Jane Smiley - Golden Age

Andy said, “How about money laundering? When the cash started being deposited was when all those offshore accounts were being investigated. Possibly he was stashing his money in my account to hide it, so I paid my taxes.” She smiled politely.

“As you will remember, Mrs. Langdon, it was decided by the Supreme Court that offshore accounts are entirely legal, and that it was in the public interest for corporations to follow uniform international tax laws as set up by the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement, and so there was no actual reason for Mr. Langdon to, as you say, launder any money.”

“After 2017.”

“True, that decision did come down a year and a half ago. However, that is neither here nor there from Mrs. Langdon’s point of view. She would like an accounting of the money you received from your son.”

“I can send you the bank statements.”

“And, if you don’t mind, can you estimate how much is in that account right now?”

“I believe a hundred and six dollars.”

Now the young man looked taken aback. He said, “Mrs. Langdon estimates that Mr. Langdon deposited at least a million dollars in that account.”

“In the end, more, I would say.”

“And you felt that this was your money, so you spent it?” He looked around the Hut in amazement. His gaze paused at the wall oven, as if she might have put the cash in there.

Andy said, “I wouldn’t say that I spent it, though it undoubtedly has been spent. I gave it away.”

He licked his lips.

“Ma’am, have you kept a list of the persons or organizations you gave that money to? And do you have your tax returns from the last six years?”

Andy said, “Oh, my goodness! You will have to subpoena me for those! But it isn’t going to do Loretta any good. That money is gone, as well it should be. If the IRS wants to put a ninety-eight-year-old woman in jail, they are welcome to do so.” She again gave him her best, most radiant, and, she knew some would say, skeletal smile. He looked taken aback.

Andy said, “I didn’t give a penny to the Catholic Church.”

He didn’t say anything to that. He took another sip of his tea. She said, “Will you tell me something?” She made sure she sounded wheedling, kind, and decrepit — she even got a little bit of a shake into her voice.

He said, “What’s that?”

“What has happened to the ranch in California? What was it, the Angel Ranch.”

“The Angelina Ranch has been donated by Mr. Chance Langdon to the California Rangeland Trust, and he has moved to ten or so acres somewhere around Santa Ynez. Since the ranch sits square on the Monterey Shale, he thought maybe the trust was in a better position to preserve it, should fracking become viable again. Of course, there is the drought aspect as well.”

They both shook their heads regretfully.

“Mrs. Langdon has no quarrel with her son’s decision.”

“She has her good points,” said Andy.

The lawyer said, “Yes, ma’am. She does.”

—

WHEN, after a year of on-and-off suspense about Michael’s “accident,” Richie told Jessica over breakfast that it was he himself who had killed him, run him down in the Toyota because he laughed at Richie and gave him the finger, she lathered some pear jam on her toast and said, in her straightforward Jessica way, “I don’t believe that.”

Richie pushed his plate away, even though he’d hardly touched a thing. “I tell you something that it has taken me a year to confess, and you don’t believe me?”

“I believe that you think that you killed him, but I don’t believe that you did.” The toast was so crisp he could hear it crunching. Jessica did so love to eat.

“You think I have dementia or something?”

She set her elbows on the table and leaned toward him. “Darling, don’t you realize that you ask me certain things over and over, like whether we’ve watched Crystal and Cooper already this week, and why isn’t it on the DVR?”

“I do ask you that?”

“Yes.”

“Why isn’t it on the DVR?”

“Because we watched the latest episode Monday night and then you deleted it.”

“Do I know how to operate the DVR?”

“You do.”

“Did I enjoy Crystal and Cooper ?”

“You seemed to.” She shook her head. She thought he was joking, and maybe he was, a little. He said, “I am sixty-six. My mom is almost a hundred. Aunt Claire is eighty. Everyone in our family is sharp as a tack.”

Jessica said, “I know that, sweetie.”

He let the subject drop, but every so often, he called the investigator who had been put on the case at the beginning and asked him if there was any new information. The investigator was sympathetic — he had cousins who were twins, very close — but he never had new information. Finally, after the fifth call, he said, “Congressman, I would like to pursue this, but we are so low on funds that I would have to do it on my own time, and there are other cases that seem more important to me. Not to mention the backlog in the courts. There are a few retired investigators you might contact to see if one of them would do it — but it’s a boring case. It’s a hit-and-run. It’s more or less meaningless. Now, you were telling me about that young man you knew, who was shot out in Washington State?”

“Cousin,” said Richie.

“Yes, sir. Well, that is more interesting in its way, because those gangs of kids that they have in certain places — there in Washington State, but also in Kansas and Wisconsin and Oklahoma, and a lot of places where the economy has simply vanished these last years, they are a real symptom of the times we live in. They don’t care if they murder, they don’t care if they die. They’ve got nothing to look forward to, so, as with your cousin, they kill for a twenty-dollar bill. We thought those types were a third-world phenom; well, look where they are now. At least they got those boys, and they’re in jail. Sixteen people had to die before they got ’em, but they got ’em. That’s all I have to say.”

“Thank you for your help.”

“I wish I could help, Congressman, but you’ve got to accept the fact that whoever killed your brother got away with it.”

After that call, Richie thought about those kids in Washington. Some had been fourteen (the most ruthless age, in Richie’s estimation), though the apparent killer was eighteen — he had been living at the park for three years. His father had been a migrant from Amarillo, Texas. He farmed for ADM for a year, but couldn’t support his family doing it. The son began stealing, was kicked out of the house; the wife died mysteriously (domestic violence was no longer investigated, as a policy to save money); then the father shot himself in the mouth. The other four kids had similar backgrounds. It was the same in Oregon, the same wherever there was still water, still even the smallest hope of making a living. The boys drank from the river, shot and ate animals, ambushed passersby. The sixteen bodies (Guthrie had been number fourteen; fifteen and sixteen were a local couple, the boys’ biggest mistake) were left under bushes for the vultures and the crows to take care of them. Two of them drove Guthrie’s car to a local town, where they spent his last $38.56. Then they left the car in a parking lot and hitchhiked back to the park. Until the death of the local couple, people in the town had thought they were “harmless,” figured they couldn’t “do nothing about them — gonna ship them back to Texas?” Was he like these boys? Since he had done what he did, why did what they did fill him with horror? Sometimes he allowed himself to believe that what he had done had a certain justice to it, or, at least, a certain practicality. Other times he thought he had fulfilled his destiny — you name which one, psychological, mythological, political, masculine. But no one believed he had done it. No one believed that Congressman Langdon (D-NY) had the balls.