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

The Evil Men Do  — Chapter Nine

Stu had always preferred his youngest uncle, George, to the other two. It began one day at the seashore, before Stu learned to swim, when Edgar, explaining that it was time he learned, threw him into the ocean, then watched him flounder. It was the aftermath of a hurricane, and the water was choppy.  Nobody but the lifeguard was watching, and Stu was already getting sucked out when the lifeguard swam out and dragged him back, then bawled Edgar out. Since that time, Stu stayed as far away from them as possible. He really believed that they wanted to get rid of him, and he was glad when there were no more reunions at the beach.

Later, like any other teenager, Stu tried, unsuccessfully, to get out of the occasions when the family got together.   

Stu knew he would have to interview his grandfather at some point too, see how much he could get out of him. His uncles claimed the old man was senile. Was he really? Stu wondered if they were afraid the old man would divulge facts they didn’t want Stu to know. 

They didn’t like Stu any more than he liked them. Why, he didn’t know. He might have got on their nerves years ago, but he wasn’t a child anymore. Neither was married, neither had children. Edgar had been married but was divorced.

After nearly drowning him that time at the beach, they ignored Stu. At those family reunions which he felt sure nobody enjoyed because he didn’t enjoy them, George was the only one who talked to him, asked questions, gave the impression he even listened to the answers. No doubt poor George felt as out of place as he did. Stu’s other uncles talked too loud, bragging, drowning out each other’s voice.  They were all so busy trying to impress the old man they had no time for anyone else. Stu had the idea they failed to impress him, though. He listened to them brag and sat and smoked and said nothing until  Edgar and Jonah ran out of things to say, got tired of talking, and shut up. 

Men, only men. The only women in that house were servants.

Of the four brothers, Stu’s father, the eldest, was also the handsomest. In addition to looks, he possessed a magnetic personality and a strong will. Stu used to think he never had moments of indecision or self doubt, but now he knew better. 

George, born years after Edgar, when his mother’s health had begun to ebb, was the weakest both physically and morally. Where the other brothers were tall and well built, George was slender and shorter than the others. He even had less hair. Only the bushy eyebrows they all shared, Stu as well, marked him as one of them.

Edgar and Jonah were not really twins, but they looked so much alike they often were mistaken for twins. Brawny and boisterous, with coarse black hair springing in spiky profusion from heads, chests, and nostrils, hearty and insincere, they had failed to demonstrate convincing grief at Prudhomme’s funeral. Stu did not believe that they grieved over their brother’s death. He imagined them returning to their offices after the funeral and spending the afternoon there, prelude to an ordinary evening, no sign they were bereaved. He told himself he had no way of knowing what they felt.

George said that, when he told the old man, he pretended not to believe it. George knew as well as Edgar and Jonah did that he would have preferred it to have been one of them.

They were raised in the kind of competitive atmosphere that made enemies out of kin.  Prudhomme, alone in his ambition, George in his feeling of inferiority, Edgar and Jonah bonded together in their mediocrity and supportive of one another. They too had offices in the city, in a different building. Stu wondered if they even knew Prudhomme had moved, if they had heard that the empire was crumbling. If it was.

For some reason, they wanted to meet Stu at Edgar’s Fifth Avenue apartment at 83rd Street. The doorman phoned upstairs, told him to go right up. Thick carpeting, raspberry with a swirl of white, like ice cream, muffled his steps, but the door was open anyway. Edgar stood in the doorway, Jonah right behind him. Stu chose his words carefully. They waited for him to speak first. Although they seemed slow, even dull, in fact they were shrewd, practical men. All they lacked was imagination. Stu knew he would have a hard time talking them into re-opening the investigation, and he needed their approval. It wasn’t up to just him.

“I don’t believe my father committed suicide,” he said. “He was murdered..”

“Why on earth do you think that?”

“He wasn’t the type.”

“The type, the type,” Edgar sneered. “What type is that?”

“You know what I mean.”

“We went through a lot to keep the police from digging into his life. All our lives. You have no idea.”

Stu had not expected this. “You tried to cover it up?  Why?”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to make it look like he did something he never in his right mind would do?”

“You can’t know that. It looked like suicide, why not accept it was, keep the police out of our business. They’re satisfied.”

