Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 10

“It doesn’t have anything to do with your father,” says Sergeant B. T. Ames, tapping a thick manila folder against the metal table.

“I don’t see how you can be so sure,” replies Mariah, sitting next to me on one of the hard wooden chairs in the small chamber off the police squad room. A single small window at about shoulder height lets in so little light that the day looks gruesome; it is hard for me to remember the bright autumn beauty I left behind just twenty minutes ago when we walked into the building. It is Thursday morning, one week and two days since the Judge’s funeral, and both of us are scared.. . although both our spouses think their spouses are being silly. I think maybe our spouses are right, but Mariah begged me to accompany her. We met at LaGuardia Airport a few hours ago and flew down together on the shuttle. Mariah, who can better afford the expense, rented a car, and we drove out to the Maryland suburbs for this meeting.

“It’s my job to be sure,” the detective deadpans.

“Somebody killed one of them,” Mariah says to the sergeant’s raised eyebrow, “and then somebody killed the other.”

Sergeant Ames smiles, but I can see the exhaustion. Obtaining this interview with a busy Montgomery County detective required Mallory Corcoran to make several calls from Hawaii, urged on by Meadows, who was badgered by me. The sergeant, leaning against the austere metal desk, has made clear that plenty of actual police work awaits; we can have only a few minutes.

We will take whatever time she can give.

“I’ve looked at all the reports on your father,” says Sergeant Ames, waving a sheaf of faxes. “He died of a heart attack.” She raises a large hand to forestall any protest. “I know you doubt it, and you are entitled to your doubts. I happen to think the reports are correct, but it isn’t in my jurisdiction. The Reverend Freeman Bishop is in my jurisdiction. And he was murdered. Maybe he was murdered here, maybe he was murdered someplace else and then dumped here. Either way, Freeman Bishop is my case. Oliver Garland is not my case. And what I am telling you is that the cases do not have anything to do with each other.”

I glance at my sister, but she is looking at the floor. Her designer pantsuit is black, as are her shoes and her scarf, and the choice strikes me as a little melodramatic. Well, that is Mariah’s way. At least she appears relaxed. I am stiff and uncomfortable in the least seedy of my three tweed blazers, this one vaguely brown.

In any event, it now seems to be my turn. I throw what I hope is a congenial smile onto my face.

“I understand your point, Sergeant, but you have to understand ours. Father Bishop was an old friend of the family. He performed our father’s funeral just a week ago. You can see how we’d be a little bit

… shaken up.”

Sergeant Ames puffs out a great gust of air. Then she stands up and walks around the wooden interrogation table to peer out the tiny window, where she blocks what little sunlight the window admits. She is a member of the paler nation, a broad yet graceful woman with a square, angry jaw and curly brown hair. Her size seems mostly muscle, not fat. Her dark blazer and cream-colored slacks are rumpled in the way that police fashions always are. A badge dangles from her breast pocket. Her florid face is chipped, from years of bad weather or years of bad diet or possibly both. She could be thirty. She could be fifty.

“We’re all shaken up, Mr. Garland. Mrs. Denton. This was a brutal crime.” She is still lecturing us from the window, giving us her back. “Kill a man this way, dump him in a public park.” She shakes her head, but the facts don’t change. “I don’t like to have this kind of thing in my town. I grew up here. I have my family here. I like it here. One reason I like it here is that we don’t have these problems.” Racial problems, she means. Or maybe she just means black people: the town, after all, is nearly all white.

“I understand that-” I begin, but Sergeant B. T. Ames (we do not know her first name, only the initials) holds up her hand. First I think she has something to say, but then I realize that she has heard knocking that I missed, because she walks over to the door and opens it. A uniformed officer, also white, gleams at us suspiciously, then whispers to the sergeant and hands her another fax for her collection.

When the door is closed again, Sergeant Ames returns to her window.

“They found his car,” she says.

“Where?” Mariah asks before I have the chance.

“Southwest Washington. Not far from the Navy Yard.”

“What was he doing down there?” Mariah persists. We are both frustrated. All the sergeant has really told us so far is what the newspapers reported: Father Bishop had a vestry meeting scheduled for seven on the night he died. He called to say he would be a little late because he had to visit a member of the parish who was having problems. He left home in his car about six-thirty, and his neighbors swear he was alone. He never made it to the church.

The detective swings toward us, but leans against the wall, crossing her arms. “I’m afraid I have to get back to work,” she says. “Unless you have some information that you think will help us find Father Bishop’s killer.”

