by John Enright
In the back parlor the TV set was still on, and as Dominick passed by the door he got a brief glimpse of Lydia and Angelica tussling over Lydia’s purse. They each had a grip on the handle and were pulling in opposite directions. Their voices were raised and mixed in with the sounds of gunshots and screams from the TV show. Something snapped, someone fell with a crash, and there was the sound of the purse’s contents spewing out onto the floor.
Dominick slid the cat off the shovel onto the kitchen counter beside the sink. He could see now there was blood congealing around the cat’s nostrils and eyes. That was probably not a positive sign. Otherwise it looked the same as when Ms. Arnold was carrying it around.
“What should we do? Should I call 911?” Ms. Arnold asked.
“Let it rest for a minute. See what happens,” Dominick said. “You know, nine lives and all.”
“How can you say that? How can you say that?” Angelica was yelling at her mother as they came into the kitchen. Lydia was still wearing her mink, but now she was also wearing blood, running down her cheek from a cut on the side of her forehead.
“Don’t try to tell me different,” Lydia said. “You are nothing but a liar.” She didn’t seem to notice the blood.
“I never did anything of the kind!”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Lydia said. “You took them all.”
“Lydia, you’ve cut yourself,” Ms. Arnold said, going toward her with her hand extended.
“Don’t touch me, you witch. My ancestors used to burn the likes of yours at the stake.”
“You’re the murderer. You’ve killed my precious. You’re just a crazy, dangerous old lady!”
The blood was now dripping off Lydia’s cheekbone onto her mink.
“Don’t you talk to my mother like that,” Angelica said, coming all the way into the kitchen.
“You shut up, you cheap harlot,” Ms. Arnold said. Voices were now raised to a level that drowned out the car chase and sirens on the TV. “You fobbing your poor addled mother off on me to take care of, never contributing a penny. You . . . you geriatric abuser.”
They were off to the venom races then, all three of them. Dominick ran some tap water onto the end of a dish towel and went over to Lydia. She let him dab at her face. He showed her the blood on the end of the towel, and she scowled. Then she saw the blood on her coat and she took the towel away from him to wipe at her fur. Angelica and Ms. Arnold were still going at it. Dominick drew Lydia aside to try to stop her bleeding, feeling like he was pulling an injured bird out of a cockfight.
“How dare you! How dare you!” Angelica was yelling. “It’s not as if anyone ever trusted you or any of your family. My father was right about you.”
“Your father? Your father was one the most useless . . .”
Dominick sat Lydia down in a kitchen chair and gave her the towel to clean her coat. He went to get a fresh tea towel. He knew what drawer they would be in. When he came back Lydia had slipped her iPod out of her mink coat’s pocket and was putting in her ear pods. The fight no longer interested her. She took the fresh towel from Dominick and pressed it against her cut brow without a word. She looked more distant than dazed.
“No, no. She is leaving today, right now, with me. I wouldn’t think of leaving her here with the likes of you for another minute,” Angelica was saying as Dominick slipped behind her and out of the kitchen, down the hall, and out the front door.
It was Sunday and sunny, almost the Ides of March. The first pale tourists of the season were venturing out in New Jerusalem. As Dominick walked back to the dockside lot where he had left his car he walked past them. He remembered a bumper sticker from the summer before: “If there is a tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?” When he got to Starks’s house, Starks’s Jag was there but he wasn’t. Dominick showered and changed, ridding himself of the smell of Angelica. When he came back out of his room he could hear the sound of a blender in the kitchen.
“Margarita?” Starks asked as Dominick came into the kitchen. “Sunshine, hope, tequila.”
“Welcome back,” Dominick said. “How was the trip?”
“Always answering questions with questions.” Starks was running a slice of lime around the lip of a tumbler. He then twirled the upside-down glass once in a plate of salt. “Two can play that game. How was your tryst with the grieving daughter?”
“Lucky guess?”
