The Anonymous Source

by A. C. Fuller

  “You’re like America.”

  “I get that,” he said. “That’s funny.”

  “You didn’t laugh. Where are your parents from, anyway?”

  “Upstate New York. They met in high school. Dad lived in New York his whole life before the move. Mom went to college somewhere else, but they never really talked about it. I think they wanted me to believe in the whole high-school-sweethearts thing.”

  “Or maybe they wanted to believe in the whole high-school-sweethearts thing.”

  “Maybe.”

  “In Iowa, we were considered foreign even though we were whitish. We looked different enough for people to ask where we were from, and most people thought Argentina was part of Mexico.”

  Alex laughed and rubbed his eyes. “But you weren’t really raised Catholic?”

  “It’s basically a Catholic country, but we weren’t raised anything. My parents gave up religion soon after I was born.”

  “So why do you meditate?” Alex asked.

  “It’s a concentration practice.”

  “But why?”

  “So I can pay closer attention to what’s going on inside me.”

  “But there’s a lot more going on outside you. Why not pay attention to that?”

  “It depends on what kind of action you’re looking for. There’s a lot going on inside, too. We just don’t pay much attention to it.”

  “Some people have good reasons not to.”

  “That’s true, but it’s funny to hear you say that because, of all people, you seem to have the least amount of pain to avoid.”

  Alex looked down at his lap. “You mean besides my parents dying?”

  “Yes, besides that. Sorry.”

  The elbow of the man next to him was digging into Alex’s side so he scooted toward Camila. He looked back up and she smiled, then fished around in the bag for the last of the peanuts. As he watched her chew, he felt drawn in, and he wondered whether he was falling in love with her. Then, in an instant, he felt the floor drop out from beneath him and thought he would fall forever. He remembered the call he received when his parents died, and how he’d felt when he’d received it. Blank. Out of control. Terrified.

  He felt the man’s head drop onto his shoulder and he pushed it away, still staring at Camila. “Can I tell you something—I mean, ask you something?”

  She threw a peanut at him. “In case you haven’t noticed, you don’t need the preliminaries and throat clearing with me. Just ask.”

  “It’s just . . . well . . . I mean . . . ” He swallowed hard. “In the taxi yesterday you said you felt like you were standing on water but not sinking. I’m not sure how to ask this, but . . . what’s going on with you?”

  The flight attendant came by to collect trash and Camila asked for another bag of peanuts. When the flight attendant left, Camila said, “I’ve dated mostly older men. John wasn’t the first. Men who are not only not of the world, but not really in it, either. I have the same tendency. My whole life, I’ve only barely been here. My mind is here, sure, but the rest of me? Not so much.”

  The flight attendant came back with two bags of peanuts. “Plain and honey roasted,” she said. She handed them to Camila and turned abruptly.

  “Was she mocking me?” Camila asked.

  “Well, your peanut consumption may put the whole airline in the red this quarter. But seriously, I get the thing about older men, but what’s going on with you now?”

  Camila passed the bags of nuts between her hands. They crinkled rhythmically and the man next to Alex squirmed. Alex put his hand over hers to stop the noise.

  She looked up at him. “Have you ever felt bad in a way that‘s beyond everyday guilt, beyond moral judgment, beyond the little voice in your head that tells you what to do? Like something is wrong that can never be fixed?”

  He wished he had, so he could feel what she felt, but his guilt was simpler than that. “I haven’t.”

  She traced the words on the peanut package with her pinky finger. “Well, it’s like that,” she said. “And all I can do is feel it.”

  “But why? I mean, what do you feel bad about?”

  “It started after John died. I dumped him and three weeks later he was dead. And it’s my dad, too. He’s dying, and I think I’m heartbroken, but all I can think about are the times he hit me. When he hit me, I walled off parts of myself for safekeeping. Other parts of me went dormant. Since John died, it’s like everything I buried is slowly resurfacing. At the core, I don’t feel bad about anything. I think sometimes the ‘abouts’ are just stories we tell ourselves to avoid feelings that are fundamentally unbearable.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sometimes I think I’m holding all the suffering of my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Like the accumulated sadness of our whole family lineage—the hard times, the abuse, even the everyday disappointments—are appearing in me, and I have to process what they couldn’t. To feel what they couldn’t feel. ”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure there’s a why.”

