“So did I!” Jason exclaimed. “Didn’t see you, though.”
“I was wearing a different outfit.”
“He wasn’t.” Adam was getting ready to reopen the great selling out versus arrested development debate, but now Alison was talking about seeing Dylan—you know, When-He-Was-God, and there was no time for small talk.
“When he plugged in…it was like.…”
“I know what you mean.” Jason nodded intently.
“Doors flew open.”
“Wow…wow. I remember.…”
“That he was booed off the stage? That the sound sucked?” Nothing bothered Adam more than nostalgia. And Dylan would have backed him up—don’t look back—that was Dylan’s line. Maybe Satchel Paige said it first, but Dylan put it to music. “She’s got everything she needs/she’s an artist/she don’t look back.” Get it? She doesn’t look back. “I swear,” he continued, “sometimes I think I’m the only one who can remember the ’sixties.”
This didn’t deter Jason, who was still blown away by “doors flew open.” That’s what Dylan meant. That’s what it all meant. Great music was an invitation. You either got it or you didn’t. Jason must have played Dylan tapes for seven hundred people. About half said they liked it. Maybe seven got it.
“So what do you do now?” he asked Alison.
“I teach history at NYU. Starting next week, that is. I just finished my Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin.”
“A woman professor?” Adam asked, half male-chauvinist, half revenge for Alison’s reporter crack.
“I tried to be a man professor, but I could never learn to go to the bathroom standing up.”
“That reminds me—I’ll be right back.” Adam bounded off toward the restrooms.
“I have to apologize for Adam. He can be a little—”
“New York? I like it.” She looked a little harder at Jason, but he was looking up at the TV, distracted, and didn’t pick up on it.
“Yeah, well, uh, not everybody is.…”
“What?”
Jason stared intently at the TV, looking confused and a little concerned. “I’ve seen that car before.”
Jason stood up in his chair and reached up to the TV, raising the volume manually. The TV showed footage of police milling around the large sedan that Jason had seen that morning on the side of the road. There were a lot of cops at the scene, and all kinds of flashing lights, like there had been some major pile-up instead of just one stopped car. An authoritative male voice added some voice-over to the pictures.
“Repeating tonight’s top story, Brooklyn Borough President Sidney Maynes was found dead in his car late this afternoon, an apparent suicide. Associates of Maynes report that he had been despondent over his role in failing to contain the City’s financial distress.”
The TV footage showed a body being removed from the front of the car and placed on a stretcher. The body was covered, but the attendants were having a little trouble pushing it across the grass, and one of the arms, in a dark sleeve, slipped and dangled off the side. The camera unsteadily closed in on the body, but then the picture jerked to a wide shot, and Jason could imagine the director back at the station screaming at the hand-held for getting so close. He could see the car was in exactly the same spot as this morning, but now only the front driver’s door was open. The cops were treating it like a crime scene, closing off the road near the car and putting up yellow tape. Jason leaned in closer to the screen, but the picture switched back to the studio, and he was startled by the bright life-size image of a female news anchor.
“Maynes’s body was discovered slumped over the wheel of his car on the shoulder of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Police were alerted to the vehicle by motorists idling in rush hour traffic. In other news, commenting on the City’s finances.…”
Jason lowered the volume and climbed down from the chair. He stared at the wall underneath the TV.
“Did you know him or something?” Alison was searching for context. It seemed unlikely he knew the Brooklyn Borough President, but she was reading that level of concern in his face.
“No. It’s probably nothing.” Jason said it, but he wasn’t selling it. Adam landed back at the table with a thud that shook their beers.
“What I miss?”
Jason kept quiet, and guided a drop of beer back up the side of his glass.
“This Mayes guy killed himself,” Alison said, watching as Jason continued to study his beer.
“Maynes,” Adam corrected.
Jason looked up. “You knew?”
“I told you when I got here. You never listen to me.”
“I hear you plenty. You didn’t say anything.”
“It was implied. You gotta listen right. Whatever’s going on, he was in it up to his neck.” Adam put his hand sharply under his chin.
“How do you know?”
“You keep waiting for the facts to catch up with what I know, by then it’ll be too late. I’m telling you. I know things. A lot of things.”
“Did you know that when I flew over Maynes’s car this morning, the back door was open?” Jason rested the side of his face in his palm, trumping Adam’s theatrics with Jack Benny understatement.
“Don’t fuck with my head. You’re fucking with my head.”
“Have I ever fucked with your head?”
“What does it matter if the door was open?” Alison jumped in. She could tell that Adam and Jason were on the verge of switching over to some all-guy code.
“Back door,” Adam said sharply.
“Could mean nothing,” Jason said, collecting himself. What did it matter, anyway? “Could have been jarred loose when he went off the road.”
“Or it could have been left open when someone took off in a hurry,” Adam countered, leaning in on the table, challenging Jason to shoot him down.
Adam was just warming up and Jason decided to go the other way, and throw some meat into the cage. “And I could have sworn he was wearing a tan jacket.”
