Surrender, New York

by Caleb Carr

  And I was shocked to find a nineteenth-century farmhouse, its grounds well manicured and shaded by several enormous maple and oak trees. The clapboarding on the house was well maintained and had been painted fairly recently, while the black tin roof, obviously a recent addition, also showed no signs of deterioration. But what was perhaps most surprising about the house was its size: I could not judge the exact number of rooms from the driveway, but there were certainly many—space enough, perhaps, to house a way station for young people on their way to new and promising lives. Could this truly be the nefarious headquarters, the existence of which we had posited ever since Latrell had spoken of it?

  I did not have long to consider such questions. On the left-hand side of the driveway, about twenty-five yards short of the house, stood an old barn, which appeared to have been transformed into an elaborate and, judging by the number of vehicles outside it, thriving garage. Most notable were a series of well-maintained trucks: yet I looked in vain for one that sported all-terrain tires with the tread that Mike had identified. Then, as I pulled closer, I got a better look inside the concrete-floored barn itself: replete with a hydraulic lift and work pit in its center, three or four large, rolling cases of Craftsman tools, and welding tanks, it was a motorhead’s dream. But my attention was soon drawn from such details by the sight of several men emerging from the gaping doorway of this state-of-the-art yet wholly unexpected workshop: each of them carried the inevitable can of Genesee beer in one hand, and I recognized one of their number to be Kevin Meisner, whose truck, I now saw, was parked up by the house: a red Dodge from the late Nineties. Yet it was far from a beater, as had been described by the witnesses at the scene of Gracie’s collision, and bore no white cap. The latter could easily have been removed, of course, but I began to have my doubts when I saw the last man to come out of the garage:

  It was Bass Hagen, who told the others to stay back as he approached me, which did my courage no good: if he was an enforcer of some kind, I was in deep trouble. But I pulled the Empress to a halt and rolled down the window, encouraged by the genuinely amiable smile that I could now see beneath his mustache. He never hesitated, but came right up to lean into my window.

  “Well, Doc,” he said. “I guess we’ve got one hell of a mess.”

  “I guess,” I answered slowly. “And are you part of it?”

  “Of this business?” He pointed to the house. “Shit, no. But I’m looking out for Ambyr.” He leaned in closer. “Are you?”

  “I’d like to.” He offered his enormous hand at this, and I shook it.

  “Okay. Then you gotta know she never meant any of those kids harm. She’s done a lot of good, good that the state couldn’t.” He glanced at the house. “Wish to fuck she’d told me about it, though.”

  “As do I, Mr. Hagen.”

  He looked back at me. “You been awfully good to them—to Ambyr and Lucas. So I’m assuming you’re not actually planning to use that—” He pointed at my jacket, where the outline of my holster would have given my Colt away, even if the butt end of its grip hadn’t been slightly protruding into plain sight.

  “That’s never been my intention,” I answered. “But—well, Fletcher Hollow…”

  “Yeah-uh,” he chuckled. “You ain’t wrong, there. This place is a little different, though.”

  Just then there came some indistinct shouting from the garage, to which Bass turned to listen. “What? Yeah, I know the clock’s running, God damn it!” He glanced at me again. “Okay, then, Doc. I’m gonna trust you to do what’s right.” I only nodded in reply, and Bass pointed farther up the drive. “She’s up to the house. Listen, though—I know this whole business ain’t gonna be easy on you, but try not to be too long. Because I ain’t too sure how long she’s got to get outta here. Okay?”

  I nodded again as he stepped away, a look of genuine sympathy on his face; and then I slowly urged the Empress on, farther into this most peculiar of mysteries I’d come on in a long time—which, given the circumstances of recent months, was saying quite a bit. Pulling the car alongside Kevin’s truck, which was parked at the very end of the driveway near what was plainly the door to the house’s kitchen, I got out and took a long look around the neatly kept grounds. A rubber tire swing hung from a bough of one of the trees on the lawn, each of which must have been more than a century old; and as I walked among them, not at all certain of what I was or should be doing, I saw that the grass eventually rolled away and down into the small brook that had created the hollow. It had been dammed up, at one point not too far downstream, to create a clear, inviting pond, in which two kids—maybe eleven or twelve—were swimming and splashing, their laughter inaudible until you reached the crest of the lawn.

