What did he want from love anyway? A mate or a hiding place? Both perhaps. And yet hadn't he raged again and again against the witless contentment of his animal self, smug in its nest, in its ease, in the comfort of its own dirt?

He hated that part of himself: the part that wanted to be wrapped in the arms of some beloved; that asked to be hushed and sung to and forgiven. What stupidity! But even as he railed against it, fled it, out to sea, he shuddered at the thought of what lay ahead, now that love was gone again.

Not just the loneliness and the sleepless nights, but the horror of being out in the fierce, hard light that burned over him, set there by his own divinity.As he guided The Samarkand out into the ocean currents, he wondered how many more times he'd be able to sail away before the toll of partings became intolerable. Perhaps this was the last.

That wouldn't be such a terrible oath to take: to swear that after Rachel there'd be no more seductions, no more breaking of hearts. It would be his mark of respect to her, though she'd never know he'd made it: to say that after her there would only be the sea.

That said, he couldn't readily put the woman from his mind. He sat out on deck through the night, while The Samarkand was carried further and further from land, thinking about what had pa.s.sed between them. How she'd looked, lying in the carved bed that first night; how she'd talked to him as he told the story of Jerusha and the river-man, asking questions, prodding him to make the story better, finer, deeper. How she'd imitated the child bride while she lay there, pulling the sheet off her body to show herself to him; and how exquisite that sight had been. How they'd touched; how he thought of her all the time they were parted, wondering whether to risk bringing her on board the boat. He'd never let a woman set foot on The Samarkand before, holding to ancient superst.i.tion on the matter. But her presence made such fears seem nonsensical. What boat would not be blessed to have such a creature tread its boards?

Nor did he now regret the decision. Sitting under the stars he seemed to see her, turning to smile at him. There she was, with her arms open to welcome him in. There she was, saying she loved him. Whatever wonders he saw after this-and he'd seen wonders: the sea turned silver with squid, storms of gold and vermilion-there would be no vision out of sea or sky that would command his devotion as she had. If only she hadn't been a Geary.

II.

So, Galilee sailed away, and-as I said-I don't know where he wandered. I do know where he ended up, however. After three weeks The Samarkand put into the little harbor at Puerto Bueno.

There had been storms all along that coast earlier in the month, and the town had taken a severe battering. Several houses close to the quay, repeatedly a.s.saulted by waves breaking over the harbor wall, had been damaged; and one had collapsed entirely, killing the widow who'd lived there. But Galilee's house at the top of the hill was virtually unharmed, and it was here he returned, climbing the steep streets of the town without speaking to anyone he encountered, though he knew them all, and they all knew him.

The roof of the Higgins house had leaked during the storms, and the place smelled damp. There was mildew everywhere; and much of the furniture in the upper rooms had begun to rot. He didn't care. There was nothing here that mattered to him. Any vague dreams he might have once entertained of bringing a companion here, and living a kind of ordinary life, now seemed foolish; laughable. What a perfect waste of time, to indulge dreams of domesticity.

By chance the weather brightened the day after he appeared-which fact did nothing to harm his reputation as a man of power among the townspeople-but the scene from the windows of his house-the clouds steadily sculpted to nothingness by the wind, the sea glittering in the sun-gave him no pleasure. He'd seen it all before.

This, and every other glory. There was nothing new to watch for; no surprises left in earth orheaven. He could close his eyes forever, and pa.s.s away without regret, knowing he'd seen the best of things.

Oh, and the worst. He'd seen the worst, over and over again.

He wandered from one stagnant room to the next, and up the stairs and down; and everywhere he went, he saw visions of things he wished he'd never witnessed. Some of them had seemed like brave sights at the time. In his youth, b.l.o.o.d.y business had excited him; why did its echoes now come to bruise him the way they did?

Why when he lay down on the mildewed bed did he remember a wh.o.r.ehouse in Chicago, where he'd chased down two men and slaughtered them like the cattle they made such profit from?

