The Pursuit of Happiness (2001)

by Douglas Kennedy

  ‘Oh shit,’ he whispered.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Smythe,’ one of them said. ‘I hope this isn’t an unpleasant surprise.’

  Eric said nothing.

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’ the gentleman asked. Then he proffered his hand. ‘Agent Brad Sweet of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You must be Sara Smythe.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

  ‘The doorman at the Hampshire House knows you. And he informed us that you’d been with your brother in his apartment since yesterday evening. After, of course, your visit to the law offices of a certain …’ He held out his hand. His associate put a file into it. He opened the file. He read aloud from it. ‘The law offices of a certain Joel Eberts on Sullivan Street. He has impeccable subversive credentials, your lawyer not to mention a file on him as thick as the Manhattan phone book. Then, after your little legal pow-wow, you headed to the offices of Thomas Cook at 511 Fifth Avenue and booked passage on the SS Rotterdam, departing this evening. Afterwards, of course, you came here to the passport office, hoping to pull that last-minute travel ruse, so beloved of individuals trying to leave the United States in a hurry.’

  He shut the file.

  ‘But, I’m afraid, you won’t be leaving the country tonight - as the Department of State have put your passport application on hold, pending the outcome of the Bureau’s investigation into your political allegiances.’

  ‘That’s outrageous,’ I heard myself saying.

  ‘No,’ Agent Sweet said mildly. ‘It’s all perfectly legal. After all, why should the State Department issue a passport to someone whose presence overseas may be harmful to American interests …’

  ‘Oh for God’s sakes,’ I said, ‘what harm has he done to this country?’

  Eric said nothing. He just sat on the bench, staring down at the fake marble floor.

  ‘If he cooperates with us tomorrow, his passport will be issued within twenty-four hours. If, of course, he still wants to leave the country. Five p.m. tomorrow at NBC, Mr Smythe. I look forward to seeing you there.’

  With a curt nod in my direction, Agent Sweet and his associate left. Eric and I sat motionless on the bench for a few minutes. Neither of us could move.

  ‘I’m dead,’ he said.

  I stayed with him again that night. I tried to get him to talk things through - to work out some sort of strategy before facing Sweet and the NBC people tomorrow.

  ‘There’s nothing more to discuss,’ Eric said.

  ‘But what are you going to do?’

  ‘I am going to get into bed, pull the covers over my head, and hide.’

  I couldn’t stop him from doing that. Nor did I want to - as, at least, I would know where he was. He was so exhausted, so stressed, that he fell asleep shortly after getting into bed. I tried to follow suit - but I spent much of the night staring at the living room ceiling, feeling both convulsed with rage and utterly helpless in the face of the FBI’s onslaught on my brother. My mind was speeding, as I tried to figure some sort of possible way out for Eric. But I came up with nothing. He’d either have to name names, or suffer the consequences.

  I wanted to believe that - if I was in his position - I’d play Joan of Arc, and refuse to cooperate. But everyone envisages themselves doing the heroic thing when sitting in an armchair. Brought face-to-face with the reality of the dilemma, however, things often turn out differently. You never really know what you’re made of until you find yourself standing astride a precipice, looking down into a very deep void.

  Sleep finally hit me around three that morning. When I jolted awake again, the sun was at full wattage. I glanced at my watch. Eleven twelve. Damn. Damn. Damn. I shouted for Eric. No reply. I got up from the sofa and went into his bedroom. He wasn’t there. Nor was he in the bathroom, or the kitchen. Panicked, I scoured all surfaces for a note, telling me he’d gone out for a walk. Nothing. I picked up the house phone and spoke to the doorman.

  ‘Yeah - Mr Smythe left around seven this morning. It was funny, though …’

  ‘What was funny?’

  ‘He called me before he came downstairs, and asked me if I’d like to make ten bucks. Sure, says I. “Well, I’m gonna take the elevator down to the basement, and I’ll give you ten bucks if you open the service entrance and let me out. Oh, and if anybody comes by looking for me this morning, just tell ‘em I haven’t left the apartment.” No problem, I tell him. I mean, I can easily shaddup for ten bucks.’

  ‘Did anyone come by?’

  ‘Nah - but there’s been these two guys in a car, parked across the street since I came on duty at six.’

  ‘So they didn’t see him leave?’

  ‘How could they, when he went out the back.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you where he was going?’

  ‘Nah - but he had a suitcase with him …’

  Now I was alarmed.

  ‘He what … ?’

  ‘He had this big suitcase with him. Like he was goin’ away somewhere.’

  I thought fast.

  ‘How’d you like to make another ten bucks?’ I asked.

  I threw on some clothes, I took the elevator down to the basement. I handed the doorman ten bucks. He opened the door to the service entrance.

