“I paid him?” The coal-black eyes are sharper now, and my stomach is touched by the same twisting unease I felt when I was a child on the Vineyard and my father gave me a torch and ordered me to burn a hornets’ nest Mariah had discovered in the eaves above the porch. I knew then that unless I got every one of them I was going to be stung. A lot.
“That’s what I think.”
“That I paid this Scott for his work for your father.” Jack Ziegler enunciates the words slowly and clearly, as though offering me the opportunity to retract my testimony.
“Yes.” I may be stirring the hornets, but at least my voice is calm.
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because you and my father were old friends. Because you were his daughter’s godfather.” I force the next words out, knowing he will never tell me which version is true. “Or maybe you helped him because you… you wanted my father to owe you a favor. A favor you could later ask him to repay.”
Jack Ziegler makes the spitting sound I recall from the cemetery. His long fingers stroke the dying flesh of his chin.
“Maybe there are no checks to the late Mr. Scott because your father did not pay him anything. Maybe he did not pay him anything because Mr. Scott did not work for him.”
“I don’t think that’s it. I think there are reasons why my father could not write him checks. I think that Mr. Scott… well, let’s say he didn’t exactly have the kind of background with which a federal judge could afford to be associated.”
“So?”
“So my father had to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Maybe, even then, he was thinking about the Supreme Court.” When this evokes nothing but the same hard-eyed stare, I continue. “Besides, I’m not even sure my father could have afforded to pay him. Not on a federal judge’s salary, especially in those days.”
Jack Ziegler is wonderfully relaxed. “What else do you think, Talcott? This is really quite intriguing.”
I hesitate, but it is a little late to turn back.
“I think Colin Scott did do a report about the accident. I think he figured out who did it. I think he gave it to my father. But I don’t think my father ever took it to the police, did he? I think, when he saw what was in it, he asked Mr. Scott to do something for him, and, when he said no, my father brought the report to you and asked for your help.”
I stop. The next words simply will not emerge. It is not that I am too frightened to speak them; it is that I am less sure than I was two hours ago that I want to know the answer.
But Jack Ziegler refuses to let me avoid the rest. “You say your father came to me for my help? I see. And what is it that you suppose happened then?”
Well, this is what I flew up the mountain to discuss. This is the moment toward which I have been working, through all the conversations with Wallace Wainwright and Lanie Cross and all the memories I have teased from Sally and Addison and even Mariah, through all the evidence I have assembled, with and without their help, up to and including the missing scrapbook. If I am not going to say it, all the months of work are wasted. So is the trip to Aspen.
To be sure, if I do say it, there is a nontrivial possibility that I will never see my wife and child again. But I have, as so often, the courage of the fool.
“I think, somehow, you got Colin Scott to… to take care of the problem for him.”
So there, finally, it is out in the open.
Jack Ziegler shakes his head slowly, and a bit sadly, but his eyes angle away from me, gazing out on the vertiginous view. “Take care of it?” He snickers. Then coughs. “You sound like a bad movie. Take care of what?”
“You know what I mean, Uncle Jack.”
“I know what you mean, Talcott, and, frankly, I am insulted by it.”
His tone is low, almost caressing, and it chills me. Once again, something vaguely threatening thickens the air between us.
“I’m not trying to-”
“You are accusing your father of a crime, Talcott. You use silly euphemisms, but that is what you are doing, eh? You think your father paid this man Scott to do a murder.” He is growing less and less simple by the moment. “That is bad enough. But now you are accusing me of helping him.”
Once you stir the nest, the Judge told me, you had better keep on burning, because you can never outrun the hornets if they get loose.
“Look, Uncle Jack, I know how you make your living.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” His mouth puckers and he holds up a twisted hand. He pokes a shriveled finger in my face. “Oh, I know, I know, you think you know. Everybody thinks they know. They read the newspapers and those imbecilic books and whatnot. Those fool committee reports. But nobody really knows. Nobody.” He struggles to his feet. I have the good sense, for once, not to offer to help. “Come with me, Talcott, I want to show you something.”
I follow him as he pads in his slippers across the long room, passing in front of that amazing window with the dizzying, panoramic view of Aspen, and out into the stainless-steel kitchen, where a stout Slavic woman is preparing lunch. Now I see the source of that zesty smell, for she is pouring powder into a pot. My host snarls at her in some language I do not recognize, and she smiles thinly and disappears. The back wall of the kitchen shares the same view through huge windows. On the far side, the room opens into a greenhouse. I follow Jack Ziegler inside, where a bewildering variety of plants perfume the air. I wonder how the intermixing aromas affect the taste of the food.
“Look,” says Uncle Jack, pointing at something on the other side of the glass wall. “See what I mean? Everybody.”
Now it is my turn to be confused. “Uh, everybody what?”
“Everybody thinks they know. Look!”
I look. I throw a serious expression on my face, hoping Uncle Jack will mistake my befuddlement for concentration, as I have not the faintest idea what he is talking about. I follow the path of his trembling finger. I see his sweeping lawn, the crisp snow sparkling in the rich mountain sun, I see high hedges, and the narrow road winding upward toward the ever-more-ostentatious homes of film producers and software entrepreneurs even wealthier than my baby sister’s godfather. A minivan rumbles by: Kimmer hates them, considering them matronly, and refuses to let us buy one. A power company truck is parked a hundred yards up the hill as the uniformed crew, one male, one female, does something clever up on the pole. A bit closer in, a muscular woman in black boots and yellow spandex, evidently heedless of the cold, walks what my untutored eye decides is a Doberman. A battered red pickup bearing the logo of a lawn-care firm wheezes past, ferrying a trio of snow-blowers.
Jack Ziegler stands next to me like a statue, his finger pressed to the glass. I do not know what he is pointing at. I do know that the plants are starting to make me gag.
“Okay,” I say carefully. “I’m looking.”
“Well, do you see them?” His senility has made a sudden return, and I wonder again whether it is feigned. “Do you see them watching us?”
“See who?”
He grabs my shoulder. His fingers, hot with fever, dig into the muscle like talons. “There! The truck!”
“The truck? You mean the one over by the pole?”
“Yes, yes, do you see it?”
“Okay, yes. I see the truck.”
“Well, then, you understand. You have no idea how they harass me-”
“Who? The power company?”
Uncle Jack looks at me hard, and for an instant the clouds seem to dissipate. “Not the power company,” he says in a reasonable tone. “The FBI.”
I look again. “It’s a power company truck-”
“It is only a cover. They are here to harass me.” He laughs unexpectedly, and his eyes darken and roll. His gleeful madness has returned. “The power goes out up here at least twice a month. Do you know why?” I shake my head. “So they can send their trucks and listen in on my telephone. So my alarm systems won’t work and they can