Why, after all these years, did he remember how one of them had made a little speech as he lay dying, and thanked his murderer for the ease of it all?

Why when he sat down to empty his bowels did his mind conjure up a yellow dog, which had s.h.i.t itself in terror, seeing its master with his throat cut on the Starrs, and Galilee sitting at the bottom of the flight, drinking the dead man's champagne?

And why, when he tried to sleep-not in the bed but on the threadbare sofa in the living room-did he remember a rainy February night and a man who had no better reason to die than that he'd crossed the will of one mightier, and he, Galilee, no better reason to commit murder than that he served that same will? Oh that was a terrible memory. In some ways-though it was not the bloodiest of his recollections-it was the most distressing because it had been such an intimate encounter. He remembered it so clearly: the car rocking as gusts of wind came off the ocean; the rain rattling on the car roof; the stale heat of the interior, and the still staler heat that came off the man who died in his arms.

Poor George; poor, innocent George. He'd looked up at Galilee with such confusion on his face; his lips trying to form some last coherent question. He'd been too far gone to shape the words; but Galilee had supplied the answer anyway.

"I was sent by your father," he'd said.

The confounded look had slipped away and George's face had become oddly placid, hearing that he was dying at the behest of his father; as though this were some last, wretched service he could render the old man, after which he was finally free of Cadmus's jurisdiction.

Any ambition Galilee might have entertained of fathering a child had gone at that moment: to be the father's agent in the murder of a son had killed all appet.i.te in him. Not simply the appet.i.te for parenthood-though that had been the saddest casualty of the night at Smith Point Beach; the very desire to live had lost its piquancy at that moment. Destroying a man because he stood between your family and its ascendance was one thing (all kings did it, sooner or later); but to order the death of your own child because he disappointed you: that was another order of deed entirely, and to have been obliged to perform it had broken Galilee's heart.And still, after all this time, he couldn't get the scene out of his head. The hours of the wh.o.r.ehouse in Chicago, and his memories of the yellow dog s.h.i.tting on the stairs, were bad enough; but they were nothing by comparison with the memory of the look on George Geary's face that rainy night.

And so it went on for a week and a half: memories by day and dreams by night, and nothing to do but endure them. He ventured out of the house at evening, and went down to check that all was well with The Samarkand, but even that journey became harder as time pa.s.sed; he was so exhausted. This could not go on. The time had come to make a decision. There was no great heroism in suffering, unless perhaps it was for a cause. But he had no causes, nor ever had; not to live for, not to die for. All he had was himself.

No, that wasn't true. If he'd just had himself he wouldn't have been haunted this way.

She'd done this to him. The Geary woman; the wretched, gentle Geary woman, whom he'd wanted so badly to put out of his heart, but could not. It was she who'd reminded him of his capacity for feeling, and in so doing had opened him up as surely as if she'd wielded a knife, letting these unwelcome things have access to his heart. It was she who'd reminded him of his humanity, and of all that he'd done in defiance of his better self. She who'd stirred the voice of the man on the wh.o.r.ehouse floor, and roused the yellow dog, and put the sight of George Geary before him.

His Rachel. His beautiful Rachel, whom he tried not to conjure but who was there all the time, holding his hand, touching his arm, telling him she loved him.

d.a.m.n her to h.e.l.l for tormenting him this way! Nothing was worth this pain, this constant gnawing pain. He no longer felt safe in his own skin. She'd invaded him, somehow; possessed him. Sleeplessness made him irrational. He began to hear her voice, as though she were in the next room, and calling to him. Twice he came into the dining room and found the table set for two.

There was no happy end to this, he knew. There would be no escaping her, however patiently he waited. She had too strong a hold on his soul for him to hope for deliverance.

It was as though he were suddenly old-as though the decades in which time had left him untouched had suddenly caught up with him-and all he could look forward to now was certain decline; an inevitable descent into obsessive lunacy. He would become the madman on the hill, locked away in a world of rotted visions; seeing her, hearing her, and tormented day and night by the shameful memories that came with love: the knowledge of his cruelties, his innumerable cruelties.

