skinny, the wide receiver to Henderson’s linebacker. I would figure Henderson as the intimidator, Harrison as the silent killer. They share the same dead eyes and cold, pale stare. But my imagination is running away with me: Uncle Jack is, after all, retired.
From whatever.
“Don’t let the illusion deceive you,” adds Henderson in his smooth voice, as though reciting to a group of tourists. “There is plenty of solid rock underneath us, and the ground outside is mostly flat.” He points toward the window, probably to indicate a lawn, but I am unable to follow his gesture without having my head begin to reel.
“Mr. Ziegler will be with you momentarily,” Harrison grumbles before trudging off down one of the two hallways that run from the immense ground-floor room into the wings of the house.
“Perhaps you should sit down,” Henderson suggests, gesturing toward the several seating arrangements in the vast room: one white leather, another some brown tweed fabric, a third a bright floral print, all sharply distinct, yet blending somehow into a harmonious whole.
“No, I’m fine,” I assure him, speaking for the first time since entering the house, and pleased that my voice is steady.
“May I offer you something to drink?”
“I’m fine,” I repeat.
“At altitude, it is important to stay hydrated, especially the first few days.”
I look up at him, wondering if he is after all, as I first suspected on the day we buried the Judge, not a bodyguard but a nurse.
“Nothing, thank you.”
“Very well,” says Henderson, withdrawing down a different hallway from the one that swallowed Harrison, and suddenly I am alone in the lair of the beast. For Jack Ziegler, I have come to realize, is not simply a source of information about the misery that has overtaken my family; he is, in some sense, its author. Where, after all, would my father turn if he wanted to hire a killer? There was really only one possibility, and that is the reason I am here.
I circle the room, admiring the art, pausing here and there, waiting. In the air is the scent of something zesty-paprika, perhaps-and I wonder whether Uncle Jack plans to offer me lunch. I sigh. I do not want to stay very long in this house. I do not want to stay very long in this town. My preference would be to talk to Uncle Jack and immediately leave again, but the depressing magic of time zones and the mundane obstacle of finding a flight out have combined to make that impossible. Uncle Jack, fortunately, made no offer to put me up for the night, and our rickety family budget would never bear the price of an Aspen hotel room in the high winter season, even were one available. So I have arranged to use John and Janice’s time-share for this one night; it isn’t their week, but they ascertained that it would be vacant and switched with whoever is scheduled to occupy it.
Other than my wife, nobody in Elm Harbor knows that I have made this trip. I hope to keep it that way. I am not technically exceeding the rules Dean Lynda laid down-it is Friday, so I am missing no classes-but I do not imagine she would be thrilled to discover that I have flown off to visit… the man I have flown off to visit. Being the helpful fellow I am, I would rather not add needless complications to Lynda’s job. So I am not planning to tell her.
I glance at the window again, but the view is as disturbing as ever, and I hastily turn away to continue my circuit of the room. I pause in front of the fireplace, where the wall is dominated by a huge oil painting of Uncle Jack’s late wife, Camilla, the one he is supposed to have killed, or had killed. The portrait is at least seven feet high. Camilla wears a flowing white gown, her jet-black hair piled on her head, her pale face surrounded by an unearthly light, probably in an effort to suggest an angelic nature. It reminds me of those idealized paintings of the Renaissance, when the artists took care to make their patrons’ wives glow. I am willing to bet that the portrait was done after Camilla’s violent death, for the artist appears to have worked from a blown-up photograph, so that the result appears not so much ethereal as fake.
“Not one of his better works, is it?” sighs Jack Ziegler from behind me.
I do not startle easily. I do not startle now. I do not even turn around. I lean over to squint at the artist’s name, but it is an illegible scrawl.
“It’s not bad,” I murmur generously, pivoting to face Abby’s godfather, and recalling the answer that ended my father’s chance for the Supreme Court. I don’t judge my friends based on rumors, he said when they asked about Camilla; then he folded his arms, signaling his contempt for the audience.
Jack Ziegler’s arms are folded, too.
“He’s not a real artist anyway,” Jack Ziegler continues, dismissing the painting with a flap of one trembling hand. “So famous, so honored, yet he paints my wife for money.”
I nod, not sure, now that I am facing Uncle Jack, quite how to proceed. He stands before me in bathrobe and bedroom slippers, his face thinner and grayer than before, and I wonder whether he has more than a few months left. But his eyes remain bright-mad and gleeful and alert.
Jack Ziegler slips his skinny arm into mine and conducts me slowly around the room, evidently assuming that in my desperation, or perhaps my fear, I will be fascinated by what his illicitly obtained wealth has purchased. He points to a lighted display case holding his small but impressive collection of incunabula, some of them doubtless on Interpol watch lists. He shows me a small tray of magnificent Mayan artifacts that the government of Belize certainly does not know have left the country. He turns me to look back the way I came in. The wall below the balcony is covered by a huge fabric hanging, all multicolored vertical lines that attract and confuse the eye. There is a pattern hidden there, and the brain’s stubborn determination to work it out holds the gaze. The piece is enormously beautiful. Uncle Jack tells me with unfeigned pride that it is a genuine Gunta Stolzl, and I nod admiringly, even though I have no earthly idea who, or even what sex, Gunta Stolzl is, or was.
“So, Talcott,” he wheezes when our guided tour of his little museum is over. We are standing before the window once more, neither of us wanting to be the one to begin. As we measure each other, recessed ceiling speakers bark the hard musical edges of Sibelius’s Finlandia, which has always struck me, despite its energetic pretensions, as one of the most depressing compositions in the classical repertoire. But it is perfect for the moment.
When I say nothing, Uncle Jack coughs twice, then moves swiftly onward: “So, you are here, you have made it, I am pleased to see you, but time is short. So, what can I do for you? You said on the telephone that the matter was urgent.”
At first, I can manage only a nervous “Yes.” To see Jack Ziegler so close up, his near-twin bodyguards waiting in the wings, his eyes glittering, not quite mad but not quite sane, waiting impatiently for me to explain myself, is quite different from sitting on an airplane planning how the dialogue will go.
“You said you had some trouble.”
“You could say that.”
“You said that.”
Again I hesitate. What I am experiencing is not so much fear as a reluctance to commit myself; for, once I enter upon a serious conversation with Uncle Jack, I am not sure I can pull free of him.
“As you might or might not know, I’ve been looking into my father’s past. What I’ve found has been… disturbing. And then there are other things, things that have happened over the past couple of months, which are also disturbing.”
Jack Ziegler stares silently. He is prepared, it would seem, to wait all afternoon and into the night. He does not feel threatened. He does not feel afraid. He does not seem to feel anything -which is part of his power. I wonder afresh whether he really murdered his own wife, and whether he felt anything at all if he did it.
“People have been following me,” I blurt out, feeling idiotic, and when Uncle Jack still refuses to be drawn, I simply tell the whole story, from the moment he left me in the cemetery to the fake FBI agents to the white pawn to Freeman Bishop’s murder to Colin Scott’s drowning at Menemsha to the book that mysteriously reappeared. I omit Maxine, perhaps because keeping at least one secret in the face of Jack Ziegler’s demanding glare is all the victory I am likely to win.
When he is sure that I am finished, Uncle Jack shrugs his shoulders.
