Banquo's Ghosts

by Richard Lowry

  Robert Wallets didn’t bother to acknowledge his boss’s presence, who wheeled around in his chair to look at him. Just went to the special place on the shelf, found a glass, and uncorked the bottle. He sat on the other side of Banquo’s desk and drank.

  “Marjorie?” Banquo asked.

  The grim soldier didn’t say anything. Last Wallets saw her in the Critical Care Unit of Mannheim AFB Hospital, the woman looked more dead than alive. Her head shaved along one side, a two-inch finger of skull missing, bandages, blood seepage, and with a tube in her mouth. A plug of cotton stuck in her ear canal, but no other marks. The Colonel in charge of the hospital just looked at Wallets with blank eyes and shook his head. No prognosis.

  “We can’t tell anything now.”

  “What about Yossi?”

  Again, Wallets did not reply. Banquo looked out over Fifth Avenue. His voice floated in the room. “We have to assume, of course, that the lucky mules caught their ship in Marseille or someplace and got through.”

  “What does Dubai Ports World say?” Wallets asked.

  Banquo shook his head slowly from side to side. “Nothing. Your lost devices might not have gone through their hands at all.”

  Wallets’ shoulders hunched, and he bent over his glass, staring at the desk right in front of it. Banquo knew how Wallets’ brain must be going into overdrive, not in thought, but in pure replay—over and over again, the sight of the looming, implacable Apache attack chopper, every tiny choice sifted from every possible angle. What he did do and what he didn’t. How it all turned out. Yossi clutching his face. The mules, their deadly drums and canisters braying off into the hills. Cradling Marjorie’s head. Again. And again. The images and thoughts crowding out constructive thought.

  Unless he shook free of such second-guessing one day, they’d become utterly intolerable, until the only recourse was drink, drugs, or madness. Banquo thought of what he could say, what words of sympathy or wisdom. But he knew he had none, and simply sat there in silent solidarity.

  Wallets took another slug of brandy. “Then we have to assume the weapons are here,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Loose Ends

  Something told Giselle her father didn’t like Anton. His eyes seemed like drawn curtains darkening the room of his mind. When she flat-out asked him, he denied it. But she sensed he had to make an effort to be nice to her beau. When she told him she was going out with Anton, he’d usually respond with a flat “Ah,” and sometimes offered an alternate diversion: “I’m having dinner tonight with the Estimable Person du Jour. You’re both welcome.” As if wanting to keep her close. Or keep an eye on him. Or both.

  And she noticed how since his return her dad seemed at loose ends. He didn’t want to write but didn’t want to be alone either. Anton obliged by forever telephoning, inviting her father to gallery openings, cocktail parties, and such, basking in his celebrity and even asking his advice on random matters. Almost as though Anton wanted to be around the Man from Iran as much as his daughter.

  For his part, Peter Johnson kept his own counsel. And at times seemed to enjoy Giselle’s beau; there was a lot to like about the boy. The kid was smart, polished, sophisticated, but even with all that, Johnson’s skin crawled every time the young man held Giselle’s hand, put his arm around her waist, kissed her hello or good-bye. The little shit had seduced his baby on false pretenses so someone could take pictures of her—duly relayed to Iranian intelligence.

  First chance he could, he wanted to force the issue with Wallets.

  Johnson had tried to get in touch several times since their return, but somehow Banquo’s man never answered his phone, and speaking into the “leave a message” voice mail was wearing thin. In the end, Johnson stalked him, catching him in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza as Wallets got off the elevator around lunchtime.

  “Don’t you like me anymore?”

  That brought Wallets up short. And he seemed annoyed at being caught off guard. It had been two weeks since that night on the frontier and the friendly fire “incident” in the mountains. Johnson immediately noticed a change in Wallets. There had always been an edge of menace to him, but it had broadened out, coloring his entire disposition. Johnson could tell: he had grown colder, colder even than Banquo. His soul filled with a terrible resolve. He glanced at Johnson, unsurprised and unimpressed. Without missing a beat, they fell into step together. “It’s been busy since we got back. Having fun at the parties?” Before Johnson could answer he offered, “Eaten lunch yet?”

