by David Black
Life, February 27, 1970: “Hollywood puts its past up for sale.…”
Adventure Comic, March 1968: “Battle for the Championship of the Universe.…”
Military Life, December 1965: “People without a Past.…”
The books and magazines gave off a musty smell. The spines of the books were speckled with mold. The inside pages so covered with mildew they looked marbled.
Jack pulled out a copy of Dante’s Inferno with Dore’s illustrations. “Paolo and Francesca.” The boards were drilled through with wormholes. The pages, mouse-gnawed.
Jack slipped Dante back on the shelf.
It didn’t look as if Sunny or Tu had touched the books since they had moved in.
There were only a few pictures on the wall: A faded photograph of Blaze Starr; a Baskin print of Ahab; a copy of a Reginald Marsh Coney Island painting; a Thomas Hart Benton torn from a magazine; an Edward Hopper—a woman sitting in late afternoon sun at a window; a Norman Rockwell—a man in a short brown jacket standing up at a town meeting. Mostly American artists.
A cabinet held—on top—an old stereo; underneath, a couple of hundred LPs.
No CDs.
Without thinking, Jack lifted the turntable arm and felt for dust on the needle—as he used to with his own stereo years ago.
Noticing Jack, Tu said, “The needle was bad. The minute I tried to do a DJ thing, scratching, see, it snapped right off.”
An art deco freestanding bar held a couple of single malt Scotches, an almost full bottle of B&B, a vintage port—nothing Sunny or Tu drank, Jack thought.
It seemed as if Sunny and Tu were squatting in a house still occupied by its temporarily absent owner.
Although maybe whoever left the Scotch was not the original owner, wasn’t the man who built the place. Maybe whoever left the Scotch was also a squatter, who in turn had replaced an even earlier squatter.
Maybe the man who built the place, the original maker, had never lived there. Had only created this world in the woods and then lost interest and left.
“When we got to go somewhere,” Sunny was telling Caroline, “we hitch.”
“To the supermarket, to the laundromat,” Tu added, bouncing from one conversation to another. “Cars cost.”
The kerosene lamps, the only illumination, had been in the place when Sunny and Tu had arrived.
“Sometimes,” Sunny said, “the mantles catch fire, and we got to get a new one at the Agway.”
There was no plumbing; Sunny and Tu used an outhouse out back.
“A two-seater,” Sunny said. “It’s more sociable that way.”
“Flush toilets,” Tu said, “if they hadn’t been so expensive back when, we would’ve had two- and three-seaters inside, and everybody would get along better, sharing a shit.”
Jack noticed a white, powdery footprint, large, Tu’s foot, tracked in after Tu had stepped in the lime they used in the outhouse.
Proudly, if paradoxically, Sunny said, “Tu put in the generator—”
“Gas powered,” Tu said
—which ran the new flat-screen HDTV across the room, next to the ladder leading to a sleeping loft.
An iPod in its battery-powered Logitec docking station and speaker system stood on a side table.
It was playing “Newfoundland, Celtic rock,” Tu explained. “Great Big Sea.”
It surprised Jack how few traces Sunny and Tu left in the place: some clothes, a sketch pad—opened to a design for a ring; Tu’s, it turned out, not Sunny’s—a paperback novel about the Rapture …
“Hon,” Sunny told Tu, “you got another call from Mickey D’s.”
They shared Sunny’s cell phone, which she charged at the whorehouse.
“They think I’m hot to flip burgers,” Tu said, adding sarcastically, “My age? They gotta think I’m eighteen.”
Caroline started to ask a question, but Jack signaled her to keep silent.
Sunny and Tu knew why they were there. Jack didn’t want to spook them.
Let them get to it in their own way.
Sunny had started making French toast with a hole in the middle, which she filled with scrambled eggs, scallions, and cheese.
She asked Jack and Caroline, “You want a Papajoe?” Which is what she called the dish.
Caroline said, “No.”
Jack shook his head.
