why you kept telling me I was safe. You knew Foreman was in trouble, so you waited for me to lead you to Colin Scott.
I allow my eyes to close. The pain is overwhelming me now, and I yearn to get back into the bed. But I have to raise a last subject. “And that was the goal, wasn’t it? To get Scott back into the United States? That was the point of the operation?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Professor,” he fences.
“Yes, you are. The Judge… my father… died, and somebody had to persuade Scott that there was now a risk that something would come out that he didn’t want to come out.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, that’s right.”
Spoken quickly again, evasion in his tone. What is going on here? One more question that I will never have a better chance to ask.
“So, then, my father… was he murdered or not?”
The way Fred Nunzio ponders before answering, rubbing his chin and squinting, is a terror in itself. “No, Professor,” he says at last. “No, we don’t think so.”
Even through my sedative-clouded mind, his words are a bolt of lightning. “You don’t… think so?”
“No evidence of murder. Nobody with anything to gain by it. So, no, we’re pretty sure it was a heart attack, just like the autopsy said.”
“Pretty sure?”
He spreads his hands. “Life is probability, Professor, not certainty.”
Maybe. Maybe. Nothing ever seems to be a hundred percent certain any more. All this time, and I am still chewing on cotton.
“Agent Nunzio?”
“Yes, Professor?”
“The two men who attacked me that night? The ones who got… who got their fingers cut off?”
“What about them?”
“You think Jack Ziegler did it, don’t you?”
“Who else? He was protecting you and your family, remember? Mutilating the men who attacked you was probably his way of sending a message.”
“To whom? A message to whom?”
For the second time I have the sense I have brushed up against knowledge he would prefer to keep from me. “Anybody who was paying attention,” he says finally.
“But didn’t everybody already know about his… his edict?”
“Evidently not.” Again the evasion.
“If you… if you know Jack Ziegler did it, why don’t you arrest him?”
Fred Nunzio’s eyes go flinty. “I don’t know he did it, Professor Garland. Nobody ever knows Jack Ziegler does anything. No, that’s not it. Everybody knows, but nobody knows how they know. No proof, ever, where your Uncle Jack is concerned.”
Probably I grunt. Nunzio doesn’t like it.
“How much do you know, exactly, about your Uncle Jack?”
“What I read in the papers.”
“Well, let me explain something to you. Let me tell you why his word was enough to protect you. Do you know what Jack Ziegler actually does for a living?”
“I can guess.”
“You can’t guess. So let me tell you. He’s what you would call a broker, a man who could manage, say, a friendly takeover by interests in, oh, Cali, Colombia, of an operation in Turkey. Everybody trusts him to tell the truth, because he pays in blood if he ever lies. His fee is a percentage of the value of deal. I guess you would call him an underworld investment banker. We figure his annual income at between twenty and twenty-five million dollars.”
“So why isn’t he in prison?” Still counterpunching.
“Because we can’t prove any of it.”
I try to process this image, a man who lives by his word in a dangerous world, a man whose promises are so honored that he… he can…
Oh!
In spite of everything, a grin tugs at my mouth.
“What is it, Professor? What’s funny?”
“Nothing, nothing. I… Look, this has been a little rough. I have to lie down. Will you help me back to bed?”
“Huh? Oh, sure.”
Nunzio allows me to sling an arm over his well-muscled shoulder, and half sturdies, half carries me back to the glorified crib that the hospital has provided me.
On the way, I throw out another question: “So what was the big deal with Colin Scott? Why mount an operation to get him to come back to the States?” He hesitates. “Let me guess. I don’t need to know that, either, right?”
“Sorry, Professor.”
“No problem.” I stretch out and buzz for the nurse, who shows up a moment later and begins to straighten the sheets and plug in all the right sensors.
“The box,” I whisper as the nurse does her work. “Have you found out who took it?”
“Not yet.” His tone is grim and determined. He has been embarrassed, I realize, by the way things turned out. “But we will.”
“I hope so.”
He looks at me. Something in my voice, I worry for a moment, has given away the game. “How did you figure it out?” he asks. “Your father’s message, I mean? What made you think of the cemetery?”
“I had told him… told my father, I mean… a story about the cemetery. A long time ago. A personal story. Maybe he thought I would realize at once that the… the cemetery was what he meant. I don’t know. I just… I guess I forgot it for a while.”
I do not like the look on Agent Nunzio’s hard face. He thinks I am hiding something, which is true. “What made you remember?” he asks sharply, just the right question to catch me lying, except that I have my answer ready.
“The two pawns,” I say tiredly. “One delivered inside the law school, one outside.”
“So?”
“A white pawn, a black pawn… separated by the walls of the law school. My father used to say all the time…” I yawn. My exhaustion is not feigned. “He used to say the wall separated us… separated the two nations, even in death.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Old Town Burial Ground. It used to have a segregated area in the back… a kind of black cemetery within a cemetery… and the… my father liked to walk there.”
Nunzio gives me a law-enforcement stare, skeptical and scary. But I lack the energy to be properly intimidated. I peer up at him through the mists of pain and exhaustion. “You did well, Professor,” he says at last.
“Thank you,” I murmur, relaxing once more. “And thank you for coming.”
“Oh. Oh, you’re welcome. My pleasure.” And he is pleased, I know he is: pleased that I have let him off so lightly.
I watch him go, smiling to myself as my body sneaks toward sleep. He doesn’t know, I tell myself, delighted at my own cleverness. Nobody knows except Dana. We fooled Colin Scott, we fooled Maxine, we even fooled the FBI.
The box for which Colin Scott died and Dear Dana and I were nearly killed is worthless. The pouch inside is empty. I know because those were my instructions a month ago when, unable to act myself because I was being followed, I asked Dana over lunch at Post if she would buy a metal box and bury it for me.
