by Neil Gordon
See, it was easy: I grew up in Traverse City and had hiked the UP and sailed the Great Lakes all my childhood with my father and brother. I knew the woods and the water up there like today I know my own wardrobe. But man, was it innovative to McLeod. It was so successful that we bought a twenty-nine-foot Pearson and kept it in Saginaw Bay, and for several years that was my only route east. In the woods I was another nature child, hiking some of the last unspoiled woodland in North America; on the water I was a wealthy Cleveland lady who took her boat up north every spring and brought it back each summer.
Sailing became very big for us as, with the increasing strength of hybridized seed and the advances in forced CO2 hydroponics, the value of bud soared. Very soon our cash supplies grew far too large to handle in America, and we bought the Evelyn II. For some years I did runs to the Islands under the guise of the Bermuda Races, twice every year. And McLeod, of course, took care of me very well, first arranging the anonymous contributions to the Krosney family, then, when that was done, paying absurd amounts of money into an account at Wells Fargo in the name of Tess Sanders and opening a retirement fund, all in Internet stocks, that did substantially well all through the nineties until MacLeod bailed into mutual funds, well enough so that, were it not for loyalty, I really no longer had to work at all.
We were big on loyalty. We always had been. If we hadn’t been, none of this would have happened.
After all, Weather had split in 1976, filled with hostility and acrimony, and across this country were a couple dozen people who not only thought I was a criminal maniac but who—now surfaced, leading real lives—could have given the FBI more than they needed to find me. Tess Sanders, for example, had been created by a member of our Ann Arbor affinity group, Jed Lewis, and I very much doubted that Jed had forgotten that little fact—see what I mean about the statute of limitations? That makes Jed an accessory to Bank of Michigan as well as to the continuing crime of my existence, that I was living under that name. And that was Jed, who had been a friend. There were others who had never liked me, and never trusted me, even in Weather, and who only thought even less of me after B.O.M. None of them, ever, said a word either.
Explain that, Isabel, if you can.
Find me one other group of former friends, anywhere, who has never betrayed each other.
McLeod always said that if I hadn’t betrayed Dellesandro, one of the old Weather people would have turned me in. But I knew that wasn’t true. We had fucked up all kinds of things between us: we had too many drugs, too many fights, too much sex. If there was, in fact, anything I regretted from the underground—before Bank of Michigan, I mean—it was how horribly mean we had been to each other. That, and Teddy Gold, who had died in the town house explosion, and whom I had loved, the one thing in the world that can make me, hardened criminal that I am, cry, all these years later. But never, in all the years since Weather, had one of us turned another in to the law. Never had one of us talked out of line to a reporter, named the participants of a particular action, given away secrets that could have hurt someone. And here’s something I can guarantee you: most of us will probably never talk to each other again in our lifetimes, but never will any of us do each other harm, either, and when the last of us dies, still no one but us will know which one of us took Dr. Leary out of jail. Behind all the bullshit, that much remains true.
Which is why, when Sharon Solarz was arrested during her attempt to negotiate a surrender in 1996, I had been concerned, and sorry, but I hadn’t been scared.
Sharon, I knew, wouldn’t betray me even if she could.
And when finally, that June afternoon when I came back from docking the Evelyn II in Monterey and McLeod told me that your father had gone on the run, I didn’t have the slightest doubt about what I had to do. And why.
What I had to do was go to Ann Arbor.
Why I had to do it was because that’s where Jason would come looking for me.
Don’t get me wrong. I knew already what your father wanted from me, and I knew the answer was no.
But I also knew that I owed it to him to tell him myself.
Like I say: we were big on loyalty.
6.
McLeod’s Big Sur house—where he moved from Mendocino in the early nineties—sits at the top of a hill just south of Nepenthe. His property comprises about ninety acres bordering the Ventana Wilderness to the north and east and crossing Highway 1 to the west. Were the highway not there, you could walk stark naked from his bathroom to the ocean, so private is it. As is, he gives the ocean beach over to surfers, letting them park on his land and hike down to the water, for which he is pretty celebrated in those parts.
