The Fixer

42

Rick took a few steps and shook the old man’s hand.

“Rick Hoffman. I know I should have called first, but I couldn’t find your phone number.”

“Paul Clarke,” the old man said. “It’s been years, right? How’s Pop? Is he-?”

“He’s okay,” Rick said. “You know he had a stroke, right?”

Clarke nodded. “I can’t really visit him. I don’t know if your dad ever explained.”

Rick shook his head. “I need to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Come on in.”

Clarke’s house was low-ceilinged and looked very old, with small windows and wide-board plank floors. It was dark and warrenlike and smelled everywhere of wood smoke. Clarke took him through a few sparsely furnished rooms to a room with a large fireplace and a couple of mismatched sofas and chairs, which looked like the place where Clarke spent most of his time. Rick remembered this room, the crackling fire, the comfortable sofas where they’d curl up and read while Clarke and his father talked in Clarke’s study.

“Did you drive up from Boston?” Clarke asked as he knelt by the fireplace, balling up old newspaper.

“I did. I had no way of reaching you first. Dad’s unable to speak, you might have heard-”

Clarke turned around, nodded. “Awful thing.”

“And the phone number he had from twenty years ago didn’t work.”

“I understand. I’m not easy to find, and that’s no accident.”

Clarke seemed to be implying something, but Rick didn’t probe. In a few minutes, Clarke had lit the newspaper, and the kindling had caught fire, and before long a fire was roaring.

“What can I get you to drink?” Clarke said. “Coffee? Tea? Scotch?”

“Scotch would be good.” He wanted Clarke lubricated and voluble.

Clarke nodded and left the room, and then Rick heard the sound of water running from the nearby kitchen. He returned with two freshly washed tumblers of Scotch over ice. Clarke handed one to Rick. “I should have asked, you prefer it neat?”

“This is fine, thanks.” It was not long after noon. He’d have to drive back this afternoon, which would now entail stopping at the Town Grounds and getting a couple of hits of caffeine to help him through the drive home. “I have some good memories of visiting you here when Dad took us. Do you still make maple syrup?”

“Oh, yes. Still a sugar maker. I’ve still got the old sugar shack. It’s gotten a little fancier than it was when you kids used to come here, I’m sure-tubing and reverse osmosis and such. I only have about fifty acres here, so I’m a small-time producer. But it pays the bills, which aren’t big.”

Rick sat at one end of a sofa, and Clarke sat in an overstuffed armchair next to the sofa. The chair’s upholstery was shabby and threadbare, and tufts of white stuffing stuck out of the holes in the arms. Clarke had taken off his green plaid overshirt. He was wearing green wide-wale corduroy pants and a muted brown plaid flannel shirt, and his silver hair looked freshly barbered.

“Were you aiming at me?” Rick said as he took a sip of Scotch.

“If I were aiming at you, Rick, I would have hit you. No, I was aiming for just over your head and a few inches to the right. Close enough to put the fear of God into you. And again, I’m sorry about that. I was too impulsive.”

Rick smiled. “My fault for showing up unannounced. But I need to talk to you. You were, I think, one of Dad’s closest friends. Maybe the closest. And I know he came to see you the week before his stroke.”

Clarke nodded. Joan had called him “one of the scruffy people,” but he could hardly have been less scruffy. He could have been a country gentleman in a Ralph Lauren magazine ad.

“His doctors now think he was hit-beaten, badly. They suspect his stroke was likely brought on by traumatic brain injury.”

Clarke winced, ducked his head, then put a hand over his eyes. “Oh, dear. I’m not surprised. I’m just surprised they let him live. He expected to be killed.”

“He did? Why?”

“Because your father had had a crisis of conscience. He wanted out of the life he’d fallen into. He couldn’t go on anymore.”

You didn’t play by the rules…

“Why not?”

“Something disturbed him deeply. Something he was told to do.”

“What was that?”

Clarke shook his head slowly. “He wanted to protect me. Keep me ignorant of the details. He thought the less I knew, the safer I’d be. He was a thoughtful man, your father was. All he’d say was that some people had been killed and he’d been ordered to cover something up about their deaths.”

Rick thought of the little girl at the piano recital and knew his father had been moved as much as he had. Lenny had been told to pay off the surviving family members. It must have been part of a cover-up.

“Why did he drive up here? Did he come to talk it over with you, was that why he came?”

“I think that was part of it, yes. But I think it was mostly to get my help.”

“In what?”

“He wanted my help in doing what he helped me do, back in the day.” Clarke gave him an intent look.

Rick shook his head. “To do what?”

“He never told you… about me?”

“What about you?”

“Oh, Lordy. He wanted to disappear. Same way I did.”