  They found one of those glass-walled sandwich places on the lower concourse level, where they sat at a tiny table and watched the crowds of subterranean office dwellers stream by on a thousand private errands—none of which meant life or death, but all the same seemed to weigh like a burden on every worker bee. The tuna fish was a trifle sour, the lettuce limp, and rye bread an hour away from stale. The air down below, filtered, thick, and heavy.

  “Can you tell me about Marjorie?”

  Wallets stared gravely at him, with nothing forthcoming. He finally answered, “Nothing I’d care to say. You can imagine the worst yourself.”

  Johnson looked away.

  “It’s not that we don’t love you anymore, Peter,” Wallets continued. “It’s just since the last time we were together, a couple of mules carrying god-knows-what vanished over the horizon, and it’s everything we can do to find them again.”

  “Bad break.”

  Wallets took a deep draw on a Dr. Pepper, the straw gurgling.

  “Yeah. Very.” He sucked the rest of the soda dry.

  “Not angry at the news conference?”

  Wallets smiled for the first time. “Of course not. Meant to tell you Banquo said, ‘Bravo,’ ‘encore.’ ”

  Now Johnson prodded, not sure if he believed the man. “You shutting me out?”

  Wallets became exasperated, tossing a greasy ten on their plastic plates.

  “No, Peter—we’re cooling you off. What do you want, your own desk at the office?”

  Johnson bristled at the sarcasm. He’d put his ass on the line for Banquo & Duncan and Wallets in particular. He’d jumped into the shit and managed to crawl out. This was the first week he could actually put on his own shoes and socks and not hobble.

  He snapped back. “I want to know who the hell Anton Anjou is—every little crummy thing. I want to know why he’s still with Giselle, why you don’t have him upside down hanging from a meat hook in a warehouse, asking him questions. Is that too much to want?”

  “It’s too early for that, Peter. Anton needs more rope. And wouldn’t you rather be in play, right alongside him, looking available?” To that Johnson had no reply. So he kept his mouth shut.

  Wallets looked down at their Styrofoam plates, with their stray pieces of lettuce or crust. “You know,” he said, still looking down. “We’re not his ghosts.”

  The back of Johnson’s neck tingled with alarm. He’d never known Wallets to employ illusive allusions. Something was wrong.

  If Wallets noticed the look of incomprehension, he didn’t register it, now gazing past Johnson over his shoulder. “Banquo sometimes calls us his ‘ghosts,’ because we’d haunt people in places unseen and so much of what we do is never, never acknowledged—operating on another plain, between the normal world and one much darker.”

  Johnson’s sense of alarm left him, but not his confusion. Now Wallets fixed him with his eyes. “But the real ghosts live in the Old Man’s past, claiming him forever. It’s what drives him and by extension, us. I understand that now. Finally. And in a way I wish I didn’t.”

  Johnson didn’t know what to say. Wallets got up, and Johnson threw some of his own cash on the plates, splitting the bill. They walked out together in silence, and when they stood outside the door, Wallets’ reverie had passed. “We’ll be in touch,” he said. “You’re not cashiered; you’re just in the change drawer. Soon we may slide you onto the counter.”

  J
ohnson nodded. His impatience with Wallets had vanished. He watched the man exit through a revolving door and disappear into the street. Somehow, even with the coldest eyes he’d ever seen, Wallets could still turn the moment. Graveyard eyes, Johnson thought. Looking at his watch, he realized that he’d better get a move on or he’d be late for a gallery opening with Giselle and the Little Twerp. Mustn’t miss that.

  A Soho gallery—how original. The artist—one of those with a single name, Blaire—specialized in American flags. The stars and stripes plastered on every available wall and in every imaginable condition: some torn, some burned, some upside-down, one on the floor that everyone walked on as they entered, another over a casket, another choking a toilet as a constant flushing sound emanated from the tank.

  The first thing Johnson heard as the three of them—Giselle, Anton, and he—entered was the gallery owner holding forth to a group of admirers about his foray into Scientology: “I took my first stress test. Buddhism just isn’t doing it for me anymore.”

  Johnson glanced at the man: short, paunchy, in wealthy middle age, wearing $500 horn-rimmed spectacles; a guy who’d never missed a meal and knew the proper wine for every occasion. What was it, Peter wondered, that Buddhism was supposed to do for a gentleman like that?

