Ghostwright Read online

  “Jessica! She knows the truth. She knows how sick you are.” That was rude—bad choice of words. But, of course, Jessica would believe Asquith. Jessica was one of those people who are willing to believe the worst. She had been the Chronicle music critic, and had called a cab for Speke and Asquith more than once. She was in New York now. “Out of friendship I’ll agree that you can share—but you can’t steal.”

  Speke had a cold heavy stone in his belly. Maybe it was true. Maybe I did steal all those plays. Maybe I didn’t even cowrite them. Maybe they really do belong, entirely, to him. Is this possible?

  Asquith was standing, too, his feet soundless on the carpet. “It belongs to me, Hamilton. All of it. And all of what you have become.”

  Speke was losing control of his breath, his heart. The colors in the room were beginning to flicker. The phone was in Asquith’s hand, and he began stabbing numbers.

  “She’ll believe me,” said Asquith, “when I tell her that I wrote all the plays—and all the songs.”

  “But it’s not true!”

  “It’s always been money for you, hasn’t it, Ham? Nothing else mattered. Principles, compassion, the truth. The truth was just so much wrapping paper.”

  Speke grabbed the cord, and tore the phone out of the wall, although it took two very fierce yanks to send the beige cable whistling into the air.

  “Yes, I see how much you have changed, from Speke the thug to Speke the rich thug. I was a fool to come here.”

  Speke lunged for the door, and blocked it with his body. “Who knows you’re here?”

  “Nobody, I suppose. I don’t broadcast my life. That’s the trouble. I’ve lived underground, like a sow bug, for years. I want to claim what’s mine. I want a part of the daylight. I realize how hard you’ve worked, Ham, and I offer you my congratulations.”

  “You’re not leaving. You are not stealing my life.”

  Asquith laughed. “I’ll leave by the window. Remember that time I called the police because you were ranting? You used to frighten me, Ham, but I’ve changed.”

  “Don’t go near that window.”

  “I was going to do it nicely. I was going to tell them that we collaborated on some of them. And, it’s almost true. All the ugly language, your witty use of obscenity, all the clever references to fellatio, don’t appear in the rough drafts.”

  “Sit down.”

  Asquith smiled. He said, as though remarking on a mildly pleasant surprise. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  If he had, at that point, returned to the sofa, or sauntered over to examine the Degas—if he had done anything at all to give Speke a few moments to clear his vision and take a few deep breaths of air, everything would have been different.

  But Asquith stepped toward the window.

  He flung it open, the two wings of the French window opening outward. He propped one boot on the sill, rocked back, ready to bound into the daylight, and Speke caught him by one arm.

  He flung Asquith—threw him, hard.

  He hurled him back into the room. Asquith was light, and easy to fling, the thin body spinning like a dancer’s, slamming awkwardly against the wall.

  But it wasn’t the wall. It was the sharp point of the serpentine mantelpiece. It caught Asquith with an ugly slap, like two hands smacked together, and for a long time nothing happened. Asquith was pale, and did not move, and Speke did not draw a breath.

  Asquith’s lips were blue.

  It’s okay, Speke told himself. It’s all right. It isn’t the way it looks. Everything will be all right.

  Asquith stepped forward, slowly, with a lurch. He opened his mouth, unable to speak.

  “I’m sorry,” Speke whispered. Then, louder, “I’m sorry, Timothy.”

  Asquith halted, stiff-legged and staring. Both hands crept to his throat and he made a gagging sound, a retching cough, and there was a red stain at his lips.

  Speke wanted to say: You’re all right. Stop it. Say something.

  Asquith twisted, working one arm backward, trying to reach a place on his back, hunching, coughing. Speke nearly howled, but he could not make a sound. No! This was all a mistake!

  Asquith dropped to all fours, and vomited blood.

  Speke seized the dead phone, and then there was blood everywhere, a spreading pool of it as Asquith struggled for breath in the center of an expanding nova of scarlet.

  And collapsed, face down, one leg twitching.

