Mr. X

  “Tell me what knackers used to do,” I said.

  “Most places, knackers slaughtered worn-out horses and rendered their hooves into glue. Some stripped the hides and shipped them to tanneries. Here in Edgerton, they sheared the tails and manes and sold them to wig makers and mattress companies. When a horse came inside, the boomer—that’s what they called him—hit it in the forehead with a sledgehammer. The horse dropped, and the guy they called the hoist picked it up with that thing.” He pointed to a long, half-rotted sling suspended from the ceiling. “The shearers harvested the hair, and the hoist lowered the carcass onto a hook. When the time came, he raised it up again, swung it over the pit, and lowered it in. The pit … the pit disposed of the carcass.”

  “How deep is it?” I looked down at the still, black pool six or eight inches below the top of the pit.

  “Deep enough. On busy days, the knackers dropped ten, twelve horses down there, and none of them ever came back up. Nothing has ever come up since, either. If all the bodies supposedly dumped into the Knacker are really there, they make quite a crowd.”

  “What’s in there, acid?”

  Mullan walked over to the side of the long room and scuffed in the earth. He bent down and picked up what looked like a small loaf of bread. When he brought it back, he was holding a broken cobblestone. “Watch this.” Mullan gave the stone an underhanded toss toward the pit. When the cobble fell to within two or three inches of the surface, I thought I saw the liquid ripple upward to engulf it. A sizzling jet from beneath the surface twirled the stone like a cork, and a twist of smoke drifted away to cut into my nasal passages. My eyes watered. Whipping end over end, the cobble surged across the face of the pit, already half its previous size. It looked as though a tribe of piranhas kept it afloat. In seconds, the cobble had become a spinning wafer, a crust, a speck.

  “That’s what acid wants to be when it grows up,” Mullan said. “For a couple of months back in the early thirties, the city had the bright idea of using it as a supplementary garbage disposal for this part of Hatchtown. When the word got out, they stopped and issued the usual official denials. Anyhow, this is where Earl Sawyer wound up. He took you here, he pushed open the door, you went in behind him, and he pulled a knife. You dropped your folders right about here.” He brushed the sole of a shoe over the earth. “You struggled. Without knowing what was going to happen, you pushed him into the Knacker. Goodbye, Earl. Without a body, that’s the best we can do. It’ll work. No one’s going to waste any time looking for his corpse. And you’d have to be brought here by someone who knew where it was, because you’d never find it by yourself. Most people in Edgerton have never even heard of the Knacker, and three-fourths of those who have think it’s a fable. Let’s get the rest of this night over with.”

  He led me back to Sawyer’s house and told me to take the journal. “I never saw it. From here on, it never existed.”

  I moved through the rubble and lifted the book from the clearing on the table. “What now?”

  “We’re going back to the Brazen Head for the pictures. Then I’m taking you to Headquarters, where you will be questioned until dawn, probably. Can you remember your lines?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “We’ll have time to go over your story again. Anything else you want to do beforehand?”

  “I’d better call C. Clayton Creech.”

  “You and Stewart Hatch.” Mullan locked the back door and turned off the lights in what felt like a parody of domesticity.

  129

  In the interrogation room where Lieutenant Rowley had told me he was my best friend, I recounted Captain Mullan’s dream to audiences numbering from a pair to half a dozen at a time, over and over, like a jukebox, like a Scheherazade who knew but a single story and would tell it as long as it worked. Before me, displaying curiosity, suspicion, indifference, or weariness, passed male and female police officers of my age dressed in business suits; uniformed men two generations older who smoked cigarette after cigarette, heroically, and instead of looking at me regarded the table in exhausted cynicism; an aide from the mayor’s office; the Police Department’s press liaison, who patted her hair and blinked at the one-way mirror; Edgerton’s chief of police, who advised me to get an unlisted number; and two unexplained, parchment-faced men with the look of Kremlin functionaries destined soon to be erased from state photographs. To all of these people, I sang Captain Mullan’s song, and most of the time, Captain Mullan observed my performance from a corner of the room.

  Shortly before sunrise, I was declared a “protected informant,” or something like that, and led to a cell. The clanging of the door woke me up at 7:30 A.M. With his customary air of having enjoyed a refreshing stroll through a graveyard, C. Clayton Creech glided in, splendidly attired in his old gray suit and old gray felt hat and carrying a black, well-worn briefcase. Creech perched at the foot of my cot and regarded me in a manner that almost suggested a degree of affection.

  “Thank you for recommending my services to Mr. Hatch,” Creech said. “Stewart comes to me late in the day, but I’ll do what I can. On a happier note, you’ll be sprung from this shithole pronto.” He settled into a comfortable position without visibly moving. “The official viewpoint has it that you have rid Hatchtown of a verminous character and demonstrated the utmost cooperation in your dealings with the constabulary.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “What’s the unofficial viewpoint?”

