Sleeping Dogs

by Tony Vanderwarker

  Then she thinks of the major lying helplessly in his bed in Ward 3 and decides—If anything happened to him I’d feel guilty for the rest of my life.

  Without giving it another thought, she reaches for the telephone and briskly dials a number.

  “Hello, Sharon, what’s up?” her host for Thanksgiving dinner answers.

  “Hey, listen, I’ve got to go into work to check on something. So I’ll be a little late, okay?” She listens to Lucy prattle on about dinner getting cold, then cuts her off. “I’ll be there, okay? Gotta run. Bye.” She sets the phone back in its cradle slowly. In the back of her mind is a growing concern about the wizened old man in Ward 3. Does he really have some secret he’s kept hidden all these years? And could someone want to keep him from revealing it? Jesus, how spooky is that?

  Sharon prints out the contents of the sleepingdogs website. In the upper corner of the first page is a photograph of the webmaster with his address and phone number, a good-looking fifty-something guy who lives down in Charlottesville. She checks the clock at the top of the screen. It’s too late to call, deciding to wait until she checks on Risstup in the morning.

  After all, in a couple hours it will be Thanksgiving. Her pragmatic nature kicks in. And it’s silly to get all worked up about something that could turn out to be nothing at all.

  5

  New Brunswick, New Jersey, the day before Thanksgiving

  When he sees the curly-haired, dark-skinned student swim his first lap, the coach thinks he’s died and gone to heaven.

  A couple hours after practice ended in the Werblin Rec Center, the team now high-tailing it for home and turkey day, Johanson is sitting up in the stands finishing up practice notes with no reason to notice the well-muscled young man lowering himself into the pool. But the combination of his unique stroke and kick immediately catches his eye.

  It was the most unorthodox style he had ever seen, to say the least, as if the tail of a porpoise had been grafted onto a windmill, his legs double-dolphining in perfect unison to propel his body forward at an incredible speed while his arms churned through the water, accelerating to a pace that Johanson can’t believe until he takes out his stopwatch. While his stroke is half crawl, half butterfly and would have been illegal in competition, his times easily rival NCAA records for either event. Adapting his stroke would affect his time but even so Johanson expects the swimmer could have a huge impact on the program.

  After finishing his workout, the coach saunters up as the swimmer’s toweling off at the end of the pool. He’s with a chubby girl wearing a Rutgers sweatshirt over her suit.

  As Johanson approaches he says, “Excuse me, but can I ask you where you learned to swim like that?”

  “Been swimming since I was a kid.”

  “Where? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Why are you so interested, if you don’t mind me asking?” the swimmer says.

  “Your stroke, I’ve never seen anything like it. Are you a student here?”

  “And you are?” his voice giving the coach the cold shoulder.

  Flashing a smile, Johanson extends his hand. “Miles Johanson, assistant coach of the Rutgers swimming team.”

  “Yeah, hi,” the kid says, not impressed.

  “And you are?” the coach says, turning to his friend.

  “Melanie,” she’s taking the frosty approach too, not even taking Johanson’s hand.

  “I’d like to talk to you about trying out for the team,” he said, ambling along the pool deck with them. “I think you could start swimming competitively for us in a very short time.”

  “Thanks, but that does not have interest for me.”

  “Would you just sit down and meet with our head coach?”

  “I’m sorry, I am very loaded down with studies.”

  “We have a number of dean’s list students on the team. They all get their work done.”

  The student’s voice took on a hard edge. “Thank you, I appreciate your interest. But not something I want to do, you understand?”

  “Would you consider talking to the head coach—just talking?” Johanson was almost jogging alongside him now.

  “I think I’ve been clear, now, really, we need to go.”

  Johanson stands watching the two walk down the deck wondering if he had come on too strong. Or was the kid shy? Maybe he has immigration problems? Or just insecure about his English? And what’s with the girlfriend, he’s a finely tuned machine and she’s a load.

