Bitter Truth

The seedy orange couch. The framed Springsteen poster. The empty Rolling Rock bottle on the coffee table beside the television remote control. The little washer-dryer unit, the dryer door open and half filled with pinkish-hued tee shirts and socks and boxer shorts. Three-day-old takeout Chinese food cartons on the red Formica dining table. I tried to send my consciousness out of the room, to take a Peter-Pa

Crow’s feet, deeper than I ever thought possible, gouged out from the corners of the eyes. The scabs on the cheek were like the scrapes of hungry fingernails. The brown hair short and spiky, the neck too long, the shoulders too narrow. A white tee shirt hung from the shoulders as loose as if from a hanger. Where was the chest? The boxers were striped and only a shade paler than the bony knees. I was trying to view my body with the tranquility of an observer, as Beth had advised, but it was hard to keep down the dismay. Didn’t that stack of bones ever exercise? I went back to the face and tried to find some thought or emotion playing out on its features, but it was as inanimate as wax. I couldn’t even tell if the body was breathing, it looked more like a corpse than corpses I had seen.

I wondered what would happen if I opened my eyes just then. Would I see my consciousness staring back at me or would I have a clearer vision of the body I was now inspecting? Or would my consciousness, caught outside my awakened body, simply flee, leaving the body there as still and as lifeless as a salami? I started to back up again, to gain more perspective. The body seemed to shrink in both size and significance. I flew back until I was hovering over the dining table, as far from the body as I could get in that room. The whole scene, the sad, nondescript apartment, the mess, the stiff waxy body with its pale legs crossed on the floor, the detritus of loneliness scattered all about, the whole scene was pathetic. And then I noticed something in the body’s right hand.

I flew around the room, just zipped around for the sheer pleasure of it, before drawing close to get a better look. The hand was open, as if presenting an offering. Lying on the palm was a cellophane candy wrapper, one end twisted, one end open, and printed on the wrapper’s side in red and green were the words: MAGNA EST VERITAS.

I opened my eyes.

The light in the room forced me to blink away the hurt as I stared down at my right hand. It was open, just as I had seen it with my eyes closed, but now it was empty. My ankles hurt, I realized, from sitting cross-legged for too long. The cool blue numbers of the digital clock now read three thirty-one. I pushed myself to standing and walked around a bit, let the stiffness of my legs dissipate. I thought of that wrapper I had imagined my consciousness seeing in my opened hand and I started shaking. When I had calmed myself enough to sit and dial I called up Caroline Shaw.

With a voice drowsy with the remnants of a deep and most likely disturbing sleep, she said, “Victor, what?”

“I need to see you.”

“What time is it? What? Victor? Okay. Okay. Wait.” I heard her grope for a cigarette, the click of a lighter, the steady soft breath of an inhale. “All right, yes. You can come on over, I guess. I’ve been thinking about you too. It was nice, wasn’t it?”

“No, not now,” I said. “Tonight. Let’s have di

“I wanted to talk to you this morning but you just ran away. I saw you on the lawn with Nat but then you were gone.”

“I had to be somewhere.”

“But it was nice, wasn’t it? Tell me it was nice.”

“Sure, it was nice.”

Another inhale. “Your talent for romance is overwhelming.”

“We’ll have di

“I’ll make a reservation someplace wildly expensive.”

“That’s fine. But make it for three.”

She laughed a dreamy laugh. “Victor. I wouldn’t have imagined.”

“I want your Franklin Harrington to join us,” I said, and her laughter stopped.

“I don’t think so.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“I think that’s a terrible idea, Victor.”

“Listen to me, Caroline. I believe I know who killed your sister. Now I need your fiancé to help me figure out why.”

24

I SPENT MUCH OF THE NEXT MORNING inside my office, door closed, reading the news reports in the Inquirer and the Daily News about the shootout on the Schuylkill Expressway. The information was sketchy. The white van had been found deserted in Fairmount Park. Police were still searching for clues as to the identity of the hit men but there were still no suspects. Authorities had confirmed that Raffaello was inside the Cadillac when it was attacked and was now in a hospital in serious condition, but no one, for obvious reasons, would say where. The police would state only that Raffaello and the unidentified driver of the car were both cooperating. There were reports, though, of another occupant, a white male, tall, thin, in a blue suit, who may have fallen from the car near the zoo. My skin crawled as I read about the mysterious figure stumbling his way across the street. The sighting was made by a balloon vendor outside the zoo entrance but the police apparently were discounting the story. Still, it worried me, and I pored over the reports nervously looking for any other information.

After I had read the papers, twice, I began playing catch-up at the office, returning phone messages, responding to letters, filing motions to continue those matters that I didn’t have time to deal with just then, freeing up my afternoon and the many days to follow. I was, in effect, putting off the whole of my practice while I pursued my ill-starred quest for a chunk of the Reddman fortune. When I cleared my calendar for the next week, I took a deep breath, grabbed a file, stuffed it in my briefcase, and sneaked out of the office, heading for Rittenhouse Square. Before my di

Rittenhouse Square is a swell place to live, which is why so many swells live there. It is the elegant city park. There are trees and wide walkways and a sculpture fountain in the middle. Society ladies, plastic poop bags in hand, walk their poodles there; art students, clad all in black to declare their individuality, huddle; college dropouts looking like Maynard G. Krebs walk by spouting Kierkegaard and Mr. Ed in the same breath; hungry homeless men sit on benches with handfuls of crumbs, luring pigeons closer, ever closer. It is a small urban pasture, designed by William Pe

“Mr. Peckworth, please,” I said to the doorman, who gave me a not so subtle look that I didn’t like. I was dressed in a suit, reasonably well groomed, my shoes may have been scuffed, sure, but not enough to earn a look like that.

“Who then can I say is visiting this time?” he asked me.

“Victor Carl,” I said. “I don’t have an appointment but I expect he’ll see me.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure he will,” said the doorman.