by Glen Carter
“I was the skipper,” his father explained carefully to his son that night. “They were my crew. My responsibility. Not a soul, Jack. The bastards would never believe it anyway.”
Jack kept the secret and his father never spoke of it again, even though Jack suspected Caleb Doyle was desperate to erase the stain on his family’s name.
“Goddamn them all. Right, Jack?” His father would laugh until the laughter became a cough. Then Jack’s old man would spark up another filterless cigarette and fill the kitchen with thick grey smoke, like a death shroud smothering his hopeless face.
The house was full of memories for Jack, cold but sweet like the menthol cigarettes his father reached for when the navy cuts started bothering his throat. It wasn’t long after, Jack saw the specks of blood on his father’s shirts. On a rational level, Jack understood that a lifetime of liquor and cigarettes killed Caleb Doyle, but it was the loss of those men, for which he was blameless, that drove him to the grave.
A day after his old man was buried his Aunt Muriel from Boston came to collect him. “There’s nothing here for you now, Jack,” she had said. Jack didn’t believe that. There was a lot for him here, especially his memories. His mother’s old dishes and brick-a-brac furniture – the lingering smells. His mother’s framed picture on the mantle. His father’s old clothes were stuffed into boxes piled neatly into a corner of the front room, ready for pick-up. They closed up that saltbox house and walked out through the gate, and Jack left Bark Island. Years would pass before he returned to try and reclaim the good memories – and to deal with the bad.
“Goddamn them all,” Jack said quietly.
“Sorry?”
“Nothing,” Jack replied. “Just thinking about something my father used to say.” He then told Mulligan about Argus O’Rourke.
Mulligan shook her head. “Saw that coming.”
“Wondered why the place stunk like booze,” Tommy said, as he placed three mugs of hot coffee on the table. “Didn’t think you were a rum drinker.” Shanks blew across the top of his mug. “Saw O’Rourke on the way over, just sitting there looking out the window in his front room. Don’t think he’ll ever forgive you.”
Mulligan was instantly mortified. “Quiet, Tommy.”
“Sorry, Jack,” Tommy said, as he stared down at the steam rising from his coffee. “Didn’t think about what I was saying.”
“No worries, Tommy,” Jack said. But Tommy was right, and at that moment he decided to keep the promise he’d made to himself in that hospital bed in Cartagena. Jack looked into his cup, nodding to himself as he thought about Argus O’Rourke at that window, a broken man, whose life and gold had slipped away forever.
THIRTY-ONE
MARADONA, COLOMBIA.
The dusk came to Maradona in spectacular shades of gold and orange and darker hues of purple and red that tumbled across hillsides and valleys stretching luxuriantly for miles beneath the rocky peaks of the Santa Marta Mountains.
A gentle wind dispersed the scent of mute and cabrito, and from many houses the guacharaca and caja – and of course the sounds of singing accordionists of the vallenato whose puya and meringue sweetened evening meals of the traditional soup and grilled goat. Nicolas Mendoza had been one of the best, a master of the German instrument who had won the respect and love of a nation. And Nicolas Mendoza’s blood still lived in Maradona.
The fertile soil here once produced crops that fed the belly: mangos and sugar cane, yucca and maize. But nothing paid like the coca, which was largely an unremarkable looking plant with astounding qualities. It brought many pesos to Maradona and within a generation it was the cash crop that spread prosperity across a peasant’s landscape like sweet thick jam. A hundred grams of cocaine paste brought more cash than a ton of maize. Easy math, even for the illiterate dullards who toiled over explosive extraction barrels like geniuses of chemistry.
A patchwork of Maradona coca fields was already descending into the shadows of night, and farmers prayed the fumigation aircraft would not return until the plants were stripped of their valuable leaves. Only then could the lengthy process begin to turn the numbing paste into profit.
When the sun dropped from the sky, Maradona’s night creatures began their incessant squawking. In the Mendoza house on the highest hilltop, Angelica – whose name was really Kaitlin – was waking up from a deep sleep and having difficulty clearing away the cobwebs. She must have drifted off, slept away the afternoon, but when she opened her eyes she managed a child-like smile that pleased the one other person with her.