  The coach is not giving up easily. He checks around, finds out his name, talks to his advisor, fellow students. The faculty advisor informs him that Mehran Zarif is a brainy Iranian studying engineering who goes by the nickname Denny and keeps a low profile on campus. Every time Johanson runs into him at the Rec Center, he tries to talk Denny into trying out. But he’s never able to get more than two sentences out before he says thank you, always says thank you, smiles, shakes his head and walks away.

  Johanson tries having the head coach engage him. No luck. Zarif is polite but has no interest in meeting and stops returning the coach’s calls. It soon becomes abundantly clear that the last thing on Denny Zarif’s mind is swimming for Rutgers.

  Though he gives up trying to talk to him, over the following weeks, the coach can’t help remarking on Zarif’s activities at the aquatic center. Three days a week and once on weekends, Zarif comes in either at midday during free swim or after varsity practice. Sometimes the girlfriend’s with him, sometimes not. When she is, she always seems more interested in playing video games than jumping in and getting some exercise.

  The coach’s curiosity is piqued by his workout. Starting with an inflated exercise ball, the kid does an incredible series of exercises, a hundred pushups with his feet on the ball, followed by bridges, calf raises, back flies and ab extensions. Then with dumbbells, he went through a series of step-ups on the stands, then wall squats—two exercises having little to do with the muscles used in swimming events. Again, multiple series of each, fifty reps apiece.

  When he slips into the pool, he’s a machine. Swimming a couple thousand meters a day, many under water. He’s ripping along, arms churning, when all of a sudden his head ducks under and his body goes arrow-straight as his powerful double-dolphin kick takes over. His lung capacity is astounding; swimming two hundred meters under the surface in four fifty-meter laps easy as pie. He pops up at the wall, takes a breath and plunges for another two hundred.

  When Zarif slides a twenty-pound weight into the diving pool and jumps in to retrieve it, Johansen finally figures out what he’s training for and why he has no interest in swimming for Rutgers.

  When Zarif wasn’t around, the coach tried it. No piece of cake. Busted his lungs bringing it up from the bottom. So why in the world would he bring a barbell plate up fifty times in a row?

  It can only be recovering sunken treasure. And all the exercises he’s doing make sense for getting in and out of boats, off swim platforms, all that stuff.

  Obviously the kid’s in training for one of those treasure-hunting expeditions, Johanson’s thinking, a company secures the rights to dive a wreck and recover the loot and has to keep it secret until their mission is completed so competitors won’t discover the location and raid it in the middle of the night.

  That explains why he’s acting so standoffish. Must have connections with an international diving outfit and with big money involved, gold coins, bullion, gems—you keep your mouth shut.

  One thing for sure about these foreign students is they can act so strange.

  6

  Charlottesville, late Thanksgiving afternoon

  “Did I tell you I had a little chat with Drummond when I was at the university?”

  “How’s my favorite professor doing?” Sylvie asks her husband as she chops a row of carrots on her cutting board. Though Sylvie makes elaborate preparations for Thanksgiving, with their kids and grandchildren joining them, it always turns out to be much more of a production than she anticipates.
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br />   “Seems fine, hasn’t changed a bit.”

  “And they liked your presentation? Wait—take out the trash before you answer,” Sylvie says, shoving the bulging can toward him with her knee. “The kids will be here in a half an hour and I’m already behind. And besides, you completely ducked the question I asked you a half hour ago. I asked—didn’t think you’d talked enough about your lost bombs at our picnic in September?”

  Howie stops at the door and turns to her. “Donald’s always seemed fascinated with my project,” he says, knowing he is sounding defensive.

  “You know your children think the world of you, but lost nuclear weapons aren’t a subject for the dinner table.”

  Sylvie Collyer wonders if she isn’t being too hard on Howie until she sees he’s already wrestling the garbage can out the door. Though his colleagues at the Pentagon often laughed behind his back about his preoccupation, Sylvie has always taken it seriously. To her, there are enough unanswered questions about lost nukes to warrant concern. And the reluctance of the Pentagon brass to deal with the subject creates at least suspicion of a cover-up.

