“Are you sure he’s allowed to sit back there?” Carol asked Jason.
Carol was sitting in the passenger seat, and Adam was cramped awkwardly in the space behind them. Jason was quite certain Adam wasn’t allowed back there. He hadn’t mentioned to Harry that he was bringing him and made Adam kind of sneak on, though Sammy couldn’t have missed him.
“He’s probably in violation of some code,” Jason said, amusing himself at Morgan’s expense.
Carol looked out the window but quickly decided that looking in was a better bet. “How are you doing back there?” She called out. Adam didn’t answer, so she twisted her body in the confines of her seat and arched back towards where he was sitting. “I said, how are you doing back there?”
“I heard you. I thought you were just making conversation.”
“I was.”
“That’s more of an elevator thing,” Adam said cooly.
Carol’s gymnastics had caused her skirt to slip up past her knees to her mid-thighs. Jason noticed this and glanced over briefly, several times, making mental notes. Adam never said anything about not looking at her legs.
“Really,” she responded, with no intention of letting anybody shut her down. “Is that from Emily Post?”
“You know what the problem is with television?” Adam asked, more aggressively. “You’ve got to talk at a certain time, for a certain time, even if there’s nothing to say. Before you know it you’re walking around like that, even when the camera’s off.”
Carol twisted back to her seat, causing Jason to turn his head suddenly, but at least he managed to refrain from one of his brilliant camouflaging sneezes. Fortunately, Carol was more concerned about him as her pilot.
“Everything okay?” She looked uneasily at his face, searching for hints of some unstated mechanical problem.
“Sure. Just a lot of things to keep my eyes on,” Jason explained, gesturing at the instrument panel.
Adam snorted. It was directed at Jason, but Carol took it personally.
Carol looked out the window again, ignoring him.
“How much longer?” she asked Jason.
“Still a while. We have to take a wide circle around Kennedy airport.”
She turned back again toward Adam, apparently choosing him over the window as the lesser of two evils.
“Why are you here?” she asked him pointedly, almost existentially.
“Covering the funeral.”
“Last time I checked, you were in entertainment. Have you been promoted?” She lingered on the last word and arched her eyebrows, pulling rank.
“What do you expect out there—news or theater?” Adam asked sharply, even for him. “You gonna interview the brave widow? Get some shots of the kids holding their teddy bears? ‘How do you feel, kids, how does it feel now that Daddy’s gone? How does it feeel?’ ” He gave her the full Dylan treatment, extending the e and glaring at her with an accumulated contempt for her entire profession.
“Are you always this much of an asshole, or just on days that your office burns down?”
“How would you like—”
“Hey, take it easy guys,” Jason intervened, trying to cool Adam off and maybe scoring a few chivalry points in the process. “No fighting in the copter. It’s one of the few rules I believe in. Relax. Enjoy the ride. You guys could be down there in a van.” He pointed at a long line of traffic below.
Carol took his word for it. She was through looking out the window.
“Nice to see you can play the peacemaker,” she said to Jason.
“What do you mean by that?”
“That cop today.” She turned back to Adam. “He picked a fight with a cop.”
“I did not.”
“Bull,” she said directly at Jason. She turned back to Adam, her voice rising. “In Harry’s office. I thought he was going to hit him!”
“He’s done it before,” Adam said casually.
“Hit a cop?”
“You know that isn’t true,” Jason insisted.
Adam maneuvered in his space, getting a little closer so he could talk to Carol and torment Jason at the same time. “Let me tell you a little something about our friend here. Jason, see, he doesn’t like cops much. Why, back in nineteen sixty-seven—”
Jason turned around and looked squarely at Adam. “You tell this story like it’s supposed to be some defining moment. Let me tell you something, there’s no such thing as a defining moment. People are a little more complex than that. This is an overrated story. You need new material, that’s your problem. One of your problems.”
“Aren’t you supposed to look forward when you drive this thing?” Adam asked.
Jason glanced forward for an instant, and then looked back again at Adam. “I happen to have very well-formed opinions, and I got them on my own. Maybe some of them have been reconfirmed more or less at one particular moment, but which they would have been the same regardless.” Jason was talking so fast the words were falling over each other. They didn’t quite add up, but he’d made his point. “I don’t like anchovies, you know, but it’s not like I was ever attacked by one.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who brought it up.” At least Adam was enjoying himself. “Besides, if it’s not such a profound story, why should it matter if I tell it?
“Well, you can’t not tell it now,” Carol added.
Jason turned and faced forward, and made a slight course correction designed to serve as a subtle reminder that their lives were in his hands. Carol took a small quick breath.
“Now then,” Adam began, like he was narrating a documentary, “back in nineteen sixty-seven, old Jason here had just finished his first year of Harvard Law School—”
“Harvard?” Carol seemed more surprised than impressed, though a little bit of impressed hung in the air.
“Oh yeah, Jason was quite a tiger back then. You know what they used to say about him? He didn’t see much coming but he reacted really well.”
