American Subversive

by David Goodwillie

  AIDAN

  THE CAB RIDE TO THE ESSEX COUNTY AIRPORT IN NEW JERSEY WAS A NIGHTMARE. Touché, who was already there, had made it sound like nothing, a quick twenty-minute jaunt, fifty bucks tops. But as we inched west on Route 3, twenty minutes became forty, then sixty. It was a hot, muggy day, and the cabbie took the Friday-morning traffic personally, muttering in some Middle Eastern tongue with every roadway slowdown. Somewhere past the Meadowlands, his frustration boiled over and he glared at me in the rearview mirror, his cursing—if that’s what it was—becoming more pointed. I opened the Times and tried to ignore him.

  Almost a week had passed with no major developments, and the bombing had been relegated to page A17. According to the article, an Al Qaeda splinter group had taken credit for the blast on their website, and though an FBI source questioned the group’s credibility, the larger implication was clear: the culprits were Islamic. A few days ago, I’d have glanced at the piece without raising an eyebrow. But now . . . I put the paper down. Reading in traffic was making me queasy. And the meter was climbing—soaring!—toward triple digits. I lowered the window and turned my head into the breeze. Except there was no breeze. We weren’t moving.

  Touché’s idea was simple enough: fly up to Fishers Island, find Brendan Carlyle, and get him to talk. It was that easy, a weekend jaunt. Except it was completely implausible. Beyond the practical questions—would Carlyle be there? Would he say anything? Did he know anything?—loomed the greater issue of the flight itself. Because Touché, it became clear, had meant that he’d be doing the flying. I was petrified of planes and only boarded them heavily medicated and under extreme circumstances—family funerals, destination weddings, and trips to Vegas. It was a question of physics, equations of weight and balance that defied logic. Wake turbulence, air pockets, wind shear, bird strikes: these were the phrases, the fears, that consumed me every time I gazed down on the earth from thirty thousand feet, and all the alcohol and Ambien in the world couldn’t dull them.

  All of which is to say that the prospect of a Friday-morning flight to Fishers Island with Touché at the controls wasn’t entirely appealing. In fact, it was harrowing. I’d never been in a private plane before, and I’d told Touché as much the night before.

  “Ah, yes,” he answered, “then this is exactly what you need. You can sit in the cockpit, be my copilot. Then you’ll see how easy it is, how routine.”

  “Amtrak is routine,” I’d responded. But he had a point. What better remedy than facing my anxiety head-on, with a newly minted pilot in a single-engine plane? Still, I made one excuse after another until Touché said, “Fine, let’s forget the whole thing.” Which is when I remembered the whole thing—the bigger picture, the tiny photograph. That something would come of it was a long shot, of course. But even if Paige Roderick proved nothing more than a pretext for an island getaway, that was fine with me. Anything beat another weekend in the scorching summer city.

  When Touché had told me Essex County was a private airport, I’d conjured images of a wind sock astride a dirt runway. As we finally pulled up, though, more than an hour late, I saw hangars, a tower, even a terminal. I grabbed my bag and gave the cabbie five bucks on top of the $95 fare. He spit at my feet as he drove off.

  The “terminal”—a dozen cushioned seats and a tiny information counter—could have been a doctor’s waiting room, but for the two men in pilot shirts sipping coffee near the door that doubled as a gate. “If you’re looking for Julian, he’s out there working on his engine,” one of them said, pointing at a group of planes parked in the near distance. His friend laughed. I didn’t.

  Almost a decade had passed since 9/11, and still it felt disturbing—almost illegal—to be walking through a door and out onto an airport tarmac. The midday clouds had evaporated and the sun was ascendant; I could feel the concrete give a bit underfoot. Up ahead, a dozen aircraft of varying sizes sat neatly in rows. I spotted Touché through the glare, climbing down the steps of a small Cessna. When he got to the bottom, he made his way to the tip of the plane, where, to my horror, he dipped his head under the open hood of what must have been the engine. The pilot hadn’t been kidding.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted.

