Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  TWENTY-FIVE

  At eight o’clock the next morning a blue helicopter lifted off the bull’s-eye of the landing pad on the roof of police headquarters and flew out over the city.

  The pilot, a well-built man in his mid-thirties, with dirty blond hair, wearing yellow tinted aviator glasses and an Emergency Service Aviation Unit patch on the shoulder of his flight jacket, shouted at Vinda over the whine of the engine, “We’re on our way, Lou.”

  Vinda gave a sharp, nervous laugh. “I hope this eggbeater stays up.”

  Moving the cyclic control stick horizontally, the pilot shouted, “Not to worry, Lu-ten-ent.”

  Looking down at the streets of the city below, Vinda thought about last night. He had gone back to his apartment directly from Corregidor. He had undressed and showered and, leaving the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, aimlessly paced from room to room in the large, desolately empty apartment. He’d found himself back inside the bedroom.

  On an impulse he had opened Jean’s dresser and found all her clothes gone; only her scent lingered, and that too would fade with time. He had forgotten that he had asked Jean’s cousin, Bernice, to clean out all of her clothing and give it to charity. Vinda had been incapable of dealing with her personal effects. On her dresser sat cosmetics and hairbrushes, gathering dust.

  Going over to the window, he looked down in the street and saw that the cold had partly covered the inside of the glass with a wintry tracery. He scratched Jean’s name in the frost. Stepping back, he had looked at the name, and angrily erased it. I have to start living, I have to, he thought. Driven by an urge to get out of the place, he had dressed and left.

  Elegibos was rocking with a mixture of samba-duro and samba-reggae music. Vinda darted out onto the dance floor and lost himself in the swaying crowd. He felt released from his misery, at least for the moment. The next song was “Maravilha Morena,” a romantic ballad. He remained on the dance floor, swaying to the soft beat, his arms loose at his sides, his head tilted. He felt a presence in front of him, opened his eyes, and saw Margareth, gyrating up to him. Their bodies touched and held, moving as one. He felt the rush of warm blood throughout his body.

  “This song is about me,” she said.

  “‘Dark-Skinned Wonder,’” he said, giving the title of the song in English.

  “Yes.” Her breasts caressed his chest.

  He stared at her full, dark red lips and fiery eyes. It’s time, damn it, it’s time, he thought, as he pulled her closer to him.

  “I have a magical body, John,” she whispered in Portuguese.

  His breath caught. “I believe you.”

  “Let me invite you to rejoin the world.”

  He took her hand in his and led her off the dance floor.

  The passing landscape of irregular neighborhood grids had melted into great highways snaking through vast stretches of timberland. Automobiles were toy-sized as the helicopter’s shadow swept over them. They overflew housing developments and sprawling malls with huge parking fields filled with more toy cars.

  They had been in the air for about forty minutes when Vinda looked ahead and was enthralled by the spectacular vista spread out before him. Overlook Mountain and its massive supporting ridges filled the northeast part of the picture, and there were hills and valleys and streams and lakes, and no matter in which direction he looked, dense forest rose up out of a vast, pristine wilderness.

  His eyes fell below Overlook Mountain to the smaller mountains that formed the eastern edge of the Allegheny Plateau. Echo Lake was bounded by woodlands, and in the west he saw where the Indian Head Range disappeared behind Alderbark Mountain. And in the southwest, gleaming with icy brilliance in the morning sun, lay the Ashokan Reservoir.

  “Some view, huh?” the pilot shouted.

  Shaking his head in agreement, Vinda said, “Sure beats the Bronx.”

  The helicopter overflew the white steeple of Woodstock’s Dutch Reformed Church and circled a clearing just outside of the town. A state police cruiser, its turret lights throwing pale colors across the snow-covered field, was parked at the edge of the woods. A trooper, bundled up in the winter gray of the State Police, leaned up against the cruiser’s fender, watching the NYPD helicopter touch down in an uneventful landing.

  “Here we are, Lou, safe and sound,” the pilot said, reaching across the cockpit and pushing open the door. “Watch your step climbing down.”