Jason grunted.
“Anyway, as I was saying, he chose to intern at the San Francisco office of the ACLU. That was Jason all over: idealistic and practical at the same time. I mean, with all due respect to Mark Twain, nothing’s nicer than summer by the Bay. ‘Up and down the San Fran-cis-co Bay’,” he added, in a brief homage to Van Morrison.
“You gonna tell the story or play tourist guide?” Jason asked without turning.
“You ever hear of the Sunset Strip riot?” Adam asked Carol. He was back to his normal voice.
“No.”
“You know, from that song ‘For What it’s Worth,’ by Buffalo Springfield?”
She shook her head. “No.”
This was unacceptable to Adam. “Sure you do,” he insisted, and started singing “there’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly—”
Jason cut him off. “She said no.” If there was one thing Adam couldn’t do, it was sing.
“Well, that one was in LA anyway,” Adam continued. “But it was the same story all over. The Summer of Love,” he said with a cynical smile. “Hippies flocked to California, started to fill up the streets. They were everywhere.”
“War protesters?” Carol asked
“Not really. Just kids looking for something, I guess. In ’sixty-seven the whole thing was still more about business than politics. But either way the local storeowners asked the cops to clear the streets. They thought the hippies were scaring away customers. But things got a little out of hand. You know, kind of a dress rehearsal for Chicago ’sixty-eight.” He swung his arms to illustrate the point. “It was complete anarchy. The cops kind of waded in, ordered everybody to ‘disperse,’ and most of them did, but they really had nowhere to go. Everybody’s just milling around, one thing leads to another, maybe some names thrown back and forth. Some of the cops get a little excited, then a few more.”
His voice trailed off, and he held them both in suspense for a moment. “One thing you may not have experienced, Carol, given your lifestyle choice
s, is that when a cop comes running at you, you get this overwhelming urge to run. Even if you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just something about the uniform. So before you know it, cops are chasing kids all over the street. Everybody’s scrambling around like one of those fast-speed silent movies. Finally, one of them pulls his nightstick out, and just hits this kid right in the head. Boom! Down to the ground.”
Carol turned to Jason. “Was that you?”
“No,” Jason said flatly.
“That’s actually what makes this story so interesting,” Adam continued. “Jason wasn’t with them. It was kind of a younger, more-unemployed type crowd, whereas our hero was a very purposeful fellow at this point in time. But we’re not quite there yet. Once the first nightstick comes out, then all hell really breaks lose. Somebody throws a bottle—at least that’s what the papers said—and we’re looking at something that’s known in the trade as a ‘police riot.’ Now here comes Jason, who, as I said, wasn’t involved in this at all, just walking back to work from lunch. Minding his own business, he sees a cop catch up with some kid and start to beat the hell out of him with his nightstick. I mean, he’s just whaling on him, and he’s not stopping.”
“So what did you do?” she asked Jason.
“Nothing. What anyone would have done.”
Adam smiled. “What anyone over here did was run over and put a flying tackle on the cop. And I mean flying tackle—running, diving, tackling—peeled him right off the kid. The cop screams for help, and before you know it the nightsticks are everywhere. Jason and this other kid are hauled off to jail, bashed-in and bleeding—the kid got sixteen stitches down the side of his face—charged with assaulting an officer.”
“Wow!” Carol exclaimed.
“Yeah, Jason’s got a lot of wows in his past.”
The helicopter veered downward, sharply and without warning. As designed, it sent Adam tumbling.
“Hey!”
“We’re here,” Jason reported.
“So what happened?”
“Nothing,” Jason said. “Turns out the kid was the son of some state senator. His lawyer shows up a couple of hours later, and we’re kicked. But I never played the piano again.”
21
They set down gently on a concrete square in the middle of a large grassy field adjacent to the cemetery. A WNYS-TV6 news van idled in a small, otherwise empty parking lot in the near distance, beyond which were a smattering of stone benches, a large flagpole, and a path that led to what must have been an administrative or sales office that looked closed. You couldn’t see any tombstones from where they had landed; a gently sloping but formidable hill obscured the view. Jason had overshot the cemetery by about half a mile before swinging around and descending to the helipad; nobody wanted any aircraft buzzing the service.
Carol got out first and was greeted by two crewmen who had hopped out of the van as they arrived. Jason caught up with her just as she was opening the passenger side door.
“Hey, you going to need a ride back?”
“No,” she said quickly, looking over at the helicopter like it was a German shepherd threatening to break off its leash. “I’ll go with them.” She got in and closed the door, and talked through the window. “It should be okay, we’ll be going in the opposite direction of the rush.”
“Your funeral,” he said, walking away, two steps later hoping she found the unintended joke clever.
“You guys want a ride over?” She called out when he was already about fifteen feet away.
Jason checked over at the helicopter; Adam hadn’t gotten out yet. “No thanks, we’ll hoof it.”