  Then he heard a familiar voice. “Peter, dahling!” Jo von H emerged from the crowd like a queen from her courtiers in a little black strapless cocktail dress, a second skin that seemed to move without moving. She zeroed in on Giselle and linked arms, then glanced conspiratorially at the handsome Anton. “Well done, Ms. Johnson. So you’ve been holding out on me. Does Beau Brummell have brains too?”

  Giselle patted her arm, woman to woman. “What can I say, Ms. von Hildebrand? A lady never tells. In any case, he’s not British; he’s a Gaul.” And the two women laughed. From what Johnson saw the smooth Frenchie Banker didn’t mind the admiration. But something in his ex’s eyes pinged in Johnson’s brain. He’d seen that look before. Aw, c’mon, Mrs. Robinson. Naw—no way. Not with Giselle’s boyfriend. But there were bigger fish in the room, Johnson himself being the biggest, at least for today.

  Before the first glass of Chardonnay was half way down a crowd had gravitated to him and his brood in an elaborate magic circle. Johnson had been on TV a lot, and people wanted to talk to him. Touch the hem of his robe. Of course, he let them. He glanced across the room to the artist—Blaire standing nearly alone near his flag-choked flushing toilet—and if the jealous fellow could have poisoned this unwelcome guest right now, he would have done it in a Lucrezia Borgia heartbeat.

  Jo von H left early for another event, and later Johnson waved Anton and Giselle away in a cab. They were off to the Frenchman’s renovated townhouse on Grove Street. Silently he watched the cab bounce over the cobblestones of the Soho street, catching the first traffic light and turning a corner. Then, unhurriedly, he walked after the cab; the exercise would do him good. Fifteen minutes later found him across the Village on Grove Street standing opposite Frenchie’s stoop. The lights were on in the top-floor bedroom, and Johnson tried not to think about it. Instead he looked up and down the street. From what he could tell, nothing unusual, just parked cars wedged in too tight for comfort. He methodically walked down one side of the street heading west. When he got to the corner, he turned around and walked back on the other side.

  All the time keeping his eyes on the opposite rooftops, looking for any sign of something out of place. The line of townhouse balustrades—some in red stone, some in white, some in brown—were an almost unbroken line in the Manhattan sky. On one directly across the street from Anton’s steps Johnson thought he saw something. No movement, but some sort of wire or pole hanging over the balustrade that didn’t seem to belong. A shotgun mike? A very thin video lens? Impossible to tell. But it looked as if it was aimed directly at Anton’s lit windows.

  He walked across the street toward the suspicious building. The townhouse door was locked, of course; bolted, locked, alarmed, and a private residence to boot. No chance one of a dozen tenants might come home and open the vestibule. Nope. This was a very desirable Manhattan address, and somebody rich lived there, even if they weren’t aware that a long, strange wire protruded from their balustrade.

  He wondered: Was there a Robert Wallets guy at the other end of that wire? Johnson plopped his behind on the stairs of the stoop to think. “Can we help you?” A metallic voice from a speaker. “No loitering, please.” Of course, a security camera and a voice box over the stone stoop. But it wasn’t a real person, just an automatic recording. Relieved, Johnson got up and shuffled away. He didn’t like spying on Giselle or looking up at the apartment; his action felt all Othello-Desdemona. Halfway back to Broadway, he felt a stroke of mild genius. At one of the last corner payphones in all of New York, he dialed 911 and, when the operator answered, said, “Man with gun, Grove Street.” Then hung up.

  A mere ten minutes later an NYPD squad car rolled down Grove with its bubble lights flashing, lighting up every building, but no siren. The squad car rolled the length of Grove and slowly turned the corner.

  But Johnson wasn’t interested in that flashy show. At the roof of the townhouse right by the strange wire, shotgun mike, or narrow video lens, a man’s head cautiously peered over the balustrade at the flashing lights below. And Johnson whispered to himself, “I see you . . .” A Robert Wallets man, if ever there was one. Watching Anton’s pad.

  Comforting to know Banquo kept an eye on her, but what stung him was how neither Giselle nor Anton bothered to come to the window to stare at all the pretty flashing lights. His ears burned, yet he banished the thoughts from his mind. Stop, Othello. Stop. It’s about him and his pals, not him and her.

