broken door that had fallen on him, and crawled on, faster now.
The lights were behind him, just dim, dull spears into the Cerberus of smoke.
He reached the desk. A portion of the black air had drained out and clear air had begun to fill in, up to a foot now above the level of the water; but still no light could pierce the smoke.
He felt his way around the desk. He could sense the other men behind him.
Finally a shaft of white cut through the clear air between water and smoke and found the wall.
“Look at that,” a voice said, a voice that sounded like sound through smoke.
Like light through smoke, only faintly more than shadows, a dim row of ghostly books stood silent above the ruin of the room.
“I don’t believe it,” said another voice.
But Charles didn’t care. The chair was all important. It meant more than all the books.
His hand in the water touched something else solid, but not hard.
“Here!” Then he coughed again from breathing in enough air to speak. “Down here!”
The lights found him and what he was holding up out of the water, a hand.
Movement became urgent. He pulled the hand, and arm, and he saw black hair. Angelo’s black hair.
Angelo’s black hair. Angelo’s black hair. Charles touched the hair.
Stronger arms and shoulders again took hold, and he slid through the water, getting out of the way. His back found the desk and he sat against it. There was only one more thing.
Pulling and lifting, the men drove, burdened, toward the door and stairs. For one moment a light passed over the black hair and closed eyes and white teeth, and the jaw convulsed and choked in the wicked air.
He was alive. That was the one thing.
The men staggered away up the stairs, and the room went black and still.
Then Charles rested. The water was cold and he was soaked. The air was foul but could be breathed. Slowly his eyes could see thin gray light from the doorway, from the street or the beginning of morning. Even here, the night was not absolute always.
The light touched the walls and the books, or Charles could see them without light. They had also survived for a while longer, even if nothing would last forever, and what a story they must have seen played out in the smoke.
“Hey! Buddy! You still down there?”
The lights came back and the air was clear.
“I’m here,” Charles said.
“You all right?”
“I will be.”
“Your wife’s throwing a fit up there.”
They helped him stand but he wouldn’t leave yet. Through the weird girders of light, he grabbed a book and then the package he’d left last night. Only then they slogged through the debris and murk and up into the world of the living.
Charles walked slowly out into the open air and light, gray from ash and dawn. Dorothy ran to him.
“Charles.” She buried her head in his soaked, sooted shoulder. “They have Angelo.”
“He was in the basement.”
He put his arms around her and they fell onto the front steps to sit and weep together. They sat alone together and ignored the ruins behind them.
But not for long. In the street, still blocked by barricades, two paramedics were kneeling and Charles stumbled over beside them. Angelo was propped between them, breathing at least, a living man.
“How is he?” Charles asked.
“Okay, maybe,” one said. “Smoke, but that’s probably all.”
“Could we just take him to my house? It’s very close.”
“He should go to the hospital.”
“I want to take him to my house,” Charles said to the driver. “It’s just three blocks.”
“You what? Wait a minute.”
Now there was a swarm around Angelo, and a stretcher, but Charles pushed in. “Does he need to go to a hospital?”
The paramedics were talking. “Are you related or anything?”
“I’m his probation supervisor. I can sign papers.”
“Let me just check him out.”
Charles stepped back. But then another voice interrupted.
“Mr. Beale?”
“Detective. Yes? I don’t remember your name.”
“Mondelli. That’s somebody you know?”
“My employee. He lives in-lived in the top floor.”
“Anybody else would have been in the house?”
“No one,” Charles said. “No one should have been.”
“So, you have any idea who it was? Um, we don’t have a lot left of him to work with.”
Charles breathed in the clear, cool air. “There is a man named John Borchard.”
“Spell that?”
Charles did. “He works at the Justice Department downtown. He lives out in McLean. Or it might be someone else.”
The detective was staring at the name. “So why would he be in your building?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mondelli. If it’s him I’ll tell the whole story. But I have to get my wife back home.” He turned away to find a fireman. “Sir. The books in the basement. I have to get them out.”
“We’ll have an inspector look at it. He’ll tell you if you can get anything out.”
“They’re rare books. It’s ten million dollars.”
“Uh, okay, we’ll have the guy here in a couple hours. I’ll get the water pumped out.”
“Thank you.”
Angelo had not been moved. A pillow was under his head and Dorothy was beside him.
A pillow was under Angelo’s head, and Charles and Dorothy were still beside him. Daybreak pierced the lace curtains.
“Look at him,” Dorothy said.
The suspicion and hardness had receded from him and uncovered a tranquility that was natural to his still features. “That’s who I always thought he was.”
A clock chimed six times.
The telephone rang.
“I’m so tired,” Charles said. “And it’s going to be such a long day.” He picked up the telephone. “This is Charles Beale.”
“Detective Mondelli. Okay, tell me your story.”
“Mr. Mondelli. Yes. I don’t remember what I said before.”
“What would this Borchard be doing in your building at three in the morning lighting fires?”
Charles closed his eyes. He set the receiver on the side table for a moment, then picked it up.
“Was it John Borchard?”
