by Giles Blunt
“Stupid, I grant you. Criminal, yes. But murderous-no, my boy, not murderous. I didn’t pull in front of your parents, some other car swerved into their lane. I was devastated by it. Racked with guilt. And yet I couldn’t see that turning myself in would do any good. It would not resurrect them. It would not unbreak your heart.”
“How did you even know about me?”
“I followed it in the papers. I read everything I could. Naturally, I was terrified of being caught and going to prison. But also, I was struck dumb by the profound coincidence of our having the same last name-as if we shared a ghastly destiny cooked up by some long-dead Greek. I decided to do everything in my power to make that destiny … less ghastly.”
“Jesus, Max. Tell me you’re making this up. Just because we have the same last name, you decide it’s all right to come into my life and …”
“Not just that. My heart went out to you. I was appalled by your situation. I made inquiries at the social agencies and tracked you down. I had no plan, no chart, no map of the future. I just felt compelled to insert myself-discreetly, at this point, distantly-into your life. To make sure you were okay.”
“Okay? You killed my fucking parents, Max. I was not okay.”
“And when I heard that you would be made a ward of the state, that’s when I decided to play the part of your long-lost uncle.”
“You had pictures! Family photographs …”
“Lifted ’em from your house and made copies. That was no problem. Creating the paper trail, now, that was a challenge. The favours I had to call in! The arms I had to twist! Expensive, too. The signatures! But in the end the authorities bought it. I was your long-lost uncle Max, and as your nearest living relative I was granted temporary custody. Under supervision of the state. Eventually they were satisfied that I was looking after you properly, and-”
Owen leapt up from his chair. “You stole me!”
“No, lad. No. Sit down. I wanted to look after you. I wanted to do something to make up for what I’d done. Please, sit down.”
“You stole me. Just like you steal everything else in your life.”
“It was partly selfish, I grant you. I was a man of a certain age, I was alone, and I needed someone to love. And there you were. Love is, after all, a selfish sort of giving, don’t you think?”
“You stole me. Just like you steal your identities, your jewels, your cars, your money. But I’m not an object, Max. I’m not a thing. Oh, God, I don’t believe this.”
Max got heavily to his feet, made a tentative move toward him, but Owen stepped back.
“I’m sorry, boy. I’m sorry for what I did long ago, and for what it did to your parents and to you. If I could undo it, I would. I would, so help me God. But I can’t, and I couldn’t, and so I did what seemed like the next best thing.”
Owen started toward the kitchen, stopped. He started toward his bedroom, and stopped again. His mind wasn’t working. He wanted to get away but didn’t even seem to know how. His limbs lacked the skill.
Max came toward him-big, lumbering Max, clumsy as a bear.
“It doesn’t change anything else, boy. To me, you could not be closer if you were fashioned from my own right arm. You are my boy, my lad, my prince, and I-”
Owen finally got his feet to work. He fled the apartment and punched the elevator button. Unable to stand still for even a minute, he ran down four flights of stairs and burst out of a side exit into the blinding grit of First A venue.
TWENTY-SIX
Owen didn’t go home until late that night. He slipped quietly into his bedroom, packed a suitcase, and checked into a cheap hotel in midtown. He could have stayed with a school friend, but he didn’t want to see or talk to anyone; he just wanted to be alone.
He spent the next few days wandering from Starbucks to Starbucks, bookstore to bookstore. He sat in Union Square feeding the squirrels, he visited the Central Park Zoo, he read magazines in the public library. He wasn’t thinking; he wasn’t able to think. His mind had seized up, locked itself around what Max had told him. Owen wasn’t even sure if he was angry; he didn’t know what he was feeling.
He would sit in the cool dark of the movie theatres taking in nothing of what was happening onscreen. His mind would not let go. And when he came out, the world seemed drained of colour, overexposed. The crowds, the noise, the traffic swirled around him and he hardly knew where he was.