  A short block back toward Seventh Avenue. Johnson found a coffee shop on the corner of Grove and Bedford and went inside with half a mind to wait out the night. From a well-placed window booth he could see Anton’s stoop. The upper light in the bedroom windows was out. He had bought a half-dozen newspapers from a newsstand and ordered a club sandwich, wondering how long he’d have before crawling home. Some unspoken hunch told Johnson the young man wasn’t through for the night. Gallery opening, bedding his baby—still there’d be some extra job to do. And after an hour, he wasn’t disappointed.

  About midnight Anton came out his front door. The windows upstairs still black. Was he the kind of guy who left a note? And if so, what would it say? “Just restless, G, going for a walk . . . be back soon.” Yeah, the young smoothie wouldn’t forget the luv-u-note-thing.

  Anton walked past the window of the coffee shop without glancing through the glass and descended into the Christopher Street subway station. Hurriedly, Johnson slapped some bills on the booth table and followed the young man underground. He chose the Redline Pelham 1-2-3, Downtown to South Ferry or under the East River to New Lots Avenue. At midnight, the Christopher Street station still bustled, people going home to Brooklyn from a night in the Village or just arriving, their night about to get underway. So Johnson could stand in a far corner of the Downtown car, hanging on a strap with his back turned, surreptitiously glancing over his upraised arm. Anton never saw him.

  The train went five stops south, still in Manhattan—Houston Street, Canal, Franklin, Chambers to City Hall. Next stop Brooklyn? Suddenly Anton wasn’t in the car anymore. He’d gotten off at City Hall, and Peter pushed his way out of the subway car onto the platform. Moving bodies scurried through the labyrinth of the City Hall station. By sheer luck, Peter caught the back of Anton’s head descending the stairs to the Blue Line Trains. So they were going under the river—just the northern tip of Brooklyn, then on to Queens. Down in the lower levels of the NYC transit system, the platforms were more deserted. Anton appeared to be casually waiting for someone. And Johnson was forced to find a stanchion for partial cover. Anton didn’t seem particularly concerned, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts, only looking up when an A Train arrived at the station. That’s when things started to get interesting.

  Th
e A Train disgorged, a few passengers wandered off in various directions, and the platform was empty again—but now another man stood a car-length away from Anton. Where he came from Johnson couldn’t tell; he just suddenly appeared. Nothing very unusual about him. The guy wore cheap knockoff jeans and sneakers, hooded sweatshirt, a backpack for books and personals—the uniform of New York’s young male students and lower working classes.

  But what startled Johnson was how the hooded young man waved once to Anton in greeting, and Anton acknowledged him back. In an easy four steps, the two stood side by side, now both apparently waiting on the platform. And for no reason at all, somehow Johnson knew this was one of the guys who took pictures of Giselle.

  The rest of the night was a long, deafening blur of trains and platforms. Of rocking in the cars hanging to a strap and waiting for the whoosh of the pneumatic doors. Johnson kept well enough back to keep from being spotted—often riding in an adjacent car—though once or twice he came damn near to bumping into them. They weren’t sneaking around but open about their travels, acting naturally, even bold in their manner. Often pausing to calmly scan the subway platforms. Whatever they were doing, Johnson couldn’t imagine.

  They took the A Train on its long journey out to JFK International. Only to be met by another fellow in a hooded sweatshirt. Now the three headed back up the line. They ditched their ride at the Broadway Junction station. Switching trains again to the J Line on its way out to the distant Jamaica Center in Queens. Somewhere during the switch they picked up a fourth guy.

  At the end of the line at the Jamaica Center station, they switched over to NYC Transit’s second deep underground Blue Line, the E Train, and headed back toward Manhattan. In the process, they picked up a fifth and sixth, dressed the same as the first three, hooded sweatshirts, sneakers—and all looking Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian. Johnson’s mind simmered as he watched them, but for the life of him he couldn’t detect an objective; nobody pointed or discussed anything—they simply rode the train like everyone else. A plan, obviously, but to harm whom and how? Mass hijacking? Multiple train wrecks? No way to tell.