Later Caroline told Jack, “It smelled so good, but on their budget I didn’t want to eat any of their food.”
“The money’s crap,” Tu said, still talking about the McDonald’s. “If I was young enough, who the fuck knows what I’d do? You desperate enough, who the fuck knows what anyone’d do?”
“Tu knows a guy who kept his mother’s corpse in the freezer for the social security checks,” Sunny said, putting a plate in front of Tu, who sat at the big round oak table.
“I used to steal bikes,” Tu said between forkfuls of French toast and egg. “Jerks spend big buck on Kryptonite locks and don’t realize you can open them with the back of a Bic pen.”
“Tu wants me to get out of Mama Lucky’s,” Sunny said.
“You know how boring that job’s got to be,” Tu said. “Trying to make conversation with perfect strangers.”
“Wants me to go back to working in the nail salon,” Sunny said. “But those chemical smells, I used to get these bad headaches.…”
Sunny took her plate and sat down opposite Tu.
“Big deal,” Tu said. “I sell drugs. When I was digging graves for the county, I look into the office and see my boss, Powerhouse Welty, smoking reefer. And he’s making real money. Sitting tipped back in his chair. Doesn’t get his hands dirty. I wanted to go in kick the chair legs out, son of a bitch.”
The iPod shuffled to what sounded like massage music: flute, bells, trickling water.…
“It’s not like when I was a kid,” Tu continued, “shoveling with a spade for three-something an hour. Now, they use a backhoe and get paid big money. I can’t get that job. I’m out of work. After child support—my ex is on my case every week—I’d only make eighty-six dollars a week. How you going to live on eighty-six a week with a sixteen-year-old son who can eat a whole turkey at one sitting? My ex is on oxygen. You try making it on eighty-six dollars a week.”
“Some jobs,” Sunny said, “you got to pass the pee test.”
“Or worse,” Tu said.
“They don’t give you any respect,” Sunny said.
“And those tests,” Tu said, “you take Advil or Nuprin or B12 and you get a false positive on tests for marijuana. NyQuil, Contac, Sudafed, Dimetapp—you get false positive for amphetamines. You eat a poppy-seed bagel, you get a false positive for opium.”
“He’s an expert,” Sunny said.
“I got to be,” Tu said, “or they’ll nab my ass.”
“Do you know,” Sunny said, “even someone who works in a popcorn plant, mixing the flavors that make popcorn taste good, can get a kind of disease? At least, at Mama’s you know what to do to stay healthy. And Mama takes care of us.”
Again, the iPod shuffled: A woman sang a cappella, a song that was not familiar to Jack, haunting. The hair on the back of Jack’s neck prickled.
Sunny sang along, hitting a high note.
Proudly, Tu said, “Sunny could be a professional singer.”
“I took lessons,” Sunny said. “When I was a kid.”
“On the high C,” Tu said, “sometimes she’ll go sharp, just to show she can go even higher.”
“Tu thinks I should be on TV,” Sunny said.
They both look expectantly at Jack, then at Caroline.
They weren’t anticipating Jack or Caroline’s opinion on Sunny’s possible show biz career.
Jack said, “How much?”
All that talk about money—Jack got the point.
Tu looked at Sunny.
“Two—” he studied Jack, who had inadvertently leaned forward, “—five hundred.”
Jack counted out the money on the table.
Tu—egg smeared on the corner of his mouth—recounted it and nodded at Sunny who said, “The guy with the cowboy hat, big guy, decent manicure, broken knuckles—”
Jack hadn’t noticed the broken knuckles.
“—played the banjo,” Sunny continued.
Jack hadn’t known about the banjo either.
“—tried to teach me how to play this Japanese, Chinese game with black and white stones,” Sunny continued. “I saw him maybe three, four times. Tried to see me out-call. Wanted to deal direct. Said that way Mama wouldn’t get her sixty percent.”
“Course,” Tu said, “she told him no.”
Tu knew Jack was a friend of Mama Lucky. He wasn’t going to get Sunny in trouble.
