Hero

by Mike Lupica

  “You listened from up here?”

  Zach said, “I was hiding in the back.”

  “They seemed to like it.”

  “Are you joking?” Zach said. “They loved it. Now I know why my mom is working so hard to get you the nomination.”

  Senator Kerrigan placed a hand on Zach’s desk chair and said, “May I?” Zach nodded. The senator sat and Zach took a seat at the end of the bed.

  “This probably won’t come as a shock to you,” Senator Kerrigan said, grinning. “But sometimes I feel as if I’m working for her.”

  Zach heard a buzzing sound. Senator Kerrigan whipped out his BlackBerry, nodded in a tired way.

  “Listen, I’ve got to be going. I’m flying to Ohio tonight. But before I left, I wanted you to know how I felt about your dad. That wasn’t just another campaign speech downstairs. That came from the heart. He really was the finest man I’ve ever known.”

  “Thanks,” Zach said. “Me too.”

  The senator said, “The world became less safe as soon as he was gone. And our enemies probably see an opening.”

  Zach just sat there, listening to him now the way he had downstairs, still trying to process the fact that somebody who might be the next president of the United States was actually sitting in his room.

  Senator Kerrigan stood up. So did Zach. The senator said, “We’ll have a longer talk about this the next time we’re together.” He put out his hand and Zach shook it, hearing his dad’s voice in his head as he did, making sure he looked Senator Kerrigan right in the eyes. “Your father was willing to do whatever it took to keep our enemies from winning. So am I.”

  “I believe you, sir,” Zach said.

  “Be strong,” Senator Kerrigan said. “You be strong, Zach Harriman.”

  Then he turned and left.

  Zach stood there in the middle of the room, feeling the man’s presence even with him gone.

  Then he quietly said what Kate had said earlier.

  “Wow wow wow.”

  The loud voices from downstairs woke him up, his clock radio saying it was three minutes after midnight.

  At first Zach thought he might have been dreaming, but then the voices got louder.

  He got out of bed, pushed his door open a couple of inches, realized immediately that it was his mom and Uncle John. He had never once heard them argue about anything. But they sure seemed to be arguing about something now.

  “John,” Elizabeth Harriman said, “lower your voice.”

  “Just because I don’t agree with you,” he said, “doesn’t mean I’m shouting.”

  “Well, it certainly sounds that way to me.”

  The two of them were standing in front of the elevator, Uncle John’s coat over his arm.

  “I’m right about this,” he said. “Sometimes it seems as if you’ve joined a cult.”

  “I’m working for a candidate I believe in,” she said. “One my husband—who was your best friend in the world—believed in just as passionately.”

  “Tom only saw the things in Bob Kerrigan he wanted to see,” Uncle John said. “The same slick, polished Bob Kerrigan the voters are seeing.”

  “You’re saying he’s a phony?” she said.

  Uncle John shook his head. “They’re all phonies,” he said. “He just happens to be the one who’s trying to become president. He’s neither prepared nor strong enough, despite all his fancy words about strength and toughness.”

  “Were you watching the audience tonight?” Zach’s mom said. “Did you see how his message resonated with them?”

  “They’re in love with the words. Everybody is these days. But it takes more than words to lead this country.”

  Now Zach heard the anger in his mother’s voice again, her voice rising even though she had just told Uncle John to keep his down. “It’s not just rhetoric, John. It’s ideas. And ideals. He’s a man of great substance.”

  “He’s a man of great style.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you be this wrong about anything. And you’re not going to change my mind about him.”

  “It’s the obligation of the family lawyer to do that,” he said, “even when it’s the head of the family who’s wrong.”

  “You can do that the next time I am,” she said. “Now good night.”

  Zach watched as she pressed the elevator button for him, turned and walked into the kitchen.

  So she didn’t see the look on Uncle John’s face, the anger in it as he watched her go, an Uncle John even Zach didn’t recognize.

  Next to the elevator door, on a table for everyone who entered the apartment to see, was a framed photograph Zach’s mom had placed there: Tom Harriman and Senator Kerrigan when they were much younger, the two of them standing on Pennsylvania Avenue with the White House behind them, arms around each other.

  As the elevator door opened, Uncle John took the picture out of its stand, took a long look at it, one hand holding the door open.

  Then he slammed it hard on the table and left.

  7

  BE strong,” Senator Kerrigan had said to Zach.

  It just made him more determined than ever to find out the truth behind his father’s death.

  He had yet to find anything he could classify as a clue, despite weeks’ worth of reading. It was why he wasn’t ready to bring Kate in on this yet, even knowing she could probably help. As good as Zach’s brain was, hers was usually better.

  Yet there was another reason he was keeping her in the dark: because he was afraid that when he did tell her, even if he had something, she was going to think this was the total exact opposite of moving on with his life.

  So for now he’d just keep at it on his own. He’d book-marked some stuff on the Web, printed out some of it and stuck it in the bottom drawer of his desk with old school papers, into a clutter he figured even one of those CSI units would have a hard time sorting out.