  Vinda ducked under the still-turning blade and jogged over to the police cruiser. The trooper, a middle-aged, burly, homespun sort of a guy with a square face, broad shoulders, and a tapered waist, regarded the city cop with a mixture of disapproval and curiosity. He was dressed in a three-quarter wool coat, heavy wool trousers, fur-lined boots, gloves, and a flap-eared wool cap. Vinda’s apparel consisted of a tan overcoat, brown suit, white shirt, and paisley tie.

  Running toward the trooper, he became aware of the crunching snow, and a sensation that his feet were burning with pain from the intense cold.

  He and the trooper shook hands.

  “I’m Al Brophy, Lieutenant. I suggest we get started.”

  Sliding into the passenger seat, glad to be inside the warm car, Vinda asked, “Mohawk Trail Road near here?”

  Brophy’s lips drew back in a sort of smile. “Not really. And it’s not a road exactly. More like a location on a map. Your Mr. Harrison Bode is a mountain man, Lieutenant.”

  “In New York State?”

  “Don’t be fooled by Woodstock’s trendy weekend people and its artsy-craftsy shops. Plenty of the people around here hate that sort of crap. Some of them up in those hills’d shoot ya just as soon as talk to ya.” He looked at Vinda. “Better put your seat belt on.”

  They drove through Woodstock and continued on Route 212 for about seven miles before they turned right onto a narrow, rutted road lined on both sides by dense timber. Brophy’s attention remained fixed on the road ahead of him, guiding the car as if by some sixth sense around potholes camouflaged with snow and fallen leaves. Sometimes his navigation was a mite off, and the tire rim would slam down into a depression, sending Vinda’s head crashing up into the roof.

  At the bottom of a steep incline that led nowhere, Brophy stopped the car and announced, “Mohawk Trail Road.”

  “Where?”

  Brophy waved his hand across the breadth of the windshield. “Here.”

  “But there’s nothing here but a mountain.”

  “Yep. Bode’s house is up there,” he said, pointing up the side of the mountain. Looking down at Vinda’s laced shoes inside his half-overshoes, he added, “Snow around here can run four, five feet deep in places.”

  Vinda gave a self-deprecatory shrug and said, “Looks as though I didn’t dress for the occasion.”

  “Wait here,” Brophy said, and opened his door. Getting out, he trudged through deep snow to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and yanked out a duffel bag with the legend N.Y. STATE POLICE stenciled across the side. Tossing it on his shoulder, he slammed the trunk shut and chugged around to the passenger side, where he tossed the bag up on the roof. Using the car door as a ram, the trooper repeatedly slammed back the blocking snow drift.

  Sticking his head inside the car, he grinned and said, “Figured you might not wear the proper clothes, so I stopped by the barracks and picked up some gear from our ‘city slicker locker.’” Reaching into the bag, he pulled out a pair of thermal overpants and tossed them to him. “Better take off your coat and jacket.”

  Vinda wrestled out of his outer clothing and tossed it into the backseat. Lying back across the front seat of the car, he plunged his feet into the overpants, and worked them up over his trousers. “How’d you know my size?”

  “Telephoned your office. Spoke to a Detective Agueda.”

  Sitting up with his legs dangling out the side of the car, Vinda pulled up the fur-lined boots that Brophy had given him. Next came the hooded, fur-lined parka and gloves.

  “Ever use snowshoes?” Brophy as
ked, reaching into the backseat and taking two pairs up off the floor and laying them on the snow.

  Vinda looked down at the oval wood frames strung with thongs, and answered, “Many years ago.”

  Watching the city policeman slide into his new footwear, Brophy put on his own set of snowshoes.

  “You coming along?”

  A beguiling grin lit up the trooper’s weathered face. “I think I’d better, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  They trudged up the side of the mountain, Vinda following in Brophy’s trail. Vinda’s arms and legs began to ache, and sweat trickled down from his armpits and coursed over his chest. His breathing became labored. He did not see it at first, the narrow, winding ridge terraced in railway ties above a rutted track that in summer probably passed for a road. Glimpses of tar showed through the clinging snow. “You okay?” Brophy called back.