Of course, the surfers also keep any strangers away from Deetjen’s Cove, which is just how McLeod likes it.
His office, on the ground floor, overlooks the edge of the mountain, and from the windows, which define its western wall, the low fog I’d seen from the boat hid the sea under a cottony quilt above which shone a brilliant blue sky: Big Sur in June. The room itself, done in redwood and Turkish kilims, with a mahogany desk on which a computer showed a stock ticker and an E-Trade logo, was flooded with light, filled with a vast silence, a silence that, while I waited for McLeod to come in, seemed to me—as midday frequently does—antiseptic, to contain in its bright clarity middays from all through my life, all the way back to schooldays at home in Traverse City, my brother listening to Herman’s Hermits and my mother vacuuming somewhere in the house’s distance.
At fifty McLeod was a bald man, somewhat shorter than myself, quite slight, with a round face bisected by a pair of bifocals: black-rimmed, fashionable eyewear. He came into the room wearing running clothes, sweating profusely, and because he was sweating, patted my head rather than kissed me. As always his blue eyes held a kind of supplicating expression, an accident of their glisten: I doubt he had ever supplicated anything except grace, for he was a devout Buddhist. Then he sat down at the computer and did something with the mouse before turning back to me. It seemed he had a margin call and had bailed on Apple for the first time since ’84.
I was surprised that Mac had to cover a margin. But I’d heard the McLeod philosophy of investment before, and now I heard it again.
“Doll, every penny either of us own is in this market—anyone who’s not living on credit’s a jerkoff. Know what? Last month was the fourteenth straight month in a row that we made more from the market than from the harvest. What say to that?”
I said that I’d stick to extralegal ways of making a living, if that was the alternative, thank you very much—a conversation we had had many times before. And in that comfortable way things go when you’re spending time with Mac, we went on. The trip. The market. The wild news about Sharon. Being with McLeod, in his house, was the closest I had come to being at home in twenty-five years. Until he said what he said next, which was:
“And Jason?”
That surprised me. “Jason who?”
“Sinai, baby. Jason Sinai.”
“Oh, Christ, Mac. What the fuck happened to Jason?”
And so he told me. An Albany paper connected him to Sharon. Jasey had gone on the run with his seven-year-old daughter. But something, somewhere, went real wrong, because they caught up to him in New York, and he abandoned the girl in a hotel room that very morning and took off alone.
“Jesus God.” I was standing now, watching him with, literally, my jaw open. “Where was Jase living?”
“Upstate New York. Mim, you won’t fucking believe this. He was living as a lawyer called James Grant, and you know who he represented? Big Billy C. It was Billy put him in touch with Sharon, of all the shitty goddamn bad luck.”
“What is wrong with that fat idiot?”
“He didn’t know who Jason was. Had no idea. No one knew, doll. And Jason must have had no idea Billy was connected to me, because there’s no way he’d have handled a Brotherhood figure.”
“James Grant, James Grant.” Something was coming to me, slowly. “Julia Montgomery�
�s husband? The actress? That’s Jason?”
“Fucking A, Mimi.”
“Good God. Jason Sinai married the daughter of a U.S. senator? How did he do that? Did you know?”
“Not a clue.” McLeod sat across from me now in the twin chair to mine, a George Smith, and reached the cigarette out of my hand for a drag. “I admit I had some idea about Sharon, because she stayed in touch with Billy. But Jason? Not a fucking clue. I never even met Jason.”
I thought about this for a moment. But, like I say, I already knew what I was going to do next. I had always known what I was going to do if Jason needed me to. So I didn’t think that long.
Selling marijuana was not my job. McLeod had people for that. Still, when I told him what I wanted to do, he nodded slowly.
