Alternate Gerrolds (21 page)

The list was narrowed to ten, then six, then three.

One of the young men contacted hadn’t seen his shirt in months. His ex-roommate had apparently taken it with when he’d moved out. “No, I didn’t know him well at all. He was only here for a few weeks. I hardly ever saw him. He’d come in, crash for a few hours, then disappear again. A couple times he brought his doper friends around, but I wouldn’t let them smoke in here, so they stopped coming. He didn’t have the second month’s rent, so I told him to move out. When he did, he stole a bunch of stuff. It was real annoying too. His dad was some rich director; he didn’t need to steal my stuff. What’s this all about anyway? Does this have something to do with those clothes they found on TV?”

A bench-warrant was issued for J. Michael Tate, also known as Joseph Tate-Polanski; the son of Sharon Tate and her ex-husband, Roman Polanski. Further investigation turned up the names of several of Tate-Polanski’s frequent acquaintances: Marina Folger, Zbig Frykowski and David Sebring.

Folger and Frykowski’s whereabouts were unknown; they were presumed to be in Europe somewhere. David Sebring had died of a selfinduced drug overdose three days after the Manson murders. It took a while longer for the LAPD to find Joe Tate. It turned out they’d had him in custody all along.

Joe Tate had been arrested on a DUI at the end of August. It was his third offense; the judge threw the book at him; he was still incarcerated in the County Jail and would be for the next nine months.

When he was questioned by detectives, he readily admitted the killings. “It was the house, man—the house. My mom and dad lived there before the divorce. That was where I grew up. I was happy there—and then they sold it and he moved to Europe and she moved to New York, and I blame the people who bought it for breaking up our family. I wanted to get even, that’s all. They had no right. I wanted to show them that they hadn’t won anything at all. And I did. I don’t feel sorry for them. They had it coming.”

Cordwainer Bird had only a few more comments about the case. He tossed them off in his opening monologue the day after the verdict came down.

“Y’see,” he said. “This was my point all along. Everyone was running around looking for grand conspiracies and strange connections. There weren’t any. There never are. The universe is running by accident and God’s on vacation. Stop looking for answers—even if there were any, you wouldn’t understand them. Leave it be, you assholes. There just ain’t no justice in this life—and that’s that.”

 

AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD:

EDITOR’S NOTE:
Seventeen copies of this manuscript were delivered to my office over a period of three weeks. Some were mailed, some arrived by courier; three were faxed, four were sent by e-mail. Several arrived by messenger. All seventeen arrived under different names and from different points of origin. I believe that more copies than seventeen were posted, but only seventeen arrived.

 

Dear Mr. Resnick,

I apologize for taking such unusual steps to bring this manuscript to your attention, but after you read it, you will understand just why I had to go to such lengths to ensure that at least one copy of this will reach your desk.

By way of explanation, I am not the author of the piece, although in the absence of other heirs to the estate, I do claim full ownership of the rights. The enclosed essay, story, letter, confession, call it what you will, came into my hands in a very curious way.

I was never very close to my father; he was a stern and rigorous man, and I moved out of his household as soon as I was old enough to make my own way in the world. I even went so far as to change my name
and move to another city. For some time, I avoided all contact with my father (whom I shall not name in this manuscript); so you can imagine my surprise and annoyance to find him on my doorstep one evening. Although I felt little warmth for the man, I still felt obligated to invite him in. He carried with him a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied up with heavy twine.

“I have your legacy here,” he said, by way of explanation. He placed the package on a side table and shrugged off his heavy wool overcoat and hung it on the rack in the hall. It was a familiar action on his part, and it jarred me to see it again in my own home. I felt very ill at ease in his presence and did not know how to respond.

“I know that you believe that I have not been a very good father to you,” he said. “I did not lavish the kind of attention on you in your formative years that another parent might have. I felt that to do so would weaken you and turn you into one of those men who are less than men. Now that you are grown, I can see that I was right to do so. You have a hardness of character about you that bodes well for your ability to take care of yourself. I always felt that independence was the greatest gift I could give a son. No, don’t thank me. I hope you will do the same for your child someday. Never mind that now. I don’t have much time and there is much that you need to know.”

He took me by the arm and led me into the parlor. It was an old house that I had taken, one that could be dated all the way back to the midnineteenth century. He sat down opposite me, placed his parcel on the table between us and began to speak quietly. “Perhaps you may have wondered why I have had so few friends and acquaintances over the years, and why during your childhood we kept moving to a new place every few months. Perhaps you have wondered why I have kept such distance from you for the past few years, not even trying to seek you out. All of this has been for your own protection. I did not want
him
to find you.”

“After I leave, you will be free to forget me as you will; I will not trouble you again. I will leave this package with you. You may do with it as you wish. But I must caution you, that if you accept delivery of this, your life may be in terrible danger, the worst kind of danger you can imagine. No, even worse than you can imagine. You may examine the contents of the package, as I did when I was your age. You may toss it on the fire, as I was tempted to. You may choose to pass it on to your
own son, someday. Or you may feel that the time is right to reveal this information. The choice will be yours, as it was mine. Perhaps I made mistakes, but...I did the best I could. If you must curse someone, curse your grandfather, because it was he who first accepted custody of this—this secret.”

