Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 44

I have visited the small and stunningly rich community of Aspen, Colorado, three times in my life, the first time on a ski vacation with my old college friends John and Janice Brown, back before Bentley was born, a misbegotten expedition in which I sprained my ankle quite badly on the very first day, in the very first hour of my very first lesson, and so spent the remaining four days alone in the tiny condo, the world’s thickest snowflakes swirling outside, the television cable failing intermittently, and the fireplace too grimy to be of use, as John and Janice, veterans of the sport, went streaking down the slopes, and Kimmer, who used to ski in her college days at Mount Holyoke but hardly ever since meeting dull me, reconnected with her lost skill. On that first visit, the bumpy, prayer-inducing descent in the turboprop persuaded me that the four-hour drive from Denver up through the Rockies, high, winding, fenceless passes and all, was the less intimidating choice. Indeed, I swore at the time that I would never fly to Aspen again. So, for my next two trips, both to attend excellent seminars at the Aspen Institute-one with Kimmer, one without-I rented a car at the Denver airport and drove up.

But there are such things as blizzards that bury mountain highways, and the only way to be sure the roads are always open is to stay away from the mountains unless it is summer. Since that first trip, John and Janice have often invited us to join them on the slopes, or even to use their time-share when they can’t. Kimmer has gone twice, once with the Browns and once, just last year, ostensibly alone: “Some time apart to think will do us both some good, Misha, honey.” I have stayed home both times, honoring my oath never again to try to get into Aspen in the winter. But the Lord, we all know, has ways of confounding proud mortals who swear oaths too lightly. So here it is February, and here I am on my way to Aspen in another snowstorm, flying in defiance of my own rules, the small jet buffeted by the gusty Rocky Mountain winds, the skiers drinking hard, the rest of us turning green.

The plane lands safely, and, by the time we roll to a stop, the mid-afternoon sky even begins to clear. It occurs to me, as I scurry across the tarmac to the small but modern terminal building, that the people who live here year-round are not as crazy as I have always thought. The snow-dappled mountains are gorgeous in the winter sunlight, which picks out the details with a crystal clarity. The evergreens marching toward the summit are, if anything, more dramatic in February than in August, like winter-weather troops wearing green-and-white alpine uniforms. Most of my fellow passengers are wearing uniforms too, after a fashion, and their brightly colored ski parkas look very serious indeed.

I have time to savor this vision only until I turn toward the baggage claim area and find waiting there the lean bodyguard I remember from the cemetery, whom I know only as Mr. Henderson. The temperature is in the teens-the very low teens-but he is wearing only a light wind-breaker. He summons a dazzling smile and even a few words: “Welcome to Aspen, Professor,” delivered in an eerily familiar voice, a voice so sleek, so velvetly delicious, that I can readily imagine anybody he tries to seduce sliding willingly downward to oblivion. Yet there is nothing of the voluptuary about Mr. Henderson. He is, instead, rather standoffish-as a good sentinel surely must be-as well as alert, energetic, feline in his compact grace, somehow complete.

“Thank you for meeting me,” I reply.

Mr. Henderson nods politely. He does not offer to take my bag.

Moving on remarkably light feet, he leads me out to the car, which, this being Aspen in winter, is a silver Range Rover. He reminds me to buckle my seat belt. He tells me in his sinuous voice that Mr. Ziegler has been looking forward to renewing our acquaintance. All of this while, apologizing for the necessity, he runs a hand-held metal detector over my clothes and then, when I assume the indignities are done, repeats this activity with a small rectangular device complete with LED digital readout, perhaps to discover whether I am broadcasting. I keep my tongue in check: the meeting, after all, was my idea. “It will take us half an hour or so to get up to the property,” Mr. Henderson says as we pull out of the parking lot. Not the house, I register. Not the estate. The property. A good Rocky Mountain word.

I nod. We exit the airport onto Route 82, which parallels the Roaring Fork River into the town of Aspen. At first the scenery is broad white fields and scattered houses and the occasional gas station or convenience store, always against the backdrop of some of the most glorious mountains in North America, which frame the valley on every side. Then the clusters of dwellings grow thicker… and, on the distant highlands, noticeably larger. Bunched townhouses announce the city limits. Even before entering the town, one can see, to the north, the garish homes along the ridges of Red Mountain, looming over the town like a kitschy reminder of the yawning chasm between money and taste. Then we are inside Aspen proper, home to what might be the most expensive real estate in the United States. I watch the town pass by, almost too neat and picturesque in its bright frame of sun and snow. As always, I gawk at the tiny, perfect Victorians of the West End, painted a happy variety of earth tones, each selling at probably ten times what the same building, on a larger lot, would bring in Elm Harbor. Realtors refer to the Aspen housing market as “sticker shock for the rich,” swapping gleeful stories of well-to-do couples who break down in tears upon realizing how little a four-or five-million-dollar nest egg will buy. It is said that one of every eleven year-round residents works at least part-time selling real estate, and no wonder. A single six-percent commission can make your year. The median price of a home in Aspen is more than two million dollars, which is perhaps a fifth of what the medium-sized estates on Red Mountain fetch. On the mountain, prices of twenty million or more are not uncommon.

Jack Ziegler lives on Red Mountain.

The Range Rover sails into downtown Aspen, where every pedestrian seems to be carrying skis. The police wear jeans and drive sport-utility vehicles or sky-blue Saabs. Mr. Henderson steers swiftly and confidently through the snow. The only American cars I see are Jeeps and Explorers and Navigators. We pass a couple of filling stations, then three or four short blocks of restaurants, town offices, and shops. In the center of town, we hang a sharp left, turning north. (For some reason, maps of Aspen are usually drawn upside down, with Red Mountain, which lies to the north, at the bottom, and Aspen Mountain, which lies to the south, at the top.) We pass one of the town’s two supermarkets, cross a short bridge, take another sharp left, and, suddenly, we are climbing the winding road that is the only way up Red Mountain.

