Maniac Drifter

by Laura Marello

“What the hell,” I said. I felt too strange to protest. I bent my head. When I looked up again Harper was gone, and Getz was standing over me with a glass of water in his hand. I had no idea when Harper had left or how much time had passed. I felt in my jacket pocket for the envelopes. They were there, so Harper had come after all. I had not dreamed it.

  “Come on,” Getz said. “They’re closing up. We’ll go to my house. There’s lots of windows. “It’ll be breezy there.”

  ***

  Tuesday

  When I woke up Tuesday morning I found that I was in bed with Getz at his house and the television was on. Dan Rather was reporting the Temple of the Jaguars story update. He said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had delivered an official statement to the press, saying that they could not make amnesty for Harper’s collaborators a condition of his surrender, and that the sooner he turned himself in the better the chances that the collaborators would not be prosecuted. Getz got out of bed. “Damn,” he said. “No amnesty for the collaborators.”

  Dan Rather went on to say that a White House spokesman had criticized the extensive press coverage of this news item, saying the press had turned a simple U.S. Trade violation into a major media event, and had turned Harper Martin into an American Outlaw-Hero, as portrayed by Clint Eastwood in his movie roles. The White House spokesman had gone on to say that the news media was allowing Harper Martin to use their sympathies to manipulate public opinion in favor of the Nicaraguan government, and against the U.S.-backed Contra rebels.

  “Is it night time?” I said. I was hoping I had just woken up from a nap after the Costume Ball and had not broken my promise to Gabe again.

  Getz came in from the kitchen. “It’s Tuesday morning. Do you have a hangover?”

  “I wasn’t drunk,” I said. So I had broken my promise. “Dan Rather does the morning news now? I thought he only did the evening news.”

  “Dan Rather does all the Temple of the Jaguars reports. Day or night. How do you feel? You were really drunk last night.”

  “I didn’t have anything to drink except club soda.”

  “What was the matter then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  On the television Dan Rather promised to provide coverage of Benefit Week in Provincetown and a profile of Harper Martin in upcoming reports, as well as updates on the government position. “There was a Harper Martin look-alike talking to you when I came back with your water. What did he say to you?” Getz asked. “He looked like a Fed.”

  “He was just a guy,” I said. I reached over to the chair next to the bed, and felt inside my jacket for the envelopes. They were still there.

  “What did he say to you? Did he ask you where Harper was?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “How do you know they didn’t drug you and then get information out of you about Harper?”

  “Last night you told me I was a cop. This morning I’m the victim of a Federal drugging and illegal interrogation. I think you’ve seen too many cop movies.”

  “So you remember that part, when I told you you might be a cop.”

  “That was early in the evening. Something happened on the dance floor. I got dizzy. I started to feel strange. I don’t remember much after that.” It was true; I did not remember much, except Harper’s visit, and the envelopes I had to deliver.

  “So they drugged your club soda and made you tell them where Harper is.”

  “I think you’ve seen too many cop movies,” I repeated.

  “You’re the one whose mother worked for the FBI.”

  “Who told you that?”

  He looked at me incredulously. “You don’t remember? It was the middle of the night. You were sober by then.”

  I sat up on the edge of the bed, threw my legs over and chuckled to myself. I could not believe the situations my amnesia got me into — I could not believe I did not know what had happened that night Joe and Gabe kept referring to, I did not know where my clothes had been when I woke up that morning at Gabe’s, I did not know who had left the note on my pillow about lighting a cigarette on my thigh. And now I had broken my promise again.

  “Getz, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “How come we haven’t seen each other in a couple weeks?”

  “We see each other all the time.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s been two weeks since I stayed here.”

  “You don’t remember why?”

  I shook my head guiltily. Remember. Remember. What a word.

  “You said you’d come back the next night and you never did.”

  “I said I’d come back?”

  “Don’t you remember? You took Gabe home. I ended up with Blaine. Then I got busy lobstering. I don’t know. Who knows? Does anybody know why people end up together or with somebody else? Now you’re here and Blaine went home with Dominic. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  “Blaine went home with Dominic last night?” I asked.

