Palace Council (6 page)

CHAPTER
8

The Coal Truck

(I)

B
ERNARD
S
TILWELL CAME
into Eddie's life in February of 1957, by which time literary circles had been buzzing for a year; and, like the acclaim, Stilwell never quite left. Eddie in time would grow accustomed to the flair for melodrama that accompanied their first meeting. He was eating breakfast at the counter in the Chock full o' Nuts shop next to the Theresa Hotel, leafing through complimentary letters, when Stilwell and a fellow agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation materialized on either side of him, flashing badges where only Eddie could see, then frog-marching him to a waiting sedan driven by a third man, who zoomed off almost before the doors were closed. Stilwell sat beside him in the back. The other agent joined the driver.

“How are you, Eddie?”

“What?”

Stilwell had sleepy hunter's eyes, and arched wispy blond brows. The pupils were very dark. It was easy to imagine him capering through Hell—one of the tormentors, not the tormented. “Famous writer like you. Must be nice, huh?”

The car headed north along the Hudson, then cut east. Eddie was bewildered. Unlike most of the Negro intelligentsia of his day, he never envisioned the government as a force, whether benevolent or malign. He hardly thought of government at all. He was too busy writing. “What do you want?”

“An autograph.”

“A what?” said Eddie, thinking, absurdly, of Aurelia's promise.

“Autograph.” The agent pulled a soiled copy of
Field's Unified Theory
from somewhere. “I'm a big fan.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Nice little story. Very realistic. Do a lot of research, did you?”

Confusion replaced whatever else Eddie might have been feeling. He had assumed they would ask about the long-ago days working for Scarlett, and had been setting out a whole army of evasions and lies to defend himself. Perhaps they even knew he was the one who had found Castle's body. But now his dispositions were useless.

“I don't know what you mean. Research?”

“For your story. This Dyson Field. Nice name. Talk to him at all?”

Eddie laughed uneasily. Somebody's idea of a joke. “He's a character. It's a novel.” No response, from either Stilwell or the men in the front. Eddie glanced out the window. They were proceeding slowly through the traffic on Seventh Avenue, at about the speed of the many parades that graced the wide, divided boulevard in good weather, as one or another colored men's or women's civic organization, all decked out in ceremonial regalia, marched forth to show the world that Jim Crow had defeated neither unity nor beauty. “I made him up,” Eddie explained, wondering why he was not getting through. “Dyson Field. He's an invention. No more.” The Caucasian faces disbelieved him. “Why? What's wrong?” No response. Eddie climbed up on his high horse. “Why have you detained me?”

Bernard Stilwell laughed, and the sound was one Eddie wanted never to hear again, for, if the agent had a demon's face, his laugh was the self-satisfied bray of the final betrayer in the lowest circle of Dante's mad, brilliant vision of the afterlife. He clapped Eddie on the back hard enough to throw his head forward. Eddie clenched his fists and forced down his body's instinctive response. This was, after all, the FBI.

“A lot of detail in the novel. A lot of the physics is right.”

“I would hope so.”

“You know any physics yourself?” The car had turned east onto a side street up in the 150s, but the driver was unfamiliar with the neighborhood. Now they were stuck behind a coal truck unloading into a basement chute, noise and dust obscuring sound and sight from outside the car. Stilwell did not raise his voice, and Eddie had to lean closer to hear. “Didn't you start out as a physics major at Amherst? You switched, though, right?”

“What does my major have to do with—”

“This is more than freshman physics.” He handed Eddie the novel. “Field theory. Heisenberg's principle. This isn't
F = ma.
You had a source, didn't you?”

“A what?”

“A source. For your story.” Tapping the curling pages. Many had been annotated in blue ink. “All this physics. All this about security. Somebody talked to you. You talked to somebody.”

Eddie sized up the federal agent, so scrawny that his pasty ankles showed above his white socks. His perpetual scowl emphasized fiery eyes. “May I see your credentials again?”

