plant their bugs.”
“Bugs-”
“Right here, in my house, in my kitchen, there are bugs!” To my astonishment, he produces a fly swatter from somewhere and whacks a spot on the wall. “Take that!” he cackles with such glee that for a moment I think that I might have misunderstood him, that he really is talking about insects. “And that!” he cries, turning away to smack the refrigerator, then one of the dark green granite countertops. “That’ll rattle their earphones!” he hoots.
He tosses the fly swatter vaguely toward a closet, slips an arm around my shoulders, and leads me back into the great room, as he calls it. “They want to know what I do for a living. They think I am a criminal, for goodness’ sake!” He pauses at his immaculate desk and scribbles something on a pad. “Like you do,” he mutters. “Like you do.” Then he coughs wetly, not bothering to cover his mouth.
Embarrassed, I make my typical retreat. “Uncle Jack, I, uh, I didn’t mean-”
“But I’m on to them,” he giggles, talking right through me. “And so, when the power goes out, do you know what I do?”
“No.”
“I’ll tell you what I do,” he says, his expression crafty as he slips his arm around me once more. “I go around with a flashlight and kill their bugs! ”
“I see,” I say, wondering whether I have come on a fool’s errand.
“No, I don’t think you do see,” he mumbles. Then he tilts his face sharply upward and bellows: “Harrison!”
The skinny bodyguard materializes at once. “Yes, sir?”
This is it. They are throwing me off the side of the mountain. Kimmer, I forgive you. Take good care of our boy.
“Is this house bugged, Harrison?” Abby’s godfather demands.
“Occasionally, sir.”
“And do we kill the bugs?”
“Whenever we can, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harrison, that will be all.” Uncle Jack hands him the scribbled note, and the butler-valet- nurse-bodyguard withdraws. I begin to breathe normally once more. This is how they communicate in a house where any word might be overheard: they write each other notes. Now I understand what Henderson meant about Uncle Jack’s popularity-and how everybody would know I am coming to visit. “Bugs everywhere,” says Jack Ziegler, shaking his head sadly.
Jack Ziegler is fading. His lips quiver. The excitement seems to have worn him out, for his face has grown slack, the energy depleted. “Let me lean on you, Talcott,” he murmurs, slipping a thin, feverish arm around my shoulders. We walk back into the main part of the house, Uncle Jack’s feet sliding on the floor. He feels as light as a child against my body.
“Listen, Talcott,” he says. “Are you listening?”
“I’m listening, Uncle Jack.”
“I am not a hero, Talcott. I know that. I have done things in my life for which I am sorry. I have some associates who are sorry as well. Do you understand?”
“Not really…”
“I have made choices, Talcott. Hard choices. And choices have consequences. That is, I think, the very first rule of any just morality. Choices have consequences. All choices. I have always accepted that. I have made good choices and benefited from them. I have made bad choices and suffered for it. All of us have.” He lets this sink in, too. I realize that he is truly angry underneath the politesse. The hornets are buzzing away.
“I understand what you-” I begin, but he interrupts swiftly.
“Consequences, Talcott. An underused word. We live today in a world in which nobody believes choices should have consequences. But may I tell you the great secret that our culture seeks to deny? You cannot escape the consequences of your choices. Time runs in only one direction.”
“I suppose so,” I assure him, although I do not.
Jack Ziegler’s wet, tired gaze flicks over my face, bounds off toward the wall-is he thinking about the bugs again?-then settles on the giddying vista of Aspen beyond the two-story window. He begins a fresh lecture: “None of us who are fathers are quite what we wanted to be for our sons. You will learn that, I think.” I remember that he has a son of his own, Jack Junior, a currency trader who lives halfway around the world-Hong Kong, maybe-to escape his father.
I wonder whether that is far enough.
Jack Ziegler continues to wax philosophical, as though the purpose of my trip is to comprehend his notion of the life well lived. “A father, a son-this is a sacred bond. All through history, the headship of the family is passed on that way, father to son to son of the son, and so on. Head of the family, Talcott! That is a mission, you see. A responsibility that a man may not shirk, even should he so desire. Nowadays, on the campuses, I know, such ideas are dismissed. Sexist, they say. You know the words better than I. Patriarchy. Male domination. Pah! My generation, we lacked the luxuries of yours. We had no time to wallow in such arguments. We had to live, Talcott. We had to act. Let others worry about why God spoke to Moses from inside a burning bush instead of a sycamore tree or a Wal-Mart store or a television set. Who had time to care? Yours is the generation of talkers, and I wish you well of it. Ours was the generation of doers, Talcott, the last the nation has seen. Doers! You do not understand this, I know. You have never lived a life in which there is no time to discuss, to debate, to litigate, to analyze your policy options -isn’t that what they say now? We did not go on the radio and moan about the difficulties in our lives. We did not derive our self-worth from establishing how badly others had treated us. We did not complain. We had no time. My generation, we actually had things that we had to do, Talcott. Decisions to make. Do you see?” He does not care whether I see. He does not care whether I agree. He is determined to make his point… and, at this instant, sounds exactly like the Judge. “And this was the generation that spawned your father, Talcott. Your father and myself both. We were the same. We were heads of families, Talcott. Men. The old-fashioned kind, you would say. We knew what our responsibilities were. Provide for the family, yes. Nurture it, certainly. Guide it. But, above all, protect it.”
The sun is setting over the town of Aspen, the snow turning a magnificent orange-red. Down below, the skiers will begin on the nightlife phase of their day; I wonder when they sleep.
“I know you are angry, Talcott. I know you are disappointed in your father.” He casts his moist eyes toward me, then slides them swiftly away. “You think you have caught him at something terrible. Well, tell me, then, what would you have done? Your daughter is dead, the police do nothing-and you think perhaps you know who killed her. What would you have done?”
Now he waits. I have turned the same question over and over in my mind ever since Mariah’s visit started me thinking along this road. Were someone to do harm to Bentley, and were the law to offer no justice, would I go out and hire a killer? Or do the job myself? Maybe. Maybe not. No one, I suspect, can answer with confidence as long as the question is abstract. Only when something is at stake do we test the principles we so proudly parade.
“I know what he did,” I finally say.
Jack Ziegler shakes his thin head. “You think you know. But what do you know, really? Tell me, Talcott: what do you really know?”
His sudden directness takes me by surprise. His eyes are boring into me now. I look away. I wonder why Uncle Jack is not worried about the bugs any more, but as I replay our conversation in my mind, I realize that the only incriminating lines have come from me, and they all involve the Judge, who is already dead… and that Uncle Jack has maneuvered me into a position in which I am smearing my own father’s memory for the benefit of the FBI’s listeners.
So be it.
“He hired a killer,” I finally say, wanting to match Uncle Jack’s directness with some of my own.
“Pah! A killer! The man who mangled your sister was a killer, Talcott. And yet he was walking around free.”