Eva Mendoza was awake and silently inspecting her. “You were exhausted,” she said weakly.
They stared at one another for what seemed an eternity. Kaitlin took inventory of her. The woman was beautiful, even though she’d obviously been through a hell of some kind. Eva had managed to sit up and was feebly trying to brush long strands of hair from her face. She looked like she’d been crying.
“I must look a disaster,” she said, wiping her face with trembling hands. Sniffling into the blanket, muffled words. “I had more in my mind for our first meeting.”
Kaitlin blinked a couple of times while she tried to shake off the sleep. She pressed her teeth hard against her bottom lip and decided that nothing else would matter if this woman didn’t get some nourishment into her. “You have to eat,” she finally said.
Alejandro had brought food. Bowls of rice and dark beans sat on a wooden tray at Eva’s bedside. He’d obviously decided to let them sleep and had disappeared somewhere since the house was now quiet. The meal had gone cold long ago, but Kaitlin was famished, and she hoped her patient was feeling the same way.
“Alejandro’s a good cook,” Eva said weakly. “But he doesn’t clean as well.”
Kaitlin handed Eva a bowl of rice and nodded. “The kitchen’s a pig sty.”
They ate for a moment in awkward silence. Kaitlin watched as Eva brought tiny spoonfuls of brown rice to her mouth, in a process that looked strangely unfamiliar to her.
Kaitlin on the other hand ate hungrily and was already finishing off her rice when she cast a covetous glance at the two bowls of beans.
“You were always the hungry one,” Eva said, eyeing her with a warm smile. “Never far from my breast.”
Kaitlin nearly dropped her fork. Embarrassment flushed across her face, and she sat back, placing her empty bowl on the night table. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s all right, Kaitlin. There is much you should know.” Eva lowered her bowl and looked at her warmly. “But first, let’s both of us have some of Alejandro’s famous beans.”
Kaitlin’s hunger disappeared in a flurry of rice and beans and ice cold fruit juice she had retrieved from the refrigerator when Eva said she was thirsty. While they sat there, both of them pleasantly full, Kaitlin felt somewhat normal again. As normal as anyone could feel given what she was going through. She wondered how much to say about that, how much Eva could help her remember. If there was reason to trust, there was reason to hope.
The colour had returned to Eva’s face. She reached out to touch Kaitlin’s hand. “You hurt your head,” she said. “Everything is lost right now.”
“Like my life,” Kaitlin replied. “Will they wonder where I am?” Kaitlin stopped. Who is there to wonder? As hard as she thought, everything was still a blank for her, everything a mystery, especially this place and the only two people in her life. Maybe her assessment had been wrong. What if Eva and Alejandro meant her harm? What if, what if? Nausea seeded itself in her gut, her headache returned, stronger than before. Kaitlin slumped in her chair, sighed loudly, and searched Eva’s face with droopy eyes.
“I think we both need sleep,” Eva said, pulling the blanket up around her shoulders. “The mayor’s brother is a doctor in Cartagena. He’ll be here again in the morning.”
Kaitlin nodded and unsteadily got up. When she reached the door, she stopped. Kaitlin wanted to ask her about everything. Doctor? Kaitlin remembered nothing of a doctor. How badly had
she been hurt? What was the connection she had with this woman? Alejandro had told her, yes. But that didn’t explain how she got here, and certainly revealed nothing about her lost life.
Kaitlin fumbled for the light switch and turned – was about to say something – when she saw that Eva was already sleeping.
THIRTY-TWO
“When are we going to say enough is enough?”
Jack watched blankly.
“When are we going to be safe in our homes again?”
The host of the television call-in show looked directly into the camera and with coiffed evangelical enthusiasm held up pictures of the eight dead girls. “It’s too late for Tracy, Alyssa, and Marilee. Too late for Sherra and Krista, Roxy, Samantha and Susie. What did the Denton White House do for them? The mainstream liberal media parrot his empty commitments.”