“We can’t find him and we’ve got some forensics that match and I have Detective Paisley from Fairfax on the other line who wants to talk to you.”
“You’ve done quite a lot.”
“So why was he in your place? And you were at his place Tuesday when the judge blew himself up.”
Charles spoke slowly and wearily, keeping his words straight. “There are some papers. Important government papers. He didn’t want anyone to see them and he thought I might have them.”
“Okay, wait. Government papers. What kind of papers?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Why would you have them?”
“That’s what we were talking about at his house. He thought a former employee gave them to me.”
“Okay, we’ll get to that. What about the fire? So what you’re saying is, he would have broken in to your place to what, burn it down just to get rid of these papers?”
“I don’t know,” Charles said. “I don’t know what he was doing.”
“You have sprinklers?”
“We have fire sprinklers and an alarm.”
“Did any of it go off?”
“I haven’t heard that it did.”
“Okay. So he went in to burn the place and he cut off the alarm and water somehow. We’ll get a report from the fire chief, but he already says it was gasoline. Maybe he used too much and the fire was too fast and he got caught. Okay, Mr. Beale, I’m going to need to find out about these papers, but this is enough for now. I need to get a statement.”
“I’ll be glad to do that a little later, Mr. Mondelli.”
“That’s okay. I want to talk to your night guy, Acevedo, too.”
“He’s not awake yet.”
“Okay. I’ll call this afternoon. You going anywhere?”
“We’re not going anywhere.”
“Thanks.”
The rising sun was inches lower on the wall, creeping toward the bed. It touched a shelf, and the John Locke and the wrapped package of money on the shelf. Dorothy lowered a blind.
An hour had passed and Charles woke, still sitting beside Angelo. Dorothy was gone.
He found her in the front room, in her chair.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I closed my eyes.”
“You needed to.”
She had been crying. He pulled his chair beside hers and held her hands.
“Here we are.”
“What will we do now?” she asked.
“We’re fine. We have insurance. We can salvage a lot from the basement. We’re fine.”
“It’s all we had.”
“We have each other.”
“It’s all you had,” she said.
“I have you.”
“Why can’t we ever have anything, Charles? It’s just like losing William. I feel like we can never have anything important.”
“We can start back up.”
“There’s nothing I can ever hold on to. You’re everything I have.”
“Hold on to me.”
She did, and he held on to her, until they looked toward the stairs and Angelo was watching them.
“Angelo. Come.” Charles pulled a third chair from the dining room table. “Sit down.”
He was wearing Charles’s clothes that Dorothy had left for him, loose on his thin frame. His face was closed and shrouded in silence, but something inside was shaken. He sat by them quickly, and his eyes were further open than the narrow slits that usually were the windows between him and the world.
“How are you?” Dorothy asked.
“I am okay.”
“You look all right. Are you hungry? What do you need?”
“I am okay.”
“He is,” Charles said. “He’s fine. Angelo. I’m so glad you’re all right.” His hand, which had been holding Dorothy’s before, clamped on to Angelo’s. “I’m so glad.”
Angelo didn’t answer, but it wasn’t a hard silence. The yearning in his eyes said more than he ever had in words.
“I don’t know where we’ll put you now,” Dorothy said. “Your room is gone. You’ll have to stay in the guest room.”
“What room?” Angelo asked.
“Your room at the shop is gone. You’ll have to stay here,” Dorothy said.
“I will not leave?” He was frowning, trying to understand.
“Why would you leave?” Charles said.
“That judge said there is no more probation.”
Charles’s mouth dropped. “No! Angelo! That never meant you had to leave! Of course not.” And then seeing the bewilderment in Angelo’s face, he started to laugh. “Is that what you thought? Angelo, if you want to, you can stay forever.”
“I will stay,” Angelo said, and very firmly.
“Well good, then. That’s taken care of.” Charles let go of his hand. “But we don’t have a shop anymore. It will be a while before you have anything to do.”
“Your books?” Angelo asked. “There was fire.”
“There was fire.” The joy burned away. “Yes. We lost the whole building except the basement. Angelo, tell me what happened.”
“I was in the basement.”
“Why were you in the basement?”
“I went to watch that money.”
“How did you know it was down there?”
“You did not take it away in your car.”
“Why did you go to watch it?”
“That man following, that was bad. He wanted the money.”
“What man?” Dorothy asked.
“We saw someone on the way to New York,” Charles said. “So you were in the basement. Just waiting?”
“I was waiting. And then the door opened.”
“The front door?”
“That door opened and I heard walking up there, then walking on the stairs down.”
“What about the door?”
“He tried to open but I had it locked already. But he unlocked it.”
“He had a key?” Charles asked.
“That lock, it is too easy,” Angelo said.
“What happened when he opened the door?”
“That door didn’t open.”
“The chair,” Charles said. “You had it against the door?”
“That man pushed, but I held it closed and the chair held it.”
Charles stopped. Dorothy was hardly breathing and her face was white.
“It’s all right,” Charles said. “Angelo is sitting right here with us. Whatever he tells us, he made it through.”
