Rose Marie is trying something a little different, serializing a book she has written — "The Evil Men Do." Each month she will be sharing a chapter with you. As the months go by, you will be able to go back and re-read previous chapters if you wish to. This book is presented here exactly as she has written it. We welcome your thoughts on both the book itself and the process we are trying. So — jump in!

If you missed previous chapters, they can be read here: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter Fifteen

The Evil Men Do 

Chapter Sixteen

Driving home, he took a shortcut through the city but his mind wandering to the relationship between Reed and his father, a relationship he thought he had understood, now he soon lost his way. When he came to and looked around, he found himself in Bed-Stuy.

Once it was a part of the city he had been familiar with. The place hadn't changed, still the slum he remembered from his days at Columbia.  Garbage littered the streets, blown around by subterranean drafts from passing subways. People, mostly blacks, loitered in doorways or sat on stoops in front of doorways that were little more than gaping holes. Stu, feeling conspicuous, hunched down in the car and searched for an escape route, thankful he had gassed up before driving down from his grandfather's house. He felt like an alien on earth for the first time and was ashamed of himself for feeling that way.

It was true, though. He was an alien in these parts, except wasn't he a human being too? Driving through the unfamiliar streets, he could have been fatally careless, forgetting to lock the cars so that when he stopped for a light, three youths, two black, one white, sauntered over and tried the door. Stu pushed down the automatic lock button just in time.  The white youth, a boy really, clad in the uniform of the day - knee-length shorts that would have revealed his crack had it not been covered by a tie-dyed tee and space-age sneakers that must have cost a bundle, brandished a handgun. "Open up," he ordered, his voice husky and high. Stu had to strain his ears to hear him through the closed window. "You don't want to use that."

"Man, I do, I do."

They wore heavy gold chains at the end of which hung a pendant of some kind. Stu recognized it, a Mercedes-Benz hood ornament. The light changed, but two of the youths perched on the hood while the one with the gun jiggled the door.

A moment later all three ran, each in a different direction, and Stu spotted the police car, which pulled up alongside him. "You all right?" the officer, a black man with a pencil-thin mustache, asked.

"Fine. Lucky you came along."

"They got plenty of friends around here. In a minute they surround you, take your car, and you are gone. Disappeared. What are you doing in this neighborhood. You lost?  You're real lucky. Next time you might not be."

"There won't be a next time."

The officer gave Stu directions to Riverside Drive, and once he found himself on familiar ground He relaxed and let his mind wander again. He thought about forcing a showdown with Carl of the paint store when Janet worked, but what did he have to accuse Carl of? She had a right to choose, even if she didn't choose him.

Suddenly, he remembered what Mrs. Cartwright had said about George, that he was the only one who visited Stu's grandfather anymore and had been there recently. On a hunch he pulled over and phoned him. How much had Stu's grandfather divulged about the relationship between Reed and Stu's father? If George accused the guys in Las Vegas, the old man might have decided to set him straight. George was volatile, thought he had nothing to lose. What might he do? Suzanne answered the phone after one ring as if she had been waiting for a call or hoping for one. "George isn't here," she said.

"You know where he is?"

"No," she said. "He has a bee in his bonnet ever since he went to see his father yesterday. He's upset about something, raced out of the house. I asked him where he was going, but he wouldn't tell me."

"You know what he was upset about?"

"No, do you?"

"No," he lied. As soon s he hung up he called his grandfather's house. "Mrs. Cartwright? I understand my uncle George paid a visit yesterday?"

"Yes, he was," she said, turning the statement into an accusation. "I told you, he's the only one who comes anymore."

"You hear what they talked about?"

"I don't make a habit of listening at doors," she said. 

Why had he expected her to say as much? "Can I talk to my grandfather?"

"I'll see." He heard her put down the phone, walk away, return and pick it up again. "He's asleep."

"Will you get him to call me as soon as he wakes up?"

"He doesn't like talking on the phone."

