Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 33

The roller woman turns out to have a first name, but apparently no surname, because Maxine is all she is willing to tell me. She also has made luncheon reservations for two at a cozy inn I have never heard of down one of the confusing little side streets of Vineyard Haven. I can think of no particular reason to turn down her invitation, especially because I make no effort to come up with one. So Maxine drives the Suburban, which seems unscratched by our collision, and I follow in the Camry, whose rear bumper is badly mangled.

Vineyard Haven is the common but unofficial name of the town of Tisbury, or else it is the other way around-more than thirty summers on the Island and still I cannot keep them straight. The word picturesque tends toward overuse, especially to describe New England shore towns, but the narrow, neatly tangled lanes of Vineyard Haven, each lined with tiny white clapboard homes, stores, and churches, actually deserve the accolade. The town looks like a film set, except that no director would dare to create a town so perky, full of bustling energy, amidst gorgeous leafy trees and magnificent views of the water from… well, just about everywhere. Ordinarily, a trip to Tisbury brings a smile to my face, because it is so shamelessly perfect. But today, dragging my bumper along Main Street, I am too busy wondering what is going on.

I assume I am about to find out.

“Sorry about your car,” Maxine murmurs as soon as we are seated. The dining room only has about a dozen tables, and all of them look out on a grim churchyard, the rooftops of houses down the hill, and the inevitable blue water beyond. Ten tables are empty.

“Not as sorry as I am.”

“Aw, come on, handsome, lighten up.”

She grins the same infectious smile I first saw at the rollerdrome the day after we buried the Judge. She is wearing a brown jumpsuit and a multicolored scarf, her clothing every bit as unconventional as her hair. I find that I like her a lot more now that she has a name, even though I expect to discover sooner or later that Maxine, like just about everybody else I have met since my father died, has as many different names as she needs.

“I wish you’d stop calling me that,” I mutter, refusing to be drawn.

“Why? You are handsome.” Although I’m not, really.

“Because I are married.”

Maxine puffs her lips in amusement but lets this go, for which small mercy I am grateful. I usually hate being out with women other than my wife, out of a holy terror that somebody will see us together and draw the wrong conclusion. I value my reputation for fidelity, and I believe in the old-fashioned notion that adults have a responsibility to live up to their commitments-something I learned as much from my mother as from the Judge. Yet, sitting here with the mysterious Maxine, I find myself unable to worry about whether anybody will think we are a couple.

Which is why I must tread carefully.

“So, if I can’t call you handsome,” she sighs, “what would you rather have me call you?”

I want no intimacy with this woman. Or, rather, what I want is irrelevant, since I are married. “Well, given the difference in our ages, you should probably call me Professor Garland, or Mr. Garland.”

“Yucch.”

“What?”

“I said… yucch, Professor Garland.” Flashing those dimples at me. “And you’re not that much older than I am.” Smiling.

I am tempted to smile back. “Why are you following me?” I ask, trying to stay on track.

“In case you change your mind about that skating lesson.”

She laughs. I don’t.

“Come on. I’m serious, Maxine. I need to know what’s going on.”

“You’ll figure it out sooner or later.” Her wide, lively face is buried in the menu. “I hear the crab cakes are the best on the Vineyard,” she adds as the waiter nears, but half the restaurants on the Island make the same claim.

We both order the crab cakes nevertheless, we both choose the rice, we both ask for salad with the house dressing, we both decide to stay with the sparkling water we are already sipping. I am not sure which one of us is copying the other, but I wish he or she would stop.

“Maxine,” I ask as soon as the waiter is gone, “what are we doing here?”

“Having an early dinner.”

“Why?”

“Because we need to talk, handsome. Sorry, sorry. I mean Professor Garland. No, I mean Misha. Or I could say Talcott. Tal? Isn’t that what they call you? By the way, did anybody ever tell you that you have too many names?” More laughter. Maxine, however many names she may have, is far too easy to be with.

I stay on message. “You just thought you’d run into my car so we could have a talk?”

That fun-loving grin again. “Well, it got your attention, didn’t it? Oh, yeah, before I forget.” Maxine opens her large brown purse, and although my exhausted eyes might be playing tricks, I am pretty sure I see a holstered gun before she pulls out an envelope and snaps the bag closed again. Still smiling, she drops the envelope on the table. It is as thick as a telephone book. “Here.”

“What is that?” I have no particular desire to touch it, not yet.

“Well, I did wreck your bumper, and I can’t exactly give you my insurance card.”

Shaking my head at the unreality of the moment, I pick up the envelope and peek inside. I see a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills. Lots of them. Not new, either: well used.

“How much money is this?”

“Um, twenty-five thousand dollars, I think.” Not managing to sound quite as casual as she wants to. “Around that, anyway. Mostly hundreds.” The pixie grin again. “I know foreign-car repairs can be expensive.”

I drop the money back on the table. Something truly weird is going on. “Twenty-five… thousand?”

“Why, it’s not enough?”

“Maxine, I would sell you my car for maybe one-tenth of that.”

“I don’t want your car.” Deliberately missing my point. She taps the envelope. Her unpainted nails are trimmed very short. “I have a car. Take the money, honey.”

I shake my head, leaving the cash exactly where it is.

“What’s the money really for?”

“The damage, handsome. Take it.” She tilts her head to the side. “Besides, you never know when you’ll need some extra cash.”

Somebody obviously knows about our debts, a fact that irritates me.

“Maxine… whose money is this?”

“Yours, silly.” Oh, but Maxine has a smile! I struggle to keep my composure.

“What I mean is, where did you get it?”

She points. “Out of my purse.”

“How did it get into your purse?”

“I put it there. Do you think I let just anybody go through my purse?”

I pause, remembering the lessons from my years of law practice. In a deposition, formulate the questions with care. Most of them should be capable of Yes and No answers. Lead the witness, through her Yes es, to where you want to be.

“Somebody gave you that money, right?”

“Right.”

“Gave it to you to give to me?”

“Maybe.” She is being playful, not cautious, which is scarcely surprising, given that I have no means of compelling her to answer.

“Who was the person who gave you the money?”

“I’d rather not say.” But a toothy grin to make it friendly.

“Was it Jack Ziegler?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

I ponder, watching Maxine sip her Perrier. “Did the person who gave you the money tell you what it was really for?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And what was the money really for?”

“For your car.” Pointing toward the window. “If anything happened to it.”

Okay, I admit I was never a very good lawyer. Maybe that is why I became a law professor.

“You planned all along to hit my car?”

“Well, yeah. Probably. I mean, sure, I could have been more dainty about it.” She shrugs, a significant movement in a woman six feet tall, signaling me, perhaps, that there is nothing dainty about her at all. “I mean, you know what they say. Accidents can bring people together, right?” Tilting her head now to the other side and fluttering her eyelashes. Playacting, but not ineffectively.

“Sure, that’s the way I always meet people. Crash into their cars and take them to lunch.”

“Well, it worked.”

Okay, I am still a married man and the mystery is still too much, and we have done enough flirting. I lean across the table. “Maxine, that’s nuts and you know it. Now, I need to know what’s going on. I need to know who you are. I need to know what you are.”

“What I am?” Her eyes glitter. “What do you think I am?”

“You’re somebody who… who keeps turning up. It’s like you know where I’m going to be before I do.” I fork some salad into my mouth, chew a bit, swallow. “For instance, you were waiting for me at the skating rink.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, you got there first. I’d be very interested to know how you knew I was going there.” A horrible thought occurs to me. “Did you bug my father’s house?”

Maxine’s response is leisurely. “Maybe I didn’t get to the rink first. Maybe I just got my skates on first.” She takes a small bite from a breadstick. “Think about it. How long were you at the rink before you saw me? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Plenty of time for me to follow you there, rent some skates, and lose myself in the crowd.”

“So you did follow me there.”

To my surprise, she gives what I take to be an honest answer. “Sure. You’re pretty easy to follow.”

This irritates me for some reason. But just briefly. “You should know. You followed me-my family and myself-to the Vineyard back in November. And you followed me in Washington.”

“Not very well.” She giggles, and this time the corners of my lips twitch. “I lost you at Dupont Circle. That was a neat trick, what you did with the taxi. If I can’t do any better than that, I’m not gonna have a job.”

An opening large enough for a truck. And intended, I have no doubt, for me to drive straight through.

