Bookman's promise

sell out anyone if you pay them enough. I thought if I paid her enough she could tell you she lost it. My God, I don’t know what I was thinking. I was only there a few minutes. But something went wrong…she felt threatened by something I said…Jesus, it was nothing, just a veiled threat, what might happen if she told anybody I had been there. I had no intention to hurt her or her husband, but she got frightened. I tried to hush her— Please, I said, PLEASE! She started to scream and then everything unraveled. I picked up the pillow—not to smother her, for Christ’s sake, just to shut her up till I could talk sense to her. Christ knows I had no reason to kill her. All I wanted then was to get her quiet and get out of there. You’ve got to believe that!”

“I do believe it, Lee,” I said. “I just wish it had turned out that way.”

“I tried to reason with her. I told her just to forget I was there— she could keep the book, keep the book and the money, she could keep all the money, I didn’t care about it then. I tried to shove money at her…”

“And left some of it tangled in her bedclothes. The cops have those bills, Lee.”

“I wanted to do what was right. That’s all I ever wanted. I argued with Hal from the start. We needed to find that old woman and pay her something, a substantial amount that would erase that blot from our lives. Ask Hal, he’ll tell you what I tried to do.”

I put down my empty glass and went to the door. Somewhere behind me I heard Lee saying, “This was no crime, Cliff. This was an accident. It was an accident, I swear. There was no evil intent. You know I couldn’t do that. I could never kill anyone.”

I touched the door.

“Cliff, please…I’ll make her husband a wealthy man.”

I turned and said, “You took away all he ever wanted.”

“I’ll make it right, I swear.”

“You can’t.”

“I can! No one needs to know about this.”

“Yeah, they do. I’m sorry, Lee. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”

“Erin. You talk to him. Talk to him! This doesn’t have to go anywhere.”

I looked at Erin, who sat numbly with streams of tears on her cheeks.

“Good-bye, Lee,” I said.

I walked out. A moment later I heard Koko running along the sidewalk behind me.

“Under the circumstances, I’d rather stay with you tonight. If you’ve got room for me.”

I put an arm over her shoulder. “I’ll always have room for you, Koke.”

Sometime before dawn that same morning, Lee Huxley locked himself in the garage and sat with his motor running until he died. That’s how it ended.

For two days he was front-page news and a hot topic for talk radio. All the yakkers sounded off, speculation ran wild: Denver was treated to the usual tasteless nonsense from vacuous morons with too much time on their hands. Give an idiot a microphone and he’s just a louder version of the same old idiot.

There were a few high spots. To his colleagues Lee was the best and the brightest, a man who weighed every judgment and always strove mightily to do the right thing. Judge Arlene Weston was interviewed and said good things. He was such a fine man, so cultured and well liked. No one could have imagined that he’d do this to himself. It only proved that even a great poet like John Donne could be wrong. Every man is indeed an island, and deep personal torments can coexist with all the ingredients of a happy life.

A rumor leaked out that the president had been interested in Lee as a possible Supreme Court Justice, and the yakkers ran with disappointment as a possible motive. The White House had no comment. Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater confirmed that Lee had had two meetings with Mr. Reagan, but nothing was revealed of what might have been said or how serious Reagan’s interest might have been.

His service was mobbed. The entire legal community turned out: the church overflowed, people stood in the street and then swarmed across the graveyard, and the procession from one to the other tied up traffic for twenty blocks.

I watched it on television with Koko. Lee was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery and instantly became a fading memory.

How quickly even a prominent man is forgotten.

On Saturday after the funeral a car stopped in front of my store. I cringed when Miranda leaped out. Twenty people were in the store but she saw only me. She flung open the door, screaming, “You BASTARD! You fucking bastard, I hate you, I wish I’d never set eyes on you, I hope you die!” She charged across the room and beat at me with her fists until she collapsed.

Apparently Lee had left her a note. I can only imagine what was in it.

A week later I got a vicious letter. If she could kill me she would happily do it. At the end she said,