Kissing the Beehive (29 page)

I wrote throughout the spring and into the early summer. Always vigilant, always alert toward what was going on around me. More than ever before. I had to finish the book fast and turn it in.

Frannie had explained why and he was right. He said there was probably more danger now than before, despite what we knew.

So much of what I had learned I could use, but it all needed turning.

Sometimes 180 degrees. Frannie helped the whole way. Following his instructions, I never spoke to him on the phone in my house.

Cass and I didn't see much of each other. I knew I had to leave her alone until she was ready but I ached for her. Every time the telephone rang, my hope jumped.

All that spring Durant was in and out of the hospital. He was in the last stages of his illness, but despite that he held on like a terrier. When the doctors admitted there was nothing more they could do for him, he said he wanted to go home and die there. They could not stop him.

He refused to let me visit because he said he looked too dead for his own good. We spoke often on the phone and despite his description, at least his voice sounded as robust as ever. Two days after I finished the book, expressed copies to my agent and editor, and verified they had received them, I called to tell Edward.

"That is _spectacular_, Sam! What a surprise! I had no idea . . . You have to give me a copy so I can at least _start_ to read it before I die. I

can't tell you . . . Oh, that's the best news I've had.

"Look, how about coming over for dinner tomorrow night? Bring the manuscript and we'll eat like French kings. Fuck what my doctors say! We'll drink every bottle of wine I've got left. This is a great occasion!"

The three of them were waiting in the driveway when I arrived. His two dogs wore small top hats held in place with rubber bands under their chins.

Edward had on a normal-sized one that contrasted comically with the anthracite blue robe and pajamas he was wearing. He leaned heavily on an aluminum walker.

His face was sunken and wan but his eyes were huge and lit like a child's on Christmas morning. He reached down slowly and picked up a bottle of champagne he had at his feet. He held it straight out in the air.

"Hail the conquering hero! The Germans would call you a _Dichter_. The greatest praise for a man of letters. Welcome!"

"This is quite a greeting."

"And well-deserved! I wanted to hire the Grambling marching band but they were already booked. Come on, come into the house. Is that it?"

I had the manuscript in a gray cardboard box under my arm. It was four hundred and seventeen pages long. Not so long. Not as long as I had once thought it would be.

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"Yes."

"Fantastic!" He handed me the bottle and slowly led the way into the house, the dogs waddling eagerly behind him.

There were flowers everywhere. It looked like an arboretum of the most exotic, colorful flowers I had ever seen. All of the rooms smelled like paradise.

"All I need in here is Rima the Bird Girl to make it complete. Don't mind the flowers. It's just nice to have them to look at these days. They remind me of better things. Sit down. Do you want some champagne or a drink?"

"Champagne would be fine."

He started to open the bottle but stopped and closed his eyes tightly in pain. I got to him just in time and helped him over to the couch.

"Damn! I swore I wasn't going to let that happen. I asked my body for just one night and then it could do whatever the hell it wanted. We have to celebrate!"

I opened the bottle and poured into two beautiful crystal glasses on the coffee table. The same table where he had shown me the murderer's news clippings so many months ago. I handed him a glass.

"I'm sorry I can't stand right now, but here's to you, Sam Bayer. Here's to you and your book and a life that I hope brings you great surprises and much love." He took a sip and licked his bottom lip. "Ahh! Almost perfect. My tongue is off these days, but who can blame it? All these pills and medicines they have me swallowing . . . May I?" He gestured with his glass toward the gray box now sitting on the table.

"Sure." I drank. The sweet bubbles burned the back of my throat and made me want to burp. I watched as he took the box onto his lap and smiled.

"Do you mind if I take a quick look? I can hardly wait."

"Go ahead."

He pulled off the top of the box and gently lifted out the manuscript.

"It's big! Heavy! How many pages is it?"

"A little over four hundred."

"That'll be, what, about three hundred and fifty pages when it's printed?"

"Something like that."

