Speak Ill of the Living Page 3

  He knew little about the atrocity Henry had committed, more than thirty years before. Something about an armored car, a robbery, a guard killed during the crime, a wife widowed, children left fatherless. Painful things, about which Eddie’s parents had told him little before they stopped speaking to each other, and then divorced. Eddie barely spoke to either of them anymore. He had always meant to look up the news clips about the robbery and Henry’s trial, but that had always seemed like a project for later.

  Why are you writing me now?

  What could Henry Bourque want? Money? Money for what? Was he dying? Did he have some terrible disease? Was he writing to apologize? To make amends? Or did he just want to meet the brother he had never known? Why did the letter look so fat? How much did he write?

  For a second, Eddie considered throwing the letter away. He looked to the trashcan. Then to the sink, in which he could burn the letter safely.

  Why don’t I just read it?

  He slapped his hand on the envelope and snatched it up. General VonKatz jumped away, startled. Eddie tore open the message.

  A wad of newsprint was folded inside. He unfolded a page torn from an out-of-state newspaper. The folio at the top of the page identified the paper from the suburban Buffalo, N.Y., region.

  It was Eddie’s story on Roger Lime that had moved over the national wire and had been picked up and published by this paper in New York. The paper had also printed the photo of Roger Lime that Eddie had seen in the police station. The paper’s local editors had headlined the story: “Dead and Alive? Massachusetts Bank Exec Again Held Hostage.”

  Eddie’s byline had been circled in pencil.

  The words “Held Hostage” in the headline had also been circled. An arrow drawn from the circle pointed to five words scrawled down the left margin:

  I

  know

  who’s

  doing

  this.

  Chapter 2

  The Mighty Chevette murmured along the Massachusetts Turnpike, west, toward New York. The morning sun glared in the rear-view mirror. Cars, buses and garbage trucks blew past Eddie in the next lane, but he wasn’t in a rush. He had budgeted six hours for the three hundred mile drive, and six hours back.

  The Chevette’s radio played only white noise. To help pass the time, Eddie had only the scenery, and little of it. He passed woods and sound-dampening fence, and sheer cliffs of sandstone still striped with blasting holes five decades after the rock was dynamited to cut a path for the road. He drove past signs for western Massachusetts towns he had never heard of, passing the backsides of suburban malls, and identical rest stops, spaced a half-hour apart, selling the same brands of gas and fast food, as if these plazas had been replicated along the highway with the copy/paste function on a computer.

  He thought about Hank’s message.

  I know who’s doing this.

  How could he know? He had been locked up thirty years. What could he know of Roger Lime? Was this a psychotic joke?

  Eddie’s back grew damp against the seat. He drove past a sign for an upcoming exit. He thought about turning back. What would he lose? A few hours on the highway. A few hundred miles on a car that had precious few miles left.

  Could he live without knowing what Henry had meant in that message? No, no way. He smacked a palm on the steering wheel and settled the argument. “Keep going,” he muttered out loud. He was going to see Henry Bourque, his brother, the killer.

  ***

  The prison was down a winding street, outside of a village that was nothing more than a service station, a post office, and the intersection of two roads that led to more interesting places.

  For a federal pen, it wasn’t imposing. It was a one-story modern building made from tan and yellow brick. Concrete walkways wound from the parking lot through rolling lawn and perennial gardens encircled by spilt-log railings. Take away the guard tower and the twenty-foot chain fence, and the place could have been a community college campus.

  Eddie climbed out of the car and stretched. He was stiff from the ride, dry mouthed and dehydrated. Just behind his eyes, he felt the early rumblings of a caffeine withdrawal headache. His stomach filled with cold anticipation.

  Inside, a guard in a gray uniform gave Eddie a clipboard and a one-page form. Eddie stopped at the question: “Relationship to Inmate___________.” He felt his face flush with embarrassment.

  He printed: “None.”

  The guard gave the paperwork a nanosecond’s review, tossed the clipboard on a desk, and waved Eddie along.