By the time he got back Adam still hadn’t stirred, nor did he give the impression he planned to.
“Don’t make me go to this thing alone,” Jason said. “Besides, if anything happens to the copter when you’re in it, insurance won’t cover it.”
Adam didn’t respond, but he dragged himself out and they walked slowly toward the cemetery. The hill was bigger than it looked when you were walking it, and it started to rain lightly.
“Go ahead, rain on me, it won’t make any difference,” Adam said in disgust, looking up at the sky.
They continued walking, and the rain got a little harder. “She didn’t even offer us a ride, did she, the soulless whore.”
“That she did,” Jason answered. It might have been an afterthought, but he let her get full credit.
“Huh, I must have been wrong about her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, maybe she’s got a soul.”
“You’re just bitter ’cause you never made it with her.”
“How would you know that?” Adam asked in a worldly voice. It touched Jason for a second, but only just.
“Because there is no way you wouldn’t have told me.”
“You think I tell you about all of them?”
“I don’t think you tell me about half of them. But you would have told me about her.”
They finally reached the top of the hill and started down the other side. They could see the Maynes service in the distance.
“Yeah, I guess I would have, eventually,” Adam conceded. “But just for the record, I never tried.”
“I see.”
“Really. I wouldn’t want any part of it.”
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “Most guys look at her, I figure they’re saying, ‘That’s an amusement park I’d like to visit.’ Not to mention the sheer curiosity factor.”
“I thought you found her fascinating, you know, in an intellectual sense.”
“I wasn’t talking about me, I was talking about most guys.”
“What, you’re not most guys, but I am?” Adam said, lowering his voice as they approached the funeral.
“I’m not saying you’re most guys,” Jason said, steadily lowering his voice to a whisper. “I’m just saying that’s what most guys would think, and it wouldn’t be surprising if you shared that particular thought.”
They slowed as they approached the crowd. Jason didn’t know how popular Maynes was when he was alive, but he managed to draw a very large gathering to his graveside. The rain had tapered off again and was somewhere between a light rain and a heavy mist. Most of the spectators were in raincoats but didn’t use umbrellas, giving Adam and Jason a clear view as they approached, since they were still on slightly higher ground. The casket was suspended above the grave in the center, attached by red straps to a brass-colored frame. The mourners formed a U-shape around it, set back by about twenty feet on each side. At the top of the U there was a dais crowded with dignitaries, and a podium with a microphone set in the front.
Adam and Jason stopped near the back of the crowd, leaving a small space so that they would be able to see everything, but not so far back that they obviously stood out. A contingent of reporters stood behind the dais at a discreet distance, but a lone unmanned camera was set up in front to film the speakers. It must have been going on for a while, because the Mayor was already giving his speech. An aide was standing next to him, holding a large umbrella. Adam and Jason listened, but they also scanned the crowd as the Mayor spoke.
“…I met Sid in ’fifty-three. Too young to fight in the big one, he’d volunteered for Korea and had just come back.” Cohen was in good form. There was a warmth in his recollections, but he wrapped his words with just the right weight for the occasion. “He worked full time and put himself through law school at night, supporting three generations of his family. In nineteen seventy-one he became the youngest borough president in the City’s history.”
“Yeah,” Adam whispered, “he was a real prince.” He pointed out someone on the dais to Jason. “There’s his good friend, Dominick Labetta. I’ve got a picture of him and the Mayor meeting at a.…”
“What?” Jason asked.
“I don’t have that picture anymore. I don’t have any pictures. I don’t have anything. What’s the point. The whole thing is a joke.”
Jason leaned over without moving hi
s feet and nudged Adam’s shoulder with his. Then he leaned in a little more, and Adam had to take a small step to keep his balance.
“It’s a bump in the road. Looks big now, but the farther you get from it, the smaller it’ll seem. Nothing’s ever slowed you down before.”
Adam looked Jason in the eye. “You’re not exactly a poster boy for ‘It’ll work out,’ you know?” It was more pessimistic than aggressive, and Jason sensed Adam was letting the conversation continue.
“Shake a tree and crooked politicians will come falling out faster than light-hitting shortstops. You just gotta keep shaking.”
Adam looked at the ground, unconvinced, and Jason returned his attention to the Mayor, who was still going on.
“…This city never sleeps and neither did Sid. If he stumbled toward the end of his journey, it was due to the unforeseeable twists in the fate of the path, not the price of his remarkable pace. He packed two lifetimes into forty-five years, and our City was better for it, and those of us who knew him well.…” He paused for a moment, and looked past the crowd, as if to gather his emotions, though he betrayed none too obviously. “Those of us who knew him well…all I can say is, we were thankful for the privilege. Farewell, my friend.”
Cohen stepped back, and his aide slipped off to the side, lowering the oversized umbrella as he left the dais, revealing a group of four men. He exchanged a few short handshakes as he worked his way back towards the center of the platform, and the empty chair waiting just to the left of where the four men stood quietly in a row.
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