“Human behavior. It's a fascinating subject, don't you think, Mr. Antonelli? Your behavior, for example. People who were only familiar with the bare outline of your biography would think you had led a very enviable life: an enormously successful lawyer, famous for never—or almost never—losing a case. And yet you come here, to San Francisco, to take a case we both know you have no chance to win. It's a sort of pattern with you, isn't it, Mr. Antonelli? To push things to the edge, to take risks, just because it's something most other people would not do. You don't want to see yourself as just like everybody else, do you, Mr. Antonelli? You want to see yourself as somehow different from other people. You've never married, though we both know— don't we?—you're attracted to women. You were engaged once, but that ended badly, didn't it?”
I was angry now and fear had nothing to do with it. “What do you know about that?”
“I know that, quite unfortunately, the woman to whom you were engaged was institutionalized. I told you, Mr. Antonelli, I'm an interested observer.”
His thumbs stopped moving around each other in that insane rhythmic circle and his hands went limp in his lap. He turned away and stared for a while out the window. We had just reached the top of a hill. The lush green outline of Golden Gate Park stretched out toward the ocean in the distance below.
“You asked a very interesting question during jury selection. Do you remember?”he asked, his small half-hidden eyes swinging in a slow lazy arc back around to me. “You asked one of them who he thought killed John F. Kennedy. I thought it was quite effective.”
In the darkened shadows, his silhouette was a series of descending circles, each one larger than the one above. It did not seem possible that he could have been in that courtroom, even before I had begun to study the faces of everyone there, without my noticing him.
“You've been watching the trial?”I asked, pretending that it was at most a matter of mild curiosity.
“We've kept an eye on it,”he said in what struck me as a strange tone. It was as if he were amused, and also a little aggrieved, by the enormous disparity in what we knew.
Whatever doubts I may have had about what Andrei Bog-donovitch had told me, whatever hesitation I may have felt about believing that people had been following him and that I was in danger as well—all of that had now vanished, defeated by the absolute certainty that the large figure who sat opposite me was somehow responsible for at least the death of Bogdonovitch and perhaps the death of Fullerton as well.
“Do you know why that question was particularly effective, Mr. Antonelli?”he asked, each word echoing slowly into the night. “Because ever since that day in Dallas, everyone in this country believes that behind everything that happens—every apparently 'random act of violence,' as I believe you put it— there must be a conspiracy of some kind that gives the reason why.”
“Are you trying to tell me that there was not some kind of conspiracy? That Fullerton's death was a random act of violence?”
“I'm not here to tell you anything, Mr. Antonelli. I don't know who killed the senator, and, to be quite blunt about it, I don't really care. Both of us know what Jeremy Fullerton really was.”
He was guessing. He did not know what I knew about Fullerton or whether I knew anything at all. Or did he?
“I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about,”I replied, doing what I could to appear indifferent.
He looked at me with open disdain, an expression that even he could show.
“I was hoping we could have a serious conversation, Mr. Antonelli. I've been quite impressed with you. I was certain you were a serious man. Please believe me when I tell you there is nothing to be gained by treating me as if I were some kind of fool. I am anything but that, Mr. Antonelli.”
With that warning, my anonymous companion leaned forward and whispered something in the driver's ear. At the next corner we turned left onto a two-lane road that ran under the cover of a long line of cypress trees bent by the winds that swept in from the Pacific. It was the entrance to Golden Gate Park.
“You know all about Jeremy Fullerton, Mr. Antonelli. Don't try to tell me otherwise. Andrei Bogdonovitch told you. Why bother to deny it? We know you talked to him; we know you met with him at his shop. You were there, Mr. Antonelli; you were there just before Bogdonovitch was killed in that unfortunate accident.”
“Accident!”I cried. “You told me not to treat you like a fool, but you don't seem to have any hesitation treating me like one!”
There was no change, at least none I could detect, in that expressionless face. In the only visible manifestation of his reaction, he closed his eyes and slowly shook his head.