“Of course.” Casually, smiling, almost without looking, Stilwell lifted a languid hand. The next thing Eddie knew, the forearm was jammed into his neck, holding him tightly to the seat, while the other agent from the restaurant leaned from the front seat and grabbed his wrists, lest he try something stupid. The driver had the grace to look uneasy, but he kept his eyes forward.

“Did you have a source or not?” said Stilwell conversationally.

“Get off me!” cried Eddie, quite surprised.

“Your source, Eddie. Come on.”

“It's a story, you half-witted son of a bitch! Let go!”

Instead, the agent pressed harder. “You know who I'm talking about, Eddie. I can't prove it yet, but when I do, you'll wish you'd told the truth.” Stilwell's spluttery mouth was very close. “You're a stupid little man, Eddie, and you always will be.” Just like that, the heavy arm was gone, and Eddie was leaning forward, choking for breath. “Didn't you think we'd find out? Do you think we're as stupid as you are?”

Eddie lifted a cautious head. “You're crazy,” he wheezed. When Stilwell did not respond, Eddie was emboldened. “I'm going to turn you in.”

“For what?”

“Assault.”

“You assaulted me first. It was self-defense. I have two witnesses, both law-enforcement personnel. Who's going to speak up for you, Eddie?”

The writer ground his teeth and kept his temper. The coal truck continued blocking their path, black dust sifting through the air as the coal ran down a wooden chute. Out on the sidewalk, Harlem strolled past, none of the few pedestrians in evidence paying attention to a Negro in a car being beaten by three Caucasians. It occurred to Eddie that his first guess was wrong: the driver had chosen a side street on purpose. “I'll call the papers.”

“Ever read them?”

“Read what?”

“The newspapers. Specially from out of town.” The agent grinned, but only with his mouth. “Ever read them?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“New Mexico papers?”

“Not that I remember.”

Stilwell nodded. The driver had backed up and was executing a tight K-turn, nearly bumping a couple of parked cars. The other man in the front seat reached into his jacket, and Eddie tensed for blackjack or gun, but the agent only drew out a newspaper clipping, which he handed to Stilwell, who handed it to Eddie.

Eddie frowned, then looked closer.

The dateline was Los Alamos, New Mexico. One week ago.

         

NEGRO SCIENTIST IN SUICIDE

         

“What is this?”

“One Joseph Belt lost his security clearance after your novel came out.” He pointed to a photo in the corner. “Pretty redheaded wife, too, just like the one you made up.”

Eddie studied the page. In his fury over the suggestion of a link, he had missed the name completely. Belt. Joseph Belt. Physicist. Phil Castle's friend who had met Eddie at the Savoy and refused to answer any of his questions.

Harlem's own Doctor Belt had shot himself.

(II)

“N
O
,” Eddie said. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief as he read the two columns. Gunshot to head, despondent, drinking, marriage collapsing, rumored troubles on the job. First the Wall Street lawyer, now his Negro friend. Eddie said what he thought: “I don't believe this.”

“You knew him.”

“I met him once in my life. I wanted to interview him for the paper.”

“And what secrets did he share with you?”

“Secrets?”

“About the nation's security, Eddie.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. He didn't tell me anything.”

That noxious laugh again. They had reached a Puerto Rican neighborhood. The car turned south once more. They were driving in an oval, roughly navigating the perimeter of Harlem. “Sure thing, Eddie.”

“I'm serious. I didn't know he worked at”—a glance at the paper—“the Los Alamos National Laboratory. I never even heard of it.”

“No idea what they make there, right?”

“Actually, no.”

“Oppenheimer. Heard of him?”

Eddie shifted his weight. “Sure. Father of the H-bomb. You people railroaded him. Took his security clearance.”

“Had his due process first. A hearing. Buy the transcript at your local bookstore. Professor Belt testified in his favor. You didn't know that, either, did you?” The agent did not wait for the answer. “Why did you pressure your publisher to get your book out so fast? Were you trying to help Belt?”