  No question Howie’s obsession with unrecovered nuclear weapons cut short his career, though no one at the Pentagon would ever own up to it. Once a Pentagon favorite in constant demand for his graphic magic, he soon became a pariah. Too strident, self-righteous and unwilling to listen to reason, his former colleagues sealed him off, avoiding his nods and glances in the hallways.

  The handwriting was on the wall—the Pentagon had had it up to here with Howie Collyer. Someone planted classified documents in his desk drawer and reported the infraction. Three times and he was effectively framed and labeled as a security risk. Early retirement was the only option.

  Though his pension was measly, Sylvie got lucky with a local dotcom venture, making a bundle before it went belly up. The tiny farm they had bought outside of Charlottesville made for a perfect retirement retreat. With their nest egg, his pension and their Social Security, they have plenty of money to live comfortably, do some traveling and write a few checks to the kids. And they are still young enough to enjoy life around Charlottesville, football games, concerts, lectures and some scrappy doubles games. Howie is playing golf again in a regular foursome and his game is showing signs of the brilliance he’d displayed on the links when he was younger and had a seven handicap.

  Sylvie wants him to move on and put all the Pentagon stuff behind him, lost bombs included. Let bygones be bygones is one of her favorite sayings.

  “Raccoons are at it again,” Howie says as he comes back in with the empty can.

  “You live in the country, you put up with critters,” Sylvie says. “Now you go tidy up your office so Grace will have someplace to put her things.”

  Howie’s christened the space over the garage his “War Room” and every square inch, every nook and cranny is chockablock with maps, charts, photographs and newspaper articles. Each of the eleven lost nukes has its own separate section with a title card above it: “The Jersey Bombs,” “St. Lawrence River Bomb,” “New Mexico Bomb.” Each card notes the date the weapons were lost, the aircraft that carried it, the type of device and the location where the aircraft crashed or the bomb was jettisoned.

  Howie stops at the door when Sylvie calls to him, “Before you leave, I need some advice. I’m thinking of making either turnips or rutabagas— which one?” Sylvie stands behind the counter holding up a beige vegetable in one hand, a round brown wax-coated one in the other.

  “That’s like asking whether I prefer lethal injection or a firing squad.”

  “Not funny . . .”

  “Okay, I’ll take lethal injection,” Howie says, pointing at the rutabaga. “Just make sure you add a ton of butter. I can stomach anything as long as it has enough butter in it.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way about my rutabaga, I think it’s a great recipe,” Sylvie says, acting miffed.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Howie says as he walks around the kitchen island to the sink where his wife is standing. In her mid-fifties, Sylvie prides herself on still being attractive, holding back the aging effects of graying hair and gravity with exercise, a careful diet, and regular trips to her hairdresser. Howie puts his arms around her waist and gives her a kiss on the neck.

  “I’ll put in a pound of butter as long as you promise not to talk about lost bombs.”

  “No lost bombs, it’s a deal.”

  Howie manages to finish cleaning up just as the first load of guests pulls into the driveway. He stands at the window watching Bridey and Donald’s minivan circle the drive before hurrying downstairs to greet them.

  “Happy Thanksgiving!” Howie’s daughter-in-law squeals as she bursts through the door. An elementary school teacher who had ambitions of being an actress, Bridey cradles her latest production, a Rubenesque baby girl with rosy cheeks and a curly wisp of blonde hair dangling down her forehead. Jasmine is Bridey’s third, the other two come bounding in the door behind her followed by their father, Donald—Howie’s oldest, thirty-four and a philosophy professor at a local community college.

  “Hey, everybody! Happy Thanksgiving,” Howie says, heading for the mob flocking in the door. Howie high-fives and low-fives Jock and Richie, one four, the other six, as they race into the kitchen. Both are irrepressible hellions, much to their grandfather’s delight. They jump and leap over Howie like a couple puppies, squealing and squawking while Howie hoists them up, swinging them in whirling orbits to the consternation of their mother and grandmother.

  “Put the boys down before you hurt them,” Sylvie chides as she watches her two grandsons circling through the air.

  Bridey holds Jasmine up for her grandmother.