“Who doesn’t erase messages from the answering machine?’
“Who knows how?”
“Can you imagine a language that only used the interrogative?” Starks poured a thick slurry mixture into two tumblers.
“What would that be like?”
“Wouldn’t that be interesting?” Starks put one of the tumblers down in front of Dominick.
“Did you know there is a language that only uses the passive voice?”
“Really?”
“Basque. It’s an ergative language.”
“That wasn’t a question, you know? You lose.” They clinked glasses.
“Thanks, I will have a margarita, though it’s hardly the season yet. Where were you just now? Your car was here, but you weren’t.”
“Down in my darkroom off the garage, developing film I shot on my trip, which went fine, by the way. Was your visit worth the trouble?”
“Oh, no trouble. What did you take photographs of?”
“Houses primarily, old houses. Oh, come on, Dominick. What’s her name? What’s she like in bed?”
“Angelica. Appreciative.”
“Well, one word answers are better than none, I guess.” Starks went to the stove and lifted the lid off a pot to give it a stir. There was a wonderful waft of fish chowder. “Emma is coming out for dinner,” he said. “She heard you were back, and wanted to fill us in on developments.”
“She heard I was back? Was it on the radio or something? That smells good.”
“Oh, was your return a secret? She called me on my cell phone while I was away to ask if I had heard from you, and I told her you were back and staying here. There’s a second message for you on the machine, from yesterday, from Emma. I guess you didn’t get that one. Pretty soon you’re going to need a secretary to keep your social calendar straight.”
“Developments?”
“The LNG thing, I’m sure. That is her new pastime and passion. Unless, of course, it’s just to see her dear Nickel again.”
Emma arrived in a taxicab and asked Dominick to pay the man. But first she gave him a big hug and smooch and said, “I knew you’d come back.” Coconspirator had always struck Dominick as a cozy term, hinting at a bond unknown in everyday lives. It carried an aura of covert closeness, of secret sharing. It was certainly never a term he would have expected applied to himself, but at dinner that night, over chowder and French bread, Emma ordained him and Starks as her coconspirators. She acted as if it were a gift she was giving them.
Emma’s enthusiasm—a convert’s eagerness—was inviting. Starks had been right; there did seem to be some sort of sudden weird groundswell of public opinion against the LNG terminal in Old Grofton, some sort of Yankee closing of the ranks against an intruder. Emma seemed to know all the players and all the details. Even schoolkids were making posters opposed to the Hercules Corp’s project. The TV news especially liked covering the right-wing anti-Arab group’s antics.
“Graffiti?” Dominick asked.
“Some pretty good stuff,” Emma smiled. “Even if I do say so myself.”
Emma’s “kidnapping”—as she put it—by the ICE agents at The Harp had been her confirmation to the cause, that and a documentary she had seen on the dangers and evils of natural gas and its extraction. “You’ve got to see it.” Her release from custody had been for her the validation and proof of the righteousness of her cause. She was disconcertingly full of self-confidence and had all sorts of ideas about what their International Gaia Brigade could do next. “And to think,” she said, “that it all started right here at this table with your guys’ ide
a to reinvent Lord Witherspoon.”
“The hashish revolution,” Starks said.
“And all to save poor Atticus’s ass,” Dominick said.
“Well, Atticus is becoming a bit of a martyr to the cause now, you know. There are people who think he didn’t just innocently drop dead while being questioned.”
“Oh, come on,” Starks scoffed.
“The whole world knows that the feds don’t mind using extreme methods of interrogation when they think they are dealing with terrorists.”
“That’s the CIA and those types and not on US citizens.” Starks seemed offended.
“CIA, FBI, ICE—it’s all the same to most people. And they have used torture on American citizens. They had already questioned Atticus more than once. He had nothing to tell them. Why pull him in yet another time? I’m just telling what people are saying. It didn’t help that there was no autopsy and that they had him immediately cremated.”
