by Neil Gordon
That makes me pause, seriously. Cause when you think of it, in a couple of weeks, of course, on March 6, Kathy Boudin will be walking out of the smoldering townhouse, naked, deafened by the blast, and into ten years of life as a fugitive that would culminate in her twenty to life sentence for the Brinks Robbery. I leaf through some more letters—my grandfather and this guy were close.
And then I have an unexpected thought.
They must not have known if their kids were in the explosion.
I pause on that, then say it again. They must not have known if their fucking kids were in the fucking explosion.
That must have been some few nights for them, that week in March, 1970. Right about now, in fact, but forty years ago.
Wonder if any of the lefty fuckwits marching on Washington Square the other day thought of that. Thought of Jack Sinai, or Lenny Boudin, Teddy Gold’s momma, or Diana Oughton’s, wondering if their kids had just blown their asses off.
That thought seems to have carried me through the next few minutes, because next I find myself in the living room again, pouring another glass of wine. And while I drink it, at last I come to a decision.
Now, don’t ask me to explain why I’m doing what I do next.
Who the fuck knows why we do anything?
All I know is that what I do next, even in a life like mine, governed by coincidence, filled with madness, is very, very strange indeed.
It is five o’clock in the evening. First I google the Apple Store, and see that the Soho branch is open till ten. Then I go back downstairs, only this time in my shoes, and find that little pile of money again. This time I count that there are ten bank-fresh one-thousand-dollar bills. Out of curiosity, I check the dates: all before 1975, and I know, suddenly, with certainty that this was a safety stash, meant for Sinai when he was underground.
How do I know?
Because I know.
Sinai’s father had kept a safety stash for him while he was underground, and I know, because it’s just the kind of thing that Sinai would have done for me.
Sinai, whom I had now treated like the piece of shit he was for a good fifteen years, had never once done anything but offer me everything he had.
That shithead. And his father, I knew with certainty, had done the same for him.
And now his father is dead, and he is dying.
Ain’t that interesting? Ain’t that just so fucking compelling and riveting and meaningful that it takes a strong liver and a sedulous effort to forget it, one day at a time, day after day after day.
And my poor grandfather, my poor grandfather never lived long enough to give this to his son, did he, because he died while his dear son was still a fugitive?
Well, in a way it was mine, by rights, wasn’t it?
Not that I cared.
With the cash, I let myself out the front door, leaving it open behind me—I had no keys—and catch a taxi to the Apple Store in Soho. Ten thousand turns out to be enough for 27 inch LED display, a 1.8 gigahertz MacBook Air, and a scanner with a scaleable paper handler. I pay cash, haul it all to a taxi, bring it home, pour a glass of wine. Then I set it all up in the living room. When I am done, I go back downstairs and, in six trips, bring each drawer of the desk up to the living room and upend it on a different part of the kelim, around the computer setup, making six piles of paper which, moving clockwise, brings me roughly from the ’60s to the ’90s in my grandfather’s life. I find and hack—easy, if you have a copy of Warlord, which I do—a neighbor’s WI-FI connection, download my copy of iData from the cloud, get the scanner’s OCR program in sync, and set up the record and field structure of a new iData database called “Jack.Sinai”. I roll another J, pour another glass of wine, put on my headphones, and cue up Sinai’s extensive collection of Pink Floyd, and began running paper through the paper handler.
Usually Little Lincoln does this but, of course, he is in London.
5.
Comfortably numb—very, very much so—I go to sleep sometime early Wednesday morning, then get back up and get back to it. Now, whatever the fuck it is I’m doing, I’m doing it like a dog with a bone. A stoned dog with a bone, that is, and a first-rate collection of pinot noirs and hard liquors—I even find a bottle of Red Breast—to help.
On Thursday, my Aunt Maggie calls to tell me that I’ve been indicted, and that I’m going to need to surrender, and also that the Times want their PVI piece. I ask her how long she can delay, and she says they want it now, without any delay, and I say no, I mean the surrender, and she says oh, not long. I spend the day working, and by Friday morning have two of my six piles scanned, OCRd and dBased. Friday afternoon, Maggie gets the idea of claiming that I am a foreign national, because I am traveling on a British passport. That has to go up to the State Department, and gets me through two more piles. Also she has a bike messenger deliver a letter from the Times inquiring about my piece. By now, the living room of my grandfather’s house is looking somewhere between a Chinese restaurant after New Year’s and an Irish bar. I work the Times piece for a while, and manage to file something serviceable in between running the scanner. On Sunday, my piece runs, and the Times reminds me, through Maggie, that in April I’m covering the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade commemoration for the magazine. I ask Maggie to tell them that I’m on it but that I need a research assistant with a laptop and scanner. Also on Sunday, London files extradition papers, but the weekend is here so fuck them. Monday, I agree to surrender if I can take my computer to jail with me. As we’re talking the minimum security in any case, this is quickly granted. I finish scanning the last pile of papers from my grandfather’s desk and begin, now, on the portfolios, which have already been edited down and go much more quickly. On Tuesday we manage to get the surrender delayed for the following Monday and the research assistant arrives with a second laptop and scanner. Working together, we finish the entire job by about 4 a.m. on Friday. Then the research assistant, who is a woman of about twenty-three, just graduated from Brown, and I polish off the rest of my New York State of Mind as well as two more bottles of my grandfather’s very fine pinot cellar, and probably would have gotten it on, twenty-three-year-olds being what they are, had we not fallen asleep on the living-room floor instead and, in the afternoon, I turn myself in at the Federal Building.
