Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 37

The largest ego on the faculty is owned not by Dana Worth or Lemaster Carlyle or Arnie Rosen or even the recently humiliated Marc Hadley; no, it is the sole possession of my Oldie neighbor Ethan Brinkley. Little Ethan takes enormous pride in his achievements in advance, according to Dear Dana Worth, the faculty wit. That way, says Dana, he avoids the stress of worrying about whether he ever actually achieves them or not.

Over the years, Ethan has told everybody who will listen, and quite a few who would rather not, about the secret appendices he has stored around his office: photocopies of hundreds of files and reports that he somehow neglected to turn in when he ended his stint on the staff of the Intelligence Committee. Little Ethan, as Theo Mountain derisively calls him, likes to pepper conversations with delectable tidbits from the files, the identities of John Kennedy’s lovers, for instance, or the brand of Fidel Castro’s cologne. At times, it is a little like living with a budding J. Edgar Hoover. Stuart Land has told Ethan to his face that he should be in prison, and Lem Carlyle, the ex-prosecutor, has contemplated turning him in, but, so far, nobody has quite gotten up the nerve to do anything, even when Little Ethan, beguiling sprite that he can be, was a regular television guest during the Clinton impeachment proceedings, issuing vehement calls for a return of integrity to the federal government.

Ethan possesses considerable ambition, but no scintilla of either irony or shame. And so it is, on the first afternoon of the spring term, less than a week after the collapse of Marc’s hopes for the judgeship that now seems Kimmer’s for the taking, and one day after my debilitating conversation with Addison, that I stand in front of Ethan’s door, right across the dim hallway from mine. I am nervous, partly because Ethan and I are not remotely friends, but mostly because what I plan to ask of him is somewhat tricky. No, let me be truthful: what I plan to ask of him is probably against the law.

Not that mere illegality will bother Ethan Brinkley.

“Misha!” he booms when I step into his office. The little man bounds from behind his desk to give my hand a practiced pump. I have never invited Ethan to address me by my nickname, which is reserved for a handful of intimates, but he has heard Dana use it and adopted it as his own, assuming, in the manner of salesmen and politicians everywhere, that his choice to call me what he wants rather than what I want somehow cements our intimacy.

Actually, it offends me, but, as so often, I keep that fact to myself, confident that a secret time of reckoning will come.

A few pleasantries as Ethan waves me to a hard wooden chair. His office is the size of a large closet, and his two smallish windows on the longer wall look out on nothing except the next wing of the building. But the vista and the square footage will come with time, believes Ethan, whose ambition knows a certain patience, thus enabling him to take the long view. The day will arrive, Ethan told me in a careless moment well before he was voted tenure, when I am a power in this place.

He already has the swagger, muttered Dana when I shared this bon mot.

Ethan reads my mood. His face is composed and sympathetic as he settles himself on the chair next to mine. Another politician’s move: he does not sit across the desk from me, perhaps believing that it lends too much formality. Everything Ethan does is purposeful, designed to make people like him, and most people do. Some say he is already running for dean, ready to tilt against Arnie Rosen and Lem Carlyle for the job when Lynda Wyatt decides to retire. I am surprised that people think he is aiming so low.

Ethan is an athletic and clever little man, with untidy brown hair and innocent brown eyes. He favors scuffed shoes and tweed blazers just rumpled enough to assure the people that he is one of them, except that his rumpled blazers cost a thousand dollars a throw. His gaze never wavers from the face of the person he is talking to, or listening to, but you have the sense from the set of his small mouth and the deep frowning lines on his forehead that it is all show, that behind the ingenuous eyes he is calculating, move and countermove, like a chess player working out his response while your clock is ticking.

“So, Misha, what can I do for you?” Ethan asks, brown eyes twinkling, as though I do not have five years of seniority on him.

“I need some information that I think you might have.”

He almost smiles: Ethan is happiest when helping others, not because it excites his passion for charitable works, but because it leaves the people he helps in his debt. Little Ethan is spreading markers around the law school as fast as he can, teaching extra courses, attending every workshop, volunteering to write the committee reports no sane professor would touch, even showing up at the endless receptions for visiting assistant attorneys general from brand-new countries of which nobody has ever heard.

“Misha, you know me-anything for a buddy.”

I nod, then gather my courage, for I am making a leap, one I have been pondering ever since my return from the Vineyard, and one that was cemented by what my brother told me. So, with a silent prayer, I voice the name: “Colin Scott.”

Ethan frowns for a moment, not in distaste, but in concentration. His memory is part of his fast-growing legend. Our students are astonished by his ability to quote long passages from cases without troubling to look at a book or notes, a trick that most academics can do, but which Ethan renders with a certain implike flourish. And, if the truth is told, he has mastered the illusion far earlier in his career than most of us did.

“Rings a bell,” Ethan concedes. The sympathetic look is back. “What about him?”