Better to die soon, he thought. Kinder to himself, though he probably didn't deserve the kindness.

On the sixth evening, climbing the hill to the house, he conceived his plan. He'd known several suicides in his life, and none of them had made a good job of it. They'd left other people with a mess to clear up, for one thing, which was not his style at all. He wanted to go, as far as it werepossible, invisibly.

That night, he made fires in all the hearths in the house, and burned everything that might be used to construe some story about him. The few books he'd gathered over the years, an a.s.sortment of bric-a-brac from the shelves and windowsills, some carvings he'd made in an idle hour (nothing fancy, but who knew what people would read into what they found here?). There wasn't a lot to burn, but it took time nevertheless, what with his state of mind so dreamy and his limbs aching from want of rest.

When he had finished, he opened all the doors and windows, every one, and just before dawn headed down the hill to the harbor. His neighbors would get the message, seeing the house left open. After a couple of days some brave soul would venture inside, and once word spread that he'd made a permanent departure the place would be stripped of anything useful. At least so he hoped. Better somebody was using the chairs and tables and clocks and lamps than that they all rot away.

The wind was strong. Once The Samarkand was clear of the harbor, its sails filled; and long before the people of Puerto Bueno were up and brewing their morning coffee or pouring their breakfast whiskies their sometime neighbor was gone.

His plan was very simple. He would sail The Samarkand a good distance from land, and then- once he was certain neither wind nor current would bear him back the way he'd come-he'd surrender his captaincy over both vessels, his body and his boat, and let nature take its course. He would not trim his sails if a storm arose. He would not steer the boat from reef or rocks. He would simply let the sea have him, whenever and however she chose to take him. If she chose to overturn The Samarkand and drown him, so be it. If she chose to dash the boat to pieces, and him along with it, then that was fine too. Or if she chose to match his pa.s.sivity with her own, and let him linger becalmed until he perished on deck, and was withered by the sun, then that lay in her power too, and he wouldn't lift a hand to contradict her will.

He had only one fear: that if hunger and thirst made him delirious he might lose the certainty that moved him now, and in a moment of weakness attempt to take control of the vessel again, so he scoured the boat for anything that might be put to practical use, and threw it all overboard. His mariner's charts, his life jackets, his compa.s.s, his flares, his inflatable life raft: all of it went. He left only a few luxuries to sweeten these last days, reasoning that suicide didn't have to be an uncivilized business. He kept his cigars, his brandy, a book or two. Thus supplied, he gave himself over to fate and the tides.

III.

i Most murder, as you're probably aware, is domestic. The conventions of popular fiction tell an untruth: the person most likely to take your life by violence is not some anonymous maniac but the man or woman with whom you breakfasted this morning. So I doubt that I'm spoiling any great mystery if I confirm here that the man who murdered Margie was Garrison Geary.He didn't do it because he despised her, though he did. He didn't do it because she had a lover, though she had. He did it because she refused him knowledge, which may seem like an obscure reason for slaughtering your spouse, but will probably be one of the lesser strangenesses ahead.

By the time Rachel got back to New York, Garrison had confessed. Not to cold-blooded murder, of course, but rather to an act of self-defense in the face of his wife's crazed attempt on his life.

According to his testimony it had happened like this: he'd come home to find Margie in a drunken state, wielding a Colt .38. She was sick of their life together, she'd told him, and wanted an end to it all. He'd tried to reason with her, but she'd been in far too inflamed a state to be talked down. Instead she'd fired at him. The bullet had missed, however, and before she could fire a second time Garrison had attempted to disarm her. In the struggle the gun had gone off, wounding Margie. He'd called the police instantly, but by the time medical help arrived it was too late. Her body-weakened by years of abuse-had given up.

There was a good deal of evidence in support of Garrison's account. The first and most potent piece was this: the gun was Margie's. She'd bought it six years ago, after one of her drinking circle had been attacked on the street, and died in the resulting coma. Margie hadn't concealed her pleasure in the weapon; it was a "pretty gun," she'd said, and she'd have not the least hesitation in using it should the occasion arise.