  “Yeah, don’t you remember?”

  “No, it must have been late, when I was dizzy.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you in Alcoholics Anonymous?” I shook my head. “Are you on the wagon?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because you never drink, and you eat a lot of sweets. The people I know in AA crave sweets. And then you can’t remember things in the morning, like a drunk who got so plastered the night before he can’t remember the fights he got into or the insults he handed out.”

  A drunk person’s amnesia. That was what I had. I had never thought of it in those terms before. “But why do you think I crave sweets?” I said.

  “You’re always drinking chocolate egg creams and eating Hershey Bars.”

  “That’s chocolate, not sugar,” I said. I got out of bed and gave him a consoling pat on my way to the shower. He did not believe a word of it.

  ***

  I took a commuter flight down to New York City, provided Harper’s biographical information packet to Dan Rather at the CBS News offices and was back in Provincetown in time to deliver Harper’s letter to the secret investors’ meeting. I was getting to be a pro at this espionage work. I thought perhaps I should become a private investigator, or take after my mother and work for the FBI.

  Then I went to the secret investor’s meeting at the Beachcombers disguised as Harper Martin. The big wooden door to the Hulk was unlocked; I swung it open and stepped inside. No one was in the front room. I walked around a ping-pong table with florescent lights strung up above it. A ping-pong paddle lay on either end of the table, as if someone had just stopped playing. I passed between the table and stacks of shingles, piles of beer bottles, stools and ladders, to a mantle at the far end of the room, which was decorated with whale vertebrae and a model of a schooner. Above the mantle hung a framed news clipping of Charles Heinz in his studio, “shortly before his death,” the caption said. I inspected an old poster for the Annual Beachcombers Ball, which was titled “Clown Prince, Prisoner of Paris.” Beneath that a chalkboard chart titled “Proposed Members List,” with lines and columns for votes, recommendations and commentary, leaned against the wall. The Beachcombers decided on members by first rejecting the candidate by unanimously shouting No! when the vote was called. Then the Skipper announced the candidate had been unanimously elected.

  The Beachcombers met in a big wooden barn-like structure called “The Hulk.” It was located on the east end of town, on the water side, across the street from the Art Association. The Beachcombers bought the Hulk in 1917 for $2000. At that time it jutted out into the bay on a wharf, but in 1927 a big storm weakened the main wharf pilings and they had to turn the Hulk around sideways.

  The Beachcombers began as a club for men who were “engaged in the practice of fine arts or their branches.” In the fifties, when the Abstract Expressionists became a force in town, Hawthorne and the Beachcombers came to be known as the more conservative group,
the craftsmen-artists. Now the sons of these artists were the Beachcombers. They still met in the Hulk to have dinner together, get drunk, tell stories and piss off the deck, play pool and sleep in the wall bunks.

  The Hulk looked almost the same now in the 1980s as it had when the Beachcombers bought it 70 years before, except it had been turned around sideways, and the posters for the shows and annual balls, the photographs and documents, had accumulated the weight of memory and history. Now, when a person walked in the Beachcombers, he couldn’t help feeling that this was an important place, where history was made, where famous artists like Hawthorne, Ambrose Webster, and Edwin Dickinson had gathered. Where the artwork and photographs, junk and memorabilia had once seemed offhand, careless even, they now seemed precious and revealing, a testament to the famous people who had belonged there, like the studio where Picasso painted the Guernica or the desk where Dickens wrote Great Expectations.

  I looked out the back window at the deck and the bay. I could hear Cosmo and Raphael talking upstairs, but I didn’t go up just yet. There was another room downstairs and I wanted to look at it first. I went through the door, stood underneath the fireplace and read the signatures carved in the bricks inlaid along the mantle. I ran my hand along the wide wooden captain’s table that was set with tin plates and mugs for 12 people. At the head of the table was a wood gavel laid out above the plate, carved in the shape of a penis with testicles. I grabbed the head of the penis and rapped the testicles on the table. “Order! Order!” I shouted. Along the wall that looked out on the deck and bay were two long tables with pots and pans spread out to dry. A poker table sat in the corner of the room, and on it a circular rack with colored chips stacked in the runners. Photos of old guys with beards and sailor caps were nailed to the beams and pots and lanterns hung from hooks in the ceiling.

