Chain of Fools

5

We followed the ambulance in two cars to the Eden County Hospital. By the time Timmy was wheeled into the ER, his right foot was the size and color of a small warthog, and the ambulance crew had him so drugged up against shock and pain that he had begun to babble.

He told the nurse, "I'd like to be in Skeeter's room."

I said, "Okay, but that's down in Albany, and you'll have to hop there on your right foot."

"What's your name?" a man with a clipboard yelled in Timmy's ear.

"Timothy Callahan."

"Have you got any coverage?"

"I prefer to pay cash."

I said, "He has excellent insurance," and showed the man Timothy's New York State Assembly employee's health insurance card, which I had located easily in his wallet, the slender purse of a fiscal ascetic.

A physician showed up, groped around, ordered X rays, and told us in due course that Timothy's injury appeared to be a simple fracture. If the X rays confirmed that, the fracture would be set and Timmy would be shoved out the door with a fiberglass cast and a pair of crutches in a matter of hours. I asked, Didn't they want to keep him for a week or ten days? But they said no. I told Timmy I'd be back to collect him later and left him with a copy of Guns and Ammo that I'd found in the waiting room.

I rejoined Janet and Dale in the parking lot, and rode in Janet's car to her brother Dan's apartment in a building next to the Eden House, the old Victorian hotel in the center of town. Dan Osborne and his girlfriend, Arlene Thurber, lived on the second floor in what had been two apartments. They had knocked down a wall to create a long, high-ceilinged salon with six windows overlooking Edensburg's Main Street and enough shelf space to hold their sizeable collection of leftist political history and analysis, from Bukharin to Fanon to Carlos Fuentes. There were lots of posters and photos too of Che and Fidel and a recent selection of Zapatistas wearing masks, but no Erich Honecker or Mengistu Haile Mariam that I was able to make out.

When we arrived, Dan and Arlene were just about to leave to drive down to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs to see that evening's double feature in a Godard series, Alphaville and Les Carbiniers. Dan and Arlene seemed happy to have Janet and Dale show up, and they tried to persuade us to join them at the movies-until Janet told them why we had come by unannounced.

"It looks as if somebody is after me," Janet said. "And I guess it stands to reason that they might try to get at you too, Dan. I think you're going to have to be on your guard."

When Dan and Arlene looked more bewildered than alarmed, Dale spelled it out. "Not 'after' her, not 'get at.' What Janet means is, somebody is trying to kill her. And if the whole thing has anything to do with you-know-what, they might try to kill you too, Dan. Arlene, you're probably safe, theoretically, since you haven't got a vote on the Herald's board of directors. But since you two are joined at the hip, Arlene, you could conceivably suffer what the Pentagon likes to refer to as collateral damage-that is, end up just as dead as Dan."

Dan was tall and gangly, like all the Osbornes, and he slumped a little when he heard this. He had a Fidel-style beard that was honey colored with some gray in it, making him look less like Castro than Gerry Mulligan, and his wide mouth dropped open beneath it. Arlene, busty, braless, and languid in purples and reds and Navajo silver, stiffened and exclaimed, "Dale, what kind of crazy shit are you laying on us? Are you serious?"

"Last week, somebody tried to run Janet over with a Jet Ski," Dale said, "and today he came back and tried to bash her again. There were four of us out in the lake this time, and Don's boyfriend, Timothy, got whacked on the foot. He's over at County right now having it set."

"That is too much!" Arlene said angrily.

"This happened just now?" Dan asked, looking dazed. His surprise was understandable, although his mind may also have been mildly fuddled by marijuana. Its weedy aroma hung in the room, a sweet cloud of sixties deja vu for me and-judging from the numerous tiny roaches in the ashtrays-a routine nineties air freshener for Dan and Arlene.