“It’s terrible,” she said.
“But it’s over. Go ahead, Angelo. Did he ever get the door open?”
“No, it didn’t open. Then he went back up the stairs. Then the light went off.”
“He turned off the electricity.”
“I locked the door again if he would come back. Then I waited and then I smelled fire.”
“Did you go up to see?” Charles asked.
“I looked up the stairs, but it was all fire.”
“Could you have gotten out?”
“That man, he might be waiting for me to come out.”
“So you went back down.”
“He would get that money if I went out.”
“The money isn’t as important to me as you are, Angelo!” Charles shook his head. “You could have died down there.”
“I think it was a very big fire,” Angelo said. “You say that room doesn’t burn in fires. Then the smoke came.”
“Maybe it was the better thing to do. You probably wouldn’t have gotten through it. John Borchard didn’t.”
“That man did the fire?”
“That’s what the police say. He didn’t get out, Angelo. He died right above you.”
“He was not a good man. I said be careful.”
“Yes, you did. We both had to be careful.”
Angelo’s perils had taken Dorothy’s thoughts from her own. “I think that’s enough,” she said. “Come into the kitchen, both of you. We need to eat. We’ll have a long day. We need to get back over there to get the books out. I’ll call Morgan and Alice.”
“You get something for Angelo,” Charles said. “Tell Morgan to meet me at the store in twenty minutes, and tell Alice to bring boxes. Have her buy a couple hundred somewhere. And lots of packing.”
“Don’t you want anything?” she said. “You must be starving.”
“I need to think what it means. Angelo, are you sure you had the door locked in the basement?”
“It was locked.”
“But he still got it open?”
“That man, he must be good on locks.”
Charles stared out the window. The sun had gone. In just a few minutes, clouds had covered it.
In just a few minutes more a car had arrived, loudly. Its door slammed and the doorbell rang, while a voice called through the window.
“Mr. Beale? Are you in there?”
Charles jumped to the door. “Congresswoman. Come in. Dorothy, Karen Liu is here.”
“I just heard,” Karen Liu said. Charles had barely gotten her seated. “My staff got a call that John Borchard was killed in a fire. Then they said it was in a bookstore in Alexandria. Oh, Mr. Beale! I drove right over. The street was closed. I called and found out where you lived.”
“You found us,” Charles said.
“I have some coffee,” Dorothy said.
“Yes, please. What happened? What was he doing?”
“I don’t know for sure. The police think he was trying to burn down the building and he didn’t get out in time.”
“That’s horrible! Mr. Beale, you know how I felt about him, but I never wanted anything like this! Did he…?” Suddenly her momentum stalled. She started again, much slower. “What was he doing?”
“It had to do with Derek,” Charles said. “He thought I had Derek’s papers.”
“And he burned down a whole building to get them? Oh, Mr. Beale! I can’t believe it. He could have killed people.” She stopped again. “He killed himself.” She lurched forward. “Do you think he did it on purpose?”
“I don’t know,” Charles said. “No, he wouldn’t. Not like that.”
“What about your books?”
“The showroom was destroyed. The basement may be salvageable.”
“Oh my. Oh, Mr. Beale. If there is anything I can do, anything, I will. Anything.”
Dorothy handed her a coffee cup and she took it without noticing.
“We’re only getting started,” Charles said. “I need to go back and look. I need to get the books out as quickly as I can. Congresswoman-”
“Please call me Karen. You already have, once.”
“Karen. Would you stay with Dorothy and Angelo?”
“I’ll go with you,” Dorothy said.
“No, you stay and get some rest. There won’t be a lot to do yet. I’ll take a flashlight.” He went up the stairs to the bedroom and took a flashlight from the nightstand. Then he opened the John Locke and took one paper from the card box.
He looked into the kitchen. “Angelo, I’m leaving. Take care of Dorothy for me.”
“Take care how?”
“If she needs anything.” He turned back to Dorothy. “Goodbye, dear.”
Charles stepped out onto the brick sidewalk that he walked so many times, and so many others had walked before him. He looked for a moment at the old townhouse and the lace curtains in the windows.
Then he chose a quick pace, down two blocks, over one block, past the firemen carrying away barricades and people clotting the way. He squeezed through.
In the full light, the ruin of the building was entire and terrible, but only pitiable, not profound as it had been in the night. Charles stood and pitied it. The face was intact but charred with great black stains leaking upward from the blank holes of the windows. Just from the way it stood, it was obvious that it was hollow and dead inside.
There was one sign of life, a man in a hard hat coming out of what had been the doorway, and Charles hurried toward him.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m Charles Beale. I own the building. Are you inspecting it?”
“Yeah. Good morning. They said you want to get books out of the basement?”
“Yes, very quickly. May I get them?”
“Okay, look, Mr. Beale,” the man said. “This place isn’t safe. But how much did you say the books are worth?”
“About ten million dollars.”
He nodded. “I’m going to let you in. It’s not going to fall in today, I don’t think, but you’re doing this at your own risk. I’m giving you one day.”
“Thank you. I’ll go down now and look.”