  “Fine,” he lied, asking, “How does he get his food?”

  “Stocks up in the fall. And he hunts.”

  They had been making their way uphill for about twenty minutes when faint sounds of music drifted through the air. Soon they were plodding past cords of wood that appeared to have been stacked with almost military precision. The music grew louder. They climbed farther, and suddenly a timbered house reared up on the hill, smoke curling up out of its stone chimney.

  Brophy stopped, waiting for the puffing city policeman to come up to him. “I’m going to wait outside for you. I suggest you tread softly with Bode. Most of the folks who retreat up to these mountains do so because they’ve had their fill of civilization and people, mostly people. They got plenty of hurt and anger hidden inside ’em, and it don’t take much to set ’em off.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  They made their way over to the porch and took off their snowshoes.

  Vinda turned and drank in the view that spread out before him. He wished Jean could be there to share it with him. Then he shook himself out of his reverie, turned, and walked up onto the porch. He had barely raised his hand to knock when the heavy, solid wood door was pulled open.

  “What do you want?” Bode demanded.

  Not tall or short, but medium-sized and wiry, with deep gray eyes and thin lips, Bode had a good-sized nose streaked with bluish veins. His face was almost completely covered in unkempt hair, with a beard that stretched down to his chest. His eyebrows were beyond being bushy; they grew out of control in every direction, and his overgrown mustache looked like a spur running off into his matted hair.

  Holding out his police credentials, Vinda said, “I need to talk to you about one of your former students at the Cincinnati School.”

  Bode eyed him with distrust. “What student?”

  “Frank Griffin.”

  Color flooded Bode’s cheeks; he silently stepped to the side, allowing Vinda to enter.

  “I’ll wait outside,” Brophy said, as if reaffirming his presence.

  A stone fireplace took up most of one wall of the timbered room. A balcony circled the living area and served as a library. Stacks of books were everywhere; the hearth crackled with burning logs.

  Bode wore thick-soled boots and a checkered shirt tucked inside his bib overalls. He walked over to the music system and, after pausing to listen to the end of a movement of a Mozart piano concerto, lowered the volume. He turned, with weary distaste in his eyes, to face the policeman.

  One look at him and Vinda could tell that this was not going to be a convivial chat. He needed some way to win Bode’s cooperation.

  The mountain man crossed the room and sat on a wood sofa with orange corduroy cushions. Lowering himself into a pine chair across from Bode, Vinda looked around the room, and then looked carefully at the books stacked on the table next to him. Many of them were in foreign languages. Two of their spines bore Portuguese titles. A spark of excitement ignited in his chest when he realized that he might have discovered a way to get through to the glacially silent man.

  One of the books was on the life of Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer and navigator who conducted the first circumnavigation of the globe. He grinned tiredly at Bode, and said in Portuguese, “I see you are reading about our great navigator Magellan.”

  Bode’s face pinched together with surprise, and he began dancing his fingertips together.

  Vinda continued talking in his father’s tongue. “Family legend has it that my distant cousin was Francisco Serrao, who sailed with Magellan in 1508 from Cochin to Malacca.”

  Bode responded in halting but clear Portuguese, “Exactly what do you want of me?”

  “Frank Griffin needs your help.”

  Bode, switching back to English, tossed him a look of infinite scorn. “Since when do the police help people?”

  “Since always.”

  “The police killed Frank’s wife; they destroyed his life.”

  “That was an accident.” He knew that he needed to come up with something that would draw Bode out of his shell of isolation. “Frank thought a lot of you. Did you know that he made you his beneficiary? Now he needs your help.”

  Bode gnawed his lower lip. “What kind of trouble is he in?”

  “We have reason to believe that his life might be in danger.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you that. You’re just going to have to trust me.” He reached into his parka and took out the photograph of Griffin that he had taken along with him. “Is this Frank?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you please help me find him? I promise you, no harm will come to him.”