“Help him do what?” asked Eddie, who had simply wanted to impress his father, and the sooner, the better.

The spiteful eyes blazed. “Get the book out before we could stop him. Make our work harder. Was that your idea or his?”

Wesley Senior had a way of refusing to suffer fools. Eddie copied it now. He rolled his eyes and turned to look out the window. The morning was smoky, like a battlefield.

“Come on, Eddie. We know he was your source. You met with him a couple of years ago, at the Savoy. You spoke to him on the telephone both before and after that—”

Eddie's whippet head came around. “What? I did not!”

“Eddie, Eddie.” Gently. “We're not complete incompetents. All those late-night clandestine calls from bars in New Mexico to bars in Harlem. You think we don't trace calls out of the base? With everything the Reds have been up to down there? You think we can't dig up the bars where you hang out? Joseph Belt was your source, we got on to him, and he shot himself, just like in your novel. But you didn't know anything about his work, did you? You have a magical power to make your stories come true. Or do you just see the future? Is that it, Eddie?”

Eddie felt cornered and did not even know how it had happened. “It's a coincidence. That's all.”

“One Negro physicist in the whole country with the right security clearance, and he commits suicide a couple of months after your novel comes out.” Stilwell was looking out the window at a barge on the choppy gray water. “After meeting you the previous year.” A shake of the head at the iniquity of men. “Wait! I know! It must be those nasty racists at the FBI making trouble for the Negroes again, right?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Yeah, well, relax, Eddie. You're not important enough for us to waste time smearing you.”

Bristling, but not sure how to greet this insult, Eddie said, “Then to what do I owe the pleasure of your hospitality?”

“We have a deal for you. You tell us everything Doctor Belt told you about his work, you don't write any more about national security, and we can maybe forget this little incident.” The voice remained casual, but the eyes bored in. “We live in dangerous times, Eddie.”

“He didn't tell me anything about his work, Agent Stilwell. He refused to say a word. You can be very proud of him.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Probably.”

Stilwell already had his elbow cocked, but the driver muttered something, and Eddie wondered whether they were playing good-cop, bad-cop, or if he had incorrectly guessed who was in charge. Outside, the fog was thickening instead of burning off.

“Know any of his friends?”

“No.”

“Did you know this Philmont Castle? The lawyer who got himself strangled?”

Eddie barely hesitated. “We never met.”

“They worked together, Eddie. Castle and Belt. And it wasn't just the two of them, Eddie. We're trying to figure out who else might have been in on it. Maybe Castle's wife.”

“I'm sorry, Agent Stilwell. There is no way in which I can be helpful.”

“What about Aurelia?”

Despite the ache in his neck where Stilwell had elbowed him, Eddie sat very straight. “I beg your pardon.”

“Aurelia Garland. Your little chippy. Loose thing like that. Was she part of Belt's scheme?”

Eddie tried to hit him. Stilwell was federal, and the car was cramped, but still he tried. His fist barely flickered. The agent had his arm pinned before he could get any energy behind the punch.

“Naughty, naughty, Eddie. Assaulting a federal officer is a year in prison, minimum.”

“You're a sick bastard, do you know that?”

Amusement in those devil's eyes. “Job's a job, Eddie. But I guess you know that, don't you?”

The car had stopped on a side street three blocks from his apartment, and the man from the front seat had the door open for him.

“Goodbye, Eddie.” Stilwell handed over a card. “Call me when you change your mind.”

“About what?” said Eddie, rubbing his neck.

Stilwell winked, and shut the door.

CHAPTER
9

The Fine Old Truth

(I)

M
EANWHILE,
Aurelia was betraying her husband. Not with another man—she had not yet fallen that far from the wife she had always imagined she would be—but she was betraying Kevin's trust all the same. She had chosen today because Kevin was in London. She knew he was because she had the telegram confirming his arrival. So here she was, on her knees in his private office in the suite kept by Garland & Son in the Thirties off Park Avenue, not far from the Morgan Library. She was twirling the dial of the huge safe, manufactured, the door proclaimed, by the Mosler Safe & Lock Company of Cincinnati and New York. This was where her husband kept his secrets. If anything ever happened to him—so Kevin frequently told her—everything was there.