He walked in and stopped. There could never have been anything like books in such a place. There were no shelves, no counter, nothing to make it a room. There was only black, enough to suck the light out of air. There was no ceiling. He looked straight up to where the office had been and it was only more of the same black, lightless space.
He walked down the stairs. The splintered door was the first thing visible, and he pushed it aside with his foot. The water was mostly gone. He turned his light onto the walls.
The books stared back at him and their thoughts were unknowable, whether it was relief or reproach or resignation. He took a volume from a shelf and gently opened it. The cover was strong and straight and the pages were dry. Now, as they went on, Mr. Great-heart drew his sword, with intent to make a way for the pilgrims in spite of the lions. Then there appeared one that, it seems, had taken upon him to back the lions; and he said to the pilgrims’ guide, What is the cause of your coming hither? Now the name of that man was Grim, or Bloody-man because of his slaying of pilgrims; and he was of the race of the giants. MR. GREAT-HEART: Then said the pilgrims’ guide, These women and children are going on pilgrimage, and this is the way they must go; and go it they shall, in spite of thee and the lions. GRIM: This is not their way, neither shall they go therein. I am come forth to withstand them, and to that end will back the lions.
“Yes, Pilgrim,” Charles said. “Keep making your progress. I will fight for you all that I can.”
He stood for a very long time looking, at shelves, at books, at the room, and at the precious value of everything, everything at all.
“I’ve so enjoyed knowing all of you,” he said.
Slowly he climbed the stairs, back into the light.
Morgan was standing in the street, gape-mouthed, wide-eyed and blinking.
“Good morning,” Charles said.
“Oh.”
“Yes. It’s all right, Morgan. There’s a lot of work to do. The basement looks good. Everything’s down there.”
“What happened?”
“We’ll talk about it later. For now, we need to get the books out. Do you have boxes?”
“Some. Alice is getting everything.” Morgan blinked once more. “I should just start?”
“Yes, get started. Take them to my house, we’ll find room. I need to go out for a while.”
But he had only turned when a taxi blocked his way, and its door opened, and a walking stick jutted.
“Get me out,” a voice said, and Charles reached down and gently lifted. It didn’t take much force.
“Jacob,” he said. “We’ve had a bad accident, I’m afraid.”
“Bad accident? That’s nothing. I’ve seen plenty worse.”
“It’s bad enough.”
“You think you’re trying to get free advertising? It’s all over the television.”
“Oh. I haven’t been watching.”
“Of course not, there’s work to do. What’s left, anything?”
“The basement came through, Jacob. Everything’s still down there. Morgan has already started and Alice is coming.”
“Then it’s not bad at all. Just work, and I know you don’t mind that. Buck up, Charles.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m glad you’re here, Jacob. Would you like to go over to the house for the morning? When is your flight?”
“I cancelled it. I’m here to take care of your books, and someday you’ll learn how to yourself and keep your store from burning down. Stop there! Let me see!”
Morgan had just emerged with his first box and Jacob scuttled over to him.
“Leave the top off,” he commanded. “Let them dry. Not too many to a box. Now you’ll pack them special to let them dry. I’ll tell you how.”
“Oh, Mr. Beale!” Alice had arrived.
“Everything is fine,” he said. “We won’t sell much today, but everything’s fine.”
She burst into tears.
“Leave the boxes,” Charles said, “and go over to the house to see Dorothy. Everything will be fine. Come back and help when you’re ready.”
“Yes, sir,” she sniffed.
“And thank you so much,” he said. “For everything.” Her lip was too stiff to talk so she just nodded. “Morgan. Just keep working, slow and steady. Angelo could help, and Alice will too when she’s calmed down.”
“Will you be back soon?” Morgan asked.
“When I can. I need to take your little telephone.”
“Yes, sir. Here.”
“Thank you very much, Morgan. You’ve been such a help over the years.”
Morgan set the first box next to his car and went in for the second.
“Jacob,” Charles said. “I need to go out for a while. If you could just watch and help them pack.”
“What are you doing, Charles?” Jacob looked at him suspiciously.
“Just some business.”
“What business?”
“Doing what I know I have to do.”
Jacob searched him with a single glance.
“Then I’ll take care of this.”
Charles returned to his quick pace. He took a smart left onto King Street and crossed to Market Square. The crowds were thicker than the day before, with brisk-moving suited office workers squeezing between slow tourists. Most of the benches were empty and Charles picked a solitary one. He took Morgan’s telephone from his pocket, and a business card, and pushed the little buttons.
“Frank Kelly.”
“Mr. Kelly. This is Charles Beale.”
“Oh, hey. What can I do for you?”
“I need your help.”
“Sure. What?”
“Mr. Kelly, this is about Derek Bastien, and it’s a very long story. I just have one question, though. When we talked about Derek’s desk, you called it a Honaker.”
“Um, yeah. I think that’s right.”
“Who told you that it was?”
“Somebody. Let me think. Why do you want to know?”
“It’s part of the long story.”
“Go ahead,” Frank Kelly said. “I like stories.”