“There was no note.” Before they could contradict him, Stu added, “anybody can type a note on the computer.”

“How do you know what was in his mind those past weeks before it happened?” Jonah shot a look at Edgar, who nodded his head up and down like a bobbleheaded doll. “You hadn’t seen him in how long? You don’t know what he was going through. Suppose he was sick. Pain makes us all cowards. You know he’d been seeing a doctor?”

Now, how did he know that?  “A shrink,” Stu said.

They looked taken aback. No doubt they’d hoped he was physically sick.  What else had Stu expected?  He knew beforehand that the visit would be pointless yet he needed them. “He wasn’t sick,” he said. “He was going away.”

“Who told you that?” Jonah asked.

“The shrink.  He told his girlfriend too.”

Edgar chewed his lip. “He didn’t say a word to us.” 

“When did you last see him?” Stu asked.   

The brothers exchanged looks; something was on their minds. Stu bet that they had sensed something was up with their more successful brother. What had Prudhomme told them?  Instead of an answer, a question, from Edgar: “What do we have to do to talk you out of opening it all up?” he prompted.

“Yes,” Jonah echoed, “what?”

“You can’t talk me out of it.”

“Something was wrong with him,” Jonah said. “Just because he wasn’t the type to admit it. What if he was sick? It would explain a lot if he just found out he was sick.”

“Explain what?” Stu asked.

“We had an agreement, it was all set, then he backed out,” Edgar said. “Under normal circumstances he’d never do that.”

“You want to cause a scandal?” Jonah demanded. How do you think that’ll affect the business?”

“The business is already in trouble,” Stu said.

From Jonah’s expression this was news. “How do you know? You didn’t work for him.”

“I know,” Stu said without explaining further.

“What about us? A scandal will hurt us by association. On the other hand, if you really want to get involved—“

“About time,” Edgar interrupted.

“I’m talking,” Jonah said. “You could start where your father left off.”

“What kind of agreement?” Stu asked.

“To develop the marsh,” Jonah said.

“I live there,” Stu said. “You don’t think for a minute I’d agree to develop it. He made up his mind suddenly. “I’m going to see if I can make my father’s firm profitable again.”

“You’d work with Reed?”

It was the perfect lead-in. “What do you know about Reed? His background? Where he came from?”

“My brother and Reed went back a long time.”

“So I heard,” Stu said. “You know he was in jail?” The news stunned them. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“There’s a hole in the past, nobody talks about it.” 

“Knowing that, you’d still work for him?” Edgar asked. 

“Give it up, Stu. I understand what you’re trying to do, but it’s too late now,” Jonah chimed in.  “Best thing you can do is accept our brother is dead and go on with your life.”

“No,” Stu said.  “I told you my plans. I’m determined to find out the truth. You can help me or not, suit yourself. I’ll go ahead with or without your help.” Stu understood perfectly their reluctance.  He searched his mind for something mean to say. “You two don’t seem very cut up over his death.”

Edgar and Jonah exchanged pained looks. “We are, Stu,” Jonah objected. “We really are, you shouldn’t say that or even think it. Fact is, he’d changed. We didn’t know him anymore. No matter what you say, he had something weighing on his mind. If it wasn’t his health, then what was it? We didn’t hold it against him when he changed his mind, even though in all fairness he should have talked to us first instead of letting us find out second hand. Isn’t that the mark of a sick mind, changing your mind from one day to the next?”

Stu, his hand on the door, turned back to them.  “What are you talking about?”

“Tell him,” Edgar ordered.

“I am. We have plans to develop the marshland. Build a mall there. Everything’s set, feasibility study, design plans, vendors, money paid out. He thought by getting you out of there you’d give up the painting and buckle down.”

“He changed his mind,” Stu said.

“That’s just it,” Jonah continued.  “He changed his mind.  At the last minute.  Not that he could.  He committed himself. Why do you think he did that?”

“I’m not sure,” Stu said.

“You think Reed knows?”

“Probably,” Stu said. He didn’t add that Reed was unlikely to tell him. “If you’re thinking of going ahead, I warn you, I’ll fight you every step of the way.”  He was finished here, rose, stalked to the door, yanked it open.

“Reed,” they shouted, following him to the door. “He’ll do it.”

