I waited for someone to guide me to a seat and told her I’d be meeting a Mr. Flanagan. She said he was in the back room. She took me there. Al was seated eating a potato pancake. There were no other customers in the large room.
I sat and asked Al about our being alone. He said he had arranged a large, private luncheon and rented this room so he got very good treatment whenever he came into the place. They wanted a repeat private luncheon.
Being polite, I waited until he finished the potato pancake. Then he looked at me and said, “If one’s ethnicity were determined by one’s stomach, I’d be Jewish.”
“You’d be a mongrel, Al, a bit of absolutely everything.”
“Maybe. But underneath it all, I’d be Jewish.”
A waiter came over to us, bringing glasses of water and silverware and napkins. Then he placed a large supply of coleslaw on the table along with some dishes for us to eat the slaw.
Al quickly put some in his dish.
A waitress came over to take our order. Al ordered pastrami on rye and some kugel. I was open-mouthed, but not so stunned to be unable to order some extra-lean corned beef on a roll.
The waitress left.
Al took a sip of water, looked up at me, and said, “You’ve been a busy boy, what with your kidnapping and making a very bad man disappear. Perhaps you sent him on a cruise.”
“It’s sweet that you keep up with my activities so closely.”
“You’re two inches from jail, Ryle. I take a professional interest. If I wanted to, I’d send an investigator looking more closely at you.”
“You know why I’m doing it.”
“Yeah. Because you’re a sucker for a little girl. I was wrong. There is someone trying to kill her.”
I nodded.
“You know a pro named Whitey?”
He thought for a minute and then shook his head.
Flanagan ate a forkful of coleslaw and looked at me. “You want to tell me where the girl is and what’s going on?”
“In a few days. I promise. At least about the girl.”
“I’m telling you, Ryle, the girl is going to have a story and you are going to be in a lot of trouble. I’m guessing you won’t coach her to lie.”
“No, I won’t.”
“I didn’t think so. It gets hot in the Tombs in a month or so. You better have a really good exit out of this. Becoming Houdini would be a great idea.”
“I want to tell you something about a crime.”
“Yeah, you mean besides the ones you’ve done?”
“Yes. Besides those.”
Flanagan leaned back.
“Is this official?”
“No. It’s entirely off the record.”
“Then I need more food to protect myself.”
He ordered coffee and a piece of cake.
“It’s nice that you’re single-handedly keeping the economy of Long Island afloat.”
“It’s a civic responsibility,” he said.
I waited. The coffee arrived and he sipped. As we waited for the cake, he said, “What are you going to tell me, Ryle?”
“I don’t know exactly. There is some sort of crime involving the Bank of Waterbend.”
“Is somebody going to do a hold-up?”
“Maybe.”
“My goodness. You’re Mr. Information, aren’t you?”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“When is this going to happen?”
“I have no idea.”
“What do you expect the D.A.’s office to do about it?”
“Keep an eye on the bank.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll just tell my boss that we need to tie up valuable cops to watch a bank because, who knows?, there might eventually be some sort of crime there. Hey, that’s a path to promotion for me. You have any other ideas? Watch a grocery store because someone might be plotting to steal some grapes?”
“When I say it aloud, it doesn’t sound too good, does it?”
“I’m used to you. Take my advice and don’t tell anyone else.”
The cake arrived and all conversation was now officially paused.
When he finished, Flanagan said, “You’re not stupid. I don’t like the Directors of that Bank.”
“The Mayor is somehow involved as well. He’s running for President.”
Flanagan laughed. “Do you know how much you need to take a run at the White House? Millions. They can’t justify a loan that big. The bank examiners will go nuts. He’s not going to walk in with a mask and a sub-machine gun. The money is not coming directly from the Bank. He is using it for contacts to get it the old-fashioned way which is that people donate it to him for favors if he gets elected. But then they’re pretty stupid people because he won’t even make it past Iowa. That’s your problem, Ryle. You can’t define what crime is even going to take place. You can’t tell when it is. You can’t tell who’s involved. And you have no idea about how to stop it.”
“Thanks for the encouragement.”
Flanagan shrugged. “You want someone to lie to you, talk to a life insurance agent or any lawyer. From me you get the truth.”
Flanagan ordered two sandwiches and a side order of potato salad to go.
While they were preparing it, he said, “You’re running out of time on the girl, right?”
“Right. Mrs. Lucey gave me a timetable. I’ve been a complete failure.”
“You have a place for the girl to go if you have to turn her in?”
“I’m thinking Janet in the Congressional office and her husband are good people.”
“And they want a kid? A kid with deep psychological damage?”
“Janet will think about it.”
“Sure, and then she’ll come to her senses and realize she’s working and won’t have time. You can’t solve the world’s problems, Ryle. Idealism is a form of idiocy if it’s not tempered by hard-nosed reality. Let her go into the system and trust that it will all turn out okay.”
