Chain of Fools

17

Friday morning I hit the road early for the three-hour drive out to Attica. I had the radio on for a while, but the news on Morning Edition was unrelievedly bad-tornadoes, Bosnia, Newt-so I shoved a Betty Carter tape into the player. Some of her news was bad too, but with a musical ingenuity that seemed to rival the engineering feats of Leonardo, Carter transformed both good and bad news into the aural equivalent of human flight. The miles flew by, and I would have enjoyed the solitary couple of hours of sublime music while cruising under a deep, cloudless August sky, except for the fact that as I drove I was nagged by two events of the day before.

One was Pauline Osborne's greeting me at the entrance to her home with a pistol, followed by her sudden, unprompted screams of what I took to be rage and frustration. A few hours afterward, I had described this scene to Janet, Dale, Timmy, Dan, and Arlene. None of them knew what to make of it. Janet said Pauline had long been prone to both anxiety and depression and probably relied a little too heavily on alcohol to get from one shopping day to the next. But Pauline had never shown signs of a crack-up coming on, nor had she brandished a firearm, as far as anyone present knew So what did this incident mean?

The other disconcerting revelation of that evening concerned Craig Osborne. I had asked Janet for tear sheets or printouts from the Herald library on the jewel heist that had landed Craig in prison. She had brought them back to the house, and I read them and discussed the clippings with members of our odd, jittery household while an Edens-burg policeman watched over us from his cruiser parked across Maple Street.

Osborne, I learned, had been tried and convicted the previous November of robbing a luxury hotel in Tarrytown, Westchester County, New York. A second armed robber, who turned out to be a part-time hotel employee, had been shot and killed by a hotel security guard during the middle-of-the-night stickup. Craig had escaped, for a time, with the loot-a box of high-quality cut diamonds and other gems. The jewels had been stored in a hotel vault overnight and were owned by a party of hotel guests, a wealthy Kuwaiti family in the area for a wedding the next day in nearby Briarcliff Manor.

Craig had shot and killed the security guard before making his escape, and that was one reason for his long prison term, twenty-five years to life. The other reason for the trial judge's imposition of the maximum sentence for Osborne was this: When Craig was captured three days after the robbery-he had been wounded in the leg in the shoot-out and a suspicious nurse at an Oneonta walk-in clinic alerted the police-the gun Craig had used in the robbery was still with him, stashed in his luggage in a motel room. But the stolen jewels were nowhere to be found.

At the time, none of the Osbornes had thought much about the missing jewels. They were busy coping with their shock over Chester and Pauline's only son having committed a horrible violent crime. The armed robbery itself was uppermost in the minds of everyone in the family, and the police and the hotel's insurers would have to worry about the jewels. Craig had repeatedly insisted to the police that he had dropped the box of gems outside the hotel in his panicked getaway. While this was considered possible-a dishonest passerby might have picked the jewels up and made off with them-a likelier scenario, according to police, was that Craig had either handed the jewels off to a third accomplice, or he had hid them in anticipation of his eventual release from prison or even a possible escape.

The Osbornes I spoke with on Maple Street that evening said they had failed to make anything of the fact, or even notice, that the estimated value of the missing jewels from the Tarrytown robbery was nearly the same amount-$16 million-as the Herald company debt that had forced the Osbornes to put the paper up for sale. When I pointed this out, Janet said it struck her as a kind of goofy coincidence and she urged me not to head off on an unpromising tangent. She said that if Craig had meant for the proceeds of the robbery to erase the

Herald's debt, he'd have planned some elaborate fencing and money-laundering scheme-Craig was violent and amoral but not stupid, Janet said-and the money would have turned up already and saved the Herald. Dale, Timmy, Arlene, and I began to speculate on ways that the jewels or cash might have somehow gotten waylaid or diverted from their intended purpose. That's when Dan excused himself again and headed for the bathroom.

"I was wondering how long it was gonna take before somebody with some smarts came along and made the connection," Craig Osborne said. "We didn't even know the fucking jewels were worth sixteen million. We figured we'd have to make two hits, or five, or a hundred, before we had a stash big enough to pay that fucking bank what the Herald owed it. We about shit when we hit the fucking big payoff on the first hit."

