by Robin Kirman
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Lombardi leaned back in his chair and pulled out an envelope from the pile on his desk. A manila envelope, like the ones she used to organize drafts of papers and class notes, a pile of them left in her living room, untouched for days. She thought of what her classmates must be doing at that moment: scribbling into blue books. Finals were in session.
“I came across an old charge on file in Colorado.”
It took her a moment to grasp what Lombardi was getting at; she’d been just thirteen when she’d lived in Colorado with her father. The memory was hazy: officers waiting inside her home, asking questions about her father’s photographs, suggesting that his portraits of her were improper. Pornographic was the word one officer had used. Stupid, brutal men, as she recalled these officers, pleased to torture her father—who was also young, handsome, and gifted—the way Lombardi was pleased to torture Storrow now.
“What can I say? The police were way off base then, too.” She watched Lombardi rub his unshaved cheek. She’d had enough of him: those smug purple lips, the sweat stains under his arms. “You know, I came here because I wanted to be helpful, but I’m not in that mood anymore.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“So I’m going to go now.” She pushed her chair out and stood.
“In a moment you can, sure. But we still haven’t gotten to the night of the murder. I wouldn’t want you to have to come back in, when we could wrap all this up today.” Lombardi raised his hand, beckoning her back to her seat.
“I have nothing to say about that night.”
“You didn’t see or hear from Storrow?”
“No.”
“And that wasn’t unusual, itself?”
“No, it wasn’t.” She and Storrow hadn’t been speaking by then, but she wasn’t about to be forthcoming with Lombardi: he’d overstepped, intending to upset her, obviously, to shake her into letting something slip. Well, she wouldn’t—not a word about her final arguments with Storrow, the worst of them prompted by Alice—Storrow afraid of what Alice might have discovered, afraid of all that he might lose on account of Georgia’s carelessness. You risk my career, my peace of mind…At the time of the murder, she and Storrow had been split up for two weeks, but that wasn’t information for Lombardi, who would surely find a way to use it: to paint Storrow as wounded and unstable. “We only met in Manhattan on the weekends; the rest of the week I didn’t know him. So if that’s all.”
“You mind telling me where you were last Sunday night?”
She grinned at him, joylessly. “Am I a suspect now?”
“It might help us, generally, with our investigation—if you don’t mind.”
“I was at a party, all right? Kirkland House. A swim team thing.”
“The time?”
“Eleven to one, maybe? I don’t remember. Ask someone from the team. Ask anyone but me, because I’m sorry, but I’m leaving.”
“Soon, Miss Calvin. Something to drink?”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Hungry then? I can send Theresa for a sandwich.”
“Do I need to call a lawyer? Are you keeping me against my will?”
“I’m not keeping you, Miss Calvin: I’m asking you to cooperate, out of consideration for Julie—a girl you knew—whose neck was broken five days ago. Think of Julie, think of her family.”
And as soon as he’d said that, she was robbed of the desire that had been building—to tell Lombardi to fuck off. The moment she pictured Julie Patel, with her smooth cheeks and neat braid, lying on a coroner’s table—or was she already in the ground?—when she imagined the little sister mentioned in the news, lying awake at night, her mother sobbing in the next bed, into the rough sheets of some Cambridge or Boston motel—she’d given in, collapsed back into her chair, and let Lombardi start in on her again.
2
Even as a child, before he’d conceived of the ambition to become wealthy or renowned, before he’d grasped the route to such achievements, Charles Flournoy understood something about power—enough to know he’d been born precisely at its margins. His hometown, Garden City, Long Island, was a no-man’s-land between the metropolis fifty miles west and the charming eastward towns that served as backyards for Manhattan’s wealthy, a nondescript community not far from Mitchel Air Force Base: modest wood homes with trucks in the driveways and flags in the front yards, cheap restaurant chains, an aviation museum, a movie theater, a bowling alley, a library, and a putt-putt course.
