On the fifth day following my surgery, I am able to stand and walk around for a few minutes a day. Three days later, I trade in the assistance of the nurses for the support of two metal crutches. Then the harridans of physical therapy have their turn at adding to my medical torture, laughing and cajoling as I suffer and half die all over again. After nine days of their ungentle tutelage, the doctors reluctantly concede that I am about ready to go home.
This is the part I have dreaded. How can I tell my doctors that I have no place to go home to? I have no intention of setting foot in the house on Hobby Hill, trying to live under the same roof, even temporarily, with a wife who has not only thrown me out but who had, and may still be having, an affair with one of my students. Dana has offered to put me up for as long as necessary, but I can tell from the way she says it that Alison is opposed. Rob Saltpeter invites me to stay with his family, and I am tempted by the simple stability of his household, but I do not want to burden Rob and his extraordinary wife, Sara. Don and Nina Felsenfeld, still practicing the art of chesed, offer me their guest room, but living next door to the wife who no longer wants me would be slow torture. Uncle Mal leaves word that I am welcome at his house down in Vienna, Virginia, but I do not return the call. Dean Lynda does not offer me a place to stay, but she does suggest by phone that I take the rest of the semester off. And this time she says it nicely.
With Nurse White’s occasional assistance, I finally turn to the get-well-soon cards stacked on the windowsill. Many of them are from the usual suspects-faculty and students and bits of family-but there are also a few surprises, including a couple from college friends I have not seen in years who must have heard about the shooting on the news, because it was reported everywhere. There are flowers from Mallory Corcoran and the law school, and cards from Wallace Wainwright and even Sergeant Bonnie Ames. And another card, postmarked at Miami International Airport, probably while its sender was on the way out of the country, brings me up short, for it is signed at the bottom, in a strong but feminine script, Sorry, Misha. A job is a job. Glad you’re OK. Love, M. Somehow I doubt it is from Meadows. I gaze out the window and try to reconcile two images, a gentle evening stroll on the Vineyard, and a third bullet that almost killed me in the Old Town Burial Ground.
Morris Young stops by several times to see me, talking to me about God’s providence and what the Bible has to say about how marriages end. God prefers that marriages last until death, he says, but also forgives us, if we are repentant, when we fail in the quest to do as he would like.
His message does not reduce my pain.
Three days before I am to be released, somebody from Accounting comes down with a thick sheaf of papers for me to sign. At last I have the opportunity to find out how it is that I came to spend my entire stay in a private room. She shows me the intake form: Howard and Mariah Denton are paying for it. I suppose I should have known. I am about to call Howard with my grudging thanks when Mariah bustles in again, telling me I look ready to travel and informing me that the Navigator will be downstairs when the “big day” comes, plenty of room for me to stretch out on the trip to Darien.
I consider. A private guest house, space to walk on their seven wooded acres, a housekeeper to wait on me, probably a private-duty nurse and an occupational therapist to get me going again. And Mariah to listen to, all day long, and five-no, six now-children to stumble over. And so many miles away from my boy.
“Thank you,” I tell my sister, bewildered at the way my options have managed so swiftly to shrink.
The next afternoon, Special Agent Nunzio comes by, and I know they are about to shrink further.
“I can’t tell you everything,” he says sadly, as though he wishes he could.
“Can you tell me anything?”
“That depends on what you want to know.”
“Start with all the lying,” I suggest.
Nunzio runs a rugged hand through shiny black hair. When he speaks, his face is turned partly away. He does not want to be here. Mallory Corcoran must have pulled the string of all strings to get the Bureau to send an agent up from Washington to brief me. But, then, Uncle Mal owes me, several times over. Oh, does he owe me!
“Nobody lied to you exactly, Professor Garland,” Nunzio begins. We are on formal terms once more.
“Oh, no? Well, you did, for one.”
“I did?”
I nod. I am sitting in my chair by the window again, the sun warming the back of my neck. “It wasn’t coincidence that you were the one who came to interview me about the fake FBI agents who came to Shepard Street. If I hadn’t been so busy worrying about everything else, I would have figured that out for myself. The Bureau moved awfully fast, didn’t it? But it wasn’t because of the impersonation. It was because you already suspected that one of the fake agents was Colin Scott. You had lost track of him, hadn’t you? And you needed me to help you find him again.”
Nunzio gazes at the various medical devices lined up next to my bed. “Perhaps it was something like that.”
“No, it was exactly like that. I must be some kind of idiot to have missed it. You never even tried to discourage me. You never said I was nuts. You never told me to go away. I would call you with the wildest theories, and you would take them seriously. Because you wanted me to keep looking. You wanted me to find Scott for you.”
“Maybe.”
“That’s why Bonnie Ames asked me all those questions about the arrangements. They were your questions, not hers, but you didn’t want to interview me formally about my father’s arrangements because I might get suspicious. So you let her do it.”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly. Right. All that because you wanted me to flush out Colin Scott. A murderer.”
“You were never in any danger,” he sighs, finally conceding the main point.