Everything.

An hour ago, Aurelia had never dreamed she would get so far: it was not as though Kevin had entrusted her with the combination. She had arrived at the firm with no clear plan, other than to stand in her husband's office and will the answer from the air. At first it had seemed she would not even make it over the threshold. She had tried to talk or bluff or scold or tease her way past Thrush, the unctuous white assistant whose job was to keep his master's secrets, but she had failed. Fortunately, Kevin's father, Matthew, was in today, one of his rare visits from his palace on the Hudson River near Dobbs Ferry. Matty Garland was possibly the wealthiest Negro in the United States. The investment firm he had founded, a gnat by the standards of Wall Street, had nevertheless achieved remarkable success. Garland & Son employed thirteen clerks, all but one of them white, and the other was the son of a South American land baron. Matty Garland was not an easy man to charm, but he adored Aurelia. And so, when he came out to investigate the commotion and found his daughter-in-law sobbing, and Mr. Thrush ineffectually fluttering his hands, Matty waved everyone away, slipped a powerful arm around her, and led her into his own capacious office. He sat her on the sofa, offered his handkerchief, and asked her what in blazes was going on.

The story poured out, and Aurelia found, to her surprise, that her tears were now entirely unfeigned. When she was done, Matty considered. He leaned against his cherry desk, strong arms crossed, barrel chest ready to burst through the braces.

At last he said, “Do you know what I like about you, Aurelia?”

She only stared. Wasn't it obvious? She was married to his son. But this seemed not to be his meaning, so she shook her head.

“You're like me. You started with nothing, and you were determined to get whatever you could.”

Aurelia hardly knew what to say. “You didn't start with nothing—”

“Why? Because my name is Garland? Where do you think the Garlands came from? My father was a preacher in Hartford, Connecticut. Not a very good one. He never had a dime, but he sent his boys to college. My late brother Mark—he graduated. He was a professor for a while. I dropped out, because I wanted to do this.” Flipping a hand to indicate the office, and what it symbolized. “I saw which way the economy was pointing. I knew what the war would do. I moved to California. I made some good guesses, I had some good luck, but, mostly, I worked my tail off. Same as you.”

“I don't understand, Matty.”

“You think I didn't have you looked into?”

Silence.

“Come on, Aurelia. I know why your parents didn't come to the wedding, and if he has half a brain in his head, so does Kevin. You don't have any parents. You're not from some big colored family out there in Cleveland. You're an orphan, and the nice Catholic sisters put together the money to send you to college because you're smart. Don't start crying again. I don't have another handkerchief, and you ruined the first one. You think I care about any of that Negro-royal-family crap up in Sugar Hill? Who went to what school, who's married to whose son? Why the fuck do you think I live in Westchester? Excuse my French. I'm nobody.” He pinched his skin. “Look at me. Dark as a field hand. That's what those Harlem biddies would say about a man like me if I didn't happen to have a few million in the bank. And if not for all those hints you kept dropping about your parentage, and your buddy Mona vouching for you in colored society, they'd say the same about you. I'm nobody and you're nobody, so now there's a pair of us so don't tell, or however the fuck it goes. If those biddies knew the truth about you, they'd throw Kevin out of society for marrying down. Me? I'm happy, because I know he married up. Kevin always had it easy. He needs a striver in his life. You're better than he is, Aurie. Don't ever forget that. Don't you dare settle for being Mrs. Kevin Garland and going to the parties and the salons, raising a bunch of kids who are gonna care about skin color and where somebody's parents went to school. Don't you dare, Aurelia. Those Catholic sisters expected more from you, and so do I.”

He buzzed for a clerk, took the startled man's handkerchief, gave it to his daughter-in-law, kicked him out. Aurelia did not know why she could not stop crying.