See, I knew that Mac distributed to the Midwest out of Ann Arbor. I knew that he had a man there who worked as a bartender and, out of his job, distributed all of the West Coast product. As always, it was a McLeod setup: the owner of the bar didn’t know, the other staff didn’t know, so there was no chance of a RICO investigation, even if the guy was ever caught.
What I asked Mac for was to let me take over the Ann Arbor job. I’d move his weight, stay around a few months, and when Billy C. harvested out east, I could come back with his bud, which was meant for California anyway.
Watching me, calculating, McLeod said, “Why Ann Arbor?”
“That’s where Little J’s going to be looking for me.”
He absorbed that, mouth open. “That’s what he’s doing? Looking for you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I looked away now. I had never lied to McLeod, and I didn’t want to start now. Then I looked back. “Don’t ask me that, Mac.”
“You can help him?”
“No. But until he finds me, he’s not going to stop looking.”
He didn’t answer. He thought it out, though, his calculation showing in the focus of his eyes, staring at nothing. Then he said, “Alright. I’ll make the call.”
See, change came suddenly, the way I lived. Once I counted: I had walked out on six full lives in my time. Six sets of friends, six lovers, six homes, six names. Not counting my real one. Briefly, it occurred to me that McLeod was the last person in the world who called me by my real name, and if I lost him, I lost Amelia Wanda Lurie too. The thought opened up a tiny little tear in my stomach, and I stood up.
• • •
We sorted out the details. McLeod could have papers ready for me in three days. I asked him to pack a car. Paper a divorce. Dale, the owner of the Ann Arbor bar, was a friend of McLeod’s; MacLeod’s current guy would resign, and Mac would ask Dale to give me the job, get me back on my feet. I’d have two kids, one in college, one in the armed forces, a girl. My husband was an arc welder in the port. Asshole put a hand on his daughter. I have a two-hundred-yard stay-away order out on him. I’d have an American car, a Mercury Sable or a Ford Taurus, not too new. As for the weed, we’d do a backpack, just in case. An old one, like left over from college. That worked good: I’m running from my husband, don’t want to give him a legal claim to find me by taking joint property, right? So I leave him the Samsonite and take my college backpack. Mac would get some Nouvelles Frontières stickers on it, or Eurailpass—find some old luggage at Goodwill and steam off the stickers. And I’d leave, right now, and stay in San Francisco, far from McLeod, until it was all ready.
Mac noted it all. With a nod, I turned to the door, and only stopped when McLeod spoke.
“Mimi?”
“Yes?”
“Do you understand why Sharon did it?”
My back was toward him, in the doorway, and I didn’t turn. “Wanted to surface, you mean?”
“Yes.”
I shrugged. “I guess I know what she was thinking about, at least.”
“Think she’s wrong?”
I answered guardedly. “I can’t judge what Sharon did.”
“Um-hmm. You know, I met Gillian Morrealle at a party a couple years ago. She said Jason and Sharon’s status was totally different from yours. Said that the fact that Mimi had tipped off the state police where to find Dellesandro would mitigate heavily in her favor. With a negotiated surrender, she said Mimi could count on the minimum hit, ten to fifteen years, first parole eligibility at eight. Less if Gore follows Clinton: could hope for presidential clemency. Come out of jail legal at sixty. Get a fucking college degree in there.”
“Mac?”
“Yes, doll?”
I still had not turned around. To be honest, I did not trust myself to.
“Let’s not kid ourselves, okay? I’m already in jail. I’ve been there since April 1974, and I’m going to be there for the rest of my life. I can walk my ass off across this country, I’m still in jail. So I don’t need anyone to give me absolution.”
“Okay.” He answered softly. And then, master of myself again, I turned around.
See, I knew exactly what your father was doing. I knew why he had abandoned you, and why he had run. I knew the moment I heard he had a daughter. And I knew because I had thought it all out, long before.
See? Isabel? I knew that your father had dumped you in a hotel bedroom so he could come looking for me.
And I knew that until I looked Jason in the eye and told him I wasn’t going to do what he wanted, neither of us would really ever know it for sure.