“Exactly what is your job?”

All the fun goes out of Maxine’s expression, although her eyes are passionate and alert. “Persuading you,” she says.

“Persuading me of what?”

She pauses, and I can see that she has played the whole game to get to this precise point. “Sooner or later, you’re gonna find out what arrangements your father made. When you do, it’s my job to persuade you to give us what you find.”

“Who’s us?”

“We’re kinda like the good guys. I mean, not the great guys, we’re not saints or anything like that, but we’re better than some people you might give it to.”

“Yeah, but who are you?”

“Let’s just say… an interested party.”

“Interested party? Interested in what?”

She answers a slightly different question. “Whatever you do, don’t give it to your Uncle Jack. In his hands, it’s a weapon. It’s dangerous. In ours-it disappears, and everybody is happy.”

Maxine turns out to be right. The crab cakes are delicious, for the chef has managed to keep them flaky and light without leaving them with the fishy taste that is a sure sign of undercooking. The sauce is peppy but unintrusive. On the side are long serrated wedges of baked potato that fool the eye, but not the palate, into thinking they are fried. The waiter is helpful and present when needed without seeming to hover, and he evidently feels no need to share his name with us. It is, in short, a good place, of which the Vineyard has many, some, like this one, hidden away on side roads, far away from Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, known mainly to the well-to-do folks who own second homes up-Island but invisible to tourists and, just as important, to tourist guidebooks.

Maxine and I are talking, improbably, about our childhoods. The envelope full of cash has disappeared back into her bottomless bag, just like a conjuring trick. Maxine has declined, so far, to improve on her brief statement of her purpose in following me, parrying my every dialectical thrust with her hearty grin and contagious laughter. Yet, unlike my similarly hopeless effort to pry information out of the late Mr. Scott, this one rouses in me principally a sense of play; and possibly something more. I am having a far better time with this mysterious woman than a married man really should, particularly when you factor in the intelligence that she just ran into my car to get my attention, that she tried to bribe me, that she is carrying a gun in her shoulder bag, and that she was on the Island when my other pursuer, Colin Scott, went into the water.

“Even in high school, I was always taller than most of the guys,” she is saying, “so I never got many dates, because most guys don’t like taller girls.” Inviting a compliment that I elect not to bestow. So she talks on.

Maxine, it turns out, was a faculty brat, her parents both professors at old black colleges in the South. She refuses to specify which.

“So I was kind of happy to get an assignment that involved another academic.”

“I’m an assignment?”

“Well, you’re not an assignation, Misha.”

Using my nickname again. Then she startles me by asking how I got it. I startle myself by answering. I do not tell the story often, but I tell it now. I tell her how my parents, in their wisdom, named me Talcott, after my mother’s father. And how I changed it because of chess. My father taught me to play during some early Vineyard summer. He tried to teach all of us, insisting it would improve our minds, but the other children were less interested, perhaps because they were already in rebellion. Chess was one of the few things the Judge and I had in common when I was younger, and maybe when I was older, too; for we never seemed to agree on very much.

I do not remember my precise age at the time of my first lessons, but I do remember the event that led to my rechristening. I was playing chess with my big brother on the creaky porch of Vinerd Howse when my Uncle Derek, the big Communist whom my father more or less denied at his hearings, stumbled drunkenly from within, shading his rheumy eyes from the morning sunlight with his thick fingers, stained a tobacco yellow. The Judge used to lecture Derek for his weakness, not realizing that the same tendency to alcoholism, perhaps an inherited trait, would later snare him, too, at a moment of depression. For Derek, having soured by then on the possibility of a revolutionary movement among American workers, was terribly unhappy, as we could always detect in the worried glances of his wife, Thera. Now, swaying on his feet, my uncle looked down at the chessboard. Despite the difference in our ages, I was beating Addison soundly, for this was the only arena in which I usually bested him. Uncle Derek squinted at the two of us, puffed out his sallow cheeks, exhaling alcohol fumes strong enough to make us children dizzy, grinned unpleasantly, and mumbled, “So, I guess you’re Mikhail Tal now”-the Latvian wizard Mikhail Tal having been, for the briefest of historical moments, the chess champion of the world, and Uncle Derek having been, for nearly all of his life, an admirer of most things Soviet and, in consequence, an enduring embarrassment to my father. But Addison and I knew nothing of the larger chess world, and certainly had never heard of the great Tal. We looked at each other in confusion. We were always a little bit scared of Uncle Derek, and my father, who thought he was crazy, would have preferred to have no contact with him at all, but my mother, who believed in family, insisted. “No,” said my uncle, squinting against the glare. Our heads swung back in his direction. “No, not Mikhail -just Misha. That’s what the Russians call Tal. You’re a kid, so let’s call you Misha.” He laughed, an ugly, liquid sound, accompanied by a gurgling deep in his chest, because he was already ill, although he would linger, in declining health, for another few years. He shuffled to the edge of the porch, coughing helplessly, the timbre thick and wet and physically disgusting to my child’s ear, for it takes many years on God’s earth to learn that what is truly human is never truly ugly.

