Backward-Facing Man

by Don Silver

  “I don’t see why not,” Frederick was saying.

  “You don’t understand,” the curly-haired man said. “They belong to the band.” The young women were leaning back in their chairs as if Frederick and the guy were spraying each other with hot liquid.

  “You don’t understand, man,” Frederick sneered. “Two hundred thousand kids—some of whom may even have the poor taste to be your fans—are fighting for their lives in the jungles of Vietnam right now. To get the politicians to pay attention we’re gonna need a good PA system in Chicago. We’ll take good care of it. I promise, we’ll return it so you guys can get rich.” It appeared to Chuck that Frederick was in the process of shaking down his dealer.

  “No fucking way, man. This equipment is worth twenty thousand bucks.”

  Frederick lowered his voice. “You can’t just turn your back on your brothers and sisters.” The women in the room were listening intently now. Several had shifted so that their bodies were facing Frederick.

  “Oh, yes, I can. The guys are rehearsing new material. They’re this close to a record deal.” He held his thumb and his forefinger a quarter inch apart.

  “I’m talking about bombs going off and people losing limbs,” Frederick said. The only sign that he was upset was his jaw working up and down under his cheek. “And you’re worrying about some stupid rock-and-roll band….”

  “I started working with this band when they were playing open mics and jamming in clubs in Wallingford and East Hartford.” The manager made it sound like a holy mission. “Now that they have a chance to make it, I’m not gonna let some speed freak fuck it up.” He made a sweeping motion with his arms. “Who the fuck is this guy anyway?” he said to Chuck. “Get him the fuck out of here, will you?”

  By the time they got to the front door, the roadies were standing on the stairs and in the foyer, hitching up their pants. In the driveway, Frederick kick-started the bike and turned it around. “Pussies,” he called out beneath the engine noise. Then he flipped them the bird just like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider and away they went.

  In the summer of 1967, the Red Sox went 92 and 70, making it all the way to the World Series before losing to the Cards. The following winter, there was a lot of excitement in the air until Lonborg, their star pitcher, got hurt in a skiing accident. By the time Frederick and Chuck got to be friends, the Sox had already squandered their season and were, as was their habit, doing abysmally bad.

  In early August, Frederick and Chuck started going to the Scoreboard Tavern, and, if Frederick was able to weasel a free pair of tickets, they’d see a game. Together, they sat in the narrow wooden seats in Fenway Park, history all around them, while Frederick talked about the coming revolution or the inevitable collapse of capitalism. In between, he ruminated on the shameful sale that sent the Babe to the Yankees and bizarre tales of Tom Yawkey, the mining magnate from South Carolina who bought the team in the thirties and slowly rebuilt it, bringing Ted Williams and, later, Carl Yastrzemski to town, while refusing to let black players like Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays even try out.

  Listening to the radio from the time he was little, Frederick was an avid fan and a Red Sox expert, memorizing the team roster, the sponsors’ slogans, players’ averages, stats on attendance, and trivia about the ballpark; for example, how the plate steel and concrete wall that was rebuilt and painted green in the forties came to be called the Green Monster. From bus trips to the park, he came to know the stadium on game day, pristine and symmetrical, foul lines etched in lime, the pitcher’s mound sculpted in red clay, the peanut and the beer guys’ caw, the cigar and paper wrappers that lofted in ballpark breezes that changed mysteriously under the violet sky, joined during those few hours with thousands of others by hope that something beautiful might actually happen, something that could deliver them from their lives. Sitting in the bleachers, looking out at the CITGO sign that towered over the left-field fence, Frederick waxed poetic about the sport itself. “In baseball, nobody gets bashed or exploited. There’s no thrusting, no penetration, no violence,” he told Chuck. “Every at bat, every inning, every game, is a chance for redemption. A man can step up to the plate, no matter what he did his last time out, and have another chance. He can defy his stats, begin again, even win back the hearts of the people who booed him off the field.” And the ball, Frederick believed, soaring out into the bleachers, was a little agent of consciousness.