  “Some of the local bluebottles harbor reservations concerning the anonymous fellow who swapped those photographs for five portraits of Andrew Jackson. It pains me to tell you this.”

  “I can see that,” I said.

  “We may take a primitive comfort in two developments. The first is the inability of these gentlemen, due to the support given you by our chief of police, to do anything about their reservations. The second is that Mr. Stewart Hatch does not dispute your claim to be the illegitimate son of his Uncle Cordwainer. Apparently, the photographs you supplied to our law enforcement officers offer striking corroboration to the claim.”

  “Stewart knew it all along,” I said.

  “Whatever Mr. Hatch knew or did not know is irrelevant to the present conversation.”

  I swung my legs out and put my back against the wall. “What is relevant, then?”

  “Mr. Hatch’s admission of prior knowledge. In the light of Mrs. Hatch’s failure to support him in his time of trial, Stewart no longer wishes to impede your claim to the inheritance of his family’s trust.”

  “My claim? I don’t have any claim to his money. I never said I did.”

  “We are speaking now of ‘claim’ in the sense of ‘right or title to,’ not in the sense of ‘demand’ or ‘assertion.’ ”

  Stewart was up to something: he thought he could use me to keep the trust money for himself. I was the extra pass of the hand that misled the eye. Creech had undoubtedly designed this scheme with the impartial, nerveless skill he brought to everything else.

  “Mr. Creech,” I said, “if Stewart is convicted of a crime, the trust goes to Cobbie. I’m not going to let him swindle his son.”

  Creech’s patience was sublime. “Mr. Hatch has been eliminated from the food chain. I may be able to help him in a number of ways, but I cannot save him from conviction. The state of affairs is this: If you were out of the way—if, for example, you were to remain ignorant of your parentage—Cobden Carpenter Hatch would inherit his family’s trust, that is correct. As things stand, however, it must rightfully go to you.”

  I absolved Creech of complicity. Stewart had made an elementary mistake. “Stewart forgot that the same condition that cuts him out also eliminates me. Cordwainer Hatch was arrested and convicted twice. He’s out, so I’m out.”

  “The condition to which you allude does not apply to Cordwainer. His brother, Cobden Hatch, altered the terms of the trust in May of 1968. The amendment is not retroactive.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

 
“The clause has no application to actions performed previous to May 1968.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I seldom ‘kid,’ Mr. Dunstan. It doesn’t suit me.” Creech folded his left leg over his right, crossed his arms, and drew himself into a tight, self-contained package. A lizardy smile appeared on his face. He was in a state of Creech-bliss.

  “Before coming to this delightful facility, I enjoyed a lengthy telephone conversation with Mr. Parker Gillespie, the attorney for the Hatch estate. Mr. Gillespie is a gentleman of choleric disposition. He did not enjoy our little confab, but neither did he fudge. Cobden Hatch wished to drive his son into the path of righteousness by that tried-and-true method, carrot and stick. In 1968, his errant brother was believed safely dead. It never occurred to Cobden Hatch that the trust might wind up in the hands of anyone but his own son. However, we may assume that Stewart Hatch got the picture the second he had you in his peepers. Cordwainer was the first child of his generation; you were his son; the trust was yours. Illegitimacy has no bearing on the conditions as written. Cordwainer Hatch was born to Carpenter and Ellen Hatch. Carpenter’s name appears on his birth certificate. Legally, he was Carpenter’s son.”

  “According to my birth certificate, Donald Messmer was my father.”

  “Meaningless in the face of Stewart’s admission of prior knowledge. Face it, Mr. Dunstan. The Hatch trust will be made over to you.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  “You didn’t the first time, either.”

  The lizard-smile widened before my incomprehension.

  “Now and then, Mr. Dunstan, it is my task to inform you of a substantial inheritance. My role in your life appears to be that of a kind of celestial messenger.”

  “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 be 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 m
e. I knew what he had done, and I knew why he had done it. And Robert knew what I had 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 had done that, I had carried 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 was over.

  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.”

  Laurie put her head on my chest. I glared over the top of her head at the bug-eyed day clerk, and he scuttled down the counter.

  “I’m sorry about what I did to you,” I said. “It was a mistake.”

  “No, Ned, please.” She placed her hand on my cheek. “You didn’t make a mistake, I did. God, I’ve been worried. I didn’t know if I’d ruined everything, I just kept rolling over and over, wanting you next to me.”

  I held her hand as we went up the stairs.

  When I pushed the door shut behind us, Laurie brought her entire body into contact with mine.

  “How long have you known?” I asked.

  “Known what?” Her smile widened along my shoulder.