I would have let the name go, but Addison, who hated chess, liked the sound of it and began to call me Misha, especially once he discovered how much it annoyed me; so did his many friends. I learned to love the nickname in self-defense. By the time I got to college, I rarely identified myself as anything else.

“But most people still call you Tal,” says the roller woman when I am done. “You reserve the name Misha for… mmmm, your very close friends.”

“What do you have, a file on me?”

“Something like that.”

“You being the good guys? Just not the great guys?”

She nods, and this time I laugh with her, and quite easily, not because anything either of us has said is amusing, but because the situation itself is absurd.

The waiter is back. Dessert orders occupy us: Peches Ninon for the lady, plain vanilla ice cream for the gentleman. He nods at Maxine’s order, frowns at mine. Maxine grins conspiratorially, as if to say, I know a nerd when I see one, but I like you just the way you are. Maybe her grin does not signify all that, but I still blush.

We talk on. Maxine’s previously raucous face grows somberly sympathetic.

She has led me, somehow, to the night Abby died, and I am reliving the wretched moment when my elegant mother, her hand shaking, answered the telephone in the kitchen, let out that horrible moan, and collapsed against the wall. I tell her how I stood alone in the hall, peering in the kitchen door, watching my mother wail and beat the phone against the counter, far too terrified to comfort her, because Claire Garland, like her husband, encouraged a certain emotional distance. In my adult lifetime, I have shared the story only with Kimmer and, in less detail, with Dana and Eddie, years ago, when the two of them were still married, and Kimmer and I were still happy. I have scarcely told it to myself. I am surprised, and a little annoyed, to find a catch in my voice and moisture on my cheeks.

We are walking now, the two of us, a pleasant stroll in the brisk air of an autumn evening on the Vineyard. We are sauntering along the deserted Oak Bluffs waterfront, for all the world a happy couple, passing the empty slips across from the Wesley Hotel, a gracefully sprawling Victorian behemoth built on the site of an earlier hotel of the same name, which perished by fire. The flat January water laps comfortably at the seawall. A few pedestrians pass us, headed toward town, but the harbor, like the rest of the Island in the off-season, has the texture of an uncompleted painting.

“I can’t tell you everything, Misha,” says Maxine, her handbag, gun and all, swinging gaily from her shoulder. Her arm is linked in mine. I am pretty sure she would let me hold her hand if I tried.

“Tell me what you can.”

“It might be easier if you tell me what you think. Maybe I can tell you if you’re hot or cold. And what I can’t tell you, you might be able to figure out for yourself.”

I think this over as we walk. After dinner, we stood a little too close to each other in the parking lot, sharing that odd reluctance to part that characterizes new lovers, as well as people who follow other people for a living. It was Maxine who suggested we drive to Oak Bluffs, although she refuses to tell me where she is staying. And so we did, the Suburban following me once more, along the Vineyard Haven Harbor, over the hill separating the two towns, and down again to the center of town. We both parked on the waterfront, across the street from the Wesley. I have no doubt that Maxine knows exactly where I live, but I do not want her anywhere near Vinerd Howse.

Call it an excess of marital caution.

“Well, handsome?” she prompts. “Are we gonna play or not?”

“Okay.” I take a breath. With darkness, the air has turned icy. “The first thing is, I think my father was involved in… something he shouldn’t have been.” I risk a glance at Maxine, but she is looking at the water. “I think that, somehow, he arranged for me to get some information about it after he died. Or somebody thinks he did.”

