engineer’s touch in how it was handled. I don’t think it was Buddy. He’s just muscle.”
Roy looked up.
“What are you saying?” he asked.
I thought about Sullivan telling me Regina might have been a lousy old bitch, but she was his lousy old bitch. That’s how I thought about my father. He was a lousy father, but he was my lousy father. And he gave me my lousy life. People like Regina and my father, living side by side on the tip of Oak Point at the feet of the holy Peconic, never really figured out why they were here on earth, never really had a chance to know much more than hope, hard work and disappointment. And all they got in the end was the privilege of being beaten to death by people who thought they had a greater purpose, thought they could just sweep those shabby crippled lives away from their feet like so much useless trash.
“You killed her. And you killed Julia Anselma.”
I realized Roy was weeping. He’d been sweating so hard the tears had just blended in.
“Lock the door,” he was saying. “Please lock the door. I don’t want anyone coming in.”
He waited until Jackie got back in her chair. She tossed him a crumpled napkin dug out of her wool jacket. He ignored it.
“Those bastards,” he said. “They’d say things about wasting the old ladies. That nobody’d even blink an eye. I couldn’t tell if they were just provoking me, or if they meant it. But I swear, I never ever would have done such a thing.”
“Doesn’t matter. They’re in it, you’re in it,” I told him.
I looked over at Jackie. She nodded.
“Oh, God.”
He dropped his head to the desk.
“Roy, listen to me. Look at me.”
He looked up again.
“Let’s take this one step at a time. You have the original trust document. I want it.”
He started to deny it, but I cut him off.
“That was your leverage with Hornsby. As long as you had the document, you had him by the balls.”
I leaned forward and said, between my teeth, “Give it to me.”
It was on the bottom of a stack of papers on one of the tables. All he had to do was roll his desk chair over a few feet and pull it out. The paper was yellowy brown along the edges. On the cover was the same label Hornsby had taped to the envelope. It was typewritten and you could feel the impressions on the back of the individual sheets. There was a table of contents. I flipped to the article describing beneficiaries, titled, “Distribution of Trust Property.” The first section said, “Upon the death of any beneficiary, as described in Article Six, the trust property shall be divided into as many shares as shall be necessary to create one equal share for each of the living beneficiaries, and one equal share for each deceased beneficiary who has living descendents.”
I flipped to Article Six. Regina and Julia each had their own sections. Other sections described how the entire principal and net income of the trust belonged to the beneficiaries. The trustee had full powers of administration, though the beneficiaries had the right to appoint or excuse the trustee. At least Hornsby had the good manners to finally excuse himself.
I handed it to Jackie.
“I was going to tell her,” said Roy.
“Who?” Jackie asked, looking down as she leafed through the document.
“Amanda,” I answered for him, “who you knew would be gone like a shot the second she learned how rich she really was. On her own, without you. To say nothing of the betrayal. So, you were going to tell her like Hornsby was going to confess on the front page of the
“I was only trying to care for her.”
“By killing her mother?”
He winced. Then started to whine.
“I told you,” he started.
I stopped him.
“Roy, shut up. If you say one more word I’m liable to change my mind.”
By this point he was way too desperate and terrified to think clearly.
“What are you talking about?”
Jackie looked up again from the trust, curious herself.
There was so much about the world I didn’t understand. And never would. Like why my parents had married each other in the first place. It was never explained. It never even came up, but my sister and I would have cut off our own limbs rather than ask.
It was as if some external event had brought them together involuntarily, but irrevocably, and they were resigned to their fate. It was unclear whether they loved or despised each other. They simply existed as an official pairing, charged with the responsibility of feeding and housing two children, keeping the house clean and the lawn cut, and the apartment in the Bronx free of dishes in the sink or dirty laundry on the floor. My father was in a near state of rage most of the time, much of which he directed toward my mother, but only because of her proximity. My sister and I were expert at making ourselves scarce, otherwise we’d have attracted a greater share of his wrath. Maybe as much as the guy who pumped his gas, or the checkout girls at the grocery store, or local, state and federal government officials, or the IRS, or any professional athlete who ever won or lost anything. Fury was his natural state of being, unlike my mother, for whom the situation involved a greater degree of happenstance. She bore it silently, at least as far as I knew. Yet I imagined her seeking rescue, in whatever form it offered itself. She never said it, but I always thought it. As I passed through adolescence, and my perceptions matured, I began to feel responsible for allowing her circumstances to persist. I developed an unrelenting compulsion to do something. I just didn’t know what it was supposed to be. So I did nothing, beyond wishing things would change. That something would happen to end the dreadful state of despair and indecision.
And then it did. Two anonymous thugs, agents of a secret power, came into the world and flicked my father into oblivion.
My mother was rescued. But she didn’t want to be. She was utterly grief stricken and furious, suddenly at odds with the entire world, as if taking up my father’s blind rage as her just inheritance.
I wasn’t much comfort. All I could think of was my own dismal calculation. That I’d wished it all into existence, thereby denying my parents their lives and me any hope of reprieve from my remorse, for the rest of mine.
So it seemed inevitable that I would marry someone I’d never want to know and help create a child who didn’t want to know me. That I’d destroy my working life and burn my future to the ground. I couldn’t save any of it.
Just like I couldn’t save Regina, even though she was the only thing left for me to save.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “You tell the cops and Amanda about the whole scam, including your thing with Hornsby and the development project. In return I let the old ladies stay dead of natural causes.”
Jackie’s mouth actually dropped open.
“What are you saying?”
“It’s how I want it.”
“I don’t think it’s up to you,” she said. “There’s the matter of the truth.”
“I’m in charge of the truth. I got all the evidence, all the information. It’s not going anywhere without me. Anyway, this is in the best interest of your client, Mr. Battiston.”
“Hold on a minute,” she started to say.
“You’re the only one who can make this come out right. Roy goes down for colluding with Hornsby to defraud Amanda and her mother. Nobody, especially Amanda, ever learns about Julia. Or Regina, for that matter. That’s the deal.”
It took a few more minutes to get Jackie all the way on board. I really didn’t have a good reason for her to do it, which is probably what ultimately appealed to her. That and the possibility of being shut out of the whole thing, whatever it was. That was Jackie’s Achilles’ heel. Fear of being the oddball left sitting alone while all the other girls were out on the dance floor.
As Roy listened to us talk his face didn’t know whether to look hopeful or horrified. When I pointed my finger