  “I don’t know where he is. I haven’t heard from Frank in years.”

  “Will you tell me about him, the kind of person he is?”

  Bode sat frozen in silence, staring up at the row of crossbeams. He pushed himself up off the sofa and walked over to the serving table on the other side of the room. He stood there for a while looking down at the oak top and then, as though finally deciding on a course of action, opened the side panel and took out a manila folder. Coming back across the room, he handed the folder to Vinda and said, “In order to tell you about Frank Griffin, I must first tell you things about me.”

  The old newspaper clippings were from the Southampton News and told the chilling story of a sexually abused child killing his abuser, his father. Harrison Bode was twelve when his drunken father first crept into his bedroom, and sixteen when he cowered in bed cradling the shotgun he had just removed from the library gun cabinet. Harrison knew that his father had been drinking and that he would be coming to his room, so he waited with the gun for his tormentor. There were photographs of their Southampton estate, and one of the child and his socially prominent mother. The story offered some hints of the torments Bode had suffered.

  Vinda heard the squeak of a cork and looked up from the clippings to see Bode opening a bottle of champagne. “I’ve inherited some of my father’s tastes,” Bode said.

  The incongruous sight of a mountain man standing next to a silver wine bucket opening a bottle of champagne reinforced Vinda’s belief that we all live inside the many worlds of our own heads.

  Bode popped the cork, and poured the wine into stemmed glasses. He handed one to Vinda. Sipping, Bode said, “After twenty years of visiting a therapist five days a week, I decided to give up the practice of law to devote my life to helping abused and abandoned children. Hence the Cincinnati School.” Looking at the stream of bubbles rising up the center of his glass, he added, “I was never going to be able to marry or have children, so I decided to try to help other boys avoid the hell that my life had become. My father’s legacy to me, besides his money, was impotence.”

  “You’re a brave man, sir.”

  Vinda’s compassion caught the mountain man off-guard; he stared at the policeman for a long time. Finally he sucked in a deep breath and began to talk about Frank Griffin.

  Griffin had been abandoned by his parents as an infant, and assigned by the courts to the Cincinnati School. His facial deformity caused
him early on to bear the brunt of his peers’ unrelenting cruelty. He was constantly getting into fights, so much so that his ears became cauliflowered. As the years passed he became more withdrawn and delusional.

  “When I arrived at the school he was already well on his way to becoming psychotic. Frank had discovered the Bible when he was twelve and read it over and over attempting to find answers for his misery.”

  Vinda sipped champagne.

  “Religion became his obsession. He was fascinated with matters involving the action and influence of supernatural and supernormal powers. The more he studied, the deeper he delved, and the more withdrawn he became.

  “He came to believe that by possessing the secrets of the occult he garnered the strength he needed to cope with his own inner torment. Somewhere along the line he took it into his head that his parents had abandoned him because he was the illegitimate son of an illegitimate son. Do you know the significance of that?”

  Vinda put his glass on top of the stack of books on the end table and said, “It’s one way to become a vampire.” He looked at Bode and asked him, “Why didn’t anyone at the school get him help?”

  “I did. We put him in psychotherapy. But he only played mind games with the doctor. I tried reaching him on a personal level, and succeeded to a certain degree. I saw in Frank a kindred spirit of mutual suffering. We related to each other on a certain level, but there was nothing I could do or say to change his belief in the powers of the occult.”

  “Did he make friends at the school?”

  “Only Otto Holman, another loner, who latched on to Frank and became his protector. Holman was very interested in boxing and gymnastics, and he got Frank interested in them too. Frank had a natural ability for that stuff.”

  He told Vinda that Griffin had left the school when he was eighteen and worked around the country at odd jobs. Some years later he ran into Holman, and his friend from the Cincinnati School got him a job as a stuntman in Hollywood. Religion remained Frank’s main interest, so when he came back to New York between jobs he would take courses. He registered at Columbia University for a course in religious philosophy and ethics. And that was where he met Valarie. She was a Sister of Saint Joseph and had registered to take the same course.