“Do you remember the auction where it was sold? Two people tried to buy it. One of them hired a man from New York as an agent. I’ve spoken to Edmund Cane, that agent, and he called the desk a Honaker, too.” The little telephone was awkward to hold, and Charles switched it to his other ear. “No one else so far has known that detail about the desk. Whoever told you might be the person who also told Mr. Cane. I need to find that person.”
“Okay, just a minute. I’m looking at my notes. So is it something to do with the burglary?”
“It might be.”
“Should you be talking to Harry Watts over in D.C. Homicide?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m not really sure.”
“Okay, here it is. Right after the burglary in November. Interview with Norman Highberg.”
“Norman,” Charles said. “You’re sure?”
“It’s right here. Okay, Mr. Beale, I feel like I need to know more about this long story.”
“Would you like to meet?” Charles said.
“I could come right over. Are you at your place?”
Charles sighed. “No. We had a fire last night.”
“A fire!? Oh, man, I hope it wasn’t bad. What happened?”
“It was very bad. The building was destroyed.”
The telephone gasped. “All the way? What? Everything?”
“The basement survived, where the rare books were. That was very fortunate.”
“So, wait. I mean…” Mr. Kelly struggled for words. “Was anybody hurt?”
“Yes. The man who set the fire was killed.”
“Oh, man! Oh, man. Right in the store? I don’t know what to say. Are you all right?”
“Yes, all of us are all right.”
“That’s such a great place! Oh, I’m really sorry.” And then Mr. Kelly’s investigative mind finally caught up. “Hey, what, is there something up? It doesn’t have anything to do with Bastien, does it?” A longer pause and a grimmer voice. “Where was your night guy?”
“He’s all right. He was there, but he’s all right.”
“Mr. Beale, we need to talk, and we need Watts in on this. Who’s covering it in Alexandria?”
“It’s a Detective Mondelli.”
“Okay, never heard of him, but we need him, too. Look, I’ve been getting some stuff up on your Acevedo guy, and I think I need to start moving.”
“Mr. Kelly,” Charles said. “There’s a lot more to say and many more questions. Could you meet me at Norman Highberg’s shop in Georgetown? I think we can find our answers there.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Give me a little while to get there,” Charles said.
Charles took his time. He walked the familiar length of King Street, looking in windows and watching people, but never stopping. He rode the escalator to the Metro platform with the usual dozens of other people and waited until the doors whooshed open. He chose a seat and watched Alexandria accelerate away.
The ride was uneventful. He took the Blue Line past the airport and under the Pentagon, through Arlington and finally under the river to Georgetown, a familiar and comfortable course, and very finally left the Metro behind beneath the Georgetown streets. And then he was on the streets, which were very busy and crowded. He walked the blocks he needed to, passing the storefronts and so many people. At one last door he paused, and walked in.
“Is Mr. Highberg here?”
“Charles.” Norman had his finger on his nose, pushing up his glasses. “You want to just move in here? You’ve been up here all the time. Don’t tell me you have more of your questions.”
“No, I don’t have questions.”
The little telephone in his pocket made a funny sound. When he looked, it showed his home telephone number. He closed it and it stopped ringing.
“So you’re just browsing?” Norman said. “Maybe now that you have that chess set, you might want to look at some other things.” When Charles didn’t answer, he said, “Are you waiting for something?”
“For someone.” But then they weren’t waiting, as Frank Kelly stood in the door. “Norman, you know Mr. Kelly, of the FBI?”
Norman squinted at the silhouette. “Yeah, sure. Hi. What do you want? Did something get stolen or did something get found? It’s always one of those, right?”
“Mr. Highberg,” Frank Kelly said. “Do you have a room we can talk in? Just us three.”
“I got all kinds of rooms. Come on up.”
He led them away from the light through the sparkling windows and all within that sparkled in the light, upstairs and through a dusty corridor and into a room. It was a stockroom with unpacked empty boxes and unopened full boxes and a bench and packing litter and chairs.
“So, what do you want?” Norman asked. “You don’t look happy, Charles. Usually you look a lot better.”
Charles looked at Mr. Kelly. “How shall we do this?”
“Okay, this isn’t very good,” Mr. Kelly said. “I’m not sure if I have jurisdiction or what, yet, or whether I need to get Harry Watts. Do this. I just won’t be here officially. You say what you know, and I’ll figure it out as we go along.”
“Well.” Charles rubbed his eyes; they were red and weary. “Mr. Kelly, I’ll tell you my story now, and you’ll see how the burglaries are part of it. I’m very tired and I’ll try to make it short.”
“What are you talking about?” Norman Highberg said.
“Just listen,” Frank Kelly answered.
“Derek Bastien was a blackmailer,” Charles said. “He kept papers on people he worked with. He manipulated these people with threats, and fooled them into thinking it was his boss, John Borchard, who was doing it.”
“Borchard?” Frank had his notebook out. “He’s the one-”
“Yes, he was the one this morning.”
“I read the police report after you called.”
Charles went on. “One of the people Derek was blackmailing was a judge, Patrick White.”
