I hear a switch click and a small beam of light appears overhead. As I snap my buckle, I look up to find Sean sitting next to me, his hand resting on a rifle.
I curl my lip like I just pulled a hunk of rotting meat from the fridge. “You’re still here?”
He stares at me, flicks open one of the brackets that was locking the rifle in place. I wait for some kind of response but he just gives me a look implying hope—that he might find a reason to turn that weapon on me.
The SUV picks up speed as we rumble over the country road. Despite being buckled in, I am being tossed around, jerked forward and backward; because I can’t see outside I’m unable to anticipate curves and hills and braking. A few minutes into our rural ride we take a sharp turn—I go flying into the door—and the road softens to where it feels like we’re floating on air, only the hum of the tires indicates we haven’t actually left the ground.
We drive for another ten minutes before we finally slow, take a few rounded turns before coming to a stop. I hear the marshal doing the driving exchange very muffled words with someone outside the Excursion. Then we’re in motion again—and suddenly drop like we’re riding down a steep hill, drive in a circular pattern until we’ve descended to the bottom of some structure; the squealing tires suggest a parking garage.
We finally stop and the engine goes off. I hear the doors start popping open; one of the marshals opens mine. And as I step out, two men in suits and loosened ties offer their hands. One of them says, “Welcome to the WITSEC Safesite and Orientation Center.”
They turn to walk toward an entryway and I notice Sean looking around like it’s the first time he’s ever seen the place. Just before I take steps to follow the two men, I turn to Sean and say with forced glee, “Well, I guess this is goodbye.”
Sean walks back to the Excursion. “Hardly,” he says.
SEVEN
This facility, buried underground and likely roofed by a blanket of corn or soybeans, is actually a factory, an assembly line plant not unlike Ford’s. Though this place is rich with luxury, right down to plush carpets (soothing tones to calm the witness), smoked glass (to instill the notion of safety and privacy), and crown molding (reflects the traditions of home), the object—me—moves from one station to the next, being altered and enhanced until a finished, polished product is ready to be released.
When I walked through the door, the first thing they asked was whether they could get me anything. My answer: a place where I could crash for a few hours; I wanted clarity for all that was about to come. Instead of a couch next to the coffeepot in the break area, I was escorted to a private room—my room—complete with a private bath and king-size bed and television (with no cable or satellite access, used solely for watching DVDs); the only thing missing was the view: not a single window.
Now that I’ve slept—crashed through the night, woke just before dawn—and showered, I emerge from my room. I’m immediately spotted by a lady behind a large circular desk. She gently rises and comes to my side, asks me how I’m handling the adjustment and if I rested well; I suppose most people brought here are frightened into insomnia. As she speaks of the weather, tells me of pending rain that I will neither see nor hear, I follow her down the corridor where she deposits me in a small meeting room. I sit alone, start noticing the general theme of their interior design. My room, the halls, this meeting room, all alike: beige paint, large plush chairs, prints on the walls that always speak of hope and peace—impressionist views of vineyards and flower-filled hillsides, mallard ducks flying over fields and forests free of hunters and retrievers; seagulls nipping through oceanfront sand devoid of a single human body.
After a moment I’m greeted by a pair of coordinators, two women in their late fifties who speak with such calmness and smile so genuinely that it would be impossible, were I actually a witness on the run, not to absorb some sense of optimism from them. I’ve never met two people more suited for their jobs, for the roles they need to play in such a critical and stress-saturated environment.
I spend an hour with them, mostly chitchatting while I sip a cup of coffee and work down a bran muffin, though their true purpose is to give me a brief overview of my next week—week—at the facility, what to expect, who to contact for questions or health issues, what I need to do if I want to reserve the gym, and so forth. They ask my clothing size and assure me some apparel will be available for me by the end of the day. They inform me that this place is capable of housing many witnesses and their families at one time, and while our use of various parts of the building will overlap, I will never see them and they will never see me.
Then they explain each station of the assembly line.
I sit and listen as they unfold Justice’s grand plan for making me someone I was never meant to be, describe the specifics of how I’ll truly become another person right down to the legal documents that prove it, how Jonathan Bovaro is gone and can never return.
Day one: Psychology
My first full day at Safesite has me meeting with the psych team (one psychiatrist and one psychologist), who spend the first portion of our time administering surveys to determine my personality type—could have told them: mafioso with willing spirit and violent tendencies—to better plan my future in a world that will not recognize me. For the five hours that follow, they explain the impact of being in Witness Protection, likely the real reason this team was assembled, utilized not to only quell fears and concerns, but to help head off potential misgivings once the witness is already in the program.
The process of self-analysis exhausts me. Once they’re done, have smiled and shaken my hand and patted me on the shoulder, they set me free. As I lumber away from the center of the facility, thoughts of all the repercussions of my actions arrive and stick in my mind. Right now Gravina is bleeding, begging for some form of mercy, confessing his wasteful mistake, confirming that my intentions are real and true.
And after eating a meal in my room, alone, I lie back on my bed and stare at the ceiling and wonder where Melody is, what she is doing, pray she made her way.