  They sat in silence.

  Alex ran his hands through his hair. Finally, he said, “You know how you say everything is easy for me? Well, you’re kinda right about that. But sometimes, as a teenager, I would wish something terrible would happen. Like my plane would crash, or my parents would die. I didn’t really want to die, or want them to die, but I wished for some tragedy, some huge event. Like I wanted to be shaken awake or something. Then my parents did die and that didn’t do it. It did the opposite.”

  “Will you tell me how they died? It might help.”

  “Car crash. They visited New York for my NYU graduation and died on their way home from the airport. They hadn’t been back to the city since I was six months old. They took one trip—to see me—and they died.”

  Camila nodded but said nothing.

  “I was sad. I mean, I’m still sad. I feel bad that I even had that thought about them dying. And on 9/11, I remember thinking, ‘Maybe this is it. Maybe this will be the thing.’ It wasn’t. 9/11 was a lot of things, but it didn’t wake me from the fog either. I remember having drinks in the Village with some friends a couple weeks later. I was looking around the bar, thinking, ‘Everything is the same.’ There we were, a mile from Ground Zero, and everything was the fucking same. And not just with me, but with everyone. We were the same bunch of assholes we were before the attacks.”

  Camila opened the bag of honey-roasted peanuts and put one in his mouth. He chewed as she took his hand. “Maybe this is it,” she said. “Maybe this will be the thing.”

  He squeezed her hand and, a few minutes later, fell into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  RAK SAT AT THE COUNTER, staring at the phone next to the cash register. When it rang, he glanced at the old man. “Beef and peas. Four.” The man disappeared into the kitchen.

  Rak picked up the phone. “Mr. Bice?”

  “When we spoke two days ago, you assured me that you would find them.”

  “They did not go home all night.”

  “We have the video now. It will never come out.”

  “How do you know that they do not make a copy?”

  “We can’t be sure until you find them. They are in Hawaii. Kona. Maybe I don’t need to tell you, but you have a personal stake in this as well. We were fortunate that the police found the kid and the charges stuck, but now that this case has gotten so big, if that video comes out, the pressure to find the real killer will be huge.”

  Rak glanced toward the kitchen, where the old man was standing at the stove. “But you have not yet tell me what it is, exactly.”

  “I’m not going to talk about the video. The less you know, the better. It doesn’t implicate you, but it could get the kid off. You need to track them down and make sure they do not have that recording.”

  “When I track them down, I will kill them both.”

  “No, you won’t. Like I said before, do what you want with the girl. Lea
ve Alex Vane alive. As long as he doesn’t have a copy of that video, he can’t hurt you. Without that video, Santiago will be convicted.”

  “Mr. Bice, I took the job on the professor as a courtesy to Smedveb. He says you are okay. Now, you will tell me how this happened, or I will hang up, kill them both, and disappear.”

  The old man slid a paper plate down the counter and set a small bowl of yogurt next to it. Rak dunked a whole pierogi in the yogurt and popped it into his mouth.

  “If I tell you what happened,” Bice said, “will you do what I’ve asked?”

  Rak licked tiny drops of grease off his pasty lips. “You have no choice but to tell me and find out.”

  Bice spoke in a steady monotone as Rak chewed pierogies. “After 9/11, two cops approached Downton, the black man—the drug dealer—in Washington Square Park. They were young, dumb cops trying to make names for themselves by looking into local kids who might have Al Qaeda ties. They wired him with a video camera. A week or two before you took out the professor, they were put on leave for brutality.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Roughed up an Arab, but the department covered it up. Never came out in the papers. After nine months, they came back to the police force with a demotion. Went looking for the recorder. They found Downton and he told them he got rid of it after they disappeared. They asked him about the night the professor was killed and he said he didn’t see anything. But they thought he was lying. Thought he knew something about the murder.”