“I assume the meeting is just the two of us,” I say.

“As far as I know.” His battle-hard gray eyes never leave the road. I realize that Mr. Henderson has not given me quite the reassurance I need, perhaps because I did not ask quite the right question.

“Nobody else knows I’m coming?”

“Oh, I would guess that everybody does.”

“Everybody?”

“Mr. Ziegler is a popular man,” he says cryptically, and I realize that I am not going to get any more information than I already have, but what I already know is enough to keep my nerves humming.

The Range Rover corners hard to the right at a switchback and then, moments later, hard to the left at another. All around us lies the tawdry evidence of the madness of the nouveaux riches. To describe the mansions surrounding us as large does not quite capture the phenomenon of Red Mountain. They are immense testaments to misspent wealth, decorated with enough multi-tiered fountains, tennis courts under all-weather bubbles, four-car garages, turrets, indoor pools, and terrorist-proof gates to fill several museums, as perhaps in the future they will-the Museum of American Waste, our grandchildren’s grandchildren might decide to call it. Further confirmation, my favorite student, Crysta Smallwood, would likely say, of the determination of the white race to destroy itself-in this case, by spending itself to death.

The Range Rover makes another sharp turn, and suddenly we are facing a heavy gate and Mr. Henderson is whispering seductively into a speaker along the side of the road. A tiny light turns green, and the gate rolls back. A wide, unmarked road stretches upward. At first, I imagine that we are entering Jack Ziegler’s estate, which I have never seen but have always imagined to be sprawling and walled. I realize a moment later that I am mistaken. We are inside a private development, a subdivision for people whose wealth is in nine figures. Mailboxes are all clustered together near the entrance, and, moments later, individual driveways appear. The houses are no smaller than elsewhere on the mountain, but they are quieter somehow, less gaudy, their residents concerned more with privacy than showing off. Turning a wide corner, we pass a Grand Cherokee marked with the logo of a private security firm, and the two hard white faces inside look more like Green Berets than ordinary rent-a-cops.

We are in a cul-de-sac. The second driveway on the right is Jack Ziegler’s.

Uncle Jack lives in what is sometimes called an upside-down house, because you enter on the top floor. From the outside, it is rather unpretentious, flat and rectangular with unassuming stucco walls and a garage that holds a mere three cars. But the secret, it turns out, is on the inside. We are admitted to the house by another quiet bodyguard, this one named Harrison, who is very nearly Henderson’s twin, not in appearance but in behavior, for their affects are as confusingly similar as their names. The marble-floored entry hall is actually a balcony from which one looks down into the main part of the house; the dwelling is built into the side of Red Mountain, and to descend the stairs to the lower level, which is where they lead me, is to descend the mountain itself. The windows looking out on the town below and Aspen Mountain beyond are two stories high. The view is alarmingly beautiful.

I do not generally suffer from vertigo, but as I pick my way down the stairs I cannot resist the sensation that I am strolling into thin air, right off the side of the cliff, and one of the interchangeable bodyguards seizes my upper arm because I begin to sway.

“Everyone has that reaction at first,” Mr. Henderson says kindly.

“Almost everyone,” corrects his partner, who looks like a man who has never been dizzy in his life. Harrison is skinny, the wide receiver to Henderson’s linebacker. I would figure Henderson as the intimidator, Harrison as the silent killer. They share the same dead eyes and cold, pale stare. But my imagination is running away with me: Uncle Jack is, after all, retired.

From whatever.

“Don’t let the illusion deceive you,” adds Henderson in his smooth voice, as though reciting to a group of tourists. “There is plenty of solid rock underneath us, and the ground outside is mostly flat.” He points toward the window, probably to indicate a lawn, but I am unable to follow his gesture without having my head begin to reel.

“Mr. Ziegler will be with you momentarily,” Harrison grumbles before trudging off down one of the two hallways that run from the immense ground-floor room into the wings of the house.

“Perhaps you should sit down,” Henderson suggests, gesturing toward the several seating arrangements in the vast room: one white leather, another some brown tweed fabric, a third a bright floral print, all sharply distinct, yet blending somehow into a harmonious whole.

“No, I’m fine,” I assure him, speaking for the first time since entering the house, and pleased that my voice is steady.

“May I offer you something to drink?”

“I’m fine,” I repeat.

“At altitude, it is important to stay hydrated, especially the first few days.”

I look up at him, wondering if he is after all, as I first suspected on the day we buried the Judge, not a bodyguard but a nurse.

“Nothing, thank you.”

“Very well,” says Henderson, withdrawing down a different hallway from the one that swallowed Harrison, and suddenly I am alone in the lair of the beast. For Jack Ziegler, I have come to realize, is not simply a source of information about the misery that has overtaken my family; he is, in some sense, its author. Where, after all, would my father turn if he wanted to hire a killer? There was really only one possibility, and that is the reason I am here.

I circle the room, admiring the art, pausing here and there, waiting. In the air is the scent of something zesty-paprika, perhaps-and I wonder whether Uncle Jack plans to offer me lunch. I sigh. I do not want to stay very long in this house. I do not want to stay very long in this town. My preference would be to talk to Uncle Jack and immediately leave again, but the depressing magic of time zones and the mundane obstacle of finding a flight out have combined to make that impossible. Uncle Jack, fortunately, made no offer to put me up for the night, and our rickety family budget would never bear the price of an Aspen hotel room in the high winter season, even were one available. So I have arranged to use John and Janice’s time-share for this one night; it isn’t their week, but they ascertained that it would be vacant and switched with whoever is scheduled to occupy it.

