The Web

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Ewing's smile was anemic.

  "Let me get you a refill, Senator," said Zondervein, starting to get up.

  Hoffman said, "No, thanks— anyone else?"

  Creedman lifted his martini glass.

  Lieutenant Zondervein took it and went to the door. "I'll check on the first course."

  Hoffman unfolded his napkin and tucked it into his collar. "Mafia style," he said. "But one wirephoto with grease spots on the tie and you learn. So what's on the menu, Elvin?"

  "Chicken," said Ewing.

  "Does it bounce?"

  "I hope not, sir."

  "Roast or fried?"

  "Roast."

  "See that, Mr. Creedman? Simple fare."

  He turned to Ewing. "And for Dr. Moreland?"

  "Sir?"

  Hoffman's lips maintained a smile but his eyes narrowed until they disappeared. "Dr. Moreland's a vegetarian, Captain. I believe I radioed you that from the plane."

  "Yes, sir. There are vegetables."

  "There are vegetables. Fresh ones?"

  "I believe so, sir."

  "I hope so," said Hoffman, too gently. "Dr. Moreland maintains a very healthy diet— or at least he used to. I assume that hasn't changed, Bill?"

  "Anything's fine," said Moreland.

  "You were way ahead of your time, Bill. Eating right while the rest of us went merrily about, clogging our arteries. You look great. Been keeping up with the bridge?"

  "No."

  "No? You had how many master points— ten, fifteen?"

  "Haven't played at all since you left, Nicholas."

  "Really." Hoffman looked around. "Bill was a great bridge player— photographic memory and you couldn't read his face. The rest of us were amateurs, but we did manage to put together some spirited matches, didn't we, Bill? You really quit? No more duplicate tournaments like the ones you used to play at the Saipan club?"

  Another shake of Moreland's head.

  "Anyone here play?" said Hoffman. "Maybe we can get a game going after dinner."

  Silence.

  "Oh, well . . . great game. Skill plus the luck of the draw. A lot more realistic than something like chess."

  Zondervein returned with Creedman's martini. Two sailors followed with a rolling cart of appetizers.

  Honeydew melon wrapped in ham.

  Hoffman said, "Take the meat off Dr. Moreland's."

  Zondervein rushed to obey.

  The ham tasted like canned sausage. The melon was more starch than sugar.

  Gladys had said Hoffman was a gourmet, but gourmand was more like it: he dug in enthusiastically, scraping honeydew flesh down to bare rind and emptying his water glass three times.

  "Dad's been writing to you," said Pam. "Did you receive his letters?"

  "I did indeed," said Hoffman. "Two letters, right, Bill? Or did you send some I didn't get?"

  "Just two."

  "Would you believe they just made their way to my desk? The filtering process. Actually only the second one got to me directly. Maybe the three times you wrote "personal' on the envelope did the trick. Anyway, I was tickled to receive it. Then I read the reference to your first letter and put out a search for it. Finally found it in some aide's office filed under "Ecology.' You probably would have received a form letter in two or three months— where do you get the ham, Elvin? Not Smithwood or Parma, that's for sure."

  "It's through the general mess, sir," said Ewing. "As you instructed."

  Hoffman stared at him.

  Ewing turned to Zondervein. "Where's the ham from, Lieutenant?"

  "I'm not sure, sir."

  "Find out ASAP. Before the senator leaves."

  "Yes, sir. I'll go to the kitchen right now—"

  "No," said Hoffman. "Not important— see, Tom, we eat frugally when the public picks up the tab."

  "If you want great grub, Senator, come over to my house."

  "You cook, do you?"

  "Love to cook. Got a great beef tournedos recipe." Creedman smiled at Moreland. "I'm into meat."

  "Get much meat on the island?" said Hoffman.

  "I make do. It takes some creativity."

  "How about you, Pam? Do you like to cook?"

  "Not particularly."

  "Only thing I can do is biscuits. Campside biscuits, recipe handed down from my great-grandmother— flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, bacon drippings."

  "How long will you be staying?" said Moreland.

  "Just till tomorrow."

  "You've finished assessing Stanton?"

  "The process began stateside."

  "Are you planning to close it down?"

  Hoffman put down his fork and rubbed the rim of his plate. "We're not at the decision stage, yet."

  "Meaning closure is likely."

  "I can't eliminate any possibilities, Bill."

  "If the base closes, what will happen to Aruk?"

  "You're probably in a better position to say, Bill."

  "I probably am," said Moreland. "Do you remember what I wrote about the blockade of South Beach road?"

  "Yes, I mentioned that to Captain Ewing."

  "Did Captain Ewing give you his reason?"

  Hoffman looked at Ewing. "Elvin?"

  Ewing's red face was aflame. "Security," he rasped.

  "Meaning?" said Moreland.