  “She gets more beautiful every time I see her,” Sylvie says, taking the baby in her arms. “Honestly, I bet this child could make a fortune modeling.”

  With both grandsons hanging off his legs, Howie struggles over to Donald like he’s running a three-legged race and throws his arms around him.

  “Good to see you, Dad,” Donald says. Howie and Donald couldn’t have been further apart. An affable ex-jock who could charm the pants off the stiffest flag officers in the Pentagon, Howie’s son Donald is an academic who acts like he is carrying the weight of the world. Plus he’s slim and anemic-looking with a permanent case of bedhead and no interest in his appearance. The family speculates that Donald looks and acts the way he does since his father had, in their words, taken up all the air in the room, when Donald was growing up. But Donald’s made his own mark, his last book was briefly talked about as a Pulitzer contender and with his wife Bridey, he has turned out three beautiful kids.

  “Jeez, boy, you’re practically wasting away,” Howie says, clasping his son by his shoulders. “Bridey, you’ve got to get some meat on this boy’s bones quick.”

  “My weight is within normal parameters,” Donald asserts, pulling away from his father.

  “Feel like a stick to me, boy,” Howie says. But when Sylvie shoots him a warning sneer Howie promptly relents. “To each his own, I guess. So—everybody up for a big Thanksgiving dinner? We have a solid gold turkey this year, damn thing cost me an arm and a leg.”

  “Howie, it’s free range.”

  “Free range, you bet. Know what free range means? Farmers don’t have to spend a cent feeding it. But we’ve got to pay through the nose to eat it—now what kind of deal is that?”

  “Here comes Grace!” Sylvie hoots, taking advantage of her daughter’s arrival to change the subject.

  Grace is the only member of the family who can keep up with Howie. A divorce lawyer in Raleigh, she is tough as nails, quick-witted, has a million stories and keeps her mouth in the gutter, as much to shock as to keep people off guard. Sylvie has a deal with Grace not to use the eff or ess words at family gatherings. Even so, every time Aunt Grace visits, Bridey and Donald’s boys go back to school with a new stock of cusswords.

  “Jesus Christ, whole damn clan’s here!” Grace bellows as
she comes in the door. Her shirtsleeves are rolled up to display a nasty-looking lump on her forearm. Though she has her mother’s pretty face, from somewhere in the family’s genetic history, Grace inherited the body of a fireplug. Having gone to college in Canada and fallen in love with hockey, Grace started a female league in Raleigh and loves to show off her bumps and bruises. She drives a pickup with big wheels and goes to every Nascar race she can fit into her busy schedule. Her dates are truck drivers and mechanics, for the longest time she went with a professional rodeo cowboy. Sylvie can only shake her head whenever she contemplates her daughter. So curious that Grace had been the one to adopt her father’s outgoing manner instead of Donald. Even more remarkable was that she had taken Howie’s irrepressibility out the window and is able to set her father back on his heels on a regular basis.

  “Hey, Daddy, how the hell are you?” Grace says, slapping Howie on the back and planting a fat kiss on his cheek. “Getting a little porky around the middle here, got to watch those pounds,” Grace says, grabbing her father’s waist with both hands and wheeling him side to side.

  “So whatcha been up to, Daddy? Found any lost bombs lately?”

  Sylvie quickly interjects, “We’re not going to talk about it this Thanksgiving, so let’s drop it. Grace, what have you been up to?”

  “Whoops, no lost bomb talk. Okay, I’ll tell you about my latest divorce case. First, I’ll need a drink.”

  “I think we can take care of that,” Howie says. “Anyone else?”

  “I bought a nice chardonnay to go with the turkey, there are a couple bottles in the fridge,” Sylvie volunteers. While Howie opens the wine, Bridey surveys the dishes her mother-in-law has lined up on the counter.

  “I hope you won’t mind if I pass on the rutabaga, Sylvie, the stuff makes me gag,” Bridey says.

  “Try a little taste, I put loads of butter in it.”

  “You could put whipped cream in it and I’d still barf.”

  “Okay, you get a pass on the rutabaga.”