  7

  No, a voice howled inside him.

  He’ll be all right.

  Speke swept over to his friend, and then stopped, afraid to touch him, unable to take another step. There was blood on the corner of the mantelpiece, and blood on the shirt where the stone had punctured Asquith’s back. The body stopped twitching, and it was so obvious that Speke could do nothing but raise his hands to his head.

  He closed his eyes, rocking in place. Everything will be fine. There’s no problem at all. Go ahead—look and see.

  Look and see in a minute, when you can stand to do it. Count to three. To four. Then—take a peek.

  When he looked again, everything was still as it had been. The body at his feet sprawled in a way no living body could tolerate, one arm flung, palm upward, head to one side. There was a rank sewer stink, and a glistening, still-spreading patch of piss at the crotch.

  The room around him blanked out. Speke was cold, stiff, unable to see anything but the sheen of scarlet. He prayed, a wordless, silent, shrieking prayer.

  He lunged to the telephone, but the thing was dead, and he hurled it against the wall. And then he heard a sound that twisted his insides and made him close his eyes. No! Not this—anything but this.

  It was the voice of Maria. “Ham? Are you all right?”

  Please, God, anything but this! Why couldn’t he move time backwards, just five minutes? That’s all it would take—five minutes. His legs were stiff, and his breath tore in and out of his lungs. He began to shudder, absurd, uncontrollable trembling as he staggered toward Maria.

  Don’t let her see this, he prayed.

  “What is it?” She still didn’t see. “My God, Ham, what’s the matter?”

  He shook his head, meaning: leave. Go away. Now.

  She said, “I heard shouting.”

  She carried a watercolor of what looked like a bright yellow hand grenade, and Speke could only hold out his arms and mouth at her: don’t come in here. Don’t look.

  She dropped the painting and put her hands to her mouth. Her eyes widened as she stepped gingerly, but inevitably, toward the lake of blood.

  Don’t look, his soul screamed. Maria, please don’t look.

  She became a statue. Staring downward, her face pale, as if her mind were struggling to deny what lay before her.

  Speke felt himself melt away. If only he could be a boy again, with a boy’s sense of what life was. Sun, and bicycles. And little, simple sins, buying Winstons out of a cigarette machine. That was all gone now, in another universe.

  She knelt, and then was on her feet. Her lips parted, and when she spoke her voice was nearly inaudible, but Speke could hear it. He heard it well.

  “He’s dead!” she whispered.

  For an instant something like laughter ripped through him. Of course he’s dead. Didn’t I tell you about this little hobby of mine? I throw people around the office.

  Then the laugh was gone, replaced by something cold and heavy. He anticipated her thoughts. The phone doesn’t work, Speke wanted to say. I tore it out of the wall, and then I hurled it and it broke.

  Shivering, she knelt and touched the multicolored wires which had burst from the telephone, and then looked up at Speke, as if beseeching him to tell her what had happened, to tell her this wasn’t what it seemed. She held up the dead receiver, as though to say: you, Hamilton, did this.

  There is only one thing to do. Call the police, he commanded himself. Run up to the house and—

  He couldn’t move.

  It was an accident, he tried to tell himself.
Just a simple accident. The police would understand. A troublesome visitor. People can be so annoying. We all lose our temper from time to time, Mr. Speke.

  An arm wrestling match got ugly. We were practicing our old soft shoe routines. We both used to dream of being stuntmen. We were having a business conversation and Mr. Asquith hurled himself at the mantlepiece.

  It was time to practice what he was so good at. It was time for him to be honest with himself. He grabbed Asquith by the arm and threw him, as hard as he could. And besides, just yesterday he had thought of doing something like this. He could not forget the taste of anxiety in his mouth, and it all came back to him now. In the back of his mind he had always wanted to do this. He had planned it all along. Admit it to yourself, Speke. Admit it—you wanted this all along.