“You saw him?”
“I saw somebody.”
It was like watching a tennis match. “Shouldn’t you tell the police?” Alison asked innocently, mostly to stay involved.
“No!” Adam and Jason spoke at the same time, and the combined effect was quite startling. They continued to talk over one another, elaborating their positions. “Not till I have more of the story.” “Nothing much to tell.”
Alison seemed unconvinced by the barrage, but got the clear impression that this was a crowd that did not go to the police, for one reason or another.
“Couple of hundred feet up in a moving helicopter,” Jason mused. “I’ve got nothing to say to them that they don’t know by now. Even New York cops can tell the difference between a murder and a suicide.”
“I’m telling you,” Adam said confidently, “this whole thing is about the money. If I could just get into the City’s books, I’d blow this whole thing wide open.”
5
It was very late when they left the bar, and Jason walked Alison the long way back to her apartment building. The neighborhood looked good at night. The lighting took the edge off the streets, the way a tinted mirror didn’t show the lines in your face. It was also good to get some time with Alison alone. He’d known Adam for so long that when they were together it was like he wasn’t a single person.
“Adam’s always digging at something,” Jason explained. “He spent over six hours at the Hall of Records yesterday.”
“What for?”
“You heard most of it. He’s convinced that there are these dark secrets in the City’s financial records. But he can’t get his hands on the ones he wants, so he tries to put the pieces together by filling in all the information that’s available to the public.”
“What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Are there dark secrets in the City’s financial records?”
“I don’t know. There are dark secrets everywhere, if you’re looking for them
,” he said, waving his hand at the scores of unlit windows looking down on them from the apartments that lined the street. That came out gloomier than he wanted. “Anyway, Adam’s pretty excitable, is all I mean.”
“Everybody should be excitable about something.”
“I guess.”
It was quiet, and Jason looked around. He loved walking the streets after hours. Traffic lights dutifully performed their silent ritual, the changing of the guard in front of an empty palace—green lights would turn yellow and then red, and the opposing red would fall to green. With just a few lonely cars on the road, you could appreciate the majesty of how the lights turned green, one after the other, in precise rhythm down the boulevard as far as the eye could see. At the right speed you could probably make it all the way to the City without stopping.
He looked over at Alison, and wondered if she would ever think about traffic lights that way. Probably not, but then again, Adam probably didn’t either, so he decided not to hold it against her.
“You never married?”
“No.” She answered matter-of-factly, much to Jason’s relief. He regretted asking as soon as the words left his mouth.
“And you?” she countered.
“I was engaged once,” he offered, as if mentioning a summer camp he once briefly attended.
“Really?” She stopped walking for a half-step, but only just. “What happened?”
“Good question.” Actually, he wasn’t quite sure of the answer. “She, I, it was…I guess there was some disagreement about how long an engagement was supposed to last.”
“I bet you didn’t beat my record,” she said with a smile.
“Engaged?”
“Two years.”
“Impressive. Then what?”
“It was more of a trial separation than an engagement. We met in college. Then he headed off to the war, and I started grad school, partly to mark time. He thought I should quit when he got back. So did my mother. She worked for three years when my father was in the Pacific, quit the day he came home, and never looked back. But it was too late for me.”
She stopped abruptly. The flashing DON’T WALK sign froze to an urgent red, and the light turned against them. It would be thirty seconds, or even a minute, before it would exhale and give way to that reassuring, solid, white “Walk.” Jason looked left and then right—there wasn’t a car in sight. He gave her a long look, but she wasn’t biting.
“I think we can risk it,” he said.
They turned down a quiet street and continued talking. It was dark, and the trees threw shadows from what light there was. You notice different things about people when you can’t see their faces—how they walk, the way they hold their heads, when they decide it’s just the right time to push the hair back from in front of their eyes. Jason thought the night was more honest than the day.
“You like being a professor?”
“I don’t know. I just started. I love history.”
“Which part?”
“The last part,” she said, laughing. “Sorry, we historians have so few good jokes. Trust me, you don’t want to know,” she said with a smile that gave him credit for showing interest.
“Sure I do.”
“Okay, then…my dissertation was called The Social Roots of Economic Decline in Medieval Empire.”
Jason took his best shot, but it was obvious he had nothing, so he went with repetition: “The social roots—”
“It won a prize,” Alison interjected quickly. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s hard. I mean, on the one hand I’m really proud of it, but on the other, no normal person would ever, you know.…”
“So what’s it about?”
“Well, it’s really interesting, actually.” Jason could see the whites in her eyes as they widened. “You see, nobody really understands why these empires declined—you know, usually there are good reasons why the rich just get richer. And these vast empires, they were stronger and richer than everyone around them…but they just kind of ran out of steam, and faded away.”
“So it’s a mystery story.”
“That’s what my advisor used to say, but not as nicely. I think history is big mystery story, when you really look at it. And I love a good mystery. But it drove him crazy. He used to call me Agatha.”