  Touché reemerged from the engine block, careful not to bang his head. He was holding a screwdriver. “Glad you could make it. Did you walk?”

  “Traffic.”

  “Well, put your bag in the cabin and come help me.”

  “With what?”

  “Routine maintenance.”

  “Routine maintenance? Don’t you have people for that kind of stuff?”

  “Just hurry. We’d be there already if you’d been on time.”

  Resigned to my impending demise, I climbed into the plane and looked around. The cramped four-seater smelled strongly of gasoline and old leather. Flight time was less than an hour, but still. I clambered back down the steps and joined Touché, or at least the visible part of him.

  “The fucking thing’s tiny.”

  “Do me a favor,” he said, from inside the engine. “Check the oil, will you? It’s directly opposite me, you’ll see it.”

  I didn’t move. Touché poked his head up, annoyed. “What’s wrong with you? It’s the same as a car. There’s a—what do you call it?—a dipstick.”

  “My God. You’re serious.”

  I walked around the propeller to the other side, where another cover lay open, baring the aircraft’s inner workings. The dipstick was right in front of me. I pulled it out, wiped it on the bottom of my jeans, then put it back in and pulled it out again.

  “It’s at three!” I shouted, over the fuselage.

  “Out of what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘out of what’?”

  “I mean three out of what?”

  I looked down at the rod in my now greasy hand, and like every dipstick I’d ever seen, it went to ten.

  “Ten!”

  There was silence.

  “Is that good or bad?” I shouted.

  “It should get us there” came the reply, followed by the slamming of the engine cover on the other side. A moment later, Touché was standing beside me.

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  “Of course you are.” He snatched the dipstick from my hand and put it back in himself, then slammed the cover closed.

  “I don’t know how to say this. Actually, I do. I’m not flying in this piece of shit. I don’t care if you’ve had ten thousand hours in the air, and all the—”

  “Ah, Aidan, stop being a baby. I was kidding about the oil.”

  “No you weren’t.”

  Touché thought for a moment. “Fine. I’ll go alone. You can stay here and wait for another e-mail that will never come. Or you can be proactive.” With that, he climbed up into his machine. He knew I’d follow him; in the end, everyone followed him. I took a deep breath and started up the stairs.

  Touché twisted knobs and read gauges while I strapped myself into the copilot’s seat. Then he stood up, pulled the steps into the plane, and with a straight face recited the location of emergency exits and life jackets in the event of various catastrophes. “Sorry,” he said, as he sat back down. “I have to say all that.”

  Through the small windshield, I watched the rotor slice through the air, once, twice, then catch with a dull roar that immediately rendered communication impossible. Touché motioned toward a Vietnam-era headset hanging in front of me. I put it on and the world fell silent.

  “Better, no?” His voice in the earphones was calm, almost soothing.

  “This isn’t fun for me,” I responded, but he didn’t react. Instead he pointed at a button on the console.

  “Press this to talk.”

  We were moving now, taxiing. I pressed the button. “Please tell me you actually know what you’re—” I was cut off. A third voice was talking, spewing forth a sequence of Whiskeys and Tangos that Touché repeated back as he turned onto the runway and slowly pushed the throttle. The engine gained
power, and when we came to speed, my friend pulled lightly on the yoke and lifted us into the sky. It was like pulling a water-skier from a lake. Once, then again, he received coded instructions, and we banked smoothly and ascended. Below us, north Jersey spread out like green carpeting, stained in places but still lush.

  Touché pressed his button. “You don’t look so bad. Why all the fuss before?”

  “It’s okay to talk? I don’t want to interrupt some critical ground-to-air directive.”

  “Your headset is only wired internally. You can hear everything coming in but can only talk to me.”

  Up ahead, the Hudson River slithered its way north, or maybe south, and I couldn’t help but think about that US Airways jet that had glided to a miraculous water landing two winters back. Did Touché know how to glide? We turned east and suddenly there was Manhattan, the slender middle finger of the American fist, glittering so damn brightly I had to look away.