“That’s what everybody keeps telling me. But look at this.” I lift my hospital gown to show him the bandages all over my abdomen. He does not flinch. He has seen worse.
“I’m sorry about that, Professor. Truly sorry. Maybe we should have given you more formal protection. We did look in on you from time to time. You didn’t know we were there, but we kept an eye out. Then, after Scott died-after everybody thought he died-we thought you were safe. I guess we miscalculated.”
“Somebody did, anyway.” I gather my waning strength. “Now, tell me about Ruthie Silverman.”
“Ms. Silverman? What about her?”
“She’s the deputy White House counsel. She helps pick judges.”
“I know that. But I’m not sure why you’re bringing up her name.”
“You know what I’m talking about. My wife was never going to be a federal judge, was she? That was just a cover. A cover that let you investigate my family’s life while you pretended that you were collecting data on Kimmer. A cover that was conveniently yanked away as soon as it looked like it was going to keep me from going to see Jack Ziegler.”
“Exactly what are we supposed to have been covering?”
“No, you tell me.” I want to keep punching, but I am wearing out. “I’m tired of guessing.”
Special Agent Fred Nunzio stretches out his strong arms, links his fingers, cracks his knuckles. His shoulders seem too broad for his dark suit. Another agent, similarly attired, is waiting out in the hall-I saw him-and I suspect that it is contrary to Bureau policy for Nunzio to talk to me alone. Which means that Washington wants everything he tells me to be deniable.
“You have it wrong, Professor. Ms. Silverman never lied to you. Nobody from the White House lied. They weren’t involved, not the way you seem to think. Your wife really was a candidate for that judgeship. We didn’t manipulate that. I doubt we could have. The White House runs us, remember, not the other way around. But we took advantage of it, no question. It allowed us to… well, to delve into various things we could not otherwise have investigated.”
“Such as my brother’s finances.”
He is more uncomfortable than ever. “This was not about your brother, Professor. I would call that… coincidence.”
“Oh, really? The Bureau is doing a background check on one Kimberly Madison and, by coincidence, turns up information about the financial problems of her brother-in-law?”
“We have to look at every lead,” he says unctuously.
“No. There’s something more here. This wasn’t even just about Colin Scott. He was… he was…” I cannot find the word. Then I have it, thanks to my father. “He was a pawn, wasn’t he? Just like me. One black pawn, one white pawn.”
Nunzio ignores the last part of my comment. “Colin Scott was a bad man, Mr. Garland. That’s what we do down at the Bureau, we catch bad men.”
“Oh, really? So was it the Bureau that shot him in the cemetery?”
“No, of course not,” says Nunzio, too quickly. I do not think he is lying exactly. He is just telling less than the whole truth. The FBI may not have killed Mr. Scott, but it has a pretty good idea who did. And will never tell me. Which is okay: I have secrets I will never share, too. I just wonder if the Bureau could tell me where she is.
I am tired, and so many parts of my body are aching that my nervous system cannot decide which pain signal to send along first. So it sends them all at once. The sutures in my belly itch horribly, but I cannot scratch them. I have been warned by Dr. Serra, who says he does not intend to do all that work over again.
“Tell me about Foreman,” I say quietly. “He’s one of yours, isn’t he?”
The agent closes his eyes briefly, sighs. “He wasn’t from the Bureau. He was from… a cooperating agency.”
“Was?”
“A hunter found what was left of him in some woods upstate. It wasn’t pretty. You saw the pictures of Freeman Bishop, right? Well, this was a thousand times worse.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble, resolutely refusing to imagine what could be a thousand times worse than what happened to Father Bishop.
“Foreman was a good man. He joined up with Scott to do an arms deal. It doesn’t matter where. The point is, he managed to win Scott’s confidence. Or so we thought. When Scott came back from overseas to track down your father’s arrangements, he brought Foreman along to help.”
“Or to keep an eye on him.” Nunzio’s earlier euphemism implied that Foreman was from the Central Intelligence Agency, which makes legal sense, if the operation against Scott began overseas. “Scott might have suspected him from the start…”
“Yes. That’s possible.” He shrugs again. “Anyway, he obviously suspected him at some point.”
“Now I see. You didn’t just lose track of Scott. You lost track of Foreman. That’s why… that’s why…”
That’s why you panicked, I decide not to say. That’s why you kept encouraging me to keep looking. That’s why you kept telling me I was safe. You knew Foreman was in trouble, so you waited for me to lead you to Colin Scott.
I allow my eyes to close. The pain is overwhelming me now, and I yearn to get back into the bed. But I have to raise a last subject. “And that was the goal, wasn’t it? To get Scott back into the United States? That was the point of the operation?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Professor,” he fences.
“Yes, you are. The Judge… my father… died, and somebody had to persuade Scott that there was now a risk that something would come out that he didn’t want to come out.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, that’s right.”
Spoken quickly again, evasion in his tone. What is going on here? One more question that I will never have a better chance to ask.
“So, then, my father… was he murdered or not?”
The way Fred Nunzio ponders before answering, rubbing his chin and squinting, is a terror in itself. “No, Professor,” he says at last. “No, we don’t think so.”
