Graveland: A Novel

by Alan Glynn

  What was the point of that?

  Who knows? She doesn’t.

  What she does know, however, is that she liked Frank Bishop, and she feels for him. On the drive down to the city from Atherton they talked a lot, at least for the first part of the journey, and she got a real sense of what makes him tick, of how he thinks, and especially of how important Lizzie was to him. Maybe that last part is to state the obvious, but it certainly puts things into perspective for Ellen.

  As she listens to Charlie talk now about the Carillo trial, she feels no real connection to any of the key players in it. Sure, Connie is on trial for her life, and may well be innocent, but as a semi-public figure of some years’ standing—socialite, opera singer, mob wife, and politician’s daughter—she’s been so mediated and filtered already, before this, that she doesn’t come across as authentic or relatable in any way.

  Frank Bishop, by contrast …

  Who’d ever heard of him before last Friday?

  No one.

  This is an ordinary guy who’s suddenly living the unimaginable nightmare of having his personal life—family tragedy, professional failures, character flaws, the lot—projected onto the Jumbotron screen of public consciousness.

  From total anonymity to full-spectrum media blitz in a matter of hours.

  There’s no comparison.

  She looks into her glass.

  Not that it’s a competition or anything.

  Later, walking back to her apartment along Amsterdam Avenue toward Ninety-third Street, Ellen wonders how Frank is doing. He still has a story to tell, that’s for sure—a unique perspective, at the very least, and to put it at its most neutral, on a significant public event.

  She’s not going to call him, though.

  She should.

  If she was doing her job right.

  But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe she doesn’t know what that is anymore.

  * * *

  For most of Monday morning Craig Howley avoids going anywhere near Vaughan’s office. He knows that it has already been vacated, divested of all traces, etc., and that he’s free to rearrange the furniture in any way he sees fit, but still, there’s something very final, very Rubicon-esque, about this, about stepping over the threshold.

  It isn’t so much like taking over the Oval Office after a previous incumbent’s four- or even eight-year term—a better analogy, Howley thinks, would be how L. Patrick Gray must have felt in 1972 taking over as director of the FBI following J. Edgar Hoover’s nearly four decades in the job. Howley doesn’t know if Gray occupied the same physical space as Hoover, if he took over his actual office, but man, he must have been feeling the pressure.

  Howley himself is certainly feeling it.

  At least when a four- or eight-year term is up, it’s up.

  At least Hoover was dead.

  In any case, Howley chairs the usual 8:00 A.M. meeting of senior investment directors in the conference room. He then spends an hour or so floating around the hallways, popping into other people’s offices and engaging in a form of banter that ends up being slightly awkward and forced. He also stands around reception for a while making calls and sending texts.

  Displacement activity.

  At around midday, just before he’s due to go for lunch with Paul Blanford, the CEO of Eiben-Chemcorp, Howley makes his way over to what has traditionally been thought of as Vaughan’s personal corner of the fifty-seventh floor. He couldn’t count the number of times in the last year that he has sat outside this office, waiting for the nod from Jacqueline Prescott. But now, suddenly, here’s Angela, already in place at her new desk. He has a few words with her before making his way into the main office.

  He stands inside the door and closes it behind him. The layout and design of this huge space are pretty much old school, lots of mahogany paneling and red leather furniture; carpeting; blinds; a big, solid desk; anonymous artworks. Vaughan had the conference room renovated six months ago, but hadn’t gotten around to doing his own office yet, even though he’d apparently been talking about it for some time.

  Howley will do it now, though—gut the place and start from scratch.

  He has a few ideas.

  Brushed steel and travertine, custom fabrics and smoked glass. A couple of really big fishtanks, a walk-in humidor, a bocce court. Indulgent, yes, to a certain degree. He figures he’s earned it, though. This may well be the last office he ever occupies, so he’s determined to put his personal stamp on it.

  But the truth is that there’s a lot more to be rearranged around here than the furniture. It’s something that has become plain to him over the last few days.