Other than my wife, nobody in Elm Harbor knows that I have made this trip. I hope to keep it that way. I am not technically exceeding the rules Dean Lynda laid down-it is Friday, so I am missing no classes-but I do not imagine she would be thrilled to discover that I have flown off to visit… the man I have flown off to visit. Being the helpful fellow I am, I would rather not add needless complications to Lynda’s job. So I am not planning to tell her.

I glance at the window again, but the view is as disturbing as ever, and I hastily turn away to continue my circuit of the room. I pause in front of the fireplace, where the wall is dominated by a huge oil painting of Uncle Jack’s late wife, Camilla, the one he is supposed to have killed, or had killed. The portrait is at least seven feet high. Camilla wears a flowing white gown, her jet-black hair piled on her head, her pale face surrounded by an unearthly light, probably in an effort to suggest an angelic nature. It reminds me of those idealized paintings of the Renaissance, when the artists took care to make their patrons’ wives glow. I am willing to bet that the portrait was done after Camilla’s violent death, for the artist appears to have worked from a blown-up photograph, so that the result appears not so much ethereal as fake.

“Not one of his better works, is it?” sighs Jack Ziegler from behind me.

I do not startle easily. I do not startle now. I do not even turn around. I lean over to squint at the artist’s name, but it is an illegible scrawl.

“It’s not bad,” I murmur generously, pivoting to face Abby’s godfather, and recalling the answer that ended my father’s chance for the Supreme Court. I don’t judge my friends based on rumors, he said when they asked about Camilla; then he folded his arms, signaling his contempt for the audience.

Jack Ziegler’s arms are folded, too.

“He’s not a real artist anyway,” Jack Ziegler continues, dismissing the painting with a flap of one trembling hand. “So famous, so honored, yet he paints my wife for money.”

I nod, not sure, now that I am facing Uncle Jack, quite how to proceed. He stands before me in bathrobe and bedroom slippers, his face thinner and grayer than before, and I wonder whether he has more than a few months left. But his eyes remain bright-mad and gleeful and alert.

Jack Ziegler slips his skinny arm into mine and conducts me slowly around the room, evidently assuming that in my desperation, or perhaps my fear, I will be fascinated by what his illicitly obtained wealth has purchased. He points to a lighted display case holding his small but impressive collection of incunabula, some of them doubtless on Interpol watch lists. He shows me a small tray of magnificent Mayan artifacts that the government of Belize certainly does not know have left the country. He turns me to look back the way I came in. The wall below the balcony is covered by a huge fabric hanging, all multicolored vertical lines that attract and confuse the eye. There is a pattern hidden there, and the brain’s stubborn determination to work it out holds the gaze. The piece is enormously beautiful. Uncle Jack tells me with unfeigned pride that it is a genuine Gunta Stolzl, and I nod admiringly, even though I have no earthly idea who, or even what sex, Gunta Stolzl is, or was.

“So, Talcott,” he wheezes when our guided tour of his little museum is over. We are standing before the window once more, neither of us wanting to be the one to begin. As we measure each other, recessed ceiling speakers bark the hard musical edges of Sibelius’s Finlandia, which has always struck me, despite its energetic pretensions, as one of the most depressing compositions in the classical repertoire. But it is perfect for the moment.

When I say nothing, Uncle Jack coughs twice, then moves swiftly onward: “So, you are here, you have made it, I am pleased to see you, but time is short. So, what can I do for you? You said on the telephone that the matter was urgent.”

At first, I can manage only a nervous “Yes.” To see Jack Ziegler so close up, his near-twin bodyguards waiting in the wings, his eyes glittering, not quite mad but not quite sane, waiting impatiently for me to explain myself, is quite different from sitting on an airplane planning how the dialogue will go.

“You said you had some trouble.”

“You could say that.”

“You said that.”

Again I hesitate. What I am experiencing is not so much fear as a reluctance to commit myself; for, once I enter upon a serious conversation with Uncle Jack, I am not sure I can pull free of him.

“As you might or might not know, I’ve been looking into my father’s past. What I’ve found has been… disturbing. And then there are other things, things that have happened over the past couple of months, which are also disturbing.”

Jack Ziegler stares silently. He is prepared, it would seem, to wait all afternoon and into the night. He does not feel threatened. He does not feel afraid. He does not seem to feel anything -which is part of his power. I wonder afresh whether he really murdered his own wife, and whether he felt anything at all if he did it.

“People have been following me,” I blurt out, feeling idiotic, and when Uncle Jack still refuses to be drawn, I simply tell the whole story, from the moment he left me in the cemetery to the fake FBI agents to the white pawn to Freeman Bishop’s murder to Colin Scott’s drowning at Menemsha to the book that mysteriously reappeared. I omit Maxine, perhaps because keeping at least one secret in the face of Jack Ziegler’s demanding glare is all the victory I am likely to win.

When he is sure that I am finished, Uncle Jack shrugs his shoulders.

“I do not know why you are telling me this,” he says gloomily. “I assured you on the day of your father’s burial that you are in no danger. I will protect you as I promised Oliver I would. You and your family both. I keep my promises. Nobody will harm you. Nobody will harm your family. It is impossible. Completely impossible. I have seen to it.” He shifts his weight, evidently from physical pain. “Chess pieces? A missing book? Men hiding in the woods?” He shakes his head. “These are not disturbing, Talcott. I had frankly hoped for better from you.”