  ‘If those men come back asking either for Eric or me …’ I said.

  ‘You’re still asleep upstairs, right?’

  The service entrance led to an alleyway on West 56th Street. I hopped a cab, and took it down to Joel Eberts’ office. Because, quite frankly, I didn’t know where else to go. As always, he was welcoming - and appalled when I told him what had happened at the passport office yesterday afternoon.

  ‘I tell you,’ he said, ‘we’re turning into a police state - and all in the name of the Red Menace.’

  But he was even more alarmed by the news that Eric was last spotted sneaking out of the side entrance of the Hampshire House with a suitcase in hand.

  ‘You can run, but you can’t hide from these bastards. If he’s not at NBC today, HUAC will instantly subpoena him. And the Feds will dream up some crime and misdemeanor in order to issue a warrant for his arrest. He should just face the music, no matter what happens.’

  ‘I agree - but as I don’t know where he’s gone, I can’t give him that advice.’

  ‘You know, you don’t need a passport for Canada,’ Eberts said.

  He made a fast call to Penn Station, asking to be put through to the reservations office. Yes, they told him, a train had left at ten that morning - but there were no passengers registered under the name of Eric Smythe. When he asked if they could check and see if he was registered on any other departing trains, they said that they didn’t have the time or manpower to search through every passenger list of every train.

  ‘You know what the guy in Reservations told me?’ Eberts said after hanging up the phone. “If finding this guy is so important, call the Feds.”’

  That was the only time I’d laughed in two days.

  I suddenly had a brainstorm, and asked to use the phone. First I called the Rainbow Room and spoke to the receptionist and found out that the Rainbow Room band were staying at the Hotel Shoreham in Atlantic City. I got the number and got lucky: Ronnie - in true musician style - was still asleep at twelve thirty. But he woke up quickly after I told him about the events of the last two days.

  ‘You have no idea where he is?’ he asked, sounding genuinely worried.

  ‘I was hoping that he might have come down to see you. But had he, he would have been there by now.’

  ‘Look, I’ll stay in the room all afternoon. If he’s not here by four, I’ll see if I can get out of tonight’s gig and come back to Manhattan. I hope to hell he hasn’t done something really stupid. I mean, if he loses his job, he loses his job. I’ll make sure he’s all right. As I know you will too.’

  ‘I’m sure he just panicked,’ I said, trying to convince myself this was true. ‘I bet anything that he’ll surface in a couple of hours. Which is why I’m hea
ding back to his apartment straight away. You can reach me there all day.’

  I was back at the Hampshire House by one. I used the service entrance, and took the elevator up to Eric’s apartment. There was no sign of his return, and the switchboard operator had logged no calls for him. I used the house phone to call Sean, the doorman.

  ‘Sorry, Miss Smythe. Your brother hasn’t shown his face yet - but those two guys in the car are still out front.’

  I worked the phones all afternoon, calling every possible bar, restaurant, or haunt that Eric frequented. I called the travel agent at Thomas Cook who’d booked Eric’s passage to Europe, on the long shot that he might have asked her to dispatch him somewhere within the States. I checked in every hour with Ronnie. I phoned the superintendent of my building, wondering if he’d seen my brother loitering with intent outside. I knew that all my efforts at locating him were futile ones - but I had to keep busy.

  At four, Ronnie phoned me, to say that he’d managed to find someone to cover him for tonight, and he was taking the next train back to Manhattan. He showed up at the apartment around six thirty. I was pacing the floor at that point, wondering why Agent Sweet hadn’t phoned the apartment at five to enquire about Eric’s whereabouts. After all, he was supposed to have been at NBC then. But now he was a fugitive; a man who had run away. Though I didn’t want to articulate my deepest fear to Ronnie, I couldn’t help but think: I may never see my brother again.

  At eight, we called the Carnegie Deli and had them deliver sandwiches and beer. We settled down in the living room and continued the wait. The evening went by quickly. Ronnie was a great talker - with a huge cache of stories about growing up in Puerto Rico and earning his chops as a musician. He chatted on about all-night drinking sessions with Charlie Parker, and surviving as one of Artie Shaw’s side men for seven months, and why Benny Goodman was the cheapest band leader in history. He kept me laughing. He helped numb the fear we were both feeling. Round about midnight, however, he started to admit his worry.

  ‘If your dumb, crazy brother has done anything really self-destructive, I’ll never forgive him.’

  ‘That’ll make two of us.’

  ‘If I lost him, I’d …’

  He shuddered a bit. I reached out and gripped his arm.

  ‘He’ll be back, Ronnie. I’m sure of it.’

