Chain of Fools

24

Dan and Arlene had leased a Range Rover to replace the one damaged when they'd been run off the road. I found the vehicle parked at the edge of an old logging trail on the mountainside where the ashes and diamonds had rained down in April. Their tent had been set up nearby, and their cooking fire appeared freshly doused when I discovered the campsite just after seven Saturday morning. I knew the tent was theirs because several items of clothing hanging on a branch looked like Arlene's, and the tent smelled of pot.

Neither Dan nor Arlene was present at the camp, and I tramped around in the nearby woods for the next hour without locating them- or finding millions of dollars' worth of jewels in the underbrush-before I wised up and hiked back to the campsite to await Dan and Arlene's inevitable return.

When I heard them approaching just after ten, I was inside the tent sitting on a campstool, trying to read Dan's copy of The Autumn of the Patriarch. It was in the original Spanish, but I grasped a word here and there: si, no, nada, muerto, etc.

"Yo, Dan. Hey there, Arlene," I yelled, and Arlene shrieked. "Hey, it's just me-Strachey."

The tent flap was flung aside, and Dan stood there glaring and breathing hard. As Arlene came up behind him and leaned down to get a glimpse of the intruder, Dan snorted at me, "What the fuck are you doing here!"

"Reading your book. I hope you don't mind. I saved your page. And I want you to know, I'm impressed. I couldn't even get through this one in English, and I'm a big Garcia Marquez fan."

"Get out of my tent, goddamn it!"

I carefully replaced the novel where I'd found it on the ground cloth next to the double sleeping bag. Dan backed away as I came out into the dappled sunlight. The forest aroma was enchanting after the musty tent smell, but Dan's demeanor-I wondered if he might be going to heave again-meant this would be no time for enchantment.

"Why, Don," Arlene drawled, giving me a forced look of hippie insouciance, "how did you know — where to look for us? We were just up here in the woods chilling out for a couple days, and you knew right where to look. That is so weird!"

"I got the map from the charter pilot," I said, and Arlene screamed again. Dan began to retch and staggered off behind some brush.

"Be careful not to puke on the diamonds!" I yelled, and then he really let loose.

Arlene started to follow Dan, but then thought better of it.

I said, "Did he throw up in Cuba too?"

"Some from the turista," she said. "But mostly we just got diarrhea."

"Ahh."

When Dan quieted down, Arlene went to him with a bottle of water. I waited while he attended to his oral hygiene. They both came back a minute later, Dan wan and shaky, bits of his breakfast in his beard.

"I think we need to air some things out," I said.

"I'll get you a clean T-shirt," Arlene told Dan, but he looked at me and he knew what needed airing.

After he changed his shirt, Dan lowered himself to the pine-needled forest floor and leaned against a tree. Arlene and I sat on the two camp stools.

"I talked to Craig," I said. "I talked to the charter pilot. I drew conclusions. I knew to talk to the pilot because your mother discovered that your father's ashes were missing from the urn. If Eric had replaced the ashes with something more human-remains-like than cornmeal, your mother might never have noticed the loss. And none of us would have figured out what happened to the jewels."

Exhaustedly, Dan said, "I put the cornmeal in the urn. Eric had just left it empty. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking."

"God, I don't know either," Arlene said. "You put cornmeal in your father's urn? That gives me the creeps."

"You didn't know about the jewels?" I asked Arlene.

His strength coming back now, Dan snapped, "Arlene didn't know anything until yesterday! So don't go goddamn dragging her into anything. I didn't tell her about the robbery until we got out here, and by then you must have heard about it from Craig, so Arlene was really the last to know and she can't be legally implicated in any way. So just goddamn leave Arlene out of it"

"Sometimes it pisses me off that with Dan I'm always the last one to know anything," Arlene said. "But this time I guess I lucked out. Although, when you come right down to it, Dan didn't really do anything so terrible, and I sure hope the cops aren't going to hassle him. I mean, he didn't even know about the heist until the jewels came in the mail from Craig. By then, I mean, what difference did it make, since those oil sheiks have got diamonds up the wazoo anyway? Dan just thought, hey, he may as well put the jewels to good use and save the Herald, and also Craig could get even with his big asshole dad, Chester. So I certainly hope the cops aren't going to make some big fucking deal out of what Dan did."