Except for one thing. I have one more encounter with Uncle Joe. On Monday morning, before I leave for my surrender, I’m in my grandfather’s study and there’s a knock on the window. Startled, I look up to see Uncle Joe standing there with a bottle and two glasses. The bottle is unlabeled, and the glasses are the kind you usually use for water. I go around to let him in, and start to take him upstairs. But rather than following me, he goes on and into the study, and I end up following him there. When I come in, he’s already seated, and pouring very red wine out of an unmarked bottle into the two water glasses.
“I understand you’re turning yourself in today.”
“Yes.” I’m surprised. “How do you know?”
He taps the side of his nose. “Uncle Joe knows. Try this, missie. This is wine. Give you the stuffing for what’s ahead.”
It is blood-red, viscous, and extremely strong. I sip a couple times and repress a gag. Then, like him, I drain the entire glass. This, clearly, is the way this wine is meant to be drunk: it descends into my stomach with a deep red glow.
Delicious.
He clearly finds it the same, because he pours another two right away and downs his. I, for once, uncharacteristically, leave my glass untouched. When he’s finished drinking, he pours himself a third, and looks around the room—the piles of paper, the computer, the bulletin board of family pictures.
“This is where Jack and I used to spend our time. His favorite room in the house. Became mine too.”
Then he looks at me. “You finding what you’re looking for, missie?”
“Hard to say. I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“You think?” His eyes are on the bulletin board again. “
I’d say you’re on the right track.”
I don’t answer this one, because I don’t know what to say. In any case, I don’t need to, because he goes right on.
“After he died, everyone and his brother wanted to talk to me. Times, New Yorker, TV. The survivor, right? Old comrade in arms. Oh, I talked to them I told them what they wanted to hear. But no one knew the truth. Not then, not now.”
“The truth? The truth about what?”
“What it did to him. What it’s done to you.”
“What do you mean, Joe?”
He is into the third glass now, his gaze on the bulletin board, his eye absented. For a long time he sits like that, holding his glass.
“Oh. The price you pay. No one understands. We killed people, you know. Both of us did. Then we lost to Franco. Then you come home and try to make sense of what you’ve done.”
He drinks off his glass and I pour him another. Waiting.
“The Good Fight. My ass. I did it differently. For me, when Spain fell it was all over. All our hopes. Put my family first, my business. Never told my kids a thing. I never even voted again. Jackie couldn’t give it up. Of course what could I do? An electrician. I ran a good business, helped the folk who worked for me. It was all over. But Jackie, he never stopped. All his life, all his work—it was all about Spain. I think, he couldn’t have killed those people for nothing. He couldn’t bear to have. So he keeps fighting the good fight. But there’s a price. That’s what he doesn’t know.”
“Price?” He doesn’t answer, so I top up his glass and wait.
“Price. For all of you.” And at this his gaze comes back into focus. He fills my glass, toasts, and we drain them. “For you all. Jason of course the most. See, he didn’t mean to have that effect on Jason. But not only Jason.”
At this, he gets up, here, and walks to the bulletin board, fingering the family photos. “Klara. He lost her, too. Danny and Klara, what a pair they were, growing up. Then Maggie, her heart broken. All of them. None of them were untouched. Beck. Born and given away, while they were underground. So there’s her life too. And now there’s you.”
“Me?”
“You, missie. You weren’t born when Jack went to Spain. But everything you were going to be was. And now you have to figure out what to do about that.”
At the courthouse, the business happens quickly. Aunt Maggie arranges for me to surrender in judge’s chambers in the State Supreme Court, but it appears that I need to be brought there by the police, so I get to do something kind of fun: walk into the local precinct with my lawyer and give myself up. Maggie shows up at the Bedford Street house around two, which gives me almost enough time after Joe leaves to hide the empties and clean up a bit. Almost. She has some fairly dry comments to make about how prison might be good for me—either that or rehab. I had showered, dressed, and packed a bag according to prison regulations, as communicated on the web; I’d also backed up my iData dBase and packed my computer. Maggie is a little shorter and rounder than when last I’d seen her, but those shocking green eyes of hers are still shockingly green, and her hair, though lighter, is still red. She was in her late thirties when I first met her, and one of those unusual woman who are sexier at forty than at eighteen, and though I am not myself really Jewish—just my father—I am close enough to understand that Maggie’s particular beauty—her maiden name is Calaway—made her a very rare bird indeed in the Sinai clan. Anyway, she chats away as we take a taxi to the 6th Precinct on 10th Street, where they are waiting for us. I am duly booked, digitally fingerprinted, iris-scanned, photographed, and—to my surprise—cuffed; then we ride in a cruiser to State Supreme Court and go up the front steps next to that huge Beati Qui Ambulant in Lege Domini graving on the church, which always gives me a laugh. Lege domini, my ass. This also, is fun: the press had found out, so there are photographers, and the pictures will make more than a few front pages—you can see them yourself, if you want: March 19, 2011.