“Tell you something else. I don't know what's going on with Kevin, any more than you do. He comes in when he wants to come in, he leaves when he wants to leave. He's a lazy so-and-so, and he always was, but I figured, a new wife, a new baby, he's busy. So I left him alone. Now you tell me he's overseas half the time, and I don't even know about it. Probably traveling on my dime, too. I'll have to find out. Maybe dock his pay. Now, Kevin's my only boy, and I love him. No matter what he's up to, I'll always love him. But you're worth ten of him, Aurelia. Twenty. You want to check and see what's going on? Be my guest. Don't tell me about it. I don't want to know. Just fix it. That's the girl.”

(II)

T
ELLING THE STORY LATER,
Aurelia could never quite remember how she wound up alone in her husband's office, the combination to the massive safe in her hand.

She had to do the numbers three times before she got them right. She kept expecting Kevin to burst in, his shoe in his hand, demanding to know if she was ready to give him an heir. Finally, she heard the tumblers click. She thought she would never be able to budge the heavy steel door, but it swung easily on its hinges.

The safe was almost tall enough to walk into. Hunching over, she could slip inside. There was a small ledge for sitting, and even a light switch. She found file cabinets, but they were full of financial papers. One of them disclosed her husband's net worth, a detail he carefully kept from her, and her eyes goggled at the figures. Others related to transactions for the firm, and she could not make head or tail of them, but the amounts of money involved were large—larger even than Kevin's funds. She wondered just how much Matty had. She wondered if white people even knew there were Negroes this rich. She wondered if Harlem did. When she was finished with the last drawer, she had found nothing to suggest what Kevin was doing. She sat on the ledge and pondered.

She could stop now. She could put the files back, close the vault, go home, raise this child and the next and the next, go to the parties, live in luxury, spending her husband's money. She could do all the things Matty Garland had just warned her against. All the things the Catholic sisters had not raised her for.

She thought about her imaginary family, the one all Harlem thought had bred her: the jazz-singing aunt in Paris, the uncle who owned hotels. If only they existed, they would tell her to relax, to enjoy the life she had sought and married into.

She imagined the nuns looking over her shoulder.
Check your answers one more time, dear,
Sister Dorcas used to tell her, tut-tutting whenever Aurelia finished her test before the other children.
Check them again, dear. You want to be sure you have them all exactly right.

All right. Fine. Check the answers one more time.

Aurelia delved into the records again, and, as if in reward for her renewed labor, she found at once what she had overlooked. The bottom drawer of the second cabinet. The file folders were higher than in the other drawers. Once she realized that, the reason was apparent.

There was a false bottom.

A sheet of steel exactly the size of the drawer. It was not attached in any way, just weighted down by the files themselves. The casual observer would never notice. Aurelia took a peek out into the office. In for a penny, in for a pound. She emptied the files onto the floor. Several tries and two broken nails persuaded her that she could not pull up the false bottom with her fingers. She scrounged in her husband's desk, finally took the letter opener, and pried up the steel without difficulty. Beneath, she found a small cloth sack and a thick manila envelope.

The envelope was sealed with cellophane tape, and Kevin had signed his name over it, so that he could tell if anyone got in. But Aurelia, at her husband's instruction, had been forging his name on checks from the day they returned from their honeymoon, and by now she was willing to bet that not even Kevin could tell the difference. She peeled off the tape, pulled out the documents inside, studied the first, glanced at the second, and had to admit that she understood none of it:

         

34—Term 1—Resistance (probably war, see 27–29, 41)

35—Term 2—Palace Council to reconsider timing

36—Day 20—Shake the throne (tentative—per Author) (“6 mo” + F : ix, from 1010)

37—Pandemonium on inside? (tentative—per Author)

         

On and on in that vein, for several pages. The words were typewritten, and mimeographed, and could have meant anything. Terms 1 and 2. Terms of the academic year? Presidential terms? Congressional terms? Terms in an equation? Aurelia shook her head. Who or what was the Palace Council? And Day 20. A date of a month? Was the reference to war metaphorical or literal? She played around with abbreviations and anagrams and found nothing.

