To my surprise, not only is Meadows free to talk, but she has good news: the FBI has tracked down the mysterious McDermott. He is, indeed, a private investigator, based down in South Carolina. He has been bothering people who knew my father, especially around Washington, asking about a woman named Angela. He is well known to his local sheriff, who considers him persistent and perhaps a bit underhanded, but certainly not dangerous. He even has a real name, but the Bureau would not tell Meadows what it is.
“Why wouldn’t they tell you?”
She hesitates, wanting to be a Washington player like Mallory Corcoran, and thus loath to admit that she is outside certain circles of knowledge. “They said we didn’t need to know,” she finally confesses.
“Did they say why?”
Another pause. “I didn’t ask, to tell you the truth. Maybe I should have pressed…”
“It doesn’t matter.” I sketch for her the substance of John Brown’s call. “Did they tell you anything about Foreman?”
“Foreman works for him. He’s some kind of private investigator too, and, yes, Mr. Garland, he is also considered harmless.”
At last I allow myself a ripple of relief. “Anything else?”
“Only that the two of them have fled the jurisdiction. Left the United States. They apparently heard the FBI was looking for them and headed for Canada.”
“Canada? What is the FBI after them for, that they would go to Canada?”
“That’s what they told me.”
Puzzled but relieved, I remember why I called in the first place. I tell Meadows about Mariah and her bullet fragments. Meadows laughs.
“What’s funny?” I glance at my watch, worry about my son waiting.
“I’ll add it to the file.”
“What file?”
“Mr. Corcoran had me open a file for stuff like this. We’ve got every nutty letter, every Internet posting, every right-wing pamphlet, every wild talk-show host’s theory about your father. It’s a very thick file, Mr. Garland.” Another chuckle. “We already have lots of alleged autopsy photographs in there.”
“So what’s the funny part?”
“Oh, well. I have a whole subfile full of e-mails from your sister.” Meadows lowers her voice. “I haven’t even bothered Mr. Corcoran with them.”
“You’ve… heard from Mariah?”
“Would you believe twice a week?” Another laugh, except that this one is humorless. “I guess she figures, you know, being as how she’s Mr. Corcoran’s goddaughter and all…” Meadows trails off, then adopts a more serious tone: “Somebody has to do something about her, Mr. Garland. My friends on the Hill tell me that if she doesn’t cut this stuff out… well, your wife won’t stand a chance.”
CHAPTER 15
Bentley! Home! Two of my favorite words!
I arrive twenty minutes late to pick up my son because of my time on the phone with my sister, and I endure the unemotive glares of the teachers-all women, all white-whose grim silence informs me that they are prepared to call the Department of Family Services to report the Garland-Madison team as far too frequently tardy and therefore unfit to parent. I take some solace, however, from the fact that Miguel Hadley is still there, too, his parents therefore every bit as unfit as Bentley’s. Miguel, a pudgy little boy, is an amazingly bright child but never an ebullient one. He seems particularly solemn today. He hugs Bentley to say goodbye. The school encourages hugging between boys in the service of some unarticulated ideological goal-making sure they don’t grow up to be the kind of men who drop bombs on innocent civilians, perhaps. But I am not sure why the teachers bother. University kids are far more likely to grow up to be the kind of men who sit in the White House ordering others to drop the bombs, in between hugging their constituents.
Standing off to the side, waiting for the two little boys to finish their embrace (the school preaches that we mere parents should never separate them by force), I gaze out the window toward the parking lot, hoping, through this device, to avoid having to make small talk with the teachers who staff the school. They are hopelessly well- meaning, in the manner of white liberals of their class, but because they believe they have transcended racism (which afflicts only conservatives) they remain blissfully unaware of how their disdainful elitism is perceived by the few black parents who can afford the school. Nor is there any point in enlightening them: their desperately sincere apologies would only make matters worse, signaling, as liberal apologies tend to, that the members of the darker nation are so weak of character that there can be no greater sin than insulting one.
White liberals, of course, believe themselves to be made of stronger stuff. That is why they so often support rules punishing nasty comments made by whites about blacks but readily forgive nasty comments made by blacks about whites.
I shake my head, struggling against the angry red direction of my musings. Does any of this diatribe actually represent what I believe? I scratch at the fading outline of a flower sticker in the corner of the window, wondering why these teachers, with their cultlike grins of welcome to every dark face, bring out the worst in me. And why I condemn liberals alone. The racial attitudes of conservatives are no better; often they are worse. These teachers, for all the arrogance of their sympathy, are not the ones scrawling KKK with cheap paint on the lockers of black high-school students or sending money to the National Association for the Advancement of White People. What is the source of my vitriol? Is it possible that I am just recalling, albeit dimly, some furious article or speech by the Judge? Odd how difficult it is becoming to tell the difference, as though my father, in death, owns more of my mind than he ever did in life.
I wonder whether I will ever escape him.
As I brood in the corner, waiting for the teachers to decide that Bentley has learned his anti-war, anti-macho, pro-hugging lesson for the day, I notice a trapezoidal black Mercedes minivan streaking and thumping across the potholes of the pitted lot. Dahlia Hadley, Miguel’s mother, has arrived in her usual heedless rush. She bustles inside, a tiny, slender whirlwind of smile and energy, and the teachers, so unnerved by my presence, begin to beam again, because everybody loves Dahlia; it’s like a rule.
“Talcott,” she murmurs breathily, as soon as she has waved to her son, “I am so glad you are here. I was thinking of calling you. Do you have a minute?”
“Of course,” I say, certain that something unpleasant is coming.
Dahlia takes my large hand in her small one and draws me off to another corner of the long room, where wooden blocks lie helter-skelter, sloppiness passing as juvenile creativity.
“It has to do with our mutual concern,” she says, glancing around. Her indigo jeans and matching sweater are a little showy, but that is Dahlia. “Do you know what I am talking about, Talcott?”
Of course I know, but I am still free to pretend that I do not, because the Elm Harbor Clarion, no whiz at digging up stories unrelated to municipal corruption (of which our fine city has plenty), has yet to run the obligatory article on the finalists for the seat on the court of appeals. But I decide not to play games.
“Ah… I think so.”
She hesitates, then meets my eyes and smiles again. Dahlia Hadley is in her early thirties, a raucous, hennaed Bolivian even Kimmer, in spite of her best efforts, cannot help liking. Marc and Dahlia met, Dahlia points out whenever somebody will listen, after his first marriage was on the rocks. (But before he left his wife, Kimmer adds savagely.) Marc’s first wife was Margaret Story, a very distinguished historian a year older than he, with whom he had two children, the younger of whom is Heather, now a student at the law school, and the older of whom is Rick, a poet often published in The New Yorker, who lives in California. Margaret was broad and quiet and distant,