I spent my childhood being summarily dismissed, usually by the Judge, and have never been able to bear it as an adult. So I protest-as so often, without first thinking. “We told you we think there’s a connection…”

Sergeant Ames takes a step toward me, her heavy face unwelcoming. She seems to be growing larger, or perhaps I am shrinking. I am suddenly reminded that she is, after all, a police officer. She is not interested in our theories or our meddling.

“Mr. Garland, do you have any evidence of a connection between the murder of Freeman Bishop and the death of your father?”

“Well, that depends on what you mean by evidence-”

“Did anybody tell you that this crime was connected to the death of your father?”

“No, but I-”

“Do you know of your own knowledge who killed Freeman Bishop?”

“Of course not!” I am offended but also a little bit scared, the ambiguous relationship of black males to the nation’s police departments being what it is. I remember that this tiny room is used for the interrogation of suspects. The furniture begins to emit a soft red glow. Mariah puts her hand on my arm, warning me to calm down. And I get the point: we are here, after all, and the sergeant has a job to do.

“Did anybody tell you who killed Freeman Bishop?” Sergeant Ames continues.

“No.” I remember, far too late, what we used to tell clients facing depositions: Keep it simple, say yes or no, and never, ever volunteer anything, no matter how badly you want to explain.

And stay calm.

“Did anybody tell you that he or she knows who killed Freeman Bishop?”

“No.”

“Did anybody tell you that anybody else knows who killed Freeman Bishop?”

“No.”

“Then maybe you don’t have any information for me.”

“Well, I…”

“Wait.” Spoken softly. The detective has taken command with remarkable ease. My intimidated students wouldn’t recognize me, but Avery Knowland, I am sure, would have a grand time watching.

Mariah and I wait as instructed. Sergeant Ames, to my dismay, actually opens her manila folder. She pulls out a sheet of yellow lined paper and reads some handwritten notes, her tongue poking around her mouth as she concentrates. She grabs a ballpoint pen from the table and makes a couple of check marks in the margin. For the first time, I realize that the detective is not just questioning me for show. Mariah recognizes it too; her hand tightens on my arm. Sergeant Ames knows something, or thinks she knows something, that is leading her to ask these questions.

And she is asking only me, not my sister.

When the sergeant speaks again, she is looking at her notes, not at me. “Are you aware of any threats received by Freeman Bishop?”

“No.”

“Are you aware of anybody with a strong dislike for Freeman Bishop?”

“No.” Again I cannot help elaborating: “He was not the sort of man who generated, uh, strong emotions.”

“No enemies of whom you are aware?”

“No.”

“Have you had any recent conversations with Freeman Bishop?”

“Not since the funeral, no.”

“Prior to the murder, but after the funeral, have you had any conversations with any person about Freeman Bishop?”

I hesitate. What is she driving at? What does she think happened? But hesitation in an interrogation is like a red flag to a bull. Sergeant Ames lifts her intense gaze from the manila folder and settles her eyes on me. She does not repeat the question. She waits, terrifying in her patience. As though expecting me to confess. To a conversation? To something more? Does she think that I… surely she doesn’t think…

You’re being ridiculous.

“Not that I can recall,” I say at last.

She gazes at me a moment longer, letting me know that she recognizes the hedge, then looks down at her notes again.

“Have you recently noticed any peculiar behavior by Freeman Bishop?”

“I didn’t know him that well.”

She glances up. “I thought you saw him last week, at your father’s funeral.”

“Well, yes…”

“And did you notice any peculiar behavior?”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

“He seemed the same as always?”

“I guess so.” I am puzzled by her questions now, not scared.

“Did anybody else recently tell you about any peculiar behavior by Freeman Bishop?”

“No.”

“Did anybody tell you anything that could have a bearing on this murder?”

“Don’t hurry. Think hard. Go back a couple of weeks if you have to. Months.”

“The answer is still no, Sergeant. No.”

“You said you think there is a connection between your father’s death and the murder of Freeman Bishop.”

“I… we wondered, yes.”

“Did your father ever talk about Freeman Bishop?”

This one puzzles me again. “I guess. Sure, lots of times.”

“Recently?” All at once her voice grows gentle. “Go back, say, six months from your father’s death?”

“No. Not that I remember.”

“A year. Go back a year.”

“Maybe. I don’t recall.”

“Was it your father’s wish that Freeman Bishop perform his funeral?”