  When Cosmo came into the kitchen, I was reading a poem by Harry Kemp, the dune poet, that was framed and hanging on the wall. “Was that you shouting?” he said.

  “I was trying out the gavel,” I said.

  “How about this?” he said. He walked behind me to the corner of the room and plugged an electric cord into the socket underneath the window. A sculpture of a naked woman with electric light bulbs for nipples flashed above his head. They were blinking on and off like a Christmas Tree.

  “Charmed,” I said.

  “Here for the meeting?” he said.

  I nodded. “I have a message from Harper.” I reached into my jacket and pulled out the envelope. “Can I bring it up?” He motioned for me to follow him, and when he got to the stairs stepped back to let me pass. “After you,” I said.

  “Ladies first,” he said. I grimaced and went up. “So is Nichole coming to the Bocce Tournament tomorrow?” he asked as we passed a ceramic flounder hanging from a shingle along the stairwell.

  “How did you know it was me?” I said. He laughed. “Harper told me to come dressed as a man.”

  “Well you did that. Is she coming?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you should talk to her.”

  I stopped on the stairs and turned around. “I’ll try.”

  The upstairs room was dominated by an enormous wooden pool table with leather ball pouches. Old car seats were rigged up along the walls as spectator benches. “This way,” Cosmo said. I followed him into a back room, which also had a pool table in it. The investors of Maniac Drifter Inc. were using it as a conference table, and had their notebooks, papers and pens strewn across the green felt. Antaeus held the black eight ball in his hand, then spun it across the table so it ricocheted near the middle pocket where Falzano was sitting, bounced off the far end where Cosmo had left his chair empty, and came to rest between him and Raphael.

  I looked around. Above the deck windows hung framed etchings of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. A flood lamp from the submarine S-4 sunk off Wood End on December 17, 1927, was mounted in a class case on the wall behind me. A crumpled Winston pack sat on the floor by Antaeus’ feet, and an old Louis XIV chair with ripped upholstery was stationed by a tiny room. I walked over to inspect it. It was the john. “Nobody uses that,” Antaeus said. “They piss off the deck.”

  “I don’t,” Falzano said.

  “You don’t come here,” Antaeus said.

  “The hell she doesn’t,” Raphael said.

  Antaeus spun the eight ball across the table again, but Falzano had pushed her notebook out and it interfered with his rebound. “Damn,” he said, and walked around the table to retrieve the ball. “So you caught a spy?” he said to Cosmo.

  Cosmo patted me on the back. I pulled my fedora down lower on my forehead. Antaeus thought it was a greeting and nodded back to me. “A messenger,” Cosmo said. “He brought a letter from Harper.” Raphael pulled up the Louis XIV chair and invited me to sit down. I smiled at him, tucked some stuffing back into the chair, sat down, and placed the letter on the pool table in front of Cosmo.

  “Should he stay?” Antaeus said, looking curiously at me.

  “I think it’s alright,” Cosmo said. “I know him.”

  Raphael smiled. Falzano cocked her head like a dog who has heard the word “cat” or “bird.” “I think I know him, too,” she said.

  Cosmo slipped the letter out of the envelope and unfolded it. “To the investors of Maniac Drifter Inc.,” he read aloud, in his formal, stentorian voice, the one he reserved for speeches at the Art Association. “I wanted to let you know that I am turning myself in to the Federal Government representatives tomorrow, in answer to their subpoena for questioning on U.S. Trade and Customs Violations.” Cosmo looked up over the page to see how the others reacted. Antaeus slumped in his chair and twirled the eight ball on the table with his fingertips, staring down at it as if he were a young boy who had just been scolded. Falzano looked around the room, tapping her pen on her notebook. Raphael fixed his eyes on Cosmo and the letter.