Asshole, Jack thought. Puts Limbaugh to shame. Liddy too. If you believed television and talk radio the nation was under attack. Stoking the story worked. From New York to New Orleans and everywhere from Seattle to Portland to San Ysidro and east to Tennessee, analysts and the socalled experts were feeding the perception that neighbourhoods were under siege, being destroyed by drug violence. Republican Senator Aaron Robicheaux appeared on Russert, tears in his eyes as he demanded President Denton launch surgical strikes against Colombian drug lords.
Jack watched as the talk show host leaned into the camera. “Find me a farm boy who hasn’t done crank. Or an athlete who isn’t strung out on marijuana or steroids. Last week a third grader in Omaha was caught with an ounce of cocaine in homeroom. Said he got it from his dad. Where does it end, folks? Where does it end? Americans have had enough. America has to protect itself. National security is our sacred right.”
Jack grabbed the remote, switched off the television, and for the fourth time that evening he got off the sofa and went to the refrigerator. The beer tasted good and so did the Camels, which he’d picked up for the first time in college even though his Aunt Muriel condemned him mightily for it. Jack chuckled dryly as he thought about his mother’s sister with the unfortunate British accent, which was the reason she had left Bark Island. She was thirty-five when she had her stroke and the cockney started before she’d left the hospital. Jack couldn’t remember the way she used to speak, only the strange accent that came out of her mouth, even though she had never been to England, never watched British television, and in fact had never known anyone whose accent was legitimately English. All of which was duly noted with discomfort, if not disdain, by her former friends who thought she’d turned uppity. It took years for doctors to understand and to give it a name – foreign-accent syndrome caused by traumatic brain lesions. It was a diagnosis that came too late for Muriel, who packed her bags, got on the ferry and eventually found a husband in Boston. Jack thought it could have been worse. The accent could have been German, like the crews of the U-boats which prowled the waters off New England, sinking merchant ships and the occasional unarmed trawler for the terror dividend it paid up and down the coast. Old Paddy White’s uncle never made it out of the engine room of SS Salisbury when it took a kraut fish amidships. He still pulled a face and hissed lavatorial accusations whenever he hobbled by Klatzel’s, a fine Bavarian bed and breakfast overlooking the harbour. To Paddy it might as well have been Hitler’s alpine redoubt.
Jack grabbed another cold one, shuffled past a stack of unread newspapers and mail, and headed for the bedroom. He grimaced at his own reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. He looked bad, felt worse. Lately his appetite was off, replaced by headaches, ones that threaded their way through the fabric of his dreams until the pain became too unbearable to sleep. He was told they’d continue until he recovered fully from the concussion. In the meantime he needed another refill of painkillers.
Lately he’d been waking up in the middle of the night, his heart beating so hard it felt like a snare drum was strapped to his chest. He’d bolt upright in bed, toss aside his sweat-soaked sheets and search the darkness for the cause of his panic. When that happened he wasn’t able to get to sleep again until he downed a cold beer on the porch at the back of the house. In the distance, moonlight on silver sea, reminding him that Caleb Doyle never left shore again after what happened to his boat – his crew. Jack guessed the manager at Martin’s Marine took pity on his old man when he gave him that job fixing small engines. When Jack’s mother died it seemed his father’s only joy came from the sight of the empty plot next to his wife.
It had been three weeks since the bombing. Or was it four? The MRI on Jack’s head showed no lingering trauma to explain his headaches. Jack’s doctor shrugged and told him to take a vacation – a long one – because guys like Jack were basically their own worst enemies. “Learn to relax. Take up yoga. Re-evaluate.”
Walter Carmichael told Jack to take all the time he needed, which was unusual for Carmichael who sent his wife on vacations without him and had once delayed bypass surgery to ride herd on a network election special. “Get outta my sight, Doyle. Tell Lou Perlman to expect my call.”