Like most small towns, Garden City had its local notables—its politicians, its business owners, its coaches and sports stars—but none of these made much of an impression on Charlie. He seemed instinctively to grasp the limits of their influence, and was surprised when others failed to, and thus took umbrage at what they perceived as impudence or arrogance in him. Just the opposite, thought Charlie. It was humility that lay at the foundation of his insight: if he had hopes of avoiding the fate of his parents—scrounging and compromising, becoming bitter and angry like his father, or timid and defeated, like his mother—he must come to understand that the world wasn’t centered around him, and whatever loomed in the foreground served as mere obstructions to the view of the big picture, of what and who truly held sway.
Charlie’s father, Jim Flournoy, had spent over a decade as a technician at the air base, until, in the late ’70s, not long after Charlie was born, he’d had a disagreement with a coworker, one bad enough to land the other man in the hospital and earn Charlie’s father a lifetime reputation as a hothead. As Charlie knew him, his father could only hold a job working for himself, driving a van with his name and number on its side, doing repairs or making deliveries, carting furniture, lumber, and garden and nursery supplies up and down the Long Island Expressway. Charlie’s mother, Margaret, worked as a secretary at the local high school he and his older brother, Luke, attended; on her summer break, starting when Charlie was five, she also began operating a small maid service for the Hamptons high season. This proved a shrewd and profitable enterprise; if she hadn’t been marred by insecurity and bullied by her husband, Mrs. Flournoy might have built hers into a very successful business—among the ever-expanding Hamptons set, the need for housecleaners proved bottomless—but Charlie’s father was forever upsetting her efforts, taking the van for his own use and vanishing when she had appointments. Jim Flournoy didn’t like his wife’s playing servant to the rich or, as he put it, wiping Jewish asses.
Such gripes grew louder when Luke began escorting their mother in search of odd jobs. While she cleaned, Luke checked around with neighbors to see if anyone wanted a lawn mowed or something heavy lugged around. “You’ll make him think we’re lower than those people,” his father complained, forbidding the arrangement whenever he was around to stop it. “Luke works with me: if you want company, take Charlie.”
For as long as Charlie could remember, his father was looking for ways to be rid of him; he seemed uneasy in the presence of his younger son. “The judge” his father started calling him when Charlie was just six, though Charlie had always been careful to keep his critical thoughts hidden, not to let his father catch him frowning at the mess inside the van after he’d used it, or at the bruises that, from time to time, darkened his knuckles. When his father was at home, Charlie kept to his room, reading mostly: Luke bought him books with some of the money he was earning here and there, and Charlie soon learned to let his gentle older brother stand as a buffer between his father and him.
Luke was four years Charlie’s senior: popular, handsome and well-built, the state champion long-jumper and skilled at most everything he did, from telling a joke, to pulling off fifty push-ups each morning and night. In high school he announced his plans to be a pilot—which, in a town bordering on Mitchel, was a much-admired profession. Every afternoon starting junior year he spent an hour studying for the Armed Forces Qualification Test; upon graduation, he meant to join the air force. If he wasn’t admitted to the offic
ers program, he’d enlist as an engineering technician like their father.
Having grown up spotting soldiers emerging from the neighborhood bars and movie theater, Charlie was immensely proud to think that Luke would soon be among them. His big brother was already a hero in the mind of thirteen-year-old Charlie, and that belief persisted even when, one rainy summer day before Luke’s senior year, their mother received a call from a client in Bridgehampton, accusing Luke of stealing jewelry from a neighbor’s house. The neighbors claimed that they’d gone to the beach and had left the deck door open. Luke had been spotted in the backyard; they were threatening to call the cops.
Luke had been out when the call came, working a job in Hempstead, but his father didn’t need to hear him say it to know his son could not have stolen. “Why not accuse their doped-up Swedish au pair, or one of those Mexican slaves out in the yard? No, they want to think Luke did it and I’ll tell you why: because they’re a bunch of thieving shits and the Flournoys are not. You’re so clueless about these people, Margaret—how do you think they get their money? Being angels? And you’re gonna believe them over your own son?”