I looked at Dan, and he glanced at me, and he knew I knew he'd been in on it from the beginning. I said, "It's over, Dan. It's all coming out now. There's no way it can't"

Dan looked away into the woods. Maybe he still thought he'd spot a diamond.

Arlene said, "What's he mean by that, Dan?" He wouldn't look at her or me. She said, "What else is there to come out? What's Don talking about?"

There was a silence, and then Dan said, "Arlene, I need to talk to Strachey privately I know you're going to be pissed off-"

"I sure as hell am gonna be pissed-"

"But take my word for it, Arlene, you'll be better off if you don't know certain things. It's for your own sake, goddamn it!"

"What things don't I know? What? What?" she yelled, eyes blazing.

I said, "About Eric's murder. Dan knows all about Eric's murder, and he's going to tell me about it, Arlene. Aren't you, Dan?"

Arlene looked aghast and said, "No."

Dan sat there and said nothing.

Arlene screamed, then said it again. "No!"

Dan looked at her and said, "I killed Eric."

"You did not!" Arlene shrieked.

"I did, Arlene! I killed Eric!"

"Dan, you've gone over the edge!" Arlene cried out. "You couldn't have killed Eric, and you know it! You were with me the day Eric was killed, and we were in the city picking up a delivery for Liver!"

"No, of course I didn't actually kill him with my own hands!" Dan moaned. "But I might as well have, for chrissakes. I was-I was trying to control everything, and save the paper for Mom and Eric and Janet and me, and-I fucked up, goddamn it."

I said, "So now it's all got to come out, Dan. It's too late to save the paper for the family. The chances are slim that you'll ever find those diamonds in these woods. And even if you did, word is out now, and the jewels would have to be returned to their owners. The best deal you're going to get from now on is, the board votes next month and the paper goes to the decent Griscomb chain and not to god-awful Info-Com."

He said simply, "I know that."

Arlene was rocking on her seat and said, "I can't believe this. I just fucking can't believe this, Dan. You never told me those diamonds had anything to do with Eric. I thought they were just some oil profiteer's wife's jewelry, and the fucking diamonds were going for a good cause that would benefit the people!"

"Arlene," I said, "two people died in that robbery, one of them a working man, a member of the international proletariat. Letting that guard live the rest of his life would have been a good people's cause."

"Sure, that sucked, that guard getting killed," Arlene said, "and I'm not saying that two wrongs make a right. But the Herald stands up for people like that dead guard, and if the Osbornes lose control of the paper, then it'll start standing up for assholes like big corporations that want to poison the rivers and cut all the trees down. So I agree with what Dan was trying to do. Especially since he didn't even know about the robbery until after it happened."

Another awkward silence. I looked at Dan, and then Arlene did too.

Dan said, almost inaudibly, "I knew about it, Arlene." Then, more loudly: "Of course I knew about it. Come on, Arlene, are you really that naive? I mean-Jesus!"

Arlene slumped and said nothing.

"Was the robbery your idea?" I asked.

Now Dan's face contorted with grief. He said, "No."

Arlene went white and said, "Was it Eric's?"

Dan guffawed once. "God, no. Eric? Don't be absurd."

I said, "What happened, Dan?"

Again another long silence in the woods. "This is the end," Dan finally said. "I'm relieved."

"A lot of people will be."

"I won't," Arlene said, but Dan ignored this.

He took a deep breath and in a shaky voice he said: "Stu Torkild-son first came to me last summer and told me the Herald would not survive as an Osborne family paper unless we could somehow pay off the Spruce Valley debt. He said the resort project was eating the paper alive. He had already refinanced twice, he said, but the company was only falling further and further behind, and Stu had exhausted all legal means for saving the paper."

When Dan said "legal," he gave us a meaningful look. "Stu said to me," Dan went on, "that I, better than all the other Osbornes, understood how 'questionable means'-his term-are justified by good ends. He mentioned as an example something he knew about that I'd done back in the Movement days in sixty-eight. And then when I agreed to listen to what he had to say, he told me bluntly that he thought Craig would be willing to pull off some moneymaking caper that would rescue the paper.