“But the men who got their fingers cut off…”

“I will protect you, ” he emphasizes, flapping a hand, and I comprehend instantly that I may not step another inch down that road. For a harrowing instant, I know true fear. “You and your family. As long as I live.”

“I understand.”

“If these men truly accosted you, I would think their misfortune was a sign that you are truly safe.” Jack Ziegler lets his meaning sink in. Then his bleary eyes find mine. “I had hoped you were here with news of the arrangements.”

I pause. There is opportunity here, I can sense it, if I can only get my creaky brain back into operation. “Not news exactly. But I think I might be on the track.”

Once more I hesitate to press forward. If I complete the thought, I am committed to my path. I made my decision long before landing in Aspen, but between the decision and the act God has placed the will; and the will is quite sensitive to terror.

Still Abby’s godfather waits.

“But, well, if you could just explain a couple of things to me-well, things would be so much easier.” I am annoyed at myself. Just as in the cemetery, I am tongue-tied in Uncle Jack’s presence. I suppose I have reason: Jack Ziegler is a murderer many times over, an efficient broker in just about every illegal substance, a middleman to the underworld, with connections to organized crime so complex, so neatly obscured, that nobody has ever quite succeeded in tracking them down.

Yet everybody knows they are there.

“A couple of things,” he repeats, promising nothing. I notice a line of perspiration along his forehead. His hands as he brushes it away betray a slight tremor, and his eyes intermittently lose their focus. An attack of nerves? His illness? “A couple of things,” he says again.

I nod, swallow, steal a glance out the window, this time without quite feeling like I am tumbling off the mountain-but still I cannot figure out how the house stays up.

I look back at Jack Ziegler again, and I realize, from the fact that he is waiting with so much patience, from the fact that he agreed to see me at all, that he is every bit as needy as I am. So my voice is calmer and more certain when I say: “First, I was wondering if you saw my father, oh, about a year and a half ago. A year ago last October. Around then.”

His eyes cloud again, and I realize he is actually trying to remember. “No,” he says at length. “No, I think not. At that time I would still have been in Mexico for my treatments.” He sounds uncertain, not deceptive. Still, it is hard to be sure. “Why?”

“I just wondered.” Realizing this sounds ridiculous, I reinterpret it. “I… heard a rumor, I guess.”

“And is that why you came all this way, Talcott? To chase down a rumor?”

“No.” Time to roll the dice. “No, Uncle Jack, I came because I want to ask you about Colin Scott.”

“And who, please, is Colin Scott?”

I hesitate. Colin Scott, I know from Ethan Brinkley, had several names, and there is no reason to think Jack Ziegler knows them all. On the other hand, if, as I suspect, he has been keeping tabs on my life these last few months, he can hardly have failed to hear the name once or twice.

“Colin Scott,” I repeat. “He used to be called Villard. Jonathan Villard. He was a private detective. My father hired him to find out who was in the car that killed Abby. Your goddaughter.”

Now it is Jack Ziegler’s turn to hesitate. He is trying to work out how much I know and how much I am guessing and how much he can hide. He does not like being vulnerable to me, and his willingness to show me this calculating side suggests that he wants my help.

“And?” he asks.

“I think you used to know him in the CIA.”

“And?”

“And you had to be the one who put my father in contact with him.”

“And?” Not even telling me if I am hot or cold. There is a wheeze in his voice, wet and sickly. He puts a hand flat over his chest, then bursts into a fit of phlegmy coughing, doubling over. Instinctively, I take his arm, which, beneath the bathrobe, has melted away almost to the bone. Harrison is next to us in an instant, gently removing my fingers, guiding Uncle Jack to the sofa, handing him a tall glass of water.

Jack Ziegler gulps the water, and the coughing subsides.

“Please sit down, Professor,” the wiry Harrison orders gravely. His voice is a reedy chirp, and I look twice to make sure he really is the tough guy he obviously wants to appear. I examine his shoulders and decide that he is.

I sit as commanded, on a spindly chair across from the scariest man I know. Harrison proffers a pill, which Uncle Jack waves peevishly away. Harrison’s outstretched hand might be carved from stone. Uncle Jack glares but finally yields, swallowing the pill, swigging the water.

Harrison withdraws.

Could he, too, be a nurse? Am I imagining too much? I glance at the infamous Jack Ziegler, slumped on the gorgeous sofa, spittle on his dry lips, his hand waving feebly, but not in time to the music. Why was I so afraid of him? He is sick, he is dying, he is scared. I look around the room. Not a museum, a mausoleum. My heart is seized with an unexpected wave of pity for the man huddled across from me. We sit in silence for a few minutes, or, rather, we sit without talking: Finlandia has been replaced by what sounds like Wagner, although I am unable to identify the piece. Jack Ziegler leans back on the sofa, his eyes closed.

“Please excuse me, Talcott,” he whispers without moving. “I am not yet recovered.” He does not say from what.

“I understand.” I pause, but I am too well bred to avoid what I must say next: “If it would be easier for you, I can come back another time.”

“Nonsense.” Another cough, not as loud, but dry and rattling and obviously painful. He opens his eyes. “You are here, you have come this great distance, you have questions. You may ask.” Although I may not answer, he is telling me.

“Colin Scott,” I say again.

Jack Ziegler blinks, his eyes watery and ancient and mildly confused. I try to remember all the crimes he is supposed to have committed, all the connections with the Mafia, with the arms dealers and the drug lords and other people whose livelihood depends on the misery of others. But I am finding it difficult to recall why this doddering old man seemed so scary a moment ago. I remind myself about the men whose hands were mutilated after they attacked me, but it stirs less horror than before.