"It happened about an hour ago," Janet said, "and the sheriff's department is supposedly trying to track the guy down I'm alerting you two, for what it might be worth, and I really think I have to tell Mom because-well, you know. First Eric is killed and then this, and-it does seem possible that somebody is trying to change the outcome of the board vote on InfoCom and Griscomb."

Dan glanced at me uneasily-as if to say, This is private family business, and who is this bozo, anyway'-and then snapped at Janet "Why am I just now hearing about this?"

"Because," she shot back, "it just now happened, Dan. That's why we're here."

"But Dale said it happened lastweektoo I know nothing about that."

"Well, now you know, Dan. As I said, that's why we're here. That's why we came here To tell you about it. Now the question is, What do we tell Mom?"

"What makes you think," he said, his beard flapping, "that this has anything to do with the sale of the paper? Where did you get that idea?"

"I don't know that there's a connection," Janet said in a sneering tone I hadn't heard her use before she had come into the presence of her brother. "I am merely surmising it from the rather startling sequence of events over the past three months. The paper is put up for sale and two conflicting offers are made, putting the family at one another's throats. Then Eric is killed. Then two attempts are made on my life. I'm just adding two and two together and coming up with four. When you add two and two, what do you come up with, Dan?"

Making a show of struggling for control, Dan took a deep breath and said, "Yes, the timing is suspicious, Janet. That I can see. What I'm having a lot of trouble accepting is that InfoCom would go so far as to actually try to kill an Osborne. God, imagine how it would make them look if they were caught. Does the sheriff have any leads? Who's investigating this, Ken Stone?"

"It's Ken," Janet said, "but it looks as if the attacker got away both times. He's obviously someone who knows the homes on the lake."

Arlene looked suddenly horrified and said, "It's like Karen

Silkwood! Dan, we'd better make sure your mother is safe. Crewes-InfoCom would off an old lady if they thought she was going to interfere with their bottom line. They'll stop at nothing to protect their corporate profits."

Dan didn't react to this. He just peered our way with his watery blue eyes. It seemed now as if they were no longer focused entirely on those of us in the room, nor was the mind behind them. Finally Dan said to Janet, "Tell me again what happened, and why you think these episodes were deliberate attempts to-to attack you. This Jet Ski run-over-attempt thing actually happened twice?"

Dale nodded slowly and held up two fingers, and Janet described once again the attack the previous week and the attack a few hours earlier that had landed Timmy in the emergency room.

"Now, who's this Timmy again?" Arlene said. ¦

Dale said, "He's Don here's boyfriend. Don is a private investigator from Albany who we're hiring to clear everything up, including Eric's murder. We're giving him about four days to produce results."

"You're a private eye with a boyfriend? How cool," Arlene said. "Are you bisexual?"

Before I could reply, Dan said without hesitation, "I'm not sure that's such a great idea. I mean bringing in someone from outside."

This was addressed to Janet and I let her answer it. "Why is it such a terrible idea? The police have made no progress at all toward solving Eric's murder. And if somebody is trying to kill me too, there's at least a good chance that the same person is behind it-or people. But convincing Ken Stone of that, or even the staties, is going to be tough with no real evidence to go on. And Don has an excellent reputation, according to Eldon, who's an old friend of Don's boyfriend."

"How's Eldon doing?" Arlene asked.

"I'm sure Don's C.V. is impressive," Dan said to Janet, dismissing my resume with a little wave. "But that's not my point. My point is, by bringing in someone who's outside the paper and outside the family at this sensitive juncture-someone who's going to take months just to gather background-you run the risk of having him going around stirring up people's suspicions and exacerbating an already tense situation without gaining anything positive. If there is some kind of plot against you or me or even Mom, we can hire a security service to protect us. If anybody asks why, we can just say Eric's murder freaked us out, and having protection for a while makes us feel more secure. Don," Dan said, looking me in the eye for the first time since we'd been introduced, "are you associated with a firm that does security work? If you and your firm could confine your work to guaranteeing the safety of Janet and myself and our mother for a month or so, that could be extremely useful to our family, and I think we might be able to do business."