  “Hold on,” said Touché. “We’re flying over the Palisades. Sometimes the air gets choppy.” Seconds later, we swooned, down and then right back up, before returning to humming tranquillity.

  There was a rhythm to flying. We moved up the coast and were passed from tower to tower—Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport, New Haven. Touché had filed a flight plan, so each new region of the sky was expecting us. The radio back-and-forths were friendly, jocular, routine. It’s the word I kept coming back to. I relaxed and looked out over Long Island, which from my perch looked small and manageable, the harbors and vineyards of the North Fork, the mansions and azure pools of the—

  “Tell me what we’re doing,” said Touché’s voice in my ears.

  “What do you mean?”

  Touché pointed at his headset and then at the button in front of me. I pushed it and repeated myself.

  “I mean,” Touché said, “is any of this real? A girl like that. Do you honestly believe she could be involved?”

  “I don’t know. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?”

  “If someone really had information about her, wouldn’t they go directly to the police or FBI? Certainly, they wouldn’t e-mail some amateur blogger—”

  “Hey, I get paid,” I said, but I’d forgotten to press the button again.

  “—which means that whoever’s sending the messages, your Mr. Empires Fall, is also likely to be involved.”

  “But isn’t that a bit obvious? Why take the risk?”

  “It’s not a risk if the e-mail can’t be traced back to the source,” Touché said. “And I’m assuming it can’t be?”

  “Probably not. There are ways to cover your tracks online, from using public computers and proxy servers to data wiping and virtual tunneling. But that stuff’s not my strong suit.”

  Touché furrowed his brow. “Perhaps they sent you the photo because they assumed you’d post it immediately.”

  “But why wouldn’t I call the cops?”

  “That’s a good question. Why haven’t you?”

  Which is how we left it. Everything open to interpretation. But at least Touché was intrigued. Or maybe he was just bored. Maybe he was already planning to fly to Fishers Island and just wanted company. With Touché, it was best not to ask. And anyway, we were beginning our descent. I could see the island in front of us, a thin spit of land two miles off the coast of Connecticut. The airwaves had gone quiet.

  “Why isn’t anyone talking to us?” I asked.

  “There’s no tower. It’s just a little landing strip. The military built it during World War Two.”

  “Then who guides us in?”

  “You’re the copilot,” Touché said, grinning.

  I could see the runway, an impossibly short strip of concrete on the western tip of the island. But we were well centered, and as I bit my lip and dug my fists into the seat, Touché brought us down. Slowly. Smoothly. Safely. Nothing to it.

  He cozied the craft up beside the only other plane at the airfield and cut the engine. A minute later—and not a moment too soon—I stepped gingerly down the stairs onto the weed-strewn tarmac. Touché was still shutting things down, so I put in a quick call to Derrick. In my absence—I’d told him I was going to a wedding—my boss had agreed to take the reins of Roorback for the day (after that I’d be off the hook until Monday, as I didn’t usually post on weekends). Like most publishers, he didn’t mind occasionally sullying his hands on the content side of life, if only to seem involved. As a precaution, the night before, I’d moved the two EmpiresFall e-mails from my Roorback account to my personal account (though they were probably still on the server if someone was really looking). As for the possibility of another missive arriving while I was gone, I could only hope Derrick wouldn’t notice it amid the hundreds of others clogging up my in-box. If he even checked my Roorback account at all.

  To my relief, Derrick sounded normal when he answered the phone. In fact, he sounded like he was having a ball. “Just sitting here lobbing little grenades at the haughty fourth estate,” he said.

  “Isn’t it fun?”

  “For a day, yes. But make sure you’re back Monday morning.”

  “I will be.”

  “Where are you again?” he asked.

  “Fishers Island.”

  “Florida?”

  “Long Island Sound.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “I think that’s the point,” I said.

  When Touché had secured the plane (with little blocks on either side of the wheels, as if the thing might roll away), I followed him to a battle-scarred Grand Wagoneer with wood-paneled siding.

