More brilliant zigzag tears against the night, cracks of thunder following ever more swiftly. But Deval doesn't stop, he continues to declaim, spewing out his story against the storm.
"You see, it wasn't the money per se, old boy. It was what so much money could do! What you've got to understand is that what the Husband offered the Gentleman was far more than a mere bundle of cash. He offered him a magnificent living. He offered him a life!"
Spencer extracts the wet cigarette from his holder. He turns boastful as he tosses it away.
"Early you proposed the notion that the Gentleman received his Lover's column in payment for the deed. To set you straight, the Gentleman did not receive the column as a gift. Rather he bought it. That's right, bought the column, first receiving a byline in smaller print beneath the Lover's, then little by little making the column his own. Through study and emulation, he learned which knobs to turn, levers to pull, in order to enter society. And, over time, his tongue became tarter, more sharply honed than the Lover's. People found his bon mots more amusing. By the last year of the Lover's life, the old man wore a look of defeat. His sources dried up. People considered him passe. Now they looked to the Gentleman for approval, turned to him for counsel, confided secrets in his ear."
The rain slacks off, the lightning passes, the storm quells as quickly as it came. Deval's voice falls too. We crawl out of our shelter. Now his tone turns brittle.
The Gentleman, he tells me, before agreeing to do the deed, pondered what to do if he were caught. He knew one thing. He would not fall upon his sword. If it became clear he was going down, he'd bring the Husband down with him. And so, clever boy that he was, he took steps to ensure proof of the Husband's complicity. It wasn't just the possibility that the husband would disavow their bargain that drove him; rather something far more serious. For if the Husband was so evil as to employ the Gentleman to slaughter the mother of his children, what insurance did the Gentleman have that the Husband wouldn't later employ another to slaughter him?
Thus certain steps were taken, and a good thing, for over the years the Husband tried several times to renege. Whenever this happened, the Gentleman would remind the Husband of the hold he had, the means to send him to prison. Then as punishment, he'd require even larger payments.
As expected, the Husband would always relent, in the end making the huge final payment as demanded. So in that sense, at least, their pact was not Faustian, not one in which the Gentleman sold his soul to the Devil and then one day the Devil came to collect his note. Rather it was a case in which the Gentleman performed a service for the Devil (i.e., the Husband), then used proof of their bargain to extract ever larger sums.
"You're wondering what that proof was, aren't you?" Spencer's eyes gleam in the night, "Remember how I patted you down? If the Husband had patted the Gentleman down, there would have been no proof. Perhaps even, for that matter, no crime. But in the story I'm telling, the scheme between them was recorded."
"Why're you telling me this?"
He shrugs. "It's just a story after all."
He stops speaking then as suddenly as he began. Storytelling time, it seems, is over. He turns, starts back toward his car. I watch him as he gets inside, then beckons me to the driver's window.
"Well, that's it, old boy." He smiles. "Time now for me to bow out." He starts the engine. "I'm sure you'll manage to find your way home." And then, feigning an afterthought, he hands me an envelope.
"A souvenir. I know you'll make good use of it. Well… so long, old boy…" And, with that, he raises his window, switches on his headlights, then drives off slowly into the fog.
I stand there staring after him, amazed at what he's told me, the cool manner in which he's told it, his strange, cool departure too. What is he up to? Why has he left me here? Why has he told me so much? Is this all some kind of complicated taunt?
When he's out of sight, I tear open the envelope, find a tape cassette inside.
If this is the recording of the deal he made with Andrew, why give it to me now? Why go to all the trouble of patting me down, telling me what happened in the guise of a story, then hand me what appears to be hard evidence of his guilt?
In the post storm silence, I can hear the throbbing engine of his car as it makes its way through the ruins, then a short, sharp honk when it reaches the steelworks gate. I move out of the furnace area toward the river, hoping to catch sight of the Jag as it crosses the flatlands then mounts the road to the bluffs above.
I make it out finally, its perfect profile, as, headlights gleaming, it ascends River Street toward the Stanhope Bridge. A fine black shape moving smoothly upward through the night. Then, at the crest above the riverbank, it stops.
Good! Maybe he'll come back for me.
Hearing the roar of the engine revving up across the water, I get a feeling that's not what's going to happen. Then with mounting terror, I watch as the big car suddenly leaps forward toward the railing, crashes through, soars out into space, hangs in the air for a moment like a great falcon poised before attack, then plunges down-down-down toward the Calista River, finally splashing in the water, then sinking slowly into the iron-red muck.
Calista County Courthouse
12:30 p.m.
Closing arguments in the Foster trial are done, the prosecution having methodically summed up its case, the defense having emotionally cast ‘reasonable doubt.’
I've spent the morning distracting myself from last night's trauma by producing a dozen drawings, half of defense counsel ridiculing the evidence, half of the prosecutor pounding home his points. As soon as Judge Winterson completes instructions and sends the jury off to deliberate, all of us in the media circus troupe back to the Townsend to wait in Waldo's for the verdict.
Lots of rumors circulate around the barroom as to possible dispositions of the case. But as the afternoon wears on, another rumor snakes its way in, not about the Foster trial but about local society columnist Spencer Deval.
3:00 p.m.. The first glimmer reaching Pam and me as we sit with Sylvie at the bar is that Deval's car was fished out of the Calista River at dawn.
A few minutes later, Starret stops by to tell Pam he hears Deval was involved in an old local murder case.
A half hour after that, Tony whispers that he's heard Deval was drowned.
"The cops were in his house this morning going through all his stuff," Tony tells us. "‘Course to me it'll always be Mr. C's house. And that car! What a shame! It was Mr. C's pride and joy."
"What were they looking for?" Pam asks.
Tony gives us a ‘search-me’ shrug. "Whatever it was, they found it or they didn't. I hear they stopped early this afternoon."
7:00 p.m.. Just as everyone is chowing down on hotel sandwiches, a new rumor hits the room: the Foster jury has been escorted to Plato's for dinner, all jurors looking relaxed and relieved. This, coupled with courthouse rumors, suggests they've reached a verdict.
8:30 p.m.
Mace appears at the barroom door, spots us, gestures for us to join him outside. We depart Waldo's casually, search him out, discover him on a couch behind a potted palm in a quiet, rear corner of the lobby.
"It's all over," he tells us. "The voices on the tape check out. It's Fulraine and Deval making a murder deal, cold and vile, utterly vile." He strokes his goatee. "What I don't get is why he patted you down, then handed you that tape."
I've been thinking about that all day myself. "I don't think he made up his mind what he was going to do till the very end," I tell Mace. "Then, by giving me that tape, he forced himself to take the leap."