"Craig's motivation would be getting even with his father by bolstering the position of the liberal Osbornes who controlled the paper. Stu said I shouldn't mention his involvement to Craig because Craig knew Stu and Chester were friends, and that would make Craig suspicious."

I said, "Torkildson actually proposed a jewel robbery?"

Dan laughed sourly and said, "Hell, no. Do you think Stu Torkildson of the Glens Falls Torkildsons is a common criminal? What Stu had in mind was a multimillion-dollar drug deal. He said I had friends in Cuba, and he knew from reading The Wall Street Journal that Cuban officials deal coke big-time. This was Stu's idea of keeping the deal respectable."

"So you and Craig would be risking your necks, and Stu wouldwhat?" I asked.

"Stu would do nothing and risk nothing. He told me straight out that if the deal were ever exposed, he would deny any knowledge of it. He only wanted to save the Hera Id for the Osbornes, and he had to save himself for that noble pursuit."

"Right," I said. "The way he saved the Herald with the Spruce Valley project."

Arlene blurted out, "And you listened to that flaming asshole, Dan? I can't believe this shit! I just can't believe it!"

"Well, goddamn it, Arlene, how else was I supposed to save the Herald? You tell me!"

She shook her head and muttered something inaudible.

I said, "Whose idea was the jewel heist? Craig's?"

"He had this buddy," Dan said, "who'd worked for the hotel and who swore it would be easy to hold the place up in the middle of the night. Nobody would get hurt," Dan said, his pale eyes suddenly full of anguish. "And one job, if they hit the right night, could net over a million in cash and jewels, which I would then fence with my Cuban contacts. Nobody ever guessed that the one robbery alone would produce a haul worth an amount more than equal to the Herald's entire debt. And nobody guessed either that the hotel security man would turn up in the middle of the robbery. According to Craig's buddy, the guard was supposed to be in some other part of the hotel at that hour."

"Did Stu know about the robbery in advance?" I asked.

Dan shrugged. "Only after the fact. He still thought it was going to be a big drug deal, with the laundered cash arriving at the Herald by way of a so-called 'loan' from a bank in the Caymans. When he heard that Craig had been arrested for robbery and murder, he wasn't too wild about the news. It was obvious that Stu's going out on a legal limb to save the Herald was really to recoup his own battered reputation after the Spruce Valley debacle. A 'world-class' drug deal-that's what Stu said he had in mind-was one thing, but armed robbery was something else, and Stu was on the edge of freaking out when he heard about it."

I said, "And Chester knew none of this?"

"Not in the beginning," Dan said, looking away again.

"But he figured it out," I said. "Craig described that part to me."

Dan nodded grimly. "Fucking greedy, hothead Chester. We knew all along-I knew, Stu knew-not to get Chester involved."

"And Chester never tumbled to the fact that his good pal Stu was the man who had initiated the entire scheme?"

"No," Dan said, "Chester found out Craig and I had been spending time together before the robbery. And then when the stolen jewels failed to turn up, Chester was suspicious and went out and confronted Craig at Attica. Chester is such a total asshole. First of all, he threatened to blow open the whole deal if we didn't give him the jewels so that he and June could gain control of the paper. Craig just blew him off.

"Then in May, Chester gets it in his insane head that Eric and I are about to use the diamond money to squeeze him and June out of the paper, and he goes out and confronts Craig a second time. But by then I'd lost the jewels and I was frantically trying to find them up here in the woods, and I was too embarrassed to tell Craig where the jewels went. So when Chester goes out to Attica and says, 'Where are the jewels?' Craig, who's plenty pissed by now, he tells Chester, 'Ask Dan where they are.'"

Arlene said, "Jesus, Dan, what a bunch of fuckheads. Your family sounds like a bunch of people on a daytime TV talk show."

"Every family is a family from a daytime TV talk show!" Dan snapped. "Most families just don't happen to go on television and make fools of themselves in public."

I said, "In the nineties, we're a long way from Tolstoy in these matters, I guess, but let's get back to your interesting narrative, Dan. So Chester then came to you and asked where the jewels were?"