  Security for a prison visitor was no worse than at the airport. A second guard ran a metal-detecting baton over Eddie, and then x-rayed his shoes. He led Eddie through a sliding steel door, six inches thick, like the hatch to a vault filled with gold, and then into a security airlock. There was a similar door on the other end. The door he had entered thundered shut behind him, and the other door opened.

  The visiting room was just like the movies. Ten chairs faced ten windows, which looked into a mirror image room on the other side of the glass. Telephones were mounted to the wall. The visiting area was beige and olive. The hard gray tile floor had been buffed to a wet shine and Eddie’s shoes squeaked against it.

  There were no other visitors here.

  “Sit at number six,” the guard said, pointing to a chair. “It has the best phone.”

  Eddie nodded and slowly stepped to the chair. The guard left, letting the door slam. Eddie jumped, startled.

  He sat. The room was cold, like the frozen food aisle in the grocery. Eddie had worn a polo shirt and dress slacks. Gooseflesh roughened his bare arms. He rubbed the goosebumps away. The glass barrier between Eddie and the other side of the room, where the prisoners sat, was spotless. Eddie reached to it. Twice tapped a finger on. Felt the glass there. Heard the thump, thump.

  What will the face of a killer look like?

  A door opened on the other side of the glass. A man with a scarred face shuffled in. He was tall and broad, mountainous in the upper body, sharply tapered to a narrow waist, and then wide again in the thighs. He wore a tan jumpsuit, silver handcuffs and high-top canvas sneakers. His ankles were shackled. His head had been shaved recently, maybe two days ago; there was five o’clock shadow on his scalp.

  Eddie had prepared for an older version of himself, but this man was not his doppelganger. He had the same pointed French-Canadian features, and similar deep-set dark eyes. But Henry Bourque’s face was longer, his complexion lighter, his nose wider and slightly bent. His skin was deeply lined around the eyes. He had a familiar look, but not like a twin. More like an older uncle.

  Eddie’s eyes went to the scar on Henry’s face, an arresting, hook-shaped gash. It started at the left corner of his mouth and ran up his check, just outside his eye, then slashed up and across his forehead in a curve, ending above his right ear. The scar was muddy red, and no hair dared grow near it. How could a man survive such a wound? Goosebumps raised again on Eddie’s arms.

  Henry stood and looked Eddie over, too. His lips bent into a tiny smile. The crow’s feet around his eyes exposed themselves as laugh lines.

  Henry Bourque eased into the chair, and then nodded to the phone. They both picked up. Eddie listened. His brother’s voice was low and whispery, encrusted with nicotine: “Have you been to the mountains?”

  Not what Eddie had expected to hear. “Huh? I don’t…”

  Henry’s voice sank lower. “The mountains, man. Haven’t you been this summer?”

  “Once, to the Whites in New Hampshire.”

  Henry smiled. “Ooooo, the White Mountains,” he moaned. “Tell me about them.”

  “I thought you wanted to tell me—”

  Henry’s eyes widened and Eddie stopped in mid-thought. Henry looked like a madman. Red veins squiggled through the whites of his eyes. He said, “The mountains, little brother, tell me about them.” His head weaved, as if he was fighting a stiff wind on the other side of
the glass.

  Little brother?

  “I dunno,” Eddie said. “They were great. I climbed Mount Adams, solo.”

  Henry rolled his eyes and rapped the telephone receiver twice on the glass. “No, man,” he said, exasperated. His voice got raspier. “You’re the fucking writer. Tell me like a writer.”

  Eddie stared into his brother’s eyes. Maybe they were not the eyes of a madman, maybe they were just desperate.

  Eddie nodded, looked away for a moment to gather his thoughts, and then spoke slowly, “At twilight I threw down my sleeping bag under an old beech, gray, the color of an overcast sky, climbed into the sack and burrowed myself in the goose down. Dry leaves under me crackled whenever I moved. The day had been humid and I could smell the ground, kind of peppery.”

  Henry Bourque closed his eyes and listened.

  “I had a flask with me,” Eddie said. He laughed.

  Henry smiled, said nothing, kept his eyes closed.