  “What in the world…” I murmured—and was startled when an unlikely young voice answered:

  “You’re the one who’s here to see Ambyr?” I turned to find myself faced with yet another kid, this one maybe a little younger than those in the pond. She was pretty, with fair hair and bright blue eyes that were so appealing that I didn’t immediately notice a large birthmark that crept around from her lower scalp and partway into one cheek, just below the jaw. “Nice place, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed,” I answered. “Do you live here?”

  But she ignored the question: “If you’re ready, I’ll take you on in.”

  “Okay,” I said; then she took my hand and led me toward the house.

  She pulled the screen door open, revealing the kitchen of the house: it was large, and whatever quaint details had been left untouched were overpowered, visually, by the complete replacement of its appliances, its countertops, and its fixtures. Though not a particularly well-thought-out renovation, with steel and granite that did not match the house at all, it was an expensive one: precisely like the Kurtz kitchen, I remember thinking. But that renovation had been paid for by the state; other, more sinister money had been behind what I was seeing.

  “Ambyr’s upstairs,” the girl said to me, as I took all this in. “She said you should go right up. See you!” And with that, she was back out the door, leaving me to enter what would once have been the large dining room of the house, but was now some kind of kid heaven: there were two widescreen televisions, the first showing Disney Animation’s Big Hero 6, the other hooked up to an Xbox 360, on which was paused what looked like the latest edition of the gaming phenomenon Call of Duty. Scattered around other parts of the room were iPads, cell phones, and other electronic equipment, along with half-finished sodas and bags of various snacks.

  It was all a far cry from Fagin’s crumbling, filthy headquarters in Oliver Twist; and yet, one could not help the feeling that there was some kind of connection to be drawn between the two. As I made my way through the next room—probably the parlor, in its day, but now converted into a place where adults clearly took their ease, with slightly larger televisions than the kids used, and very plush La-Z-Boy chairs positioned before them—and then put one foot on the wide, center-hall staircase, I became ever more disoriented and even afraid.

  “Where in the fucking world am I?” I murmured,

  “Trajan?” she said, that remarkably keen hearing having caught either my footsteps, my barely audible voice, or the sound of my cane. She approached slowly from the right side of the upstairs hall, and finally appeared: dressed, now, as I had never seen her, in expensive jeans and a dress shirt that was tied just above her midriff, with her hair held up in a flip on the back of her head by a barrette—and her white cane nowhere in sight. She was sweating, and had clearly been working hard at something that I guessed at with a single word that knocked my insides loose: packing.

  “Come on up,” she said, her voice very serious. “But be careful of a couple of the steps, they’re steep…”

  She headed back to resume her work, clearly feeling that time was pressing hard; and I followed along, wishing with all my soul that this inexplicably pleasant world into which I’d walked was in fact the nightmare that it suddenly felt like; but, knowing
it wasn’t, I quickly typed a text message into my phone, although I didn’t hit send yet. Not yet…

  I found her in a large bedroom, appointed in a manner not unlike the one in her home, save that each piece of furniture and each detail of decoration was obviously far more expensive. Moving to the bed, the frame of which was built of solid oak in a very handsome Mission style, with a white lace spread that had obviously been hand-worked, I saw several piles of clothes: designer clothes, to judge by the looks and the labels. These had not been bought locally; indeed, the closest place that they could have come from was the large collection of designer outlet stores in Manchester, Vermont, a place that drew in many a New Yorker on their way north for vacationing in summer and skiing in winter. And the perfect place, I realized, to make contact with wealthy families who were seeking children to join them, as well as to carry out the hand-overs of such precious merchandise…

  “This is very nice stuff,” I commented, my voice already taking on a bitter edge as Ambyr continued to fold the pieces up and carefully place them in a couple of leather Cipriani trolley cases and tote bags. “I’d almost think it belonged to Shelby—but of course, she’s dead.”

