“How can I help you?” he asked.
With that most simple of invitations, Conchita Crystal proceeded to tell Walter a story so absurd and incomplete, so filled with holes he had to remind himself several times not to completely dismiss its credibility before she finished. Her nephew, Harry Levine, had the written confession, she said, of the man who killed John F. Kennedy.
Sadie Fagan had a moustache. Not a thick one, dark and heavy, but noticeable nonetheless. It didn’t bother Harry Levine, until he was a teenager. Then he found it kind of creepy. Later, as a grown man, keenly aware and eagerly appreciative of the intrigues a woman’s body offered, Harry no longer concerned himself with Aunt Sadie’s mildly hairy upper lip. She was his father’s older sister, a squat woman, a fireplug not much more than five feet in her shoes. She was fat, but not like a lot of middle-aged women Harry saw around town. Not like the ones who always seemed to smoke menthol cigarettes. Not like the obese ones with huge asses and truck-tire thighs. And not like the ones who drove ten-year-old Pontiacs, wore oversize t-shirts emblazoned with NASCAR logos, and inevitably blocked the aisles at Wal-Mart. Aunt Sadie was solid and carried her weight well distributed. She had a big head, big ankles and a big everything else in between.
From what Harry could see, his father and Sadie shared only the same dark complexion. All resemblance ended there. In the photographs, the ones his mother and Sadie loved to show him, she always smiled. His father never did, not in any of them. And all the while Aunt Sadie never had any expression on her face except a happy smile.
As a kid, Harry thought his aunt’s grin was permanently pasted on her face. She awoke smiling and went to sleep the same way. And it was there all the while in between, even when she was angry. When Harry was eleven he happened across a picture of the old Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella. Immediately, he recognized his aunt. Of course, she was neither black nor a man and hardly a ballplayer. She was, instead, very much a middle-class, suburban, New York Jewish woman, one who just happened to live in Roswell, Georgia.
Like so many southern white women, Jews and Christians alike, Sadie had what could only be politely called big hair. To Harry, the scent of hairspray meant his aunt was nearby. No matter what she wore-a bathrobe on a Sunday morning, Bermuda shorts and one of her husband Larry’s old shirts while she worked in the garden, or a shiny, gleaming, rhinestone-studded floor-length evening gown like the ones she always wore to wedding receptions and took with her on Caribbean cruises-Sadie’s hair was always perfect and very heavily lacquered. Stiff to the touch.
Harry was born in May 1974, six months after his father disappeared in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos or someplace else. Who really knew? His mother, Elana Morales, never believed the government’s story, but what could she do? She wasn’t his wife. The unfortunate David Levine drew a low number, got drafted in February, last saw Elana in August and disappeared, MIA, the second week of December 1973. He was never found.
Harry’s mom, Elana, was Puerto Rican, a real Puerto Rican, not a New York Puerto Rican. She was a law student in New York City when she met David Levine, fell in love and moved in with him. They talked about getting married, talked about it, that’s all. David fancied himself a poet. He worked at the Post Office and wrote long poems, that rarely rhymed, in small notebooks, sitting with Elana in coffeehouses and bars in Greenwich Village. Both of them were antiwar-who wasn’t? It was the seventies. He really got screwed by his draft board. By then it was too late to get married and when Elana turned up pregnant, the Army couldn’t care less.
Sadie and Larry Fagan moved from Brooklyn to Atlanta in 1966. Larry had made a business trip there a few months earlier-he sold medical equipment-loved it and worked himself into his company’s southeastern office. Sadie was reluctant to leave New York, her family and friends, but she kept her misgivings to herself. Soon after arriving in Georgia, she realized her fears were unfounded and was more than happy to admit it. Sadie made new friends. So did Larry. They both loved living in Atlanta. Larry found his way to a senior management job with a major manufacturer of cardiac surgical supplies and the two of them settled in for the long haul.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t have children. They never said exactly why not, but years later Harry discovered it was his uncle’s fault. A low sperm count can give many women second thoughts, but Sadie stayed, sacrificed and saved her motherly love for her nephew. When Elana gave birth she gave Harry his father’s name, Levine, and took it for herself too. She was alone in New York with a baby and another year of school before becoming an attorney. She needed money and she needed friends. Sadie and Larry invited her to come to Georgia, not for a visit but permanently. They implored her. “We’re family,” they said. Elana accepted. She transferred to Emory University Law School and brought herself and her baby son to live with the Fagans.