  By early August, like all Red Sox fans, Frederick had given up hope that his team would make it to the World Series. His work as a groundskeeper had become tedious and repetitive and Frederick was using crystal meth more and more—staying up two, three, four days in a row. To anyone who’d listen, he bragged about getting stoned with other radicals and how he’d been asked to draw up plans to disrupt the Democratic National Convention later that summer. The idea for the Fenway hack probably came to him in late July.

  For at least a hundred years, MIT students have advanced the state of the art of practical jokes. Hacks, as they’re called, are a blend of ingenuity and courage, the personal statements of people who don’t easily and ordinarily express themselves—kids who didn’t write or sing or dance or paint. They’re the marriage of electrical engineering, mechanical mastery, social satire, and elegant pranksterism, and they usually require intense preparation, creativity, steely nerves, and split-second timing. In prior years, students have implanted transistor radios in telephone receivers, hoisted a police cruiser onto a campus rooftop, and set up a dormitory room in the middle of the Charles River when it was frozen. At MIT, hacks are a part of life—a way for the geeks and brainiacs to triumph over the more well-rounded Harvard boys. And so it was one day in August 1968, with man coolers blowing hot air across their faces, Frederick told Chuck his idea.

  “How’d you like to help me hack one of the oldest franchises in baseball?” Frederick said. Chuck had just fired up a joint and was cupping it in his hands. “Picture a volcano erupting in the middle of Fenway Park during a game. All you’d see is lava—a steaming mass of multicolored goo that curdles up and starts smoking on the field.”

  Chuck laughed.

  “The coaches and the managers and field umpires running out, scratching their heads, and the players gathering round, holding their noses, and the fans having no fucking idea what’s going on. Then, in the center-field bleachers, a banner unfurling that says, ‘Stop the War,’ or ‘Bring Our Boys Home.’”

  “It’s ballsy,” Chuck said. He thought for sure his friend was kidding. He’d seen it a dozen times before: Frederick getting all fired up about something he never actually intended to do.

  Frederick took out a composition book filled with equations, chemical reactions, drawings, even the names of companies that made or sold chemicals that could simulate a volcano erupting. He’d already thought a lot about it.

  Chuck played along. “It’s not without its challenges,” he said.

  The other groundskeepers at Fenway whose job it was to bring out the crushed brick, clay, and Kentucky Bluegrass were a mixture of college boys with connections to the front office, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans working illegally, and a couple of career mechanics all laboring under a grizzled old full-time landscaper named John Touey. In Frederick’s opinion, none had the right political leanings or could be trusted to help. His regular posse, the people he claimed to operate with, were, as he explained it, engaged out of theater.

  For a hack like this to work, Frederick said they would need strong support, extensive setup, outside resources, and, depending on how well it went off, the ability to disappear afterward for a while. With clouds passing over the bleachers and the white noise of traffic coming off the Mass Pike, Chuck heard himself egging Frederick on—telling him it had all the elements of a Hall of Fame hack, mischievous with a message, a combination of science, technology, and social commentary. He told his friend he was intrigued by the idea. He spoke in glowing terms about how amazing it would be to pull off. By the time the two of them got up to leave,
stoned out of their gourds, Chuck told Frederick that he was on board.

  New Year’s Eve Day, 1999

  John Russell was pleased when his pager went off. As a favor to his old friends at the Bureau, former special agent Ken Ford, who’d retired to a desk job with Interpol, had agreed to keep an eye on the next of kin of fugitives like Fergus Keane. “I dunno know if this means anything to you, Jack,” Ken said, “but the Volcano Bomber’s old lady just went missing in Switzerland.” It was Friday—the day of the dreaded millennial shift, Y2K—one of the few times you’d find right-wing survivalists and New Age crystal gazers side by side, joking in the aisles of Wal-Mart. Most other guys Russell’s age were barbecuing ribs in the Poconos or snuggling their honeys in the suburbs. Whoever was assigned the Volcano Bomber case had probably long since stopped working it, except to make out paperwork each month.

