Thirsty. He was quite thirsty. Without thinking he opened up the refrigerator and gagged at the thick smell. Rotten food, sour milk, and who knew what else. He looked behind the refrigerator and saw that it had been moved, probably during the police search, and the power plug had been pulled out. No electricity for several days. Wonderful.
And then, well, he didn’t know why, but he opened up the freezer. Among the dripping remnants of a few frozen food dinners and some unidentifiable lumps in aluminum foil, there was a thin package, wrapped in plastic and hidden way back. It didn’t look like frozen food. From the amount of dripping water, it was clear that this part of the freezer had been locked in a few inches of ice. Something was here, something that Merl... well, Colonel Sawson, wanted hidden. Carl put his hand into the slimy water and pulled out the package. It had been wrapped in several pieces of plastic and taped shut. Inside was a thin brown manila envelope, letter size.
He opened the envelope in the kitchen, standing by the stove. Four objects tumbled out. The first was a standard issue Armed Services identification card that showed a picture of Colonel Sawson. Nothing unusual about that. Carl had his own card buried somewhere in his wallet. He looked at Merl’s firm face and steady gaze and he shivered. The man he had seen by Boston Harbor last month ... He had looked like a POW camp survivor compared to the strong and confident-looking colonel whose picture he held in his hand.
The second item was a much folded piece of paper. At the top it said simply, ‘The White House. Washington.’ There was a hand-scribbled note:
10/27
Merl—
You seem to be off at an ExComm meeting. Just a reminder, God forbid, that if this slips away from us all that my brother’s place in Maine is still open for you and Carla. The address is 14 Sea Breeze Way, York. Hope not to see you there, if you know what I mean.
I’m off to the Hill to brief some chowderheads. Luck to us both, eh?
—Casimir
Carl refolded the piece of paper and carefully put it back into the envelope. The day before the war started, that’s when it had been written. He held the piece of paper gingerly in his hand, like an ancient relic. And Casimir had to be the ‘Caz’ that Troy said Merl had dreamed about so often. So where was Caz now? Was he the mysterious visitor that Troy had mentioned, who stopped by before the murder? There were two more objects enclosed in the plastic. One was a plain white business card, with the name ‘Stewart Thompson’ and a Boston phone number in embossed black lettering.
The last object seemed to be another identification pass, though larger than the other one. He picked up the laminated card and tilted it toward the light.
There was another photograph of Merl Sawson in his military uniform, and a gold thread ran through the photo. To the right of the photo was Merl’s name and rank, along with an identification number and his height, weight, hair and eye color. The signature of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara—another ghost from the past—was on the bottom of the card, just below a thumbprint. In the middle was a string of words, all in capital letters:
OFFICIAL IDENTIFICATION.
FOR BEARER’S USE ONLY.
OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT BUSINESS.
EMERGENCY TRAVEL AUTHORIZED.
PASS THROUGH ALL CIVILIAN AND MILITARY CHECKPOINTS
AUTHORIZED.
ENTRY AUTHORIZED INTO ALL MILITARY BASES.
ENTRY AUTHORIZED INTO ALTERNATE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT.
As he returned the card into the envelope, his hands started shaking.
~ * ~
NINE
On Monday morning Carl went to York, Maine, a coastal tourist town about two hours north of Boston. For the first time in a long while—the last incident involved an Opening Day at Fenway Park—he had called in sick without actually being ill. He had also dialed the phone number of Stewart Thompson, whose card he had found in Merl Sawson’s freezer the night before. There had been no answer.
To get to Maine he took 1-95, and the further north he drove, the fewer the number of cars and trucks he saw, and the number of horse-drawn wagons with rubber wheels along the side of the road increased. Each time he went under a highway overpass, he leaned forward and looked up through the dirty windshield. Orfie gangs were known to pass the time by hiding on overpasses and dropping boulders on the cars below.
Just before the New Hampshire border, he drove by the exit for Newburyport, his hometown. He clenched the steering wheel and kept his eyes focused north. In ten years he had never taken this exit. He tried not to think of the house where he grew up, with Mom and Dad inside, right after the war, with the power out, the power out for months, for God’s sake, the snows rising and rising during that terrible winter...
When he crossed over into New Hampshire, he allowed his hands to relax and his eyes to wander. As he shifted in his seat, he felt something pressing into his ribs from inside his coat: Merl Sawson’s identification card and the decade-old invitation from the First Family. The invite made him think of his old downstairs neighbor, Slatterly. They had been friendly the first year he had moved into his apartment in Boston. Slatterly had a shaved head and a thick New York accent, and he didn’t get into too much detail of what he did in New York before the war. Now, however, he was into postwar collectibles.