“What about him?” Uncle Jack finally says, blinking hard.

“I don’t think my father paid him. There don’t seem to be any canceled checks in my father’s papers.” I decided before I ever set foot in this house to leave Mariah out of it. Best that Abby’s godfather find it necessary to kill no more than one of Abby’s siblings.

“What was it for which your father failed to pay?”

“For the work he did. Tracking down the sports car.” I swallow, my uneasiness building afresh as his face strengthens once more, but the time for caution was before I lifted the receiver to call Jack Ziegler in the first place. “My father didn’t pay him for his work.”

“So?”

This single syllable possesses an affect heretofore missing: a sleeping beast seems to be slowly waking, and Jack Ziegler does not seem nearly so doddering.

“I don’t imagine he worked for free,” I say carefully.

“So?”

My fear is creeping back, stroking my back and thighs with chilly fingers. Somehow, Uncle Jack has altered the temperature of our conversation.

“I think… I think you paid him. Paid the detective.”

“I paid him?” The coal-black eyes are sharper now, and my stomach is touched by the same twisting unease I felt when I was a child on the Vineyard and my father gave me a torch and ordered me to burn a hornets’ nest Mariah had discovered in the eaves above the porch. I knew then that unless I got every one of them I was going to be stung. A lot.

“That’s what I think.”

“That I paid this Scott for his work for your father.” Jack Ziegler enunciates the words slowly and clearly, as though offering me the opportunity to retract my testimony.

“Yes.” I may be stirring the hornets, but at least my voice is calm.

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because you and my father were old friends. Because you were his daughter’s godfather.” I force the next words out, knowing he will never tell me which version is true. “Or maybe you helped him because you… you wanted my father to owe you a favor. A favor you could later ask him to repay.”

Jack Ziegler makes the spitting sound I recall from the cemetery. His long fingers stroke the dying flesh of his chin.

“Maybe there are no checks to the late Mr. Scott because your father did not pay him anything. Maybe he did not pay him anything because Mr. Scott did not work for him.”

“I don’t think that’s it. I think there are reasons why my father could not write him checks. I think that Mr. Scott… well, let’s say he didn’t exactly have the kind of background with which a federal judge could afford to be associated.”

“So?”

“So my father had to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Maybe, even then, he was thinking about the Supreme Court.” When this evokes nothing but the same hard-eyed stare, I continue. “Besides, I’m not even sure my father could have afforded to pay him. Not on a federal judge’s salary, especially in those days.”

Jack Ziegler is wonderfully relaxed. “What else do you think, Talcott? This is really quite intriguing.”

I hesitate, but it is a little late to turn back.

“I think Colin Scott did do a report about the accident. I think he figured out who did it. I think he gave it to my father. But I don’t think my father ever took it to the police, did he? I think, when he saw what was in it, he asked Mr. Scott to do something for him, and, when he said no, my father brought the report to you and asked for your help.”

I stop. The next words simply will not emerge. It is not that I am too frightened to speak them; it is that I am less sure than I was two hours ago that I want to know the answer.

But Jack Ziegler refuses to let me avoid the rest. “You say your father came to me for my help? I see. And what is it that you suppose happened then?”

Well, this is what I flew up the mountain to discuss. This is the moment toward which I have been working, through all the conversations with Wallace Wainwright and Lanie Cross and all the memories I have teased from Sally and Addison and even Mariah, through all the evidence I have assembled, with and without their help, up to and including the missing scrapbook. If I am not going to say it, all the months of work are wasted. So is the trip to Aspen.

To be sure, if I do say it, there is a nontrivial possibility that I will never see my wife and child again. But I have, as so often, the courage of the fool.

“I think, somehow, you got Colin Scott to… to take care of the problem for him.”

So there, finally, it is out in the open.

Jack Ziegler shakes his head slowly, and a bit sadly, but his eyes angle away from me, gazing out on the vertiginous view. “Take care of it?” He snickers. Then coughs. “You sound like a bad movie. Take care of what?”

“You know what I mean, Uncle Jack.”

“I know what you mean, Talcott, and, frankly, I am insulted by it.”

His tone is low, almost caressing, and it chills me. Once again, something vaguely threatening thickens the air between us.

“I’m not trying to-”

“You are accusing your father of a crime, Talcott. You use silly euphemisms, but that is what you are doing, eh? You think your father paid this man Scott to do a murder.” He is growing less and less simple by the moment. “That is bad enough. But now you are accusing me of helping him.”

Once you stir the nest, the Judge told me, you had better keep on burning, because you can never outrun the hornets if they get loose.

“Look, Uncle Jack, I know how you make your living.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” His mouth puckers and he holds up a twisted hand. He pokes a shriveled finger in my face. “Oh, I know, I know, you think you know. Everybody thinks they know. They read the newspapers and those imbecilic books and whatnot. Those fool committee reports. But nobody really knows. Nobody.” He struggles to his feet. I have the good sense, for once, not to offer to help. “Come with me, Talcott, I want to show you something.”

I follow him as he pads in his slippers across the long room, passing in front of that amazing window with the dizzying, panoramic view of Aspen, and out into the stainless-steel kitchen, where a stout Slavic woman is preparing lunch. Now I see the source of that zesty smell, for she is pouring powder into a pot. My host snarls at her in some language I do not recognize, and she smiles thinly and disappears. The back wall of the kitchen shares the same view through huge windows. On the far side, the room opens into a greenhouse. I follow Jack Ziegler inside, where a bewildering variety of plants perfume the air. I wonder how the intermixing aromas affect the taste of the food.