Mariah and I exchange a glance. Something is up. “I don’t think he ever talked about his funeral,” I say, once it becomes clear that Mariah is not going to speak. “Not to me.”

Sergeant Ames turns her attention to the folder once more. I wonder what she could be reading in it. I wonder what she did when she learned that we were coming to see her, where she went for information, what information she found. I wonder where these questions are coming from. I am sorely tempted to violate the rules every lawyer lives by… and just ask.

Instead, I ask something else.

“Do you have any leads?”

“Mr. Garland, you have to understand the way this kind of thing works. The police usually are the ones who ask the questions.”

Pushing my buttons: nothing galls me as much as being patronized.

“Look, Sergeant, I’m sorry. But, you know, this is the man who just did my father’s funeral. Nine years ago he performed my wedding. Now, maybe you can see why I would be a little bit upset.”

“I do understand why you are upset,” Sergeant Ames says sternly, hardly bothering to glance up from her notes. “But I also have a murder to investigate, and as long as you have used your connections to barge in here on a very busy day, I expect you to try to help if you can. Because he did your father’s funeral. Because he did your wedding.”

Mariah tries to fix everything: “How can we be of assistance, Sergeant Ames?”

“Did you hear the questions I asked your brother?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Something registers in the sergeant’s face: why didn’t I think to say ma’am? Because she is white and I am black? Is rudeness the legacy of oppression? Downward, downward, civilization spirals, and all we Americans seem able to do about it is quarrel over the blame.

“Do you have any different answers to offer?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.” My sister has never sounded so contrite in her life. The tactic seems to have some effect.

“I want you to look at these,” the detective says, her voice softer. She slides two glossy black-and-white photographs from her folder. “These are, mmm, the least horrible.”

Mariah glances down and then looks away; but I do not want to lose face before the formidable B. T. Ames, so I force myself to stare, and force my protesting mind to process what it is seeing.

To look at the photographs is to realize immediately that whoever tortured Father Bishop did it, at least in part, for the fun of it. One picture is a close-up of a hand. If not for all the blood, you might not notice on first glance that three fingernails are missing. The second shot appears to show the meaty part of Freeman Bishop’s thigh. Bright, almost bubbly circles are burned into his skin. Puckers of pain, like craters on the moon. I count them-five, no, six-and this is just one small area of his body. I try to imagine what kind of person could do this to another. And keep on doing it, because this took a while. And where somebody could do it, to ensure that nobody would hear his screams. I doubt that a gag over his mouth would have been enough.

“It’s different when you see it, isn’t it?” the detective asks.

“Do you-did you-” I am stuttering. This can’t be what Jack Ziegler was talking about. It just can’t. I start over. “Do you have any idea why somebody would do something like this?”

Sergeant Ames answers my question with one of her own. “Do you?” Her eyes are on me once more, watching as I examine the photographs. I sense an uneasy stirring in Mariah next to me, and I am not sure why.

“Do I what?”

“Do you have any idea why somebody might have done this?”

“Of course not!”

My protests do not interest Sergeant Ames. “Do you have any reason to think that Father Bishop had any information that somebody else would want?”

“I don’t know what you mean…”

“Well, he was tortured.” The detective gestures at the photographs in what seems to be exasperation. “Usually, that means somebody wants information.”

“Unless the torturing was just for show,” Mariah interjects quietly.

Sergeant Ames turns toward my sister, her eyes alight with cautious re-evaluation-not of the case, but of Mariah.

“Or the work of a psychopath,” I put in unwisely, not wanting to be left out if the detective is now ready to toss respect around.

“Right,” says Sergeant Ames, her words made all the more scathing by the monotone in which they are delivered. “If it turns out that somebody cut out his liver and ate it with fava beans, I’ll give you a call.”

I bristle at this put-down, but, before I can think of a suitable riposte, the detective is making a little speech. “You’re wondering why I am asking these questions. Let me try to explain what is going on here. You’ve read what was in the papers, I assume. So you know that Father Bishop, may he rest in peace, died of a gunshot wound to the head. Well, that gunshot wound was to the base of the skull, angled slightly upward. No amateur would put a shot there. The amateur takes his cue from the movies and shoots people in the side of the head or maybe the throat. But if you want to be sure, you do the base of the skull. You also know that Father Bishop had cigarette burns on both of his arms and one of his legs and the side of his neck. You know he was missing three fingernails. You know that he was found with his hands tied behind his back. Other things were also done. You don’t need all the details. But this man was tortured. Tortured viciously. The way that drug dealers, for instance, do it when they want something.”