"You said 'we,' Craig. You and who else?"

"Me and cousin Dan," he said, giving me a big Jack Nicholson-style demonic grin. "Who the fuck else do you think it could've been?"

Craig Osborne was a tall, rangy, bony-faced man with long, thinning straw-colored hair, cool gray eyes, a cold sore above his upper lip, and a fresh bruise on his left temple. The Plexiglas divider between us was filthy and smudged, as if Osborne's last visitor had been his pet rottweiler, and this made it harder to read his face and eyes. There was also the sobering reality that among the Osborne family, Craig was famous as a liar. Yet my inclination was to believe him. I had barely introduced myself when Osborne began to vent. He warned me that he would refuse to repeat anything he was telling me to the police or to the prosecutors, and he would deny to them that he had talked to me about anything other than the American League pennant race. Yet here he was spilling his guts to a stranger, and he was confirming my suspicions that Dan-of-the-sensitive-stomach was deeply involved in- what? It looked like some wild and woolly attempt to save the Herald through illegal means that had somehow gone all wrong.

I said, "Why are you telling me this, Craig? You don't even know me."

"I know enough about you," he said cockily, "to know that you are the man I need to talk to."

"And what is it that you know about me?"

Osborne laid his sinewy forearms on the table and leaned closer to the glass. He said, "Dan called me up yesterday and told me about this hot-shit private eye called Strachey. He said you'd been hired by my cousin Janet and Eldon McCaslin to find out who killed Eric. Dan said if you came out here, I should tell you to fuck off because if I told you anything I'd just get the law after him, and that wouldn't do anybody any good and it wouldn't help the Herald. But as you can tell," he said with a sneer, "I'm telling you everything I know about the deep shit the Osbornes are in. I mean everything."

"Okay."

"You are one lucky dick, Strachey."

"Uh-huh."

The sneer faded, and he said coolly, "There are a couple of small things I want from you in return. One of them is easy."

"What's that?"

He looked at me and said, "I want you to find out where the jewels are. I want you to report this information to me."

I said nothing.

He went on. "I don't need them. I sure as fuck don't have any use for diamonds in this house of scumbags. I just want to know. I'm curious. Artie would have been interested too."

"Who is Artie?"

"Artie Wozniak. Artie was blown away in the hit at the hotel. Artie got killed for nothing. That sucks. I want you to tell me why Artie got killed for shit." He watched me expressionlessly.

I said, "Where does Dan say the jewels are? Or wasn't he the third accomplice who ended up with the jewels?"

"Dan got the jewels, sure. The hit was his idea too. He always knew I was a fucking thief. Everybody in Edensburg knew that. It was Dan's idea that I could use my talent for being an asshole for a good cause. And when we made the hit, Dan was down the road from the hotel. I made the handoff to Dan, and then I drove up to Oswego with my leg ripped open, and this hot-looking nurse turned me in. Dan was supposed to stash the jewels in Edensburg somewhere until this Cuban he knew came through-some kahuna with the Cuban U.N. office-and this guy would be the fence in return for a cut. But something went wrong. Fucking Dan won't tell me what it was, but he's trying to fix it, so he says. He says the fucking jewels got away from him, and he's busting his balls, he keeps telling me, to get them back. He says to me he's embarrassed. Embarrassed! Embarrassed, shit. I want to know where those fucking jewels went. I deserve to know."

"I suppose you do."

"And if you're working for Janet," Osborne said casually, "you can help Dan find the]ewels, and you can still use them to keep the fucking Herald from being taken over by assholes like Chester Osborne."

This was getting treacherous. I said, "I couldn't do that. If I found the jewels, I'd have to return them to the police, or the gems' owners, or their insurance company. That's a given I have no choice."

He gave me a look-one of the two or three in his repertory-that bordered on the salacious, except it had to do with an appetite other than sex. He said, "You could do it. And you will too." Then his face hardened. "Have you met my father?"

"Yes, I have."

"Do you want that piece of shit to control the future of the Herald?" He waited.

"No," I said.

"Then the jewels have to be used."

