Metropolis Pt. 2, page 15
Murphy raised his hands.
“Who’s your friend?” Donovan asked.
Nick stepped up and shook the captain’s hand. “Nick Santori. I guess I share Murphy’s obsession.”
“You two inside at the time?”
They gave Captain Donovan as much detail as they could about what they saw.
Murphy called it a strange coincidence. “I may need to come in at some point and look over the cold-case files,” Murphy told the captain. “You going to give me a hard time about it?”
Donovan tapped his pen on his pad. “You mean you left something behind when you retired?” He slapped Murphy’s shoulder right where he’d hit the floor, drawing a wince. “Whenever you’d like, old-timer.”
Murphy slapped him back, then shook hands with the other officers nearby before he and Nick headed back to the Bronco.
As they climbed inside, Nick said, “You called our being there when the library got hit a coincidence.”
Murphy rubbed his shoulder. “I’ve earned the right to lie a time or two, but just so you know, I stopped believing in coincidence when I was ten years old. We can talk about it later, though. Right now, let’s get the hell out of here. We’ll do our investigative work at my place next time. At least there I’ll have Ole Betsy.”
“You have a dog?”
“Nope, Browning twelve gauge.”
Nick nodded and took them back to Farbridge Island.
CHAPTER 22
JULY 21, 1928
EDWARD TOOK the new elevator up to the survey platform overlooking the Bedlam Shipyard. The doors opened to a long working suite that smelled of cigars and his father’s Eau de Cologne du Coq. The old man, Cornelius Baynes, was standing next to his desk facing the rear wall, which was entirely made of glass. It looked out across a mile of steamship docks and across the bay to Metropolis. Trampers pushed through the harbor waters, tugging barges, ferrying passengers, docking to load and unload. Longshoremen moved freight on and off a dozen steamers from his father’s enormous shipping fleet. The near wall was appointed with ship wheels and trade-wind maps and photographs of Cornelius Baynes with seemingly every dignitary in Metropolis. But his desk next to him had only one photo—Edward’s mother, who’d passed when he was only ten.
His father held a brandy snifter in one hand and a cigar in the other. He was a few inches shorter than Edward, always wore a black suit with tails, and kept a goatee he thought made him look distinguished. “You bring your photographers with you, again?” his father said without turning.
Edward ignored him, went to the dry bar to pour himself a cognac, then joined his father at the window. In the reflection they looked too much the same—thick brows on heavy ridges above the eyes, and eyes so dark they seemed to have no pupils. “The public shall remain safe from your withering gaze today, Father.”
“You know, I’d rather you just take my money for your pompous campaign than use my name to boost your credibility.” Cornelius took a healthy swallow of brandy and puffed his cigar.
Edward swished his own drink. “I do the family name credit, Father. It’s all I care about. You should know that by now.”
“You care about your given name, son. That much is true.” His father scowled. “So, then, what could possess a milquetoast dandy to spend a day on the docks?”
“I thought you might like to know how your favorite son is faring,” Edward said. “Since you know he can’t stand the sight of you.”
“If you had half the pluck of your younger brother, I wouldn’t be looking for someone to manage my shipping concerns, drive expansion. I’ve just funded a new publicity campaign—a cartoon called Steamboat Willie. It’ll appeal to the kiddies, then all the parents will be taking their families on steam cruises. Money will be rolling in on wheelbarrows.”
Edward watched a steamer, loaded to the gills, unmoor from the dock. “I shall make my mark with policy, Father, not another million for your war chest. Which brings me to the rather uninspiring professional and financial progress of your would-be heir.”
The old man sneered. “You’ve become an unbearable mushmouth, Edward. Get on with your slander of your brother.”
“Well, last I shared with you, Julian was renting a room in the tenement at 8 Orchard. Now—” Edward paused for dramatic effect “—he has taken residence in an abandoned cattle car at the back of the Stockton Railyard.”
His father’s jaw clenched.
“I suppose one might optimistically argue that your hope for Julian to one day take the reins of your rail concerns could begin by him actually living in a train car so decrepit you no longer have any use for it—a cattle car rank with the smell of cow shit. You could also hope to build a railway to the moon. What do you think, Father?”
Cornelius pointed to a crew of dockhands moving truck-sized crates onto a ship deck with a hoist. “Those men know the value of hard labor. They can pick up a steaming pot handle without a potholder because their hands bear the calluses of pulling rope and handling tools. Which is precisely what your brother is doing as an expressman, but with more personal risk.”
“Do you mean like the risk of trying to organize a Teamster chapter right under your nose? How’s that sit with you, given your grand vision of Julian commanding your rail concerns?”
Cornelius was quiet a moment. “Your brother’s an idealist, but he’ll come around. Meantime, I’ve busted every attempt at union foolishness thus far, including two runs by the mob families. With Julian, though, I’ll grant you, he’s behind his time in assuming higher responsibility.”
“You know, Father, that might be because Julian has a taste for drink.” Edward tapped his cognac snifter. “Not like you or I, who drink so that others around us will let down their guard. No, Julian has more of a bathtub-gin palate. He drinks by volume, you might say, and it goes on from there. These days, he’s even more enamored of cocaine than drink, especially when he’s gambling away the money he should be using to take care of his woman.”
