The Sirena Quest

by Michael A. Kahn

  He’d drafted the opening scene that same winter night, writing into the wee hours as the snow fell outside.

  Four pages.

  He’d been polishing it ever since. Best writing he’d done. The scene almost worked.

  Almost.

  It was that gap—between the experiences and the words—that obsessed him. He knew there was a story there, and a powerful one, and if he could tell it right, he might finally have something to point to in his life besides a thirty-second television commercial featuring a Siamese cat dressed in full opera gear (including breastplate and helmet) singing Wagner to a sack of kitty litter.

  And thus, when Ray Gorman called that afternoon, Gordie was not there. Although seated behind a desk high above North Michigan Avenue on a sunny day in June of 1994, the window behind him displaying a dramatic view of Lake Michigan and the scalloped beaches on Chicago’s north side, Gordie was back in Skokie on a moonless night in the spring of 1970. Specifically, according to the lines immediately below the words FADE IN, he was in the front seat of his father’s Ford Fairlane, the Fifth Dimension’s “Age of Aquarius” on the car radio, the windows fogged, receiving a clumsy but earnest hand-job from Sherry Goldfarb.

  The moment was so vivid that when his secretary knocked on his office door, he realized that he had a throbbing erection—a predicament made all the more awkward by his glass-top desk. If she noticed, she didn’t let on. She placed a stack of inter-office memos in his in-box and turned to leave.

  “Any calls?” he asked, aiming for a calm tone.

  “Mr. Richards wants to know if you can move tomorrow’s meeting back to 3:30. Mr. Moran called about lunch. And a Mr. Gorman just called.”

  “Ray Gorman?”

  She paused at the door and frowned. “I think that’s his first name.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I don’t know. He told me to put him into your voice mail.”

  After she left, Gordie turned his chair toward the window, rapping a pencil against his knee.

  Ray Gorman.

  Other than that conference call last winter when Ray made them all take the reunion pledge, he hadn’t heard from his freshman year roommate in years. His smile faded as he recalled reading in Bryce Wharton’s goofy column in the alumni magazine that Ray was now a big-time real estate developer somewhere out west. Even got his face on the cover of some national magazine. No doubt a millionaire, life a bowl of cherries.

  He glanced over at the phone, at the blinking red message light. After a moment, he lifted the receiver and pressed the message button.

  “One new message,” the automated female voice announced. “Received today at five-eleven p.m.”

  A pause, and then: “Hey, Cohen, it’s Gorman. Your secretary claims you’re busy. Yeah, right. Put your dick back in your pants and grab a pencil. Lou and I are driving up to Chicago tonight. We’re staying at the Palmer House. We’re in the hunt, dude. And so are you. Fill you in tomorrow morning. Meet us in the hotel restaurant at eight. No excuses. None. See you tomorrow.”

  Gordie placed the receiver back in the cradle.

  After a moment, he turned toward his screenplay.

  Draft Three.

  The Great American Screenplay

  Nearly twenty years in the making.

  All four pages of it.

  He sighed and shook his head.

  Part 3: The Hunt

  In her last known photograph, Sirena is seated in front of the Class of ’56 at their senior class banquet. If you study that black-and-white photo under a magnifying glass, as hundreds before you have done, you will see evidence of her more celebrated adventures. Most of the big toe on her right foot is missing, broken off in 1923 when her chaperones from the Class of ’24 jammed her into the backseat of the waiting Model T in front of the Tremont Hotel in Boston after her evening at the senior class banquet. The uneven gash along her right arm is the scar from the cement used to reattach a chunk of marble that broke off when she was shoved out of a moving train during her third abduction from the college. The chips and nicks in the folds of her gown and the two deep grooves in the granite base were gouged when the heavy chains came loose during the notorious Homecoming Chase of 1937.

  “The Siren of Barrett,”

  New England Heritage (Vol. 53, No. 2)

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ray downed the rest of his orange juice. “Advertising? Never would have guessed.”