"A good size. And that title! A great title, Sam. Provocative, mysterious. It really catches you."

"Thanks."

He lifted off the title page and saw the dedication page. His eyes widened and he looked at me, perplexed. "Veronica? You dedicated it to

_Veronica_?"

I sat forward. "Yes. Don't you think it's appropriate? She died for the book, Edward. Who did you think I would dedicate it to?"

"No, you're right! It's entirely appropriate. Don't forget, I'm a father, my friend. This _is_

Edward's story and I only thought . . . Oh, it doesn't matter. We've got the _book_, right? That's what's important. The whole book is here and it's finished! And _you_ did it."

Lifting off the dedication page to the first page of text, he began to read. As his eyes moved across my words, his smile fell slowly. I don't know

how far he got. It didn't matter because everything was in the first sentence.

Everything that mattered.

_"The day after Edward Durant Jr. murdered Pauline Ostrova, Club Soda Johnny Petangles went around Crane's View writing 'Hi Pauline!' in two-foot-tall letters on everything he could find."_

"What is this, Sam?"

"It's the story of your son and Pauline. Just not the story you wanted anyone to _know_. But it's
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the truth, Edward, and both of us know it."

"How can you say that? After everything --"

"I'll say it too so you can hear it in stereo, Counselor." McCabe came in from the kitchen, eating an olive. "You should see what he's got for dinner, Sam. You're going to leave this house a fat man tonight."

Durant looked stonily at McCabe but didn't ask how he had gotten in.

Frannie sat down next to me and slapped my knee. "Do you want to hear the short version or the long, Mr. Durant? Let me give mine first. I started thinking real hard when Cassandra disappeared and you suddenly knew a lot more things about what was happening to her than I.

I'm a competitive man.

Competitors are suspicious. If they lose, they want to know _why_.

"Then one day I heard this heavy-metal song on the radio. You know heavy-metal music? The group's called Rage Against the Machine. There was a line in one of their songs: 'Rally round the family with a pocket full of shells.' That got me thinking even more, and I decided to start looking around. One of the places I looked was here, _very_ thoroughly, while you were in the hospital."

"You went through my _home_? Did you have a search warrant?"

"No, but I had a flashlight."

Durant snorted. "Then whatever you found is inadmissible."

"I know that, but I still found it."

"What? What did you find?" Durant shifted in his seat, his eyes crinkling in pain.

"Bills mostly. Phone bills with calls to hotels where it just so happened Veronica Lake was staying, even one to Vienna! A monthly bill from your trap-and-skeet club where they go on and on about what a _marvelous_

marksman you are. What else? MasterCard receipts for a round-trip plane ticket to L.A. the day before a certain movie producer got shot there. Little things mostly, but you know how they add up. Especially when you're suspicious.

"Then I found a big one that pretty much clinched it for me. A bill from the Silent Running Services in New York. Famous place. Especially if you're a cop and know about businesses like that who cater to the paranoia of the rich and famous. Among other things, the company sells machinery for illegal phone tapping. So I got a guy to take a look at Sam's phones and bingo!

Guess what I

found? Why would you tap Sam's phone?"

Before Durant had a chance to reply, I said, "John LePoint. Do you know who he is?"

He looked at me but did not move or speak.

"He was your son's cellmate at Sing Sing."

"No he wasn't. A rapist named Bobo Cleff was."

"Until two weeks before Edward died. Then Cleff was transferred and they moved LePoint in. I spoke with him. He said Edward confessed to Pauline's murder two days before he died.

"He said they'd had a fight about you. Pauline told him that you had tried to seduce her and . . .

he hit her. He killed her.

"But you knew, didn't you? _Didn't you, Edward_? All these years you knew that because you tried to screw your son's wife, he killed her. Plain and simple. He kills Pauline, and you kill Veronica and David Cadmus thirty years later for no reason other than to make him look innocent. But he wasn't!

Edward killed her! He punched her out, threw her in the river to drown and then ran away.