  The room swayed one way, and then the other. He felt his legs vanish, his head wander way from his body. Murder. That’s the way it would look, and that’s the way it was. He had murdered someone. Just like that, no trouble at all.

  He tried the word out again. Murder.

  “What have you done?” she whispered. “Ham, tell me what you’ve done.”

  She would never forgive him. It was self-defense, he wanted to lie. This was a dangerous man, this Asquith. A black belt in every sort of martial art known to man. He nearly killed me, but I fought him off. It was brutal. He attacked me with—

  He had to sit down. He would, some day, some fine day in the future, when he could control his body movements again. Surely there was a mistake of some sort. Surely Asquith was only injured. A handful of paramedics could chopper up from Stanford and everything would be fine.

  She read his eyes. Read him too clearly. She shook her head, a shiver. No, her eyes said. It’s too late.

  The intercom spoke in Sarah’s voice. “Mr. Bell is just arriving,” it said.

  Bell! There was still a world out there, a universe of people and events. Somewhere someone was probably opening a letter, reading a newspaper, turning on a television.

  His voice functioned, amazingly. “I’ll be right there,” it said, the disembodied phrase he had uttered a thousand times before sounding so normal that it was obscene. It shouldn’t be possible that he could stand here and say something so banal while staring at so much blood.

  Tell Sarah, he commanded himself. She’ll call the police. But the thought of telling Sarah made him cringe inside.

  “I’ll do anything you want me to do,” Maria said.

  What could he possibly want her to do?

  He groped across the desk, and switched off the intercom. Don’t take any unnecessary chances, he told himself. And, just as quickly, he demanded: why not? Why not tell everyone what had happened? He was amazed at himself, and wanted to hoot with laughter. He acted as though he had a plan.

  Tell her to call the police. Tell her to run up to the house and call the police.

  “Anything,” she was saying. “Ham, I’ll help you. Tell me what you want me to do.”

  She was weeping as she said this, trembling, and Speke wanted to take her into his arms, these arms which had just killed a man.

  The police. Anything else is sick. Anything else is wrong. Wrong: the word stunned him. He had committed a crime, even, he made himself think, a sin.

  He had wanted to protect Maria. He had wanted to keep her from anything ugly. He had wanted to cure her of all the hard things that had happened to her in the past.

  “We have to keep this secret,” she said.

  He couldn’t form the words. He took a breath. “What do you mean?”

  “I couldn’t bear it, Ham.” He held her, and she was trembling. “The police, all the questions, the cameras—I’m not that strong.”

  No, he told himself, she wasn’t strong. He gazed down at her, and he knew what she was saying with her eyes. If he called the police, and if the world closed in on them with its heavy boots she would leave him.

  He could bear anything but that.

  “I’ll help you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I’ll tell you what to do.”

  It was simple, when she told him what steps he should take. It was simple, and perfect. For an instant, when he looked back at the body, he nearly collapsed, but he kept himself upright, and as he spoke, and began making decisions, it was astounding how his mind began to clear.

  “We’re going to be all right.” He deepened his voice and forced out the words, “We’re going to get away with this.”

  As soon as he said it, he knew that it was true.

  8

  It was very simple: before they did anything else, they would have to hide the body.

  Sure—that’s a brilliant idea, he told himself. It was like finding a wallet. Just stick the body in your back pocket and keep walking.

  It was getting hot in the Outer Office. It had never been so stifling, and he found each breath a little shallower than the one before it. His lungs contracted to two painful points and the room around him began to go gray.

  The heat made the smell rise higher, each breath a whiff of urine and that other smell, the soprano shriek of blood. Speke began sobbing, but even so he was able to stalk toward the window, and lean, pushing the swinging glass doors outward, to let in the fresher, cleaner heat of the day.

  The soil lay beyond, the stone sea to which he would commit his friend. It all swam in his eyes, the roots of the trees and the fallen acorns, the leaf-litter and the spill of sun through the branches. His palms were wet. This hand … He gazed into his palm. This hand had grabbed Asquith’s arm and—

  “Who?” she asked. “Who was he?”