Flanagan’s order arrived. He waited, expecting me to pay. I did, and then we got up.
I walked out into the sunshine. Summer wasn’t far off. I needed some time and space to think. I had promised Hannah Drake that I’d show her some of Long Island before she went home.
I went to a phone, checked her number in my calendar book, and called.
She said she’d enjoy a day trip. She’d have a gloomy and depressed companion, but maybe we could cheer each other up.
I drove down Route 25 to Route 112, turned right, and just kept driving. When none of the sights provided relief, I turned around and went home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I was desperate for a fast from confusion. I was dizzy with worry, uncertainty, and fear. Loud noises bothered me. I knew I needed to rest, to take a vacation from my life. I felt my self cracking up, as though I had no core being and all I was turned out to be a collection of quotes from other people. It hadn’t been this bad before. A little girl’s fate rested in my fragile hands. Thoughts of my father’s aging would make surprise visits to my mind. I knew coffee was not exactly the medicine I needed, but I drowned myself in it.
I hoped taking Hannah on some kind of trip would take me away from it all. But I was a tourist. I would see some sites again, but then I would return to my problems. Hannah might be a tourist as well, ready to return home. But she might instead be a traveler, someone without a real home, someone wandering and looking, sure inside she was just a tourist and then uncertain as she saw a world outside her own.
I drove to the house Ari had found. Hannah was sitting and reading with Jennifer. I just listened for a minute. I was sure I hadn’t read as well as Jennifer did when I was her age.
Ari had been searching the grounds. He had placed some alarms carefully outside the back door and under some of the windows.
He nodded as he came in to see me.
“Hannah’s remarkable with her.”
“They did know each other before.”
“I know,” Ari sai
d, “Still, Jennifer is calm with her. That’s quite a gift.”
We walked to the other room.
Hannah looked up at me and smiled. “Hi, Danny. We’ve finished what I think is our hundred and thirty-eighth book this morning.”
Jennifer laughed. The sound of her laughter was the only noise I could stand.
“Where would you like to go?” I asked Hannah.
“I just want to move. I have been studying American Indians and they have quite a history here.”
I nodded. “It’s too bad you won’t be here for Labor Day Weekend. Every year the Shinnecock tribe has a powwow at their reservation in Southampton. It’s very festive. Very colorful.”
“A show for the tourists, huh?”
“It is that, I suppose. But it is very important to them. It’s a way to remember who they are and where they came from.”
“Could we go there?”
“Let me make a call. I know someone named Coffee who used to live on the reservation. Then he moved away completely, going upstate, but he learned that in his soul he needed to be physically near the Shinnecock Reservation, so he came back to the area. He told me his present and his past always are shifting in their relationship to each other, like the water and the sand at the ocean’s edge. He’s not sure who he is at any given moment. He likes to go to Coopers Beach. Sometimes in the winter we go there together and just stare at the waves.”
“Can we go to that beach afterwards?”
“Sure.”
I called Coffee and he agreed to meet us.
I drove on the Long Island Expressway in my usual way, out to Exit 70 and then south to meet up with the route leading toward Southampton.
We got to the reservation. Coffee was parked on the side of the road waiting for us. You couldn’t miss him. He had a giant green Pontiac.
We greeted each other, and I introduced him to Hannah. Then we went into the Reservation.
Coffee seemed to have physically shrunk in his body as we walked around. “When the English settlers came here, the Indians didn’t attack them. The natives were peaceful. They farmed. They fished. They made wampum, which was very valuable to the settlers.”
Hannah said, “I’ve read about that in many books. But they just use the word without really explaining what wampum is.”
Coffee looked up. He liked the question. It put him in touch with his heritage in a positive way. “My ancestors walked on the beaches on Long Island looking for shells. They found ones that were just the perfect size, just the most dazzling color. The wampum were shell beads, polished shells strung together by putting precise, tiny holes in the shells and putting them on a wooden, pointed stick. It was very difficult work. I mean they had to put these holes in the shells without breaking them. This was before awls, you understand. They were real artists. And it was the natives who showed the importance of whales.”
“They went hunting for whales?” Hannah was having a great time.
“Not the way you mean. But in the winter, a whale might end up on shore. The natives cut it up. When the English came, they and the natives began to go out looking for the whales. But the British weren’t our friends. We didn’t know diseases before them. The Shinnecocks almost died out. By 1686. Imagine that, Miss Drake. 1686. In no time at all, the colonist diseases almost killed the Shinnecock. There were only one hundred and fifty-two who survived, including my ancestors.”
“How many Shinnecock are there now on the reservation?”
“Maybe six hundred or so. And some of us live off the reservation.”
“Not a lot.”
“No. We wanted to share. And we ended up losing almost all of it.”