  “Your car’s here. What a stroke of luck.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  We threw our bags in the back and were soon turning onto the island’s main road.

  “So I did a little research last night,” I said.

  “And?”

  “There’s a lot of old money here.”

  “So old there’s no bank. No hotels or restaurants either. They don’t want another Nantucket.”

  Touché recited a quick history of the island, the upshot being that the small group of industrialists—the Du Ponts among them—that had originally bought it had somehow managed, through a century of family infighting and sweeping societal change, to maintain control of their little paradise.

  “How often do you come up here?” I asked.

  “Once, maybe twice a year. It’s all I can handle. The people. You’ll see.”

  Except there were no people, just land, lush and wild. The road wound through meadows and tangled forest, then, out of nowhere, we came upon a guardhouse. Touché waved to the man inside and we kept going.

  “Welcome to the private side of the island,” Touché said.

  “I thought the whole thing was private.”

  “There are levels to these things.”

  We pressed on, past ponds and coves, glimpses of water, sailboats shimmering in the sun. Then the road bent sharply and the trees opened to reveal a series of golf holes surrounding an elegant clubhouse. The fairways were crowded with men in outfits of unfathomable patterns and hues. “The Club Championship is this weekend, which is why I’m fairly sure we’ll run into Mr. Carlyle.”

  “He’s a golfer?”

  “Everyone up here’s a golfer.”

  We continued past the parking lot, filled with cars from another era—vintage Mustangs and diesel-powered Mercedeses—and on toward the end of the island.

  “No Ferraris or Hummers, at least.”

  “The landed gentry has its upside,” Touché said.

  That he somehow said this without sounding like an asshole was a tribute, not only to the statement’s veracity, but to my friend’s obvious indifference to his surroundings. Touché thrived on creativity, diversity, the manic hum of humankind. Fishers Island was the opposite of all that. It was comfort, idleness, boredom . . . golf.

  It was also real estate. I had never been anyplace I could rightly call a compound until we turned into Touché’s crushed-shell driveway. My G
od, the place was magnificent. The main house, which backed up to a bluff overlooking the sound, was painted white and peeling in places, but looked all the more elegant for the deterioration. And the surrounding grounds—which were immaculate—hosted a barn, a pool, and a well-kept grass tennis court. Grass.

  We parked, eventually, and walked inside. Touché led me up a winding staircase to the third floor and pointed down a row of open doors. “That’s your wing. I’ll meet you downstairs in an hour.” With that he turned and loped away. I wandered down my assigned hall and settled on a corner suite lined with books and windows. I let some air into the room and then collapsed upon the massive bed.

  I woke up during the falling part of an airplane dream. I could hear my heart pounding in the dead silence of the house. How long had I been asleep? An hour? Two? Outside, the air had cooled and flags were whipping in the wind. It was the time of day when my father used to lay his thumb along the horizon, and if part of the sun disappeared behind it, he’d announce it was cocktail hour. I was young then. He no longer made such distinctions.

  I showered, shaved, and slipped on an Izod and an old pair of khakis I’d dug up for the occasion. I searched the house, but Touché was nowhere to be found, so I made myself a gin and tonic and settled into a wicker chair on the front porch. What a life. Yet Touché saw right through it. This side of his family, his American side, was something he hardly acknowledged. But in truth he’d been living in the States for almost twenty years now. In an effort to keep him out of harm’s way, Santo had shipped his only son off to a famous prep school outside Washington, D.C., then on to UCLA. Touché rarely discussed his time in Los Angeles; I’m guessing he liked it a little too much. All that money and panache in a town like that. It took him five years to get his diploma, and one more to recover from the exertion. He sniffed around the movie business for a while, but little came of it. So he decamped to his parents’ apartment in New York and applied to NYU—right across the street—for grad school. While I, like so many others, saw journalism as something concrete in a suddenly arbitrary world, I think Touché saw it in simpler terms—as the old aristocratic fallback. Apparently, journalism was once an honorable profession.