And I don’t need to explain to you of all people why, before I could do that, I had to look him in the eye.
7.
The next morning, at the Old Cigar Store in North Beach, a woman, good-looking and no longer young, sat at a window table over a cappuccino, smoking. She wore a light green silk blouse and a black skirt, both from Kmart, both bought for cash; black pumps; a faded jean jacket. Her hair was jet black, as were her eyes, and she held in her lap a weathered leather handbag. Next to her, on the floor, sat a vinyl American Standard suitcase, by no means new. On her nose rested a pair of Ray-Bans.
The Ray-Bans were out of character. But I have my vanity, too.
Outside the window, where she was vaguely watching, a Mercury Sable, maybe three years old, circled Washington Square, looking for parking. When a man in a suit, holding keys, left a building, the Sable slowed, trailing him down the street, ignoring the blasting of horns from the growing line of traffic behind it. The man in the suit finally climbed into a Toyota Land Cruiser, and the Sable waited for him to pull out, the cars behind him now no longer even honking. When the Sable had at last taken the parking space, and the driver exhibited her middle finger to the line of cars at last freed to pass, a young woman in heels, a skirt, and a leather jacket came out and, carefully locking the car and feeding its meter, came into the café.
Clearly the younger and the older woman were close friends, for they greeted each other with a kiss and a long hug. Then, busily, the young woman sat down, ordered a cappuccino, and got to work. She took a car registration and keys out of her bag, also an extra set of keys and a manila envelope, all the while talking in a flat California accent.
“Thank you so much for lending me the car, Cleo—I can’t tell you how it helped. Did I keep you waiting? Here’s your registration and extra keys, oh, and here’s some papers I found in the apartment—important?”
The older woman transferred all these things into her purse, answering in a low-pitched voice with a slightly western twang. “My God, yes, darling. I was so scattered when I left the house, I left my papers there. Was the shithead at home when you went by?”
“Yes.”
“How was he?”
“Drunk, doll. He was drunk. Now you listen, Cleo. Don’t you think about that bastard any more. You just get into that car, drive safe, and do what you have to do, you hear? There’s a full tank of gas, you don’t have to stop before you’re halfway through Nevada.”
“Okay.” The older woman smiled, perhaps bravely, because her lower lip was trembling. Then the two embraced again, and the older woman, after trying to
pay for her coffee and not succeeding, stood up and left, leaving her suitcase too.
She opened the car and checked the trunk, where an old backpack with Eurail stickers lay. She put her jacket on the passenger seat with her handbag, and her shoes on the floor, as if she were, in fact, planning on driving through Nevada without stopping. Then she started the car, adjusted the seat and mirrors, and pulled out.
• • •
Once out of North Beach, I stopped and checked my papers. There was a social security card, bank card, driver’s license, library card, a few other pieces. My name was Cleo Theophilus, Greek in origin, which was why McLeod told me on the phone, when we set up this meet at the Cigar Store, to make my hair black. I memorized my address and birth date, then started moving again, while I made a mental list of what I had to do. I needed to invent a family history, why my parents came from Greece, and when; where they lived, when they died, where I grew up. I needed grade schools, high schools, jobs, marriages, in-laws. And for all of those, I needed authenticating detail.
A new identity is like a novel, and like all novels, if they are to be good, you have to need to write them, not want to. With a sigh, I began to sketch out Cleo Theophilus’s life, and by the time I was on the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge, I had begun to feel the whitewash of imagination over the present, perhaps the most seductive feeling I knew. The day was brilliant, that pure, thin northern California sun, all of the bay spread out to my right, the endless Pacific to the left. I was on the move, on the move, and for the first time since I’d come home, my spirits began to rise: to be on the move was lonely, but it was also the closest we ever came to being free. With a little flash I wondered if this was what Jason, wherever he was, was experiencing. Then, to chase away the thought, I turned on the radio, and I swear to you, Chrissie Hynde was singing, just like that: