Jason glanced out of the corner of his eye at the heaps and heaps of notelets and Post-its and newspaper cuttings and legal sheets and torn-out magazine articles, all of them softly ruffling in the breeze that poured softly through the half-open window.
‘You’re going to start recycling paper?’ he suggested.
Michael swung out his arm and gave him a feinted cuff around the ear. ‘Recycling paper! Smartass!’
He swung around again, and picked up his pad. ‘This, my friend, is the first major new question-and-answer game since Trivial Pursuit. This is going to make millions. No, I tell a lie, billions. In years to come, they’re going to talk about this game in the same breath as Monopoly and Scrabble. That’s when you and I are living in luxury in Palm Beach, with power-boats and Lamborghinis and all the babes we can handle. Well, all the babes you can handle. I’m quite happy with your mom.’
Jason gravely regarded the mess and said, ‘It looks kind of complicated.’
Michael pulled a face. ‘Oh, for sure. Now it looks complicated. But think about it. Before they put a clock together, it looks kind of complicated, doesn’t it? All those little cogs and stuff. But by the time I’ve finished – ‘ he shuffled some more papers into order ‘ – well, it’ll be less complicated.’
‘The guy said he really had to see you.’
‘Oh, the guy. Did he tell you what his name was?’
‘Rocky Woods, I think.’
Michael looked up at him with a grave face. ‘Rocky Woods? Is that what he said?’
‘His exact words were, “I have to see your father. Ask him if he remembers Rocky Woods.” ‘
Michael covered his mouth with his hand for a moment, and said nothing. Only his eyes betrayed what he was thinking. They were darting quickly from side to side as if he were reading from an autocue, or vividly remembering something that had upset him, in more detail than most people care to.
‘Dad?’ asked Jason. ‘Did I do right? Do you want me to tell him to go away?’
But Michael reached out and took hold of Jason’s wrist, and squeezed it, and tried to smile, and said, ‘You did fine. How about asking him in?’
‘Okay, if you say so.’
When Jason had gone running off, leaving the door ajar, Michael stood up and walked around his desk to the window. His den was not much more than a run-down conservatory on stilts, overlooking the grassy dunes of New Seabury beach, and the permanently blue waters of Nantucket Sound. The rest of the house was just as spartan – a three-bedroomed summer cottage that he had bought from a friend at Plymouth Insurance. It was all bare scrubbed boards and Quaker furniture and Indian-style rugs. When he had brought his family down from Boston to see how Michael was getting along, his friend had joked that it was like spending the weekend with the Pilgrim Fathers – ‘all succotash and pumpkin pie and how are we going to survive the winter?’
Michael was a lean, hawkish-nosed man of thirty-four, with mousy, short-cropped hair and eyes that were blue and opaque, where his son’s were blue and clear. He was handsome in the way that Jimmy Dean had been handsome; or the young Clint Eastwood; a little too drawn-looking and slightly deranged and hurt in the way he looked at people. In his blue check short-sleeved shirt, his wrists looked knobbly and treble-jointed, and his khaki hiking shorts didn’t too much for his gangly legs. His movements were hesitant and shy, and occasionally almost effeminate. But there was no doubting his masculinity. Apart from the fact that he had courted and married the cutest girl at Plymouth Insurance, his interests in life were classically male: fishing, baseball, drinking beer and tinkering with things.
His greatest passion was what he called ‘downwind thinking’ – which meant solving problems by approaching them from downwind and jumping on them when they least suspected it. Since they had moved to New Seabury over a year and a half ago, he had invented a self-releasing weight for casting fishing lines to record distances, and converted Patsy’s electro-exercising machine into a device for removing barnacles and limpets and other shellfish from the bottom of yachts. In the same way that the exercising machine caused human muscles to contract, the ‘Limpet-Zapper’ put the bivalves’ whole bodies into spasm, so that they literally jumped off the hull.
But two moderately successful inventions hadn’t generated anything like enough income to keep Patsy in pantyhose or Jason in Adidas, and they were still living like the Pilgrim Fathers, except it was meat loaf instead of succotash and Jell-O instead of pumpkin pie and how are we going to survive until the end of the month, don’t even think about the winter.