Dan shook his head in disgust. "I told Chester he was nuts and to fuck off, which he did. But what does Chester do next? He goes to Eric. Eric! Eric came to me, and he says, what's this about Craig and me and the jewel robbery? I said, God, Eric, don't be ridiculous, it's just Craig playing head games with Chester. Eric, who was so straight, so naive- Eric just says, oh, okay. And he went back and told Chester that Craig had made up the entire story, none of us had any jewels, and to forget about it."

"It is Craig's belief," I said, "that at that point Chester became so frustrated and angry that he flew into one of his violent rages and killed Eric."

Arlene let loose with another shriek. Dan looked at her and then at me and said quietly, "No. That's not the way it happened."

I said, "Torkildson?"

Dan nodded and Arlene shrieked again.

I said, "How? Why?" ^v

Dan took a deep breath. "By early May," he said, "I was fairly certain I'd never find the jewels out here. I'd spent weeks combing these woods without coming up with a single jewel, and meanwhile the ground cover was getting thicker and thicker."

"You bastard!" Arlene said. "That's the whole month I thought you were out fucking Patsy Livingston again. And here you were up here in the woods looking for diamonds. Dan, you asshole!"

"But the thing was," Dan said, "by that time the paper was up for sale and it already looked as if the board's choice would be either Griscomb or InfoCom. I had finally admitted to Stu that I'd stashed the jewels with Dad's ashes and Eric had unknowingly scattered the contents of the urn up here in the woods. So Stu was getting agitated and he was saying that if we couldn't save the Herald for the family-and restore his shattered reputation-then the paper would have to be sold to InfoCom so at least the family could come away with several million. I knew we had the board votes to approve a sale to Griscomb, but Stu started threatening legal action against any board member who blatantly voted against the company's best interests-he said Chester and June would both sue and he would join them-and that's when I panicked and made what turned out to be a terrible, terrible, terrible mistake."

Arlene sat looking frightened but said nothing. No one spoke until Dan took another deep breath, let out a long sigh, and went on.

"I decided to blackmail Stu," Dan said. "I told him that I had lied about Eric throwing the jewels away accidentally. I told him Eric had found the jewels and confronted me, and that I had confessed everything. I said Eric was threatening to go to the police and expose us all, Stu included, but that Eric had agreed to return the jewels to their owners anonymously if Stu threw his support to Griscomb and stopped Chester and June from suing us."

Dan paused and looked off into the woods thoughtfully. I said, "How did Torkildson react?"

"He followed Eric into the woods on the day of Eric's weekly trip to the beaver pond that Eric was writing about in his column and bludgeoned Eric to death. He described the whole thing to me the next day. Stu said he didn't plan to kill anyone else if he could help it, but that after the Spruce Haven bust he was already too embarrassed to show up at the country club on Friday nights, and he would not risk being exposed additionally as an accomplice in a jewel robbery."

Arlene and I sat looking at Dan, who leaned comfortably against his tree but whose eyes were full of terror. Arlene did not exclaim this time, she just sniffled quietly.

I said, "Is there any way it can be proven that Torkildson killed Eric?"

"Sure, I've got the proof," Dan said. "Stu told me he killed Eric with a camera tripod he borrowed from the Herald's picture department. I found the tripod that night and took it home. Stu had washed it off, but there were still traces of blood on it and presumably Stu's fingerprints and other DNA traces."

"Why didn't you turn Torkildson in?" I said. "Dan, the man murdered your brother."

"Well," Dan said, "for one thing, I just wanted to save the paper. I figured Stu would help me do that, considering what I knew. It turned out I was wrong about that. Torkildson is a psychopath. And of course the other thing was, it was my fault. I triggered Stu into killing Eric. I was just as guilty as Stu was."

With that, Dan stood up, walked over, and lifted the tent flap. He went inside, and a thought hit me hard and I stood up abruptly.

I spoke rapidly to Arlene. "He doesn't have a gun or anything in there, does he?"

"No," she said, "Dan's just getting his stash. Sounds like a good idea, huh? Don, I'll bet right about now you could go for a smoke too."