One night, Slatterly proudly showed off the items he sold and traded: souvenir conch shells from Key West, old postcards from San Diego, miniature replicas of the Statue of Liberty, and his prize and joy: a thick, round piece of marble, the size of a baby’s fist. ‘Know what that is?’ Slatterly had asked. ‘No? My friend, that is one of a kind. That’s a real gavel that was used in the U.S. Senate, before the war. And you know what I paid for it? A case of canned Spam, that’s what. Now, for the original Declaration of Independence—you know, it was rumored to have been removed from DC before the bombing—I bet that would go for a warehouse full of Spam.’
Carl was sure Merl Sawson’s JFK invite had some sort of value but Slatterly wasn’t there to ask about it anymore. One night, two years ago, Carl had come home from the Globe, and the downstairs apartment had been cleaned out, and no one knew what had happened to the hustler.
Several minutes after passing through New Hampshire, he was in Maine. He took the coastal road—Route 1 — into York, where he stopped at a general store and got directions to Sea Breeze Way from an old man who hobbled using two canes.
The street—which was one lane of cracked and bumpy asphalt — was off of the main beach. The day was overcast and the sands were empty except for a couple at one end, walking a dog. Carl parked at the main beach and walked down the lane. The house was two stories with peeling light green paint, an empty dirt driveway off to the left, and a half-collapsed outbuilding at the rear that was probably the garage. Most of the other houses on the street were cottages, with FOR SALE or FOR RENT signs in the unwashed windows. The mailbox in front of number fourteen had a name, in black-and-gold stick-on letters. CYNEWSKI.
Carl hunched his shoulders forward and walked up the crushed stone path. He took a deep breath and knocked on the porch door. A gamble, coming up here and taking a day off from work, but a gamble he had to take. He waited, knocked again, and was going to try for a third time when an old man appeared behind the screen. The man opened the door and Carl was embarrassed when he realized the man wasn’t that old. He was just terribly thin with wispy white hair, wearing baggy blue jeans and a green, heavy-knit sweater. There were fleshy bags under his droopy eyes, and his hands wavered.
‘Yes?’ he said, his eyes dull, as if he had just been asleep. ‘Hope you’re not selling anything, ‘cause you’ll be wasting your time and mine.’
‘Carl Landry, Mr. Cynewski, from the Boston Globe,’ he said, passing over his business card. ‘I’m working on a story out of Boston and well, I’m actually looking for some information, information about a man named Casimir. Perhaps your brother?’
The man closed his eyes and stepped back, as if he had been punched in the chest. He sai
d in a whisper, ‘Are you telling me that my brother is alive?’
Oh, great, he thought. ‘No, no, I’m sorry to have made you think that, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m doing a story about someone who knew him, before the war, and I was hoping ... well, it’s a long shot, but I’m just looking for information. That’s all.’
He opened his eyes, tried to smile. ‘Information? It’s been a while since anyone’s asked me anything, except for those damn tourists who need directions or want to use my bathroom. The name is Marcus Cynewski, though you can get away with calling me Mark.’
‘Thank you, Mark,’ he said, and then Mark opened the door wider and said, ‘You’re a long way from home. Boston Globe. Why don’t you come in and I’ll fix you a cup of tea.’
The wind whipped against his legs. ‘That would be fine.’
~ * ~
They went into the living room. It was dark and musty, filled with old leatherbound books in shelves against the wall, and magazines and newspapers over the furniture and hardwood floor. Carl sat on a couch and Mark sat in a large, overstuffed chair with a plaid blanket over his legs. He could too easily imagine this older man, alone and sitting at night in the quiet house, reading these books and magazines with his trembling hands, remembering better times. Carl knew he was being ungenerous, but he could hardly wait to leave this oppressive house.
Carl glanced down at the couch beside him and saw a few mimeographed journals with hand-drawn covers: The Nation, The Progressive, and Ramparts.
‘I see you’ve discovered my deep and dark secret,’ Mark said, holding his tea with both hands, a slight smile on his face. ‘There they are, my oddball politics open for the world to see. I do find them enjoyable, and you know why? Not necessarily because of the politics, but because of the writing. Underground and uncensored, there’s a fresh spirit you don’t see in any of the newspapers, no offense to the Globe. There’s, even a name for them, a Russian phrase called samizdat. Means self-published. Funny, isn’t it, that we honor our former enemies by giving our journals of free speech a foreign name.’
‘How often do they come out?’ Carl asked, picking up a Nation and noting the cheap paper and smeared ink.
‘Irregular, of course, depends whether the staff’s been rounded up or if they’ve run out of paper.’ Mark sat back and looked outside for a moment. ‘But enough of marginalized politics, from someone who thought the 1960s was going to be a liberating era instead of a time of food shortages and labor camps.’ He sipped from his tea and glanced out the picture window. ‘You know, this is my favorite time of the year. The light is different and the ocean looks more real, without the deep blue sky and sunshine. I can walk out on the sands and not meet anyone, which is just fine. Most of the shops are closed and the roads are empty. The tourists have left, including those damn rich Canadians, who think they own the place.’