  “Don’t, Trajan.” Ambyr shook her head with a look of gratifyingly genuine pain on her face. “If you start off being mean, it’s only going to take up time.”

  “Oh?” I noised, my tone only getting worse. “You in a hurry to get someplace, Ambyr?”

  “Yes,” she answered, still with great self-control. “And there’s things we have to talk about.”

  “Really?” Her manner had begun to enrage me. “You think so?”

  “Stop it, Trajan.”

  “Stop it?” I growled. “I haven’t even started it, yet!” I moved around the bed as quickly as I could and grasped her by the shoulders, ready to shake her. “Your brother is back at my place, in a very serious dissociative state that’s kept him up for almost sixteen hours, his mind ready to snap because Derek is dead and you disappeared—and now I show up here in fucking Wonderland, with you packing, and you ask me not to take up time?”

  She remained limp in my grasp, apparently having expected some such reaction. “Yes—I do. There’s a lot I need to explain, and I don’t have long to do it. So can we just move on?”

  I was ready to do almost anything to bring her around—kiss her, slap her, scream at her—but then I studied the expression on her face more carefully and saw what I was dealing with: genuine compartmentalization disorder. Not the kind of phenomenon that pop psychologists like to blather about, but a deeply narcissistic syndrome in which separate realities simply cannot and will not be integrated in a person because of psychic deformities caused by trauma in childhood—trauma that, in her case, I understood only too well. I had been one of those realities, fully genuine for Ambyr during the time that we had spent together; but I had only been one, and now, with both herself and the operation that was centered on this strange house in apparent danger, she was existing in another.

  “That’s it, then, isn’t it?” I said, releasing her. “All we’ve been through, all we’ve shared: an episode. Pleasant, maybe even loving, but most of all necessary; and now the necessity has changed…”

  “I don’t want you to remember it like that,” she answered, her pronounced detachment never breaking despite her words. “It meant so much to me. So much…”

  “Ambyr, please. I’ve studied too many patients like you. And there’s not a damned thing that I can say or do right now that’s going to make you come back to me—you’re just not in that world, anymore. I might as well be…” I stared at the clothes on the bed, as she returned to the task of packing them. “Dead.” Then, trying to summon what strength I could, I continued, “So let’s talk about the things that do matter: the things I need to know. Obviously, you’re the handler, the woman involved in this operation that we’ve long since determined must have been convincing most of these kids that it would be okay to take off with a family of rich strangers.”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding as she began to tear up a bit. “How long have you known?” She was trying to keep the conversation on a path of practicalities, to avoid the kind of emotional distress that might actually force her to face who she’d been and what she’d done.

  “With certainty, for the last week,” I told her. “I’d had moments of suspicion several times before then, but that was when all the pieces began to fit too precisely to avoid, when I really couldn’t explain it away, anymore. Although God knows I tried. I was only confused, ultimately, about one detail—your accomplices. But I began to figure that one out, too, the night that Curtis Kolmback was murdered. She’s not quite so clever at it as you are, old Cathy Donovan. Tell me: was she giving you orders, or vice versa? I mean, who actually decided that Derek—” At the mention of the dead boy’s name, Ambyr drew in a sharp breath, and leaned onto the bed for support. I could have gone to her, I could have offered her comfort; but in her present state of mind, it would have been fruitless. “I’m sorry if the mention of his name bothers you that much.” Then the ice flowed in my veins full force: “Responsibility for a life is a terrible weight, isn’t it?”

