A/N: Onward.
Big Swamp
Chapter Twenty: Disburthen
Sarah stands silent as I toss dirt back on the bones of David Diamond.
I'm not going to ask again about Uncle Wylie. I'm not going to ask about her past. No doubt the two intertwine; that much's obvious to me.
I shovel but I'm tiring. The shovel's small — I did not uncover much of Diamond, but it's like gravedigging with a spork. Sarah's aiming the flashlight at the grave and nothing's in the light except the disturbed dirt, my feet and lower legs, the shovel, and my hands and forearms.
It feels a little like that's all of me there is.
I finish, gently pat down the dirt, feel strange about that, and step back out of the light. Sarah keeps the flashlight on the grave for a moment longer, spotlight, then she clicks it off.
Everything's dark. Uncanny. The soft breeze still blows, and it cools the sweat running down my back and off my brow. I wipe at my forehead with the back of my wrist — my hands are dirty — and I hear Sarah sigh.
She clears her throat softly. "So, Chuck, to tell you about Uncle Wylie I have to tell you about me." She stops.
I put down the shovel, take the handkerchief I keep in my back pocket out and wipe my hands, then I walk around the grave to her, take her hand.
She takes that as her cue. "What I've told you about myself is — basically — true. My mom died of Lupus," the sadness returns to her voice, "my dad moved us around constantly, I had no real friends in high school, maybe a few briefly in college, and few since then. But I've omitted what I did with my dad, how I helped him with his work, what his work was. What I was.
"I have been a bad person. I have been...fighting to change, not so successfully. — But I guess I should just start at the beginning…
"Can we go back to the Hall? This is hard enough for me without feeling like I'm giving the eulogy at a stranger's long-overdue, graveside funeral."
"Okay, sure," I say softly.
I retrieve the shovel and she clicks the flashlight on again. We turn and she locates the path. She hands me the flashlight and I lead away from the grave. The path's too narrow for us to walk side-by-side. We descend the hill and wind around. We've almost reached the path to the pond. The breeze has stopped. Nothing's moving but us.
Or that's true for a moment. We hear a crack in the distance, ahead of us.
"Who?" Sarah says, as I tug her forward, then drop her hand and begin running. I shut the flashlight off as I run, the larger path is only a few feet from me. I hear Sarah behind me, right behind me.
I reach the larger path and turn toward the Hall, guessing about direction. We run on. As we reach the end of the path, I see the shadow of a runner well ahead of us, already at the Hall. I guessed right but we're too far behind. By the time we reach the rear of Hall, we can hear an engine moving away, out on the road. We go around the Hall but the sound has receded by the time we get there. The driver has not turned on the headlights, and so we can see nothing, only hear.
I hope for another car to pass but none comes. The engine becomes faint.
"Dam!," I curse between sucking breaths. Sarah's barely breathing hard, I realize.
"Who was that, Chuck?"
"I don't know. I wish I'd learned to tell engines by their sound."
Sarah makes a humming sound. "V6, 5 speed."
I gape at her. "How?"
She shrugs; I can feel the shrug more than see it. "Another thing I need to explain to you."
Sarah starts back around the Hall. This time, I follow her.
I'm still trying to catch my breath as we enter the back door and she clicks on the light.
I sit down at the small table in the kitchen, put the shovel on the floor beneath my chair. Sarah opens the refrigerator and takes out two beers and hands me one. It's very cold. She finds an opener in a drawer and opens hers, then hands the opener to me.
She sits down as I open mine.
"Odd evening," I offer as if it were a comment on the weather.
Sarah laughs, that laugh I love. "And you said you were boring, Chuck."
I laugh with her and she takes a sip of her beer, then narrows her eyes.
"Who killed that man...Diamond? Do you know, Chuck?"
"I don't know...but I've got a strong suspicion."
"You don't suspect Uncle Wylie, do you?"
"No, Sarah. — Diamond's been dead a long time. But I do worry about whether your...uncle is somehow connected to it all."