That’s the way Harry grew up. He and his mother lived downstairs on the lower level. They had two bedrooms, a living room, a small office for Elana and a bathroom. They had a separate entrance from the backyard, one that Elana never used. In high school, when Harry sneaked out after curfew and came home late, way late, he came and went via that special door. His mother knew. His aunt and uncle knew. It never crossed Harry’s mind they had any idea. He thought he’d pulled one over.
They had a wonderful life in that house, all four of them. After her graduation, Elana passed the Bar and took a position with one of Atlanta’s big, downtown law firms. Six years later, she realized she would never be made partner. Why? Although a Levine, she was Latino. While some Jews made partner, no such rewards awaited Latinos. She was unmarried. She was a mother. Who knew why? She quit. Elana Levine opened her own law office in Roswell, near home, all by herself. She did everything a lawyer could-wills; evictions; pre-nuptial agreements; divorce and custody; civil suits of all shapes and sizes; and minor criminal offences, DUIs and drug busts for rich suburban kids. As a Spanish speaker, she was sought out by Atlanta’s growing Mexican population, usually for matters pertaining to immigration. Her practice thrived. Very soon she earned more money than Larry Fagan did. She paid half the family’s expenses and could easily have afforded a home of her own but Elana never-not once, not ever-considered moving out. Sadie would not have allowed it anyway.
In the hot summer of 1991 Harry’s mother was retained to represent two Mexican men, both undocumented, each charged with rape and murder. It was a death penalty case, high profile considering the nature of the crime and the defendants. The victim was a white woman, a cute blonde in her twenties. Family photos showed her glowing good looks and beaming personality. They were plastered all over local TV and in the newspapers. The time-honored, southern tradition of demonizing the dark-skinned perpetrator prepared to roll like a roaring train, full-steam at these… Mexicans. Elana mounted a spirited defense. In so doing she became the darling of the Atlanta media. An attractive woman, in her early forties, she was a natural for local television. That, like the defendants, she was herself a Latino was the icing on the cake.
The judge failed to put a gag order on the lawyers and Elana trumpeted her client’s innocence. Television ate it up. The camera loved her: long hair, dark eyes, tan skin and ruby red lips. Both men were, in fact, completely innocent, falsely accused, indistinguishable by the local cops from any of a million Mexican men. They had absolutely nothing to do with the crime. There was no evidence and, after Elana’s closing argument, no doubt about the verdict. Both of them were found not guilty. Their rejoicing was short-lived. No sooner had the judge declared the men “free to go,” than agents of the federal government, INS, approached, arrested and carried them off. They were illegals, wet-backs, undocumented-call them what you will-they were ripe for deportation.
The young, impressionable Harry was so taken by the circumstances of the case, by the job his mother had done, and by what he saw as the gross injustice of a callous, unfeeling federal government, he made up his mind right then what he would do for his life’s work. He wanted to be a Fo
reign Service Officer. He wanted to represent his government with compassion and dignity, so people like his mother and her clients would no longer toil and suffer under the weight of a perfidious state. Of course, he was only seventeen years old.
After high school, Harry attended Tulane University in New Orleans, where he studied International Relations. He loved New Orleans yet always looked forward to coming home, to Roswell, for summer vacations, Thanksgiving and Christmas. He never went to Panama City or Ft. Lauderdale for Spring Break. He never drove across country for the summer, up to New England or west to California. Why would he? Why would anyone? he wondered. He went home. What could possibly be better than Roswell? When he graduated, Harry went north to the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He told his mother he needed a law degree from an Ivy League school. She was so proud. More than the education, the contacts he made and the imprimatur on his resume proved very helpful in the diplomatic corps. At twenty-five, Harry Levine took his top-list law degree and joined the Foreign Service.