Hearing it put so starkly, and by a police officer, I almost cringe, for all I can think about is my family. The detective, however, has chosen her words with care. Mariah picks up on the little hint before I do, but Phi Beta Kappans tend to figure things out fast. Her head bobs up again.

“I thought it was a hate crime.”

“Well, I can see why you would think that. The newspapers say it was a hate crime and the television says it was a hate crime and the NAACP says it was a hate crime and the governor of this fine state says it was a hate crime and I understand that the President of these wonderful United States even suggested it might be a hate crime. And so do the two busloads of protesters who are arriving this weekend to remind us all about how terribly the people of my town treat black people-never mind that there is absolutely no reason to think that the crime actually occurred here. But you know something? Hate crimes, even murders, tend to be committed by amateurs. This wasn’t.” She is watching our faces again. “Now, you have not heard me say it was a hate crime and you have not heard anybody from the police say it was a hate crime, have you?”

Mariah, the onetime journalist, keeps at it: “So was it a hate crime or wasn’t it?”

Sergeant Ames fixes my sister with a baleful glare, as though she has recognized too late the species she has admitted to the inner sanctum. The detective’s eyes are a flat, obsidian black, daring anybody to tell a lie in her presence. She plainly does not like being interrogated. But when she speaks, her voice is almost mechanical.

“Mrs. Denton, we do not know for sure what kind of crime it was except that it was a nasty one, and the person who did it is running around free. We will find who did it and then we will know what kind of crime it was.”

“Wasn’t there a note?” I ask.

“Evidently, we read the same newspapers, Mr. Garland. I read in one of them that there was a note pinned to Father Bishop’s shirt, and somebody else had an exclusive report that the note was from a white supremacist group that wants to take the blame.”

“In the papers,” murmurs Mariah, the ghost of a smile on her lips. She did not read the detective’s comment quite so contemptuously as I did.

“I am not confirming that,” the sergeant agrees, smiling back. Now that each knows the other’s agenda, they are comfortable together: more evidence, if any is needed, that the world would be better run by women.

“You are not confirming it,” Mariah explains, probably for my benefit, “because, if there was a note and you don’t tell anybody what it says, you can use it to sort the kooks who always call after a crime like this from people who might actually be able to help solve it.”

“That’s one of the reasons, yes.”

I look from one of them to the other. There is something more here, some level of comprehension the two of them have already passed while I am still struggling to manage the first rung. It is rather like watching a chess game between two grandmasters, all the subtle maneuvers that make so little sense to the unschooled mind until, in a sudden flurry, one of them is defeated.

“The other reason,” Mariah suggests in the same quiet tone, “is that the letter could be a fake.”

“I didn’t say that,” the detective interposes immediately, her smile disappearing as though she has belatedly recalled that smiles are banned in this sad little room. I can feel the tension rising once more-and then, suddenly, I see where they are heading.

“Sergeant Ames,” my sister says formally, “we are here because we have families, and we are worried about them.” She rubs her ample belly to underline the point: she means we are worried about our children. “If you can persuade us that there is no relation between what happened to Father Bishop and what happened-what might have happened-to our father, we will go away and never bother you again. I promise you. We won’t blab to the papers. I used to be a journalist, and I was always very good at keeping my mouth shut. I never revealed a source. My brother, as you know, is a lawyer, so he knows how to keep a confidence. I know you feel we used connections to barge in here. I’m sorry about that. But we did it for the sake of our families. And nothing you tell us will go any further than the two of us. I promise you that, too. And if we can ever do anything for you. ..”

She leaves the rest hanging in the air. Oh, but my sister is good! What a reporter she must have been! Without saying a word that can be held against her, Mariah has managed to threaten, indirectly, to make a nuisance of herself if she does not get what she wants. More important, she has also raised the specter of our supposed family influence-all of it, of course, actually the largesse of Mallory Corcoran.

Sergeant Ames gets the message. And is far too experienced to let herself get angry. Instead, she takes a nibble at the bait.

“Father Bishop’s family,” she says, “has not been very cooperative. They seem to think-well, the racial angle is giving them problems.”

“I’ll talk to them,” Mariah says at once, as though she runs the Gold Coast, which our mother once hoped she would. “I was in Jack and Jill with Warner Bishop.”

The detective nods as though she knows all about the various social organizations for the children of middle-class African America. “Warner Bishop seems to think we’re all rednecks out here,” she says.

