before, just at my back.
Wellington fumbled with the watch. For an engineer, he seemed oddly stumped by how to open such a simple mechanism. Finally he succeeded in freeing the catch. For a minute, he studied the photograph inside.
“You have some story about the item and my mother?”
“It’s for your ears only,” I said.
“Leave us, Mr. Morrissey.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Mr. Wellington,” Morrissey cautiously offered. “I think I should be here if you need me.”
A reasonable argument from a bodyguard, I thought. Whatever else I felt about Morrissey, he was a man who took his job seriously.
“I believe, Mr. Wellington, that what I have to say you won’t want anyone else to hear,” I countered.
“I’ll say it only once more, Mr. Morrissey. Leave us.” The reedy voice suddenly had volume and power, and I could tell that somewhere in all that withered white was a man with the ability to command, the kind of man I’d talked to on my cell phone earlier.
“Yes, sir,” Morrissey said.
I didn’t turn, but I heard the door open and close at my back.
The air was close and warm. I was sweating.
“The story,” Wellington said, holding up the watch so that it dangled at the end of its gold fob.
“That watch was given to me by an old man. He was given it by your mother. His name is Henry Meloux. He’s dying.”
I tried to pierce the shadow over his face, to see in that frail wizened face something of Meloux. The eyes were dark, but not Henry’s, I finally decided. More like the woman in the photograph, perhaps.
“A rather short story,” he said.
“He gave me that watch and asked me to give it to the man who may be his son.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. Was he amused?
“He believes I’m his son?”
“He didn’t reveal the whole story to me, but it’s clear he was involved with your mother in a way that could have produced a son. Apparently the timing of your birth is right. And you’re named Henry, like him.”
He considered this, but it was hard to say what he might have been thinking.
“What does he want?’
“To see you, that’s all.”
“You said he’s dying. Where is he?”
“In a hospital in Minnesota.”
“He wants me to go there?”
“Yes.”
He picked up an atomizer that had been tucked beside him in the chair, and he sprayed the air between us.
“Tell me more about this Meloux,” he said.
“He’s Ojibwe. He’s what we call a Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. He heals.”
He leaned forward, and his upper face became clear to me, something carved out of marble, white, hard, and cold.
“An Indian?”
“Yes.”
He stood up, tall and brittle-looking, hollow featured. A ghost of a man.
“Do you realize what you’re saying about my mother? What kind of woman would take up with an Indian buck?” He pointed a curling nail at me. “If I were ten years younger, I’d knock you down.”
I tried again to speak reasonably. “Think about it, Mr. Wellington. You were born two months after your parents married. You were conceived out of wedlock. And I also know that as a child your favorite toy was a stuffed cormorant given to you by your mother. In the Ojibwe totemic system, Henry Meloux is cormorant clan.”
I’d hoped, I suppose, that in the same mysterious way Meloux knew he had a son, the son would recognize Meloux as his father. Not exactly a brilliant strategy.
“Edward!” Wellington called angrily. “Edward!”
The door burst open. “Yes, Mr. Wellington?”
“Show this man out. I don’t wish any further conversation with him.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Wellington.”
I could hear the pleasure in Morrissey’s voice.
“The watch,” I said.
“What?” Wellington squinted at me.
“I’d like the watch back.”
“I’d say it belongs to my family.”
“I’d say not.”
“Edward,” Wellington commanded.
“Come on, O’Connor.”
I shook off his hand. “I’m not leaving without that watch.”
Morrissey gripped my shoulder hard. I turned and swung, catching him full on his jaw. He went down, looking stunned. I spun back and sprang toward Wellington.
“Stay back,” he cried. He cringed a moment, then threw the watch at me like a spoiled child and spat, “All right then, here.”
I heard Morrissey struggling up at my back. I turned to meet him.
“Enough, Edward,” Wellington ordered. “Just get him out of here.”
Morrissey was breathing hard, and I could see he wanted a piece of me. Hell, he wanted the whole enchilada. But Wellington once more said, “Enough.”
Though Morrissey relaxed his body, his eyes were still tight. “Yes, sir.” He nodded toward the door. “After you, O’Connor.”
TWELVE
He jumped me on the limestone path.
We were out of sight of the mansion, winding our way through the pines toward the dock. Morrissey was behind me. He hadn’t said a word since we left the room where Henry Wellington sat trapped in his antiseptic craziness, and I wondered where the bodyguard’s head was at. He couldn’t be happy with himself. He hadn’t done his job particularly well. I was in possession of the watch, and if Wellington hadn’t thrown it at me, I’d have actually laid my germ-infested hands on him. Plus, I’d clipped Morrissey’s jaw pretty well.
So as he brooded behind me, I wondered.
Then he hit me.
In my left kidney.
A blow like a cannonball.
I arched against the impact and the pain. My knees buckled and I went down, kneeling in the crushed limestone.
Morrissey danced to the side and kicked me below the ribs. I toppled and went fetal, my knees to my chest, my arms wrapped around my head to protect myself.
But Morrissey had done all the damage he intended. Except to bend down and deliver this: “Shithead. You ever swing on me again, I’ll kill your sorry ass.”
I heard the crunch of limestone as he stepped back.
To be on the safe side, I waited several seconds then carefully uncurled. Morrissey stood a dozen feet away, arms crossed, shades in place, watching me get to my feet. No emotion on his face now. A volcano that had finished erupting. His right hand rested on his wind-breaker, near the bulge that was not a whisk broom.
