by John Enright
Now, there was a perfect example of revisionist history. It had been the tall agent, not short Agent K, who had frisked them at Charlie’s, but that unnecessary detail would only dilute the impact of the story. Dominick was now smoking his cigar on the stone bench, looking down the rolling brown meadow toward the bay. The historic record had been diddled with like that long before digital photographs. Sometimes actual events made lousy narratives, and story was the important part of history. Soon the story of the battle of Darby Point would begin its petrifaction into historic fact and Agent K would need a publicist. It would not make any difference that it was all invention. But body parts? Those were more difficult to produce than faked photographs.
Dominick fixed Cajun short ribs for supper that night. Starks told him that their local news was now national, with the old photos of Jake Forrest and even the faked one of Forrest and Atticus on the boat playing on cable news. “The International Gaia Brigade is now infamous,” Starks said.
“Excuse me for being so vain,” Dominick said as he brought the food to the table, “but am I to understand that a photograph of my body—albeit with a different face—is on national TV?”
“International, and it’s your hands holding the camera, too.”
“Fame, so fleeting.”
“Aren’t you lucky? They identify your friend Atticus by name, as a probable accomplice.”
“Tying it all up. I hope it’s not too spicy for you.”
“Well, there is still the question of who the other two men on the blown-up boat were, and the Coast Guard is conducting a pro forma inquiry, but, yeah, it is a bit over the mark with the cayenne.”
“It’s what the recipe called for. Of course, I do sometimes confuse teaspoons and tablespoons. Has anyone asked what all those explosives onboard the Chris-Craft were for? I mean, there’s nothing really at Darby Point yet to blow up.”
“Question unasked, along with why the ICE guys were out there alone without FBI, Coast Guard, or local assistance when a so-called intense search was in progress.”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter,” Dominick said. “Here, more bread. Want another beer?”
“Thanks. It was a pretty bold move on their part anyway. Do they think this will end it?”
“And who exactly are they? I made a flan for desert. That should ease your palate.”
After supper Starks loaded the dishwasher and went off to his darkroom downstairs. Dominick went to the study to watch the cable news. He did want to see his body on TV, but he had to wait through the other news. Starks came to the study door. “Dominick, we have to talk,” he said, and he turned and walked off toward the front room. Dominick followed him. Starks dropped a pile of photographs and contact sheets on the dining room table. “I developed your film,” he said. “A few good shots.”
“Thanks. What’s wrong?”
“Dominick, when I invited you here I opened my house to you. I did not grant you entry into my past.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This,” Starks said, sorting out some black-and-white prints from the pile and laying them out for Dominick, shots of the shadows inside Broadmoor. “This is my past, not yours. My parents’ home, not yours. My dreams and nightmares, not yours.”
“John, I . . .”
“You had no right to go there. You trespassed. You broke into and entered my private world.”
“No, I found the keys to an old and deserted house and I wandered around in empty rooms, a space that had been empty a long, long time. If that is your past, John, god help you.”
“Look at your photographs, Dominick. You wanted to own that space.”
“I was photographing shadows, for Christ’s sake, dust motes not memories, contrasts not crime scenes.”
“Why did you say that? Why?” John Starks was suddenly as Dominick had never seen him before. He was angry, furious. He stepped back and flexed as if punched. “What do you know? Why, really, are you here?”
“John, I . . . really, come on. If I was trying to hide something I would not have given you the film to develop. I’m sorry if I crossed some line by going up there, but . . .”
“This and this,” Starks flopped two more prints in front of Dominick. One shot was of a corner of the Broadmoor kitchen where the slanting barred light from an unseen window did a disappearing trick above a counter. The other was of sunlight coming down the staircase from one of the turrets into an otherwise darkened hall.