The day he left the United States for his first assignment overseas was one of those spring days in Manhattan New Yorkers dream about all winter. A gentle, sweet-smelling, cool breeze mixed with a bright sun, high in a cloudless sky. Coats were unbuttoned. Jackets unzipped. People breathed deeply, smiled widely. Harry’s plane didn’t leave until late in the afternoon. He had all day to walk around and say goodbye to America. He was strolling on the sunny side of 23rd Street when he spotted the little record store with a big sign in the window: REAL RECORDS-VINYL LPs. Harry had always been a real record man. His father had quite a collection. His mother saved them-all of them-for Harry. He grew up with Jefferson Airplane, Marvin Gaye and The Mamas amp; The Papas. Sixties pop wasn’t the only music his father liked. David Levine left his son hundreds of records, including a wide variety of jazz-Oscar Peterson, Art Blakey, Count Basie and Joe Williams. Harry loved those records for many reasons, not the least of which was, they were his connection to the father he knew about, but never knew. Poor David and poor Harry. Most children who grow up without a father are constantly told by their mother, whether true or not, how much their father loved them. Harry, of course, was well aware his birth came after his father was killed. Might it be, he sometimes wondered, that the records were more important to him than they ought to be?
After Tulane, just before he left for law school in Philadelphia, Harry decided he needed a really good record player, a top quality turntable. He was surprised to find no one sold any. The vinyl LP, invented by the engineers at Columbia Records in 1948, was already a relic of the past. The compact disc, with its seductive clarity, had pushed the record to forgotten bins in old music stores. So too was the fate of the record player, the quality turntable. Harry had no use for the CD. They were surely more precise than pressed vinyl, more like how one might think the music ought to sound. But, for Harry, the CD was less than the real thing, the sum failing to equal its parts. It was cold, empty. He just wanted a turntable and was disappointed when he couldn’t find a store that sold good ones. Everywhere he looked, they either had none or the little, cheap, children’s record players. The manager of a discount electronics superstore near the Roswell Mall told Harry there might be someone who could help him. “Try Fat Jack’s,” he said. “He’s got a place down the block from the Historic District, around the corner-I forget the name of the street. Look for it. If Jack is still in business, he’ll get one for you.” Fat Jack’s Audio was in a small strip center, one of four storefronts. It shared space with a chiropractor, a dry cleaner and a travel agency. There was a small sign above the door, but nothing in the window. Inside, Harry found an old man sitting on a car seat ripped from a Chevy or a Ford or some other 30-year-old American car. The car seat was on the floor, in the middle of the store, surrounded by boxes and boxes of records. The old man looked to be dozing.
“I’m looking for a turntable,” Harry said.
“Miss your records?” the old man asked, looking up, wide awake.
“No. I play them. It’s just that…”
“Don’t sound good enough for you?”
“Yes. That’s right. So, I’m looking for a good turntable-at a reasonable price. Someone told me I could find Jack-Fat Jack-and he might have one I could buy.”
“I’m Jack,” the old guy said, standing up and offering his hand to Harry. “What do you like most about your records?” he asked. Harry stood there, surprised by the unexpected and somewhat personal question, thinking about an answer. When nothing came to mind, he repeated it back to Jack.
“What do I like most about my records?”
The old man, who was anything but fat-he looked average, quite normal in every way-smiled at Harry and walked slowly over to the counter beyond the boxes of records, toward the rear of the store. Harry noticed there was no overhead lighting. At least none that was turned on. Three floor lamps, one in the middle of the boxes, another by the counter where Jack was, and a third well behind him, visible through an open door leading to some sort of back room, illuminated the store. Harry wondered what kind of business this guy could do in a store this dark. He didn’t see any turntables. He didn’t see any equipment at all. Harry had no way of knowing Fat Jack made everything he sold, been doing it like that for decades.
“Take your time,” Jack said.
“You know the sound you hear just as the needle touches the first groove?” said Harry, finally. “It’s only a moment. Just an instant. It’s like the sound of someone tapping an open mike. That’s it,” he said. “That sound. That’s what I like most about my records.”
