by Bill Eidson
Johansen spoke around the door. “Keep on coming. Once you’re in, she goes.”
Ben stepped into the gloom of the barn. In an instant, he took it all in: Johansen standing by the concrete wall, the gun on him; the mother and boy, bound and tied to a farm tractor. A shaft of light revealed the mother’s face, looking imploringly between Johansen and her daughter. “Please now, can she go?”
“I don’t want to,” the girl said. “I want to stay with you, Mommy.”
“Move it,” Johansen snapped.
Ben did a mild double take when he looked at Johansen again. Somehow, the man had shaved and cleaned himself up. Ready for the cameras. “Can I?” Ben said, gesturing to the girl.
Johansen nodded abruptly.
Ben knelt down next to her. “Hey, I’ve got a girl your age.” He pointed to Parker. “So does he.” Ben looked back at the phalanx of men with guns and he understood her hesitation. He flapped his hand down to Parker and the agent got his point immediately and knelt down to the girl’s level. “Run to him, honey. He knows you’re scared.”
The girl looked at Ben closely, and then abruptly ran to Parker.
Without thinking, Ben raised the camera and captured two shots of the girl with dirty blue coveralls and pigtails, running for the kneeling FBI agent.
“Never miss a shot, do you, Ben?” Johansen said. “Now come here, and take off that vest.”
Ben hesitated, but Johansen simply raised his gun to Ben’s right eye. “You’ll miss that, in your business.”
Ben took off the vest and Johansen had him kneel with his hands on his head while he put the vest onto himself. “Open your shirt and your pants and show me where the wires are—and then pull them.’’
After a moment’s hesitation, Ben did.
“All right. You go against that wall and you can keep shooting. Just save a shot or two for me.”
And that’s what Ben did. He took shots of the twelve-year-old boy, looking back at his mother as Haynes and the cameraman walked toward him. After that, of Parker and Burnett filling the barn doorway, silhouetted by bright light. Johansen had all of them pull their wires. “You’ll forgive me, I’m sure,” he drawled. “I had a bad experience with these once.”
Johansen’s diatribe took a surprisingly short time to complete. “I make no apologies for my actions,” he began, looking into the video camera. “Although I was saddened that Thad Greene was pressed so violently into service in the war against the disintegration of America, I am delighted to hear the news that he’ll recover …”
And so on.
A self-serving monologue that placed all of Johansen’s acts of terrorism into “the larger context.” This, with a gun jammed against Mrs. Greene’s neck. Most of it had a singsong, practiced sound. Johansen kept his eyes on the video camera, except when he would discuss the “institutions of entropy” that had “softened and weakened this great country in the name of equality.”
Then he would look at Parker.
When he did that, Johansen’s mouth turned ugly and his voice shook just slightly. Ben almost raised his camera to capture it, and then decided against it.
Johansen might read it as encouragement.
Finally, he was done.
Johansen bowed his head, and then waved the two television guys back.
“I’ve got some questions,” Haynes said.
“Just shut up and keep your camera rolling,” Johansen said.
Parker and Burnett stared at the newscaster, and he backed off, but didn’t look too happy about it.
Abruptly, Johansen shoved the woman away. “Thank you, Mrs. Greene. You may leave now. I’m sorry for the trouble.” He waved the gun at Burnett. “Walk her out, see that your guys don’t kill her.”
She seemed stunned, and then her face flushed crimson. She looked as if she were going to say something, but then looked to the gun and the other men, and simply turned away.
“What’s going on here?” Burnett asked.
“Do it,” Parker growled.
Burnett hesitated.
“Move!” Parker said.
Burnett took the woman away.
“Now how about these guys?” Parker said. “It’s time for them to walk.”
Johansen shook his head. “The fourth estate stays. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that leadership is all a matter of making the right symbols. Well, I’m going to make one right now.”