  “I took two shots of bourbon. And Goddam! That Kentucky corn whiskey burned on the way down, like drinking pure steam. But it spread its warmth over me. As I closed my eyes I could hear a few raindrops flicking off the leaves of that beech tree. I waited for a drop to strike my face, but one never did.

  “In the morning I hiked past sugar maple with deep ridges in their bark. I saw a doe watching me through a hobblebush, but I pretended not to notice it. The trail cut higher, over boulders, slick with dew. A spruce grouse, fat and brave as hell, fluttered down right in front of me. It was slate gray with a red patch over one eye, like a pirate. It tilted its head at me. I tilted my head back at him. He lost interest and waddled away, into the balsam trees.”

  Henry leaned forward and rested his head against the glass. His eyes squeezed tightly closed.

  Eddie paused, recalling more details from his hike.

  “At tree line, about four thousand feet, I climbed into a cloud. I couldn’t hear anything except my own boots on the rock, and my own breath, panting. I couldn’t see much beyond the next boulder, just white fog. I scaled a steep talas field, following the painted blue blazes on the rock, scrambling on hands and feet like a bug. I could smell my sweat. Green lichen speckled the granite.”

  “How’d the rocks feel?” Henry asked, eyes still closed.

  “They left my bare hands rough.”

  Henry rubbed his hand together.

  Eddie continued, “There’s a sign on the peak, a wooden marker nailed to a shaved log, and wedged in a cairn. I couldn’t see the sign through the fog until I could nearly touch it. The mountain was fifty-eight hundred feet high, it said. Wind was rushing over the summit. It was cold on my face. I stood on the highest rock, the peak of the peak. And then the fog grew brighter, and suddenly the wind pushed it all away, like somebody had thrown a switch. I could see for miles, and from my perch I looked down on a hawk circling the valley.”

  Eddie was finished.

  Neither brother said anything for a minute. Then Henry pushed away from the glass and looked at Eddie. “I can see it,” he whispered. “I’m there, on the mountain.” His head weaved again, like a cobra charmed by a flute. He gave a contented little smile and said in a jolly voice, “That’s how I travel, do it all the time. My wife gets sick of describing things for me.”

  “You’re married?”

  Henry held up his left hand. “Not allowed a ring in here.”

  “But…how?”

  “Lonely people outside these walls are looking for conversation, for someone to listen to them, for a husband who will be wholly devoted to them, whatever his circumstances.” He smiled. “They can be sure we’re not cruising the bars when they’re out of town.”

  “Can’t be much of a marriage.”

  Henry knocked a knuckle on the glass. “World’s best birth control,” he said. “It was a quick courtship. Got married last May, right in this room, on the thirteenth.” He looked sly and smiled. “We’re having a party next month. Are you free that day, little brother?”

  “Do you have to call me that?” Eddie snapped. Why did Henry address him like they were so familiar? Why does that piss me off so much? “Until I got your letter, I wasn’t even sure that you knew I was born. You’re a stranger, nothing more.”

  Henry’s eyes widened again. He turned the scarred side of his face toward Eddie and broke into a tight-jawed grin that raised another wave of gooseflesh on Eddie’s skin.

  Henry’s hard whisper came from a reddened face: “You know me better than you think.” The muscles in his neck tensed. He looked like he was about to crash through the glass. Eddie leaned away from him. Eddie’s hand unconsciously tightened around the phone, as if claiming it as a weapon—closest thing he had to a club—to defend himself.

  This is foolish. He can’t reach me through the glass. He can never get out of this prison.

  Eddie willed himself calm. He paused for a deep breath, then said in a breezy voice: “I don’t know much about you. I know you were an athlete before you came here, a good one.”

  Henry’s face instantly relaxed. There was no trace of rage in him. He asked, “Do you know how the universe was made?”

  Another sudden change of direction? “Sorry, I wasn’t around for Genesis.”

  “Genesis? So you say God made the world?”

  Eddie shrugged.

  Henry leaned back, looked around the room. He seemed indifferent.

  The sonofabitch is mirroring my emotions!