“Wanted to meet before he left town,” Sunny said, “before whatever business he was up here for was done.”
“You know his name?” Jack asked.
Sunny shook her head no.
“I guess he was some kind private cop,” she said. “’Cause the other number he gave me, not his cell, was at the college, security, up at the Sewall Observatory.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
1
The setting sun bathed the dome of the Sewall Observatory in rose. The telescope’s shutter was closed.
From this distance, across the river, the structure looked to Jack as if he could hold it in the palm of his hand.
The wind was still strong enough to make the tops of the trees on the hillside lean left. When Jack turned off the highway, the car was buffeted so hard he had to grip the steering wheel to keep from being knocked off the road.
They crossed a humpback bridge, a metal rainbow that had lost its magic and was now merely made of girders.
As they started up the approach to the complex of observatory buildings, Jack was unprepared for—up close—the sheer size of the dome, which in the rapidly fading light was purple. Huge above them.
The dome slid up the car windshield. Out of sight. Jack leaned forward, craned his neck, and peered through the glass to look up at the observatory on the top of the hill.
Caroline was half leaning out the passenger window to keep the dome in view.
A door to a metal-and-glass office building next to the dome was unlocked. When Jack and Caroline entered, a young man, a graduate student in a blue polo shirt, jeans, and black high-top Keds, who was passing with an armful of files, asked if he could help them.
Jack showed him a slip of paper with the telephone number he had gotten from Sunny.
“Do you know the office with this extension?” Jack asked.
“The last three numbers,” the student said. “Two-oh-seven. Second floor. All the way back.”
“Whose office is that?” Caroline asked.
“For floaters,” the student said. “Whoever happens to be in town. You here for the seminar?”
“Who’s been using it this week?” Caroline pressed.
“You mean the Cowboy?” the student asked.
“You call him the Cowboy?” Jack asked, amused.
“You wear a hat like that here,” the student, “you’re asking for it. Nice enough guy, though. Quiet. Keeps to himself.”
“He works for the observatory?” Jack asked.
“He must if he’s here,” the student said and continued on his way.
“Well,” Caroline said, “getting in was easy.”
“It’s a university facility,” Jack said, shrugging, also surprised at how easy it had been to get in.
Caroline nodded and said, “I guess.” As if trying to convince herself, she added, “It’s not like it’s a nuclear reactor. What’s the worst-case scenario? Someone comes in and copies your star map?”
They climbed the stairs to the second floor and headed down the hall.
2
Room 207 showed no signs of use. The desk held a computer monitor, but it wasn’t attached to a keyboard or a CPU. A telephone was unplugged. The desk chair was rolled across the room, next to a wall with a blank white board. There was no second chair for visitors.
On a long side table were three large paper clips, a pad of yellow Post-its, an empty—washed—ceramic coffee cup with the observatory logo: a cartoon of a scientist in a white coat peering with one bugeye through a telescope, which looked like a gun barrel.
There were no windows.
“When he was a boy, I made sure Robert made his bed every morning,” Keating said. “Robert said the maid could do it.”
Keating stood in the doorway, dressed in a light blue cardigan, a white shirt, suspenders, chinos, loafers.
“I showed him how to make hospital corners,” Keating continued. “Showed him how to do it well. The morning he died, he still took pride in how good he was at making his bed.”
“How did you know we were here?” Jack asked.
“Surely,” Keating said, “you know the building is monitored?”
“You got here fast,” Caroline said.
“You have to learn to be less self-centered, Caroline,” Keating said. “I wasn’t here because of you. There’s a seminar I was interested in, one I’m missing, it’s true, because of you. I suppose we can chalk this up to a happy coincidence.”
Keating paused.
“At least,” Keating said, “I hope it will turn out to be happy.”
“Why did you hire someone to kill me?” Jack said.
Keating ignored Jack’s question and asked one of his own:
“Why did you visit the motel that burned down?”
“You’ve been tracking us?” Caroline said.