She reflects for a minute.
"The man at the Coliseum. I wondered why you never mentioned him to me again." She can do detective too; I need to remember that.
"Yes, — no, — maybe. That man, Bill Peppers, connects your uncle to the Petersons in a way that...worries me, a different way than the ownership of Noble Hall does. I don't believe Peppers killed Diamond, though."
I pause. "I'd like to hear what you were going to tell me."
Her gaze is troubled; she's shaking her head. "Uncle Wylie's not involved with Peppers, Chuck. Not in the way that worries you. As I told you, the night we swam in the pond…" she lights up unselfconsciously at the memory, troubled gaze gone, "I told you my parents split when I was little. They split because my mom couldn't stand — " She shakes her head.
"Let me back up a bit more. My dad, Chuck, was a con man. My mom met him when he was working at a traveling carnival, probably one of the last of its sort. He was all small cons at the time, and she, ...she thought she could change him." Sarah laughs softly. "The changes went the other way, though. Dad didn't want to change. He slowly pulled mom into his cons, charmed her. She was a beauty, smart — except where Dad was concerned — and with her help, his cons became steadily more ambitious: he started playing for bigger and bigger prizes.
They made money, easy money, and they lived fast. But, after a while, Mom got pregnant. She'd already begun to sour on the life they were living — she'd never managed to kill her conscience, just...outrun...it for a while."
"They'd begun to fight months before I was born, and my birth made it worse. They loved each other, but Dad couldn't stop the cons, and Mom couldn't go back to them. So, she sent him packing, and I was in her arms, he told me years later, as she stood and watched him leave.
"Mom's parents were quite old when she was born, and her father was dead before she met Dad. Her mom died soon after Dad left. Mom inherited my grandmother's house and we lived there for several years. But Mom got sick. Soon, she was unable to care for me, and, although she hated it, she found Dad — she always seemed to know where he was — and she told him he needed to come and take care of me. He agreed and he came and took me. He still couldn't give up the life. So, punch line, he raised me in it."
"Wait," I extend my hand slowly, stopping her, "you're telling me that your father took you and included you in his cons? A young girl?"
She grimaces, nods. "I was nine. Mom lived on for a time but she never got better, just slowly worse. Four years after I left home, she died. We went to the funeral and Dad arranged to sell the house, Mom left it to him, and we were back on the road a few days later."
Sarah sips her beer again and picks at the label. I scoot my chair closer to her and take her other hand in mine.
She smiles sadly. "Dad knew how...to use me. The first few years I was with him, I was his pig-tailed, blue-eyed blond prop, — mainly used to make people trust him since I looked so angelic." She smirks at me but I can see a trace of bitterness in her eyes. "Later, as I got older, I became a more active part of the cons, playing small roles, distracting people, pretending to be sick or hurt so as to attract notice or sympathy or apology."
She tugs the label off her beer but it does not come off cleanly. The gluey part remains attached to the bottle. I'm trying to decide what to say when she goes on.
"Even later, when I was older...more developed...I became a different kind of prop or a different kind of distraction…I played more active parts, lied and pretended...acted as a lure." She glances at me sideways and continues to pick at her bottle, now scratching determinedly at the gluey part of the label.
"I was good at it — my father's daughter. But it began to bother me — my mother's daughter. I had trouble sleeping. I lost weight. Dad had made a big score shortly after I graduated, so big that we settled — or as close to it as we ever managed — in California. North of San Francisco.
"I got into USC and went to LA for college in the fall. I had a hard time adjusting during the first term, but I did it. I got to know some other students, even dated a couple of times. Nothing serious. But as much as I liked USC, I lived in fear that it would all end, that I'd be found out, exposed as what I'd been, or that Dad would start conning again, demand that I rejoin him. — He did start conning again, I found out, but he left me alone; he was going to let me finish school.
She sips her beer again, the label now completely scraped off, the damp remains of the paper on the table.
