"Sorry," I said. "That first time."
"Due to Carpenter Hatch's desire to stay the dead hand of the past from restricting the financial options available to his heirs, the entire contents of the trust comes to you unencumbered. On a personal note, the spectacle of the Hatch family being so royally harpooned affords me nothing but pleasure."
"How much money are we talking about?"
"Mr. Gillespie estimates the current value at twenty to twenty-five million, conservatively. Mr. Gillespie will be in touch with you today, and I am certain that he will advise you to retain his services. I would anticipate a spine-quivering description of the sorry state awaiting you, should you decline."
“I guess I have to talk to him," I said, which amused Creech.
“In the meantime, I'll prepare the documents necessary to sever Gillespie's relationship to the trust and FedEx them to you in New York. If you wish, I could also do some background work to discover if my colleague has given you an accurate accounting."
"How would you charge me for that?"
"You would be billed at my usual rate of two hundred dollars an hour. If that is acceptable, fax Mr. Gillespie the day you return to New York, instructing him to copy me on everything he sends you. My esteemed colleague will probably defile the seat of his trousers. I suspect that your two hundred dollars an hour should net you an extra two or three million."
"Mr. Creech," I said, "you're my hero."
"Your money is going to be rigorously accounted for. And since I have more experience of your temperament than Mr. Gillespie, let me ask how much of the windfall you intend to give away."
I smiled at him, but he did not smile back. Creech sat on the edge of my prison cot, folded into himself, gaunt, ageless, and impersonal in his gray suit and hat, waiting for whatever I would say.
“I want to take care of Cobbie Hatch," I said.
“Is it your wish to care for the boy by supplying the funds for his education and allowing his mother a reasonable annual stipend sufficient to allow them a comfortable life, or do you intend to make him wealthy?"
"He gets half of the money," I said.
"You are consistent in your methods," Creech said. “I expected you to divide the pot into equal shares. May I make a suggestion?"
I nodded.
“I recommend that you establish a trust similar to the Hatches', which would grant the boy a certain sum each year, along with a separate sum for his mother's living expenses. At twenty-one, twenty-five, thirty, whatever age you specify, the boy would be given the principal. By the time he is twenty-one, it should be equal to the present value of the original trust."
"How long would it take you to set that up?"
“It's about a week's worth of paperwork."
"Let's do it." I thought about the details. "Have Cobbie come into a quarter of the principal at twenty-one, another quarter at twenty-five, and the remainder at thirty. Give Mrs. Hatch two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year in expenses."
He nodded. "Mrs. Hatch's payments will he made from the trust set up for her son. This arrangement, which is extremely generous, will require my involvement on an ongoing basis, you understand. I have the feeling that you would prefer that my services be billed to you rather than to Mrs. Hatch and her son."
"Would you please send Mrs. Hatch a letter outlining the terms we've discussed?"
"Of course." Creech unfolded his legs and placed his hands between his knees in what I thought was preparation for departure. Instead, he took a clutch of papers from his briefcase and placed them in my hands with a feathery glance of rebuke. "These are the documents concerning Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Crothers's financial obligations in regard to Mount Baldwin Elder Care Facility. We agreed that you would sign them in my office the other day, but never mind, I brought them along. Mrs. Crothers will not be beggared."
Apologizing, I signed the papers and watched them disappear into the briefcase. Creech leaned back without bringing his spine into contact with the wall. "Previous to last night, had you heard of the Knacker?" His voice made the question seem weightless.
“I heard some kids in Hatchtown talking about it, but I didn't know what it was."
"Are you aware that the city once used it for garbage disposal?"
I said that Captain Mullan had mentioned it.
"A week after the city put the policy into effect, Hatchtown residents began falling ill at an unprecedented rate. Flu, intestinal disorders. In the first month, six people died of undiagnosed infections. By the end of the second month, birth defects increased noticeably. At the end of the third month, public opinion brought an end to the practice. When I was a boy growing up on Leather Lane, Mr. Dunstan, I knew children younger than I who had been born blind, deaf, severely retarded, with deformed or missing limbs, or with combinations of all the above. The original business had folded long before. The owners opened a fairground."
I said nothing.
“I suppose the Hatches knew that whatever was in that pit, whether they put it there themselves or not, was eventually going to seep into Hatchtown's water supply. To this day, Hatchtown people never drink anything but bottled water."
"So I noticed," I said.
“If Cordwainer Hatch died in the Knacker, he had the honor of meeting several of my former clients." Creech grasped the handle of his briefcase and stood up, uttering a raspy sound I understood was a Creech-chuckle only after he had gone across the cell and called for the guard.
•A quarter of an hour later, an officer escorted us to the lobby. A few cops turned away when they saw Creech. We emerged into an overcast morning twenty degrees cooler than the day before. Wisps of fog meandered across Town Square. The tips of fingers lightly tapped my elbow, I thought in acknowledgment of my new freedom. On a bench near the fountain, Goat Gridwell's golden hair tumbled out from beneath a mound of blankets. "Thank you, Mr. Creech," I said, and discovered that he was gone.
•130
•Through coiling fog I went up the lanes, Dove, Leather, Mutton, Treacle, Wax, with each step anticipating the footfall, the low smear of laughter that would announce Robert's presence behind me. I knew what he had done, and I knew why he had done it. And Robert knew what Ihad done—there could be no more pretense between us. The threat posed by the being I had known as Mr. X had been forever eradicated. I haddone that, I hadcarried it off. Robert and I had come into equilibrium, I thought, and I wanted to tell him that I had given away half of the fortune he had schemed to get. Each of us had saved the other's life. We were finished. It wasover.
I crossed Veal Yard and turned around to scan the narrow buildings and shadowy openings beyond the fountain. Robert was hovering; he was awaiting his moment. I went into the lobby and saw Laurie Hatch floating out of a leather armchair.
She wrapped me in her arms and pressed her smooth cheek against my unshaven cheek. "Thank goodness." She tilted her head and looked into my eyes. "How are you?"
"Reports are still coming in," I said.
“I feel so. ... I don't how I feel. I had to see you. Last night, the world turned upside down, and everything went flying. I felt numb.
Then the police barged in and asked all these questions. They even asked about the pictures. Did they talk to you?"
"They talked to me all night long," I said.
"And let you go. You're not in trouble."
“I'm fine."