The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  He looked at the list. “Three guys,” he said. “Three guys lost their passes. Whoops, sorry. Two guys and a girl. Woman, I mean. The local AP gal, a guy from the Miami News, and a guy shooting for SI. He’s a contract guy with Black Star. Usually Sports Illustrated uses their own guys, but I guess this time they were strung out too thin. Baseball, college football, the pros—you know.” He flipped the paper across the desk. “Is a copy all right?” he asked. “I need to keep the original.”

  She nodded. Her head spun, but she thought of another question:

  “Did they give any reason for needing another pass?”

  “Yeah,” Stark said. “The NFL is real careful about who gets these things. They don’t want the sidelines cluttered with everybody’s cousin.” He looked at another piece of paper. “Let’s see, ah, yeah. The AP gal had hers in her bag. She was flying Eastern and they lost the bag. That had to be the truth. The guy from the News had his eaten by his ten-month-old, and the guy from out of town, let’s see, lost his in a fight . . .”

  Stark leaned back in his chair. “You know, I seem to remember when he came in that morning for a new one, he had a pretty good welt above his eye. Everybody was kidding him about it. He was pretty good-natured about the whole thing, though.”

  Detective Barren felt her stomach plummet. I knew it, she thought. I knew she fought hard. Susan would never let anyone steal her life so easily.

  She picked up the list from the desktop, looking down at the names printed on the page.

  She tried to steady herself, thinking that she couldn’t be sure until she went to the printer. Then she would need to have forensics run tests to make doubly certain. The process could take some time, she cautioned herself. Move slowly. Move carefully. Be certain. Inwardly, she doubted her ability to take her own advice.

  She stared again at the names printed on the page, but the letters seemed to jump about, as if teasing her. There he is, she thought. There he is.

  The old Cuban gentleman who came out from behind the counter at Biscayne Printing to assist her was gracious and deferential.

  She produced her badge, which caused him to look up in some aston­ishment, obviously, Detective Barren thought, slightly disturbed by the idea of a female policeman. Still, he took the torn yellow tag gently from its plasticene cover and turned it over, rubbing the paper texture between his fingers.

  “This,” he said with a tinged accent, “is certainly similar to the passes that we print for the Dolphins. But this year, of course, the color has changed.”

  “Could it be . . .” she started, but he held up his hand.

  “Last year,” he said. “If I can take this, I could show you the bulk lot we purchased, perhaps make a perfect match for you?”

  This was a statement presented as a question. Detective Barren knew that the forensics department of the county police could make the same match easily.

  She shook her head. “No, thank you. I just wanted . . .”

  He held up his hand. “Anything for the beautiful detective.” He smiled with an old man’s benign lasciviousness.

  She retrieved the paper sample and wondered when the next flight to New York took off.

  The droning of the jet engines failed to disturb her preoccupation with a single dominating thought, an inability to focus on anything save the name, which she repeated over and over to herself terrified, in a way, at the ordinariness of it. She gave the taxi driver the address almost unconsciously. When she pulled up in front, the huge office building barely registered. Like an automaton, she punched in the seventeenth floor on the elevator, squeezing into the back with a dozen office workers, riding in swooshing silence to the photo agency.

  She waited a few minutes in a lobby while a receptionist went to get an editor. She spotted a series of framed photographs, all of disasters or wars, and she wandered over, staring at the first out of curiosity, then with a frightening interest. It was seeing the name that drove her out of the half-light of consciousness she’d fallen into. There, she said to herself. There he is. It steeled her. Several photos displayed on the wall were Douglas Jeffers’, including a shot of a grime-streaked fireman, eyes captured by defeat, as a city block burned in the background. It was Philadelphia.

  She turned away as the editor came out to talk to her. Her first thought was to lie. Lie cleverly, lie completely, lie blatantly. Do nothing alarming. Create a diversion, she thought. She did not want the photo agency con­tacting Jeffers and telling him a policewoman was looking for him. She hesitated only briefly before uttering the first lie. She shook a sense of guilt from her mind and sauntered ahead. She recognized the expediency of her falsehoods, but still considered them a momentary weakness when the forces driving her, she thought, were powered by righteousness and honesty. They had to be.

  The assistant dispatch editor was friendly but reluctant. “I mean, he’s not here. I really don’t know how to say any more. Sorry, but . . .”

  Detective Barren nodded, shaking her head in mock disappointment. “Boy, you know the old gang is going to be so sorry. Everybody wanted to see old Doug.”

  “What do you mean?” The assistant editor asked. He was a middle-­aged man, wearing a bow tie. He had an understated lecherous air, the sort of slightly disheveled man constantly on the make, and more often than not able to use his rumpled teddy bear approach successfully. She thought she could use this. Detective Barren smiled generously at him.

  “Oh, really, it’s nothing. It’s just a bunch of us who covered the Move bombing in Philly together and got to know each other have this reunion planned . . . no big deal, really. You know how we all met? Hunkered down a little ways back from where the firemen and cops were getting ready to blow the place up. Old Doug was like a racehorse. He couldn’t stand waiting. He just had to get his shot, you know, no matter how much shooting was going on. Isn’t that just like old Doug . . .”