“I’ll talk to him,” Mariah promises.

Sergeant Ames looks back at me briefly, but she addresses herself to my sister. “I won’t show you the note,” she says. “I can’t do that. I’m sorry. But I can tell you, in the privacy of this room, that there is absolutely no reason for you to worry about the safety of your families. There really is no connection between this crime and your father. But you’re right about the other part. There was a note, and we do think it was a fake. That is, we do not think this was a white supremacist thing.”

She pauses, wanting us to take the next step. I am about to offer another question, but Mariah raises a hand and slips hers in ahead of mine.

“It was drugs, Sergeant, wasn’t it?”

Sergeant Ames looks at her, then looks at me, then looks back at my sister. There is real respect there.

“Yes,” the detective finally says. “Yes, we think it was drugs. Now, this also stays in this office. You cannot even tell Father Bishop’s family, not just yet.” A pause to let this sink in; police detectives can make threats too. “But we are quite confident that you and your father and your families are not involved. We have to wait a day or so for toxicology to be sure, but I already know from other evidence what they’ll tell us: that Father Bishop was a fairly heavy user.”

The detective stops. My jaw does not exactly drop, but I am pretty sure that time stands still and my heart skips a few beats, and lots of other cliches happen at the same time. So it was not simple incompetence that caused Freeman Bishop’s sermons to meander into meaninglessness. I am astonished, and embarrassed, by the depth of my relief.

But Mariah sticks to the problem.

“How does that explain what happened to him?”

Sergeant Ames sighs. She hoped to get away with less, it seems, but now will have to tell us the rest. I am still wondering, however, what her purpose was in interrogating me. Was it just intimidation?

“We don’t publicize this,” she says, “because we are afraid of copycats. But, in the Washington area, I’m including the suburbs, we see a dozen or so of these cases a year. Most of them you never read about or see on television, because the victims are less prominent. The kind of torture Father Bishop suffered-well, it’s horrible, but it’s more common than you might think. In particular, it is used a lot by dealers to make their customers who are behind in their payments tell them where they have money stashed. They torture the information out of them and then shoot them in the back of the head. Or sometimes they get gratuitous about it, torturing for kicks. And we are pretty sure that is what happened here. Even a very tough man would have had a lot of trouble holding out against a fraction of what they did to him, and from what people tell me, Freeman Bishop, may he rest in peace, was not particularly tough. If they wanted information from him, I think they probably got it pretty fast. The rest of what they did to him was for kicks.” A pause to let this sink in. The temperature in the room drops several degrees. “Still, the basic fact remains the same: Freeman Bishop, we are pretty sure, was killed because he used drugs and couldn’t pay for them.”

“Pretty sure?” I ask, just for something to say.

The sergeant glares at me. She would rather I shut up, her eyes say, so that she can pretend that I am not in the room. Mariah is the one she trusts. As far as Sergeant B. T. Ames is concerned, I am furniture.

I see my mistake an eyeblink later, but my sister sees it faster. She is already up on her feet, pulling me to mine, thanking the detective for her time, shaking hands as though closing a sale. Sergeant Ames steps around us and opens the door so that the rest of the squad can hear her dismiss us.

“Look, Mr. Garland. Mrs. Denton. I’m really sorry about your father. I am. But I have a murder on my hands and a lot of work to do. So, if you will excuse me, I have to get back to the job.”

We drive together to Shepard Street, where Mariah plans to spend the night; I am flying home on the shuttle a bit later this evening, but will return next week for the funeral of the man who, last week, officiated at the Judge’s. The house is eerily silent after the hubbub of a week ago; it sounds like the house of a dead man. Our footsteps echo like gunfire on the parquet of the front hall. Mariah grimaces, explaining that she sent all the Judge’s Oriental carpet runners out for cleaning right after the funeral. She raises her palm in half-apology, then turns on the CD player, but her kind of music this time, not my father’s: Reasons, the long version, by Earth, Wind and Fire, which remains, in my sister’s casual judgment, the single greatest pop recording ever made. The Judge would have been appalled. I remind myself that this is my sister’s house now, that I am a guest, that she can do what she wants.

After Mariah visits the powder room, we find ourselves once again in the absurdly bright kitchen, sitting together at the table, sipping hot chocolate in companionable silence, almost-but not quite-friends again. I loosen my tie. Mariah kicks off her shoes.

“I wish you wouldn’t stay here alone,” I tell her.