He tried to separate the two essential facts that Max had revealed to him and weigh them one at a time. First, how bad was it that Max was not really his uncle? Did it alter the fact that he had raised him? Did it render everything else about their relationship false and empty?
And then the other, much worse: that Max had been the cause of his parents’ deaths. His actions had led to all that tearing metal and twisted steel that had killed them both instantly. But obviously Max hadn’t intended that outcome. He was just a criminal on the run, in a blind panic, heedless of everything except the spectre of prison looming before him.
Still Owen stayed away. After three days he moved into the dorm at Juilliard.
He felt a lot better once classes started. It was exciting to embark on a new life, and he found himself enthralled by all the books on the syllabus: critical works, texts on acting, playwrights he had never heard of. And he was fascinated by the other people in his class. They too had all earned raves for their performances in their drama club, and a lot of them had worked in theatre camps and small summer theatres while Owen had been busy robbing Republicans.
Owen was intimidated by some of them, they were so talented. While others, well, you had to wonder how they had ever passed the audition. The stage set his group was using consisted of leftovers from the previous semester, a living room suite that might have been new in the mid-seventies, cat-clawed and much stained. Halfway through the second week of school the instructor, Phil Major, was centre stage, analyzing the performance of a student named Jason who had mumbled his way through a Sam Shepard monologue. Then it was McKenzie’s turn.
McKenzie was a knockout, with shapely cheekbones and wide-set eyes that made her look both innocent and wise. Everyone in her class wanted to recognize some speck of talent in such beauty, but when Phil gave her the go-ahead, she fell hard onto the couch and, in a manoeuvre straight out of World Wrestling Entertainment, pitched forward onto her knees, where she proceeded to claw at the carpet. She shrieked her lines at such volume that Owen covered his ears.
Phil clapped his hands twice, two sharp reports.
“Okay, McKenzie, thank you. Thank you,” he said, in a silky tone that betrayed nothing of the horror he must have felt. “Well, that was certainly less restrained than Jason. But you have to keep in mind, this scene occurs early in the play, and if you start at that level of intensity you’re going to have nowhere to go for later scenes. Remember, acting is never about losing control, even if your character is losing control. Okay. That’s all we have time for today. Same time, same place, Thursday.”
The students filed out of the auditorium, quieter than usual, subdued by the McKenzie Chernobyl.
“Owen, you heading to the caf?” It was Bobby Jaye who spoke. Bobby was all blond dreadlocks, an earnest Midwesterner with a skateboard under his arm.
“No, I’m gonna take a walk. I need a breather.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Bobby looked around conspiratorially. “Man, that McKenzie really goes to eleven. I thought we were gonna have to call an ambulance.”
“She may have given us a little too much.”
“Oh, really, you think?”
Owen headed up Broadway to the Acropolis, one of the last old-style diners on the Upper West Side. Tuesday at four in the afternoon, the place was full of chattering high school students. Owen sat at the counter and ordered a Coke. The TV above the glassware was tuned to NY1, sound off, the mayor gassing on about something. Owen pulled out a used paperback copy of Burn This. He turned to Pale’s opening speech, a fiendishly intricate rant that he was
hoping to memorize by Thursday.
But all he could think about was Max. Here he was at Juilliard, immersed in theatre arts-it was ridiculous not to be discussing it all with Max. He pulled out his cellphone and set it on the counter beside the book, considering.
Dr. Abe Pfeffernan, a scholarly-looking man dressed in hospital scrubs, waited calmly in line with the other customers of the Chase branch at Sixty-eighth and Madison. He had a beaky nose, a slightly mournful expression, and a full head of curly salt-and-pepper hair bisected by the surgical mask he had pushed up there and forgotten.
The doctor chatted amiably with the lady behind him. They agreed that one of the problems with the prevalence of ATM machines was that when you eventually did require the services of a human teller, you faced a hideous lineup. And so slow. Invariably the person in front of you was there to refinance a mortgage or to exchange Ugandan shillings for Swiss francs; no one went to a teller for a simple withdrawal.