“White?” Frank put his notebook down. “He’s the one-”
“Yes, who died Tuesday. Do you know the rest of his story?”
“All the stuff in the newspaper. Yeah, I know.”
“Derek Bastien was the one who told the newspaper about him,” Charles said. “Mr. White was one of his victims.”
“What are you talking about?” Norman was acting very confused. “What is all this?”
“But Patrick White thought John Borchard was his tormentor, and he planned revenge.”
“Is that what the bomb thing was about?” Frank Kelly said.
“It was supposed to look that way,” Charles said. “But there was another blackmail victim. Someone who went to Mr. White and offered to help. But I think he only helped Mr. White die.”
“Keep going,” Frank Kelly said. “I think I’m following it.”
“I’m not!” Norman Highberg said. “What is this, anyway?”
Charles did keep going. “I think he also helped John Borchard die. John was desperate to get Derek’s papers. He bought Derek’s desk.”
“Borchard bought it.” Frank was writing furiously, but still intensely attentive. “The papers were in it?”
“In a hidden drawer, and they were still there. I saw them Tuesday. John showed them to me.”
“I get it,” Frank said. “Because someone else tried to buy the desk, too. That’s this other victim, right?”
“Yes. It has to be.”
“The one that you say, um, what? That he booby-trapped White’s bomb?”
“I guess that would be it,” Charles said.
“Okay, that would be tricky. And then Borchard?”
“They would have been there in the shop together. He made sure John Borchard didn’t get out after the fire was started. Maybe he was already dead.”
“What… what, what fire?” Norman was beside himself. “Somebody tell me what you’re telling me? What fire? And who’s dead? Where?”
Frank was shaking his head. “Do you have any clue that he wasn’t there by himself? The police report says he was.”
“I don’t think he was. He picked locks and turned off my alarm system and sprinklers. I don’t think John Borchard could have, but I think the man who broke into Derek’s house, and the other houses, could have.”
“Okay.” Frank was very pleased. “I got you. That’s real good.” Then his smile deflated. “Except I’ve got bad news for you.”
“What is that?”
“I’ve got about two-thirds of a case against your guy Acevedo on that.”
“Angelo?” Charles was too tired to react.
“DNA for one thing, and that stuff we recovered, too. I’ve got a link between a guy he knew and the attic we found the stuff in.”
“I was afraid you would say that.”
Mr. Kelly was still figuring. “And he’d be in your shop, and he knows the alarm and everything else.”
“Wait,” Norman erupted again. “Where was the fire? Did you have a fire, Charles? What, at your place?”
“But Acevedo isn’t anybody Bastien would be blackmailing,” Mr. Kelly said. “So Acevedo’s working with someone else? I’m getting mixed up.”
“I’m getting mixed up,” Norman said.
“It comes back to the desk,” Charles said. “The man from New York, Edmund Cane. He was the agent for that other victim, the one I want to find. And Mr. Cane called the desk a Honaker.”
“Honaker?” Norman said. “It was a Honaker?”
“Does that make a difference?”
“No. No way that desk was worth a hundred five grand, even if it was a Honaker. But I don’t do furniture, so what do I know.”
“What do you know, Norman?” Charles asked. “John Borchard didn’t know. The only two people who knew that the desk was a Honaker were Edmund Cane and the FBI. I think Mr. Cane must have heard it from his client, and I think Mr. Kelly must have heard it from the same person as well. Norman, I think that was you.”
Norman Highberg tried to make sounds but nothing came, and his face contorted in an indecipherable expression. But finally, he choked out words.
“Are you crazy?”
“I’m not,” Charles said.
“You’re crazy, you both are. What is this? What are you doing here?” Now that the words had broken loose, they came in a torrent. “You’re both wacko! You think I even know what you’re talking about?”
But Frank was already moving on. “Okay, I can handle this. I’ll get Harry Watts in here. I should have called him before. I just figured Highberg’s DNA on the stuff we recovered was old, but it must have been recent.”
“I don’t have DNA!” Norman said.
“But look,” Frank Kelly said, “we need to get hold of Acevedo. Where is he?”
“Back in Alexandria,” Charles said.
“Does he know what you’re doing right now? I mean, does he know we’ll be after him?” He took a slow breath. “Where’s your wife?”
“I’m getting out of here,” Norman said. “This is too crazy.”
Charles rubbed his eyes again, and they were much redder and wearier. “Yes, Norman, go ahead. Leave.”
“What?” Frank Kelly’s head jerked up from his notebook.
“Leave, Norman,” Charles said. “I’m sorry. Just go away.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Frank Kelly set his jaw. “Yeah. Get lost.”
Norman didn’t move, but then he did quickly, and left them.
“Okay,” Frank said. “Start over.”
Starting over took a great deal of energy. Charles had to wait to gather it.
“You killed Derek, and Patrick White, and John Borchard,” he said.
“Just keep talking.”
“I’m very tired,” Charles said.
“I’ve got a gun right here, and you’re only alive as long as you keep talking.”