  “I was never responsible for Derek’s life,” Ambyr said, her voice taking on that lethal tone that it had on just a few other occasions. “I never wanted to be responsible for anybody’s life. Nobody’s but my own. I was tricked into everything else.”

  “Actually, I was speaking more about his death,” I said, matching her manner. “Or do you contend that you didn’t consistently tell him that, if he put you in touch with other throwaways, one day you’d come up with a new home for him, too?”

  “You believe I’d do that?” she said, with astonishment that was either real or a very good act; I simply didn’t know, anymore. “He just assumed it, and then, later, he started to get impatient, in that way he always did: so pigheaded, so self-centered, so fucking—”

  She caught herself just in time, but I knew where she’d been going: “So fucking retarded? You can say it, Ambyr, nobody else will hear you.”

  “Except that I want you to know—” she said, with what, again, seemed genuine emotion. “I want you to know that it was the others who decided he had to go, without telling me. But you’re just not listening, are you?” She zipped up one bag and tossed it on the floor. “Anyway, like I said, there are other things we’ve got to talk about. Mainly one thing—Lucas.”

  I had stupidly hoped that the one thing we really needed to talk about was us; and when it wasn’t, my injured pride only took fuller control. “Okay,” I said, my sarcasm transparently wretched. “Let’s talk about Lucas. Or rather, let’s talk about where you’re going, first, and about why you can’t take Lucas with you.”

  “Stop asking questions that are pointless,” she said, growing increasingly irritated with my attitude. “I can’t take him with me when I’m going to be one step ahead of the law.”

  “And how do you know that’s what’s going to happen?”

  She threw more clothes into another bag. “Because, baby,” she said, matching my sarcasm, “you’re going to tell them. If you haven’t already.”

  I was a little awed by her insight; but I wasn’t going to let it show. “Okay. Let’s say I am—you certainly don’t seem to be packing for a life on the lam. More like an ocean cruise, I’d say.”

  “I earned these things,” she answered, the same warning in her voice. “And I’m keeping them, damn it. As for Lucas—imagine what’ll happen if I take him with us and we get caught. Juvie, almost for sure. The best that it could turn out is that they’ll stick him in some lousy foster home somewhere, and I don’t want that.”

  I nodded slowly, pulling out a cigarette. “Admirable—but what do you want for him?” I struck my lighter hard, lit my cigarette, and took a long drag, blowing the smoke in her direction.

  Just then a honking came from below, and it didn’t take a genius to tell what it was about: her ride was getting impatient. Ambyr moved to the wi
ndow and stuck her head out, calling, “I’ll be down in just a few minutes, Kev!”

  The more it hurts, the less you show it: the same lesson I had learned as a boy, and countless times since. “Ah, yes—Kev. The young man who had a crush on you, but in whom you had no interest. He must love you a great deal, to have pimped you out to an old cripple just to keep this operation safe—”

  “Trajan!” Ambyr shouted. “I can understand how you feel, but there is just no time, we’ve gotta talk about Lucas!”

  “Not yet, we don’t,” I said firmly. “I want to talk about just how this operation has worked, and how you could have allowed four kids to die in what I suspect was this very house without calling it off. Or did Donovan rule that out? Maybe threaten you with jail if you didn’t conceal the suicides?”

  “Stop it!” Ambyr suddenly cried, clapping her hands over her ears; and as I watched her crisis in action, I realized, with some damnable satisfaction, that there must in fact have been real feeling for me, in there; but prod and poke and torment it as I might, it simply wasn’t going to get out. “I can’t do this,” she went on after a moment. “I’ve got to worry about getting out of here, and about what’s going to happen to Lucas!”

  At which the sound of a screen door slapping shut below became audible, to be quickly followed by hard, fast steps on the stairs. In seconds, Kevin Meisner appeared at the doorway, looking somewhat surprised to see that some incident of violence wasn’t taking place.

  “Everything okay, Ambyr?” he asked, catching his breath and nodding at me, in a none-too-friendly manner, this time. “I heard shouting.”