“Wait,” Dominick said. “His daughter told me that she had him cremated.”
“Did she? Or did she just agree to it? In any case, it looks like a cover-up. The hospital they took him to was a veteran’s hospital, Army doctors.”
“Don’t you think this all sounds, well, a bit paranoid?” Starks said. “Like some conspiracy theory?”
“The fact remains he died in custody and would probably still be alive today if they had just left him alone.”
“Okay, so he qualifies as a martyr,” Starks said. “Does that make your Gaia Brigade some sort of church?”
“Oh, please, John. People can believe in something without making a religion out of it. Our little campaign, or more properly the feds’ overreaction to it, sparked something. Suddenly it was a federal crime to question something being pushed down our throats? Atticus’s death put a human face on the protest, a local face. Not some guy named Muhammad. You couldn’t get more New England than Atticus Jameson.”
“Spoken like a true zealot,” Dominick said. “Emma d’Arc.”
“You two are such cynics. I think that’s why I like you.”
“No, you’re cute when you’ve got a cause,” Starks said. “That warpath look suits you.”
“I don’t think Atticus would like the idea of his being a martyr,” Dominick said, “but no matter, as he isn’t around to like or dislike anything now. What’s next?”
“I don’t know. It’s all gotten pretty out of control. No coordination, different groups doing their own thing. Bay Savers has pretty much fallen out of the picture with Atticus gone and Theo cooperating with the feds. There was an interesting development in court in Boston today, though—a deadline that the Hercules lawyers missed, which is unlike them. They were supposed to respond to a show-cause motion that had been filed requesting a delay and an expanded environmental assessment, and they didn’t respond.”
“Which means what?”
“No one knows for sure. Just a dropped ball or what? But I was told that their not filing a response means the judge—a federal judge—pretty much has to grant the request for a delay. But they wouldn’t give up that easy. They’ve won every court decision thus far. They may have something up their sleeves.”
“Lawyers wear a lot of sleeves.” Starks opened another bottle of wine.
“I think, right now, your best course would be to just sit back and see what happens,” Dominick said. “Don’t get any more involved. I mean, do you want to find out personally if the feds are using torture or not?”
“The problem is I can’t think of a single funny thing to say about torture,” Starks said, refilling their wine glasses.
“It comes from the Latin for twisted,” Dominick volunteered.
“Emma, you do not want to become a twisted sister. It is not a wait-loss program.”
“Are you implying that I should lose some weight?”
“No, just that you should lean toward waiting. Patience, princess.”
After dinner Emma went to watch her cable news shows and Dominick went out to the porch to smoke a cigar. He wondered where his bad coyote was hanging out tonight. When he came back in, the house was quiet. Starks had retired and Emma was not in the study watching TV. He looked into his room, where an end-table lamp was lit and Emma was curled up under the covers on one side of the queen-size bed. Her back was to him.
“I want to sleep here tonight, Nickel. That couch is uncomfortable. I won’t bother you, if you don’t bother me. I’ve got my period anyhow.”
“Okay, go to sleep before I come in and start snoring.” Dominick went to the kitchen and poured himself a nightcap. This sharing of beds would have to stop. It disturbed his sleep.
Chapter 24
“John, I want to make it clear that I will be out of your hair as soon as possible. I know I have already overstayed the few days I asked for.” Dominick and Starks were seated at the dining room table the following evening, eating the braised lamb chops and risotto Dominick had cooked for supper. Dominick felt that some sort of apology was in order. That morning when Emma had left for town with Starks there had been no witty routines. Starks had seemed mildly irked by their presence and by Emma’s assumption that he would give her a ride. She hadn’t noticed, of course, just full of her cause and her plans, but Dominick noted it, a houseguest’s red flag—irritated host. So he had gone shopping and cooked dinner, entering into houseboy mode, and now he was broaching the delicate topic of EDD—estimated date of departure.