“That’s what you think.” Stu stood in the doorway. “He was against developing the marsh in the first place.” Stu continued  out, leaving them standing in the hall, mouths open, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  Never mind that he had no more idea than they did why Reed, normally so gung ho about development, was against it this time, why his father, who never changed his mind, had changed it.

That night Stu, who didn’t dream, tossed and turned in the throes of one.  He was driving along a narrow road between two immense bodies of water. The road looked the way the Florida keys do on a map, a thin line, fragile between ocean and gulf. The tide was coming in much faster than normal, making the road narrower and narrower until it seemed that the sea would cover the road entirely and engulf Stu in his car. He awoke, bedclothes in a tangle, to the sound of cats fighting outside his window.  The orange stray protecting his domain against a black and white tom. The tom ran off when Stu opened the door. The orange cat held his ground, began purring even before Stu bent down to stroke it. He brought out a saucer of milk, and the orange cat peered up at him, its wild green eyes mild, inscrutable, keeping its secrets to itself.

Stu looked forward to Chuck Forster’s conservation meeting that night. He hadn’t looked forward to it until learning of Prudhomme’s interest. Now he had a chance to find out what was going on.  Wondering if Reed was interested in attending, he phoned and left a message with Jenkins.  “A meeting on the environment?” Jenkins asked, a smile in his voice which puzzled Stu.

“Just the marsh,” Stu said. “A plan to save the marsh. Tell him the meeting’s at seven. You can both come.“

The meeting was being held in the city hall, part of the same building that housed the whaling museum. He arrived early, but Chuck had beat him there and greeted him effusively.  “Glad to see you, thanks for coming,” he gushed, pumping Stu’s hand, who realized that Chuck had expected him not to show up.

“You expecting much of a crowd?”

“Hoping, more like it.  We ran an ad in the local paper, posted it around town at the train station and the supermarket and so on.”

Stu wondered if Janet would attend, kept his eye on the door. The hall was filling up, but he saw neither her nor Per. Per probably couldn’t come unless Janet wheeled him in, but Stu, knowing her views, had expected her to be there.  Surprisingly, a few minutes before eight Anthony slouched in and took a seat at the rear.

Promptly at eight the meeting began. Stu soon realized that the speakers didn’t know anything about the actual plans for development and feared the worst. “We’ve all heard about a movement to develop the marsh, but we don’t know who’s behind it,” the first speaker, a shabbily dressed man, about 50, with longish white hair and a scarf wrapped around his neck and dangling over his chest. “That’s what we need to find out.”  He eyed Stu. “You for or against?” The woman beside him, probably in her fifties, with gray-blond hair in two braids, put a hand on his arm.  “Fair question,” he said, “considering.”

“Against,” Stu said.

“You really think we can stop it?” A voice from the audience, an elderly woman clutching the cracked black handbag on her lap. “People like us don’t have any clout. I remember when we used to clam all around the bay, but the yield’s dropped so much it’s hardly worthwhile. As for mussels, you know as well as I do we haven’t been able to eat them for years, the ones from here. When the lighting company was putting up its new plant, some of us picketed. I was younger then, I was one of them. We said it would destroy the mussels and the clams. But it went through anyhow. What’s different now?  Nothing’s changed, nothing ever changes. The same guys are still calling the shots.”

Heads turned to view the woman doing the talking. She didn’t seem to notice, but, through talking, looked around, obviously waiting for responses.  “Who’s she?” Stu asked Forster.

“Don’t know. A concerned citizen, like the rest of us. Worst thing is, she’s right. Some of the owners of small businesses in town see only a chance to increase business.”

Later comments proved Forster right. Anthony himself was one of those who stood up later and said, “I don’t know what you guys are so worried about. This is progress. Progress and property rights. You can’t let a bunch of conservationists run everything.” He was in the minority, that much was obvious, and he knew it, casting belligerent looks around him. “You’re gonna have trouble, you try and stop it. You save the environment guys are getting your way too much. Some of us aren’t going to stand for it. We have a right to make a profit.”

“Getting our way?” the woman with the handbag practically screeched. “We never get our way.  The beaches are so polluted, swimming in the water is like swimming in a cesspool, and now you want to rape the marsh too.”