  “And when was this?” Rak asked.

  “End of August. They were angry because it was an expensive camera. Real stupid guys.”

  “And how are you connecting to these ‘real stupid guys?’ How did you come to know all this?”

  “Before they went on leave, the two cops used to help me out. Kept an eye on certain reporters for me. Did odd jobs.”

  Rak smiled and sucked the filling out of a pierogi. “‘Odd jobs.’ Yes.”

  “One of the cops came to me two weeks ago and told me the story. Said that one of my reporters, Alex Vane, had a meeting with this dealer. He brought it to me because he was worried that Downton might be telling the reporter about them, about their attempts to get information illegally. Like I said, these are real stupid guys. The cop that came to me, this Irish piece of shit, had roughed Downton up a bit when he couldn’t produce the recorder. He thought maybe Downton had turned on him. Wondered if I could do anything to get the reporter off the story.”

  “You sure the black man didn’t tell the police anything about what happened in the park that night? About the professor?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the police—this ‘Irish piece of shit’—thinks you make Downton disappear to help him?”

  “Yes, and now he owes me.”

  “Okay, I will finish the job. But, Mr. Bice, there is no reason to keep anyone alive. If the girl and the reporter saw this video, they both have to go.”

  “No.”

  Rak nibbled the doughy edges of a pierogi. “Mr. Bice, this is not about you anymore. I do not understand your business. I do not know why you want what you want. But I am not in the business of keeping people alive.”

  “I’m paying you to do as I say. I am in control.”

  Rak laughed. “No, Mr. Bice, no one controls Rak. Keep the money. I’m going to finish this.” Before Bice could answer, Rak hung up, wiped his sleeve across his mouth, and walked to the door.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Wednesday, September 11, 2002

  AT THE KONA AIRPORT, Alex and Camila stepped out of the plane into sweltering, wet air. They took the rolling staircase down to the tarmac where a young woman with curly brown hair was draping orchid leis over the heads of some of the passengers.

  “How come we don’t get one?” Alex asked Camila.

  “I think you have to be with a tour group.”

  “That orchid scent is like a shot of caffeine. I think I slept hard the last few hours.” He flipped open his phone. “It’s past midnight back home. One-year anniversary of 9/11. And we are definitely not in New York City anymore.”

  Ten minutes later, they were sitting on a slatted bench under a wooden canopy, waiting for a taxi. Alex got up to stretch and do jumping jacks as Camila munched chocolate covered macadamia nuts. When he saw that she was watching him with a wry smile, he closed his eyes.

  She laughed. “You know I can still see you when you close your eyes, right?”

  He opened his eyes and bent at the waist, touching his hands flat to the ground. “I’m not sure that’s how it works.” He slowly arched up and smiled at her. “I’m fairly certain that when I close my eyes, the world stops existing.”

  “Remember what I said about you being a decent guy pretending to be an asshole?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I take back the ‘pretending’ part.”

  Alex’s phone beeped. He had a message from a man named Damian Bale, who worked at the Old Rhino Bar in the Village. He called him back as Camila watched from the bench.

  “Damian Bale? This is Alex Vane. What’s this about?”

  “Are you the Alex Vane who’s covering the Santiago trial for The Standard?” Bale spoke quickly and sounded young.

  “That’s me.”

  “I was working the bar last New Year’s Eve, the night the professor was killed in the park.”

  Alex could hear clinking and music in the background. “Did you know him?”

  “No, but I saw him that night. He was a regular. Always came in, ate alone, seemed kind of sad and uptight. Wasn’t a big drinker or a big tipper. Always had wine, usually two glasses, but that night he ordered a bottle and only drank a glass. Kinda sad to be drinking a hundred-dollar bottle alone on New Year’s.”