  What it is, essentially, is a matter of survival.

  He walks across the room to the big desk and sits behind it. He looks out on all that James Vaughan—up until last week sometime—surveyed. He thinks of the decisions that have been made from behind this desk, the deals struck, the strategies devised, the vast web of Oberon-related business that has been conducted. Howley has even been involved in some of it himself—over the last year, obviously, but also before that, from the other side of the fence. He and Vaughan were instrumental in setting up a supply chain out of Afghanistan of the precious metal thanaxite, an essential manufacturing component used in advanced robotics. More specifically, it was needed for a program called the BellumBot—an autonomous battlefield management system—that was in development at Paloma Electronics.

  All of which is perfectly fine, but if Howley is really to succeed here on his own terms, he’s going to have to be more assertive, more proactive.

  He swivels from side to side in the chair.

  He’s going to have to do something about James Vaughan.

  Because despite all of Vaughan’s good wishes and declarations of support, and despite his various health problems, as long as the man has a breath left in his body he will continue to run things—at some level, consciously, unconsciously, whatever, it doesn’t matter.

  He was at it the other day, making that call just before the press conference, blowing hot and cold, actually trying to undermine—or so it seemed—the whole event. And it was the same up in his apartment that time, the way Howley was ushered into the fucking kitchen and then more or less dismissed after twenty minutes.

  Mind games.

  The ultimate example of which, of course, is this business with the “black file.” Howley has wondered on more than one occasion recently if Vaughan wasn’t in the grip of some form of creeping dementia, but not after that.

  It was too calculated, and controlling.

  However, there was one thing about the other day that puzzled Howley and that he thought about a lot over the weekend. He even discussed it with Jessica.

  The boys at Eiben?

  This new medication Vaughan is on?

  It was the second time the old man had mentioned it, and it seemed to be something he was genuinely excited about. It also seemed to be something that was outside his normal arena of calculation and control—this despite the glaring fact that Eiben-Chemcorp was actually one of the companies listed in the file.

  It was almost as if mentioning this new medication he was on had been a slip of the tongue, and therefore, in Howley’s view of things, a demonstration of weakness. Possible demonstration, at any rate. It was certainly worth looking into, certainly worth rearranging his first official lunch for.

  As he’s leaving the office to meet Paul Blanford at the Four Seasons, Angela tells Howley that a producer from Bloomberg has called to schedule a meeting for tomorrow morning. Howley is pleased about this. Putting down his marker as Oberon’s new leader in a TV interview—something Vaughan would never have done—seems to him the right way to go about things.

  He sets a time for the meeting with Angela. Then, just as he’s turning to go, he asks her to draw up a list of interior designers who specialize in executive office suites.

  * * *

  It’s not the dingy rooms, or the long soulless dingy corridors, or the opp
ressive rattling dingy elevator cars, Frank doesn’t mind those, but he wishes he’d picked a different hotel, in a different neighborhood. The Bromley—midtown, near Seventh Avenue—is rube central, the obvious place you’d pick on the map if you were heading to that New York City for the first time and had tickets to see a show.

  But he’s not going to change hotels now. It’d be too much hassle. Not that it actually would be any hassle. All he’s got by way of stuff is the few things he accumulated this morning on a quick trip to the nearest Duane Reade.

  It’d be a hassle in the sense that breathing is a hassle.

  But the relative anonymity is working.

  Because who’d think to look for him here? And apparently people are looking for him. He’s had voice messages on his cell and on his phone in Mahopac, all from journalists and TV booking agents wanting to get him to open up and talk. He’s also spoken to Deb more than once today, and each time the subject was raised—Victoria Hannahoe wants to do a follow-up interview and thinks maybe this time Frank should come on.

  Frank tries really hard to make his “no” not sound like a primal scream. Also, he doesn’t have any idea where to begin trying to understand what Deb is thinking.

  So he doesn’t.