"So, the second year I relaxed, thinking that my life was becoming...normal. But in the mid-year, just after the break, when I got back to campus, a man came to see me. He sat down at my table in the cafeteria and he called me by my name…"
She inhales and I'm puzzled. "He called you 'Sarah''?
She purses her lips and takes her hand out of mine. "Chuck, 'Sarah' is not my name. I mean, not my birth name."
"Oh." I don't know what else to say.
She drops her head a bit and studies me, that coolness showing in her eyes. It takes me a minute to realize she's worrying that I'm going to stand and leave. Instead, I take her hand back in mine.
"So," I say softly, "this guy calls you by name?"
"Yes, he called me by name, and then he showed me his ID. He was from the CIA."
"The CIA?" I shake my head, not expecting that turn in the story. I let the question about her name pass.
She nods. "The CIA. You see, when I was about sixteen, Dad showed up one day at our hotel room with Bryce Larkin." She pauses again, looks for a reaction, but I just nod.
"Anyway, Bryce was four years older than I, and he'd been conning for a while. Dad knew about him somehow and brought Bryce in for a con Dad had been planning. Bryce worked with us for a while on that con, and then Dad used him every now and then until I went to college. He'd been part of the big score that Dad made just after I finished high school. He...liked...me, I knew, but Dad was always careful to be with us, between us. At the time, that was fine with me. Bryce left with his cut of that big score. I hadn't seen him since I started college."
She gets up and begins to pace — I don't think she's quite realized it. I'm outwardly calm but inside I'm shocked. The CIA? Bryce?
"The man told me that the CIA was interested in me, wanted to recruit me. They'd heard about me. He asked me if I was interested." She sits back down, finishes her beer. She's visibly upset now.
"I should have said no, Chuck. But — I felt like my past had caught up with me, like my hope that I could...outrun...it was just wrong. And, although I liked school, and was doing well, I had no idea what I would do when I finished; I worried I'd fall back into the life, that Dad would drag me in if I didn't go on my own. So, I told him I was interested.
"A few days later, I met with the Director of the CIA. Joan Miniver. We met at the airport, in a meeting room there. She was between flights. When we started talking, I asked what the man had meant — 'the CIA had heard about me'. She was vague, intimating that my Dad and I had worked with an agent without knowing it. We'd worked with a lot of other cons over the years, like Bryce — any good con, big score, requires a team, usually — but I couldn't figure out who it might have been. She told me about being an agent, about fieldwork. But mostly she talked to me about patriotism, protecting the innocent, — all this high-minded stuff, very Star-Spangled Banner. At that moment, sitting there in the airport, it seemed like the perfect way to...transmute my past, turn the...gray-black...stuff I'd done into red, white, and blue. Human alchemy. So, I said yes. I was slated to start at the end of school, the beginning of summer."
She stops again, sits, and reaches for my beer, looks at me, and I nod. She takes a sip of it. Then sits back, holding it in two hands. "They sent me to the Farm. You've probably heard of it?"
"Yeah, although just on TV or in books."
"Well, it's not like that, or not much. One of the first things I realized, once I got started and understood what I was doing, was that the other people in my class were mostly like me — people looking to hide, people with questionable pasts, few with any real sense of duty or honor. I excelled, and was the top of my class."
That's one part of this that does not surprise me.
"But my excellence clarified something else. At the Farm, I hadn't left the con life. Spying was just the con life with a wardrobe change: a trenchcoat and a gun. So, in the middle of my time there, disillusioned, I told them I wanted out. I created quite a stir. They asked me to stay longer, and a day later Miniver came to the Farm to talk to me herself. But I was sure; I wanted out. She left, and a few hours later, Bryce showed up."
"Bryce?" I was so caught up in the story that the name hits me without warning.
She looks uncertain, embarrassed. "It turned out he recommended me to Miniver. That's how she heard about me, decided to recruit me."
"Bryce had blown through his part of that big score, the last con he did with my Dad and me, and he'd decided to join the CIA. He'd been in the CIA since around the time I started college. He told me all sorts of stories about how great being an agent was, how Miniver'd make us partners, glamorous stuff."