“Why don’t you go ahead of me?” the doctor suggested. “You don’t want to waste your entire afternoon here.”
“Oh, no, no. That’s all right.”
“Please, I insist. I’m in no rush.” He stepped aside so she could move up.
“Such a gentleman,” she said, clutching her purse. “But surely you have to get back to the hospital?”
“You’re very kind to think of it, but no. I’m only involved in research.”
“Research whereabouts?”
“Over at Rockefeller.”
“Oh, my, you must be a brilliant man. That’s very prestigious.”
“We have our victories now and again,” Dr. Pfeffernan allowed with a small smile. “Failures, unfortunately, are more common.”
“And what are you researching?”
“The old enemy, I’m afraid.”
“Cancer?”
“And we’ll conquer it,” Dr. Pfeffernan swore, raising a palm above his head. “Hand to God. Someday, I swear, we’re going to wipe it out.”
“Oh, I hope so. My husband died of colorectal seven years ago. Irv Rosen? He was a pediatrician in a family practice, I don’t suppose you ever met him.”
“I never had the pleasure. I believe in a few more years we may be able to save people like your husband.”
“Oh, you’re just like him. He was totally dedicated, never wanted to retire, and always hoped for the best, even though some of his cases were heartbreaking.”
“Pediatrics, yes. Such tsoris.” Dr. Pfeffernan placed a hand over his heart. “You see some real tragedies there.”
Mrs. Rosen unsnapped her purse, pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed at her eyes. “Well, Doctor. With people like you on the job, maybe someday there’ll be a lot fewer of those tragedies.”
“From your mouth to God’s ear, Mrs. Rosen. I think the teller’s ready for you.”
“Well, it’s been a pleasure, Dr. Pfeffernan, you have a good day now. And good luck on your quest!”
When Max got to the counter, he met the inquiring gaze of a young black woman on the other side of the bulletproof glass.
“I need to open my safety deposit box,” he said, handing her a piece of Pfeffernan ID. “Can’t go anywhere without a passport these days.”
“Oh, you didn’t need to wait in line for that, Doctor. You could have just got one of the managers to assist you. Wait there, I’ll be right back.”
She returned a moment later with another black woman. She wore a red dress and large gold earrings that gleamed against her skin.
“This is Miss Leary,” the teller said. “She can help you.”
“Dr. Pfeffernan, you need to open your safety deposit box?”
“That’s right. I rented it just a week or two ago.”
“Come with me.” She handed back his identification.
He followed her through a door into the back. A security guard was seated just inside.
Miss Leary showed him into the safety deposit room and inserted her key into the drawer. Max turned his key in the lock, pulled out the drawer, and set it on a table.
“There you go, Doctor. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
He pulled open the drawer and removed a snub-nosed automatic, pointing it at her.
“Don’t be alarmed, my dear, but yes, I’m afraid there is.”
The coffee shop was filling up. A man sitting next to Owen was explaining to his seven-year-old daughter what same-sex marriage meant.
“Well, you see, Megan, some girls like girls, so they marry girls. And some boys like boys, so they marry boys.”
Owen picked up his cellphone from the counter and dialed home. No answer. He tried Max’s mobile, but it switched him over immediately to voice mail. He didn’t leave a message.
He was pulling out some change to pay his check when someone said, “Hey, turn the sound up. Where’s that happening?”
The TV screen showed the front of a Chase bank. The banner said LIVE: Upper East Side.
“What’s going on, Daddy?”
“Someone’s robbing a bank,” the man said.
“Why?”
“Because he wants their money.”
“Will they give it to him?”
“If they do, he’ll have to give it back. It belongs to other people.”
According to the reporter on the scene, the robbery had begun barely twenty minutes ago, but the bank was already surrounded by police. A sweep of the camera showed snipers on the corners of buildings across the street. Helicopters hovered overhead. The amazing thing, the reporter said, was that the robber was a senior citizen, apparently a doctor, who was holding a woman employee hostage.
