Palace Council Read Free Page B

number of men and women too famous for Eddie to dare approach. One of the toasts was offered by Robert Wagner, the mayor of New York. Frank Sinatra offered another. Everyone was buoyant but Eddie, who usually limited himself to a single glass but tonight drank quite a bit more. Eddie attended out of duty, and wished he had not.
    He was in love with the bride-to-be.
    Eddie watched the happy couple, listened as glasses were raised to Aurelia Treene and Kevin Garland. His usual geniality faded. He began to seethe. People were surprised. Eddie Wesley was always so placid, and so much fun. Tonight he argued belligerently with other guests. Finally, a young man with whose family Eddie’s had summered on Martha’s Vineyard in the old days was delegated to pull him aside and calm him. Eddie broke free. Harry Belafonte tried. Eddie broke free. Langston Hughes tried. Eddie broke free. A grim phalanx of Harlem men then offered courteously to put the fool out on the street, but the bride-to-be intervened. In full view of everyone, she grabbed Eddie by the arm and dragged him into the kitchen. He did not break free. People whispered excitedly. The kitchen was busy with hired help, everyone in smart, sparkling uniforms, eyes on the princess as they pretended to look the other way.
    Aurelia was furious.
    â€œThis is just the way it is. This isn’t your world, so I can’t expect you to understand. But I have responsibilities to my family.”
    â€œAnd to yourself?” Eddie demanded. “Have you no responsibility to yourself?”
    Aurelia was unfazed. She remained schoolmarm-stern. “How can we preserve what matters if we all keep on putting ourselves first?”
    â€œI don’t put myself first. I put you first.”
    â€œYou put your writing first.”
    â€œI love you,” he said, the words like ash in his mouth. “I’ll always love you.”
    For a moment Aurelia softened. She touched his cheek. “Maybe if you’d taken that job with my uncle.” Then, as if by force of will, the schoolmarm was back. “Some things we can’t do anything about. That’s the way life is.” To this credo, Eddie had no answer. “Now, behave yourself,” she added.
    Aurelia rejoined her admirers, and her glaringly unamused fiancé. Eddie decided the time had come to depart. A friend or two offered to accompany him, but Eddie shook his head. In consequence, he was alone when, thirty minutes later, he found the body.

CHAPTER 2
    The Cross
    (I)
    E VERY CORPSE on which Eddie Wesley had ever laid eyes had belonged, once, to someone he knew, for his familiarity with the species flowed entirely from encounters at funeral parlors and what were called “homegoing services” at his father’s church. His term in the Army had been served entirely within the nation’s borders, and even during his months working for Scarlett he had never touched what Lenny called the happy end of the business. It was past midnight when Eddie came upon his first-ever unknown body. He was wandering among the lush trees of Roger Morris Park, across Jumel Terrace from the party, talking himself down, remembering how his father always warned against treating desire as implying entitlement. The park was closed to visitors after dark and haunted besides, but Eddie was a doubter of conventions and rules, except in literature, where he accepted them entirely. The park had once been the grounds of the most famous mansion in all of Manhattan, the ornate Palladian palace that had been home, a century and a half ago, to Madame Jumel, perhaps the wealthiest woman in the land. This was back around the time of the Louisiana Purchase, when the Haarlem Heights had been a distant, rural enclave for the white and well-to-do of the polyglot city. Harlem of Eddie’s era, after sixty years of Negrification, possessed few genuine tourist attractions, and the Jumel Mansion was among the few, although its