Behind the mimeoed pages was a note, scribbled in an unfamiliar hand on stationery from a famous Florida hotel that admitted no Negroes:

After PC, problem. Too soon. Ask KG to find testament. He can have

And there it stopped.

Well, KG was obviously her husband, and PC had to be Philmont Castle, and here again was the testament mentioned in the note delivered to their London hotel. She was right. That was why Kevin was running around the country: he was searching for the testament. But why would anyone who could get into a fancy segregated resort—that is, anyone white and rich—care about the testament? And what was it that Kevin could “have”? A reward? Assistance in the search?

Puzzled, Aurelia crossed to Kevin's desk, took paper and pen, and copied the pages. There were eight altogether. She sealed them back up, retaped the flap—which had plainly been taped many times—and, letting her fingers relax, signed her husband's name across the cellophane.

She put the envelope back, then opened the bag.

Inside was a single item of jewelry—a man's signet ring—and set into the ring was an inverted cross.

Memory brushed her.

Eddie, sitting with her at Chock full o' Nuts on Seventh Avenue a few weeks before the wedding, his thin face determined as always, asking if she had ever seen anything around Harlem bearing what he called the Cross of Saint Peter, then showing her a drawing he had made. And Aurie, after telling him, no, she had never seen anything like that, had rebuked him for looking so sour. Cheer up, she had told him. Cheer up and go find somebody to love.

“Already did,” Eddie had said, judging her with those gentle eyes.

Not sure whether to slap him or kiss him, Aurelia had settled for instructing him to grow up. Then she left in a huff.

Now, sitting on the ledge inside her husband's office safe, holding in her hand a cross just like the one in Eddie's drawing, she wondered. Eddie had never told her where he had seen the cross, and she had never asked. Did he have some kind of connection with her husband, some secret the men shared and she did not? Men were like that, and Harlem was chockablock with clubs and societies with passwords and symbols and odd names. Perhaps Eddie and Kevin were members of one. Maybe Eddie wanted to join Kevin's.

Closing the massive door, Aurelia laughed mirthlessly at her own pretensions. She knew nothing. That was what Sister Dorcas used to call the final truth, except that a much younger Aurie always thought she was saying “the fine old truth.” And the fine old truth was this: She had all but broken into her husband's safe and found his secret compartment—and still she knew nothing. But she was surer than ever that there was something to find.

(III)

“F
OUND WHAT YOU WERE LOOKING FOR
?” said Matty, ushering her out, beefy arm around her shoulders once more. “Good girl. That's the way. I'll clear up the evidence, don't worry.”

“There wasn't anything,” she said, faintly.

“Lying for the cause. Don't blame you, really. Done it a time or two myself. Keep the secrets, that's the thing.” His voice was booming, as if he didn't care who heard him. As they crossed the open, airless room where the firm did its trading, the clerks all managed to turn the other way. “Don't worry, my dear. Things will work out. Husbands, well, we get up the damnedest nonsense from time to time. I do. My sainted Daddy did. My sainted brother did. I bet even my sainted nephew Oliver does. Wives, well, job is to understand us. Civilize us, my Daddy used to say. You're a good woman. Better than my boy deserves. Things will work out,” he thundered. At the elevator, Matty kissed her forehead. Only later did it occur to her that he was helping establish an alibi for her visit.

Aurelia sat up smoking half the night, and spent the next day with her slender fingers creeping toward the phone, then curling back. She wanted to talk about it. She thought of Mona Veazie—Mona, who had known Aurie's secrets since college, and come up with the imposture that allowed her to be introduced to society—but Mona would demand every detail and then laugh her head off. She thought of Claire, but Claire would tell her to be patient because husbands need time. She thought of Eddie, the person most likely to take her seriously, but she was a married woman and part of society and could no more call her former beau than she could fly to the moon.