I had only the dimmest memories of my grandfather. He died when I was very young. He had always seemed a nervous man to me. Whatever secret my father was about to impart, he certainly had my attention now. I had never seen the man act like this before. In the space of the past few moments, he had said more words to me than he had said during the entire last year we had lived together under the same roof. Incongruously, all I could think to say was, “Would you like some tea?” I simply wanted to acknowledge his attention in some way and indicate that regardless of all else that had passed between us, he still had my grudging respect.

My father blinked at me in confusion as well as in some annoyance. His train of thought had been derailed by the question. But his features eased at the thought of my hospitality; perhaps he took it as a sign that I held some gratitude for his actions, or even affection. Perhaps I did; my own thoughts were not clear to me at that point, I was so confused by his confession. I hurried to the kitchen to put the kettle on. My face was flushed with embarrassment. My curiosity had been terribly aroused by his long preamble, and now we would both have to delay the denouement that much longer.

Shortly, however, the kettle was boiling and the tea was brewing in the ceramic pot between us, filling the room with friendly and reassuring vapors. As I placed a tray of biscuits on the table—that I had baked myself only this morning—my father resumed his narrative.

“Your grandfather,” he said portentously, “was the nephew of the famous Dr. Watson—yes,
that
Dr. Watson.” He paused to let that sink in.

I had known that there was some secret about our family’s past, simply due to my father’s reluctance to discuss it with me; but I had always assumed it was something criminal in nature. Possibly a relative who had been hung for stealing horses or some other great disgrace. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you. Why should that be something to keep secret? It seems to me that we should be proud of our ancestor.”

My father tapped the parcel on the table. “When you read this, you will understand. This is the
truth
about his so-called adventures. I’m going
to leave this with you. It’s yours now. If you want my advice, you’ll toss it in the fire and be done with it. Because once you open it, once you read it, you’ll never know a peaceful night again.”

He finished his tea in a single swallow, glanced impatiently at his watch—more for performance, I believe, than because he had a schedule to keep—and rose immediately from his chair. “I must go now. But I’ll give you one last piece of advice, perhaps the most important piece of advice I can ever give you, and you will have to take it as an acknowledgment of how much I truly do care about you and how proud I am of what you have made of yourself. Whatever you do, son, wherever you go, keep yourself secret. Keep yourself impossible to trace. Leave no record of where you may be found. It will save your life. Believe me.”

And then he was gone. He slipped back into his dark old overcoat and vanished into the night as abruptly and mysteriously as he had come. The parcel remained unopened on my parlor table.

Now, at this point, perhaps I should explain a little bit about who I am. I am a single man in my late thirties; I live alone in an old house. I have never wed; I have no children, no pets, and I keep mostly to myself. I believe that this is in no small part due to the disruptive nature of my upbringing; deprived as I was of the opportunity to form attachments during my impressionable years, I have almost no social skills at all. Rather than inflict my clumsy fumblings at friendship on others, I prefer to live vicariously through the many volumes of books I have managed to collect over the years.

That my father had presented me with what was obviously an unpublished manuscript either about or by the famous Dr. Watson was an act of overwhelming generosity to me; but the manner of his presentation was so disturbing that it left me troubled and upset beyond my ability to describe. Perhaps another person would have opened the manuscript immediately, but I was in such a state from my father’s visit that it was all I could do to finish my tea and wash the cups. I allowed myself the luxury of a long hot bath to calm my nerves and then went immediately to bed. I would resolve what to do about the package the following morning.

To my dismay, the package was still in the parlor the next day. I had hoped that my father’s visit would have turned out to have been merely an apparition of a troubled sleep. But no such luck. Nor had anyone broken into the house and made off with the mysterious parcel either. Whatever it contained, it was still my responsibility.

After a meager breakfast of tea, toast and marmalade and a single soft-boiled egg, I sat down in the parlor and prepared to examine my “legacy.” There were twenty-three handwritten pages. The writing was hurried and crabbed, as if the author was working under great stress. In some places, it was nearly indecipherable.

I worked my way slowly through the pages, reading them carefully, not going onto the next until I was fully certain I had understood everything before. When I finished, my thoughts were in greater turmoil than ever. Had I not been presented with this manuscript by the hand of my very own father, I would have been absolutely certain that this was the most elaborate literary hoax in history.

If even the smallest part of the manuscript was true, then my father was right; my life was in terrible danger. I could do nothing to validate the truth of this information without calling attention to myself and giving
him
a clue to my whereabouts as well as my
when
abouts.

After thinking about this for several days, I decided to make typescript copies of the pages, have them duplicated, and distribute them via as many channels as possible to prevent
him
from interfering with the eventual publication.

I know that most people who read these words will blithely assume that this is merely a clever piece of fiction and will casually dismiss it. However, if even one or two people who are in a position to act will take this revelation seriously, then we may be able to stop
him
before it is too late. I am sure that your curiosity is now sufficiently aroused. With that in mind, I will now get out of your way and let you read the pages of my grandfather’s last story.