  Zach Harriman was staying strong.

  Zach’s mom was out of town on a trip to help Senator Kerrigan. Zach, Kate and Alba had just finished dinner together.

  Alba told them both to shoo, despite Zach’s offer to help clear the table. “I don’t need your help in my kitchen,” she said. “Go.”

  And it was hers, Zach knew. Oh man, they all knew. Even Elizabeth Harriman acted like she had to get permission to go into the kitchen when Alba was cooking.

  Zach and Kate went to the second-floor den and turned on the Knicks game. Kate didn’t care about basketball, but she’d started watching the games at night just to keep Zach company, knowing that when his dad was around—when his dad was still alive—watching the Knicks was something Zach had done with him.

  Tonight, though, he sensed that she wasn’t just there to keep him company; she had something else on her mind. She was paying even less attention to the game than usual.

  Which was saying something.

  “Okay,” she finally said from her end of the couch. “I’ve got a fun game we can play. How about we each tell the other the secret we’ve been keeping!”

  This was not good, he knew right away. Definitely not good. He could tell by the tone of her voice, the fake excitement in it.

  Zach’s immediate response was to just stare at the Knick on the foul line as if he were about to take the most important free throw in the history of the NBA.

  “Should I go first?” she said. “Or do you want to?”

  Zach said, “Why don’t we just watch the game instead of playing one?”

  “Okay, if that’s the way you want it,” she said, ignoring him, folding her legs underneath her as she turned to face him. “I’ll go.”

  The Knick made the first free throw.

  “Oh, wait,” Kate said. “I can’t go first. Want to know why?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Because I haven’t been keeping any secrets from you, that’s why.”

  He turned his head. She was at least smiling at him. “Your turn,” Kate said.
>
  “I haven’t been keeping any secrets from you, either,” Zach said.

  “Liar.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Yeah, you have,” she said. “All the closed doors at night. You saying you’re doing homework when I know better than anybody that you don’t have it in you to sit that long for anything having to do with school.”

  “Since you know so much,” Zach said, “why don’t you tell me what it is? Then we’ll both know.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” she said. “Why don’t you come clean with me and save us both a lot of time. And you a lot of misery.”

  She was going to wear him down on this, Kate style, the way Spence could wear him down about her. If there was one thing about Kate that came closest to annoying him, it wasn’t that she was so smart. It was that she could be so cocky about it.

  She always thought she was right. And she wouldn’t give up until you admitted it.

  He tried to explain it to his dad one time and his dad had laughed and said, “She looks like a sweetie pie, but if Kate Paredes goes up for a rebound, she is coming down with the ball.”

  It was like that now, Zach Harriman knowing he was going to lose this battle sooner or later, deciding it might as well be sooner.

  “Okay, I give up,” he said.

  “A wise decision,” Kate said. “You’re just one eighth grader from the Parker School trying to stop my eventual plans for world domination.”

  He muted the TV set. The room was completely quiet now. There was just the blur of the action from the game.

  “I’ve been reading up on my dad’s crash,” he said.

  Kate said, “And why, more than a month after it happened, are you doing something like that?”

  “Why?” he said. “Because I want to know what happened, that’s why.”

  “You do know,” she said. “Everybody does. The engines failed and your dad tried to land in the bay. He didn’t make it and crashed into that field instead.”

  She held up a hand, letting him know she wasn’t quite finished. “And I thought the whole goal right now was to put as much distance as possible between you and all that.”

  What did his dad used to say? Another one of his goofy expressions?

  In for a dime, in for a dollar.

  If he was going to tell Kate some of it, he might as well tell her all of it.

  “I don’t think it was an accident,” he said.

  “Wait a second,” she said. “You’re saying that you think somebody sabotaged your dad’s airplane?”

  “Yes.”

  “When he . . . when it happened, you said no way your dad would let a plane he was flying crash,” Kate said.

  Her eyes were on him hard, like a flashlight being shined on him in the darkened room.

  “Right,” Zach said. “And we agreed that no one lets an accident happen. It just happens.” He put air quotes around happens, shrugged and said, “I was lying.”

  “To me,” she said.

  “Not just to you, to everybody,” he said. “I didn’t buy that it was an accident when it happened and I’m not buying it now. He was just too good a pilot. Like he was too good at everything else.”

  Except being around, of course.

  Except being here.

  “But it wasn’t pilot failure,” Kate said. “It was engine failure.”

  “That’s what the investigators said. I know that’s what they think. But they don’t know. Because on top of everything else, they can’t find the black box. And there’s no record of him making a distress call to the airport in East Hampton, which was the closest one, or anywhere else.”

  Kate said the next part in a soft voice, like she was telling him that she didn’t want to argue with him, or have a debate about this, or beat him up on it. “Planes crash all the time,” she said, “all over the world. Sometimes there’s an official explanation, sometimes there isn’t. Remember that paper I did on Amelia Earhart? Sometimes the plane just disappears.”