  By two that morning, however, there was still no sign of him. So Ronnie retired to the bedroom and I returned, once again, to the sofa bed. I was so drained that I was asleep within minutes. Then I smelled smoke. My eyes jumped open. It was early morning. Thin dawn light was creeping through the blinds. Groggy, I squinted at my watch. Six nineteen. Then I heard a voice.

  ‘Good morning.’

  It was Eric, sitting in an armchair near the sofa, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. His suitcase was on the floor next to him.

  I leapt up from the bed. I threw my arms around him.

  ‘Thank God …’ I said.

  Eric managed a tired smile. ‘He had nothing to do with it,’ he said.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Here and there.’

  ‘You had me frantic. I’d thought you’d left town.’

  ‘I did. Sort of. At seven yesterday morning, I woke up and decided that the only thing I could do was get the next flight to Mexico City. Because, outside of Canada, Mexico’s the only foreign country you can enter without a passport. And hell, I’d done time down there after Father died, so I figured it was a logical destination for me.

  ‘Of course, I knew the Feds would be out in front of the building, so I tipped the doorman and had him slip me out of the side entrance. I hopped a cab, and told him to take me to Idlewild. Want to know something funny? If the cabbie hadn’t taken the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, I’m sure I’d be on a flight to Mexico right now. But there we were, heading to Queens on that bridge. And I made the mistake of turning around in the back seat, and seeing that midtown skyline framed by the rear window. And before I had time to think about it, I told the cabbie, “Change of plan. As soon as you get off the bridge, turn around and bring me back to Manhattan.”

  ‘The driver didn’t like this one bit. “You crazy or somethin’?” he asked me.

  ‘“Yeah, I’m crazy. Crazy enough to stay here when I shouldn’t.”

  ‘I got him to drop me off at Grand Central Station. I checked my bag at the left luggage place there - but it was raining, so before I turned the bag over to the guy, I opened it up to get a folding umbrella I’d packed away for London. That’s when I found your gift. I tell you, I cried when I saw the inscription. Because I also knew that this was the pen I’d use to name names.’

  I swallowed hard. And said nothing.

  ‘That’s what I had decided, halfway across the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge. I was going to be a stoolie. I was going to sing like a canary. I was going to sell out several people who I hadn’t seen in years, and who were as innocent as I was. I was going to keep my job, and keep my lifestyle, and keep being able to run a tab at 21. Yeah, I’d feel bad about it … but dem’s de breaks, right? I mean, if the Feds knew I’d been a member of the Party, then they also knew that the people I’d be naming had been members too. So all I’d be doing is telling them stuff they already knew.

  ‘Or, at least, that’s how I rationalized it to myself.

  ‘So I clipped the pen inside my jacket pocket, and decided that I’d celebrate my last eight hours as a man with a relatively clean conscience by doing whatever the hell I wanted to do. Especially since I had a thousand bucks in traveler’s checks in my wallet. So I treated myself to a champagne breakfast at the Waldorf. Then I wandered into Tiffany’s and dropped some serious cash on a sterling silver cigarette case for Ronnie and a little something for you.’

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small blue box marked Tiffany’s. He tossed it over to me. I stared down at it.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ I asked.

  ‘Absolutely. Well go on, open the damn thing.’

  I lifted off the lid, and stared down at an absurdly dazzling pair of platinum teardrop earrings, studded with small, perfect diamonds. I was speechless.

  ‘Does your silence indicate ambivalence?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re beautiful. But you shouldn’t have done this.’

  ‘Of course I should have. Don’t you know that the great American rule of thumb is - when committing an act of moral cowardice, always soften the blow for yourself by spending a lot of money?

  ‘Anyway, after my little spree at Tiffany’s I walked up Fifth Avenue and spent a few leisurely hours at the Metropolitan Museum, looking at Rembrandts. They’ve got The Return of the Prodigal Son on loan from Amsterdam. Helluva picture, as Jack Warner would say. The misery of family, the need for redemption, the tug between responsibility and desire - all wrapped up in one really dark canvas. I tell you, S - the only person to use black better than Rembrandt is Coco Chanel.

  ‘After the Met, it was lunchtime. Off to 21. Two martinis, an entire Maine lobster, half a bottle of Pouilly-Fume … and I was ready for a little more hoch kultur. The New York Phil was doing a matinee at Carnegie Hall with your old favorite, Bruno Walter, on the podium. And the band were playing Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony. Amazing stuff. A big cathedral of sound. A guided tour of heaven in the company of a devout believer - and a sense that there is something just a little grander and more all-encompassing than our trivial endeavors on Planet Stupid.

  ‘The audience went nuts when the concert ended. I too was on my feet, cheering my lungs out. Until I glanced at my watch. Four thirty. Time to stroll down to Rockefeller Center and engage in some very dirty work.