  “I thought he’d be a comedian,” Lou said.

  “We all did. Gordie was the funniest guy I knew. I kept waiting for him to pop up on Johnny Carson, or in a movie, or on his own TV show.” He shook his head. “What happened?”

  “He told me there’s more to life than making people laugh. He wanted to be a serious writer.”

  “So he picked advertising?”

  Lou shrugged. “Pays the bills.”

  They were eating breakfast in the coffee shop at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago’s Loop.

  Lou glanced at his watch. Gordie was running late.

  “That’s why he left Hollywood?” Ray asked.

  “I think he’d had enough. He’s from Chicago. An only child. His dad died a few years back, but his mom still lives here.”

  “Did he ever get a movie made?”

  “He had scripts out on option—lots of them. But nothing got made.” Lou shook his head. “Not even the talking monkey rewrite.”

  Ray frowned. “And what exactly is a talking monkey rewrite?”

  Lou smiled. “Not quite Citizen Kane. The premise was that this nerdy accountant in Detroit inherits a squirrel monkey from his aunt. He’s never had a pet in his life, has no idea what to do with it, decides to give it away. He’s on his way to animal pound when he discovers that the monkey can talk.”

  “And?”

  “The working title was Motown Monkey Business. Gordie got hired to do a rewrite. Gordie’s agent heard it was going to be a comeback vehicle for Jim Nabors.”

  “And?”

  Lou shrugged. “Nothing. Gordie heard Nabors backed out two days before filming was to start. Hollywood.”

  “Gomer Pyle and the talking monkey, eh?” Ray finished his scrambled eggs and took another sip of coffee. “How long was he out there?”

  “Fourteen years.”

  “Never got married?”

  Lou smiled. “I think he’s still looking for Her, with a capital H.”

  “Oh, yeah. The hot chick from that mixer, right?”

  Lou nodded, thinking back to the evening he spent with Gordie in his Venice apartment seven years ago. Gordie had three scripts out on options at the time, although his optimism sounded forced. As always, he was still searching for Her—or at least some reasonable facsimile thereof. All he had to show were dozens of receipts from the Boardwalk Florist (which he dutifully photocopied for his accountant) and a case of genital herpes.

  Lou next saw him two years ago in Chicago. Gone were the Hawaiian shirts and baggy Army pants, replaced by Armani suits and antacid tablets. They’d met for dinner and gone back to Gordie’s Gold Coast condo so that he could show Lou his TV commercials. All four were slick and clever. Each had impressive production values, but what struck Lou most were the missing ingredients: the zest and zaniness that had been Gordie’s trademarks. His ads were retreads of other ads—clever retreads to be sure, but retreads nevertheless. Lou had returned to his hotel disheartened.

  “There he is,” Ray said.

  Gordie was up by the cashier, peering around.

  Ray stood and waved. “Gordie!”

  Gordie came bounding over to their table, a big grin.

  “How’s it going, guys?”

  Ray squinted at him. “Dude, where’s your hair?”

  Back in college Gordie wore his dark hair in a wild Jew-fro. Now he was almost completely bald
.

  “Where’s my hair?” Gordie eyed Ray. “Hey, Slim, where’s your waistline?”

  “Fuck you, half pint.”

  Gordie turned to Lou as he took a seat. “I’m skipping a production meeting for this crap?”

  “Crap?” Ray answered. “Listen, Mr. Huckster, we’re here to inject some meaning into your existence. I’m about to give you a purpose in life beyond hawking laxatives to the AARP brigade.”

  Gordie looked at Lou with a bemused smile. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  Lou smiled. “We’re on a mission.”

  “Oh?” Gordie chuckled. “Which one of you is Elwood?”

  “We’re serious,” Ray said.

  Gordie formed his index fingers into a cross in front of him as if to scare off a vampire. “No more missions, boys. I went on a JUF Young Leadership Mission to Israel two years ago. Just outside Haifa they hauled me to the back of the bus with a pledge card. A Jewish gang bang.” He groaned. “I’m still paying off that pledge.”