According to Garrison, she had. She'd intended to kill him, and he'd done what anybody would have done under the circ.u.mstances. He didn't make any false show of grief. His marriage to Margie had been little more than a duty for years, he freely admitted. But if he'd wanted her out of his life, he pointed out, there were less foolhardy ways to engineer that than to shoot her in his own bathroom. Divorce, for instance. It didn't make any sense for him to murder her. It only jeopardized his liberty.

Portions of his testimony appeared on the front pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, along with quotes from a number of sources that suggested his arguments carried weight. Nor could most of the commentators refrain from reporting some unflattering anecdote about Margie's alcoholism, which had been public knowledge (and on occasion a public spectacle) for a decade or more. Of course there was also no scarcity of gossip pieces, both in magazines and on television, raking up some of the less savory stories from Garrison's past. Two of his former mistresses consented to be interviewed, as did a number of sometime employees.

The portraits they drew weren't particularly flattering. Even if only half of what they were remembering was true Garrison still emerged as self-centered, autocratic and on occasion s.e.xually compulsive. But when each of them was asked the important question-in your opinion, was this self-defense or murder?-they were all of the opinion that the man they'd known would not have shot his wife in cold blood. One of the mistresses even added that "Garrison was very sentimental about Margie. He'd always be telling me how it had been when they were first in love. I used to tell him I didn 't want to hear about all that, but sometimes I think he couldn 't help talking about her. It used to make me a little jealous, but looking back I think it's sort of sweet."

The other subject that came under close scrutiny during this period was the family itself. TheGarrison Geary Murder Case gave the press across the country, from the most high-minded journals to the lowliest gutter rags, a perfect excuse to dust off all their old stories about the Gearys. "As rich as the Rockefellers and as influential as the Kennedys," the piece in Newsweek began, "the Geary family has been an American inst.i.tution since the end of the Civil War, when its founding fathers came to a sudden and impressive prominence which has not diminished since that time. Whatever the demands of the age, the Gearys have been their equal. Warmongers and peacemakers, traditionalists and radicals, hedonists and Puritans; it has sometimes seemed that within the ranks of the Geary clan an example of every American extreme could be found. With the police investigations into the murder of Margaret Geary ongoing, a cloud of doubt hangs over the family's reputation; but however those investigations are concluded one thing may be reliably predicted: the family will survive, as will the American public's endless fascination with its affairs."

ii Rachel had not told anybody she was on her way back, but she didn't doubt that word would precede her, courtesy of Jimmy Hornbeck. She was right. The Central Park apartment was adorned with fresh flowers, and there was a note on the table from Mitch.e.l.l, welcoming her home, and thanking her for coming. It was a curiously detached little missive, not that far removed from a hotel manager's note of thanks to a returning guest. But nothing about Mitch.e.l.l surprised her any more. She was perfectly sanguine about what lay before her. Whatever new grotesqueries she was about to witness she was determined to view them with the same amused detachment that she'd seen in Margie.

She called Mitch.e.l.l in the early evening to announce her arrival. He suggested she come to the mansion for some supper. Loretta would like to see her, he said; and so would he. She agreed to come. Good, he said, he'd send Ralphie to pick her up.

"There are reporters outside the home all the time," he warned.

"Yes, they were waiting for me when I came back here."

"What did you tell them?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"Who the h.e.l.l's telling them our business, that's what I want to know. When all this is over, I'm going to find out who the f.u.c.k these people are-"

"And do what?"

"Fire then- a.s.ses! I'm so sick of having cameras everywhere and people asking stupid f.u.c.king questions." She'd never heard Mitch exasperated this way before; he'd always accepted scrutiny as the price of living the high life. "You know some sonofab.i.t.c.h got a photograph of Garrison in jail, sitting on the can. And some f.u.c.king rag printed it! A picture of my brother taking a dump in a cell. Can you believe that?"The outburst shocked her; not because somebody had taken a picture of Garrison relieving himself, but because until this moment she hadn't imagined his being behind bars. She'd just a.s.sumed that Cecil, or the phalanx of lawyers the family had hired to defend Garrison, had secured his release on bail.

