“Actually, a pretty nice spot to rest for eternity.”
Ricky thought for a moment, then asked, “You wouldn’t know who bought the plot, do you? And who pays for maintenance?”
The man shrugged. “Checks just come in, I don’t know.”
Ricky found the grave site without any difficulty. He stood for a second amid the silence of the bright midday sun wondering for a moment whether anyone had given thought to a headstone for him after his suicide. He doubted it. He’d been as isolated as the Jacksons. He wondered, as well, why he’d never put up some sort of memorial to his dead wife. He had helped establish a book fund in her name at her law school, and he’d annually made a contribution to the Nature Conservancy in her name, and he’d told himself that these acts were better than some cold piece of stone standing sentinel over a narrow slice of earth. But standing there, he was less certain. He found himself caught in a reverie of death, thinking about the permanence and the impact on those left behind. He thought, we learn more about the living when someone dies, than we do the person who passed away.
He was uncertain how long he remained there, in front of the graves, before finally examining them. It was a joint headstone, and it merely said the names, the dates of their birth, and the date of their death.
Something bothered him, and he stared at this small bit of information, trying to discern what it was. It took several seconds before he made a connection.
The date of the murder-suicide was the same month that the adoption papers were signed.
Ricky took a step back. And then he saw something else.
The Jacksons were both born in the 1920s. They would have both been in their mid- sixties when they died.
He felt hot again, and he loosened the tie around his neck. The fake stomach seemed to pull at him, weighing him down, and the fake contusion and scar suddenly began to itch on his face.
No one can adopt a child, much less three children, at that age, he thought. The guidelines for adoption agencies would rule out a childless couple that age almost immediately, in favor of a younger, far more vigorous couple.
Ricky stood by the graves thinking he was looking at a lie. Not a lie about their death. That was true enough. But a lie somewhere in their life.
Everything is wrong, he thought. Everything is different from what it should be. Ricky was almost overcome with the sense that he was treading on the edge of something larger than what he’d expected. Revenge that was boundless.
He told himself that what he needed to do was to get back to the safety of New Hampshire and sort his way through what he’d learned, make some sort of rational, intelligent next step. He halted the rental car outside the office of the Econo Lodge, and stepped inside, spotting a different clerk. Omar had been replaced by James, who wore a clip-on tie that still managed to be skewed around his neck.
“I’m going to check out,” Ricky said. “Mr. Lazarus. In room 232.”
The clerk pulled up a bill on the computer screen, and said, “You’re all set. Except there were a couple of phone messages for you.”
Ricky hesitated, then asked, “Phone messages?”
James the clerk nodded. “Guy from some dog kennel called, asking if you were staying here. Wanted to leave a message on your room phone. Then, just before you came in, there was another message.”
“Same guy?”
“I don’t know. I just push the buttons. Never talked to the person. It just sticks a number up here on my call sheet. Room 232. Two messages. You want, just pick up the phone over there and punch in your room number. You can hear the messages that way.”
Ricky did as instructed. The first message was from the kennel owner.
“I thought you’d be staying someplace cheap and close. Wasn’t too hard to figure out where. I been thinking about your questions. Call me. I think maybe I’ve got some information that might help you out. But you better get out your checkbook. Gonna cost you.”
Ricky pushed the numeral three to erase the message. The next message was played automatically. The voice was clipped and cool and astonishing, almost like finding a piece of ice on a hot sidewalk during a summer day.
“Mister Lazarus, I have just been informed of your curiosity concerning the late mister and missus Jackson, and believe I might have some information in that regard that might assist you in your inquiries. Please telephone me at 212-555-1717 at your earliest possible convenience, and we can arrange a meeting.”
The caller did not provide a name. That was unnecessary. Ricky recognized the voice.
It was Virgil.
Part Three. Even Bad Poets Love Death
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ricky fled.
Bag hurriedly packed, tires squealing, accelerating down the highway, he raced away from the motel in New Jersey and the familiar voice on the phone. He barely took the time to wash the fake scar from his cheek. In the space of one morning, by asking a few questions in the wrong places, he had managed to compress time, turning it from his ally into his enemy. He had thought he would slowly scrape away at Rumplestiltskin’s identity, and then, when he’d managed to discover everything he needed, he would take a slow and sturdy approach to designing his own revenge. Make certain that everything was in place, traps set, and then emerge on an equal footing. Now, he understood, that luxury had disappeared.
He did not know what the connection was between the man at the kennel and Rumplestiltskin, but it surely existed, for following his departure, while Ricky was idly inspecting the grave site of a dead couple, the kennel owner had been making telephone calls. The ease with which the man had found the motel where Ricky had been staying was daunting. He told himself that he needed to be far more careful covering his tracks.
He drove hard and fast, heading back to New Hampshire, trying to assess how compromised his existence truly was. Random fears and contentious thoughts reverberated throughout him.
But one idea was paramount. Ricky could not return to the passivity of the psychoanalyst. That was a world where one waited for something to happen, and then, before acting again, tried to interpret and understand all the forces within. It was a world of reaction, of delay. Of calm and reason.
If he fell into its trap, it would cost him his life. He knew that he had to act.
If nothing else, he had to create the illusion that he was as dangerous as Rumplestiltskin.
He had just passed the welcome to massachusetts sign on the roadway, when an idea came to him. He saw an exit up ahead, and just beyond that the common American landscape marker: a shopping mall. He steered the rental car off the thruway, and into the mall’s parking lot. Within a few minutes, he was shoulder to shoulder with all the other people, heading in to the array of stores, all selling more or less the same things for more or less the same prices, but packaged in different manners, giving shoppers the sensation they were finding something unique amid all the similarity. Ricky, seeing some dark humor in it, thought it a wildly