“Was I that unpleasant this morning?” Starks said. “I hate Mondays, always have, the end of make-believe and the start of their world. It was nothing personal, more universal.”
“But Emma staying over again . . .”
“Please, Dominick, do you flatter yourself by thinking I’m jealous?”
“It is your house.”
“And she was my guest as well. Although I fear Queen E is becoming a tad unhinged.”
“It’s not a game with her anymore.”
“Anyway, Dominick, stow your apologies. I enjoy your being here, and you can cook supper every night, if they’re all as good as this.”
“Then let me do that. It would be my pleasure. You can call in your menu requests.”
“You’re not worried about Emma?”
“Not my worry. She is a big girl, if you haven’t noticed.”
“You said you took some photos on your trip. Black-and-white, I presume. Shall I develop them for you?”
“That would be good, thanks. I’ve been shooting that film you gave me. And as long as we are exchanging favors, may I use the computer in your study to check my e-mail? I’ll be searching for the next place to go.”
“No problem, no hurry. No porn sites, please. Too many viruses.”
As a matter of fact, Dominick had already begun using Starks’s landline in search of his next destination, leaving messages with his e-mail address to respond to. Coming back had been a mistake.
It was several days later when Starks’s phone, which never rang, rang around midday. It was Starks. “You’ve been killed. Or at least Lord Witherspoon has been. Turn on the news, channel four.” Of course, by the time Dominick turned on the TV and found channel four there was an erectile dysfunction drug ad on and it took another half hour for them to circle back to their “top breaking story.”
The Coast Guard and federal authorities had released some details about an explosion and fire in the channel off Darby Point the night before. According to the Coast Guard, the vessel destroyed was a Chris-Craft powerboat that had been stolen the day before from a local marina. According to the federal authorities, the boat had been engaged in another terrorist attack on the Hercules Corp’s LNG compound in Old Grofton when it was intercepted by the authorities. A warning shot across the boat’s bow was answered by a burst of automatic weapons fire. When the fire was returned there was a violent explosion, destroying the vessel and all aboard.
Special Agent Kaczynski of Homeland Security affirmed that the stolen craft and its crew of three had become the obj
ect of an intense search since earlier in the day when through anonymous sources and surveillance it had been determined that one of its crew was the fugitive terrorist Jake Forrest, known locally as Lord Witherspoon. “Mr. Forrest was observed through night-vision goggles on the deck of the vessel firing an automatic weapon moments before the explosion.” Pieces of at least two bodies had been recovered, but positive identification was doubtful. Agent Kaczynski was briefly interviewed on camera. He was their abbreviated ICE man. He looked suitably grim and victorious. In a World War II movie—Audie Murphy—he would have been smoking a Lucky Strike. Another erectile dysfunction drug ad followed, as if men who watched the news had a chronic problem, one that could not be cured purely by buying a bigger pickup truck. Dominick clicked the set off.
Well, Agent K would be quite the hero now, having tracked down and eliminated a number one terrorist enemy of the state. At least he hadn’t thanked the lord for the professional courtesy of his assistance. Maybe that was in the part of the interview edited out. After all, was it not a godlike act to create someone and then destroy him? There was something almost biblical about it.
This called for a cigar. It was a sunny day, not spring yet but headed there. Dominick put on his jacket and walked up toward the big house. There was a south-facing terrace there with a stone bench from which he could see the bay. He would take a broad view of things. This, after all, no longer had anything to do with him. This was now entering the realm of history. An historic event had transpired. A transnational villain of mythic proportions—Jake Forrest, aka Lord Witherspoon, aka Nobody—had been vaporized right there on their bay. A terrorist attack on the homeland had been repulsed. A red letter day for America. And for Hercules Corp, which could proceed unimpeded by bombs. Agent K’s feat could now be entered into the register of patriotic exploits, and Dominick could brag that he had actually met the man himself, had the honor of being frisked by him.