I wave my hand toward his painstakingly organized and carefully locked cabinets. “I need to know whatever you know about him.”

“He’s dead.”

“I know that. I was on the Vineyard when it happened.”

“Were you, now? Were you? Well!” He stands up to head to the cabinet, but claps me on the back as he passes, somehow implying that we have been to war together, but only I have seen combat. I do not even mind the gesture, for it signals what I have been half hoping, half hating: that Colin Scott is mentioned somewhere deep in the files of the Select Committee on Intelligence. Which explains, among other things, why the FBI was so reluctant to give Meadows his name.

“Colin Scott,” he mutters, twirling the combination lock on one of the black metal monstrosities that line the far wall. “Colin Scott. You’re around here somewhere.” He makes a show of leafing slowly through the files, although I have no doubt that he knows exactly where to find whatever he knows about Mr. Scott, maybe because of his memory, or maybe because he would have had the folder out recently in order to add the information on Scott’s death.

“What do you think of this business about Marc?” Ethan asks over his shoulder as he piddles around in the drawer. “Think it’s true?”

“I don’t know.” I keep my voice neutral. Having spoken to Theo, I have little doubt that Marc did exactly what he is accused of doing, even though he has not yet formally taken his name out of the hat. But I am interested to see which way Ethan the great politician plans to jump. Ethan, who probably knows nothing of my wife’s candidacy, is noncommittal by nature. Since joining our ranks, he has avoided controversy the way a cat avoids water. He enjoys debating proposals of only two kinds: those that pass unanimously, and those that are withdrawn without a vote.

“It’s a sticky wicket,” Ethan agrees, for he decided somewhere along the way that the occasional Britishism, even if a mere cliche, makes him sound statesmanlike. “I suppose one wants to see all the evidence first, hmmm?”

“I suppose.”

“Mustn’t leap to conclusions. Very unscientific,” he admonishes. “Gotcha,” he adds, straightening up with a thin manila folder in his hand, and, for a silly instant, I imagine I am still in Theo’s office as he pulls out the proof of Marc Hadley’s sin.

“Colin Scott?”

Ethan nods. “The very same.” He walks back toward me, but this time he perches on the corner of his desk, which, like the rest of the office, is so neat that a casual visitor might be excused for supposing that no work goes on here. The obligatory photographs of his wife and infant daughter are so perfectly aligned that he must have used a ruler. The signed photographs of prominent Washington figures are quite a bit larger.

“Now, Misha, we have something of a problem here,” he begins apologetically, and I know a lecture on confidentiality is coming, for, although Ethan Brinkley possesses no ethics to speak of, he has the politician’s knack of talking as though he has plenty. “This information is technically the property of the federal government. If I were to show you this piece of paper, we could both wind up in prison.” Ethan’s bland face puffs up with pride at the idea that he controls so sensitive a document, even if he did steal it.

“I understand.”

“But I can tell you the contents.”

“Okay.” I see no legal difference between the two scenarios, and I doubt that Ethan does either, although he would doubtless swear under oath to a grand jury that he thought he was within the rules: If I don’t read the actual words on the page, if I only summarize or paraphrase, I am not precisely divulging the contents of the document, and so I’m outside the statutory prohibitions. Legal hairsplitting of that kind tends to make the public angry, but it is often a good way to escape responsibility for breaking the law. Politicians are fond of it, except when a member of the other party does it. We law professors teach it to our students every day as though it is a virtue.

“Colin Scott, Colin Scott,” he muses, pretending to read it all for the first time. “Not a very nice man, our Colin.”

“Oh? Not nice in what way?”

Ethan will not be hurried. He hates to relinquish center stage, even for a second, and is constantly rehearsing for the big chance that is on its way.

“He was with the Agency, of course. Well, you knew that.” I didn’t know, not for sure, and not even Uncle Mal, who knows everything, saw fit to tell me, but if the fact were a complete surprise, I would not be here. Still, the confirmation is a second strike against Mallory Corcoran. “A long time,” Ethan continues. “Mmmm. Foreign postings.. . Well, I don’t suppose I can tell you that. He was there in the old days, when they used to have what was known as the Plans Directorate. I see you never heard of it. Nice euphemism, isn’t it? They call it Operations now. The people who are out there, overseas, doing things. Well, well.” Still examining his pages. “This was back in the sixties, Misha. Large blank areas, pretty large. Not unusual with the gentlemen from Plans. Don’t know the full scope of his activities. But he was dirty, and the Agency dumped him. This must have been… yes, after the Church hearings. New broom and all that. He was old-school. A dangerous man to have around.”

“Why dangerous?”

But elfin Ethan prefers to dole out his precious little surprises one by one and wait for a reaction. “Colin Scott is not his real name, you know.”

“As a matter of fact I didn’t know, but I can’t exactly say I’m astonished.” When I am around Ethan, I seem to lapse into the same portentous constructions that are his only means of communication.