“Based on cell phone data,” Keating said, “peoples’ daily roaming habits mimic movements of carnivores looking for prey.”
“That doesn’t sound like we should be less self-centered,” Caroline said. “It sounds like we should be paranoid.”
“Things are rarely what they seem,” Keating said. “The Duchess of Windsor worked for Allied Intelligence. Her job was to seduce Edward, who was pro-Nazi, so he would have to abdicate and the British government could go forward with an unambiguous anti-Nazi policy. Errol Flynn was spying for the Nazis, while Cary Grant was working for the OSS. Have you been to East Brunswick? To the copper mines? Where they kept Tories during the War of Independence. Like Guantanamo. But successful nations forget their sins.”
“Everyone finds his own conspiracy,” Jack said, thinking of Shapiro.
“There are no conspiracies,” Keating said. “Just like-minded people trying to get something done. And some things are better done in secret.”
“Why, Mr. Flowers,” Caroline asked, “are you a spy?”
“I wouldn’t go into the business today,” Keating said. “Now, it’s all private contractors who spend most of their time investigating each other.”
“Electrical pollution is a secret,” Jack said. He didn’t frame it as a question. “National security.”
“The strength of the people,” Keating said, “is that they survive the stupidity and incompetence of their leaders.”
“Even when they’re kept in the dark,” Caroline said.
“The greatest nation in the history of history,” Keating said, “the shining city on the hill turns out to be a shopping mall, its flickering lights running on emergency power. We all know it’s a rigged game.”
“And Frank threatened to blow the whistle,” Jack said.
“As people become aware, they feel cheated,” Keating said. “That’s why most people prefer not to know.”
“You don’t believe they have a right to know?” Caroline asked.
“In Micronesia,” Keating said, “testicular ablation—crushing of a testicle—was once common practice. A practice no one questioned because of the authority of the community.”
“Of the community leaders,” Caroline said.
“When people begin to question their leaders,” Keating said, “the community suffers. Unfortunately, we’re going through such a period. Today, everything’s change and conflict.”
“And it’s
your job to make sure the American people don’t find out that the electrical toys they depend on are poisoning them?” Jack said.
“Because,” Caroline said, “we’d end up marching backward two centuries.”
“The American people,” Keating said. “You make them sound like some monolithic creature. Some great beast like—You’ve seen the vegetable man.”
“Stan the Vegetable Man,” Caroline said.
“That’s the one,” Keating said. “Zucchini legs, a tomato head. An American Leviathan. An agrarian colossus appropriate for a society that finds its mythic roots as an agrarian Eden.”
“You make the American people sound like something alien,” Jack said.
“As alien to me as any bugeye monster,” Keating said. “My world is dead, Mr. Slidell.”
“Mr. Slidell,” Jack said. “Jack no more?”
“It’s been a delightful game,” Keating said, “but any game that goes on too long is a bore.”
“Tell me about your dead world, Mr. Flowers,” Jack said. “I think I missed the funeral.”
“It died half a century ago,” Keating said. “When we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we also destroyed our country as surely as if we’d unleashed thousands of atom bombs in a global holocaust. We destroyed the Old Republic. My world.” He nodded at Caroline. “Her world.”
“Not my world,” Caroline said.
“Oh, yes,” Keating said. “Your world ended so completely before you were born, you don’t even know what you’re missing.”
“Class warfare, huh?” Jack asked.
“I would think you might understand all about class warfare, Mr. Slidell,” Keating said. “After all, your side won.”
“Too bad I missed out when they distributed the spoils,” Jack said.
Keating shook his head.
“What a terrible century,” he said, “full of horror and fast food. Fast food and reality TV.”
“At least we have some sort of reality,” Caroline said.
“Some sort, yes,” Keating said. Almost to himself. “Caroline, go back to work. Mr. Slidell find something to do. Get your law license back. I’m sure there’s a way. You seem to like each other. Get married. Settle down. You don’t need to cause problems for yourselves.”