“Agatha?”
“You know, like Agatha Christie.”
“So, did the butler do it?”
“Nobody knows for sure. I said it was suicide. It sure wasn’t murder. There wasn’t some foreign force that conquered them. They just…kind of died inside. Once they reached the height of their power, they lost their sense of purpose.”
She glanced over quickly before continuing, to make sure his eyes hadn’t glazed over. “It was as if after spending all that energy to get to the top, once they got there, they had nowhere else to go. They understood the challenge but didn’t know what to do with the achievement.”
“Sounds interesting,” he said after a pause, referring more to the timbre of her voice when she talked about it.
“Uh-huh.” She gave him a skeptical smile.
“No, really.”
Even by Jason’s route, they had finally reached Alison’s apartment building. It was older, and small for the neighborhood, four stories high with a half-flight of brick stairs leading to the entryway. Alison fumbled for her keys.
“So,” Jason offered tentatively, trying to rise to the occasion, “the last three times I’ve played at the Cottage you’ve been there. This raises an interesting question. It’s going to be three, maybe four days till we—”
Alison silenced him with a kiss, which lasted more than a moment.
“Maybe we should plan something sooner,” she offered, walking up the steps.
“How about dinner?”
She reached for the door. “Sure, call me.”
“I don’t have your number!” he said hurriedly, as she had one foot in the door.
She barely looked back. “Get it from Adam. He asked for it when you were in the bathroom.”
6
Jason’s first day of extra-curricular flying made it obvious why Mr. Morgan was in the market for a helicopter. He had already been to the Bronx and was now cruising towards Staten Island. The trip would have taken hours under the best of circumstances, and these days, it was just not a practical possibility. Even off-peak, the FDR Drive looked like a parking lot.
Jason looked over at his unnamed passenger, who earlier in the day had greeted him with a rather monotone “Mr. Morgan said you’d be expecting me.” His own uncharacteristically warm “Hi, I’m Jason” had been met with a slight nod and firm shake of the hand. The guy looked to be about Jason’s age, athletic, with sharp dark features that held his initial impenetrably stoic expression longer than you would have thought was possible. He wore a suit and tie—a nice suit that fit well—but he had the hands of a bricklayer. Jason passed the time guessing about his background. Second generation, maybe third. Southern European, big family, probably from Brooklyn. And for some reason Jason convinced himself that his father was a butcher.
“What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh.” Some people are intimidated by awkward silences, but Jason wasn’t one of them. He looked over, wide-eyed, feigning innocence.
“You can call me Bill,” he offered, making no effort to avoid the distinct impression that his name was anything but Bill. But it was better than nothing.
“Okay, Bill, where exactly in Staten Island are we going? It’s a big-ass island.”
“I’ll point it out when we get closer.”
“Listen, I don’t care where you want to go, I just gotta make sure we’re clear to land.”
“That won’t ever be a problem.”
“Still, it would help if—”
“Look, I’ll tell you everything you need to know, okay?” He stretched out the word need, and it effectively ended the conversation. They rode on in silence. Bill had tw
o attaché cases at his feet, and he occasionally tapped one of them with his fingertips, as if he was keeping time.
As they approached the Queensboro Bridge Jason subtly swung around a bit to get a better view. There were a few things in the City that really mattered, things that you anticipated seeing again no matter how many times you’d seen them before. The Statue of Liberty, the Chrysler Building, the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, for sure. Even with the Simon and Garfunkel song, the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge was under-appreciated. Most people wouldn’t put it in the top three, maybe even top five. But most people hadn’t driven across the Queens-bound lower roadway at night, veered off at Northern Boulevard, and then thought to look out the back window. The bridge was spectacular from below and the darkness of the river framed the lights of the City all the way downtown.
They passed the bridge and cruised effortlessly down the East River, leaving Manhattan behind. When they reached Staten Island, Bill directed Jason to an isolated spot on the northeastern part of the borough.
“Over there,” Bill gestured, pointing at a large industrial park in the distance. Even from the air, it looked big, and as they got closer it also looked very empty. The factories were idle, shut down, maybe even abandoned; it didn’t look like the grounds were being maintained. But there were a few cars around and some scattered lights were illuminated.
“There’s a good spot behind those tanks,” Bill directed. “Set it down on the far side, across from that warehouse.”
Jason did as he was instructed, and as they were landing, Bill turned to him.
“Leave it running. I’ll be right back,” he said, and quickly hopped out while the rotors were still spinning. He took one of the briefcases with him, leaving the other on the floor. Jason was looking down at it when Bill suddenly reappeared.
“Hey!” he shouted over the blades.
“What?”
“I forgot to tell you.” A hint of warmth slipped into his voice, though his eyes stayed firm. “If you’re ever not sure what to do…if anything happens when I’m away from the copter, just take off. Don’t worry about it, don’t think about it, just go. Got it?”
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