“Do you know why all my sharp kitchen knives are locked up and I had to show you how to unlock the drawer to get one to use? Because my mother stabbed my father to death in that kitchen, against that counter, in a jealous rage. You knew that, didn’t you? Somebody told you. And this, this.” Starks jabbed his finger into the other photo, into the shadows at the end of the hall. “You even caught her face watching you; just as she watches me whenever I go there.”
Dominick picked up the print to study it, and, yes, there in the shadows of the dark hallway were the faint symmetrical highlights of what might be construed as the cheekbones and brow and nose of a face.
“I’ve destroyed your negatives and I will destroy these prints, stolen property, and you will have to leave, Dominick. Not tonight. I won’t throw you out into the cold, but as soon as you can. Our continuative present has ended. Good night.”
When Dominick got up in the morning Starks was already gone. Once again Dominick could leisurely pack and load his car. He was in no hurry. He had no idea where he was going. As he left he slipped the spare house key under the tread on the bottom step where Starks kept it. He was feeling rather numb, not at all philosophical.
Not a hundred yards down the road, Emma was drudging along, talking on her cell phone. She either didn’t notice or didn’t recognize him driving by. She had her head down as she walked and talked. Dominick turned around in the next driveway and headed back. There was no other traffic on Starks’s road. He pulled up beside her and buzzed down the passenger-side window. “Emma, if you are headed to John’s house, no one is at home.”
“Oh, oh it’s you,” she said. Then into her phone, “Gotta go. Do you think you can find it? It’s a house with two turrets up on a bluff. There’s a cove with a dock. I’ll have a light. Bye.” Emma clicked her phone shut. She was wearing a small backpack that she slipped off and tossed on the seat between them before getting in. “O Lover, am I glad to see you.”
“What’s up?” Dominick asked. He pulled back onto the road and drove back the way he had just come, but past Starks’s driveway.
“Where?” Emma asked, expecting them to turn in.
“I’m not there anymore. John has gone solo, guest-free again.”
“I was hoping you guys could put me up again, just until dusk. It’s sort of urgent.”
“How so?” The roads here circled around the big estates. Dominick took a left onto a smaller back lane.
“I’ve got to escape. Someone will pick me up in a boat.”
“I gathered that. Escape from what?”
“The feds are after me. I’m headed for Canada.”
“Emma, what in the world? What have you done now?”
“There were bomb threats today, e-mailed to the local ICE and FBI offices.”
“And?”
“They were signed by the IGB, supposedly in retaliation for the murder of Forrest and Atticus.”
“And?”
“The feds think I did it.”
Dominick took another left. “And did you?”
“No. Honest Injun, Nickel, I wasn’t responsible, but they have their plants in the movement. They know who to blame. Someone fingered me, and I can’t prove I didn’t do it. I’m no good to the cause in the slammer. Been there, done that. Not this time, sweetheart.” A variety of delightful youthful energy emanated from Emma as she leaned forward in her seat. “Not this time, baby.”
“But your cell phone, can’t they trace that?”
“Oh shit, I never thought. What should
I do?”
“Make another call, to anyone. No, wait.” Dominick took another left, back onto a main road that led to a shoreline stretch with plenty of new houses at least two miles up the coast from Broadmoor. “Now. Then after they answer give it a minute, hang up, and turn it off.”
“You’re so clever, Nickel.”
“I’m just guessing.”
She did as he said. Dominick turned the car around and headed back to Starks’s. At the carriage house Dominick had Emma wait in the car while he retrieved the apartment key from the bottom stair tread and went up and let himself in. The ring of keys with the key to the big house was still there in the same kitchen drawer. He drove up there and unlocked the house. Emma followed him in. He led her through the empty rooms and up the main staircase to the second floor, then up the circular stairs to the turret. “You’ll hide here,” he told her. “I’ll come and get you when the coast is clear.”
“I have to be down at the dock by dusk.”
“How did you know there was a cove and a dock?”
“John and I used to run dope in there from visiting yachties now and then in the old days. Before they’d hit customs. It’s secluded. Nickel, I don’t know what to say.”