He laughed and added, ‘Who’d ever think we’d be complaining about the rich Canadians? Or the rich Mexicans, for that? Who would have thought they’d be arming their borders to keep out American refugees? Who’d have thought?’
‘Not too many, I guess,’ Carl said, seeing that the man wasn’t quite all there. His hands trembled so much that the tea in his cup slopped over the sides, and the little smile on his face seemed forced.
‘So. You’re working on a story.’
Carl said, ‘Yes, I am. About someone your brother Casimir knew, back when he was at the White House. A Merl Sawson, a military aide. Does the name sound familiar?’
Mark seemed to think for a moment, rubbing at his chin, and said, ‘A little ... yes, it does. I do remember my brother Caz mentioning a friend of his, a man named Merl that he knew while working for JFK. But that’s about all I can remember. Sorry.’
‘Did he say anything about what Merl did at the White House?’
‘If Casimir did, I must have forgotten it.’
‘Well, what was your brother’s job?’
Again, the smile that wasn’t a smile. ‘Besides being a war criminal?’
Carl felt the warmth of his teacup. ‘Did he really go to trial, or is that your opinion?’
‘My opinion, learned as it is,’ he said. ‘Tell me, Globe man, how many men are still in prison from the Kennedy Administration?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘A good answer. We never do know, do we? The Domestic War Crimes trials in 1963 were closed to the public and to the press. All that was announced was the sentences and Caz’s name wasn’t on the list, but still, in my own mind, he was a war criminal, even though he probably died in the bombing. He worked for that lightweight Kennedy in that evil agency of his, and he helped bring disaster upon us.’
‘Do you know what he did?’
A brief wave of a hand. ‘Of course not. Everything was top secret, need to know, all that rubbish. He was some high mucky-muck in the CIA, I do know that, and that’s all because of Yale. You see, he went to Yale and was recruited by the spies, and I went to Harvard and did something entirely different.’
‘And what was that?’ Carl asked.
‘I started to work towards my doctorate in history. I was fascinated by the First World War and how it happened. None of the princes, kings, prime ministers, or presidents wanted a war, you know. And yet it came, tore the heart out of Europe, and shattered a half dozen empires. Sound depressingly familiar? And what school did you go to, Mr. Globe?’
‘The one with the funny green uniforms,’ Carl said.
‘Ah, a veteran,’ Mark said, shifting in his seat. ‘Did you serve during the war?’
‘Yes, overseas.’
‘And where did you go after the callback?’
‘Southern California. Relief and recovery.’
Mark slowly smoothed out his blanket, though it didn’t look wrinkled. ‘Southern California. You know the rumors...I suppose you could say something about the story I’ve heard, about Governor Brown being arrested and shot by military police during that first year.’
Carl looked at the far wall, a spot just above Mark’s shoulder. ‘I really can’t say.’
‘And the missions you performed in the Golden State?’
He kept on staring. Some interview this was turning out to be. ‘Relief and recovery. And that’s all I can say. Look, Mark—’
‘I know, I know, you’re supposed to be asking the questions. I apologize. You and most of your comrades in the service were and are honorable men, following orders and performing your duty. Except for those damnable thugs in the Zed Force. I, on the other hand, am old and talkative and still angry, after all these years. My friends and I, we were active in letter-writing campaigns, in protests, in marches. We wanted to ban the bomb. That’s it. Just ban the bomb and everything would be perfect.’ A wave of the hand, probably in disgust. ‘We were such innocents, little children, to think we were accomplishing anything. Bah. We were tiny little King Canutes, all of us, standing at the shore and demanding the tide stop coming in.’
He stroked his chin delicately, like he was so frail he was afraid of injuring himself. ‘I still see a couple of my friends, here and there, and you know what they believe? That we were lucky. Lucky the war happened then and was relatively minor. Lucky that it didn’t happen ten years later, when a much stronger Soviet Union would have destroyed us as we’ve destroyed them. Lucky that it didn’t happen twenty or thirty years later, when countries from India to Israel to Argentina had the bomb, and we could have merrily nuked our way back to the Stone Age. One physicist friend of mine - quite mad, you understand—even said that there could have been a time, not too far in the future, when corporations or gangs of wealthy criminals could have made the bomb. Or where bombs were so small that they could be stolen by terrorists or religious zealots. Can you imagine living in such an insane world?’
‘I’d rather not.’
Mark smiled weakly. ‘My brother Caz, though. He could have thrived in any kind of world, so long as he was fighting against godless communism. Perhaps his spirit is smiling,
you know. I don’t think there’s a single communist party left, except for maybe in Italy.’
Carl took a sip from his tea. It was now cold. He tried again to do what he had come here for. ‘But Merl Sawson. Did you ever meet him, or hear of him?’
‘Just like I said earlier, only a passing mention that he was one of Casimir’s friends. That’s all I know. You said you were doing a story about Merl. What kind of story?’
‘He was murdered a few days ago. I’m just doing a follow-up about his life, who he was, what kind of background he had.’
Resurrection Day Page 14