  “And then?” Raphael said.

  Cosmo cleared his throat. “Then it says: I plan to invoke the secrecy clause, Article Eight of Maniac Drifter’s Articles of Incorporation. If you remember, that clause states that you granted me complete privacy as to the corporation’s activities and understand that those activities are within the law. This article will serve as a signed statement, (emphasis Harper’s), that you were not aware of any illegal activities, and would not condone them had you been aware.” Cosmo looked up from the page again.

  “Hogwash,” Falzano said. She was drumming on her notebook with the pen now. “Just because you don’t know something illegal is going on doesn’t mean you’re not responsible. If they want to subpoena us they will.”

  “Holy Mother of God,” Antaeus said, as if he just remembered something.

  “We’ve all been investigated for something at one time or another,” Cosmo said, looking over at Antaeus.

  “Think of the press he’s getting,” Raphael said. “It’s working against the government. They’re under pressure. They’ll just want to get rid of this thing.”

  “Shall I continue?” Cosmo said. Antaeus looked up. Falzano nodded her head. “I know this is not legally binding, but I’ve been in touch with some of the Federal government representatives, and I’m pretty sure by this time, with all the publicity, they’ll be willing to settle with me as simply as possible. I hope to be out again by the end of the week, and I believe that even after the trade and customs violations fines, taxes and interest fees, I’ll be able to meet my monthly payment.” Cosmo looked up again, like a schoolteacher expecting a response.

  “The smart ass,” Antaeus said, laughing. “He’s probably into six figures by now, and he’s reassuring us about his monthly payment.”

  “It sounds like he knows what’s going to happen before he even turns himself in,” Falzano said.

  “They must have made a deal,” Antaeus said. “The Feds do that, you know.”

  “The boy isn’t stupid,” Raphael said. “We all knew he had a business sense.”

  “Is that i
t?” Falzano asked Cosmo.

  Cosmo returned to the letter. “He finishes with: The Defense Fund and Benefit Week were great ideas. Thanks for your backing. See you soon.” Cosmo folded the letter and put it back into its envelope.

  “So what do you think?” Falzano asked, to no one in particular.

  “I think Harper Martin is the best investment we ever made,” Cosmo said gravely.

  Antaeus started laughing as if he suddenly understood the joke. “We’re going to be rich!” he said. “The whole town is going to be rich!” Raphael smiled contentedly, as if he had reached some cosmic understanding about the universe. “The smart-ass bastard,” Antaeus said.

  “Should we publicize this secrecy clause as a way to garner public opinion and discourage the feds from indicting us?” Falzano said.

  “I don’t think we need to,” Cosmo said. “But I think he wants us to go on with Benefit Week, if I’m reading the letter right.” He patted the envelope with his fingertips. “Even if he won’t need the Defense Fund money.”

  “I think that’s exactly right,” Raphael said, growing more and more Buddha-like as some color rose to his cheeks.

  “The son of a bitch,” Antaeus said, slamming his fist down on the table. “He’s going to look like he made this big sacrifice, turning himself in, taking the rap on himself. He’s made himself into a goddamn hero!”

  “Precisely,” Raphael said, getting up.

  “The best investment this town ever made,” Cosmo repeated. “Nobody loses.”

  “For a change,” Antaeus said.

  The investors of Maniac Drifter Inc. gathered up their papers and notebooks. Antaeus rolled the eight ball into the side pocket near Falzano. Raphael held my chair for me as I got up, and then took me by the elbow with his hand. “Let me see you out,” he said, nodding toward the door.

  “Well, thank you for bringing this, young man,” Cosmo said to me.

  I nodded. “He didn’t say a word the whole time,” Falzano whispered as I walked downstairs with Raphael.

  When we reached the door of the Hulk, Raphael squeezed my arm and said, “Mary’s back from Boston. I thought you might like to know.” He winked at me.