He watched the cloud shadows sailing across the sands. They reminded him of giant stingrays, gliding swiftly and silently across the floor of the ocean. He saw three children flying a red box kite, and a woman in a pink swimsuit and a huge pink hat, walking a brown-and-white spaniel. If only you could capture this scene, exactly as it was, and hang it on your wall, complete with wind and movement and sound, and the net curtains stirring at the window. He smiled to himself and realized that he had just invented television.
There was no knock at the door; but he heard it swing open a little more. He turned around and there was Joe Garboden, same as ever, in a mauve-and-green-and-cerise-and-yellow-striped blazer that looked as if it had been rejected by the Mambo Kings for being too showy. Joe was large-headed, with thick black greasy hair, and cheeks with the texture of cauliflower. His eyes were deep set and glittery, but kindly, and he smiled a whole lot – more than the average, anyway – which was what made him one of most acceptable bearers of bad news that Michael had ever known.
‘Hallo, Joe,’ he said, keeping his hands buried in the pockets of his hiking shorts.
Joe came and stood next to him, one hand extended. He waited; and waited; and in the end he said, ‘What’s the matter, Michael, playing with your dinkle more important than greeting an old colleague?’
Michael reluctantly took out his hand and shook it. Joe smiled, and then stared at the palm of his hand and said, ‘I hope you weren’t playing with your dinkle.’
‘I’m not going blind, am I?’ Michael retorted.
‘That’s only because you’re not doing it right.’
Joe dropped his greasy Panama hat on to the desk, right on top of Michael’s legal pad, and then he stepped right up to the window and admired the view. ‘Beautiful day, isn’t it? This house is heaven in summer. What’s it like in midwinter? Hell, I’ll bet. How do you heat it?’
‘Blankets.’
‘Blankets?’
‘That’s right. From Thanksgiving evening to Memorial Day morning we stay in bed.’
‘Hey, good deal. Especially with Patsy, if you don’t mind my saying so. She still looks like everything a man ever dreamed about.’
‘Oh ... you saw her?’
‘Sure, we talked. She’s out in the yard, washing the car. Or ... what shall I say? ... washing the bits that hold the rust together.’
‘What brings you all the way down here?’ Michael asked him. ‘You didn’t come to show me that coat, I hope.’
Joe said, ‘Mind if I park my ass?’ and eased himself down on the leather couch. He picked up Michael’s magazine and frowned at the cover. ‘Mushing?’ he asked, in disbelief.
Michael said, ‘Mushing ... you know, training huskies to pull sledges, skijoring, that kind of thing. Mush! Mush!’
‘People do a lot of that around here?’ asked Joe, straightfaced.
‘Forget it, Joe – it’s just an idea I’ve been working on.’
‘All right,’ said Joe. He took out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped his forehead. ‘I guess I’d better tell you why I’ve come.’
‘You mentioned Rocky Woods. My kid thought that was your name.’
‘I’m sorry. That’s not a name to make jokes about it, is it?’
Michael didn’t answer, but turned away, and watched the box kite ducking and weaving over the shoreline. He could guess, approximately, what Joe was going to ask him, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted t
o look at his face when he did.
Joe said, ‘You heard about John O’Brien, of course. The Supreme Court justice-to-be.’
‘Of course. Who didn’t? Pretty average luck, hunh? The Lord didn’t mind giving it to him, but the Lord sure made sure he took it all back, in spades.’
‘That helicopter was insured by us at Plymouth, and underwritten by Tyrell & Croteau. It was actually owned and run by Revere Aeronautic Services, but that day it was out on charter to the Justice Department.’
‘I heard on TV that it was engine failure.’
‘That’s what you heard on TV.’
‘You mean it wasn’t engine failure?’
‘I mean that’s what you heard on TV. Engine failure was part of the story, for sure. Engine failure was probably the principal cause of the chopper coming down – although we still don’t know why the engines failed, or even how, or whether it could have been sabotage. But it’s what happened after it came down that’s really making our heads hurt.’
‘It burned, didn’t it? Helicopters loaded with two hundred gallons of aviation-grade kerosene do have a tendency to burn.’
‘This one didn’t ignite until nine and a half minutes after impact.’
