'No, of course I didn't actually kill him with my own hands!' Dan moaned. 'But I might as well have, for chrissakes. I was-I was trying to control everything, and save the paper for Mom and Eric and Janet and me, and-I fucked up, goddamn it.'
I said, 'So now it's all got to come out, Dan. It's too late to save the paper for the family. The chances are slim that you'll ever find those diamonds in these woods. And even if you did, word is out now, and the jewels would have to be returned to their owners. The best deal you're going to get from now on is, the board votes next month and the paper goes to the decent Griscomb chain and not to god-awful Info-Com.'
He said simply, 'I know that.'
Arlene was rocking on her seat and said, 'I can't believe this. I just fucking can't believe this, Dan. You never told me those diamonds had anything to do with Eric. I thought they were just some oil profiteer's wife's jewelry, and the fucking diamonds were going for a good cause that would benefit the people!'
'Arlene,' I said, 'two people died in that robbery, one of them a working man, a member of the international proletariat. Letting that guard live the rest of his life would have been a good people's cause.'
'Sure, that sucked, that guard getting killed,' Arlene said, 'and I'm not saying that two wrongs make a right. But the Herald stands up for people like that dead guard, and if the Osbornes lose control of the paper, then it'll start standing up for assholes like big corporations that want to poison the rivers and cut all the trees down. So I agree with what Dan was trying to do. Especially since he didn't even know about the robbery until after it happened.'
Another awkward silence. I looked at Dan, and then Arlene did too.
Dan said, almost inaudibly, 'I knew about it, Arlene.' Then, more loudly: 'Of course I knew about it. Come on, Arlene, are you really that naive? I mean-Jesus!'
Arlene slumped and said nothing.
'Was the robbery your idea?' I asked.
Now Dan's face contorted with grief. He said, 'No.'
Arlene went white and said, 'Was it Eric's?'
Dan guffawed once. 'God, no. Eric? Don't be absurd.'
I said, 'What happened, Dan?'
Again another long silence in the woods. 'This is the end,' Dan finally said. 'I'm relieved.'
'A lot of people will be.'
'I won't,' Arlene said, but Dan ignored this.
He took a deep breath and in a shaky voice he said: 'Stu Torkild-son first came to me last summer and told me the Herald would not survive as an Osborne family paper unless we could somehow pay off the Spruce Valley debt. He said the resort project was eating the paper alive. He had already refinanced twice, he said, but the company was only falling further and further behind, and Stu had exhausted all legal means for saving the paper.'
When Dan said 'legal,' he gave us a meaningful look. 'Stu said to me,' Dan went on, 'that I, better than all the other Osbornes, understood how 'questionable means'-his term-are justified by good ends. He mentioned as an example something he knew about that I'd done back in the Movement days in sixty-eight. And then when I agreed to listen to what he had to say, he told me bluntly that he thought Craig would be willing to pull off some moneymaking caper that would rescue the paper.
'Craig's motivation would be getting even with his father by bolstering the position of the liberal Osbornes who controlled the paper. Stu said I shouldn't mention his involvement to Craig because Craig knew Stu and Chester were friends, and that would make Craig suspicious.'
I said, 'Torkildson actually proposed a jewel robbery?'
Dan laughed sourly and said, 'Hell, no. Do you think Stu Torkildson of the Glens Falls Torkildsons is a common criminal? What Stu had in mind was a multimillion-dollar drug deal. He said I had friends in Cuba, and he knew from reading The Wall Street Journal that Cuban officials deal coke big-time. This was Stu's idea of keeping the deal respectable.'
'So you and Craig would be risking your necks, and Stu wouldwhat?' I asked.
'Stu would do nothing and risk nothing. He told me straight out that if the deal were ever exposed, he would deny any knowledge of it. He only wanted to save the Hera Id for the Osbornes, and he had to save himself for that noble pursuit.'
'Right,' I said. 'The way he saved the Herald with the Spruce Valley project.'
Arlene blurted out, 'And you listened to that flaming asshole, Dan? I can't believe this shit! I just can't believe it!'
'Well, goddamn it, Arlene, how else was I supposed to save the Herald? You tell me!'
She shook her head and muttered something inaudible.
I said, 'Whose idea was the jewel heist? Craig's?'
'He had this buddy,' Dan said, 'who'd worked for the hotel and who swore it would be easy to hold the place up in the middle of the night. Nobody would get hurt,' Dan said, his pale eyes suddenly full of anguish. 'And one job, if they hit the right night, could net over a million in cash and jewels, which I would then fence with my Cuban contacts. Nobody ever guessed that the one robbery alone would produce a haul worth an amount more than equal to the Herald's entire debt. And nobody guessed either that the hotel security man would turn up in the middle of the robbery. According to Craig's buddy, the guard was supposed to be in some other part of the hotel at that hour.'
'Did Stu know about the robbery in advance?' I asked.
Dan shrugged. 'Only after the fact. He still thought it was going to be a big drug deal, with the laundered cash arriving at the Herald by way of a so-called 'loan' from a bank in the Caymans. When he heard that Craig had been arrested for robbery and murder, he wasn't too wild about the news. It was obvious that Stu's going out on a legal limb to save the Herald was really to recoup his own battered reputation after the Spruce Valley debacle. A 'world-class' drug deal-that's what Stu said he had in mind-was one thing, but armed robbery was something else, and Stu was on the edge of freaking out when he heard about it.'
I said, 'And Chester knew none of this?'
'Not in the beginning,' Dan said, looking away again.
'But he figured it out,' I said. 'Craig described that part to me.'
Dan nodded grimly. 'Fucking greedy, hothead Chester. We knew all along-I knew, Stu knew-not to get Chester involved.'
'And Chester never tumbled to the fact that his good pal Stu was the man who had initiated the entire scheme?'
'No,' Dan said, 'Chester found out Craig and I had been spending time together before the robbery. And then when the stolen jewels failed to turn up, Chester was suspicious and went out and confronted Craig at Attica. Chester is such a total asshole. First of all, he threatened to blow open the whole deal if we didn't give him the jewels so that he and June could gain control of the paper. Craig just blew him off.
'Then in May, Chester gets it in his insane head that Eric and I are about to use the diamond money to squeeze him and June out of the paper, and he goes out and confronts Craig a second time. But by then I'd lost the jewels and I was frantically trying to find them up here in the woods, and I was too embarrassed to tell Craig where the jewels went. So when Chester goes out to Attica and says, 'Where are the jewels?' Craig, who's plenty pissed by now, he tells Chester, 'Ask Dan where they are.''
Arlene said, 'Jesus, Dan, what a bunch of fuckheads. Your family sounds like a bunch of people on a daytime TV talk show.'
'Every family is a family from a daytime TV talk show!' Dan snapped. 'Most families just don't happen to go on television and make fools of themselves in public.'
I said, 'In the nineties, we're a long way from Tolstoy in these matters, I guess, but let's get back to your interesting narrative, Dan. So Chester then came to you and asked where the jewels were?'
Dan shook his head in disgust. 'I told Chester he was nuts and to fuck off, which he did. But what does Chester do next? He goes to Eric. Eric! Eric came to me, and he says, what's this about Craig and me and the jewel robbery? I said, God, Eric, don't be ridiculous, it's just Craig playing head games with Chester. Eric, who was so straight, so naive- Eric just says, oh, okay. And he went back and told Chester that Craig had made up the entire story, none of us had any jewels, and to forget about it.'