“Norman knows you’re here and he heard everything I said.”
“I’ll deal with that when I have to. First, just talk. Start with the desk.”
“All right.” Charles kept his eyes on Mr. Kelly’s face, and not on his hands. “I always knew there were two people who wanted the desk. As I worked out what Derek was doing, I knew who they must be. John Borchard was obvious after I talked with Patrick White. The other person was elusive. I knew who he was; I just didn’t know his name.
“There was always the big question that I never saw an answer to. How did Derek get all these papers? When did he have time to find court records in Kansas and class records in Virginia, and how did he ever get bank records? And all those dozens of other papers? And then I knew who the other person must be. It was his spy, his agent, his burrower. There was one paper I had, a list of dates and amounts and people’s initials. It was his list of his payments to you. A lot of money, but not enough to outbid John Borchard for the desk. When did you know there were papers in the book as well?”
“Just keep talking.”
“It must have been when you talked with John Borchard, the evening that Patrick White was killed; or earlier, because you had Mr. Cane trying to buy the books on Monday.
“One thing I knew about the spy was that he was always showing up somewhere. Once Patrick White was exposed in the newspaper, a mysterious fellow victim approached him. Did you hear the recording that John Borchard had?”
“Just keep talking. Don’t ask questions.”
“I thought about it. If I had supplied Derek with that information about Patrick White, and then I saw the huge drama playing out in public, I would have been worried for myself. What would you do? I think you would have felt at risk. So you became Mr. White’s confidante, so that you could know everything he knew. Probably that was when you knew that there was only one way out of your business with Derek. How did you get into it in the first place?”
“I said no questions.”
“Well, it will come out. I can think of several ways you might cross paths. The Justice Department and the FBI, his collection of antiques and your job hunting them. It looks like he paid you a lot of money. And then, after the auction, you showed up at my shop. You were just following leads. One of them was that I asked Edmund Cane some pointed questions about who he was representing. It was just the next morning that you arrived. Just like with Patrick White, you wanted to be close to know what was happening. Looking back, I remember you following me in that one morning, and standing there as I turned off the alarm.
“I don’t know what you said to John, to get him to come with you to my shop, to recover the papers. Maybe you even told him you were with the FBI and you needed his help? I know that you gained my confidence, Mr. Kelly. I’m sure you could gain everyone else’s.
“I’m rambling, I’m sorry. As I said, I’m very tired. I guess that once you saw that the Patrick White scandal was getting out of hand, you saw the danger of Derek being exposed as the source. And, if Derek would do that to Mr. White, could you trust him yourself? So you ran a quick series of burglaries to camouflage your attack on Derek. Was it a rotten feeling for him, Mr. Kelly, when he saw you? Or did he not see you?”
“Just. Keep. Talking.”
“I’m almost finished. You went through such efforts to hide yourself. All those burglaries, that was really lots of effort, and risky, although you must have a lot of useful skills and you surely know how burglaries are done. But also keeping Patrick White so close that you could kill him if you needed to, and getting John Borchard to the bookstore.
“I also suppose that was you following us to the train station, after Edmund Cane called to tell you we were coming to New York. We had that suitcase of books, so you would have assumed we were packed for the night, and there wouldn’t be anyone in the building. You might really have been successful with making those all look like accidents.
“And now, I don’t know what you were planning next. You claim that you recovered the things stolen from Derek’s house and you’ve tried to involve Angelo, of all people. I think you were setting up the next death, where Angelo would kill me, but die himself somehow. And Norman? That was ridiculous. You recovered those stolen items from your own attic, and there wasn’t any DNA on them. Certainly not any that was months old. That was ridiculous, too.
“But at least it gave me a way to get you here for this conversation. So now I do have some questions, and you need to answer them.”
“I don’t need to do anything.”
“But you’ve been exposed now, Mr. Kelly. It’s over.”
“I don’t think so.” Frank Kelly tapped his fingers on the packing bench beside him. “I don’t think so, because it’s just the two of us sitting here. You could have taken this whole thing to Watts and D.C. Homicide yourself. So why are we just sitting here together?”
“I wanted to be sure.”
“It’s more than that. What papers did you have in that book, anyway?”
“Karen Liu’s checks, John Borchard’s overturned convictions, Patrick White’s law school paper, the list of payments to you, and Galen Jones’s drug connection. And one other.”
“Sounds like the top-sellers, there,” Frank said. “Borchard knew about Bastien’s secret drawer and so did I, so he couldn’t keep those first four papers there. Jones knew about the drawer, too. I think I know what the last one was. You looked through the papers that Borchard got from the desk. What were you looking for?” He waited, but Charles didn’t answer. “You wanted to know what he had on you.”
“I didn’t find anything.”
“You already had it. That one other paper.”
“I was afraid so,” Charles said. “I’d hoped it wasn’t.”
“That’s straight from the files at the orphanage, the FitzRobert place.” Frank Kelly folded his arms. “Let’s say I let you out of here alive. If this goes to trial, all that stuff will come out. Karen Liu is going to sink like a stone. But your main problem is that you’ve got homicidal maniacs in your family tree. Hey, sorry to be blunt, but that’s the clinical name. How’s your Dorothy going to feel when she finds out her mother was crazy, and that her son inherited it right down the line?”