  “What kind of wine did he order?”

  “Hellooo? You must already know the answer to that. Is this a test?”

  “Yes, it is,” Alex said.

  “Châteauneuf-du-Pape, 1992. He was a Rhône guy. Liked the big, bold reds. I’m studying to be a sommelier so I watch what kind of people order what kind of wine. He was a small, weak guy. Maybe the big hearty reds made him, you know, feel like something.”

  “So what are you calling to tell me?” Alex asked, wiping sweat from his forehead.

  “You heard of Demarcus Downton? Some random guy who got killed in Brooklyn Heights a couple days ago?”

  Alex coughed into the phone. “Yes.”

  “Well, The Post ran a sketch of the guy who killed him. Now, I do not read The Post, but meathead guys leave it on the bar all the time. I was thumbing through it today and I recognized the guy who killed this Downton guy. He was in the bar New Year’s Eve.”

  “Wait,” Alex said, “the guy from the sketch in The Post was in your bar? White guy, mustache, real small?”

  “I’m sure of it. Real funny looking. Strange accent. I spent a summer in the south of France and one traveling though Eastern Europe for my thesis on dessert wines. Anyhoo, this guy sounded European, but the accent was all jumbled together.”

  “And you think he was in your bar New Year’s Eve?”

  “I don’t think, okay? I know. Look, I want to own my own place someday, a wine bar down here in the Village. I’m gonna specialize in wines that go with chocolate. Gonna call it Chocolate Bar. Clever, right?”

  “So what?”

  “So what I’m saying is, I notice what goes on in a bar. Hellooo? It’s my job. And this guy did not belong. Was here maybe an hour. Drank a glass of krupnik. I mean, who orders that? Made me think he was Polish or maybe Lithuanian. And, other than Professor Martin, he was the only guy here by himself that night.”

  “Why not call the police about this?” Alex asked.

  “I did. Called them right when I saw the sketch in The Post. They took my statement and told me not to talk to any reporters. There’s one other thing, too. Guy was eyeing the professor. At first I took him for gay with how much he was looking over at him. But I know gay. I am gay. I thr
ew some gay at him and it didn’t stick, if you know what I mean. When the professor went to the bathroom, the guy paid for the krupnik and walked out right past his table.”

  “Did you get his name?” Alex asked.

  “No.”

  “And I’m guessing he didn’t pay with a card?”

  “No, he left cash. A twenty for an eight-dollar drink. Seemed in a hurry to leave. Didn’t seem that weird at the time, but when I saw his picture in The Post, it all kinda came back to me.”

  “If the police said not to talk to reporters, why did you call me?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t know, I figure, you get me in the paper, I can start building my brand.”

  “Your brand?”

  “You run this in The Standard, mention my name, maybe people will drop by and see me at the bar. I’m looking for investors.”

  “And you think this will help you find them?”

  “Hellooooo? You’re a journalist, you know there’s no bad PR.”

  Alex thanked him and said good-bye, then sat down next to Camila and filled her in on the conversation.

  When he had finished, she said, “Well, if Santiago didn’t do it, I guess we know who did.” She stood. “I’m hungry.”

  Alex laughed. “Makes sense. It’s dinner time here and you’ve only eaten four or five meals today, plus two-thousand calories worth of peanuts. You wanna get a taxi into town?”

  “Yes, and I could use a cocktail.”

  * * *

  They watched the orange sky darken to a rusty brown as they passed miles of black lava rock on the long, flat stretch of highway into Kailua-Kona. Neither spoke during the ride. As they pulled into town, Camila said to the driver, “Just drop us anywhere. We don’t know where we’re going.”

  They walked down Alii Drive, poking their heads into gift shops full of t-shirts and postcards as the last light faded from the sky. A reggae band on the sidewalk a block away started playing steel drums.

  “I thought reggae was supposed to be Jamaican,” Alex said.

  Camila waved her hand at a throng of tourists blocking a storefront. “Do you think most of these people know the difference?”