  Russell took the turns to Lorraine’s house without thinking. He hadn’t given up. Many a night since he’d arrived in Philadelphia, he’d sat outside their house, watching the Nadia women on the unlikely chance that Fergus, aka Frederick, might try to see his daughter. It was that way with fugitives. He knew this. Some—like Abbie Hoffman—have a face-lift, get married, and become activists all over again, only to circle back and turn themselves in. Some walk away, but just as many, or more, awakened by age or infirmity, return to see an old lover or a child on holidays, anniversaries, or in times of trouble. He realized this was a long shot. Even if Keane was still alive, somebody would have had to tip him off to Lorraine’s disappearance, which would have been unlikely. The radical underground had pretty much dried up.

  Being honest with himself—a habit he fell into now for reasons he didn’t much understand—it wasn’t just the fantasy of catching Keane in the twilight of his career. The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a tough time in law enforcement. Everyone’s heard about holidays and depression. Russell had experienced firsthand how this time of year leaves a man with too much time on his hands. Nowadays, his peers did woodworking in their basements, traveled, coached Little League, bought boats, and babysat their grandkids. Russell read a little—mostly mysteries—and he still went to the track, but for the most part, his only hobby, the thing John Russell liked most, was work.

  He parked on Medley Street about three hundred feet from the Nadia house and slid his seat back. Satisfied he could see the front door clearly, he took a newspaper out and stuck it in the visor. Then he memorized his surroundings—the lights that were on, window treatments and whether they were up or down, the position of vehicles on the street, the young man in a military jacket, the middle-aged woman at her doorstep looking for her cat, the heavyset guy with the hood of his car up, a couple of teenage girls sharing a cigarette. Twice, he emptied his bladder into a Nalgene. He read the paper and ate a Mars Bar. Less than an hour later, Stardust Nadia appeared in her doorway, dressed to the nines.

  The girl looked more like her mother now. She was a little fuller in the face, and curvaceous. There was confidence in her gait, coolness in the way she shook her head to keep the hair out of her face. She was wearing a tight-fitting red shirt with sequins and carrying a leather jacket. Her blonde hair, short skirt, black tights, and pumps would make a lovely New Year’s Eve package for whomever she was planning to meet.

  Russell put the car in gear. He’d been present at key moments in the girl’s life—outside the hospital waiting room the night she was born, at her christening, school plays and graduations, her confirmation, a Christmas pageant or Halloween parade here and there. From behind the wheel, behind a newspaper, or from the back of a crowd, Special Agent John Russell understood things about Stardust Nadia that most agents didn’t know about their own kids. He knew, for example, that she was bright, left-handed, had a pretty bad sense of direction, and was forgetful, inclined to lock her keys in her car and leave her credit card in stores. Yet if someone had pointed him out to Stardust, she’d have pegged him as a neighborhood guy, somebody’s dad, a familiar face in a photograph. It was Russell’s belief that Stardust knew nothing of the Volcano Bomber or Fergus Keane. The very idea that the Feds thought her father was the prime suspect in a federal criminal case—a fugitive from justice for thirty years—would have amused her.

  Russell followed her to the end of the street and turned left, riding the brake. At Appleberry, she turned left again and waited at the intersection. Russell parked and followed her up onto the train platform. Downtown, Stardust Nadia walked from Market Square to Third Street and turned right. On South Street, she bought a falafel and then headed up west to Eleventh. By ten thirty, she was standing at the end of a line of urban hipsters in spiked leather and long black coats, before deciding to move on. At eleven, she entered a martini bar on Arch Street called Rox.

  It took Russell a few minutes to find her. At the bar, she exchanged polite smiles with men who said things that either she ignored or that made her laugh politely, and then drifted away. It was so loud Russell’s rib cage shook. At eleven thirty, somebody gave up a stool next to her, and a sharp-dressed man sat down. Russell put him in his late thirties—fancy suit, slicked-back dyed hair. After a short conversation, the man in the gray suit pointed to a table, stepped back, and made a little motion for Stardust to sit down. He was too young, too slick, and too flashy to be directly connected to the radical underground, though he could easily have been the messenger.

  Stardust opened her purse and pulled out a compact and lip gloss. They ordered drinks. The guy laid an array of electronic devices on the table—a pager and two cell phones, which lit up, one after the other. John Russell moved in an arc around them. From a little alcove near the bathroom, he watched her toss one back, then another. Just after one A.M., they headed toward the door.