Charles didn’t answer.
“So here’s a deal. We just walk away. You don’t tell anyone about me, and I don’t tell anyone everything I know. Just pretend we never had this conversation.”
“I don’t think I’d feel very safe about that.”
“You can make some arrangements. Write the whole long story and put it in a safe place where it goes to the newspaper if anything ever happens to you. I admit it’s messy but I don’t see any alternative.”
“You would have killed three people and nothing would happen to you?”
“They were not nice people. Right?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. You could almost say they got what they deserved.”
“And would you get what you deserve? You’ve killed two people in the last two days. What kind of homicidal maniac have you become?”
“Hey, watch it,” Frank said. “Did your man Angelo get what he deserved? Aren’t you all about second chances, Beale? Why didn’t you drop those papers in the police department’s inbox the day you found them? Because you didn’t want Borchard or Liu to get shoved out the same window that poor Patrick did. I’ve been reading you like a book.”
“I think at this point, Karen Liu is ready to face her charges.”
“You should worry more about yourself.”
“It would be very hard on Dorothy to know the truth,” Charles said. “But we’ll get past it.”
“Get past it? I think you’re underestimating what this will do to her. She’s going to realize that your William killed himself because he inherited a defective mind from his mother. Think about something like that long enough and you might go crazy.”
“How did you get that paper?” Charles asked.
“I looked in her file at the orphanage.”
“Then you’ve made a mistake,” Charles said. “We’ve seen her file. Her mother never killed anyone. She and Dorothy’s father were missionaries in China. They died there when she was an infant.”
“This was a separate file. It was marked closed. You never saw it.”
“I know what file you mean. We never did see what was in it. But it wasn’t Dorothy’s. It was William’s. Didn’t you know that we adopted him?”
The telephone in his pocket rang again. He reached for it, but even faster Mr. Kelly had his hand inside his jacket.
“Don’t touch it.”
Charles put his hand down. “My wife is getting very worried. She doesn’t know where I am.”
“Who does?”
“No one.”
Mr. Kelly shook his head. “Then there’s something else going on here. Why would you walk into this room if you knew you were never coming out? You should at least have kept Highberg in here.”
“I wanted him away from danger.”
“Where’s the paper you talked about? The list of money Derek Bastien paid me?”
“I have it with me. I didn’t want it found before I talked to you. You see, it’s part of the reason I didn’t give the papers to the police either. I can’t save you from your punishment, Mr. Kelly, and I wouldn’t. But I was hoping there was something I could do to rescue you. Something.” He sighed. “You’re right. I am all about second chances.”
“Then you’re all about being a complete idiot. You’re going to save other people and you can’t even save yourself?”
“For whatever you’ve done to me,” Charles said, “I forgive you.”
The door opened.
A long gray mustache looked into the room, and Galen Jones’s bright eyes above it.
Frank Kelly suddenly smiled. “Jones? Right? Galen Jones. What do you want?” His eyes stayed on Charles. “We’re just talking antiques.”
Mr. Jones hesitated. “I was meeting Beale. I’m making a chess table for him. It’s ten o’clock, right? Thursday? Highberg said you were up here.” His eyes stayed on Frank Kelly. “Something wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong,” Mr. Kelly said. “He’ll be done in a few minutes. You could wait downstairs.”
“Okay.” Mr. Jones stood for a moment more. Then he shook his head. “What’s happening?”
“I said nothing.” The smile was gone. “Get lost.”
“Highberg said you were talking about Bastien’s desk.”
Charles nodded slowly, and his eyes stayed on Galen Jones. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
Mr. Jones visibly tensed, and his eyes went to Frank Kelly’s hand resting on his lap, but tense and not at rest. “What are you-”
“I said get lost!”
“Nobody talks to me that way!”
The hand twitched. “If you don’t-”
Jones stepped forward. “I’ve had enough of you.”
Mr. Kelly’s hand moved, deliberate and threatening. His eyes were full on Galen Jones.
But another hand moved fast. With all his strength Charles pulled at a box on the bench beside him and hurled it as hard as he could. Its whole weight seemed to hang for an endless moment in the space between them. Then it half caught Frank Kelly’s shoulder but didn’t slow or veer, and an awful, heavy blow hit him full in the face, carrying him and his chair backward, still in the same shattering crash, all the way to the floor.
He only shuddered once, and then was still except for the rattle of his breathing.
“Thank you,” Charles said, his own breath in gasps. “Thank you for coming.”
Galen Jones pulled the box away. A cascade of what had once been a Chinese vase poured out of it. “What was…?”
“No. Don’t ask. Just call the police.”
“You get his gun, I’m not touching it.”
Frank Kelly didn’t stir; a dark bruise was already covering half his face. Charles eased the gun from the holster and set it on the bench behind him.
“Mr. Jones, I had completely forgotten that you and I were meeting here today.”