"When does he get out?" she asked him.

"We're pressing for that right now," Mitch said. "I mean, he's innocent. We all know that. It was a horrible accident and we all wish it hadn't happened, but it's ridiculous keeping him locked up like he was a common criminal."

A common criminal: that went to the heart of it. Whatever else Garrison might have been, Mitch.e.l.l seemed to be saying, he was American royalty, and deserved to be treated with appropriate respect. It was an impression Rachel had reinforced when she went over to the mansion: the atmosphere was one of besiegement; the drapes closed against the curious eyes of the hoi polloi, while the n.o.ble Gearys debated their response to the crisis. Loretta set the tone for these exchanges. The imperiousness was intact, but it was shaded now with a certain bruised melancholy, as though some martyrdom had been visited upon her which she was bearing with fort.i.tude. She welcomed Rachel back with a dry kiss.

They gathered for supper around the dining room table, with Loretta at one end and-rather pointedly positioned, Rachel thought-Cecil at the other. Besides Deborah, Rachel and Mitch three other members of the clan were present. Norah was there, tanned and brittle; George's brother Richard had come up from Miami, where he'd just successfully defended a man who'd cut up a hooker with an electric carving knife, and Karen, flown in from Europe. She was the one member of the group Rachel had not met; she'd been out of the country during the wedding. She was a contained woman, her body, her gestures and her voice neat and una.s.suming. Rachel had the impression that she'd not come back out of love for either Garrison or the family, but because an edict had gone out, demanding her presence. She certainly had little to contribute to the debate. In fact she said scarcely a word throughout the supper, seldom even looking up from her plate.

There was no doubt as to the star of the evening: it was Loretta. She made a statement of intent the moment they all sat down.

"We're going to start acting like a family again," she said to everyone. "This business with Garrison is a wake-up call, to us all. It's time to put our differences aside. Whatever problems we have with one another-and they're bound to come along in the best of circ.u.mstances-this is the time to forget about them and show people what we're made of. Cadmus, as I'm sure you know, is now bedridden, and I'm afraid he's very weak. In fact, some of the time he doesn't even know who I am, which is of course very painful. But he has periods when his mind's suddenly very lucid, and then he can be astonishingly acute. Earlier this evening he started talking about hearing voices in the house. And I told him that yes, we were having a little family gathering. I didn't tell him why, of course. He doesn't know about... what happened... and I don't intend to tell him. But he did say to me, when I explained to him that we were all gathering together, that he was going to be here with us. And I think in a very real sense he is. He should be our inspiration right now."

There were murmurs of a.s.sent around the table, the loudest coming from Richard. "We all knowwhat Cadmus would say if he knew what was going on," Loretta said.

"f.u.c.k 'em all," said Mitch. Norah laughed into her wine gla.s.s.

Loretta moved on without glancing in her stepson's direction. "He'd say: business as usual. We have to demonstrate our strength as a family. Our solidarity. Which is why I'm particularly grateful to you, Rachel, for coming back at such short notice. I know things between you and Mitch.e.l.l aren't very easy at the moment so it means a lot to me personally that you're here. Now, Cecil, why don't you tell us all the situation as far as Garrison's bail is concerned?"

The next hour was dedicated to legal issues: the history of the judge who would be presiding over the hearing, supplied by Richard; brief a.s.sessments of the prosecutors from Cecil, then onto the business problems arising from Garrison's temporary indisposal. Rachel didn't understand many of the issues under discussion, but there was no doubt that despite Loretta's talk of business as usual family affairs were hard to keep on track without Garrison to give the orders. A dozen times, maybe more, a question had to be left unanswered because it fell into Garrison's area of expertise.

Finally, the conversation returned to Rachel.

"Has Mitch.e.l.l told you about the fund-raiser on Friday night?" Loretta asked her.