“It’s one of his names, of course,” Ethan presses on. “He has several. Look at this. Mmmm, yes. You see, Scott was a name they gave him, along with a new identity, after he was drummed out of the Agency. Set him up, let’s see, yes, he opened a little detective agency in South Carolina. Well, you knew that. But South Carolina was not his first stop post-Agency, and Scott was his second new name. Seems some old friends, not the friendly kind, rumbled to his old one. His old new one, I mean.”

“You mean enemies.”

“Well, yes.” Ethan is annoyed that I have broken into his narrative. He is having fun teasing me.

“What was his real name?”

“Oh, Misha, naturally, if it were up to me I would tell you, but, you know, national security and all that. Sorry, but rules are rules.” Apologizing self-importantly. All at once this mystery is awash in people who could help me understand what is going on but climb up on their principles to explain their refusal.

“What did he do in the Agency?” I ask, really just to keep the conversation going; in truth, I have just about run out of ideas.

“He floated.” Ethan smiles at my blank look. He loves jargon. “He was in Plans, as I told you, but he also worked for Angleton, who ran counterintelligence until he cracked up. Later on he did a little of the paramilitary thing in Laos, had lots of contacts up in the Shans-well, let me not bore you with any of these details. Point is, if there was a whiff of Communism, a fire to be put out, Mr. Scott was the kind they called. Not a fanatic, mind you. Not a Bircher or some such. That kind tends to go into politics, not intelligence, and, in truth, intelligence doesn’t really want them. No, our Mr. Scott was more your spear-carrier. One of your technocrats, let’s call him that. Totally devoted to getting the job done. The kind who followed orders, even if the orders were, shall we say, not the sort of thing that should ever see the light of day. A dangerous man, as I said, for just that reason. Past his time, of course. Dinosaur. Relic of an era the passing of which we do not exactly lament.” Implying that we do not exactly lament his death, either, whoever we are.

And implying something else, something I have feared but buried almost from the night when Uncle Mal first told me that Agent McDermott was a fraud; a fear that wakened rudely when I heard Sally’s story; a fear that clawed its way to the surface once Addison explained that dollar was really daughter.

“You’re saying he… uh, he killed people.”

“I cannot confirm that, of course,” says Ethan primly. “Let us just say that he is, or, rather, was, a dangerous man.”

I mull this over. A dangerous relic, a dinosaur, drummed out of the Agency, talking to my father in his study in the middle of the night, the Judge telling him that there are no rules where a daughter is concerned. A daughter, not a dollar. Then showing up a quarter-century later, pretending to be in the FBI, looking frantically for something or other, maybe trashing Vinerd Howse, then drowning at Menemsha Beach.

I am overlooking something, and I have a hunch it is something obvious.

Then I have it.

“Just one more question, Ethan. When exactly was Mr. Scott, or whatever his name was, thrown out of the Agency?”

Ethan assumes a pious pose. “Oh, well, I hardly think it would be proper for me to share actual dates with you, Misha. The law, is, well, the law is what it is.”

“But it was after the Church hearings, right? And the Church hearings were-when?-’74? ’75?”

“Around then, yes.”

So Colin Scott was already out of the Agency by the time Sally and Addison heard him arguing with the Judge. About daughters, not dollars.

Already out of the Agency. Recently out of the Agency. Bitter? Desperate? Ready to be seduced by Jack Ziegler’s rantings? And by the chance to-

“Ethan, one last thing.”

“Anything, Misha. Anything within the law, that is.”

“When the Agency first set him up as a private detective, where was that?”

“Maryland. Potomac, Maryland. Right across the river from Langley, you see.”

“And what name did he use then?”

“Oh, well, I hardly think-”

“Never mind.” I am on my feet. I cannot sit here for another second. “Thank you, Ethan. You’ve been helpful. If you ever need anything.”

“I appreciate that, Misha, I really do,” he murmurs, all the sympathy back on his face as he offers that practiced political handshake once more.

I cross the hall on rubbery legs, unlock my office, slam the door behind me, and collapse into one of the shaky side chairs. I lack the strength to make it to my desk, so I will have to weep here.

For now I know what should have been obvious, what I should have understood all along but suddenly can see with a horrid crystal clarity. Colin Scott, also known as Special Agent McDermott, indeed used the name, sometime earlier in life, of Jonathan Villard. When he had to disappear, the Agency created the story of Villard’s death from cancer.

No wonder the police have no copy of Villard’s report. Maybe the Judge never gave it to them. Maybe he never intended to. Maybe he lied to the family when he said otherwise.

My father’s opponents were right from the start. He did not deserve a seat on the Supreme Court. But not for the reasons they thought: not because he had too many lunches with Jack Ziegler or, their true motive, because of his disagreeable political views.

They were right because the Judge knew Colin Scott.

They were right because, when Abby died and the police failed, the Judge did not simply hire a detective.

He hired a killer.