“I just want to be calm.” He took one more breath. “All right. I’m calm.” He picked up the telephone.
“Mrs. Bastien. This is Charles Beale.”
“Mr. Beale. The used-book salesman.”
“That’s right.”
“Is that like a used-car salesman?”
“Pretty much the same thing.”
“It’s Cloverdale.”
“Of course, I’m terribly sorry. Mrs. Cloverdale.”
“That’s better. What can I do for you?”
“I just wanted to ask you about Derek’s desk.”
“His desk? His desk?! What is it about this desk?”
“Oh? Have other people been asking?”
“Too many.”
“I just have a simple question.”
“Sorry. I have exceeded the allotted number of answers on that subject. Try something else.”
“All right-another subject-what about the papers that were in the desk? That’s a different subject.”
“Barely, Charles. Just barely.”
“Where are those papers? I doubt they were still in the desk when it was sold.”
“How should I know? I didn’t check any drawers. I think the place called and asked if I wanted them and I said to send them to his boss at work.”
“John Borchard?”
“That’s the one. Since he wanted them, anyway.”
“Oh-he had asked for them?”
“He asked. It got real annoying, sort of like you. So I finally just told them to send him everything they found. Papers, paper clips, paper plates. Just send it all.”
“I suppose we should be careful what we ask for.”
“I never heard from him again so I guess it worked.”
“Thank you, Lucy.”
“Glad to help, Charles. Charles?”
“Yes?”
“I like it when I never hear from people again.”
“You do?”
“Don’t call back.”
“Mr. John Borchard called while you were on the phone,” Alice said at the door. “He said to tell you he really is planning to come by some time.”
“I like it when I hear from people again,” Charles said.
EVENING
They chose an aloof table far from the windows and outside light.
The confusion of smells assailed them: sweet caramel, bitter coffee, lemon, chocolate, salty meats, vegetables, thick cheeses, wood, hot sun-heated air and cold shadow, and people.
“There’s too much,” Charles said. “I don’t know how to sort it out.”
“Should you do something?” Dorothy asked.
“Dorothy, I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t know of any thing to do, or you don’t know which thing to do?”
“Which.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Or any.” They were silent, and their thoughts twined with the smells and sounds.
“But you have to do something,” Dorothy said.
“Yes. Now that I’m worried, officially. No more just following the wind, anyway. Tomorrow morning Frank Kelly will show me the report on Derek’s death.”
“We keep hearing that it was just a burglary.”
“The fifth in a series. Five different houses. It has to have been just an accidental tragedy. But it just couldn’t have been.”
“Do you think you’ll see something that everyone else has missed?”
“No. But it seemed like an opportunity not to miss.”
“I know it’s all confusing, Charles, but I think that in the end, you’re just going to have to give the papers to the police. There really isn’t any other way.”
“I keep hoping there is some other way. That’s what I’m looking for.” His fingers were drumming on the table, and he stopped them. Then he counted them off. “Six people. Karen Liu, John Borchard, Patrick White, and three more we don’t even know. I open the book, and there I have their terrible secrets. Their sins. Their sins that can pull them down and destroy them.” He looked at his open hands. “Am I being overly dramatic?”
“Not by too much. You could take it all to the police.”
“That is a decision itself.”
“But otherwise it’s your decision, Charles, and I don’t think it should be. Patrick White’s secret is already exposed. We don’t really know what it would mean to Karen Liu and John Borchard. We don’t know if the other three are even secrets, or what they are.”
“I think we can guess by the company they were keeping.”
“And don’t we have a responsibility to tell the police? They might be real crimes.”
“And people should get what they deserve,” Charles said. “The wages of sin is death.”
“But the gift of Charles Beale is everlasting life?”
“I don’t enjoy being in this position.”
“I know that. And I understand why you don’t feel free to give it up, either.”
“The problem, Dorothy, is that you’re right. I feel like I have godlike responsibility here, to deliver judgment that is true. It’s just that I don’t have wisdom, authority, omniscience or anything else. I’m not God.”
“What happens if you don’t do anything?”
“There will be some point where a decision is unavoidable. I just hope I can be ready when that comes.”
“Maybe God will have delivered his own judgment by then.”
Again they were silent, letting the coffee shop distract them.
“Did you enjoy your conversations with Derek?” Dorothy asked.
“Yes. They weren’t always comfortable. He liked to provoke me, and I would push back at him. But they were very thoughtful and stimulating.”
“Would I have liked him?”
“Only if he’d wanted you to.”
“Where does evil come from, Charles?”
“Derek! How in the world do you expect an answer to that?”
“What is evil, then?”
“Well, what is good?”
“What we accept it to be, Charles. And evil, also.”
“It’s all subjective, then?”
“More or less. We’re selfish over our possessions, so we call stealing ‘evil.’ You said, ‘How in the world?’ That’s all we have, just ‘in the world.’ What is there outside of ourselves that we can measure against?”
“No, Derek. I think there is an external standard.”
“Created by whom?”
“Let’s say, God.”