“Just don’t say anything over your phone.”
Dominick locked the house behind him as he left. He drove back to Starks’s and went up into the apartment. He needed to take a piss and he wanted a drink. He wasn’t sure what to do. Was he aiding and abetting a fugitive? Could he believe Emma that she hadn’t placed the bomb threats? Should he stay or go? He decided to leave—best not to deal with cops if you could avoid it. But as he walked out the front door, a drink in hand, the road at the end of the driveway filled up with police vehicles and two pulled in the driveway. Dominick turned and went back inside, finishing his drink.
He watched from the windows as two officers—they were State Police—went around to the back of the carriage house. The doorbell rang. Two more officers were at the door. One said they were in pursuit of a dangerous fugitive and would like to search the premises. It wasn’t exactly phrased as a request. Dominick could imagine what Atticus would have told them, but he stepped aside and gestured them in. Their search was quick and perfunctory, but every room and closet was visited. The garages downstairs? one of them asked. Dominick knew they were locked, but guessed that one of the keys on the key ring would open them. The key ring was still in his pocket, but he went to the kitchen to pretend to fetch it. It took several tries, but he found the right key, and they searched the garages and darkroom as well.
The house up there? One of the officers said, gesturing toward Broadmoor. The two other officers were already headed up there in their cruiser. Empty, Dominick told them. No one had lived there for years. Did he have a key? Otherwise they would have to break in. Dominick wanted to ask them if they were familiar with the Fourth Amendment, but instead he said, yes, he had a key. He got into the back seat of the cruiser and drove up there with them. It had been a while since he had graced the back seat of a police car, but at least this time his hands were not cuffed behind him.
“What is it your fugitive has done?” Dominick asked them. “I didn’t hear anything on the news.”
“Federal case, terrorist.”
“Oh, an Arab?” Dominick said.
“No, this one is homegrown, I gather, an Indian.” The officer held up a poor-quality faxed photo of Emma with her hair pulled back, a mug shot. She had never looked more like Geronimo. “Seen her in the neighborhood? Maybe she works as a domestic for someone?”
“Do Native Americans work as domestics?” Dominick asked.
“Just a guess. They traced a call from her cell phone to someplace near here. I don’t know what else she’d be doing in a neighborhood like this.”
Dominick unlocked the house and the same two officers went in while the others circled outside. Dominick followed them in.
“This place is like a tomb,” the officer said. “You’re sure no one’s been in here?”
“I come up now and then to check on the place. Only ghosts.”
The other officer went upstairs. Dominick could hear him opening and closing doors. Then there was the sound of the radio in both of the cruisers squawking, and a voice called from outside. “Todd, Todd, they’ve got a new location on her up the road. She’s still on the move.”
“Yo, Luke,” the officer with Dominick yelled up the stairs. “Let’s go. We’re out of here. Thank you, sir. We’ll give you a ride back down.”
Dominick locked the door behind them and rode back to the carriage house with them. “Well, good luck,” he said, getting out of the car. “Be careful, those Indians can be dangerous.” He liked the idea of their having to search all those houses down by the beach. Maybe somebody there would have the guts to ask if they had a warrant. The cop cars were all gone from the road, though now and then one raced by in one direction or the other. A black helicopter passed overhead in a hurry.
Dominick poured himself another drink. He would wait till all was calm, both outside and within his gut, before going up to release Emma. She had until dusk and she was safe where she was. His car was packed. This would all soon be history. He went into the study and turned on the TV—it was still tuned to the news channel—and there was Emma’s mug shot. The announcer identified her as a leader of the IGB—even they were using just the initials now—successor to the slain Lord Witherspoon and wanted by the authorities. She was armed and dangerous, they said. The FBI had released the text of the bomb threat, which read in part, “You have killed innocent people. If this is now war, then you are war criminals.” It was signed Commander Em, IGB.