Fat Jack-who, it turned out, had weighed nearly 400 pounds some years earlier, and lost more than half of it supposedly by giving up fried chicken-ended up making Harry a turntable. Belt driven, speed calibrated with a light sensor checking device and a manual override adjustment, separate power switches for the motor and the turntable itself, a special stylus he said he got from a special source in “Brooklyn, New York City,” even a soft landing, anti-static, removable, double-sided table cover. And he did the whole job for under five hundred dollars. Along with many of David Levine’s LPs, Fat Jack’s turntable, lovingly and securely packed, was already on its way to Turkey.
Going through the stacks in the tiny, old record store, he came upon Erroll Garner’s Concert By The Sea. He owned it; it was not one of his father’s. Harry bought it in a shop in Little Five Points, in Atlanta, when he was in high school. He remembered how often he played it late at night while studying for his twelfth-grade chemistry final. He remembered closing all the downstairs doors to keep the noise, especially Garner’s trademark grunts, from waking his mother who slept just down the hall. He’d go upstairs to the kitchen, make a pot of coffee, set himself up with his books and his notes at the small table in their living room and stay up, way past the middle of the night, studying. Putting the record back in its place, he smiled and pictured himself, once again a teenager, sitting in Mr. Kimmelman’s classroom getting every question right while all the time hearing Erroll Garner playing in his private ear. That night, on his flight to Europe, in his sleep, he heard him again.
Just as he knew it would, a whole new life opened to Harry in the Foreign Service. From the crooked, cobblestone streets and smoky cafes of Ankara, his initial station, to the noisy marketplaces of Cairo, and amidst the grandeur of Paris, his search for himself blossomed like the dogwoods along Peachtree Road. He cut his hair shorter than most. He’d always wanted it so he could run his hands across his head as if they were a brush. His wardrobe grew more formal and more distinctive. Unlike so many Americans in the Foreign Service, Harry bought his suits, shirts and ties in Europe. He favored the English tailors and found their merchandise to be both readily available and affordable. His personality emerged as brighter and more lighthearted than it had been while in school. The ease and comfort of his demeanor complemented his dressy appearance. He was funny, and fun to be with, ironic at times, but rarely cynical. He wa
s well liked by just about everyone.
In Europe, where sexual liberation was neither new nor limited by age and class, Harry did quite well with the ladies. His female companions were numerous and diverse. By the time he reached London he was a seasoned professional in his mid-thirties, a comfortable expatriate, without serious affectation, sensitive to the pleasures and comforts of his life and fully satisfied at how little effort was required to secure them.
A year after Harry’s arrival in London, his mother died of pancreatic cancer. Elana Levine had just celebrated her 54th birthday. It happened so quickly. The leftover birthday cake Sadie had put in the freezer was still there, uneaten. One day Elana complained about not feeling right and faster than anyone could map out a campaign to defeat it, the cancer killed her. Elana Morales Levine never knew she had a sister. She died at home, as she insisted, in her own bed. She was surrounded by loved ones-Harry, who had flown in from England when Sadie told him how bad things were, and Sadie and Larry. She closed her eyes thinking of David, the morphine unable to still the joy of her final memory.
Frederick Lacey, the eldest son of a bourgeois Liverpool family, was commissioned as a midshipman in His Majesty’s naval service in 1916, three days after turning eighteen years old. His father, William Lacey, had arranged it. William Lacey’s comfort resulted from the splendid success of his company, a firm that specialized in railroad parts and supplies. Lacey’s, as the business was known, had a well-earned reputation for timely delivery, plus an ability to get parts that were otherwise in short supply, parts others seemed at a loss to deliver in any time frame. He charged more than the much larger London firms with which he competed. But, unlike them, he was always true to his word. A month’s wait meant a month’s wait, not two or three or even a year’s, as others would have it. Smart businessmen will always pay more for that kind of reputation. William Lacey knew that and regarded reliability as his most precious asset. Almost a century before computers and wire transfers made money fly around the world at the speed of light, Frederick Lacey’s father showed a mastery of modern economics. His carefully chosen accounts, in banks across the wide span of the European continent, allowed him to make displays of gratitude, when called for, immediately. Men of business whose national heritage often included-nay, required-the presentation of special favors, plus the legions of Customs Agents and other governmental overseers, greedy and quick to accept any bribe, were often satisfied on the spot. William Lacey could conclude negotiations and close the deal without the delay associated with most international financial arrangements. His son took notice.
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