“I agree,” she says softly, and, for the first time in this mad search, I own an actual fact.

“I think that Colin Scott was looking for that information. I think he followed me because he hoped I would find my father’s… arrangements.”

“I agree.”

We walk on, headed toward East Chop, a wide outcropping dotted with shingled homes, more Cape Cod style than Victorian, many of them on high bluffs overlooking the water, most of them considerably more expensive than the houses closer to town. Kimmer and I briefly fell in love with a gorgeous house up there, three large bedrooms and a back yard opening onto the beach, but we did not have two million dollars to buy it. Probably it is just as well, given what has happened to us in the years since.

“Other people are also interested in the arrangements,” I suggest.

“I agree,” Maxine murmurs, but when I press her, she declines to be more specific.

I stare at East Chop Drive, which leads up to the old lighthouse and what used to be called the Highlands. At the foot of the bluffs is a private beach club. In the middle of the Chop is a private tennis club. East Chop, for all its crisp New England beauty, has a whiter feel than the rest of Oak Bluffs. Not many of the summer residents seem aware that East Chop was once the heart of the Island’s black colony.

“Colin Scott knew my father.”

“I agree.”

“He worked for my father. My father… paid him to do something.”

Silence.

I am disappointed, for I was trying, one last time, to discover that Colin Scott and Jonathan Villard were the same person, which would explain what Scott was doing in the foyer at Shepard Street, arguing with my father. But evidently not.

I hesitate, then try another tack. “Do you know what my father left for me?”

“No.”

“But you’re familiar somehow with the… clues.”

“Yes. But we aren’t sure what they mean.”

I try to think of another intelligent question to ask. We are in a little park full of brown grass, East Chop rising before us, downtown Oak Bluffs off to our right. The occasional car passes on East Chop Drive, which separates the park from the harbor.

“This island is lovely,” Maxine says unexpectedly, gripping my arm lightly with both her hands, her gaze on the distant shimmering water.

“I think so.”

“You’ve been coming here for how long? Thirty years? I can’t imagine-I mean, we didn’t have that kind of money.”

“We’ve always really been just summer people,” I explain, wondering whether Maxine appreciates the distinction. “And it wasn’t so expensive in the old days.”

“Your family had money, though.”

“We were just middle-class. But you were, too. A couple of professors.”

“They never got paid very much. And, besides, my father used to be what you’d call a high-stakes gambler. Only he wasn’t very good at it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He loved us. We lived in a big old house on the campus with about five dogs and ten cats. Sometimes we had birds. Our folks loved animals. And, like I said, they loved us.”

“Us?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Four brothers, one sister, nosey. I’m the youngest and the tallest.”

“The one who didn’t get any dates.”

“Well, I didn’t have my own car, so I couldn’t crash into anyone.” Not a great joke, but we both laugh anyway.

A companionable pause as we look out toward the water together. A yacht, an unexpected sight this time of year, is just motoring out, moving much too fast, but boat owners are like that. Few of the houses are showing any lights. Most are closed for the season. The promised storm never quite arrived, and the night sky is clear and cold and perfect.

The need to take Maxine in my arms has been creeping up on me all afternoon, and is suddenly very strong. I cover it with a shower of pointless questions.

“You don’t have much of an accent for somebody from the South.”

“Oh.” She nods but does not turn toward me. “I was educated in France, too, and I think I’ve said enough about that, thank you.”

Suggesting the need to propose a different subject. I feel like an incompetent gigolo at a cocktail party.

“So how did you get into this business?”

Maxine eyes me sideways again. “What business is that?”

“You know. Following people around.”

She shrugs, glancing at me in irritation, upset, perhaps, that I have broken the mood. Sometimes spouses must protect their marriages from their own baser instincts. “Please don’t think of it as following, Misha. Think of it as helping.”

“Helping? How are you helping?”

Maxine lets go of my jacket and turns to face me. “Well, for one thing, I can tell you when other people are following you.”

“Other people? You mean, like Colin Scott?”

“That’s correct.”

I think this over for a moment, then toss out the obvious objection. “But he’s dead.”