She hands my beer back to me. "I was tempted, but I still said no. Bryce was pissed — he...wanted me, and my quitting made him look bad since he'd recommended me. The next day, I walked away from the Company."
"So, you never became an agent?"
She shakes her head. "No, not technically. I never went on a mission, was never in the field."
"Did you go back to USC?"
"No. That's what I should have done, but I...What happened at the Farm made me think I couldn't outrun my past. But I couldn't stop trying to outrun it. The only life I really knew was the con life. I worked a straight job for a while, but Dad called...He needed me. — For the next couple of years, that's how it went. I'd quit Dad, start a job, he'd call and get me to come back: always one last con. Always."
"And then, in the midst of that cycle, Bryce showed up again. He was still in the CIA — he's still in the CIA — and he was working a long-term mission in California. He kept showing up, asking me out, and I finally said yes. He'd sneak away to come to see me when the mission allowed it. I thought we were getting serious, even if it was a sort of long-distance relationship.
"But one day I was off work, out for a drive, and I stopped at a little restaurant. Bryce was there, with a woman. He didn't see me but I saw them. It was obvious that they were sleeping together — the way they sat in orientation to one another, the touches, the glances. I had taken these Seduction classes at the Farm, all about the psychology of attraction. I knew what I was seeing." She frowns.
"You want another beer?" she asks. I've finished mine. I shake my head and she sighs, starts again, watching me closely as I listen.
"I confronted Bryce when he came to see me next and he eventually told me the woman was his mark, that sleeping with her was part of the mission — work, he actually called it that — and he told me that I just had to accept the job, his way of doing it. It meant nothing, he said. I tried to accept that, but I couldn't. Not the sort of relationship I wanted. Not close. Then I found out he was also sleeping with his female CIA partner. He couldn't call that work. It was all too much.
"I told him to get out of my life. But he kept showing up, returning, like Dad kept calling. Bryce finally got the message, or I thought he had, but Dad kept calling." She breathes out, frustrated. "I couldn't not answer.
"But I finally did. I finally quit and stayed quit a year ago or so. Dad called again, of course, from the East Coast, a new big score, the biggest, but I said no. I had a decent job, and prospects that it would get better, a job in a fashion house. It was time for me to find the life I really wanted. Things were okay for a while. No Bryce, no Dad. A job I liked, people who liked me.
"And then one day a customer came into the fashion house — a woman who'd been Dad's mark in a con I'd helped with. I panicked. I hid from her in the warehouse, and then I quit, afraid she'd come back, see me, or that someone else would."
She scoots closer and takes my hand again, stares right into my eyes. "'The wicked flee where none pursueth…'"
I nod my understanding.
"I was lost at that point, caught between a real life and the con life. I didn't want to be in the con life but I couldn't seem to settle in a real life."
"And then your Dad called again and you came here." I supply the next part.
She nods, deep worry in her eyes. Her shoulders sink. "Yes, Chuck."
"And Dad is Uncle Wylie?"
She just nods, the worry in her eyes growing.
No wonder he plays a lousy uncle. He's actually a lousy dad.
"And Bryce showing up here, was him trying again?"
She frowns, anger flashes in her eyes. "Yes, I'm not sure how he found me — but he just showed up. I couldn't get rid of him because he said he'd expose us if I did. So, I had to play along but..."
She stops. In the resulting silence, we hear a car arrive outside, park. I jump up and look out the back door. It's Wylie's Mercedes. Sarah's dad's Mercedes.
Sarah jumps up too and I feel her look over my shoulder, feel her hand grab my shoulder, then tighten on it.
"Act like I haven't told you any of this, Chuck, please."
I look at her for a long moment, at her pleading eyes, then nod. We sit down at the table. I see that unnameable look flash cold in Sarah's eyes, and then her face is composed.
She smiles at Uncle Wylie as he comes smiling through the door.
A/N: 5 or 6 chapters to go.