This time Dominick walked up to the big house. He let himself in and walked up the stairs to the second floor. “Emma, all clear. It’s just me, Nickel,” he called out as he walked down the hall toward the door to the turret stairs. But as he went to open the door it was locked. “Emma, the cops are gone. Come unlock the door.” He tried the knob again, but it would not open. “Emma!”
Emma’s voice came from behind the door. “That is you, isn’t it, Nickel?”
“Me and just me, Commander Em. Come on, it’s time to go. Unlock the door.”
“I didn’t lock it. Someone else did, from the outside.”
“What? When?”
“After you and the troopers left. The trooper opened the door, you know. I heard him. I guess he didn’t feel like walking up more stairs.” Emma was now shaking the doorknob from the other side. “It was after that. I saw them leave and was going to come down, but you had told me to stay, so I did. Then I heard someone lock the door.”
“Step back, go back up the stairs,” Dominick said. He backed up and kicked at the door above the latch, trying to spring it. Nothing. A few more tries had the same result. Then a kick missed and hit a central door panel, which splintered around his foot. A few more kicks removed the rest of the rotted-out panels. “Can you make it through there?” he asked. Emma managed to squeeze her way through, ripping her poncho.
“I thought you had sneaked up here and locked me in for some reason. To keep me from escaping or something, to wait for them to post a reward. I had bad thoughts about you, Nickel. It wasn’t you?”
“No, it wasn’t me, and nobody else came up here either. Old houses do strange things. Let’s go.”
Emma reached back through the busted door and pulled out her backpack. “What do you mean, they do strange things?”
“Old houses have memories. Sometimes they repeat themselves out of habit.”
“Well, did this place used to give people the creeps? Because that’s what it is giving me.”
The path down to the dock on the cove was obvious enough once they found the entrance to it in the scrub. Dominick left Emma there. He wanted to get back and leave before Starks returned from work. “You did send those bomb threats, didn’t you, Emma?” he asked as they stood at the top of the path, looking out at the empty cove.
“Actually,
yes, I did have a hand in it, Nickel. I lied to you because I was afraid you wouldn’t help me if you thought I was guilty of what they were chasing me for. Forgive me? This is just the beginning, Nickel. Extreme times demand extreme measures. We won’t stop until they are stopped.”
“They is a huge number.”
“Gotta try.”
“Good luck. Watch your back. Don’t trust anyone who makes being trusted a big deal.”
They hugged and Emma headed off down the trail to the dock. Dominick walked back to the carriage house, put the ring of keys back in the kitchen drawer and the apartment key under the bottom stair tread, got in his car, and drove away. Twilight was just coming on. He had nowhere to go. He drove away from the direction Starks would be coming home, which took him down the road past the new beach houses. There were police cars everywhere. He was stopped at a roadblock. They checked his backseat and had him open his trunk.
“Moving?” An officer asked him.
“Just on vacation,” Dominick said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing to do with you, bud. Just move on along.”
Chapter 25
Names on the land should have meanings, a reason for being there. After all, every place name had an origin, a footprint in history. Someone or some group of people at some point in time had decided to call their place either Pleasantville or Tombstone. Some place name origins were dictated by what was there—Fall River, Grand Canyon, Cedar Creek. Others were acts of religious devotion—Providence, Trinidad, Virginia, all of the Saints—or politics—Pittsburgh, Louisville, Georgetown—or patriotism—Jacksonville, Lincoln, all the Washingtons. Then there were, especially here in New England, all the News, homage to places left behind—New Bedford, New Brunswick, New Wherever.
Place names as exits in white letters on green signs showed up in his headlights as Dominick drove away from New Jerusalem. People should know where their place’s name came from. Why Tiverton? Why Wareham? Even the original names that somehow remained. Who knew the meaning of Acushnet or Weweantic, Mattapoisett or Popponesett? What had those words once meant? Why had time’s renaming passed them over?