“Perhaps it was not an accident,”he said as he opened his eyes again, “but if he was murdered, I certainly had nothing to do with it. Bogdonovitch was no threat to anyone. What could he do? Tell the world what he told you—that Jeremy Fullerton had once taken money from the Russians? Who would have believed him? What kind of proof could he have offered?”
He was overlooking the obvious.
“You found out,”I reminded him. “And it wasn't because Bogdonovitch told you. There are records in Moscow—KGB files.”
His nostrils flared open as he took a breath. His moist lips seemed to tremble with condescension.
“If any such records ever existed,”he said with satisfaction, “I think you can probably assume they don't exist anymore.”
The road, not much wider than a paved footpath, opened onto a broad expanse of rolling lawn and artfully sculpted ornamental trees. Straight ahead, at the far end, row after row of vacant wooden benches ran back from the front of a large circular band shell. Off to the left, the last few stragglers were leaving the gray stone buildings that housed the aquarium and the Museum of Natural History. Quietly, the limousine rolled to a stop.
“But I'll bet they weren't destroyed until after Fullerton was dead, were they? Because until he was, they would have been extremely valuable to anyone who wanted to destroy any chance Fullerton might have had to become president—isn't that right?”
He looked hard at me, and the fear I had almost forgotten started up my spine again.
“Whoever killed Jeremy Fullerton did everyone a favor. It would all have come out—everything. And what would have happened then? It would not have been like any other political scandal; he couldn't have just retired in disgrace and then, a few years later—or perhaps just a few months later—”he added, a glint of amusement in his eye, “apologized for his indiscretions and enjoyed first forgiveness and then a new rush of popular approval. No, this was different. Fullerton would have been charged with treason. There would have been a trial with God knows what kind of testimony, and he would have been sent to prison. What do you think that would have done to this country? But now, fortunately, we've been saved that entire trauma, all that unnecessary unpleasantness. He's dead. What good would it do for anyone to find out now what he really was? Because even though there isn't any evidence to prove it, the allegation alone—the mere suggestion that Jeremy Fullerton might have sold out his country for money—could be enormously harmful. That kind of thing can destroy people, Mr. Antonelli. Surely you know that. It would destroy his wife, his friends, all those millions of people who believed in him. It's better just to leave it alone, don't you think?”
I turned around and looked across at the stranger I knew I could never trust to tell the truth about anything.
“You didn't grab me from in front of the St. Francis Hotel to tell me that now that Fullerton is dead we should hide the truth about him so that no one's feelings get hurt.”
“I wanted to talk to you, Mr. Antonelli, to let you know that certain people would be extremely grateful if you took a somewhat larger view of things as you conduct the defense in the trial of Jeremy Fullerton's murder. Extremely grateful.”
I stared intently at him, searching his eyes for an answer. “These people you tell me would be so grateful: Do they include the White House?”
He made no response, but it did not matter. Even if he had denied it, I would not have believed him. The White House was behind it, all of it.
“You're going to lose, Mr. Antonelli. Surely you know that. You're too good a lawyer not to know that all the evidence points to your client. You're going to lose; it's how you're going to lose that is important. That question you asked—that question about the Kennedy assassination—that kind of thing makes people uncomfortable; it makes them start to wonder about things. It has to stop. Conduct the defense any way you want; but you are doing no one any good—and you could be doing yourself a great deal of harm—by these unsubstantiated allegations of conspiracy and cover-up.”
“Do myself a great deal of harm?”I asked, glaring at him.
For the second time he whispered something in the driver's ear. The car started up again and a few minutes later we were out of the park, heading toward the bridge.
“I have no idea whether the death of Andrei Bogdonovitch was an accident or a murder; and, if it wasn't the young man who's now on trial for it, I have no idea who killed Jeremy Fullerton. But make no mistake, Mr. Antonelli: The same people who are willing to be quite generous if you just do your job and let the law takes its course would not hesitate for a moment to punish your refusal to act as you should.”
“In other words,”I said as I felt my mouth go dry, “you had nothing to do with the death of Fullerton or the death of Bog-donovitch, but you would not mind killing me?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “You have a gift for summation, Mr. Antonelli.”
