Chain of Fools - Stevenson Richard - Страница 32

"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."

"You're getting it at a high price. It looks as if your life is your revenge."

Now he looked irritated. "Who the fuck are you, Adolph Freud? Hey, shit, man, do you think I'm too stupid to understand that? Fuck yes, my life is my revenge against my father."

I said, "You could have waited until you were bigger than your father and then punched his face in. That's crude and illegal, but people in your situation do it and it sometimes seems to make a difference."

He said, "I'm not a patient person."

"What happened," I asked, "after Dan told your father he was mistaken in his suspicions?"

"My father went to Eric."

"How do you know he did?"

"Dan told me. Eric called Dan one day, Dan told me, and said Chester had been running at the mouth with Eric about some jewel robbery, and asking where were the fucking jewels, and Eric asked Dan what the fuck Chester was talking about. Dan told Eric that this was just some shit I had made up to fuck up my father's head. Then Eric went back to Chester to tell him there was nothing to the jewel-hit story, and my father had one of his violent fits that he has, and killed him."

I watched Osborne and waited, but he just sat there looking at me as if we were discussing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and it was my turn to add a pertinent thought.

I said, "You're saying that your father killed Eric impulsively, in a rage of frustration, after Eric—what? Disappointed him by refusing to confess about the sixteen-million-dollar jewel heist that your father was convinced Eric was involved in?"

"That's what set him off," Osborne said. "Chester has been famous since he was a kid for beating on people. You must have heard about that from Janet. She knows the story." I nodded. "So," Osborne said, "old Chester finally beat somebody to death. Too bad for Eric."

I said, "And your father admitted this to you?"

"In so many words, he did."

"What were those words?"

"He told me on the phone a week after Eric was offed that Eric deserved what he got for trying to screw Chester and June by hogging all the credit for saving the Herald with the jewel heist. Chester was still convinced Dan was about to spring something, even though by then Dan had lost control of the jewels. My father also said Eric deserved what he got because Eric was trying to keep the Herald under the control of hippies and socialists, and Chester said their day was past."