"Even if the Herald's debt isn't paid off by the September deadline," I said, "a majority of the company's board members are planning to sell the Herald to Harry Griscomb, who'll retain the paper's staff and standards and probably keep Janet on to run it. Your father is one of a minority on the board who want to sell out to a sleazy bottom-line-oriented chain, but it looks as if this can be kept from happening. So your father is not going to control the future of the Herald, no matter where the jewels end up. I know you aren't crazy about your father, Craig, and I think I know some of the reasons why you don't want to see him get his way. But even without the jewels, your father won't succeed. Janet is determined to keep it from happening."

Osborne sneered. "You don't fucking get it."

"Get what?"

He slowly shook his head. "Dan told me somebody tried to hit him with a truck and drown Janet with a Jet Ski. You really don't get what's happening here?"

"It's true that attempts have been made on Janet's and Dan's lives. And all the indications are that these attacks are meant to knock Dan and Janet off the Herald's board. Yes, I get that. But Janet and Dan are both under police protection now. So is your grandmother. We can keep them safe until after the board votes on September eighth, and that's what we're going to do. The stolen jewels, Craig, are irrelevant now. Sorry."

"The fuck you can protect them," Osborne said. "Chester Osborne will find a way to get to one of them-Dan or Janet or Grandma-just like he killed my cousin Eric." Again he watched me with his unreadable eyes, the eyes of a habitual liar, the other Osbornes said.

"Your father killed Eric? How do you know that?"

"He told me."

"Uh-huh."

"In December, my father came out here and talked to me for the first time in ten years. When the warden told me Chester was up here, I wanted to come up here and stick a fork in his gut. But I figured I'd never get close enough to him to do it. Then I thought, fuck it, I'm not even gonna come up here and look at his stupid face. But then I thought, maybe I can come up here and find out something I can use against him. So I came."

"Right."

"I came up here and I actually talked to old shitface. And what he wanted was, he knew Dan had been trying to track me down before the hotel hit. Then when the jewels weren't recovered after I was picked up, Chester put two and two together and came up with this idea that was basically what had happened. I guess Chester's where I got my criminal mind from. He told me if Dan or I used the take from the hit to save the Herald, he would see that an investigation happened and Dan would be fucked.

"And then the evil old man-you'll love this-then old Chester Osborne demands that he get control over the sixteen million. Dan's Cuban had set up a plan to have the jewels fenced in Venezuela and then have the cash funneled through a bank in the Caymans. Chester had a bank in the Bahamas we were supposed to use-the cash was supposed to come back in the form of a loan to the Herald from this bank, supposedly, only the terms of the loan would be so easy that it was like the Herald never really had to pay it back. The loan deal was all just cover.

"The one part of the Bahamas loan agreement that Chester liked the most was, the loan would only go through if Janet, Eric, and Dan all got off the Herald board, and Tidy and two people from outside the family came on the board, and Stu Torkildson would be the publisher." Osborne smiled mirthlessly. "So you tell me, Mr. Private Dick? Where do I get my criminal tendencies from? Huh?"

I said, "I see your point. So, did you agree to your father's criminal demands, Craig?"

Looking smug, Osborne said, "I told him he was full of shit and I blew him off. I'd love to have told him the truth. But then Chester would've gone after Dan too soon, and that could've blown the whole deal. I warned Dan that Chester was suspicious and to make sure the source of the Cayman loan couldn't be traced. Dan said the Cuban said it was foolproof, so then I dropped the subject. I figured I'd have to get my satisfaction just from knowing that Chester wasn't getting control of the Herald — that he'd gotten fucked over, even if I couldn't rub his ugly face in it."

I said, "But that wasn't the end of it with your father, I guess."

He shook his head. "Fuck, no."

"He came back out here again?"

"In May," Osborne said. "A week before Eric was killed "

"What did your father want this time?"

"When the jewels still didn't turn up," Osborne said, looking me directly in the eye, as he had since my arrival, "old Chester starts thinking that Dan and Eric and I did do the job, and Dan and Eric have got some kind of last-minute surprise that will squeeze Chester and Stu Torkildson out of the Herald totally. That's how good a judge of people my father is-he thought my straight cousin Eric was in on the hit! Eric was queer, but he was still the straightest guy I ever knew-nuts and berries and grass and trees and all that shit that's supposed to turn Osbornes on, though as for me, you can have it.