Coffee took us through the museum. He showed us the shellfish hatchery, the education center, and then the Presbyterian Church. For the final stop, he brought us to a small granite memorial to ten men who had died in a sea disaster in 1876. Three of the men were named “Cuffee” and I asked if they were his ancestors. He said he didn’t know if they were really, but they were in spirit because of their bravery.
We said good-bye to Coffee. I asked Hannah if she wanted some lunch. She said she wanted to go to the ocean first, so I drove there. The parking regulations would be in effect in a few weeks, and even then there were people parked.
We climbed the dunes and looked over the ocean.
“Don’t those waves make you feel great, Danny?”
I said they did, and I envied the fact that she didn’t live near an ocean and now could experience the power and majesty of the waves for the first time.
I was surprised at how long she stood there. I didn’t want to disturb the feeling she was having.
She finally said she was ready to go. I parked on Main Street. We walked around looking at the stores and went into a restaurant.
“You’re the perfect tour guide,” she said. “You never say you can’t take me someplace. You go where I ask. And you don’t disturb me when I just stare at water.”
“I guess I’ve finally found my strength in life.”
She laughed. “From what I’ve seen and what people tell me, you have a lot of strengths. Seriously, you’re easy to be with, and I appreciate what you’re doing. Not to mention what you’ve done for Jennifer.”
The food came. Sometimes I measure a person by how comfortable it is to be silent with them. She was good.
And then she disrupted the silence.
“Can I ask you a question, Danny?”
That is often a dangerous opening.
“Sure.”
“I’ve been watching you all day. You look sad. Even depressed. Is everything all right? Is it anything I did?”
“It’s certainly not you, Hannah. If anything you have made me feel better. I feel buried by the hail that is falling on me as I try to figure out what’s going on with the bank, with protecting Jennifer, with watching my father decay.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve added to your burdens, haven’t I?”
“In a way you have. You created one more task to do. But I have to say, you’ve also really made me feel better. I mean it. I’m not just saying so.”
She made a small smile. Than her face darkened.
“What’s going to happen to Jennifer? I mean after you put the people trying to hurt her in jail. After you figure out what’s going on. She still has no family.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m talking to a woman I know who works in the Congressional office. She’s married with no children. I mentioned the idea of her adopting Jennifer and she promised to think about it.”
“But Jennifer doesn’t know her. She’ll be scared.”
“I’ll try to get them together early on. The woman is really nice. Except there’s no clock in the Congressional office. I mean symbolically, not literally. You work until the job is done, not until five o’clock.”
“Are there other options?”
“Putting her into the system and checking up on her.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“I’m scaring myself. You can visit her regularly.”
Hannah’s eyes wrinkled. “I have to go back in a week. I’m beyond horrified to leave her alone, without any friends.”
“Someone once warned me that I can’t take care of everyone. I guess that applies to you as well.”
Hannah sighed.
“I guess it does.”
She began to stare at me and then lower her eyes. When she repeated this a third time, I said, “Hannah, is there something you want to say or to ask me?”
“I do, but I’m afraid you might think it’s silly. And I’m embarrassed.”
“You’re going away soon. You’ll be happier if you ask. The embarrassment will last a brief time, but maybe there will be some regret that could last a long time.”
“You’re quite the therapist.”
“No. I’m terrible. Don’t listen to me. My advice often leads in the wrong direction.”
“Shut up.”
“Yes. I need to do that
more often.”
She was smiling now, looking directly at me.
“Ari made a suggestion to me. I wondered if you had thought about it as well.”
I knew what she was going to say. I had thought about it. But I wanted to draw her out, to see how she put it, so I played naïve.
“What are you talking about?”
Now she was staring right at me. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think she blinked once while she spoke the next few sentences.
“This is from Ari. Not me. Get mad at him.”
“I can’t. He’s saved my life a few times.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that.”
“What did Ari suggest?”
“He said Jennifer had gotten to you. She had already gotten to me. He said you can’t adopt her and I can’t adopt her because we’re single. And for me because I don’t live here.”
I was a little unkind. I didn’t speak but let her wander on.
Which she did.
“Ari suggested that if I moved here and we got married, we could adopt Jennifer and that all three of us would be happy.”
“I have thought about it,” I said.
“And?”
“And there’s the little matter of love. It sounds like a very generous gesture on both our parts. First of all, maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Jennifer will find a happy home with parents who love her and a family. Maybe that’s what she really needs. I think you’re a wonderful person, Hannah, but I think someone extracted the sort of gene I’m supposed to have to do this extraordinary kind of gesture.”
“I don’t know about that, Danny. You help everyone. You show people how to be good by the very way you live and by what you do.”
“Hannah, do you want to leave your home and move to Long Island?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.” She paused and looked down. “I don’t think so if there’s no one to go to.”
“Say we do this kind act without you loving me. In a few years Jennifer sees that we don’t love each other and she learns all the wrong lessons. Then she goes away to college and we stare at each other. We’re too old to want to date others.”
The Hunted Girl Page 10