  “Serves you right,” Ray said. “You probably went to Israel to get laid.”

  “Hey, I’d go to Afghanistan to get laid.”

  “And?”

  Gordie shrugged. “Came back horny and poor. Story of my life.”

  The waitress took Gordie’s order: a toasted plain bagel and a glass of milk.

  “The old stomach’s acting up,” he told them when she left. “Doctor says no more coffee.”

  “Look at you,” Ray said. “You look like an adult.”

  Gordie had on a gray pinstriped suit, a white shirt with a blue collar, and a red-and-blue striped tie with a matching red handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit. With his neatly trimmed beard, bald head, and thick, wire-rim glasses, he looked like a cross between a Haight-Ashbury poet and a loan officer.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gordie said. “So what’s this sacred mission?”

  “Sirena,” Lou said.

  Gordie frowned. “What about her?”

  Ray said, “We’re looking for her.”

  Gordie laughed. “You and half the alums. You see that piece in the Wall Street Journal last week? There must be guys on every continent looking for her. Like those goofy tax lawyers.”

  “Which ones are they?” Lou asked.

  “Class of Sixty-four, I think.” Gordie frowned as he tried to remember the article. “Three tax partners at Sullivan & Cromwell. Searching for her in Morocco, for chrissakes. Based on some obscure reference in a commencement address by Washburn.”

  Lou said, “Ray may have found something more significant.”

  Gordie turned to Ray with a skeptical look. “And what would that be?”

  Ray glanced around and leaned forward, his voice low. “Washburn wasn’t the one who hid her.”

  “Who did?”

  Lou said, “A Chicago lawyer named Graham Marshall.”

  Gordie stared at Ray, and then Lou. “How do you know all this?”

  The waitress arrived with Gordie’s breakfast. After she left, Lou explained what they’d pieced together.

  Gordie asked, “Have you talked to this Marshall guy?”

  “He’s dead,” Ray said.

  Gordie applied cream cheese to his bagel. “So why are you here?”

  Ray said, “Marshall was a Chicago partner in Abbott & Windsor. Lou knows a guy over there. He agreed to see us this morning. You comin’ with?”

  Gordie glanced at Lou and then checked his watch. “When?”

  “Twenty minutes,” Lou said.

  “Well, I have to be back by noon.” Gordie took a bit of his bagel and gave them a sheepish grin. “Client lunch.”

  “We’ll be done by then,” Ray said. “You’ll have plenty of time to strap on your kneepads.”

  Gordie checked his watch again, hesitant.

  “Come on, Gordie,” Lou said. “If I can do it, you can do it.”

  Gordie studied Lou a moment and then smiled. “What the hell, eh?”

  Ray reached over and patted him on the back. “Welcome to the mission, Gordo.”

  “Please. No missions.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  High school baseball made the meeting with Gabe Pollack possible. Although several years separated them, Lou and Gabe had both attended University City High School in St. Louis and had both pitched on the varsity team. As an eighth grader, Lou had watched from the stands as Gabe pitched his last high school game: a no-hitter against arch-rival Ladue—the single most dominating pitching performance he’d ever witnessed. Indeed, Gabe had a legitimate shot at the pros until he blew out his arm in college. Although Lou would be his team’s ace pitcher senior year, comparing his skills to Gabe’s seemed like comparing a Sopwith Camel to an F-16.

  Lou, Gordie, and Ray were seated in Gabe’s office, which was fifty-six stories above LaSalle Street in the Chicago Loop. The large window behind him framed a panorama of the skyline looking west from LaSalle Street, the view dominated by the Sear’s Tower—or at least most of it. The top disappeared into a huge, dark cloud, which turned an otherwise picture postcard view into a post-modernist apparition—Jack and the Bladerunner.

  Gabe was in his late forties—tall and trim, dark hair and a beard. He was a partner at Abbott & Windsor, one of the oldest and largest firms in the city, with branch offices around the nation and the world. He leaned back in his chair and listened to Lou explain the Graham Marshall connection.