‘Nobody got to the wreck for nine and a half minutes?’
‘That’s the mystery. The rescue services didn’t get out to the wreck for nine and a half minutes. It was way out on the end of Sagamore Head, out on the sand – and, more than that, somebody had abandoned a beaten-up Winnebago on the track from Nantasket Beach, and it took the fire department more than five minutes just to clear that away.’
He folded up his handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead again. ‘However ... somebody got out to the wreck before it exploded. Several yachts persons reported seeing a black Chevy Blazer or similar-type vehicle parked alongside the wreckage, maybe two or three minutes after impact. One guy had actually anchored his yacht about two hundred feet off the head and was paddling ashore in his dinghy to see if he could help. He says he clearly saw a black four-wheel-drive vehicle and also a person dressed in a black coat emerging from the wreck, carrying something that could have been a bag or a sack. About twenty seconds later, the helicopter exploded and there was so much smoke and flame that he couldn’t see anything more. By the time he reached the shore the vehicle had gone and the helicopter was almost totally burned out.’
Michael massaged his temples with his fingertips, like a man who feels a migraine coming on. ‘So what you’re telling me is, a person or persons unknown reached the helicopter ahead of the rescue services, and removed something from the wreck?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Exactly.’ Michael stayed thoughtfully silent for a while. Joe watched him and mopped sweat and occasionally cleared his throat.
‘Who’s handling this case?’
‘Kevin Murray and some new guy, Rolbein.’
‘Kevin’s good,’ said Michael. ‘He’ll solve it for you.’
‘Kevin’s good, yes. But Kevin’s not inspirational.’
Michael turned back to him. ‘And that’s why you’ve driven all the way down here to Noplace-on-Sea to see me? To get some free inspiration?’
Joe spread his hands wide. ‘I admit it.’ The armpits of his striped coat were stained with semicircles of sweat. ‘Aren’t I a shit?’
‘Nothing changes,’ said Michael.
‘Well, sure, Michael. But look at it from my point of view. There are hundreds of millions of dollars involved in this claim. You should see the size of John O’Brien’s life insurance policy alone – it’s twice the national reserves of Haiti and Dominica put together, and you can throw in Cuba’s for luck. Then there’s Eva O’Brien’s life insurance policy and their daughter Sissy’s life insurance policy; not to mention all the contingent claims for losses and damages and negligence.’
He blew his nose loudly. ‘All this wouldn’t be so bad if everything was straightforward, cut-and-dried. But this whole business has a very suspicious smell about it. You know what’s it like when you’re checking out a claim on a burned-out apartment building, and you think you can just detect the faintest whiff of gasoline, or paint-thinner, or methylated spirit? It’s that kind of a smell. And there are too many weird inconsistencies. Not the kind of normal inconsistencies you get in everyday life; but inconsistencies that make you think ... now hold on, how could that be?’
‘Give me a for-instance.’
‘Well, think about it. The helicopter has engine failure, crash-lands on Nantasket Beach, and there’s somebody apparently waiting for it to crash-land. If the engine failure is genuine, how does this somebody know exactly where the helicopter is going to come down?’
‘Sounds like you’ve got yourself some kind of a problem,’ said Michael, sitting down on his revolving chair, and swinging from side to side.
‘Don’t tell me. And I’m being pressured for a quick result. Henry Croteau is on my case seventeen times a day. And our beloved president Edgar Bedford is on my case seventy times a day.’
‘How about the police? Are they co-operating?’
‘There’s another weirdness. When Commissioner Hudson first talked to the media, he promised a “full, frank and fearless investigation”. But so far, the police seem to be treating the whole case with about as much seriousness as if GI Joe fell out of his plastic Huey.’
‘The FAA?’
‘Zip. They refuse to release even their preliminary findings. They say they have to piece the whole wreck back together again before they can come up with any whys or wherefors whatsoever. I’ll tell you how cagey they’re acting. They won’t even admit that they have any preliminary findings.’
‘Who’s handling the reconstruction?’
‘Your old buddy Jorge da Silva.’
‘Really? It’s not like Jorge to be cagey. How about the coroner’s office?’