“Why, Tal,” laughs my sister, “I didn’t know you cared.”

Most siblings would identify this at once as the moment to say, You know I love you; but most siblings did not grow up in my family.

“I worry about you, that’s all.”

Mariah tilts her head to one side and wrinkles her nose. “You don’t need to worry, Tal, I’m a big girl. I don’t think anybody is going to break into the house tonight and burn me with cigarettes.” Since that is exactly what I am scared of, I say nothing. “Besides,” she adds, “I won’t be alone.”

“You won’t?” This takes me by surprise.

“No. Szusza is bringing the kids down tomorrow.” I assume this is the name of the latest unpronounceable au pair. “Well, some of the kids, anyway,” she corrects herself, but maybe she has trouble keeping track. I would. “And Sally’s staying with me tonight. So don’t worry.”

“Sally?” I didn’t know my sister and our cousin were so close.

“She’s been great, Tal. Really great. She’s coming by right after work. We’re going to start going through Daddy’s papers.” Mariah looks up at me sharply, as though I have objected to this plan. “Look, Tal, somebody has to do it. We have to know what’s here. For all kinds of reasons. There are a lot of records and things that we might need. On the houses and stuff. And, who knows, maybe… maybe we can find some kind of clue.”

“Clue to what?”

Mariah’s russet gaze goes flinty. “Come on, Tal, you know what I’m talking about. You’re the one who had Jack Ziegler screaming at you in the cemetery last week. He thinks there is something somewhere, some kind of… well, I don’t know what.” She closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them again. “I want to find what he is looking for, and I want to find it before he does.”

I think this over. The arrangements. Well, she could be right. The Judge might have left a piece of paper, a diary, something to help us figure out what has Uncle Jack so worried. And what the fake FBI men evidently wanted. And maybe Sergeant B. T. Ames. The arrangements. Maybe a clue will turn up. I doubt it-but Mariah, ex-journalist, just could be right.

“Well, good luck,” is all I can think of to say.

“Thanks. I have a feeling we’ll find it.” She sips her hot chocolate and makes a face: too cold.

“It could even be fun.”

Mariah shrugs, somehow conveying her determination. “I’m not doing it for fun,” she says to her cocoa, unconsciously rubbing her womb again. I find myself wondering what my wife is doing at this instant.

“Have you heard from Addison since the funeral?” I am making conversation.

“Nope. Not a word.” She chuckles derisively. “Same old Addison.”

“He’s not so bad.”

“Oh, he’s great. Can you believe what he said about Daddy? In the eulogy? That maybe there was some reason to think he did something wrong?”

“That’s not exactly what he said,” murmurs Misha the peacemaker, a role into which I somehow stepped while trying to survive in the turbulent household of my adolescence, and one that I have never managed to relinquish.

“That’s the way I heard it. I bet that’s the way it sounded to most of the folks who were there.”

“Well, maybe he did leave it… a little ambiguous.”

“It was a funeral, Tal.” Her eyes are flat. “You don’t do that at a funeral.”

“Oh, I see your point, kiddo.”

Which is not precisely the same as agreeing with it, a nuance my sister catches at once. “You never want to take sides, do you? You like the view from the fence.”

“Mariah, come on,” I say, stung, but I offer no counterargument, not least because I do not have one.

We let the silence envelop us for a while, escaping into our own minds. I am adding up all the hours of work I have waiting for me back home, secretly furious that I allowed Mariah to spook me into this trip. Everything the detective said made sense; and none of my sister’s theories are remotely plausible. I peek at my watch, hoping Mariah doesn’t see, and lift my mug to my lips, only to put it down fast. My hot chocolate tastes as bad as hers.

“Did you believe her?” Mariah asks, as though in contact with my thoughts. “Sergeant Ames, I mean? About Father Bishop?”

“You mean, do I think she was lying?”

“I mean, do you think she was right? Please don’t play word games with me, Tal, I’m not one of your students.”

I have to answer this carefully; I do not want to make my sister my enemy all over again. “I know what you meant,” I say slowly. “I think, if she isn’t right, then the alternative is that he was tortured because of… because of something to do with the Judge. But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why not?” Her question is sharp; again I must pick the right words.

“Well, let’s suppose-let’s suppose that there is some bit of information that the Judge took to his grave with him, information that somebody wanted. I don’t believe this, you understand, it’s just a supposition.”

Mariah gives a small, tight nod. I plunge on.

“Even if it’s true-even if there is some bit of information-well, I doubt that the Judge would have confided anything important in Freeman Bishop. I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but, come on.”