  Gabe scratched his beard pensively. “You really think Marshall was the one?”

  “We do,” Lou said.

  Gabe nodded. “There’s not much help I can offer. The firm doesn’t have any of Marshall’s personal papers. I checked yesterday.”

  “Who would?” Lou asked.

  “His widow, but she’s out of the country. She’s traveling in the Far East with her new husband.”

  “Shit,” Ray said.

  Gabe pursed his lips as he studied the three of them. “You may not need his personal papers.”

  “Why not?” Lou asked.

  “If you’re right about this—if Graham Marshall was the one who hid that statue—then he left a clue where you can find it.”

  “Why do you say that?” Lou asked.

  Gabe leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “How much do you guys know about Graham Marshall?”

  Lou shrugged. “He was a senior partner in your firm. A fairly well-known antitrust lawyer. Found an article about him in The American Lawyer—the one they did after he died. Sounded like a strong personality.”

  Gabe smiled. “Colossal ego, too. But more pertinent for your purposes, he loved practical jokes. That’s why I can believe he’d agree to hide that statue.”

  “Practical jokes?” Gordie asked.

  “Not the hand buzzer variety,” Gabe said. “He loved big, convoluted pranks, especially with plenty of intrigue. You ever hear what he did to Brendan Pritchard?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Or rather, what he allegedly did to Brendan Pritchard.” Gabe smiled. “Pritchard eventually filed a claim against Marshall’s estate. He sought damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress. I handled the matter, which is how I learned the details. Vanity Fair ran a piece on it. We got the claim dismissed for lack of evidence. Still, it’s a remarkable story.”

  Brendan Pritchard was a senior partner in a major law firm in Washington, D.C., Gabe explained, and a mover and shaker within the Republican Party. Pritchard and Marshall had been rivals since college, where each played squash—Marshall for Barrett, Pritchard for Williams College. They played against each other in two New England college squash tournaments, each winning one. They stayed rivals at Yale Law School, where both were editors on the law journal. After law school, Pritchard took a job in the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., and Marshall came home to work
at Abbott & Windsor. Both became antitrust lawyers, and fairly prominent ones, at that.

  In 1978, they found themselves on a big case together—each representing a defendant in one of the uranium antitrust cases brought by the Justice Department. The pretrial preparations included an inspection of a classified government facility, which meant that all of the lawyers had to get security clearance for the inspection tour. All applied for clearance, and all received it—except Brendan Pritchard.

  “What happened?” Gordie asked.

  Gabe smiled. “That’s precisely what Pritchard asked.”

  After all, Gabe explained, Brendan Pritchard had friends in high places, including the White House. He assumed that there’d been a clerical snafu. He applied again. A week passed, and then that application was denied as well.

  The inspection tour had to be postponed because of Pritchard’s problems. He appealed the denial, and that was rejected. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI. A few weeks later a packet of documents arrived at his office from the FBI.

  “His file?” Ray asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Gabe raised his eyebrows. “And what a file it was.”

  It contained more than a hundred documents, some dating all the way back to his college days. They ranged from photocopies of his personal correspondence to photographs of him at anti-American rallies.

  “Guy was a commie?” Ray asked.

  “According to the file.” Gabe leaned forward, his eyes twinkling. “But everything in the file was fake. All forgeries—but done by a master counterfeiter, down to the tiniest details.”

  “Such as?” Gordie asked.

  “There was an FBI surveillance report from 1964—an account of a clandestine meeting between Pritchard and members of some outfit on J. Edgar Hoover’s lists of subversive organizations. Not only did the surveillance report look authentic, an analysis showed that it had been typed on a Royal portable manufactured in 1962. There was a photograph of the crowd at a 1950s Paul Robeson concert up near Glens Falls, New York. It was a benefit concert for the Rosenberg children. Right in the middle of the concert crowd, circled in red, was the face of Brendan Pritchard.”