"I suppose you do."
"And if you're working for Janet," Osborne said casually, "you can help Dan find the]ewels, and you can still use them to keep the fucking Herald from being taken over by assholes like Chester Osborne."
This was getting treacherous. I said, "I couldn't do that. If I found the jewels, I'd have to return them to the police, or the gems' owners, or their insurance company. That's a given I have no choice."
He gave me a look-one of the two or three in his repertory-that bordered on the salacious, except it had to do with an appetite other than sex. He said, "You could do it. And you will too." Then his face hardened. "Have you met my father?"
"Yes, I have."
"Do you want that piece of shit to control the future of the Herald?" He waited.
"No," I said.
"Then the jewels have to be used."
"Even if the Herald's debt isn't paid off by the September deadline," I said, "a majority of the company's board members are planning to sell the Herald to Harry Griscomb, who'll retain the paper's staff and standards and probably keep Janet on to run it. Your father is one of a minority on the board who want to sell out to a sleazy bottom-line-oriented chain, but it looks as if this can be kept from happening. So your father is not going to control the future of the Herald, no matter where the jewels end up. I know you aren't crazy about your father, Craig, and I think I know some of the reasons why you don't want to see him get his way. But even without the jewels, your father won't succeed. Janet is determined to keep it from happening."
Osborne sneered. "You don't fucking get it."
"Get what?"
He slowly shook his head. "Dan told me somebody tried to hit him with a truck and drown Janet with a Jet Ski. You really don't get what's happening here?"
"It's true that attempts have been made on Janet's and Dan's lives. And all the indications are that these attacks are meant to knock Dan and Janet off the Herald's board. Yes, I get that. But Janet and Dan are both under police protection now. So is your grandmother. We can keep them safe until after the board votes on September eighth, and that's what we're going to do. The stolen jewels, Craig, are irrelevant now. Sorry."
"The fuck you can protect them," Osborne said. "Chester Osborne will find a way to get to one of them-Dan or Janet or Grandma-just like he killed my cousin Eric." Again he watched me with his unreadable eyes, the eyes of a habitual liar, the other Osbornes said.
"Your father killed Eric? How do you know that?"
"He told me."
"Uh-huh."
"In December, my father came out here and talked to me for the first time in ten years. When the warden told me Chester was up here, I wanted to come up here and stick a fork in his gut. But I figured I'd never get close enough to him to do it. Then I thought, fuck it, I'm not even gonna come up here and look at his stupid face. But then I thought, maybe I can come up here and find out something I can use against him. So I came."
"Right."
"I came up here and I actually talked to old shitface. And what he wanted was, he knew Dan had been trying to track me down before the hotel hit. Then when the jewels weren't recovered after I was picked up, Chester put two and two together and came up with this idea that was basically what had happened. I guess Chester's where I got my criminal mind from. He told me if Dan or I used the take from the hit to save the Herald, he would see that an investigation happened and Dan would be fucked.
"And then the evil old man-you'll love this-then old Chester Osborne demands that he get control over the sixteen million. Dan's Cuban had set up a plan to have the jewels fenced in Venezuela and then have the cash funneled through a bank in the Caymans. Chester had a bank in the Bahamas we were supposed to use-the cash was supposed to come back in the form of a loan to the Herald from this bank, supposedly, only the terms of the loan would be so easy that it was like the Herald never really had to pay it back. The loan deal was all just cover.
"The one part of the Bahamas loan agreement that Chester liked the most was, the loan would only go through if Janet, Eric, and Dan all got off the Herald board, and Tidy and two people from outside the family came on the board, and Stu Torkildson would be the publisher." Osborne smiled mirthlessly. "So you tell me, Mr. Private Dick? Where do I get my criminal tendencies from? Huh?"
I said, "I see your point. So, did you agree to your father's criminal demands, Craig?"
Looking smug, Osborne said, "I told him he was full of shit and I blew him off. I'd love to have told him the truth. But then Chester would've gone after Dan too soon, and that could've blown the whole deal. I warned Dan that Chester was suspicious and to make sure the source of the Cayman loan couldn't be traced. Dan said the Cuban said it was foolproof, so then I dropped the subject. I figured I'd have to get my satisfaction just from knowing that Chester wasn't getting control of the Herald — that he'd gotten fucked over, even if I couldn't rub his ugly face in it."
I said, "But that wasn't the end of it with your father, I guess."
He shook his head. "Fuck, no."
"He came back out here again?"
"In May," Osborne said. "A week before Eric was killed "
"What did your father want this time?"
"When the jewels still didn't turn up," Osborne said, looking me directly in the eye, as he had since my arrival, "old Chester starts thinking that Dan and Eric and I did do the job, and Dan and Eric have got some kind of last-minute surprise that will squeeze Chester and Stu Torkildson out of the Herald totally. That's how good a judge of people my father is-he thought my straight cousin Eric was in on the hit! Eric was queer, but he was still the straightest guy I ever knew-nuts and berries and grass and trees and all that shit that's supposed to turn Osbornes on, though as for me, you can have it.
"So Chester comes out here in May, and he's ripshit He says he knows something is up, and where the fuck are the jewels? By then, though, see, Dan has told me the fucking jewels are missing. That's what Dan says-they're missing and he's trying to locate them, he says. Since I want to know where the fuck the fucking jewels are myself, I tell Chester, ask Dan where they are. And this is just what Chester needs to hear. It was a fucking dumb thing for me to say-Eric might still be alive if I'd kept my mouth shut-but I was pissed at Dan by then, and at everybody else, and I just didn't give a fuck."
"So your father went back and confronted Dan?"
Osborne snorted. "Dan told him to fuck off. Dan denied everthing. He said I was playing head games with Chester to get even with him for how he treated me when I was a kid."
"How did he treat you?" I said.
Osborne looked at me with his dead eyes and said, "My father beat the shit out of me every chance he got. He'd do it when my mother wasn't around. Whenever we were alone, he'd pound on me. My mother knew it, but she ignored it." He watched me with his blank look.
I said, "I can see why you want revenge."
"That's what I want."