William Lashner - Bitter Truth

In my briefcase, wrapped in plastic to protect it from any water that might seep into the case during the course of our journey, is the original of the letter to his child written three quarters of a century ago by Christian Shaw. As I travel through this ancient Mayan jungle I can’t help but wonder if the strange sense of revelation I felt atop El Castillo in the ruins of Xunantunich was somehow similar to what Christian Shaw first experienced at the bedside of the terribly wounded Corporal Magee. Beth, who has lately made a study of these things, said that in Shaw’s letter she saw the beginnings of a spiritual ideology reminiscent of the Vedanta, one of the classic systems of Indian philosophy, which teaches that the multiplicity of objects in the universe is merely illusory and that spiritual liberation comes from stripping the illusion and attaining a knowledge of the self as simply another manifestation of the whole. Beth told me the ideas in the Vedanta are not too far removed from what Jacqueline Shaw was learning from Oleanna at the Church of the New Life. I don’t know Vedanta from Valhalla from Valium but I think it more than a coincidence that Christian Shaw and his granddaughter were both suicidal before finding in a nascent spirituality something to save them. They were both trapped by the materiality and wealth and crimes of the Reddmans and longed for an understanding richer and deeper than that which surrounded them as members of that ill-fated clan. One can’t help but feel that they were on the edge of some sort of solution and Beth continues to pursue a similar path for her answer, though I still can’t figure out what it is an answer to.

But it wasn’t the change effected on Christian Shaw in that hospital in France that was most revelatory about the letter, nor was it his confession of his knowledge and acquiescence in the death of Charity Reddman at the hands of her sister Faith, though that confession answered many question about the fate of the Reddmans. No, the most interesting aspect of the letter was a name, the name of Shaw’s fellow patient at that hospital in France, the name that was to be given to the bastard child of Christian Shaw and Emma Poole, the name that pointed with clean precision to the man who had perpetrated the latter-day massacre of Reddmans. It is this man whom I am hunting, against whom my default judgment was issued, and who is the sole beneficiary of the Wergeld Trust from which I intend to wrest my fortune. Morris found out the meaning of Wergeld for me. We had thought it was a family name, but it was something else entirely, discernible from any dictionary. In feudal times, when a man was killed, a payment was made as recompense to avoid a blood feud that would result only in more killing. This payment was called a Wergeld. Faith Reddman Shaw’s attempt to pay for the crimes of her father and satisfy the blood yearnings of the sole grandson of Elisha Poole had obviously failed.

The river is peaceful now and full of beauty. We pass a tree with bright red and black berries hanging down in loops, like fine coral necklaces. Two white egrets float by; a black vulture sits above us, hunchbacked and deprived. Something like an ungainly arrow, yellow and blue, shoots across the gap in the canopy above us and I realize I have just seen a toucan. The trees here are infested with the parasitic orchids, thick as moss, a few hungry red blooms spilling down, and as I look up at them something drops loudly into the quiet of the river. I turn around, startled.

“What was that?” I ask.

“Iguana,” says Canek Panti.

Above me I notice a pack of thick-bodied lizards crawling along the outstretched branch of a tree. They are playing, scampering one around the other, and suddenly another falls off, splashing into the river. As I sit in the canoe, watching the iguanas and heading ever closer to the murderous lizard I am chasing, I can’t help but see the parallels in the death struggle over the Reddman fortune and the war between Raffaello and Calvi for control of the Philly mob and its river of illegal money. How much all have sacrificed to Mammon is stunning. For now the mob is at peace, the deadly battle for control fought and decided on Pier Four of the Naval Shipyard. What was surprising was that, with all the missing soldiers, there wasn’t much fuss in South Philly. Oh, there was some talk about a war, and the Inquirer’s mob correspondent raised some questions in an article, but it all subsided rather quickly and life went on as if the dead had never been born. I am out of it now, just as I wanted to be out of it, and am grateful as hell for that.

There was a final meeting with Earl Dante at Tosca’s in which the rules of my separation were made clear. Files were handed over, vows of secrecy were established. We looked at each other warily. He didn’t trust that I wouldn’t betray him if I had a chance to make a nickel out of it and I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t kill me just for the sport when came his ascendance to absolute power.

“One other thing,” I said, after my obligations under the separation arrangement had been made clear. “I promised Peckworth that you would reduce his street tax.”

“Why did you promise such a thing to that pervert?” Dante asked.

“It was the only way to find out what I needed to find out.”

“We already knew what it was you were finding out.”

“But I didn’t know that. Why did you get him to switch his story in the first place?”

“This was a problem for us, not for some headline-happy prosecutor. We knew how to handle it on our own.”

“I promised him you’d lower his street tax.”

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he dropped his eyes and shook his head. “Stay out of our business,” he warned before he agreed.

My last job for the mob was an appearance as Peter Cressi’s counsel at his trial for the attempted purchase of all those guns, the crime that started this story for me in the first place.

“Where is your client, Mr. Carl?” the judge asked

“I don’t know, Judge,” I answered and, as befits an officer of the court, my answer was perfectly truthful because as far as I knew he could be in a landfill in New Jersey or in a landfill in Chester County or on a garbage barge floating slowly south looking for a place to dump. I didn’t know where he was but I did know that no matter how many bench warrants were issued in his name he wasn’t going to be found. So ended my last case as a mob lawyer. In the defense bar it is considered a victory if your client is not convicted and so I guess I went out a winner.

There is a bend in the river coming up. A huge black bird with a cape of white feathers around its red face swirls above and alights on a branch overhanging the water. The branch bends from the creature’s substantial weight. Canek tells me it is a king vulture and I don’t like the idea of it following us like that. I yell, but it holds its place on the branch, not interested in anything I have to offer until I am dead. We are close now, I can feel it. At each spot when the river turns I look anxiously for the pile of rocks and the tall cottonwood that will tell me we have arrived. I expect I’ll recognize it right off, I have imagined it in my mind ever since I heard Rudi tell of it over a Belikin in Eva’s, but even if I miss it I know that my trusty guide, Canek Panti, will find it for me. He is still standing behind me, stalwart and strong and able. The carved machete rests valiantly in the loop of his pants.

“Tell me something, Canek,” I say as I feel us getting ever closer. “When I was mugged in the streets of Belize City was that the real thing or had you just set that up for my benefit?”

He is quiet for a long moment. His pole in the water gives off an ominous swish as he pushes us forward.