The only person who doesn’t see the whole thing as kind of a lark, unfortunately, is the judge, His Honor Nathan Aronson, who quizzes me for nearly an hour. He is a squat little fellow resembling nothing more than one of those old-fashioned fireplugs, an impression heightened by his very red face. But he’s also uncomfortably smart. Do you think it right that government employees should reveal classified information to the press? Yes, your honor, I do. Do you not see that you are posing a serious security risk to our country at a time of peril? No, your honor, I don’t. Do you understand that PVI is a vital security tool in the war against terror? No, your honor, I think the war against terror is a stage show only equaled by the Cold War. Oh, so you are able to judge these things better than your elected officials? Ms. Montgomery? Counselor, inform your client that she is required to answer me or I will hold her in contempt. Could you repeat the question, your honor? I was daydreaming that I was talking to someone who understood the Constitution. (Sharp elbow to the ribs, here, from Maggie.) Ms. Montgomery, this is your last warning. I asked if you think you are able to judge issues of state security better than your elected officials. Well, yes, your honor, I do. My elected officials are representatives of a government, unfortunately, rather than representatives of a constituency, because this is the degradation of constitutional democracy over the past fifty-sixty years. But since you ask—forgive me, your honor, may I finish? Since you ask, I consider myself the representative of a constituency. It’s called the Fourth Estate and our founding fathers, your honor, offered it protection under the very First Amendment to the Constitution—the same Constitution that puts so many limits on your powers, even today, in order to protect me, the accused, from abuse by the state. Your honor. I was elected by the millions of people around the world who have read, and trusted, and believed in my reporting, because that’s what a free press is about, your honor, and we still have a free fucking press in this country, your honor. And aren’t I just the impassioned little orator? Aren’t I just the last damn defender of the faith? A Sinai, through and through. I leave, finally, to be taken up to Beacon Correctional Facility—Minimum Security—with a second contempt of court charge.
Perhaps I will start a collection.
And so now it is evening, and I am in a little concrete room decorated rather in pink by my cell mate, a genial middle-aged woman serving the end of a term for procurement. She’s a pleasant enough person, and happy to give over the little desk by the window to my use, which is fine, as there’s a window with a view of lawn and trees—you can walk out of this place, if you want to, which, surprisingly, turns out to be part of the punishment—and a nice, hard-backed chair. She also, it turns out, sleeps like a dead whale, because neither the light of my computer nor my typing disturb her one bit. How could they, given the astonishing noise of her snoring?
On my screen, running right across, are fingernail scans of the photos from the Bedford Street study, and I can click on them one by one to enlarge them. Danny and Maggie, looking uncomfortable at their wedding which, I can see now, is a casual affair—Danny in a dark suit, Maggie not even in white.
Klara Singer, graduating from college in Yale blue, her wide lips brilliant red and her black eyes watching the camera with suppressed excitement, as if the whole world were waiting for her.
Sinai—Dadda—got two pictures: one as a teenager, sitting on a stoop in sun, one eye looking out of a sweep of red hair; another from what must have been the late ’90s, with Molly at Colgate Lake, a handsome middle-aged couple in swimsuits: a bald muscular man and his pretty, slim, well-kept partner.
And last the picture of my grandfather, walking next to the Hudson River in his herringbone tweed jacket, one hand, his right, in his pants pocket.
It is on this one that I pause the longest.
He is looking at the camera in something that could be called surprise, was almost surprise. And I am spending a long time thinking about that. It is surprise, but that of a man who is accustomed to being surprised by cameras—is that possible? Can that much be rea
d into his expression? Or is it just a trick of the light—is he squinting? Where is the sun? What time of day is it?
Of course, there is no way to know that. Of course. Feeling frustration, I vow to get my mind back into the game—I have a piece to prep for the Times on the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade memorial, and from now on it’s what I’m going to work on.
I slip out of the room, now, and down the hallway to the door out to the lawn, where I light a cigarette and—you were probably wondering about this—sip from a bourbon mini, available for ten dollars a pop from a guard called Myeashea who has already taken fifty dollars from me, and is virtually assured of the same again tomorrow. I turn my face up to the sky for a moment, watching the stars, then shut my eyes. I say to myself: it’s just a photograph. Then I open my eyes again, take a couple double-drags from the cigarette, put it out, and walk, quickly, back to the room. I wake the computer, then blow up the photo of my grandfather and look, not at him, but at the water. Aha. Clearly it is high tide: the water, textured by a breeze, is lapping at the very edge of the walkway.
Bingo. I go to the NOAA website—National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Institute—and search, find, and download tide tables from 1995. I scroll down to the Battery, and find high water was 11 a.m. Then I search, find, and download solar declination tables. These are harder to read, much harder, and require some research as to how they work. Still, by early morning, about three or so, I have figured it out.