“Correct,” she agrees, then adds the most chilling words possible: “But, remember, he had a partner.” The silence resumes. We are walking back toward the Wesley again, an unspoken decision having turned us around, in more ways than one. Then Maxine raises the stakes higher still. “And there could be others, too.”

“Others?”

She points up the hill the way we came. “The same man passed us twice on a bicycle while we were back there. Maybe he was just riding up the hill and back down. Or maybe he was following us. No way to tell.” She turns and points back toward Vineyard Haven. “And there was a dark brown Chrysler minivan parked a block from the restaurant. Another car of the same description is parked down at the harbor, right now. It isn’t the same car, because it doesn’t have the same license plate and there was a nice little dent in the bumper of the one at the restaurant. You can change the plates, you can put in dents as a disguise, but it’s really hard to take them out that fast. So it isn’t the same car. But it easily could have been. Do you see what I mean? You won’t notice things like that. You’re not trained for it. I am.”

This viciously detailed recital has left me dizzy. Does Maxine suppose that she is reassuring me? I look out toward the water, where the yacht I noticed a moment ago is rounding the point. One rarely finds boats in the Oak Bluffs harbor once the Island shuts down, and I wonder whose side this one is on.

“What are you saying? Are we supposed to be a team?”

“I’m just showing you how I can help.”

“And so you’ll be watching my back?” I do not quite manage to hit the superior tone I am attempting. “Keeping me safe from all the bad guys?”

Maxine does not like this at all. She turns toward me, grips my shoulders once more in her strong hands. “Misha, listen to me. A lot of people might be interested in what arrangements your father left. And not all of them will settle for bumping into your car and taking you to lunch. They can’t do anything to hurt you. But they can certainly scare you.”

We both wait for this to sink in.

“Is my family in any danger?” I am thinking, Jamaica, call Kimmer and tell her to take Bentley and go stay with her relatives in Jamaica.

“No, Misha, no. Believe me, nobody is going to hurt you. Nobody is going to hurt your family. Mr. Ziegler has guaranteed it.”

“That’s all it takes?”

“In my world, yes.”

I knew this, of course. I just never quite believed it before. It is one thing to read about Uncle Jack’s power in the newspapers; it is something else to feel it in action, a protective cocoon around me and my family.

“Then what are you trying to say?”

“It’s the information that’s dangerous, Misha.” The conversation has returned to its starting point. “If it falls into the wrong hands-that’s the danger.”

“Which is why you think I should give it to you-whoever you are-instead of to Jack Ziegler.”

“Yes.”

“Do you work for… well, the government?” She shakes her head, smiling. “No, that’s right, you work for the good-but-not-great guys.”

“In a contest between us and Jack Ziegler, nobody is going to Heaven, but, yes, that’s still about right.”

“Except that you’re following me surreptitiously, and Uncle Jack is protecting me.”

“Maybe he’s following you too. Maybe I’m protecting you too.”

“I haven’t seen any sign-”

“Remember how he acted in the cemetery, Misha? Was that the way a man behaves when he has no stake in the outcome?”

“In the cemetery? You weren’t at the cemetery-”

“Yes, I was,” Maxine smiles, delighted to be one up on me again. “I was at the funeral too, sitting in the back row with a bunch of your relatives. They all thought I was somebody’s cousin.” The smile dims a bit, and I sense weariness now: she is tired of playing a role, tired of flirting, tired of the job. “You even hugged me over by the grave,” she adds softly. “It was a nice hug.”

I am a little surprised, as Maxine means me to be. But I am also undeterred.

“You still haven’t given me a reason to give the… the information to you. That is, if I ever find it.”

“You won’t take my word for it? I mean, I did buy you crab cakes.”

“And wrecked my car.”

“Just the bumper. And I offered to pay for it.”

When I remain silent, Maxine stops walking and grabs my arm again. We are in the parking lot of a tiny store that sells just about everything, from breakfast cereal to fine wine to the little stickers that allow you to put your trash at the curb for collection.