Anthony frowned, then laughed. “You know what they say? May as well relax and enjoy it.” A wave of protest greeted those words, but he continued to stand, chin thrust out, daring them to challenge him.

What had happened to Stu’s old friend? Anthony had always had a wild streak, a streak of cruelty, but Stu thought as the years went by his friend would soften. He got up and retorted, “everybody knows you just want to make enough money so you can get out. The rest of us want to stay here, and we don’t want it to look like Coney Island.” Anthony glowered at him, and when nobody else said anything, just turned around and stared, he got up and stalked out.

After the meeting, Stu cornered Forster, gathering up pamphlets on the dais. “Tell me about this corporation that wants to develop it,” he told Forster.  No need to let on that he already knew who was behind it. Did Forster know?

“Some corporation registered in Delaware like all of them. First they have to change the zoning so we have a little time to muster our forces. We don’t know who’s behind it. You know how it goes, layers and layers of legal entities but no names.”

“I’ll find out,” Stu said, thinking, he already knew.

“That’s one of the things I wanted you here for.” Forster looked apologetic. “I mean, I know your father was a big shot developer so I figured you’d know how to find out.”

Stu pulled into his driveway later on deep in thought. Neither Reed nor Jenkins had shown. Why not, if Reed was truly against developing the marsh. Had Jenkins given him the message? And who was Jenkins anyway? Who was he really working for?

In the back of his mind he noticed a couple of shadows where he didn’t remember seeing them before but ignored them, failed to raise his guard. As a result, his assailants caught him by surprise. He let out a yell, but he had no neighbors near enough to hear, just the frogs and gulls, sleeping now.  “Who—“, he started to question before a fist in his mouth shut him up. At first he struggled, but when he realized that the sooner he feigned unconsciousness the sooner they’d leave him alone, he slumped to the ground. Unless they planned to kill him, but he suppressed that thought. Instead he tried to impress on his memory certain facts that might help him identify them in the future, if he had a future. They wore leather jackets, he noticed that much. They smelled funny, too, and Stu realized that he was smelling old fashioned hair oil, worn by the men who lived in the shacks by the water. “I can pay you,” Stu said. That won him an additional pounding. He had about given up when his assailants dropped him, and he heard them run away. The reason they ran spoke to him a moment later. “You okay?”  A cop.

“Don’t move him in case maybe something’s broken.”

Stu focused with difficulty and saw the two policemen through a red haze that he hoped was not blood. “I’m okay. I live here. Help me inside. Please.”

“You want a doctor?”

“I’ll call somebody if I need to. I’ll be all right. You didn’t see those two guys, did you? Enough to identify them?”

“Say, I’m sorry, but they were already out of range when we stopped.”

“I think they were finished with me anyway when they saw your car.”

“They had motorcycles,” one of the cops said. “Got out of here real fast. They steal your wallet?”

Stu felt in his back pocket.  “They sure did.”

“That’s what they were after. Funny, they usually don’t beat a guy up as well. What’d you do, hold back on them?”

Stu shook his head, a mistake for which he paid with nausea and dizziness. “They grabbed me when I got out of the car.”

“They may have been following you.”

“Possible,” Stu agreed. “My mind was elsewhere, that’s for sure.”

“Living out here, you need to take precautions. We drive by more often than before because of the rapes, but we don’t have the manpower to go by as much as we should.” They wrote down the facts Stu provided and spent a few minutes cautioning him about prevention. After they left, Stu took a hot shower and fell into bed. He had a date with Janet the following day. He hoped he’d be able to make it.

He tried to sleep, but his head was full of arguments, and he felt like he didn’t understand anything. Why had Edgar and Jonah conspired to make Prudhomme’s murder look like suicide? What was the story with the relationship between Reed and Jenkins? Once again Stu berated himself for not educating himself, for standing back instead of getting involved. Was he going to be able to change anything now?

At last he got up and took a shower. He stood under the hot water for a long time and felt much better when he finally turned it off.  Then, wrapped in a terrycloth robe, he poured himself a drink and, hearing the neighboring cat at the door, opened it and took a can of cat food out of the refrigerator and spooned it into a dish. Did Janet like cats or prefer dogs? He didn’t know. He’d have to ask her. So much he didn’t know.

Check Next Month's Issue for Chapter 10