"So Chester comes out here in May, and he's ripshit He says he knows something is up, and where the fuck are the jewels? By then, though, see, Dan has told me the fucking jewels are missing. That's what Dan says-they're missing and he's trying to locate them, he says. Since I want to know where the fuck the fucking jewels are myself, I tell Chester, ask Dan where they are. And this is just what Chester needs to hear. It was a fucking dumb thing for me to say-Eric might still be alive if I'd kept my mouth shut-but I was pissed at Dan by then, and at everybody else, and I just didn't give a fuck."

"So your father went back and confronted Dan?"

Osborne snorted. "Dan told him to fuck off. Dan denied everthing. He said I was playing head games with Chester to get even with him for how he treated me when I was a kid."

"How did he treat you?" I said.

Osborne looked at me with his dead eyes and said, "My father beat the shit out of me every chance he got. He'd do it when my mother wasn't around. Whenever we were alone, he'd pound on me. My mother knew it, but she ignored it." He watched me with his blank look.

I said, "I can see why you want revenge."

"That's what I want."

"You're getting it at a high price. It looks as if your life is your revenge."

Now he looked irritated. "Who the fuck are you, Adolph Freud? Hey, shit, man, do you think I'm too stupid to understand that? Fuck yes, my life is my revenge against my father."

I said, "You could have waited until you were bigger than your father and then punched his face in. That's crude and illegal, but people in your situation do it and it sometimes seems to make a difference."

He said, "I'm not a patient person."

"What happened," I asked, "after Dan told your father he was mistaken in his suspicions?"

"My father went to Eric."

"How do you know he did?"

"Dan told me. Eric called Dan one day, Dan told me, and said Chester had been running at the mouth with Eric about some jewel robbery, and asking where were the fucking jewels, and Eric asked Dan what the fuck Chester was talking about. Dan told Eric that this was just some shit I had made up to fuck up my father's head. Then Eric went back to Chester to tell him there was nothing to the jewel-hit story, and my father had one of his violent fits that he has, and killed him."

I watched Osborne and waited, but he just sat there looking at me as if we were discussing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and it was my turn to add a pertinent thought.

I said, "You're saying that your father killed Eric impulsively, in a rage of frustration, after Eric-what? Disappointed him by refusing to confess about the sixteen-million-dollar jewel heist that your father was convinced Eric was involved in?"

"That's what set him off," Osborne said. "Chester has been famous since he was a kid for beating on people. You must have heard about that from Janet. She knows the story." I nodded. "So," Osborne said, "old Chester finally beat somebody to death. Too bad for Eric."

I said, "And your father admitted this to you?"

"In so many words, he did."

"What were those words?"

"He told me on the phone a week after Eric was offed that Eric deserved what he got for trying to screw Chester and June by hogging all the credit for saving the Herald with the jewel heist. Chester was still convinced Dan was about to spring something, even though by then Dan had lost control of the jewels. My father also said Eric deserved what he got because Eric was trying to keep the Herald under the control of hippies and socialists, and Chester said their day was past."

I said, "That's a powerful expression of sentiment on your father's part, but it's not an admission of guilt."

"It's as much of an admission as I need," Osborne said laconically. "I know my father. That's the other fucking reason I'm telling you this, as a matter of fact. I can't tell all this to the prosecutors or they'll go after Dan. I don't want that-at least not yet. It depends on what my radical cousin did with the jewels. If he gave the jewels to some fucking coffee-pickers' liberation front somewhere-which he has been known to do with Osborne family money-I am going to be extremely pissed off. But I'll wait to hear about that. While you're on Janet's tit, you can go ahead and clear it up for me as to just what became of the goddamn jewels. And the other thing you can do for me, Strachey, is you can fucking nail Chester Osborne for Eric's murder. That's what you can do for me and for the entire human race."

I sat looking at him and wondering how much of what Osborne had told me was true, how much of it lies, how much of it fantasy fed by his boiling need for revenge.

I said, "Have you told anyone else, Craig, the story you've told me here this morning?"

He said, "Just my mother. I called her up on Wednesday and told her there were some things about her husband I thought she needed to know."