  According to John Russell, a woman who’s decided to go home with a man walks tall in her heels. She lets her hips sway and sticks her chest out. If you look closely, her head sits back on her shoulders and her eyes dilate, which, in his opinion, accounts for a lot of bad choices. A man who thinks he’s about to get some swaggers. If he’s insecure, he’ll stretch his neck, looking around to make sure he’s being noticed. The guy in the gray suit who led Stardust through the crowd looked like he didn’t want to be recognized, as if he was embarrassed or hiding something. He practically pushed her into the limousine. Russell was suspicious. He flagged a cab and followed them down Arch to Fifth, then west on Market.

  Both cars proceeded around City Hall to Eighteenth Street. Russell could have called in the plates, but that would have alerted the office he was working on New Year’s Eve, something he wanted to avoid. When the limo stopped in front of Quick Copy Center, Russell gave the taxi driver a twenty and told him to wait. He stood in the shadows near a door that said ORIENTAL MASSAGE, SECOND FLOOR. It seemed odd. The limo driver didn’t get out. The lights didn’t go on. The doors remained shut. John Russell drew his weapon—a 9-millimeter Sig-Sauer.

  When the back door finally did open, a man’s shoe touched the ground at the same time a woman’s stockinged foot kicked, then retracted. There was a struggle, then an embrace. As Russell stepped forward, Stardust twisted loose, her midriff bare, her skirt hiked up around her waist, revealing her ass, divided by a black string. She swung her purse around, almost hitting Russell, who was standing with his feet planted, his pistol aimed at the man’s temple. The man in the gray suit was bleeding from the mouth. Stardust screamed, which caused them both to freeze.

  Summer 1999

  The first few names they came up with for the new venture—pawnshop.com, pawnbroker.com, pawn.com—were taken. These were the heady days of the Internet when opportunists would squat on desirable domain names for years, waiting for big businesses to buy them out. Rahim found a server farm near Temple University and a software company in Minneapolis that offered a catalogue system in modules for uploading, viewing, and purchasing online. They registered the URL to a shell corporation that was registered to another shell corporation, which was owned by an offs
hore Bahamian company that Charlie Puckman had set up in the seventies. Fat Eddie told Chuck to put the stock in somebody else’s name, somebody who couldn’t be linked to him, which would protect any money they earned from a civil suit, should one occur. Chuck thought of it late one night, while surfing porn sites stoned. In less than a month, Softpawn.com was up and running.

  Chuck’s former customers were a motley crew—street toughs, loan sharks, money launderers, petty thieves, scammers—most of them guys like Charlie Puckman Sr. They got their starts dealing drugs or fencing stolen goods, made only vague encoded notes about transactions, watched one another’s backs, kept their business to themselves, and never forgot a favor. Chuck’s first few sales calls felt awkward. His business suits—once tailored and pressed—were wrinkled and too big on him now, and his hair was wiry and unkempt. One guy asked if Chuck was feeling better since his surgery. Another wondered if Chuck was another Puckman brother, returned to salvage what he could of the family fortune. But Chuck’s unsteadiness came across as credible, and he was more successful than he’d expected.

  Big Harvey agreed to let Chuck catalogue his high-end inventory. So did two North Philly accounts provided Softpawn.com agreed to take title. To those engaged in illicit trading and hot property, commitment and consignment mean nothing. Physical possession rules. Whoever holds an item, owns it. “I have a civil suit pending,” Chuck stammered, uncertain about the effect. “You can’t afford your merch to be seized.” Miraculously, everyone agreed. By the end of their first week, four pawnbrokers had furnished Softpawn.com a list of items that hadn’t moved in months for Chuck to post on his Web site.

  Rahim visited the dealers and took pictures of furs, jewelry, and electronic equipment. Within days, he’d uploaded the photos and arranged them by category along with a two- or three-line description, written by Ovella. Chuck hadn’t said much about his marketing plan, alluding to kiosk displays in malls, students going door to door, church sales, and the like. In truth, pawnshop owners couldn’t care less what Chuck and his friends did as long as they got paid.