The next day Jack popped two aspirin, drove eighty-five miles to Boston and boarded the shuttle to New York. He needed to tie up some loose ends with the apartment. His accountant paid all the bills but Jack still spent an hour going through junk mail. He then made half a dozen phone calls to touch base with people he hadn’t spoken to in a while. Kaitlin’s friend Jesse cried again. She missed her so badly. Jack listened to her sob until she regained her composure, and then he said goodbye – he’d stay in touch. There was a message of condolence from Mona Lasing but not once did she actually utter Kaitlin’s name.
He called Jamie Malone and was put through to the newsroom instead. “Malone’s done,” Dan Finney growled.
Jack was stunned. “What happened?”
The domestic assignment editor lowered his voice. “You know how it is, Jack. His show – he takes the fall. McCoy fucked up bad while you were off chasing drug lords. Got in an argument with one of the fathers. Guy grabbed for the camera at his kid’s funeral. That night he intro’s his piece from ground zero, and him and George are talking about what happened while the story is rolling. So get this. McCoy says the dead kid’s father was being an asshole. Bad move. McCoy’s mic was hot. So coast to coast it goes to fucking air. Shit hit the fan. Now McCoy’s saying you were AWOL and left him a real mess to deal with. He was frazzled. Jamie slugged him on the way out, screamed at him that he’d literally fucked up a funeral!”
As predicted, Jack thought humourlessly. “Shit. Jamie’s a good man.”
“Great left hook too. Anyway I hear he’s still looking,” said Finney. “Meantime watch your back, bud. McCoy’s in serious ass-covering mode and you’re not getting much love these days from the rank and file. Fuck’em, Jack. You’re no prima donna to me.”
“Thanks, Finney,” Jack said. He called Malone’s apartment and got his machine. He left a short message which included an offer of references and then hung up. Doyle was sure Malone would have no problem finding another gig. He was good at what he did. Slugging McCoy would add to his allure.
Jack called half a dozen dailies to suspend his subscriptions, and then placed his last call to Lou Perlman, his agent. “Time for lunch?”
“Always.”
Lou was glad to see him, even happier to see the monstrous pastrami sandwich that was being lowered onto the table an hour later at the Four Leaf Clover, which was located near the steps that led to the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian track. They’d come by way of Lou’s old neighbourhood, a rabbit’s warren of tall, narrow wood-faced row houses on streets named after fruit. Lou still took warm summer strolls along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, where he spent long periods as a kid sitting and staring at the Lower Manhattan skyline. He still got that faraway look when he talked about it. “My father always said, ‘Nothing there for a Krakow Jew.’”
Jack had heard it many times before.
The Clover was a hamburger-and-gravy death warrant fa
cing, with delicious irony, Lipsky’s Funeral Home. Conversation, mostly guttural in nature, rumbled through the smoky grill like artillery. Waitresses in cardboard hats poured coffee by the gallon and did the best they could to sidestep customers who simply belched when they wanted to settle up. A mirror that ran the width of the lunch counter hadn’t reflected an honest image in decades except for the undertaker’s cracked neon sign across the street.
“Tell Ronny we’re here,” Perlman grunted to the waiter. “You look like shit,” he said, one eye on the sandwich, the other on Jack.
“Thanks for your support, Lou,” Jack replied, suspiciously eyeing his own pound of mustard-slathered meat.
“Eat…eat,” Lou said, expertly hefting one half of his sandwich towards his face. “You’re wasting away.”
A glob of mustard splattered on Lou’s silk necktie as he stuffed the heart buster into his mouth, a considerable stroke of bad luck considering the expansive target presented by Lou’s gut. Jack didn’t know if Lou saw, or would even care.
Perlman reached for a napkin, but used it to dab at a film of perspiration that had formed on top of his bald head. He ignored the mustard accumulating at the corners of his mouth, efficiently swept his fat tongue across thin lips.
The lunch crowd at the Clover wore coloured hardhats, like hierarchical crowns that determined which union ass sat in which stained, cracked lino chair. The blue tops got the better tables near the window.