“Nobody who knew Daddy would think he would tell Father Bishop anything.”

“Nobody who knew Freeman Bishop would think the Judge would tell him anything.”

My sister rubs her womb again, protecting her baby. “So he wasn’t

… tortured… for information about Daddy, was he?”

“I don’t think so. If I thought anything else, I would grab my family and head for the hills.”

“If your family would go.” Mariah cannot help being mischievous when the subject of Kimmer comes up. I decide to ignore it.

“The point is, kiddo, the reason I think Sergeant Ames is right is that I can’t think of any reason that anybody would have… done those things to him.” I promised to protect you, and so I shall. I can repeat this mantra to myself, but reiteration does not make it feel true. Not completely. What feels true is that somebody is out there-Uncle Jack’s others -playing a very long game, waiting for me to do… well, whatever it is that everybody expects me to do. I sense no danger, but I sense no peace.

Mariah nods. “Neither can I,” she says. She runs a hand over her eyes. “She was really something, that detective. She was one tough lady.”

“Well, you got her to admit that the note was most likely a fake. …”

“Oh, Tal, give it a rest.” Mariah’s voice has gone unexpectedly hard. I have stumbled into her realm of expertise. “I didn’t get her to do anything. Cops don’t ever admit anything they don’t want to. She told us what she wanted us to know, and that’s all.”

“Well, that’s my point.” I am excited now. “She wanted us to hear all that stuff about drugs. Why? I bet the only reason she told us was that she doesn’t believe we’re going to keep it secret. She wants us to spread it around.”

“I never knew you were such a cynic.” Mariah shakes her head as though she has never been one. She shifts in her chair and her finger stabs toward me. “I liked Sergeant Ames.”

“But did you believe her about the drug dealers?”

“Well, they did find his car by the Navy Yard.”

“I bet there’s about a hundred fifty thousand people down in Southwest who don’t do drugs or sell them,” I preach.

“Give it a rest,” Mariah repeats. “Everybody knows Father Bishop does coke. Or he did, anyway. Everybody’s known for years.”

“Everybody knows what?”

“You’re so innocent, Tal. Why are you the last to hear everything?” She laughs. At least we seem on relatively good terms again. “You really don’t know?”

I shake my head.

“Well, it’s an old story. Laurel St. Jacques caught him snorting three or four years ago, right in the sacristy. You remember Laurel, don’t you? She married Andre Conway? I know you must remember Andre.” A devilish smile, reminding me that I am Kimberly Madison’s second husband. Andre was her first.

“I remember Andre,” I say quietly. I also remember-although I never mention it-an irrational fury at Andre after he won the first round in our battle for Kimmer Madison, including a moment, in his apartment, when we nearly came to blows. At that time he was a local news producer named Artis. His new appellation came when he decided to make documentary films. “I even remember he married Laurel.”

“Do you remember that they’re divorced?”

“Rings a bell somewhere.” I hope she is not hinting anything about Andre and my wife. Unbidden, my thoughts lead me down toward their usual obsessive fear: Andre is in Los Angeles these days, and Kimmer is often in San Francisco, and he could fly up to see her…

Oh, stop it!

“I heard there was another woman involved,” says Mariah, her old streak of cruelty unexpectedly manifesting itself.

“There usually is.”

Mariah glances at me, perhaps trying to figure out if I am putting her down with what she disdains as my Ivy League cleverness, as though she has none of her own. I keep my poker face on. “Well, anyway,” she finally continues, “Laurel caught Father Bishop at it a couple of years ago. And, Laurel being Laurel, she naturally told everybody. It’s a wonder he wasn’t fired on the spot. I think Daddy must have been off the vestry by then, or Father Bishop would have been gone. But they decided to keep him around. I guess they all must have felt sorry for him or something. You know us Episcopalians, Tal. We love to feel compassion for people. We’re never happy unless we’re ignoring somebody’s sins to show how tolerant we are,” adds my sister, who converted to Roman Catholicism in order to marry Howard and, Kimmer likes to say, has followed the Church’s teaching on birth control ever since.