  Ewing directed his answer at Hoffman. "I'm not free to discuss it openly, sir."

  "The blockade was economical oppression, Nick," said Moreland.

  Hoffman cut free a white outer scrap of melon, stared at it, chewed, and swallowed.

  "Sometimes things change, Bill," he said softly.

  "Sometimes they shouldn't, Nick. Sometimes under the guise of helping people we do terrible things."

  Hoffman squinted at Ewing again. "Could you be a little more forthcoming for Dr. Moreland, Elvin?"

  Ewing swallowed. There'd been no food in his mouth. "There was some local unrest. We appraised it given the data at hand, and the judgment was that it had the potential to escalate and pose a hazard to Navy security. Restricting contact between the men and the locals was deemed advisable in terms of risk management. The proper forms were sent to Pacific Command and approval was granted by Admiral Felton."

  "Gobbledygook," said Moreland. "A few kids got out of hand. I think the Navy can handle that without choking off the island's economy. We've exploited them all these years, it's immoral to simply yank out the rug."

  Ewing bit back comment and stared straight ahead.

  "Bill," said Hoffman, "my memory is that we saved them from the Japanese. That doesn't make us exploiters."

  "Defeating the Japanese was in our national interest. Then we took over and imposed our laws. That makes the people our responsibility."

  Hoffman tapped his fork on his plate.

  "With all due respect," he said very softly, "that sounds a little paternalistic."

  "It's realistic."

  Pam touched the top of his hand. He freed it and said: " 'Local unrest' makes it sound like some kind of uprising. It was nothing, Nick. Trivial."

  Ewing's lips were so tight they looked sutured.

  "Shall I check on the second course, sir?" said Zondervein.

  Ewing gave him a guillotine-blade nod.

  "Actually, it's not quite that simple," said Creedman. "There was a murder. A girl raped and left cut up on the beach. The locals were sure a sailor had done it and were coming up here to protest."

  "Oh?" said Hoffman. "Is there evidence a sailor was responsible?"

  "None whatsoever, sir," said Ewing, too loudly. "They love rumors here. The locals got liquored up and tried to storm—"

  "Don't make it sound like an insurgence," said Moreland. "The people had justification for their suspicions."

  "Oh?" said Hoffman.

  "Surely you remember the people, Nick. How nonviolent they are. And the victim consorted with sailors."

  "Consorted." Hoffman smiled, put his fingers together, and looked over them. "I knew the people thirty y
ears ago, Bill. I don't believe Navy men tend to be murderers."

  Moreland stared at him.

  Ewing was nearly scarlet. "We were concerned about things getting out of hand. We still believe that concern was justified, given the facts and the hypotheticals. The order came from Pacific Command."

  "Nonsense," said Moreland. "The facts are that we're a colonial power and it's the same old pattern: islanders living at the pleasure of Westerners only to be abandoned. It's a betrayal. Yet another example of abusing trust."

  Hoffman didn't move. Then he picked something out of his teeth and ate another ice cube.

  "A betrayal," repeated Moreland.

  Hoffman seemed to be thinking about that. Finally, he said, "You know that Aruk has a special place in my heart, Bill. After the war, I needed peace and beauty and something unspoiled." To us: "Anyone tells you there's anything glorious about war has his head jammed up his rectum so high he's been blinded. Right, Elvin?"

  Ewing managed a nod.

  "After the war I spent some of the best years of my life here. Remember how you and Barb and Dotty and I used to hike and swim, Bill? How we used to say that some places were better left untouched? Perhaps we were more prescient than we knew. Maybe sometimes nature has to run her course."

  "That's the point, Nicholas. Aruk has been touched. People's lives are at—"

  "I know, I know. But the problem is one of population distribution. Allocation of increasingly sparse resources. I've seen too many ill-conceived projects that look good on paper but don't wash. Too many assumptions about the inevitable benefits of prosperity and autonomy. Look what happened to Nauru."

  "Nauru is hardly typical," said Moreland.

  "But it's instructive." Hoffman turned to us. "Any of you heard of Nauru? Tiny island, southeast of here, smack in the center of Micronesia. Ten square miles of guano— bird dirt. Two hundred years of hands-off colonization by the Brits and the Germans, then someone realizes the place is pure phosphate. The Brits and the Germans collaborate on mining, give the Nauruans nothing but flu and polio. World War Two comes along, the Japanese invade and send most of the Nauruans to Chuuk as forced laborers. After the war, Australia takes over and the native chiefs negotiate a sweet deal: big share of the fertilizer profits plus Australian welfare. In sixty-eight, Australia grants full independence and the chiefs take over the Nauru Phosphate Corporation, which is exporting two million tons of gull poop a year. A hundred million dollars in income; per capita income rises to twenty-thousand-plus. Comparable to an oil sheikdom. Cars, stereos, and junk food for the islanders. Along with a thirty-percent national rate of diabetes. Think of that— one in three. Highest in the world. No special hereditary factors, either. It's clearly all the junk food. Same for high blood pressure, coronary disease, gross obesity— I met an Australian senator who called it "land o' lard.' Throw in serious alcoholism and car crashes, and you've got a life expectancy in the fifties. And to top it off, ninety percent of the phosphate is gone. A few more years and nothing'll be left but insulin bottles and beer cans. So much for unbridled prosperity."