“Lies.”
Edward adjusted his trousers. Sticking it to Julian was quite arousing. “Oh, Father, you know I don’t lie to you. What would be the point? You have everything I say and do checked to be sure it can’t come back on you.”
Cornelius went and poured himself another brandy, then sauntered back next to Edward. “So your best idea, having gathered all this dirt on your little brother, is to set a meeting with me, here, where you know I wanted you to take charge, and rather than tell me your plans to help Julian, do nothing but berate him for his flaws.”
“Actually, Father—”
“It’s a bitter thing knowing you’re the fruit of my loins, Edward. My God, you’ve let your brother wind up in worse shape than a heifer, drinking, abusing his body, and throwing his youth away with some bohemian floozy—”
“Victoria is not what you make of her, Father.” Edward pointed at the photo of his mother framed on his father’s desk. “She’s more like Mother than you know and probably the only reason you’ve not had to order Julian’s headstone.”
“It’s your job to look after him.”
Edward laughed. “So I am my brother’s keeper, is that it?”
“Quite obviously, you windbag. If you’d looked out for him like you should, he would have grown into a proper industry man, the kind of heir I need to manage my affairs and grow our rail and steamer concerns to rival that of those goddamn Rockefellers. Because despite all my money, and all this family has to offer on its good name, you’ve chosen the dirtiest business a man can enter into. Politics. It sickens me to think about.”
“I see. Then let me be succinct. Your favorite son is one arrest from real prison, and unless I’m elected mayor, I’ll have no influence to do anything about it.”
“So let me see if I understand you,” the old man said. “You’re not even here just to run Julian down and lower my estimation of the boy. You’re here to elevate yourself in my eyes. Is that about the size of it? Then you can become the favorite son by saving a brother you hate? Are you so ruled by envy that you’d let Julian languish so that you could later rescue him and thereby place him under your thumb, while peddling yourself to me as a savior?” He puffed his cigar. “That’s genuinely pathetic, Edward.”
“Then save him yourself, Father. Oh wait, that’s right. He has scruples and won’t take your help. He won’t even share the same room with you.”
Cornelius stroked his goatee. “No, but you will, because you do want my money, after all. You want it so you can become mayor and further elevate yourself above your brother, rather than truly help him. You’re not only a windbag, you’re also a sycophant. I’d have respected you more if you’d just asked me for a donation, but you always have to play an angle. You’re about as predictable as a government audit. Well, I’ve got bigger plans in the making, and it’s useful to know where you and Julian stand these days. You should also know I’m backing Callahan for mayor.”
Edward nearly dropped his snifter. He hadn’t expected his father’s outright endorsement, but backing his competition?
“That took the wind out of your sails, I see.”
Edward drank for a moment and stared down at the docks. His father had forty-eight steamers all told, and seven other ports, not to mention that he’d consolidated most of the Metropolis rail lines six years ago. Some of those lines went all the way to the Pacific. The man controlled a healthy share of freight and passenger transport everywhere but in the skies. “It would be easier, though, if I weren’t in the race at all, wouldn’t it, Father . . . Did you sabotage yesterday’s zeppelin flight?”
“That an accusation? Do I need my solicitor?” Edward turned on him. “Just answer the question.”
Cornelius took a long pull of brandy in Edward’s face. “If you’d died, much as I might mourn, it might also have been good for business. Good for your brother, too.”
“You love me that little?”
Cornelius puffed at his cigar. “I love your brother that much.”
Edward fell silent. He was used to this verbal sparring with his father, and he’d always known the old man preferred Julian. But this.
“Then it was you.”
“I didn’t say that, Edward. You have your share of enemies, and you’ve kept some rather unsavory company, besides—men like Bugsy Siegel. So don’t go casting aspersions unless you have the steam to see them land.”
Edward put his snifter down on his father’s desk, gently touched the photo of his mother, and left with a fuller measure of hatred for his brother than he’d arrived with. And he thought he might know how to really hurt him.
CHAPTER 23
JULY 10, 1999
NICK LEANED against the hood of his Bronco in a turnout thirty feet from the bend on Highway 5 where Emily and her friends had died. He stared at the cross Jen had planted. The marker had been white, but the paint had mostly peeled away, and the photo of Emily had long since blown away.
The sun had set, throwing this stretch of Browns Canyon into a soft purple haze. Down off the road, a small river babbled, still lined with last autumn’s leaves. The road and the trees on the hills up both sides of road were covered in shadow. A gentle wind carried the scents of cottonwood bark and pinyon pine down the canyon.
The bend where the cross stood was on a stretch of the 5 that narrowed to two lanes and had almost no shoulder. Emily’s friend Maggie, who’d been behind the wheel, had come around the blind turn, and a drunk driver, coming the other direction, had drifted into their lane. Hit them head on.
Nick came here every week.
He grabbed his bottle of Vickers off the bumper, walked over to the marker, and read Emily’s name carved into the wood. “Hey, kiddo. Me, again. I’m glad the cross your mother put up is still standing, but I’ll be honest, I haven’t done much praying since you went away.”