Stu knew what he had to do. "I'm coming back. Let him sleep, I'll wake him up when I get there.  It's important," he said, his voice rising over her protests. Returning the cell phone to his pocket, he re-entered the traffic and decided the easiest thing to do was to drive around the block, which he did, swinging back onto the parkway, north this time. As he drove, fragments of his conversation with Janet returned to him. She'd told him she wasn't perfect and didn't want to pretend to be. As if Stu required perfection, as if his family represented a standard. If only she knew. On the contrary, behind the present lurked the past with its lurid tale of sex, greed and prejudice. And murder.

Stu pulled over again and phoned Reed this time, ascertaining that he was out of the office but was expected in later. "Call him," he told Rose, "see if you can delay him."

"Why?" she asked.

"I don't have time to go into it. Tell him to go have a coffee. Better yet, tell Jenkins to waylay him. Just so he stays out of the office." Stu was afraid of what George was planning. Again Stu tried to phone him, but George had turned off his cell phone.

On his way back up to his grandfather's house, a seemingly endless funeral procession did its best to delay him. Too many funerals, he thought, the living attempting to make up to the dead for being alive. The driver ahead of Stu might have pulled into the left-hand lane but chose to wait for the procession to end. No one pulled out to pass, and neither did Stu, despite his hurry. He felt a sense of inevitability. No one could keep him from the truth now that he had got this far, but he worried about George, who had seen himself as some kind of avenger in Las Vegas and might assume the role again.  When at last the funeral procession ended, Stu pulled out ahead of the other cars and soon left them behind. What had his grandfather meant by warning Prudhomme to be careful?

His foot pressed down on the gas pedal hard, and the little car surged ahead. All he needed now was for a policeman to stop him, but for once he was lucky. He had a bad feeling, George was in danger, from himself if no one else. But where was he, on his way to Reed's office? If he knew something, the fool wouldn't wait for anyone else, he'd try to handle it himself, hungry as he was for approval—whose, that old man's? Stu hoped not because if that's what George craved he was bound to be disappointed--again. The old vulture had stopped handing out approval a long time ago.

 Stu also thought about Suzanne, wondering if she would care if something happened to George.  He recalled that she had been sitting by the telephone when Stu had called; expecting George's call or someone else's? The Prudhommes, once lucky in business, were unlucky in love, always had been.  Because business was their true love? Yet George wasn't that way. Unless Stu read him wrong, and he was just like the others, just not successful.

His grandfather had talked about the attempt on Prudhomme's life by the man in the bar who wanted to punish him because of his affair with his wife—who was he? Stu didn't want to guess, wondered if his grandfather knew that too. It must have come out during Reed's trial. He ought to be able to discover the truth from his grandfather. Did George know?  Stu hadn't asked the right questions, but maybe George had. It was another loose end. Stu didn't know how it bore on the current crisis, but he wanted to tie it up anyway. 

At one point Stu nearly turned the car back around because he felt so sure he already knew where George had gone, but he didn't want to take the chance he was wrong. Only his grandfather could tell him how much George knew. Stu hoped he'd tell him, hoped he wouldn't play with him instead. Hoped he'd act like a human being.

At last the exit he was looking for came up, and Stu turned off the parkway with a screech of tires. This time the police car was waiting, followed him with lights flashing, and, cursing, he had to pull over. The cop got out of the car, moving too slowly, approached Stu's window, his hand on his gun.  Was that necessary, Stu asked himself. He rolled down the window. "Sorry, Officer, sorry. I'm in sort of a hurry."

"This is a residential neighborhood."

Stu nodded. "I know. I should've slowed down."

"Where are you going in such a hurry?"

Stu told him. Asked for his license and registration, he produced them, handed them over.

The cop studied them, handed them back.

"That's all?" Stu asked, surprised.

"This is a just a warning," the cop said. "Slow down before you hit the local road."

It was Stu's first piece of luck all day. He hoped it was an omen.

Again he drove past the rusted iron gates along the canopied driveway. No lights so he had to slow down. He couldn't afford an accident. He pulled up to the house and left the car, pounding on the door and calling, "Mrs. Cartwright, open up. It's important."

He heard her on the stairs, her steps sounding impossibly slow until finally she opened the door.

Come Back Next Month for Chapter Sixteen