Richard Stevenson - Chain of Fools

"Reading your book. I hope you don't mind. I saved your page. And I want you to know, I'm impressed. I couldn't even get through this one in English, and I'm a big Garcia Marquez fan."

"Get out of my tent, goddamn it!"

I carefully replaced the novel where I'd found it on the ground cloth next to the double sleeping bag. Dan backed away as I came out into the dappled sunlight. The forest aroma was enchanting after the musty tent smell, but Dan's demeanor-I wondered if he might be going to heave again-meant this would be no time for enchantment.

"Why, Don," Arlene drawled, giving me a forced look of hippie insouciance, "how did you know — where to look for us? We were just up here in the woods chilling out for a couple days, and you knew right where to look. That is so weird!"

"I got the map from the charter pilot," I said, and Arlene screamed again. Dan began to retch and staggered off behind some brush.

"Be careful not to puke on the diamonds!" I yelled, and then he really let loose.

Arlene started to follow Dan, but then thought better of it.

I said, "Did he throw up in Cuba too?"

"Some from the turista," she said. "But mostly we just got diarrhea."

"Ahh."

When Dan quieted down, Arlene went to him with a bottle of water. I waited while he attended to his oral hygiene. They both came back a minute later, Dan wan and shaky, bits of his breakfast in his beard.

"I think we need to air some things out," I said.

"I'll get you a clean T-shirt," Arlene told Dan, but he looked at me and he knew what needed airing.

After he changed his shirt, Dan lowered himself to the pine-needled forest floor and leaned against a tree. Arlene and I sat on the two camp stools.

"I talked to Craig," I said. "I talked to the charter pilot. I drew conclusions. I knew to talk to the pilot because your mother discovered that your father's ashes were missing from the urn. If Eric had replaced the ashes with something more human-remains-like than cornmeal, your mother might never have noticed the loss. And none of us would have figured out what happened to the jewels."

Exhaustedly, Dan said, "I put the cornmeal in the urn. Eric had just left it empty. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking."

"God, I don't know either," Arlene said. "You put cornmeal in your father's urn? That gives me the creeps."

"You didn't know about the jewels?" I asked Arlene.

His strength coming back now, Dan snapped, "Arlene didn't know anything until yesterday! So don't go goddamn dragging her into anything. I didn't tell her about the robbery until we got out here, and by then you must have heard about it from Craig, so Arlene was really the last to know and she can't be legally implicated in any way. So just goddamn leave Arlene out of it"

"Sometimes it pisses me off that with Dan I'm always the last one to know anything," Arlene said. "But this time I guess I lucked out. Although, when you come right down to it, Dan didn't really do anything so terrible, and I sure hope the cops aren't going to hassle him. I mean, he didn't even know about the heist until the jewels came in the mail from Craig. By then, I mean, what difference did it make, since those oil sheiks have got diamonds up the wazoo anyway? Dan just thought, hey, he may as well put the jewels to good use and save the Herald, and also Craig could get even with his big asshole dad, Chester. So I certainly hope the cops aren't going to make some big fucking deal out of what Dan did."

I looked at Dan, and he glanced at me, and he knew I knew he'd been in on it from the beginning. I said, "It's over, Dan. It's all coming out now. There's no way it can't"

Dan looked away into the woods. Maybe he still thought he'd spot a diamond.

Arlene said, "What's he mean by that, Dan?" He wouldn't look at her or me. She said, "What else is there to come out? What's Don talking about?"

There was a silence, and then Dan said, "Arlene, I need to talk to Strachey privately I know you're going to be pissed off-"

"I sure as hell am gonna be pissed-"

"But take my word for it, Arlene, you'll be better off if you don't know certain things. It's for your own sake, goddamn it!"

"What things don't I know? What? What?" she yelled, eyes blazing.

I said, "About Eric's murder. Dan knows all about Eric's murder, and he's going to tell me about it, Arlene. Aren't you, Dan?"

Arlene looked aghast and said, "No."

Dan sat there and said nothing.

Arlene screamed, then said it again. "No!"

Dan looked at her and said, "I killed Eric."

"You did not!" Arlene shrieked.

"I did, Arlene! I killed Eric!"

"Dan, you've gone over the edge!" Arlene cried out. "You couldn't have killed Eric, and you know it! You were with me the day Eric was killed, and we were in the city picking up a delivery for Liver!"

"No, of course I didn't actually kill him with my own hands!" Dan moaned. "But I might as well have, for chrissakes. I was-I was trying to control everything, and save the paper for Mom and Eric and Janet and me, and-I fucked up, goddamn it."

I said, "So now it's all got to come out, Dan. It's too late to save the paper for the family. The chances are slim that you'll ever find those diamonds in these woods. And even if you did, word is out now, and the jewels would have to be returned to their owners. The best deal you're going to get from now on is, the board votes next month and the paper goes to the decent Griscomb chain and not to god-awful Info-Com."

He said simply, "I know that."

Arlene was rocking on her seat and said, "I can't believe this. I just fucking can't believe this, Dan. You never told me those diamonds had anything to do with Eric. I thought they were just some oil profiteer's wife's jewelry, and the fucking diamonds were going for a good cause that would benefit the people!"

"Arlene," I said, "two people died in that robbery, one of them a working man, a member of the international proletariat. Letting that guard live the rest of his life would have been a good people's cause."

"Sure, that sucked, that guard getting killed," Arlene said, "and I'm not saying that two wrongs make a right. But the Herald stands up for people like that dead guard, and if the Osbornes lose control of the paper, then it'll start standing up for assholes like big corporations that want to poison the rivers and cut all the trees down. So I agree with what Dan was trying to do. Especially since he didn't even know about the robbery until after it happened."

Another awkward silence. I looked at Dan, and then Arlene did too.

Dan said, almost inaudibly, "I knew about it, Arlene." Then, more loudly: "Of course I knew about it. Come on, Arlene, are you really that naive? I mean-Jesus!"

Arlene slumped and said nothing.

"Was the robbery your idea?" I asked.

Now Dan's face contorted with grief. He said, "No."

Arlene went white and said, "Was it Eric's?"

Dan guffawed once. "God, no. Eric? Don't be absurd."

I said, "What happened, Dan?"

Again another long silence in the woods. "This is the end," Dan finally said. "I'm relieved."

"A lot of people will be."

"I won't," Arlene said, but Dan ignored this.

He took a deep breath and in a shaky voice he said: "Stu Torkild-son first came to me last summer and told me the Herald would not survive as an Osborne family paper unless we could somehow pay off the Spruce Valley debt. He said the resort project was eating the paper alive. He had already refinanced twice, he said, but the company was only falling further and further behind, and Stu had exhausted all legal means for saving the paper."

When Dan said "legal," he gave us a meaningful look. "Stu said to me," Dan went on, "that I, better than all the other Osbornes, understood how 'questionable means'-his term-are justified by good ends. He mentioned as an example something he knew about that I'd done back in the Movement days in sixty-eight. And then when I agreed to listen to what he had to say, he told me bluntly that he thought Craig would be willing to pull off some moneymaking caper that would rescue the paper.