  The only reason he’s keeping the channel open is because he needs the information—what’s going on, what is the FBI saying, when will the body be released.

  Lloyd has been the point man in all of this, and Frank is grateful to him. He’s always hated Lloyd, resented him, been unable to bear the sight of him, and now he just thinks, thank fuck for Lloyd.

  When he got up this morning, Frank quickly found himself entangled in the illusion of being “busy.” He took a shower and shaved. He went out to get something to eat. He bought that stuff at the Duane Reade. Every few minutes he stopped and checked his phone. At a newsstand he picked up a New York Times and a Post. He walked around looking for somewhere to go through them. He found a place, a bench in Bryant Park, and sat down. He scanned the papers and read anything in them that was relevant. And just beneath the surface of all this—in his mind, in the pit of his stomach—there was a faint, constant thrum of expectation.

  But expectation of what?

  It didn’t take him long to realize that nothing was going to happen, at least nothing that he might want to happen. And he was going to have to keep reminding himself of this. Because otherwise, he’d go insane.

  By the middle of the afternoon, however, he feels that he already has. The shapelessness, the lack of purpose, is inescapable. On the way back to his room, going through the lobby of the Bromley, he passes a group of German tourists. They look like intrepid explorers, with their maps, windbreakers, mustaches, and accents—confident, curious, ready for whatever lies in the undiscovered country ahead.

  And yet he feels like the visiting alien.

  In the elevator, alone, he presses the button for ten. On the way up, he doesn’t know what it is, maybe it’s the motion, maybe it’s a combination of that and the disorientating effect of the infinity mirrors, but something seems to dislodge deep inside him and he lurches sideways, simultaneously whimpering and gulping, unsure if he’s going to fall over, cry, or puke. He does none of these, but when he gets out of the car, escaping the mirrors, and is hobbling down the corridor toward his room, doors flickering left and right, he feels sure there’ll be some toll to pay for this, and a physical one.

  When he gets to his room he hesitates, standing just inside the door, but then rushes into the bathroom and throws up. He spends the next twenty minutes sitting on the toilet, eyes closed, head in his hands, squirming, grunting in pain, as his insides twist and coil.

  He imagines, when he’s finished, that this was some kind of psychosomatic delaying mechanism.

  Because it was either his tear ducts or his gut.

  And, at some level, an executive decision was taken.

  Avoidance, repression.

  Misdirection.

  Except that he knows what’s going on. He understands how it works. It’s just that he can’t control it.

  He could stage an intervention. Raid the minibar, infuse some alcohol into the equation. That would loosen things up.

  But is it what he wants?

  Because he knows that if he goes from thinking to feeling, if he hits that switch, there’ll be no turning back, and no telling where he’ll end up.

  Talk about an undiscovered country.

  He comes out of the bathroom and lies on the bed. He stares up at the ceiling. What he thinks he wants, before he surrenders, is to properly understand. And right now he doesn’t. Right now, despite the blanket nature of the media coverage, everything he sees or reads seems hopelessly superficial, each fact and opinion recycled, mediated, meme’d, so that he never feels any of it is actually about his daughter …

  He can’t relate to the person they’re describing.

  And he needs to.

  Because where’s Lizzie in all of this?

  Probably what Frank needs to do is talk to the people who were close to her, the friends she hung out with, the ones who knew what she was like and what she was into—the ones who can tell him if she really was, if she’d really turned into, some kind of extreme … militant activist.

  The only problem is, that will mean going back up to Atherton, and he isn’t ready to do that yet.

  After a while, a thought strikes him.

  Who did Ellen Dorsey meet when she was up there? What, if anything, did she find out? She told him some stuff in that bar, but he can’t remember any of the details. And in the car on the way down here, he did most of the talking.

  He slides over and sits on the side of the bed.

  What does she know? What can she tell him?