“If he returns what’s missing, they won’t make an issue of it.”
“He can’t return what he didn’t take. Tell ’em to go to hell; we don’t need their money. You know what, I’ll do it myself. Gimme their address.”
Charlie had heard his father screaming, “gimme that fucking address now,” while his mother’s voice grew frailer, “Please don’t, Jim, please,” until at last the front door slammed, and his father left—to do what precisely, Charlie could only guess. All he knew was that Jim Flournoy came home later that night with a chipped tooth and a split lip. And still, in this one case, Charlie wanted to believe his dad was right: Luke must be innocent. He wanted to believe, but up in his room, he took down the books that Luke had given him, all of them never quite new, and felt the tackiness on the sides where library stickers must have been peeled away. As soon as Luke came home, he told his brother what he’d overheard, so that if there were anything Luke was hiding, he’d be smart enough to get rid of it in time.
“I didn’t steal,” Luke insisted.
“No, I know you didn’t.”
“Soldier’s honor, Chief.”
“I know, you wouldn’t,” Charlie said. Then he took down his raincoat and went biking in the drizzle, keeping his distance long enough for Luke to dispose of what he must.
The next summer, when Luke set out for Lackland Air Force Base, the threat of war was already being keenly felt by those in their town: Kuwait had been invaded, airmen and engineers were being deployed to the Middle East, reservists called up. The chance that Luke might see combat only added to the awe Charlie felt for him when he hugged his brother at the airport: Luke was at the very peak of his glamour: fit and tan and beaming, brimming with generosity. He’d given all he had to Charlie: his wardrobe, his music and magazine collections, his bat and barbells, mitt and cleats.
But try as he might to be like Luke—to don his clothes and lift his weights—Charlie’s abilities and interests were distinctly different: books attracted him far more than sports. In English class, freshman year, Charlie discovered his love of poetry; there he learned the basics of meter and rhyme and read works by Wordsworth, Housman, Frost, and Whitman. It was the older styles he liked best: the antiquated ring of the words, evoking a time and place far away and far better than the one he moved in now. When the poets spoke of lust or disappointment or boredom, the predominant states of Charlie’s youth, they elevated his experience; poets bestowed dignity. Each time soldiers came through town, Charlie would stand silently reciting stanzas in his head:
The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread,
And out we troop to see: …
What thoughts at heart have you and I
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well.
—
Over the next few years, as Charlie grew into a gangly teen, pale and prone to freckle, his narrow chest and slender jaw refusing to broaden like Luke’s, he had to accommodate his dreams of military service to his peculiar strengths. Through his reading he encountered a different brand of hero, figures who served their country from behind desks: secretaries of defense, advisers in intelligence and national security. He learned everything he could about the most scholarly among them: James Angleton, Crane Brinton, and Henry Kissinger, men capable of expressing the most refined sentiments, while confronting the bluntest cruelties without illusions. Charlie became determined to emulate such men: to earn top grades and gain admittance to the universities that had fitted them for the highest ranks of power. Leading up to graduation, this was his principal pursuit and the subject of his obsessive reveries—this and girls of course. He was, despite his aspirations, still a lonely boy.
Pretty girls, in particular, fascinated Charlie, not just for the obvious reasons, or so he told himself, but because their ambitions more closely matched his. Among the dour, plainer faces in his mother’s cleaning van, for instance, there were always a few pretty girls who saw, even in this demeaning work, the chance to rise, to mingle with the moneyed summer crowd. Beauty, Charlie observed, permitted them access to higher society; it stirred their yearning to belong. So these girls, not the plain ones he was expected to pursue, were on a course like him and thus his proper mates.