Days two and three: Relocation Coordination
Imagine visiting a travel agency and being given the option to journey anywhere you’d like for free, with one condition: It must be bland. You might think a few hours would do the trick here, except this station I’m told is the most critical component from Justice’s end—the core cost center of the program—for some witnesses have made the mistake of relocating to parts of the country that mismatched their true needs. Beyond obvious preferences, like climate, they cover things that might not occur when looking at a map of the country, like crippling allergies specific to a region, or arthritic concerns (the Southwest is highly recommended). After completing yet another survey, they determine I’d pretty much enjoy any part of the country, as long as I’m placed near areas that offer fresh produce, cheeses, and meats year round—which means the entire West Coast or the Deep South. They inform me that any of these choices are fine because they are outside of the swell—the circle whose center point marks the position on the map where the people who want to harm me most reside, whose radius extends three hundred air miles.
They show me videos of these different sections of the country, forty-minute DVDs that put each area on display, provide all the statistics for populations and school systems and major employers, show summer and winter scenes, offer profiles of quiet towns and villages. As I watch them, I can’t help but be amused; they’ve covered these places in chocolate and whipped cream. I’ve visited many small corners of this nation in my pursuits of Melody, and by watching these videos you’d think the most attractive places in the country are the ones I never visited. I’m sure they have appealing videos of Michigan and Kentucky, too, absent the depiction of Willie and his cafoni trying to assault a young lady in a public park.
Much of the following day covers my preference for a career. Eventually, Kirsten, the young woman who’s been assisting, asks me what I like to do, what my skills and
interests and propensities are.
We stare each other down. What exactly would I say? I know how to launder money. I know how to manhandle information out of people. I’ve become fairly adept at tracking people down, breaking into buildings.
Eventually, with a shrug: “I like to cook.”
Kirsten raises her eyebrows and nods a little like I just made her workload a lot lighter, as if to say, Well, that’ll be easy.
Then back to my room, alone, with a meal, staring at the ceiling, wondering what Melody is doing, if she could ever know the best part of being in Safesite is that it distracts me from thinking about her every minute of every waking hour. And some of the nonwaking, too.
Days four and five: Legal
The legal team generates what they call a Memorandum of Understanding, the specifics of what was agreed upon with Justice—both ways—so that everyone knows what they’re getting and giving, but mostly so the witness can be certain of the details of his future, right down to the last penny of the monthly subsistence checks. My MOU confuses the legal team, has various members running in and out of the room to contact Justice to get broader details of what I’m giving back. They do not broaden much, pretty much stop at information against current dealings and relationships within the existing Bovaro organization.
On my end, I will receive: no advance bonus money; a full-time job that will be no less than a 65-percent match to one of my preferences as generated out of the meetings with the relocation coordinator; a guaranteed annual salary that will be augmented by subsistence checks of one thousand one hundred dollars per month for the first year and seven hundred fifty the following two years; a rent subsidy of five hundred dollars per month for two years. A lot for someone offering nothing, nothing for someone offering a lot.
By the end of day five I’m desperate to get my blood moving and ask one of the fiftysomething gals if I could reserve the gym. She tells me it’ll be free after dinner; I take it for an hour.
I’m escorted to the far end of the facility into a gymnasium half the size of a high school basketball court without the bleachers. I’m left alone, my shoes squeaking as I walk across the polished wood floor. I grab a basketball off a rack near the door to a small weight room and start dribbling, each bounce echoing through the room, the ceiling so high it makes me realize just how far underground we are. I take a few shots, begin moving faster, and progress to jump shots, try jamming it in a few times to no avail. As I hold the ball under my arm and catch my breath I look around the empty gym, wish I could borrow someone from the staff for a quick game of one-on-one.
I stare at the basket, put the ball on the ground and sit on it. And the realization arrives: I didn’t just swap places with Melody; I am becoming Melody. This is how it will be, countless months of enduring loneliness and isolation. I’ve been in Witness Protection for four days and I already feel it.
Melody felt it for twenty years.
I pray right now she is in someone’s embrace, despite how badly I wish it were mine.
Day six: Authentication
I don’t fully understand who comprises the authentication team, seems like some hybrid group of psychologists and technologists, but their critical function is to generate and explain the details of who you are becoming, from your name to a pseudo-history to the creation of documents—driver’s licenses, social security cards, college transcripts. Then they take me into a room and apply makeup to cover what remain of the cuts and bruises so recently delivered by Sean’s hand. I have my picture snapped seven times, each with a clothing change and modification to my hair, some with glasses on and some off, two taken at the end of the day with a full five o’clock shadow. The result: a collection of images that appear to have been assembled over the course of many years.
After the last flash lingers in my vision, I change my clothes and wash the makeup from my face and return to the gym again, intensify my workout, get my blood moving as best I can. I walk into the tiny exercise room and assess the equipment—older models that still look brand-new—and wall coverings, framed movie posters of films that could only bring light and carefree thoughts: You’ve Got Mail, Doc Hollywood, half of Jim Carrey’s earliest work. No signed prints of Casino or The Godfather here. I lift weights, beat the side of a dust-laden heavyweight bag, run on the treadmill, and listen to Melody sing to me via a small portable CD player on the floor in the corner: Aimee Mann.