“Hey, don’t you want your change?” the counterman called out, but Owen was gone.
Lieutenant Nat Saperstein was hoping the hostage negotiation guys would get there soon, but word was they were hung up on the FDR. In the meantime it was his show, until such time as the SWAT team should get the go-ahead to take over. He had snipers on the roofs and an offensive football team of beefy guys blocking the only other exit. There was no way this scumbag was getting away, though why a doctor in his seventies or eighties suddenly gets it into his head to rob a bank, well, you have to wonder.
“Loo, we got a possible lever here.”
Saperstein put down his binoculars and turned to see a uniform holding on to the arm of a young man, teenager really.
“Kid says the guy inside is his father.”
“Oh yeah? You got some ID?”
“He’s actually my uncle, but he adopted me. He’s been losing it lately. He was talking about robbing a bank, but I never thought he was serious.”
“Like I said, got some ID?”
Owen pulled out his wallet and showed him his driver’s licence. “Please don’t shoot him,” he said. “He’s not going to hurt anybody.”
Saperstein looked from the licence photo to Owen and back again. “Maxwell? Good news, kid. It ain’t your uncle in there.”
“I’m telling you, it’s him. I saw him on TV, through the front window when he was closing the blinds. He’s not using his real name. He was going to make it something Jewish. He’s always wanted to play a Jew.”
“What are you, Ku Klux Klan? ‘Play a Jew.’ You think robbing banks is playing a Jew? Get this asshole outta here.”
The uniform made a move to grab Owen again.
“Pfeffernan! Dr. Pfeffernan-that was the name he was gonna use.”
The lieutenant’s face changed now. He gestured at the uniform to let go of the kid. “Okay, son, you have my attention. Tell me more.”
“His name is Magnus Maxwell-Max. He’s British. A former actor. He likes to play different roles. He said he wanted to do an educated Jewish New Yorker, a doctor.”
Saperstein looked him over. The kid looked sincere, and sincerely scared.
Owen went through his wallet and found an old photo of him and Max together at Niagara Falls. “This is him.”
Saperstein looked at the photo, raised his eyebrows.
“He looks pretty different, kid.”
“That’s his theatrical training. He loves wigs and makeup, the whole deal. If you let me talk to him, I’m sure I can get him to come out.”
“You’re welcome to try.” He keyed in a number on his cellphone and handed it to Owen.
An American voice answered, a New York voice. “You’re trying my patience here, Lieutenant. How many times do I have to tell you: move your men back.”
“Max,” Owen said into the phone, “it’s me. Owen. You have to give this up. You have to quit while you’re ahead.”
“I’m sorry, young man. You must have the wrong number.” There was a click.
“He hung up on me,” Owen said, handing the phone back.
“That’s okay, kid, you did your best. Negotiation team’ll be here in a-Hey, wait a second!”
Owen took off and ran straight through the crime scene tape. He was in the cordoned-off area, trying not to think of the snipers positioned above him. The front door was open; he was able to walk right in.
“Owen, me lad. What brings you here?”
The actual sight of Owen shook Max into dropping the American accent. He was in his surgical scrubs, seated in one of two executive chairs that had been pulled from offices. The other was occupied by a black woman with big gold earrings. A telephone on a long extension cord was on the floor between them.
“This is Miss Leary,” Max said. “She’s playing the role of hostage, though with a disappointing lack of conviction. I let the others go.”
“Oh, you an Englishman now?” Miss Leary said. “Why don’t you make up your mind who you are before you go robbing banks? You know this man?” she said to Owen. “Would you inform him, please, that his ass is in a world of trouble?”
“You have to let her go,” Owen said. “There must be a hundred cops out there. Snipers. Helicopters. The works.”
“Well, yes, that’s the point,” Max said. “If I let Miss Leary go, all those guns are very likely to go off.”
“Max,” Owen said, “the show is over. You’re not getting out of this. The only question is how hard you want to make it on yourself. The sooner you let her go, the easier things will be.”