  “Sounds like the crazy kind of thing he’d do . . .”

  “Well, no big deal. It just would have been nice to get Doug involved. Everybody loves hearing war stories, you know. That’s why I came up here . . .”

  “Gee, sounds like fun . . .”

  “Yeah, well, last year it got a bit rowdy . . .” She half-winked and added a coy little blush for the editor’s benefit. She hoped he wouldn’t ask her anything about the incident in Philadelphia. She busily searched her mind for the few news stories she’d read. “But it’s okay, really.”

  “I’m sorry,” the editor said.

  “No big deal. It’s just, well, you know Doug. He keeps to himself so much. We were kind of hoping to draw him out a bit, you know?”

  “You’re not kidding. Photographers are an odd bunch . . .”

  “Well, old Doug, he’s one of the best . . .”

  “He sure is.”

  “You know, you’d really be surprised how many people he’s made into friends, out there in the boonies, on assignment.”

  “I always figured he did. Lord knows he keeps to himself around here. But I mean,” the editor said, “you can’t go into some of those places without learning to risk a bit with other people. Flying bullets make for fast friends.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Detective Barren said.

  “Where’d you say you were from?” he asked.

  “The Herald. Just in town for a day or two . . .”

  “Well,” he said, “all I can say is that he’s on vacation and he didn’t leave any itinerary with us. He’s due back at work in three weeks, if that’s any help. You can always leave a message here . . .”

  She thought of the wait. Impossible.

  “. . . Or why don’t you try his brother?”

  “Doug never mentioned a brother.”

  “He’s a doctor at a state hospital in New Jersey. In Trenton. Doug always lists him as next of kin before heading i
nto some war zone. Why don’t you try him? Maybe he can get a message to Doug. I’d hate to see him miss a good party . . .”

  “Tell you what,” Detective Barren said. “I’ll give the brother a shot. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll leave a message here, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Boy,” she said in an almost girlish voice, “you’ve really been a help. You know, we get this together, maybe you’d want to come for a drink?”

  “Love to,” he said.

  “I’ll call you,” she replied. She smiled. “I can reach you here pretty easily?”

  He smiled the vague smile of the hopeful. “Anytime.”

  But her mind had already closed on the information she’d received, and her heart was tugging her fast toward New Jersey.

  VI

  AN EASY PERSON

  TO KILL

  11. Douglas Jeffers watched the expanse of inky black highway flow beneath the front wheels of his car and hummed meaningless rhythms to himself. Behind him, morning was sliding up onto the horizon. Light began to filter gently through the car, creeping into the corners and filling the interior. Jeffers glanced over at the sleeping figure next to him. Anne Hampton’s mouth was slightly ajar, her breathing even and controlled. The morning light seemed to rest on her features, making them sharp and distinct. He tried to study her dark eyebrows, long, aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and wide lips, stealing glances from his concentration on the roadway. He watched the way the clean early light blended with her straw-colored hair; it seemed momentarily to be glowing. He wondered again whether she was beautiful or not. As far as he could tell, she was, in a clear, simple fashion.

  He wanted to run his finger down the side of her face, where the light was marking the edge of her check, to wake her with a small stroke of tenderness. He saw that she had a small bruise there and for a moment felt sad. He’d been extremely lucky that he had not had to kill her.

  Jeffers turned away and saw the last wan outline of the moon in the sky, before it became absorbed by the sweeping expanse of blue that was building swiftly into daytime. He liked the mornings, though the light was difficult, sometimes nearly impossible to shoot in. But, when captured, it touched the picture with a magic that was undeniable. He thought of a morning in Vietnam when he’d done the foolhardy thing of going out with a South Vietnamese Ranger battalion. He had been young and so had the soldiers. The other cameramen he’d been with—a crew from ABC News, another freelance shooting for Magnum, and a guy from the Australian—had declined the offer of a chance to see some combat and quietly tried to dissuade him from going. But he had been caught up in the laughter, shouting, and easygoing camaraderie of the men. They had been all posturing and bravado, waving weapons and grinning with confidence as they climbed in the deuce-and-one-half green trucks that would carry them into the field. He had jumped up with them, smiling, snapping off shots, taking names, and enjoying the relaxed mood so intoxicatingly unfamiliar to men at war.

  There had been an easy day of tromping through the rice paddies and fields beneath a friendly and familiar sky. They had bivouacked shortly before dark on a small rise, surrounded by trees and high brush. Jeffers remembered that the men had continued their relaxed laughter into the night, but that he’d stared out into the enveloping darkness with apprehension. He’d crawled into this foxhole early after lifting an M-16 and a half-dozen clips from an ammunition pile and putting it next to his sleeping roll. He made a small stack of hand grenades on one side of the bed, and put his Nikon, loaded with fast film, on the other. He tightened his flak jacket around him, ignoring the discomfort. His last thoughts before sleep had been angry, angry with himself mainly, hoping he would survive the night. The goddamn officer in charge had put only a skeleton platoon out on the perimeter and no one deeper in the bush in listening posts and he had wondered idly, without panic, without fear, but with a sense of frustrated foolishness, whether they were all going to die that night. Or just most of them.