Even through my sedative-clouded mind, his words are a bolt of lightning. “You don’t… think so?”
“No evidence of murder. Nobody with anything to gain by it. So, no, we’re pretty sure it was a heart attack, just like the autopsy said.”
“Pretty sure?”
He spreads his hands. “Life is probability, Professor, not certainty.”
Maybe. Maybe. Nothing ever seems to be a hundred percent certain any more. All this time, and I am still chewing on cotton.
“Agent Nunzio?”
“Yes, Professor?”
“The two men who attacked me that night? The ones who got… who got their fingers cut off?”
“What about them?”
“You think Jack Ziegler did it, don’t you?”
“Who else? He was protecting you and your family, remember? Mutilating the men who attacked you was probably his way of sending a message.”
“To whom? A message to whom?”
For the second time I have the sense I have brushed up against knowledge he would prefer to keep from me. “Anybody who was paying attention,” he says finally.
“But didn’t everybody already know about his… his edict?”
“Evidently not.” Again the evasion.
“If you… if you know Jack Ziegler did it, why don’t you arrest him?”
Fred Nunzio’s eyes go flinty. “I don’t know he did it, Professor Garland. Nobody ever knows Jack Ziegler does anything. No, that’s not it. Everybody knows, but nobody knows how they know. No proof, ever, where your Uncle Jack is concerned.”
Probably I grunt. Nunzio doesn’t like it.
“How much do you know, exactly, about your Uncle Jack?”
“What I read in the papers.”
“Well, let me explain something to you. Let me tell you why his word was enough to protect you. Do you know what Jack Ziegler actually does for a living?”
“I can guess.”
“You can’t guess. So let me tell you. He’s what you would call a broker, a man who could manage, say, a friendly takeover by interests in, oh, Cali, Colombia, of an operation in Turkey. Everybody trusts him to tell the truth, because he pays in blood if he ever lies. His fee is a percentage of the value of deal. I guess you would call him an underworld investment banker. We figure his annual income at between twenty and twenty-five million dollars.”
“So why isn’t he in prison?” Still counterpunching.
“Because we can’t prove any of it.”
I try to process this image, a man who lives by his word in a dangerous world, a man whose promises are so honored that he… he can…
Oh!
In spite of everything, a grin tugs at my mouth.
“What is it, Professor? What’s funny?”
“Nothing, nothing. I… Look, this has been a little rough. I have to lie down. Will you help me back to bed?”
“Huh? Oh, sure.”
Nunzio allows me to sling an arm over his well-muscled shoulder, and half sturdies, half carries me back to the glorified crib that the hospital has provided me.
On the way, I throw out another question: “So what was the big deal with Colin Scott? Why mount an operation to get him to come back to the States?” He hesitates. “Let me guess. I don’t need to know that, either, right?”
“Sorry, Professor.”
“No problem.” I stretch out and buzz for the nurse, who shows up a moment later and begins to straighten the sheets and plug in all the right sensors.
“The box,” I whisper as the nurse does her work. “Have you found out who took it?”
“Not yet.” His tone is grim and determined. He has been embarrassed, I realize, by the way things turned out. “But we will.”
“I hope so.”
He looks at me. Something in my voice, I worry for a moment, has given away the game. “How did you figure it out?” he asks. “Your father’s message, I mean? What made you think of the cemetery?”
“I had told him… told my father, I mean… a story about the cemetery. A long time ago. A personal story. Maybe he thought I would realize at once that the… the cemetery was what he meant. I don’t know. I just… I guess I forgot it for a while.”
I do not like the look on Agent Nunzio’s hard face. He thinks I am hiding something, which is true. “What made you remember?” he asks sharply, just the right question to catch me lying, except that I have my answer ready.
“The two pawns,” I say tiredly. “One delivered inside the law school, one outside.”
“So?”
“A white pawn, a black pawn… separated by the walls of the law school. My father used to say all the time…” I yawn. My exhaustion is not feigned. “He used to say the wall separated us… separated the two nations, even in death.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Old Town Burial Ground. It used to have a segregated area in the back… a kind of black cemetery within a cemetery… and the… my father liked to walk there.”
Nunzio gives me a law-enforcement stare, skeptical and scary. But I lack the energy to be properly intimidated. I peer up at him through the mists of pain and exhaustion. “You did well, Professor,” he says at last.
“Thank you,” I murmur, relaxing once more. “And thank you for coming.”
“Oh. Oh, you’re welcome. My pleasure.” And he is pleased, I know he is: pleased that I have let him off so lightly.
I watch him go, smiling to myself as my body sneaks toward sleep. He doesn’t know, I tell myself, delighted at my own cleverness. Nobody knows except Dana. We fooled Colin Scott, we fooled Maxine, we even fooled the FBI.
The box for which Colin Scott died and Dear Dana and I were nearly killed is worthless. The pouch inside is empty. I know because those were my instructions a month ago when, unable to act myself because I was being followed, I asked Dana over lunch at Post if she would buy a metal box and bury it for me.