  Was that a game for Henry? To read what another person was feeling, amplify the emotion and turn it back on them? Was that what thirty years in prison did to a person? Eddie wanted to talk about the note Henry had sent him, about who kidnapped Roger Lime. Henry was acting crazed, but Eddie didn’t believe it. There was something in Henry’s face that revealed a calculating intelligence behind the non-sequiturs and eccentricity. Henry Bourque would come to the point when he was ready.

  Eddie played along. “Where do you say the universe came from?”

  “There are scientists who have developed marvelous theories of the origins of the natural world that do not have to include a god,” said Henry.

  “The Big Bang theory?”

  “A child’s guess in simpler times, in comparison to the thinking of today—there’s too much luck involved. Did you realize that the ratio of matter and energy in the universe is perfect? Had that ratio settled more than a quadrillionth of a percentage point either way, the universe would be too compressed, or too spread out, for life to begin?”

  “I guess we’re lucky.”

  “Maybe not. There are other theories.”

  “What’s your favorite?”

  “Imagine a mother universe polluted with points of infinite mass and no dimensions,” Henry said. “The unthinkable gravity of these points bend the space around them, until they snap off into another dimension, and create a new daughter universe with unique physical laws. Imagine that happening trillions of times, until, as chance would eventually determine, one of those daughters develops the right ratio of matter and energy for life. It’s called the multi-universe theory. I didn’t think it up, though I wish I had. Isn’t it lovely? A theory of creation that doesn’t rely on luck or on the Almighty?”

  Eddie’s eyes traced the scar on Henry’s face. The edges were jagged, as if the wound had been carved with a dull knife. “That’s a weird concept of the universe,” Eddie said. “It’s weirder than God.”

  Henry smiled. “Occam’s razor.”

  “The simplest answer is usually the best.”

  Henry’s finger rubbed the ridge of scar beside his eye. “Wasn’t long ago that skeptics used Occam’s razor to disprove the existence of God.”

  “As you said, the universe was simpler back then.” Where is he going with this?

  Henry shifted his weight in the chair, rolling his massive shoulders. He said, “When you play chess, do you prefer the white pieces or the black?”

  Here we go ag
ain.

  “The black.”

  Henry snapped his fingers. “Yes, I knew that.” He looked Eddie hard in the eye and asked sharply, “And which do I prefer?”

  Eddie thought about how Henry had controlled their encounter, from the mysterious letter to his disjointed questions. He answered, “The white.”

  Henry laughed and banged a palm on his knee in delight. “That’s right! Can you tell me why?”

  “Because white always moves first. You like to have the first move of the game.”

  Henry’s eyes closed for a second, as a smile spread over him. With playful sarcasm, he said, “I feel like you’re the brother I never had.”

  Eddie imagined himself looking through Henry’s eyes, seeing another human life end by his own hand. What weapon had been in that hand? A gun? A knife? A club? Eddie didn’t know. He imagined a blurry gray object of death at the end of Henry’s arm. He saw an armored car driver on the ground begging for life. Saw the begging stop and the blood begin. Saw meat and bones on the ground, and then the widow in black. The thoughts enraged him.

  Eddie blurted, “You’re so smart, how could you have been so fucking stupid?”

  Henry raised an eyebrow. “Easy, easy,” he cautioned. “If you went back in time to save me, you’d destroy yourself.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Henry sighed. The telephone crackled. He switched it to the other ear. “Your kidnapped bank president is pictured sitting on a five-sided table made entirely of poplar, assembled in traditional method with white glue and pegs—not a nail in it anywhere.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Henry winked. “Because I made it.”

  “You? But you’re—it’s been thirty years.”

  “I built it to last, little brother.”

  Eddie felt his reporter’s skepticism bubbling up. He turned on his bullshit meter. “Can you prove it?”

  Henry gave a pained look. “I got angry during construction—the wood wouldn’t behave,” he said. “The left front leg would show the results of that anger. Look closely, see for yourself.”

  “Fine, let’s say you made the table. You didn’t kidnap Roger Lime. Who did?”