“Look,” says Uncle Jack, pointing at something on the other side of the glass wall. “See what I mean? Everybody.”

Now it is my turn to be confused. “Uh, everybody what?”

“Everybody thinks they know. Look!”

I look. I throw a serious expression on my face, hoping Uncle Jack will mistake my befuddlement for concentration, as I have not the faintest idea what he is talking about. I follow the path of his trembling finger. I see his sweeping lawn, the crisp snow sparkling in the rich mountain sun, I see high hedges, and the narrow road winding upward toward the ever-more-ostentatious homes of film producers and software entrepreneurs even wealthier than my baby sister’s godfather. A minivan rumbles by: Kimmer hates them, considering them matronly, and refuses to let us buy one. A power company truck is parked a hundred yards up the hill as the uniformed crew, one male, one female, does something clever up on the pole. A bit closer in, a muscular woman in black boots and yellow spandex, evidently heedless of the cold, walks what my untutored eye decides is a Doberman. A battered red pickup bearing the logo of a lawn-care firm wheezes past, ferrying a trio of snow-blowers.

Jack Ziegler stands next to me like a statue, his finger pressed to the glass. I do not know what he is pointing at. I do know that the plants are starting to make me gag.

“Okay,” I say carefully. “I’m looking.”

“Well, do you see them?” His senility has made a sudden return, and I wonder again whether it is feigned. “Do you see them watching us?”

“See who?”

He grabs my shoulder. His fingers, hot with fever, dig into the muscle like talons. “There! The truck!”

“The truck? You mean the one over by the pole?”

“Yes, yes, do you see it?”

“Okay, yes. I see the truck.”

“Well, then, you understand. You have no idea how they harass me-”

“Who? The power company?”

Uncle Jack looks at me hard, and for an instant the clouds seem to dissipate. “Not the power company,” he says in a reasonable tone. “The FBI.”

I look again. “It’s a power company truck-”

“It is only a cover. They are here to harass me.” He laughs unexpectedly, and his eyes darken and roll. His gleeful madness has returned. “The power goes out up here at least twice a month. Do you know why?” I shake my head. “So they can send their trucks and listen in on my telephone. So my alarm systems won’t work and they can plant their bugs.”

“Bugs-”

“Right here, in my house, in my kitchen, there are bugs!” To my astonishment, he produces a fly swatter from somewhere and whacks a spot on the wall. “Take that!” he cackles with such glee that for a moment I think that I might have misunderstood him, that he really is talking about insects. “And that!” he cries, turning away to smack the refrigerator, then one of the dark green granite countertops. “That’ll rattle their earphones!” he hoots.

He tosses the fly swatter vaguely toward a closet, slips an arm around my shoulders, and leads me back into the great room, as he calls it. “They want to know what I do for a living. They think I am a criminal, for goodness’ sake!” He pauses at his immaculate desk and scribbles something on a pad. “Like you do,” he mutters. “Like you do.” Then he coughs wetly, not bothering to cover his mouth.

Embarrassed, I make my typical retreat. “Uncle Jack, I, uh, I didn’t mean-”

“But I’m on to them,” he giggles, talking right through me. “And so, when the power goes out, do you know what I do?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you what I do,” he says, his expression crafty as he slips his arm around me once more. “I go around with a flashlight and kill their bugs! ”

“I see,” I say, wondering whether I have come on a fool’s errand.

“No, I don’t think you do see,” he mumbles. Then he tilts his face sharply upward and bellows: “Harrison!”

The skinny bodyguard materializes at once. “Yes, sir?”

This is it. They are throwing me off the side of the mountain. Kimmer, I forgive you. Take good care of our boy.

“Is this house bugged, Harrison?” Abby’s godfather demands.

“Occasionally, sir.”

“And do we kill the bugs?”

“Whenever we can, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harrison, that will be all.” Uncle Jack hands him the scribbled note, and the butler-valet-nurse-bodyguard withdraws. I begin to breathe normally once more. This is how they communicate in a house where any word might be overheard: they write each other notes. Now I understand what Henderson meant about Uncle Jack’s popularity-and how everybody would know I am coming to visit. “Bugs everywhere,” says Jack Ziegler, shaking his head sadly.

Jack Ziegler is fading. His lips quiver. The excitement seems to have worn him out, for his face has grown slack, the energy depleted. “Let me lean on you, Talcott,” he murmurs, slipping a thin, feverish arm around my shoulders. We walk back into the main part of the house, Uncle Jack’s feet sliding on the floor. He feels as light as a child against my body.

“Listen, Talcott,” he says. “Are you listening?”

“I’m listening, Uncle Jack.”

“I am not a hero, Talcott. I know that. I have done things in my life for which I am sorry. I have some associates who are sorry as well. Do you understand?”

“Not really…”

“I have made choices, Talcott. Hard choices. And choices have consequences. That is, I think, the very first rule of any just morality. Choices have consequences. All choices. I have always accepted that. I have made good choices and benefited from them. I have made bad choices and suffered for it. All of us have.” He lets this sink in, too. I realize that he is truly angry underneath the politesse. The hornets are buzzing away.

“I understand what you-” I begin, but he interrupts swiftly.

“Consequences, Talcott. An underused word. We live today in a world in which nobody believes choices should have consequences. But may I tell you the great secret that our culture seeks to deny? You cannot escape the consequences of your choices. Time runs in only one direction.”

“I suppose so,” I assure him, although I do not.