When Emily died, he’d finally broken with God. He didn’t have any new or profound arguments against the man in the sky. He just couldn’t see the logic behind taking Emily out of the world. He’d cursed heaven a lot before the deafening silence from the other side of those pleas stole the last of his belief.
He squatted down. “I have been remembering things, though. Like that time you took me to the Boston concert. You insisted on paying with all your babysitting money. You didn’t even know who they were, but you knew I loved them.” He laughed. “I put you on my shoulders so you could see. What were you, twelve maybe? Most kids would have been embarrassed watching their dad singing like a fool, but you weren’t. You just wanted to see me enjoy myself. And you know what? All through that show, I was happy because I was with you. I knew I’d always remember it. I can see us there right now. It was such a great day.”
He took a healthy pull from his Vickers, walked back to his Bronco, and leaned against the grill. Then he got out his phone and pulled up Emily’s last voice message. She’d been coming up this canyon when she called. Coverage down here at the bottom of a ravine in the Taconic Mountains was spotty.
He listened to the message. Then again. And again. He didn’t expect any profound revelation that might make sense of her death. He just needed to find out what was in the gaps, hear the whole message.
Headlights came up behind him and stopped behind his Bronco. Dr. Beadys stepped out of his black Lincoln and made his way toward Nick.
“I don’t know how you found me, doc, but this isn’t the place to talk.”
“Good evening to you as well, Nicholas. And I’ll remind you that you told me about this place, as well as the anniversary of your daughter’s passing.”
Nick needed to learn to keep his mouth shut sometimes.
“After the way we left things,” Beadys went on,” I felt compelled to speak with you again to better express myself. And if you’ll forgive me, I think this is precisely the place to do it.”
Nick looked down at his phone and said nothing.
“May I ask,” Dr. Beadys continued, “how coming here helps you deal with your grief over your daughter’s death?”
“I don’t need your help with this, doc—”
“In my professional opinion, Nicholas, I very much think you do. Please, I am here only because I have your best interests at heart.”
Instead of speaking, Nick played Emily’s message on speaker. When it was over, Beadys said nothing for several minutes while the river babbled and something thumped far back in the trees.
“I’ve been trying to recover the full message,” he finally said. “I just need to hear her last words, that’s all.”
Beadys leaned next to him against the front of the Bronco. “May I make an observation, Nicholas?” He did not wait for an answer. “I think you come here, to the place your daughter died, because you feel like you failed, in some way, to protect her. Some instinctive part of you, despite how irrational it might seem, wishes you could have been here to save her.”
“What I really wish, doc, is that I’d held my ground and never given her permission to go to the party in the first place.”
“Part and parcel of the same sentiment,” Beadys said. “A father’s job is to make sure his children are safe. Reason tells you that you can’t really do that all the time, that you must allow your children to grow and fail and learn. But reason doesn’t help a father grieve, and at least part of that grief is for yourself, for the idea that you were never going to succeed in all you wanted to do for her.”
“You think I’m just crying in my beer, doc? That my grief is all about me?”
“No, Nicholas. But you must acknowledge that no matter what choice you made that night, you are not to blame for her death.” Beadys surprised Nick by taking a pull off his Vickers bottle. “I will, however, admit that the desire to restore her final message has some value.”
Nick put his phone away. “Because it’s like regression therapy, I’m guessing—restoring a dream or memory to ‘rob it of its sting.’”
“Precisely.”
“So you’re really here to try and convince me to continue our therapy sessions.”
Dr. Beadys came around in front of Nick. “I’ve maintained from the beginning that it is the only pathway to your peace of mind. So, yes, that is part of why I’m here, but it is also because of Emily.”
Nick took another healthy draught of Vickers. “I don’t think I need you for either anymore, doc. I’m figuring it out.”
Beadys pulled a toothpick from his jacket pocket and stuck it between his teeth. “Please listen to me very carefully, Nicholas. Your insistence on working through psychotic instabilities on your own is a danger not only to you, but to the people you care about. Specifically, your wife and son.”
Nick pushed himself off the Bronco. “What?”
“Your drinking is out of control. I’m not sure you and I have ever been together when you have not been drinking. How often are you driving while under the influence?”
“I can handle—”
Beadys held up a hand to stop him. “Then there are the pills that you tried to procure illegally at the Remington Hall when we first met.”
“Prazosin is not illegal.”
“It is when it’s procured without a prescription.” Beadys began to pace. “Of course, by itself, that’s a rather small infraction of the law. But then let us add the grief over your daughter’s death that is affecting your marriage and your relationship with Billy. The tension I witnessed at your home is a clear indication of spousal distress, and your son’s condition, while seemingly innocuous to you, may require counseling and possibly medical intervention—he might not be well, Nicholas.”
Nick took a step toward Beadys. “What are you doing?”
Beadys held his ground. “And then there are your dreams, which you rightly sought my help to address. Dreams that have made you unstable, at best, because you are not sleeping, and at worst, because they represent a psychotic break caused by some trauma that you are now reluctant to have treated.”