"No, I..."

Loretta threw Mitch.e.l.l a weary look. "It's for the hospital. The pediatric ward. It was about the only charity Margaret had the slightest interest in, and I think it's important we have a presence there."

"I was going to talk to Rachel about it later," Mitch.e.l.l put in.

"Later's no good, Mitch.e.l.l," Loretta said. "We've had too much 'later' in this household. Things being put off and put off..." What the h.e.l.l was she talking about, Rachel wondered. "We've got to get on and do what we need to do. Even if it makes us uncomfortable or-"

"All right, Loretta," Mitch.e.l.l said. "Calm down."

"Don't you condescend to me," Loretta replied, her voice monotonal. "You're going to listen to me for once in your pampered little life. We're in a mess here. Do you understand me?" Mitch.e.l.l just stared, which inflamed Loretta all the more. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?" she yelled, slamming her palm down on the table. All the silverware jumped.

"Loretta-" Cecil said softly.

"Don't you start pouring oil, Cecil. This isn't any time to be making nice. We're in terrible trouble.

All of us. The whole family. Terrible, terrible trouble.""He'll be out in a week," Mitch.e.l.l said.

"Is this willful or are you just too stupid to see what's right in front of your nose?" Loretta said, her voice not quite so loud, but still several notches above the conver sational. "There's more to all this than what happened to poor Margie..."

"Oh don't start your Ca.s.sandra act, for G.o.d's sake," Mitch.e.l.l said, his voice thick with contempt.

"Mitch.e.l.l," Cecil said, "a little respect..."

"If she wants some respect she should start being practical, and not telling us it's all in the f.u.c.king stars."

"That's not what I'm saying," Loretta said.

"Oh I'm sorry. What is it today? Tarot cards?"

"If your father could hear you-"

"My father thought you were as crazy as a coot," Mitch.e.l.l said, getting up from the table. "And I'm not going to waste my time sitting here listening to you chatter on like you understand a d.a.m.n thing about the way the business life of this family works."

"You're the one who's out of his depth," Loretta said.

"There you go again with your inane little threats!" Mitch.e.l.l yelled. "I know what you're doing!

You think I don't see you trying to get Rachel over to your side?"

"Oh for G.o.d's sake-"

"Sending her off to that stinking little island, thinking it's some kind of secret."

Rachel caught hold of his hand. "Mitch," she said. "You're making a fool of yourself. Shut up."

He looked as though she'd just slapped him, hard. He pulled his hand out of her grip. "Are you in with her then?" he said, looking at Rachel but pointing at Loretta. "Is this some f.u.c.king conspiracy? Cecil? Help me out here. I want to know what's going on."

"Nothing's going on," Cecil said, wearily. "We're just all tired and stressed out. And sad,"

"She isn't sad," Mitch.e.l.l said, looking back at Loretta, who was wearing an expression of regal inviolability. "She's f.u.c.king glad Margie's dead and my brother's in a jail cell."

"I think you should apologize for that," Cecil said.

"It's the truth!" Mitch.e.l.l protested. "Look at her!"Now it was Cecil who rose. "I'm sorry, Mitch.e.l.l, I can't permit you to talk to Loretta that way."

"Sit the f.u.c.k down!" Mitch.e.l.l yelled. "Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are?" Cecil did and said nothing. "You know what happens when the old man goes? It's Garrison and me. We're in charge.

And if Garrison stays in jail, then it's just me." He made a tight little smile. "So you'd better watch yourself, Cecil. I'm going to be looking very hard at the kind of support I'm getting. And if I see a lack of loyalty, I'm not going to think twice." Cecil glanced down at his plate. Then he sat down. "Better," Mitch.e.l.l said. "Rachel. We're leaving."

"So go," Rachel said, "I'll talk to you tomorrow." Mitch.e.l.l hesitated. "I'm not coming with you,"

Rachel said.

"It's up to you," Mitch.e.l.l replied, with an unconvincing show of indifference.

"I know," Rachel said. "And I'm staying here."