“Listen to me, Misha. I am not your enemy. You have to believe that. I told you that the people I’m working with aren’t saints. You might not invite them to dinner. But believe me when I say that, if they get their hands on what Angela’s boyfriend knows, whatever it turns out to be, they will destroy it. If Jack Ziegler gets his hands on it, he will use it. It’s as simple as that.” Her eyes seem to glow in the darkness. “You have to go back and find it, Misha. The clues are all there. It’s just that nobody else can figure them out. I think your father thought you would know right off who Angela’s boyfriend was. Your father was an intelligent man. A careful man. If he thought you knew, then you know. You just don’t know what you know.”

I shake my head in frustration. “Maxine, I have to tell you, I don’t have any idea what my father was talking about. I think he made a mistake.”

“Don’t say that! Don’t you ever say that!” Maxine seems fearful, looking around as though she expects to find somebody is listening in. “You do have an idea. Your father did not make a mistake.” Almost shouting as she corrects me.

I remove her hand from my wrist. “I’m too tired for all this. I think I might… I’ve been thinking of giving up the search.”

Her eyes grow wider and, if anything, more alarmed. “You can’t stop now, Misha. You just can’t. Nobody else can figure out the arrangements but you. So you have to do it. You have to. Please.”

Please?

“I see.” I keep my tone neutral. I do not want her to realize that this sudden lapse into supplication is more terrifying than anything else she has said. But Maxine detects my mood; I can see it in her intelligent face; and I can see her decide to let it go.

“I don’t think we’ll see each other again, Misha. That is, I don’t think you’ll see me. Not if I do my job right. I’ll be watching you, but you won’t know when. So just act natural, and assume I’m there to help.”

“Maxine, I-”

“I’m sorry about the money,” she hurries on. “That was clumsy. And it was insulting. It wasn’t to fix your bumper. And I had a lot more of it in my bag, just in case. I still do.” Her tone is wistful.

“In case what?”

“We heard somebody else was trying to buy the arrangements from you. Disguising it, maybe, as fees for speaking engagements, something like that.” I feel a chill but do not say a word. “So, anyway, I was actually supposed to… well, I was supposed to bribe you, Misha. I’m sorry, but it’s true. We know you’ve had certain financial pressures. And, um, domestic pressures, too. I was supposed to bribe you with money or… or, well, with whatever else it took.” Now it is her turn to blush and drop her eyes, and mine to feel a rising warmth I would rather keep at bay.

“Bribe me to do what?” I ask after a moment. We have arrived back at our cars. She takes her keys from her pocket and presses the button. The Suburban’s lights flash, the alarm bleeps off, and the doors unlock. I grab her arm. “Maxine, bribe me to do what?”

She stiffens at my touch. She is suddenly quite unhappy. I do not know whether it is just coincidence that every woman I meet seems to be depressed, or whether I make them that way.

“Bribe me to do what?” I ask a third time, dropping my hand. “To give whatever it is to you instead of Uncle Jack?”

Maxine has the door open and a foot on the running board. She answers me without turning around.

“I know your life has been difficult lately, Misha. I know some scary things have happened. A lot of people would decide to give up the hunt at this point. We heard you might be thinking about it.” She hesitates. “I guess the best way to put it is that I was supposed to do whatever it took to get you not to give up. To convince you to keep looking. But I don’t think you need to be bribed. I think you’re the kind who can’t let go. You’ll keep looking for him because you need to.”

“Looking for whom?”

“For Angela’s boyfriend.”

“And then what? Maxine, wait. Then what? If I find him, and if he tells me what my father wanted him to tell me, what am I supposed to do? I mean, suppose I agree with you? How do I get the information to you?”

Maxine is up in the seat of the Suburban now, ready to close the door on me. But she turns and looks straight into my eyes. I can see the mixture of exhaustion, irritation, even a little sadness. This day did not go precisely as she planned.

“First, handsome, you have to find him,” she says.

“And then?”

“Then I’ll find you. I promise.”

“But wait a minute. Wait. I’m out of ideas. I don’t know where to look.”

The roller woman shrugs and turns the key. The engine explodes into life. She looks at me again, her gaze clear and direct. “You might start with Freeman Bishop.”

“Freeman Bishop?”

“I think he was a mistake.”

“Wait. A mistake? What kind of mistake?”

“The bad kind, handsome. The bad kind.” Maxine closes the door and throws the Suburban into reverse. The car accelerates up the hill toward Vineyard Haven. I watch until the taillights vanish around the bend.

I am alone.