‘Same thing.’ Joe pretended to tug a zipper across his mouth. ‘All that the coroner is prepared to tell us so far – and I more-or-less quote – is that “the O’Brien party was involved in a fatal helicopter incident and there were no apparent survivors.” ‘
Michael thought for a moment, and then he said,’ ‘The O’Brien party”. How many people was that, exactly?’
‘You tell me,’ Joe replied, with a gleam in his eyes. ‘The plain fact is that nobody’s saying. In that particular helicopter, it could have been three, it could have been anything up to eight. And what the hell is an “apparent survivor”? There’s nothing apparent about surviving, not in my book. If I ever find myself in a helicopter crash, God forbid, I don’t want to apparently survive. I want to be right there on NBC evening news, live and kicking, with a smut on my snout and a Bandaid on my forehead, praising the skill and courage of the pilot.’
Michael asked, ‘So nobody has yet officially confirmed the number of dead?’
‘Got it in one. You know what they told me? “Physical trauma was so severe that full identification is still pending.” Pending my ass. You and I were up at Rocky Woods, and there wasn’t any pending up at Rocky Woods. If you wanted to know how many bodies you had, you counted heads, just like we did, whether those heads were attached to anything or not.’
Michael said, thoughtfully, ‘There was John O’Brien, right? And his wife Eva O’Brien. And their daughter, am I correct?’
‘That’s right, Sissy O’Brien, fourteen years old.’
Michael was counting on his fingers. ‘There was also a pilot, of course. Any co-pilot?’
‘Unh-hunh. But there was a young hotshot from the Justice Department, Dean McAllister. He flew up from Washington the previous night so that he could escort Mr O’Brien back for the swearing-in ceremony.’
‘So, five. That shouldn’t have been too difficult to work out, even after a fire. Who’s the medical examiner?’
‘Raymond Moorpath at Boston Central.’
‘Moorpath? He’s in private practice these days.’
‘All the same, that’s where the bodi
es were taken, and Moorpath’s doing the honours. Special request from very, very, very high up. But you can’t deny that Moorpath was always the best, especially with fire fatalities. Good with floaters, too.’
Michael thought for a while. Then he said, ‘You want a beer?’
Joe shrugged. ‘So long as you’re having one.’
‘Come on through to the kitchen.’
They left the studio. A sudden gust of wind blew a small blizzard of paper off Michael’s desk. The door banged behind them and they walked Indian-file along the narrow wooden bridge that led to the kitchen door, their feet making hollow noises on the planking. To their left, there was nothing but the grassy beach and the glittering sea. To their right, a steep flight of sunbleached steps led down to the sloping concrete front yard, where Patsy was hosing down their faded green Mercury Marquis, ‘6g vintage, and Jason was watching her, perched on the cinderblock wall, swinging his legs. Patsy looked up and waved and Michael waved back, and cheerfully called out, ‘How’s the carwash, honey?’ At the same time, however, he gave her the subtlest twitch of his head and bugged out his eyes, to tell her that he didn’t appreciate Joe’s presence here at all.
Patsy smiled and carried on hosing. Michael had never felt so close to anybody in his entire life, man or woman. He and Patsy laughed together; worried together; they practically breathed in and out together. He loved her, but the way they lived together day by day was very much more complicated than anything that he had ever called love before. It was complete physical and emotional and intellectual entanglement.
Patsy was only a hair’s-breadth taller than five-feet-two, with a shaggy carefree mane of sunbleached hair, and a sweet doll-like face, with china-blue eyes and a snubby nose and plump pink lips. Today she was wearing a tight pink-and-white striped T-shirt, which exaggerated her chubby breasts, and the tiniest pair of white cotton shorts, and fluorescent pink rubber boots.
The president of Plymouth Insurance Edgar Bedford had once disparagingly called her ‘Michael’s bimbo’. But in spite of her Barbie doll looks, Patsy was educated and funny and determined: and it was those qualities with which Michael had really fallen in love. Of course she was eyecatching and of course she was sexually exciting, and he loved that, too. But she could hold her own in any dinnerparty conversation about Mozart or Matisse or Guy de Maupassant; or the Big Bang theory; or politics and censorship; or rock’n’roll; or the ordination of women; or whether the earth was really warming up or not.
The Sleepless Page 4