As I get down on a mat and begin doing sit-ups, I recall the night Melody and I shared a bed, how our bodies were wrapped together between the sheets, how we conquered and surrendered to temptation at the same time. I replay the kiss—do so with regularity—that almost crumbled our commitment, would have dismantled her escape. I remember how I felt her giving in, the way she moaned as our lips moved together like it was the first time she had felt the rush of a drug. I remember how she was the stronger of the two of us, how she honored my request, how she held a finger to my mouth, how I felt her breath on my face. I reach for the words she spoke to me.
But then, even with all of the blood moving through my body and my brain, my memory stumbles, falls to the ground, and fractures: I can’t remember what she said. Don’t let me go, Jonathan. No. Save me, Jonathan. No. Rescue me, Jonathan. Nothing. I can’t remember. The words are so distant, almost gone. A sudden panic comes upon me at the notion that someday I will forget her, that the memories of her will be altered, incorrect. That I might one day look back and think, She was just a girl I was trying to protect, I guess I didn’t really know her the way I thought I did, instead of the truth: that no greater thing will ever come and go from my life, that the moments between us were the exact minutes and hours and days that define me, that my life is worth living if for no other reason than to recall what we shared.
I get to my feet, grab a towel, and run it over my face and hair and neck as I quickly make my way back down the hall to one of the coordinators. As I ask for a pad and a pen, she studies my look of alarm. I wave her off. “Don’t worry, nothing to do with the program.”
I enter my room and kneel before my bed and start writing everything I can remember from that night in Baltimore, narrate everything that occurred. Never mentioning her by name, I document every detail from the moment we returned to our rooms: her falling back on the bed and the smooth form of her body, her reluctance to cover herself and my desperate desire to cave in to her suggestive pose, helping tend to her wounds in the bath and how I caught indistinct glimpses of her naked body after the bubbles had popped, how we agreed to sleep in the same bed. Three pages later I’m still writing, approaching the sentence that is slipping my mind. I record the kiss to paper, take nearly an entire page to describe it, the way it made me feel, the sensation of the first kiss with the only woman I truly loved, even before I realized it. I write down how she pulled back, put a finger to my lips, looked me in the eye, breathed against my face, and said to me… said… whispered…
Keep me alive, Jonathan.
I write the first three of those four words on the pad and collapse on the floor in relief.
Day seven and part of eight: Procedural Consultations
The procedural team explains who to contact and what to do in case you’re ever spotted, and to offer general behaviors and lifestyle choices to avoid the public eye.
The combination of having to watch too many videos about counteraction and veiled survival and the fact that I’ve not seen sunlight in a week is starting to take a toll. I’ve been living underground in a facility that could be confused for a hotel, but all of the high ceilings and wide walkways can’t prevent it from feeling like what it is: a big tunnel.
I spend each remaining evening alone, exercising, then journaling. Now on my second notepad, I’ve documented each event from the few days that Melody and I spent together, written down every conversation, every experience, every observation we shared. The way her body looked when it moved, how she would purse her lips to suppress a smile, how the hue of her irises would change when her ey
es filled with tears. And in the pursuit of writing down all of these memories, I can’t believe how much I actually noticed.
I’ve been here for well over a week, completed the mandatory steps and ingested the indoctrination to the point where the knowledge of how to handle myself will be second nature—though it hardly matters. Who exactly would be coming after me?
In the dead period where they’re finalizing the details of a job, a car, a residence and furnishings, I am restless. Now that the amazement of what’s achieved here has faded, I realize that this place, this entire operation and division of the Department of Justice, was born out of protecting people from the likes of my father, of Peter and Tommy Fingers, of me. When I was a kid and I’d help unload the back of an eighteen-wheeler my brothers had broken into, it was presented as a crime where no one got hurt. But people were getting hurt every day—financially and physically—and once I was old enough to understand what my family really did, a different kind of indoctrination had occurred, one built on acceptance and apathy, along with a sharper focus on retaliating against those who wronged us or had it coming. But here, in this sanctuary built to safeguard the innocent and brave defectors, you see what is required for true protection. The government had to do this because of us.
Upon arrival I was told Safesite could house several families at one time, and throughout my entire stay I have yet to see one person who was not an employee of the Department of Justice.
Until.
Until this very moment: As I leave my room just past seven o’clock on my thirteenth day, I catch sight of a little boy who could not be more than seven years old, standing far down the walkway with his hand touching the corner that faces an intersection of hallways. He gazes up and down the corridor with a nervous look on his face, then turns and stares at me for a few seconds, as if he might ask me where a certain person or room was, faces me squarely from fifty feet away like we’re preparing for a duel. He takes a half step in my direction before being snatched up by a woman and pulled away. I see nothing more than a forearm and a bangle-covered wrist before he disappears.
The Exceptions Page 37
