Different Seasons(102)

Todd Bowden swayed on his feet.

Far away, echoing, he heard his mother cry sharply: “Catch him, Dick! He’s fainting!”

The word

(faintingfaintingfainting)

repeated itself over and over. He dimly felt his father’s arms grab him, and then for a little while Todd felt nothing, heard nothing at all.

27

Ed French was eating a danish when he unfolded the paper. He coughed, made a strange gagging sound, and spat dismembered pastry all over the table.

“Eddie!” Sondra French said with some alarm. “Are you okay?”

“Daddy’s chokun, Daddy’s chokun,” little Norma proclaimed with nervous good humor, and then happily joined her mother in slamming Ed on the back. Ed barely felt the blows. He was still goggling down at the newspaper.

“What’s wrong, Eddie?” Sondra asked again.

“Him! Him!” Ed shouted, stabbing his finger down at the paper so hard that his fingernail tore all the way through the A section.

“That man! Lord Peter!”

“What in God’s name are you t—”

“That’s Todd Bowden’s grandfather!”

“What? That war criminal? Eddie, that’s crazy!”

“But it’s him,” Ed almost moaned. “Jesus Christ Almighty, that’s him!”

Sondra French looked at the picture long and fixedly.

“He doesn’t look like Peter Wimsey at all,” she said finally.

28

Todd, pale as window-glass, sat on a couch between his mother and father.

Opposite them was a graying, polite police detective named Richler. Todd’s father had offered to call the police, but Todd had done it himself, his voice cracking through the registers as it had done when he was fourteen.

He finished his recital. It hadn’t taken long. He spoke with a mechanical colorlessness that scared the hell out of Monica. He was seventeen, true enough, but he was still a boy in so many ways. This was going to scar him forever.

“I read him ... oh, I don’t know. Tom Jones. The Mill on the Floss. That was a boring one. I didn’t think we’d ever get through it. Some stories by Hawthorne—I remember he especially liked ‘The Great Stone Face’ and ‘Young Goodman Brown.’ We started The Pickwick Papers, but he didn’t like it. He said Dickens could only be funny when he was being serious, and Pickwick was only kittenish. That was his word, kittenish. We got along the best with Tom Jones. We both liked that one.”

“And that was three years ago,” Richler said.

“Yes. I kept stopping in to see him when I got the chance, but in high school we were bussed across town . . . and some of the kids got up a scratch ballteam ... there was more homework ... you know ... things just came up.”

“You had less time.”

“Less time, that’s right. The work in high school was a lot harder ... making the grades to get into college.”

“But Todd is a very apt pupil,” Monica said almost automatically. “He graduated salutatorian. We were so proud.”

“I’ll bet you were,” Richler said with a warm smile. “I’ve got two boys in Fairview, down in the Valley, and they’re just about able to keep their sports eligibility.” He turned back to Todd. “You didn’t read him any more books after you started high school?”

“No. Once in awhile I’d read him the paper. I’d come over and he’d ask me what the headlines were. He was interested in Watergate when that was going on. And he always wanted to know about the stock market, and the print on that page used to drive him batshit—sorry. Mom.”

She patted his hand.

“I don’t know why he was interested in the stocks, but he was.”

“He had a few stocks,” Richler said. “That’s how he was getting by. He also had five different sets of ID salted around that house. He was a cagey one, all right.”

“I suppose he kept the stocks in a safe deposit box somewhere,” Todd remarked.

“Pardon me?” Richler raised his eyebrows.

“His stocks,” Todd said. His father, who had also looked puzzled, now nodded at Richler.

“His stock certificates, the few that were left, were in a footlocker under his bed,” Richler said, “along with that photo of him as Denker. Did he have a safety deposit box, son? Did he ever say he did?”

Todd thought, and then shook his head. “I just thought that was where you kept your stocks. I don’t know. This ... this whole thing has just ... you know . . . it blows my wheels.” He shook his head in a dazed way that was perfectly real. He really was dazed. Yet, little by little, he felt his instinct of self-preservation surfacing. He felt a growing alertness, and the first stirrings of confidence. If Dussander had really taken a safety deposit box in which to store his insurance document, wouldn’t he have transferred his remaining stock certificates there? And that photograph?

“We’re working with the Israelis on this,” Richler said. “In a very unofficial way. I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention that if you decide to see any press people. They’re real professionals. There’s a man named Weiskopf who’d like to talk to you tomorrow, Todd. If that’s okay by you and your folks.”

“I guess so,” Todd said, but he felt a touch of atavistic dread at the thought of being sniffed over by the same hounds that had chased Dussander for the last half of his life. Dussander had had a healthy respect for them, and Todd knew he would do well to keep that in mind.