  Zach said, “Listen, even if something had gone terribly wrong and he knew that he couldn’t pull out of it, he would have used his chute and bailed out. So why didn’t he do that?”

  “Maybe there wasn’t time,” she said. “Maybe he just never got the chance.”

  “But see, that’s the thing!” he said. “My dad was at his best under pressure! The worst trouble always brought out the best in him. That’s why there has to be a reason he didn’t get the chance to save himself. And I’m going to find out why.”

  Neither one of them said anything now. Zach turned his head back toward the television, where somebody on Charlotte had just made this amazing dunk, throwing the ball down so hard Zach was surprised he and Kate couldn’t hear it over the mute button.

  “Don’t do this,” Kate said.

  “I have to.”

  “You know I’ve got you no matter what you do,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  “But you’ve got to let this go,” she said.

  He shook his head slowly, side to side.

  “Please listen to me,” she said. “Listen, because I sometimes feel like I know you better than I know myself. And I know that if you don’t let this go, you’re going to get so lost in it that even I won’t be able to find you.”

  “No.”

  “No to which part?”

  “No, I’m not letting it go. And no, I could never get that lost; you’d invent a new kind of GPS if that’s what it took for you to find me.”

  “You really and truly believe somebody killed your dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s say you’re right,” Kate said, “even though I’m not really saying that. Who would do something like that?”

  “You want the short list, just from the last couple of years?” he said. “Or the longer one from his whole career?”

  “And you really believe a fourteen-year-old can find something that nobody else has?” Kate said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”

  8

  ZACH tried to stay with the game after Kate was gone but knew he was going through the motions with the Knicks the way he was with a lot of things lately. Letting people think he was the same old Zach, when he was never going to be that Zach again.

  Maybe things would be a little different when he was back playing basketball again instead of just watching it, when he was back on the court with the guys, getting a chance to channel his energy.

  Only it wasn’t just energy he needed to blow off. It was the anger he was carrying around with him, making him feel like some kind of ticking bomb.

  All in all, he thought he did a pretty good job of keeping a lid on it, hiding it from everyone, even Kate. Maybe not doing such a bang-up job of hiding it when he tried to beat up the brick wall that day. But most of the time.

  Problem was, he was mad all of the time. And as much as he needed to know everything he could about the crash, as sure as he was that somebody had sabotaged his dad, reading up on it only made him madder.

  He knew he wasn’t the only kid in the world something like this had happened to. He knew that really bad things happened all the time, and to good people. They got sick and died. They got hit by hurricanes in New Orleans. Earthquakes. Tsunamis.

  9/11.

  It didn’t change what he felt, and what he felt was that he didn’t just have a dark cloud following him around lately; it was as if the thunder and lightning were inside him.

  Were him.

  He was upstairs now, on the balcony outside his bedroom, staring out at the park. In his hand was the rare Morgan silver dollar, an 1879, his dad had given him once as a present, with Lady Liberty on it. He’d told Zach that even though it was made of silver, it was worth its weight in gold.

  And something he should never lose.

  “Why?” Zach had said.

  “Are you chafing on me?” his dad had said, throwing one of Zach’s expressions back at him. “Because I gave it to yo
u, that’s why. And because it’s gonna be the only good luck charm you’ll ever need.”

  Zach tried to squeeze some luck out of the Morgan now as he stared at the buildings on the other side of the park. The view was amazing as always, but it was doing nothing for him. He kept replaying the conversation with Kate inside his head, thinking of ways he could have made her understand better what he was doing and why he had to do it. Only here was the person who said she knew him better than anybody, and probably did, saying he was nuts to think that somebody had knocked his dad out of the sky video-game style.

  He needed to go out.

  Needed to do something more than turn on his computer, even though it was past nine o’clock. Needed to move. Needed not to be here. Zach walked back into his room, grabbed his Knicks hoodie off a hanger in his closet, hoping that Kate and Alba were in their rooms at the back end of the first floor, knowing Alba would never let him go out alone at this time of night if he asked her for permission.

  But Zach wasn’t asking.

  All that dark stuff he was carrying around, maybe it belonged outside in the night.

  He didn’t push the elevator button, didn’t want to take the chance Kate or Alba would hear it opening and closing. He went out the back door to the kitchen instead, willing to take the stairs all the way down to the lobby.

  He knew that he didn’t have all night, that Alba would check on him eventually, around what was supposed to be lights-out time at eleven. But it wasn’t close to eleven yet. So he had time.

  Time to do what?

  That was a pretty solid question right there.

  He had remembered to take his cell phone with him. If Kate or Alba came up looking for him before eleven and realized he was gone, he knew the first thing they were going to do was call his cell. So he had a cover story ready, that he just had to run to the drugstore for a printer cartridge so he could print the English paper that was due tomorrow. Even though he’d finished the paper two days ago.

  So that meant bringing money with him also, in case they called and he did need to run over to the twenty-four-hour Duane Reade on Lexington Avenue and actually buy a new printer cartridge.