The grim laughter faded into the silence and he stared straight ahead. I did not know where we were going or what was going to happen when we got there. He did not say a word until we started across the Golden Gate.
“Death, by itself, is quite overrated as a punishment, don't you think, Mr. Antonelli?”he asked as if we were engaged in a friendly dinnertime conversation. “It's the manner of death that's important, don't you agree? Discovering what someone fears the most, that one way of dying that makes him want to do anything, including killing himself, or perhaps even killing someone else, to avoid it. That's what is at the heart of it. Did you ever read Orwell's
l984
? Do you remember the way Winston feared rats? Do you remember what Big Brother did to him with that knowledge?”
He turned his eyes until he was again gazing straight ahead. “I've never forgotten that,”he added quietly.
The driver edged the limousine over to the outside lane and began to slow down.
“What are you afraid of, Mr. Antonelli?”
I made no answer, and I thought I saw a smile pass over the otherwise indistinct features of his massive gelatinous face. Other cars were hurtling past us as we slowed to a crawl. I tried to hide my fear, and the harder I tried, the greater the terror I felt.
“A great many people are afraid of heights, Mr. Antonelli. Did you know that?”he asked, turning toward me again. “They can walk in a straight line for miles; they have perfect balance— but put them on a flat surface as wide as any sidewalk high up in the air and they think every second they're about to fall. It's not a fear I share, but I don't mean to dismiss it on that account; I have fears of my own—everyone does. Shall I make a confession? What I fear the most? Being buried alive. The thought of it alone makes me shudder.”
The car came to a stop. The lock on my door suddenly snapped open. We were at the middle of the bridge, hundreds of feet above the cold black water of the bay. The tinted window next to me slid partway down and the wind outside whipped the side of my face.
“Are you afraid of heights, Mr. Antonelli?”he asked with a kind of dreadful anticipation.
It was not so much a sense of honor as anger at my own cowardice that made me refuse to tell him the truth.
“No, I'm not,”I replied, though there was no doubt in my mind that he knew I was lying.
“Then you won't mind walking the rest of the way,”he said as he reached in front of me and pushed open my door.
“I'm not walking anywhere. You can take me back to where you got me.”
Suddenly the silent passenger in the front seat had a gun pointed in my face. Slowly, carefully, my eyes on the pistol, my hands in plain sight, I got out of the car. A gust of wind hit me hard and I stumbled to catch my balance.
“Here, Mr. Antonelli, this is for you,”said that now-familiar voice. He was reaching through the open window, holding a thick manila envelope in his fat puffy hand. “You're going to lose the case, Mr. Antonelli. Nothing Fullerton did can help you win it.”As the car began to move away, he added, “We'll meet again, Mr. Antonelli; you can be sure of it.”
I stood there watching the taillights of the limousine, and then, at the sound of a horn, jumped back as a car came bearing down on me from behind. Once I got onto the pedestrian walkway, I clutched the railing and tried to steady my nerves. I knew better than to look down, and so I looked back toward the city. It was less than a mile away, but it made me feel like I was circling the earth and that at any moment the city was going to roll back below the horizon as the planet rotated around the sun. I looked the other way, toward the dark obscurity of the hillside at the northern end of the bridge. I began to walk toward it, never for a moment letting go of the railing.
Each time the wind blew up in a sudden gust, each time the bridge moved beneath my feet as the traffic rumbled across, I felt myself tense. I taunted myself with the knowledge that, as the schoolbooks teach, a coward dies a thousand deaths and laughed out loud at how utterly useless when you needed them all those lessons were. Anyone passing must have thought me mad, waving my arm around, shouting into the wind, angry at the man who had taken me, angry at being threatened with something worse than death, angry at the cowardice without which those threats would have had no effect.
The anger concentrated my mind and made me think about something other than how terrified I was of being out here, high up in the air, on a bridge that was moving beneath my feet and, billowed by winds, swaying from side to side. I wanted revenge; I wanted that obese obscenity to know what it was like to live out your worst fear. I began to see myself with a shovel, throwing dirt on his grave, listening while he beat with his bare hands on the lid of his coffin, knowing he was going to be buried alive.