Greg Iles - Dead Sleep

With a strange sense of foreboding, I take the frames from his hand. The first picture is of me, my standard publicity head shot. The second is of Jane, her graduation photo from Ole Miss. My heart begins to pound.

“What are you doing with these?”

At last de Becque sits on the sofa opposite us. “Listen to me, Jordan.” Again the soft “J.”

“Because of the circumstances when we last met, there were certain things I could not tell you. Now things have changed. You should know that I knew your father much better than I led you to believe. I think perhaps you suspected this.”

“Yes.”

“He was a good friend to me, and I to him. I did what I could for his career, and for his life.”

“What did he do for you?”

“He enriched my days. That’s a great gift. But what you really want to know is this. Did your father die on the Cambodian border? Today I tell you – he did not.”

“Oh, God.”

“He was shot there by the Khmer Rouge, yes. But he was found alive later by others. There are many angles in an Asian war. Business, always business. Even with the Communists, until they win. Jonathan Glass was my friend, and when I heard what had happened to him, I exerted considerable effort to learn his fate. Over a period of months, I managed to negotiate an exchange for him, for certain considerations that need not be mentioned here.”

“How badly was he hurt?”

“Very seriously. He had a head wound. There had been infection.”

John takes my hand and squeezes tightly.

“He was not the same man he had been before the wound,” says de Becque.

“Did he know who he was?”

“He knew his name. He remembered certain things. Other things, no. His vision was impaired as well. Photography as a career was over for him. Though I don’t think he much cared at that point. His frame of reference had been reduced to fundamental things. Food, shelter, wine-”

“Love?” I cut in. “Is that where this is going? Did he have someone here? Someone like Li?”

De Becque raises his eyebrows in a way that says, We are all adults here, no? “There was a woman.”

“She was with him before he was shot?”

“Oui.”

I take a deep breath, then plunge on to the almost unspeakable question. “Did he have children by her?”

De Becque’s eyes tell me he understands my pain. “Non. No children.”

Relief washes through my soul, but new fear follows. “Did he remember us at all? My mother? My sister?”

The Frenchman holds up his flattened hand and tilts it from side to side. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But let me speak plainly. If your anxiety is that Jon simply decided to abandon you, to not go back to America – this should not be a concern. He was in no condition to do such a thing. I had a plantation in Thailand, and he lived out his days there in a simple way. He did simple work, he knew simple joys.”

John squeezes my hand again, and I’m grateful for his presence. The emotions pouring through me now are too intense to bear alone. Amazement that my secret hope turned out to be true. Sadness that my father was not himself afterward, that perhaps he did not remember me in any meaningful sense. But deeper than any of these wells a relief that even tears cannot express. My father did not abandon his family. He did not choose others over us. He did not voluntarily stop loving us. Though I do not voice it, a child’s simple cry of joy bursts from my heart: My daddy didn’t leave me.

There is no sight quite like gentlemen in the presence of a lady reduced to tears. John blushes and reaches for a Kleenex he doesn’t have, while de Becque, the Old World man, pulls a silk handkerchief from his trouser pocket.

“Take a moment, ma cherie” he says in a soothing voice. “Family matters… always difficult.”

“Thank you.” I wipe my eyes and blow my nose, and neither man seems to mind much. “Tell me the rest, please.”

“I anticipate your next question. Your father lived until 1979. Seven years past the wound that probably should have killed him. He was lucky to have those years.”

Seven years. My father died during Jane’s sophomore year at Ole Miss, the year I became a photographer at the Times-Picayune. Before I can think of what to ask next, John speaks.

“Monsieur, your story began with the daughters, not the father. With the photographs. And a point about Christopher Wingate?”

De Becque looks at me. “If you are now composed?”

“Yes. Please go on.”

“You understand the situation? Wingate had offended me. Cheated me. I then taught him a lesson about the consequences of breaking promises.”

“We understand.”

“Wingate was not content to learn this lesson. Perhaps he could not afford the loss he sustained in the Caribbean. In any case, he wished to revenge himself upon me. And he wished certain people to know he had taken that revenge. To this end, he set about trying to hurt me as deeply as possible. This is not so easy as it might sound. I have no family in the ordinary sense. No hostages to fortune. I’m a businessman, a citizen of the world. Not a vulnerable man. So Wingate had to look hard for a weakness.”

“I think I know where this is going,” John says.

“You wish me to continue?”

“Please,” I tell him, giving John a look that tells him not to interrupt again.

“Wingate knew about more than painting. He knew photography. When he was here, he naturally noticed my Vietnam photos. He encouraged me to tell stories. I confess, I am fond of doing so, especially after a few bottles of wine. I know when to keep my mouth shut, but some stories seem harmless enough.”

He sighs with regret. “I always kept pictures of you and your sister, for Jonathan’s sake. I showed them to him sometimes. I had a newer picture of you because you are famous. Anyway, Wingate knew your story. He knew who your father was, and that I cared about you.”

“Cared about us?”

“On one of your father’s better days, he asked me to look after you. This was near the end of his life. You were almost grown then, and I didn’t know you were in financial difficulty. Had I known… well, what are words worth now? After Jonathan’s death I learned that you were doing all right but that Jane needed money for university. I made sure she got it.”

I shake my head in wonder. “I never knew how she stopped depending on me. I thought she had scholarships or something. Pell grants.”

“She did, I’m sure.” De Becque smiles. “But she also had help from Uncle Marcel.”

“You’re telling us Wingate chose Jane Lacour as a victim to hurt you,” John says, unable to contain himself. “Right?”

“I believe it happened this way. Wingate never knew Roger Wheaton’s identity, but I think he knew where the victims were coming from. I believe he had close ties with an associate of Wheaton’s.”

“Conrad Hoffman,” says John.

“Perhaps,” says the Frenchman. “In any case, by this time, I too had surmised that the girls in the paintings were being taken in New Orleans.”

“You told us you had no idea-”

“No proof” says de Becque. “Merely the conjecture of an old man. But I was interested enough to watch the New Orleans newspapers, and keep an ear to the ground through contacts I have there. I suspected that if another victim were kidnapped there, a new Sleeping Woman might soon come on the market.”

“Jane was victim number five,” John says in a cold voice. “You suspected all the way back then?”

De Becque suddenly looks very serious. “Do you wish to waste time with another useless philosophical debate? I assure you, a Frenchman likes nothing better.”