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, it was quite the little scandal, Tal.” She flaps her hand for emphasis, tosses her head the way she used to when she wore her hair straight and long, then rushes eagerly on, happy for the chance to share gossip I seem to have missed. “Quite a few people left the church over it, as a matter of fact. The Cliftons left. Oh, they were furious! And Bruce and Harriet Yearwood left. Also Mary Raboteau. No, wait, she retired and went to Florida or something. I was thinking of Mrs. Lavelle-she’s the other one who left. And you’d think Gigi Walker would have left, she’s such a bluenose, but, well, I guess she had her reasons to stay.” An odd little laugh. My sister loves being judgmental, even when nobody else in the room knows what she is judging. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear about it, Tal.”

“No, I missed it.”

“Daddy thought Father Bishop should quit voluntarily, you know, save everybody all the trouble? But he went in front of the congregation and did one of those God-isn’t-finished-with-me-yet sermons, and that was pretty much the end of that. Oh, that reminds me.” My sister is on her feet. “I promised Sergeant Ames that I would call Warner Bishop. Poor guy, he doesn’t have anybody left.” Mariah vanishes into the foyer. A moment later I hear her tread on the stairs, going up to the study to find the Judge’s address book. I am amazed. I assumed that my sister was just talking when she said she would reassure Father Bishop’s family, but I forgot how seriously she takes promises. When we were children, she used to run to our parents to complain whenever I (or, more frequently, Addison) went back on a promise. In the Garland household, promise-breaking was pretty much a court-martial offense. Our mother would punish us, usually confining us to our rooms for a couple of hours, but our father would do something far worse: he would call us into the little downstairs study he used in those days and deliver one of his excruciating lectures, letting the full force of his chilly, dispassionate disapproval wash over us as we stood before his desk at parade rest. Promises are the bricks of life, Talcott, and trust is the mortar. We build nothing in life if we make no promises, and we tear down what others have built if we make them and break them. Something like that. He struggled to make the same point to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining his relationship with Jack Ziegler: Friendship is a promise of future loyalty, loyalty no matter what comes. Promises are the bricks of life

… I will never abandon a friend, and I expect that my friends will never abandon me.

That’s a very noble sentiment, Judge, but the fact remains that this particular friend of yours was under indictment for…

With respect, Senator, it isn’t a matter of nobility. It’s a matter of what kind of world you want to build. If you want to build at all-or just to tear down.

Lots of friends did abandon him, of course, once they calculated that the Judge was more likely to wind up in prison than on the Supreme Court.

I go to the sink and wash our cups. When the water stops running, I hear Mariah’s voice drifting down the stairwell. Mariah, who can be warm and vivacious when she chooses, will probably be a considerable comfort to Warner Bishop, Freeman Bishop’s hapless son, now some kind of advertising executive in New York, with whom my sister once put in time in Jack and Jill and all the other youth groups of our set. Homely, chunky, awkward Warner Bishop, who wanted desperately to date Mariah when they were teenagers, but never quite succeeded in drawing her interest. According to Addison, Warner has carried a distant torch for her ever since. Oh, our closed little world!

“Drug dealers,” I mutter. Maybe, maybe not. Whoever it was, I do not even need to close my eyes to see the photos of what they did to Father Bishop. To his hand, to his thigh, and, easily imagined, to other parts of his anatomy that the detective chose, perhaps out of kindness, not to share.

Freeman Bishop, drug user, came to a drug user’s end. How is it that I alone seem not to have known?

Maybe Mariah is right. Or maybe she is nuts. Or maybe I am.

Maybe I should make a peace offering.

Drying my hands on a kitchen towel of hideous red-and-black design, I dither for a moment, wondering if it is time to use the card Jack Ziegler gave me in the cemetery. But it isn’t: after a murder, the last thing I need is to call in a monster for help. And then I know exactly what to give. The memory of my father’s lectures reminded me. I think Mariah’s hunt for a hidden clue will bear no fruit, but I do not want her to think I am her enemy. What I will offer is less a clue than a memento of the man our father was-a memento that might even persuade my sister to abandon her search. I stand up and head down the dark hallway to the claustrophobic first-floor library with its cherry cabinets. After a quick, covetous glance at the Miro, I sit behind the desk and roll the chair over to the bookshelf where my father kept his scrapbooks. I hunt through them for several minutes before giving up in puzzlement.

Mariah moved it, I am thinking. Or somebody else in the endless parade through the house after the funeral: Mariah’s children, Howard Denton, Just Alma, the unpronounceable au pair, Mrs. Rose, Sally, Addison, his little white girlfriend, Uncle Mal, Dana Worth, Eddie Dozier, the woman who cleans the place, one of the numberless cousins, anybody.

The blue album with the newspaper clippings of hit-and-run accidents is gone.