That's the story, you bastard! That's what my book says. You wanted his story? Well you got it.

The whole, miserable truth --" I tried to say more, but my throat closed and I had begun to cry.

For all of them and for

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my own exhaustion. For all the dead.

"And did you kill those other people too? The one in Missouri, the one in --" I threw a hand in the air. I couldn't finish the sentence.

Durant looked offended. "I killed no one else! Oh, you mean those newspaper clippings I showed you that first day? I researched similar murders over the years. Sifted through and chose those. There were so many similarities between the three that of course it looked like there was a pattern. Good hard evidence. I needed to convince you, Sam." He tried to keep his face blank but I could see, I could tell he was holding back a smile.

Frannie elbowed me. "Tell him what else LePoint said."

Durant was staring at me. There was nothing in the room then but eyes.

Annoyed by the standoff, McCabe blurted, "Then _I_ will. LePoint said your son didn't hang himself, he was murdered by one of Gordon Cadmus's people."

Durant let out a howl that, even today, freezes me to think of it. A canine cry thirty years long of remorse, absolution, unimaginable pain and gratitude. The room could not hold the sound. When he stopped, there was a silence -- total, absolute silence. He began to cough and when he put his hands to his mouth, a trickle of blood spilled up over them and down the front of his robe. None of us moved.

When he was able to speak again, Durant's voice was a skate scratching across ice. "I knew it! I knew it all the time! I knew you would find it, Sam."

"Why did you kill Veronica, Edward?"

"Because she was a threat! She threatened everything. Every time she came into your life again she stopped everything. Nothing was getting done!

When she lied about having contact with the killer I knew that was the end.

She was becoming dangerous and who knew what she'd do _next_."

"And David Cadmus?" Frannie's voice was low and quiet. He held the cork out of the champagne bottle against his chin.

Durant ignored him and looked only at me. "At first, killing him was only part of my plan to get you moving on the book. But after what you've just said? It was correct. An eye for an eye, Sam.

The sins of the father. _Cave ignoscas_. 'Beware of forgiving.' I always knew Gordon Cadmus was involved.

That's why I was a good lawyer. _Instinct_." His face was triumphant. "Are we ready to eat?

There's so much food."

"That's it? That's all you have to _say_? You killed two people, just so I'd write a _fucking book_?"

He looked at me pityingly. "It's not a book, Sam. It's my saving grace.

It _isn't_ the book I hoped for, but just knowing after all these years that Edward didn't kill himself . . . It's a miracle." He stood up, took hold of the walker and slowly shuffled toward the kitchen. For the first time, beside the scent of the flowers, I could smell the delicious aromas of food. Over his shoulder, Durant called out, "Have a glass of champagne, Frannie. I'll be back in a minute."

"Did you hear him scream, Sam? I told you, that old man would have killed you too if he'd known what you were writing. That's why I said you had to finish the book and turn it in before you showed him. Now there's nothing he can do." Frannie filled the glass and took a sip. "I hate champagne. It always reminds me of the feeling in my foot when it falls asleep."

Almost whispering, I said, "Why did you lie to him? LePoint never said Gordon Cadmus had Durant killed! He said he committed suicide."

Frannie rolled the empty glass between his palms. "That's true, but it worked. We got our confession. Nothing else we can do with him. He's too dead to arrest. Plus I'd love to see the look on his face when he reads your book and finds out the truth. Sur-prise!"

_"Cave ignoscas."_

McCabe snorted. "Yeah, right. _Cave ignoscas_, motherfucker."

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Durant reappeared at the kitchen door wearing two bright red and yellow oven mitts. He was beaming. Not a maniac's smile either. It was the smile of a man who believed no matter what, nothing could touch him because the truth had set him free.

"So what happens now, Frannie? Are you going to arrest me? I'll probably be dead before they indict."

"I know that. What happens now, Edward? You're going to die and go to hell."

"True. But let's eat dinner first."

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