To be in their company, Charlie boarded his mother’s van, too, each summer morning; he worked for her for three years, until he was sixteen and old enough to find legal employment: serving as a busboy at an exorbitant East Hampton steakhouse. He was sweeping up the crumbs left by CEOs, brokers and lawyers, standing by while their prep school sons poached the fetching waitresses he pined for. It was work his father made clear he found contemptible, but Charlie was happily free of his father’s resentment, consoled by the knowledge that he’d be one among the blessed soon enough.
In the spring of senior year, when college acceptances came in the mail, Charlie was rewarded for his years of study: come September, he would head off to Harvard with the sons and daughters of the most privileged. While his high school classmates—bound for community college and local jobs—could spend their lives driving up and down Route 27 alongside the Manhattan elite, they’d never be among them. Harvard was a different sort of passage.
—
In the last week of August Charlie said good-bye to his parents at the dock of the Cross Sound Ferry; from New London on the other side, he’d catch the train to Boston’s South Station and, from there, the red line to Harvard Square. He preferred to make the trip alone, without his father there to spoil his enjoyment. For years he’d been anticipating the moment when he’d step through Johnston Gate and greet the images he’d memorized from the glossy college catalogs and from pictures in history books.
Charlie’s arrival on campus would remain, whenever he looked back on it, the most rapturous experience of his youth. It was an occasion—a lifetime might contain just two or three—when reality aligns itself so snugly to the contours of fantasy that the result is bliss. Harvard Yard hearkened to the spare and noble America of Emerson or Frost or Longfellow: neat paths beneath the elms, a harmonious assembly of white stone and red brick. Charlie’s dorm room was in Weld, to his mind the most imposing freshman residence: arched entrances led to stairwells lined with clerestory windows. From his room in the left tower, he could hear church bells ringing and peer down at the statue of John Harvard.
On his first day at school, while Charlie’s classmates hurried between placement tests or joined their parents for orientation meetings, he joined the procession of tour groups moving from quad to quad; soon he’d memorized the lore on every arch and gate and patch of dirt. Here, among the freshman dorms, were rooms once occupied by Kennedys and Roosevelts; five founding fathers once resided here, in Massachusetts Hall; and here, in Hollis Hall, Washington once garrisoned his troops.
Later that even
ing, the freshmen assembled in Sanders Theatre. The provost and dean stood applauding the entrance of their newest class; organ music swelled and the Holden Choirs welcomed the arrivals with the college hymn:
Thou then wert our parent, the nurse of our soul;
We were molded to manhood by thee
Till freighted with treasure thoughts, friendships and hopes,
Thou didst launch us on Destiny’s sea.
Each phrase affected Charlie like the grandest poetry; he was dizzied by the scene—the tuxedoed singers, the vaulted gothic ceiling—all that gorgeous pretension that would have choked his father on the spot.
—
From his first week on campus, Charlie was determined to make his mark on this school, to meet as many of his extraordinary peers, and forge as many connections for the future, as he could. Each night of the week, he went out, moving among the different sets: from vegan dinners at the Co-op, to keggers at the Final Clubs. The name Charlie Flournoy was going to penetrate all circles, he’d decided, and mean something positive to one and all—call to mind a friendly wave, a clever joke. Already Charlie had an inkling that he might run for student office. To that end, he decided to affiliate himself politically on campus, and after exploring the various clubs and publications, soon fell in with the small clique surrounding the Salient.
The Harvard Salient was a journal of conservative thought; its staff was made up of debate team members and majors in political philosophy, kids who’d come to Harvard with romantic visions of youthful scholars smoking pipes and sipping brandy while discussing Burke and Hobbes. In the evenings, they gathered in the Salient office in the basement of Thayer Hall to approximate such scenes; the men donned button-downs and bow ties, the women wore cardigans and skirts. Aesthetics more than ideology were what attracted Charlie to the group—that and certain legends he’d overheard, tales of gifted Salient authors who’d been summoned by Republican advisers and speechwriters for afternoons out playing golf or yachting down the Charles.