  "Are you advocating the virtues of poverty, Nick?"

  "No, Bill, but the world's changed, some people think we need to stop looking at ourselves as the universal nursemaid."

  "We're talking about people. A way of life—"

  Creedman said, "Whoa. You make it sound as though everything was hunky-dory before the Europeans came over and colonization spoiled everything, but my research tells me there were plenty of diseases in the primitive world and that the people who didn't die of them would probably have died of famine."

  I expected Moreland to turn on him, but he continued to stare at Hoffman.

  Hoffman said, "There is some truth to that, Bill. As a doctor you know that."

  "Diseases," said Moreland, as if the word amused him. "Yes, there were parasitic conditions, but nothing on the scale of the misery that was brought over."

  "Come on," said Creedman. "Let's get real. We're talking primitive tribes. Pagan rituals, no indoor plumbing—"

  Moreland faced him slowly. "Are you a waste-disposal expert in addition to all your other talents?"

  Creedman said, "My resear—"

  "Did your research tell you that some of those primitive rituals ensured impeccable cleanliness? Practices such as reserving mornings for defecation and wading out to the ocean to relieve oneself?"

  "That doesn't sound very hygien—"

  Moreland's hands rose and his fingers sculpted air. "It was fine! Until the civilized conquerors came along and told them they needed to dig holes in the ground. Do you know what that ushered in, Tom? An era of filth. Cholera, typhoid, salmonellosis, lungworm fever. Have you ever seen someone with cholera, Creedman?"

  "I've—"

  "Have you ever held a dehydrated child in your arms as she convulses in the throes of explosive diarrhea?"

  The gnarled hands dropped and slapped down on the table.

  "Research," he muttered.

  Creedman sucked his teeth. He'd gone white.

  "I bow, doctor," he said softly, "to your superior knowledge of diarrhea."

  The door opened. Zondervein and three sailors, kitchen smells, more food.

  "Well," said Hoffman, exhaling. "Bon appétit."

  18

  Other than Hoffman, no one ate much.

  After his second dessert, he stood and ripped his napkin free. "Come on, Bill, let's you and me catch up on old times. Nice to meet you all."

  A glance at Lieutenant Zondervein, who said, "How about the rest of us head over to the rec room? There's a pool table and a big-screen TV."

  Outside in the hall, Ewing gave him a disgusted look. "If you'll all excuse me." He left swiftly.

  "This way," said Zondervein.

  "Do you get cable?" Creedman asked.

  "Sure," said Zondervein. "We get everything, have a satellite dish."

  "Excellent."

  "Isn't there a dish at the Trading Post?" I said.

  Creedman laughed. "Broke a year ago and no one's bothered to fix it. Does that tell you something about local initiative?"

  • • •

  Creedman and I played a couple of games of pool. He was good, but cheated anyway, moving the cue ball when he thought I wasn't looking.

  The big-screen was tuned to CNN.

  "News lite," he said.

  "Only thing I get from the news is depressed," said Pam. She and Robin were sitting in chairs too big for them, looking bored. I caught Robin's eye. She waved and sipped her Coke.

  A few minutes later, Zondervein brought Moreland back. He sagged with exhaustion.

  Pam said, "Dad?"

  "Time to go."

  • • •

  After we landed, Creedman walked away from us without a word. No one spoke during the ride back to the estate. When Moreland pulled up in front of the house it was nine-forty. "I think I'll catch up on work. You all relax." He patted Pam's arm. "Have a good night, dear."

  "Maybe I'll go into town."

  "Oh?"

  "I thought I might go for a night swim."

  He touched her arm again. Held on to it. "That could be tricky, Pamela. Urchins, morays, you could run into trouble."

  "I'm sure Dennis can keep me out of trouble."

  He must have squeezed her arm because she winced.

  "Dennis," he said, just above a whisper, "is engaged to a girl studying at the nursing school in Saipan."

  "Not anymore," said Pam.

  "Oh?"

  "They broke up a few weeks ago."

  She touched his arm and he dropped it.

  "A pity," said Moreland. "Nice girl. She would have been valuable to the island." Fixing his eyes on his daughter: "Dennis still is, dear. It would be best for all concerned if you didn't distract him."

  Turning on his heel, he walked down toward the bungalows.

  Pam's mouth was wide open. She ran up to the house.