Faster than Ben could have imagined, Johansen lashed out with the gun butt and cracked Parker on the head. The agent staggered, and Johansen did it again. Blood gushed from a scalp wound. “Get on your knees, nigger.”
Ben started forward and Johansen swung the gun to him. “Time for your picture, you whore. Get over here!”
Ben’s hands were shaking, but in a glance, he double-checked everything. He had already put the flash on a coil cord so he could hold it off the camera. The power light on the flash was glowing red. He zoomed the lens back to its widest setting.
“You about ready there, Ben?” Johansen smiled slightly as he placed the gun inches from Parker’s head.
“Just about.” Ben stepped closer.
“You got my flag waving in the background? Is it still flying out there?”
“I’ve got it all.” Ben’s voice was shaking, too.
“Maybe you’ll win some more awards here. The niggers have been good for you, haven’t they?”
“You’re fucking cold, Harris,” the cameraman said, letting his video camera down.
“Keep rolling,” Haynes snapped.
The cameraman shrugged and lifted it up, the red light gleaming above the lens.
“Don’t do this, Mr. Johansen,” Haynes said, his voice conveying just the right sense of urgency and dismay. “I’m asking you—the world is asking you—not to do this.”
The audio was, of course, rolling too.
Johansen struck a pose and, indeed, a part of Ben knew it was a hell of a shot: the powerful black man staring up at Johansen. Parker was bloodied and confused, but still defiant. Out of focus, the running SWAT team, clearly too late. Johansen held the big gun rigidly in his right arm, his entire body conveying self-righteous judgment.
“Look at me,” Ben said, with the assurance of years.
Damned if Johansen didn’t comply, the gun moving just slightly as he did so.
Ben reached over with the flash and jammed it mere inches away from Johansen’s eyes.
And took the picture.
CHAPTER 2
“SO IT WAS PARKER WHO GOT THE GUN AWAY FROM JOHANSEN?” Peter Gallagher said.
“That’s right.”
“And it was Parker who clubbed him to the ground?”
“Well, I smacked him on the head a few times with the camera, but Parker did the heavy work. Then I backed off and covered the SWAT team as they came storming into the barn.”
Peter laughed and took a sip of his beer. They were sitting in a small bar on Boston’s waterfront overlooking the harbor. From long habit as a reporter, Peter kept his voice low. “So all this hero shit I’ve been hearing is just Ben Harris giving yet another subject a bad case of red eye.”
Ben nodded. “About sums it up. That distance from the flash, he’ll probably have some permanent vision loss.”
“Well, there’s that.”
“The picture was cool, though. Parker is this huge black force erupting from the floor; what you can see of Johansen’s whited-out face has this funny little expression like he’s just getting how much trouble he’s in.”
“I saw it. You might have a career in this business.” Peter touched Ben’s mug with his own. “Congratulations. And when I write the article I’ll make you a hero too.”
“Get in line.” Ben told him that after NBC released the footage, his answering machine at his studio in Fort Point Channel held over twenty offers for interviews. Kurt Tattinger, the new editor-in-chief, had fielded dozens more at the magazine. A literary agent who had unsuccessfully shopped around a book proposal of
Ben’s work about two years back had called to say, “Better strike while you’re hot. Time/Life just returned my call, and they want to take a fresh look at you.”
Peter lifted his eyebrows. “Enjoy your fifteen minutes. May work out to a half hour or more, given the TV coverage.”
“Better than last time.”
Peter nodded. “That thing with the priest? That was before I knew you, but I read the articles at the time. Thought you were a sleazeball paparazzi. Same kind that chased Princess Diana into that tunnel.”
“You and several million people. This time, if I can land that book and guarantee some autonomy from Kurt it’ll all be worthwhile.”
“The book, maybe. Kurt, he’s a fact of your life that’s not going to go away as long as you work for Insider. Get used to it.”
Peter Gallagher had joined Insider shortly after Ben, about three years ago. They had hit it off immediately. Gallagher was about twenty years out of Columbia’s journalism school, and had traveled the world looking for stories ever since. He was tall, lanky, and prematurely gray. A recurring case of malaria he had contracted while covering a story in Papua New Guinea had cut into his health, contributed to his divorce, and forced him into the marginally more sedate pace of a weekly magazine rather than the adrenaline-pumping pace of his Chicago Tribune days.
At forty, he looked about fifty.
But none of that dampened the intelligence or curiosity in his steady gray eyes. Along with the publication’s emphasis on photojournalism—one of the few remaining publications as dedicated— Gallagher’s political and criminal investigative reports were the backbone of Insider’s growing reputation.
“So what have you got on?” Ben asked.
“Me? Nothing that would interest a man of your caliber.”
“C’mon.”
“Hell, I can’t take you places. Robert DeNiro comes to town to promote his new movie, and I take you up to the Ritz to cover the interview, next thing he’ll be asking you about your motivation, your love life, and all about those shutter speeds and f-stops. And you know I hate to hear about that shit.”
“Like Kurt would send you in to interview someone who could cause him trouble.”
Peter shook his head, marveling. “He’s got a reputation for standing up for his people. That was his reputation at Boston Magazine.”
“Uh-huh,” Ben said, not wanting to pursue it. Because he knew Peter was right. Kurt was a solid guy, took his hits, seemed to be fair. Ben just didn’t like him, and he had the best of reasons. “Tell me what you’re working on now.”
“Let’s see, we’ve got a politician who can’t keep his pants on, challenged me to prove different.”
Ben made a face. “Leave it for the tabloids.”
“The line gets blurry sometimes.”
“Uh-huh.” Ben sipped his beer.
Peter, ever observant, got the point and moved on. “Another round of women who killed their husbands looking to get out of prison early. Most of them deserve to. Maybe you can come out and improve upon their mug shots for me.”
“I can do that. What else is local? I’d like to stay around long enough to see my kids before they start calling me ‘Uncle Ben.’”
“When do you see them next?”
“Tomorrow. Weekend visitation.”
“That sucks. Beats once a month, though.”
“When are you down to New York?”
“Week after next.” Peter told Ben about his last trip to see his daughter, and the afternoon they had spent at the Museum of Natural History. “That’s all she wants to do. Third time in a row. Whole city of New York I’d give her if I could, and she just wants to go back and see those stuffed animals.”
“She’s four,” Ben said, smiling. Thinking of his daughter, Lainnie, at that age. It struck him how he and Peter still talked freely about their children—Peter’s one and Ben’s two—but how they rarely talked about their ex-wives anymore.
Maybe a late-breaking sign of maturity, he thought.
He and Peter had a fair amount in common in regards to ex-wives. Both women were working journalists. Andi and Ben met when they were both in their early twenties back at the Portland Press Herald in Maine; Peter and his ex-wife, Sarah, had been a nationally recognized investigative team before their divorce. Her byline continued to turn up on major stories in the New York Times.
Ben was glad he and Peter had left off talking about Andi and Sarah. He never slept well afterwards. And Peter needed to be careful when it came to drinking. He swore that he never had more than their two beers here at the bar, and Ben never saw any evidence to the contrary.
“Hey, back to business,” Peter said. “I’ve got a hood who’s a real comer. Out of Southie, but he’s more than a tough Irish kid. Been all the way to Stanford and back. Runs a commercial real estate consulting business supposedly, but the word is that he’s not afraid to get his own hands dirty.”
“Sounds promising.”
“Oh, yeah, but he’s a work in progress. You got some spare time, we could build a file on him.”
“I’ll have my agent call yours.”
“Yeah, you do that.” Peter lifted his glass. “Meanwhile, see if your wife’s new boyfriend will cut you a break tomorrow. Tell him heroes sell magazines.”
After Peter headed off in a taxi, Ben decided to walk to his studio. The city lights alone would clear his head and evoke a certain amount of magic. He stopped to look back when he was halfway across the bridge. When Boston was placed as a lighted backdrop to shifting water, and vaguely threatening black pilings, the effect was visually fascinating—both ominous and beautiful.
He counted the interesting view as one of the few—maybe the only—benefits of his new life. Because going home alone to the empty loft was just as dreary as it was cracked up to be.
As he slid the key into the lock, he placed his hand on the door, feeling the dead silence behind it. No sounds of Lainnie and Jake playing or arguing. No sound of a television or radio. No Andi telling the kids to calm down, that their father was home.
He swung the door open.
Everywhere he looked, he saw himself. On the white painted brick walls hung with his own work and that of other photojournalists and fine art photographers he admired: Robert Capa, Eugene Smith, Eddie Adams, Koresh, Stieglitz. Powerful images all, Capa’s black and whites of children in wartime Paris, Ben’s own shots taken throughout the U.S. and all over the world: Mexico, Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia, Columbia. Mostly of people. People in war, people in trouble, people experiencing joy, people at work, caught mid-step in their daily lives.
Ben’s answering machine was blinking, and when he played the messages back, he had three more offers for interviews and another call from his agent saying Time/Life had called again on the book idea and were moving “from a nibble to stretching their jaws for a fairly good bite.”
Ben played all of the messages back from the beginning, ostensibly because he wanted to write them down, but truthfully, because he was hoping he had somehow missed a call from Andi.
He hadn’t.
He consciously ignored his feelings about that and smiled again at the message from his agent. Ben moved to his light table and thumbed it on, feeling a bit like a midnight alchemist as the fluorescent light flickered. He began pulling out transparencies, fingers moving quickly through his files. He laid a sheaf of them across the table and colors and shapes began to spring to life in front of him, each a visual story that played before him when he bent to look through the loupe. He did the same with the black and whites, pulling out file after file of contact sheets. Soon, if the book possibility became a reality, he would need to organize his thoughts and images into a consistent theme. And truly, there were genuine patterns in his work, and nothing would delight him more than to pull it all together. But for the time being, he simply looked at his past.
And because it was all intertwined, and because it was late at night and he was lonely, he pulled out the file of family pictures
. These were the better shots culled from more than a thousand rolls he had taken over the years: his and Andi’s first apartment in New York, their dog, Burglar, long since gone. Jake’s birth. Andi looking not much older than a teenager in the hospital gown. Exhausted. Wonderfully happy. At home, he and Andi holding their fat little baby in front of the old mirror with the cracked frame. It came back to him standing there over the light table, the exhilaration of those days: equal parts of fear and euphoria. The baby is healthy, my wife is safe. How the hell am I going to feed them?
And remembering that brought up the contrast, the difference between then and now.
I fed them, he thought. I clothed them, I housed them, and I loved them. I still love them. And yet I’m alone.
This book that his agent was calling about was something he and Andi had talked about for years. A project they could work on together: his images, her writing and editing.
Maybe now he would ask Peter if he was interested in writing it.
When Ben looked up at the clock, he was surprised to see it was almost two in the morning. “Oh, Christ.” Ben didn’t need much sleep, but he needed more than four hours. He filed the transparencies away and turned out the lights on the images surrounding him on the walls.
He was suddenly tired of his own thoughts and those who thought like him.
CHAPTER 3
ANDI MET KURT AT HER FRONT DOOR.
God, she was beautiful to him. Rich auburn hair, carelessly brushed. When she stepped out of the shadow of the doorway, the morning light brought out the gold in her green eyes, in her hair.
Like him, no longer a kid. Faint wrinkles at her eyes and mouth just added character. Her intelligence was there to read, right in those eyes. She smiled, which made him euphoric and more than a bit scared. There was no denying it, he was shaking inside.
What have you decided? he wanted to say.
Instead, he asked, “Have you been watching the recap on the news this morning?” His voice sounded perfectly calm. Sounded like him.