Part 19 (1/2)
She shook her head to indicate incredulity. ”You wouldn't believe it.”
”Too much for you?”
She sipped her tea. ”I don't mind doing a joint, you know, like, to get things going or slow things down, but he is really into heavy stuff.”
”Like?”
”Cocaine. H. Ecstasy. Meth. You name it. It was everywhere.”
”So when did things start to go...bad?”
”Some friends showed up. Business a.s.sociates, he called them. Real scaggy types. They had like these girls with them. I think they were hookers. That's when the handcuffs and the whips came out. You know, dog collars and chains.”
”Was Celeste Tangent there?” I tried to sound casual.
”Yeah...” Her voice got wistful. ”They have a thing.”
”They?”
”Freddie and Celly. We all had a thing.”
”The three of you?”
”Yeah. But it was too druggy to be real. Sixy would have loved it. You know, like his cut, 'Orifice Rex.' But it's not my scene. I mean they were putting d.i.l.d.os on dogs and trying to get a chain going. And then they had this mock wedding between a midget ballerina and one of the German shepherds. I'm so sick of that stuff. It's all fizz and no wine. And...”
”Yes?” I prompted after a pause.
”I think Freddie's starting to lose it.” She pointed to her head.
”So you decided to leave?”
She sighed, as though it had cost her something. ”Yeah. He wasn't going to let me go, though. He said no way, not now.”
”How did you do it?”
”I took a walk and called a cab.”
”With your walkaround phone.”
”Yeah. The cabbie had a tough time finding it. Freddie was really p.i.s.sed when he found I had called one and given it directions. He's like a dictator. He didn't want to let me go. But he knew you knew I was up there. It's like he owns people. And everyone's a slab of meat.”
”He's a criminal, you know,” I said.
”I can believe it.”
”I don't say that just because he thinks Adolf Hitler was a great artist. I mean he's a real criminal. He's part of organized crime.”
Diantha stuck out her lower lip and nodded, but skeptically.
I related to her then what Agent Johnson and Sergeant Lemure had told me about his background. I went into some detail. One has to be careful these days in talking to young people. Criminality has taken on such glamour. But Diantha listened as though taken with my seriousness.
She got up to rinse her cup, and I noticed the way she wore her slacks, just like her mother had so many years ago. She turned to look at me. ”Hate to rain on your parade, Dad, but I know firsthand that Freddie's not circ.u.mcised.”
What is it about that kind of detail that cuts to the heart? Because I suffered then a keen and entirely inappropriate stab of retrospective jealousy. I can't explain it. Was I that smitten by my own stepdaughter? Was I to live in torture now until she found some suitable young man and went off to start a life of her own?
”Perhaps he faked that when he went through his 'conversion,'” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.
”It wouldn't surprise me. Reality to him is what he says it is. The guy really is...”
”Solipsistic...self-absorbed.”
”Yes. You always know things, do you know that?”
She smiled at me then, melting my heart, touching me in ways I'm sure she couldn't imagine. I was looking again at a young vibrant Elsbeth, and again experiencing a kind of temporal dislocation.
We decided we would go Christmas shopping together for some last-minute things. We would dine out first, shop, and then go to the midnight carol service at St. Cecilia's, the rather High Episcopal church I attended with some regularity before Elsbeth arrived on the scene and changed my life.
I managed to get us a table at the Oriole in the Miranda, an old-fas.h.i.+oned place that serves excellent, old-fas.h.i.+oned food. Diantha had wild goose and I had tame steak, and we finished off a bottle and demi-bottle of decent wine. She couldn't quite stop talking about Freddie Bain, at the same time reaching over to touch my hand, as though clinging to me, as though torn between a rollicking life on a sybaritic if sinking pirate s.h.i.+p and austere survival on an odd bit of eroded rock jutting from the water.
We shopped halfheartedly for an hour or so, mostly walking off the wine, before making our way to the incensed interior of St. Cecilia's. There, for more than an hour, we lifted our voices and our hearts, bracing hope and beauty against the solstistial darkness. Elsbeth and I had come here each of the last three years, and my eyes watered when we sang the verses of one of her favorites: In the bleak midwinter, frosty winds may moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.
G.o.d is good, I thought. Had He not sent His only son as a rea.s.surance? Of course, we had nailed Him to a tree and left Him to die. And we've celebrated His death ever since. I put such thoughts aside and thanked fate that Diantha was with me and safe.
Afterward, outside, I noticed that Diantha had tears s.h.i.+ning in her eyes. I tried to comfort her.
”Oh, Norman,” she cried, clinging to me again. ”I don't know what to do.”
”About what, darling?” I said.
”About Freddie. I know he's a creep. I know he's crazy. I know he's a monster. It doesn't matter. I can't help it. I love him.”
35.
Something horrific has happened, something so personal, so shattering, and yet so poignant, I scarcely know where to begin. Indeed, I would not begin at all were it not pertinent to account for the strange happenings that have rocked our little community to its very foundations.
I have just returned from the Seaboard Police Department headquarters. (I'm sorry if this seems disjointed, but I am agitated beyond words.) We've finally had a real break in the case, but at an awful price. I sit here in my high study, my father's .38-caliber Smith & Wesson at the ready, my hands afflicted by a telltale tremor.
Let me start at the beginning.
Earlier this evening Diantha and I returned from a meeting with the Reverend Lopes and Father O'Gould to make arrangements for Elsbeth's memorial service at Swift Chapel. Such matters are draining. They take an emotional toll the worse for not being expected. What order of service? What hymns? (For instance, one of Elsbeth's favorites was Mendelssohn's ”Why Do the Heathens Rage?” But it didn't seem appropriate to the occasion.) Who speaks? What about the reception?
At any rate, upon returning home, we felt simply too tired to cook anything for ourselves. Indeed, we were too drained even to contemplate going out for a quick bite. Ordinarily I do not enjoy sent-out food, the kind that arrives in white cardboard containers with plastic accoutrements and little pouches of condiments. But to indulge Diantha, whose spirits had ebbed woefully low, I agreed to call the Jade Stalk and order from a veritable laundry list of Chinese food. We ticked off black bean shrimp, some kind of shredded beef, sweet-and-sour something or other, and rice, of course.