Jack Ziegler’s wet, tired gaze flicks over my face, bounds off toward the wall-is he thinking about the bugs again?-then settles on the giddying vista of Aspen beyond the two-story window. He begins a fresh lecture: “None of us who are fathers are quite what we wanted to be for our sons. You will learn that, I think.” I remember that he has a son of his own, Jack Junior, a currency trader who lives halfway around the world-Hong Kong, maybe-to escape his father.

I wonder whether that is far enough.

Jack Ziegler continues to wax philosophical, as though the purpose of my trip is to comprehend his notion of the life well lived. “A father, a son-this is a sacred bond. All through history, the headship of the family is passed on that way, father to son to son of the son, and so on. Head of the family, Talcott! That is a mission, you see. A responsibility that a man may not shirk, even should he so desire. Nowadays, on the campuses, I know, such ideas are dismissed. Sexist, they say. You know the words better than I. Patriarchy. Male domination. Pah! My generation, we lacked the luxuries of yours. We had no time to wallow in such arguments. We had to live, Talcott. We had to act. Let others worry about why God spoke to Moses from inside a burning bush instead of a sycamore tree or a Wal-Mart store or a television set. Who had time to care? Yours is the generation of talkers, and I wish you well of it. Ours was the generation of doers, Talcott, the last the nation has seen. Doers! You do not understand this, I know. You have never lived a life in which there is no time to discuss, to debate, to litigate, to analyze your policy options -isn’t that what they say now? We did not go on the radio and moan about the difficulties in our lives. We did not derive our self-worth from establishing how badly others had treated us. We did not complain. We had no time. My generation, we actually had things that we had to do, Talcott. Decisions to make. Do you see?” He does not care whether I see. He does not care whether I agree. He is determined to make his point… and, at this instant, sounds exactly like the Judge. “And this was the generation that spawned your father, Talcott. Your father and myself both. We were the same. We were heads of families, Talcott. Men. The old-fashioned kind, you would say. We knew what our responsibilities were. Provide for the family, yes. Nurture it, certainly. Guide it. But, above all, protect it.”

The sun is setting over the town of Aspen, the snow turning a magnificent orange-red. Down below, the skiers will begin on the nightlife phase of their day; I wonder when they sleep.

“I know you are angry, Talcott. I know you are disappointed in your father.” He casts his moist eyes toward me, then slides them swiftly away. “You think you have caught him at something terrible. Well, tell me, then, what would you have done? Your daughter is dead, the police do nothing-and you think perhaps you know who killed her. What would you have done?”

Now he waits. I have turned the same question over and over in my mind ever since Mariah’s visit started me thinking along this road. Were someone to do harm to Bentley, and were the law to offer no justice, would I go out and hire a killer? Or do the job myself? Maybe. Maybe not. No one, I suspect, can answer with confidence as long as the question is abstract. Only when something is at stake do we test the principles we so proudly parade.

“I know what he did,” I finally say.

Jack Ziegler shakes his thin head. “You think you know. But what do you know, really? Tell me, Talcott: what do you really know?”

His sudden directness takes me by surprise. His eyes are boring into me now. I look away. I wonder why Uncle Jack is not worried about the bugs any more, but as I replay our conversation in my mind, I realize that the only incriminating lines have come from me, and they all involve the Judge, who is already dead… and that Uncle Jack has maneuvered me into a position in which I am smearing my own father’s memory for the benefit of the FBI’s listeners.

So be it.

“He hired a killer,” I finally say, wanting to match Uncle Jack’s directness with some of my own.

“Pah! A killer! The man who mangled your sister was a killer, Talcott. And yet he was walking around free.”

“The man my father thought did it. He was never convicted.”

“Convicted? Pah! He was never arrested, never charged, never truly investigated.” His chilly eyes never waver.

“Then how could my father know for sure that he had the right man?”

“It is an error, Talcott, to think of this matter as a proposition, true or false.” A moist, ragged cough. “To be a man is to act. Sometimes you must act on the information available at the time. Perhaps it is accurate. Perhaps it is erroneous. Still you must act.”

“I am not quite following you.”

“And I am not able to enlighten you further.”

Except that he has not enlightened me at all. I almost say this, but he has resumed the tone and didactic style of the lecturer. “Some of your questions have no answers, Talcott, and some of them have answers that you will never know. That is the way of the world, and our inability to discover all that we wish we could is what makes us mortals.” The oracular side of Jack Ziegler bothers me, perhaps for ethical reasons: What right has a murderer to lecture on the meaning of life? Does he perhaps know things we weaker mortals do not? Or is all of this oratory simply obfuscation, so that the bugs, if there are any, will never catch him admitting a crime? “And some of your questions do have answers to which you are entitled. I believe that your father wanted you, more than the other children, to have the answers. Because he always lived in some awe of you, Talcott. Some awe, some envy. And, always, he wanted your approval. More than he wanted Addison’s, more than he wanted Mariah’s.” I am not sure if I believe any of this. I am quite sure I do not want to hear it. “And so your father arranged for you to receive some of the answers. But you must also find them for yourself.”

“Which means what?”

“The arrangements, Talcott. You must discover the arrangements.” He frowns. “I do not know where your father buried the answers, but he buried them so deeply that only you would know where to look. That is why so many people have bothered you. But remember always that none of them can harm you.” A curt nod. “And that you must not abandon the search, Talcott. You must not.”

“But why is the search so important?” The question I tried to ask Maxine, whose real name is unlikely to be Maxine.

“Let us say… for your peace of mind.”

I think this over. That cannot be quite all of it. Uncle Jack wants me to find whatever there is to find. It may even be, from his insistence, and Maxine’s, that somehow his… his ability to protect me… is linked to a promise that the search will succeed. Frowning again, wanting to escape this horrible room, I fire off my last shot.