  The question echoed in him. Ah, yes, he wanted to say. That, Maria, is the question of the hour. “An old friend.” It was true. Asquith was an old friend. The thought nearly destroyed him, and he had to take several deep breaths to keep from breaking down.

  “Ham,” she began. Then when she could speak again, “Don’t let them take you away from me.”

  Like many men, Speke had always wondered what he would do under real pressure. He had never been tested by war, and the physical crises that shape other men’s lives—accidents, natural disasters, physical handicaps—he had somehow avoided. As a result, he had always wondered how much courage he had. His character had been tested by the exigencies of his career, but now he could endure the fiercest sort of challenge, and he suddenly treasured this opportunity to prove to himself, and to Maria, that he was equal to it.

  He had killed, and he would get away with it. It was that simple. He would triumph. He would have something in common with the heroic, with the lion, with the eagle. He would be a man who believed in himself. Never again would there be a ripple of self-doubt. He would know the truth about himself, and other men would sense this in him. (Speke has changed, they would whisper among themselves. He’s harder, now. Colder. You can see it in his eyes.)

  “Maria, listen to me. Are you listening?”

  “Yes, Ham. I’m listening.” Her voice was the sound of someone shocked beyond feeling.

  “Do exactly as I tell you. We don’t have much time.”

  To put it mildly. Bell already here, and Scamp on his way with cameras and a sound crew. He would let Bell stay. But Scamp would have to leave. He would think of an excuse. He would not grin before the video cameras today.

  If only he could draw a single, deep breath. Or maybe that was not the problem. Maybe he was breathing too fast, hyperventilating. He turned to face her, trying to send her courage through the air. She seemed to try to respond, but, for the moment, she could not speak. He felt his legs regain their old strength as he reached her. (He’s somehow strangely masterful these days—not the same man at all.)

  “We have to work together,” he said, gripping her shoulders, the strength of his feeling making him feel drunk, stupid and bestial.

  Her eyes beseeched him: whatever you do, make it all right.

  “Get the shovel from the garage.” She did not seem to hear him. “Now!”

  She hur
ried from the cottage.

  He was panting hard, gasping. Alone with his triumph, Speke could not stand to look. He forced himself. This is what he had done. This is what he would live with.

  He snatched the carpet from before the fireplace, a stiff burgundy and tawny wool pile that he had considered an investment. Woven by women, he had been told, in a remote village long before television had even been imagined, its earth-golds the effect of tobacco juice dye.

  He rolled the body quickly into the carpet, not letting himself look at it any more than he had to, but seeing all-too clearly the blood-smeared death snarl. And then to his horror he found himself embracing the rolled-up corpse, calling his old friend’s name, knowing that he would never have a whole mind again.

  The body made a gurgling groan, a breathy syllable as his hug squashed air from the lungs. He let it fall, and stood slowly, then fell to the body again, rocking it and calling Asquith’s name.

  Maria was there, struggling with him, pulling him away, thrusting the shovel into his hands.

  “Quickly,” she whispered.

  He staggered to the window. She was smart. She knew what to do. We’ll be a team, he thought.

  It was good to be outside. He dug, stomping down hard to cut through the roots of trees. The smell of earth was powerful medicine. The earth would help him. Just an hour away from San Francisco, the estate was a refuge, a secret apart from the world of cars and news. He had been kind to the trees here, and to the house. He had cleared away the brush, and had once contracted such a bad case of poison oak the doctor had given him two shots of cortisone.

  He was giddy, he knew, with the rush of thoughts, but he couldn’t stop them. As unlikely as it seemed, he knew without a doubt that the estate would help him. Nature itself, that unacknowledged god, would help him. This was madness, but he found himself recalling that he had donated money to dolphin research, and that he had written letters to the Senate decrying animal experiments. He had always stood up for the whale. He would become a vegetarian. Was it madness to think that his entire life would change? This was all a great blessing. It was a chance to grow. What a crossroads he had reached.