  Then he had staggered into a light sleep. The encampment had been hit a couple of hours after midnight, and the firefight had lasted through the remaining darkness, until the daylight chased away the enemy, who retreated in victory, fading into the jungles of their success. Jeffers had crawled from his hole, moving slowly and painfully, streaked with dirt and blood, like some primeval beast from its lair. His grenades were gone, his ammunition expended in the frenzy of night. But, he remembered, he still had rolls of film, and he’d stood, as the darkness slid away, loading his cameras, waiting for the light to reveal the night’s toll. The first insinuations of morning had landed on the dead, freezing them in grotesque poses. He remembered staring for a single moment, as the mist curled away, a light breeze blowing away the cold and the smell of cordite, revealing the twisted, savaged figures littering the battlescape. Then he’d seized the Nikon and started shooting, moving crablike through the wreckage of men and matériel, trying to pluck both grace and horror simultaneously from the dead, fighting his own battle after the real battle had passed.

  Newsweek had used one of those shots in a prescient story on the questionable capabilities of the South Vietnamese Army. He remembered the picture: a small soldier, probably no older than fourteen, flung backward over a bent ammunition canister, eyes stuck open in death, as if surveying the remainder of the life he would not have. It ran some six months before Saigon fell. That was more than a decade ago, he thought.

  I was so much younger then.

  He smiled to himself.

  Athletes like to talk about young legs, legs that can run all day, then run some more, but photographers need them, too. He remembered just a few months past hiking through scrub hills in Nicaragua with a detachment of Guard when the rebels started to walk mortar fire toward them. He’d stayed in position, listening for the high-pitched whine and thump of the mortar shells as the explosions moved inexorably toward where he and the men had clambered down, seeking shelter. He remembered how he’d heard the sound of his motordrive whirring above the noise of the shells, and thinking then how strange that was and how battle made all one’s senses acute.

  The men surrounding him had broken, of course, and run. It was infectious, the need to run from fear, and though he couldn’t remember actually tasting fright on his own tongue, he’d found his feet just as readily. He’d fled with the young men, a dozen years or more his juniors, but outdistancing them easily, confidently, so that he was able to turn and catch a picture, one of his favorites, F-1.6 shot at 1000. Violent death had not changed much, he thought. In the background there was a spiral of smoke and a violent upheaval of dirt, while in the foreground three men, tossing weapons and web belts aside, were rushing toward the camera. A fourth man was spinning down, caught at the heels by death, pinned by shrapnel. Life had used the picture in their World News section. He thought: Fifteen hundred dollars for a millisecond of time, stolen out of weeks of deprivation, some fear, and much boredom. The essence of news photography.

  He looked back down at Anne Hampton.

  She stirred and he caught her eyes opening to the sunlight.

  “Ah, Boswell arises!” he said.

  She started and sat up quickly, rubbing her face hard.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to doze off.”

  “It’s all right,” he replied. “You need your rest. Your beauty sleep.”

  She turned and stared out the windows. “Where are we?” she asked, then she turned back toward him in near-panic. “I mean, only if you want to tell me, it’s not important really, I was just curious, and you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not a secret,” he said. “First stop is the Louisiana coast.”

  She nodded and opened the glove compartment, taking out one of the notepads. “Should I take that down?” she asked.

  “Boswell,” he said. “Be Boswell.” />
  She nodded and made a notation in the pad.

  Then she looked back up at him, pencil poised. She saw that he was watching her as carefully as he could while still eyeing the highway ahead.

  “You reminded me of someone,” he said. “A woman I saw in Guatemala a couple of years back.”

  She didn’t say anything, but continued to scribble in the book. She wrote: “Memory of Guatemala, several years old . . .”

  “The real story,” Jeffers continued, “was up on the border, where the military was trying to root out a couple of guerrilla factions. It was one of those little wars that Americans weren’t supposed to be involved in, but were, all over. I mean, Army advisers, high-tech weaponry, CIA guys running around in bush jackets and mirror shades on their eyes, and US Navy destroyers on maneuvers off the coast . . .” He laughed a little and continued. “Remind me to talk about delusions. It’s what we’re best at . . .”

  She underlined the word delusions three times.

  “Anyway, lost in all this bang-bang guerrilla-hunting was this little peculiarity about the Guatemalan situation. For years, hell, I suppose centuries, the indigenous Indian population has taken the brunt of the bad times. Both sides, Marxist guerrillas, rightist militarists, shit, even the liberals, what there were of them left after being murdered equally frequently by both sides, uniformly slaughtered the Indians from time to time. I mean, they were just not considered people, follow? Like, if an Indian village lay between the two sides, it was ignored . . .”

  “How do you mean ‘ignored’?” she asked tentatively.

  He smiled. “Good. Very good, Boswell. Questions that help clarify matters are always welcome . . .”

  He paused, thinking.

  “If the sides were in position for a fight, but the intervening land was some large important estancia, well, things would just be moved. It was as if both sides realized certain places were off limits. Like kids playing touch football. Out of bounds was a state delineated less by boundaries than by a mutually agreed-upon state of mind . . .”