“And if I do discover the arrangements? What then?”

“Why, then, everybody will be satisfied.” He falls silent, but I understand it is merely a pause: I even know what is coming next. And I am even right. “Perhaps, when you find what your father left, you should not examine it yourself. That would be a mistake. I think it would be best… yes. I shall expect you to share it with me first. Naturally.”

“Naturally,” I mutter, but too softly for him to hear. Mallory Corcoran, Maxine of no last name, now Uncle Jack: When you find it, bring it to me! Yet Jack Ziegler, unlike the others, pronounces his demand with a sense of entitlement. Suggesting, perhaps, that I will simply be returning to him his own.

“That is a fair exchange, I think.” Meaning, in return for his promise to protect me and my family.

“Uh, sure. Yes.” His tone suggests that I am about to be dismissed. I have the frantic sense of having omitted something important. Before I can control my voice, I hear myself raising the one subject I had buried deep inside, covered with the heavy earth of other mysteries, and promised myself I would not mention. “Uncle Jack, my father told… someone… that he talked to you the week before he died.”

“And?”

“And I would like to know if he did.”

I hold my breath, waiting for the hornets to attack, but the answer comes back so fluently that he has probably been planning it for months. “Yes, I saw Oliver. Why do you ask?”

“Did he call you or did you call him?”

“You sound like a prosecutor, Talcott.” He smiles peacefully, so I know he is annoyed. “But, since you ask, your father called me a few weeks before and said he would like to see me. I told him I would be in Virginia in the middle of September and we could meet then. We had a nice dinner, purely social.”

“I see.” I have no doubt that his recitation matches precisely what the FBI has on its tapes of my father’s telephone call. But there are no recordings of the dinner conversation: Uncle Jack would have seen to that. I sense a growing unease in Abby’s godfather; I have struck close to the heart of what he most wishes to keep from me. Something happened at that dinner. Something that sent my father back to his shooting lessons? I know Jack Ziegler will never tell me. “I see,” I repeat, mystified.

“And now our time is up, Talcott.” He coughs wetly.

“If I could just ask one more-”

He holds up a restraining hand and bellows for Henderson. I wonder how he decides which bodyguard to summon for which purposes.

“Wait, Uncle Jack. Wait a minute.”

Jack Ziegler’s head swivels slowly back toward me, and I can almost hear the creaking. His pale eyebrows are elevated, his sable eyes wary. He is not accustomed to being told to wait.

“Yes, Talcott?” he says quietly as Henderson appears.

I glance at the bodyguard, then incline my head and lower my voice. “You know that the man who was competing with my wife for that judgeship… that, um, a scandal killed off his chances.”

That look of hot glee. “I told you there was a skeleton rattling around.”

“Yes. Well. But I don’t quite understand… how you knew.” This is not all that I was going to ask, but as Henderson floats closer, the room seems to close in, the view from the window dizzying me once more, and I am suddenly sure I must not press further. “About the skeleton, I mean.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack Ziegler whispers after a moment. “You must concentrate on the future, Talcott, not the past.”

“But wait. How did you know? Only two people knew. And neither of them would ever…” Tell somebody like you, I do not quite say.

Jack Ziegler knows exactly what I am thinking. I can read it in his tired face as he lays a wizened hand on my shoulder. “Nothing is ever known to only two people, Talcott.”

“Are you saying somebody else knew? Somebody else told you?”

He has lost interest. “Mr. Garland is leaving us, Henderson. Drive him to the condo where he will spend the night. One of the older ones down by the library, the ones with the blue doors. I do not recall the number, but Mr. Garland will show you which.”

“I didn’t tell you where I was staying.” My objection comes out slowly, for a sudden thrill of fear has made me lethargic.

“No, you did not,” agrees Abby’s godfather. He does not smile, his feeble voice and clouded expression never waver, and yet I know he has chosen, just for an instant, to show me the tiniest corner of his power. Maybe his goal is to persuade me to trust him, to believe he will protect me, and to bring him what I learn. If, on the other hand, his goal is to frighten me… well, in that he has succeeded.

Henderson is standing on the stairs to the entryway, my coat draped over his arm. I thank Uncle Jack for seeing me. He offers his hand and I take it. He does not let go.

“Talcott, listen to me. Listen with care. I am not a well man. And yet there are many who are interested in the state of my health. I take my measures, but they send their trucks and plant their bugs. I do not believe that you should try to get in touch with me again. Not unless you have uncovered your father’s arrangements.”

“Why not? Wait. Why not?”

Jack Ziegler almost smiles. It is a near thing. I do not think he is fighting the urge exactly; he simply lacks the energy. He waves to me instead, not speaking, then collapses in a fit of coughing. Mr. Harrison, instantly at his side, takes his arm and leads him away.

On the way down the mountain, I glimpse headlights in the side mirror, but that need mean nothing: everybody in Aspen has a car. I wonder whether Jack Ziegler was right about the power company truck. I wonder how long it will be before Agent Nunzio learns of my visit, or if, perhaps, he was listening in all along. I glance at the mirror again as we turn sharply through a switchback, but the lights are gone.

Henderson asks me if I had a good visit… and, all at once, I know where I have heard his velvety voice before. I could kick myself for not realizing the truth earlier. Mr. Henderson spoke to me on the telephone at two-fifty-one in the morning, sitting up after my beating, as he assured me with quiet confidence that my family and I would not be bothered again. Because his job is protecting Uncle Jack, he most likely called me from Aspen. But Elm Harbor is only a plane ride away, and the tools needed to cut off two men’s fingers are surely available at any hardware store.