I was about to reiterate to Dan that I had already been hired by Janet, Dale, and Timmy to conduct a full investigation of Eric's death as well as the two Jet Ski attacks on Janet, and that Dan's view of the matter was interesting but of peripheral concern to me. Before I could, Janet, her face red and her neck muscles taut, laid into her brother.

"Dan, if you'd quit being some kind of Osborne patronizing twit for one minute," she sputtered, "you'd think about what this apparent attempt to kill me really means. It probably means that Eric wasn't killed by a homicidal drifter but by someone in our family. Don't you get that? It's probably not InfoCom that's behind this at all. I mean, how many corporations, no matter how cold-blooded and greedy they are, actually put out contracts on people who get in the way of their expansion opportunities? Let's face it-what this is is probably more Osborne violent craziness. I have no idea who in the family might be doing it, and to tell you the truth, I'm trying hard not to think about it. But a skilled outsider is exactly what we do need at this point. Not a shopping mall guard, but an experienced investigator. I've done some asking around about Don, and he comes extremely well recommended. And Dale and Timmy and I are hiring him, whatever the hell you think. So get used to it."

Dan looked everywhere in the room except at his older sister as she told him, in effect, that he was a pompous man who struck silly poses, and his opinions were dumb and irrelevant. When she had finished, he reddened, but said only, "Do I actually have any goddamned choice in the matter?" It looked like the reenactment of an old familiar scene in Osborne sibling annals.

"

Arlene tried to help. "Kerr-McGhee put out a contract on Karen Silk-wood, Janet. And what about Inslaw?"

By now, Dan looked so cowed and miserable-his sister's light was obviously hot and bright in his life-that I was happy to lessen the tension in the room marginally by acknowledging Arlene's existence, which seemed to slip Dan's mind when he was in the presence of his sister, and by reminding Janet that there was an aspect of the situation she seemed to have analyzed carelessly.

I said, "I think Arlene might be right, Janet, not to rule out corporate involvement in any kind of conspiracy. If there is a murder plot, that 'would be unique among assaults perpetrated by Osbornes, not characteristic. The examples of Osborne violence you described to me were spontaneous outbursts, never premeditated-as far as anybody knows-and not conspiratorial The victims were all nonfamily members. Which is not to say that one or more family members might not be conniving this time-with or without the participation of InfoCom. But there's no evidence yet pointing to any Osborne-or, for that matter, anybody else. For an investigator, the family and InfoCom are simply logical places to start."

Janet eyed me stolidly and didn't react. Dan had listened to my assessment with what looked like mounting apprehension as it dawned on him, apparently, that my digging into Osborne family conflicts might be both intelligent and dogged.

It was Arlene, though, who said, "I'm just glad somebody is finally going to do a real investigation of Eric's murder. I'm not saying the cops were covering up. But they sure haven't done much beside sit on their fat asses. So good for you guys and Don's boyfriend for hiring Don to do the cops' job. Are you taking contributions? I'd like to help out if there's a fund."

"See me afterward," Dale said. "Your generosity is appreciated, Arlene."

"I'm also going to be sending Don lots of good energy."

Janet said, "Look, I don't want to prejudge anybody, either, but what's happening to the Osborne family now, and to the Herald, is not a soccer game or a barroom argument or some juvenile criminal escapade. Just about everything is at stake for the Osbornes this time- the family business, the family name, the family history, for chrissakes. So it's possible that the particulars of past Osborne extreme behavior might be an inadequate guide."

"God," Arlene said, "all the Osbornes are tantrumy, and June and Chester and their kids are all reactionary pigs. But the idea that somebody in the family that we all know might actually get in bed with a corporation and murder a relative, even if they hate their guts-that just makes me want to puke'"

Arlene seemed to be speaking figuratively, but Dan looked suddenly queasy and bolted from the room He pulled the bathroom door shut after him, but not tightly, and we could hear him retching