  * * *

  It’s early evening, neither of them particularly wants a drink, so they meet in a diner. It’s on Ninth Avenue between Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth, a real dive, but Ellen knows the owner, the food is actually good, and they won’t be disturbed.

  “What can I get you?”

  Frank looks up at the waitress with something like mild panic in his eyes. It’s as if he’s never been in this situation before and he doesn’t know what to do.

  “Er…”

  He drums his fingers on the table.

  Ellen studies him. He looks awful. Tired, pale, shaky. It occurs to her that he probably hasn’t slept or eaten much in the last couple of days.

  “The grilled chicken sandwich is good,” she says, to move things along, and on the basis that a grilled chicken sandwich will more than likely fit the bill.

  He nods.

  “Two, please,” Ellen says to the waitress. “And an iced tea.” She looks at Frank again, and he nods again. “Two.”

  They surrender their menus.

  The place is nearly empty. They have a booth by the window, looking out onto Ninth.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me.”

  “No problem.”

  He explained to her on the phone that obviously things had changed since the previous time they’d spoken, that the help he’d needed then was not the help he needed now. That what he needed now was just to ask her a few questions.

  Fine by her.

  On the way down here she tried to anticipate what those questions might be, but she couldn’t really settle on anything. What did he expect from her? As soon as he starts, though, it all begins to make sense. He talks for five minutes straight, articulately, and through his obvious exhaustion, and pain, mapping out in detail what he refers to, with sphincter-grinding restraint, as his “dilemma.”

  His need to understand before he can grieve.

  Their food and iced teas arrive. The waitress distributes plates and glasses. They murmur their thanks.

  Ellen welcomes the brief interval.

  She’s curious. Frank hasn’t actually asked his questions yet, even though it’s clear to her now what they will be. But the thing she’s wondering is, doesn’t he have anyone else to talk to
? She gets it about the ex-wife. But doesn’t he have any friends he can confide in, the way he’s just confided in her? She’s good at talking to people, at getting them to open up to her, she knows that, but this is hardcore.

  Reaching for his iced tea, Frank looks at her, and it’s as if he can hear what she’s thinking.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “This. The long preamble. I haven’t really been able to talk to anyone. Since the other day.” He sips the tea. “It’s funny, you know. When I was working—as an architect, I mean—all my friends were architects, or in that world, and when you lose that, the work, when you get kicked out on your ass, you lose the friends as well. No one wants to get infected. And hanging out with other people who got canned isn’t much of an option either.”

  She nods along. “I know. It’s more or less the same with journalism. I’ve seen it happen.”

  “Yeah. So. Anyway.” He puts the glass down. “Here’s the thing. That’s not my daughter I’ve been reading about for the last two days. Political activist? Militant?” He shakes his head. “Lizzie was a bright kid, but she … I never once…” He seems reluctant to pin it down. “She wasn’t interested in politics.”

  “Maybe so,” Ellen says, “but this was a lot more than politics. Plus, she was at college. Shit happens at college. People change, they get into stuff.”

  “I know. I know. But—” He looks out the window, and then back at Ellen. “That’s what I wanted to ask you. Who you spoke to up there, what you heard, if you met anyone or saw anything. I know you told me some of this stuff at that bar, but I wasn’t exactly at my most focused.”

  She thinks about this for a moment. The thing is, Ellen’s understanding of what happened is that Lizzie became central to events only when she spoke to the negotiator. Up to then it was all about the Coadys. They were the ones who carried out the shootings, who had a backstory and a supposed motive. Lizzie was just the girlfriend. She barely figured. But then she spoke, she read out those demands—this girl, this kid—and suddenly the story lit up like a fucking pinball machine … out here, in the media, but maybe in there as well, in the apartment. Maybe Lizzie’s real involvement started right at that point, when she answered the phone, and once she got involved there was no route back. Once she voiced those demands, it was an easy next step to picking up the gun and pulling the trigger. Though why she was the one who answered the phone in the first place, and read out the demands, is—and probably forever will remain—a mystery.