by Mike Bogin
“You need some swimming lessons.”
“Don’t go there, mofo. None of that ‘black man can’t swim’ shit. For real.“
“I’m just saying.”
“And I’m just tellin’. Look at you. Mother-fuckin’ skinny-ass string bean, orange-head sunflower. Do I look like Michael Phelps? Do I?”
“That’s true. I guess bowling balls don’t float.”
“There you go, motherfucker. Black got nothing to do with nothing.”
“Who said anything about black? Bowling balls come in every color.”
“O, get away from me. I ain’t wasting breath on you.”
“Hey, hippos are elegant in the water.”
“I ain’t funning, Carrot Top. I pulled my own ass out of that water. Don’t be talking bowling balls and hippopotamuses no how. You just leave that be.
Look at these clothes. Ruined. Man, these cost money! I didn’t drive to North Bergen to get these at the Wal-Mart, unlike some people I know.”
Owen smiled. Tee was fine.
The two FBI snipers had Al gripped under both arms. He was upright and walking. He shuffled his bare feet onto the dirt pathway atop the riverbank.
It was past nine-thirty at night, all stars and mosquitoes, when two vans arrived at the nearest river access to pick them up. Al and Owen were able to change out of their sopped clothing and into blue one-piece jumpsuits in the vans. Owen’s suit rode high up his ankles and chafed in the crotch. The one-size-fits-all outfits were too small for Tremaine.
Major Gonzalez rode with the members from his team in one of the two vans. The specialist and his sixth squad member rode back to Hastings-on-Hudson aboard the Arcadia and were waiting there for the vans to pick them up.
“You don’t want Callie to know, then you’re going to have to make something up,” Tremaine told Owen. “And you can’t lie for shit.” They exchanged long glances and nodded at one another, quietly appreciating being alive and well.
* * * * *
Along the drive back to Manhattan, images of the fire kept coming back to Tremaine. Owen had come way too close. Tremaine couldn’t help feeling upset, too. Owen had toweled Al’s hair dry and all his attention went into the old guy for the whole drive.
When they reached the city, Owen insisted that he was driving Al home.
“Go to your wife and boys,” Al protested.
“You lost your glasses, Al. I’m driving you. Case closed.”
“We made a mess of it today,” Owen said as he drove.
“No, we didn’t. Those people on the Arcadia? They are alive right now,” Al reminded Owen.
“Those people are going home tonight to their families, their houses, their lives. Me, I’m here now, in this car, with my life because of you. Owen, mark my words. This is a success. A great success.”
Al was smiling. He could see the whole chessboard now.
“We succeeded,” he told Owen again. “We were ahead of the curve.” He was already quietly framing their next move.
After Owen pulled in front of the Pre-War co-op, Al turned to him and asked, “Would you like to come up?” then immediately apologized. “I’m sorry. You have your family. They’ll be expecting you home.”
“Callie thinks I’m spending the night in West Point. I’ll come up.”
Al felt nervous as they rode the elevator upstairs. Yes, he still had his keys.
The last time he had approached the apartment, bringing in the real estate ladies, his feet had felt like lead. Now he wanted Owen come inside.
Sometimes, when he used to drink, he occasionally would strike up a conversation and allow himself to just be, to not think so much. He hadn’t made many friends while sober.
A musty, acrid old book stench hit Owen’s nose when Al cracked the front door and pulled out his key. In the entry foyer, Al made out his outline reflected in the large wall mirror and recoiled. The blue jumpsuit made him unrecognizable without his glasses.
“Schlemiel,” he groused, feeling ridiculous as he bumped into piles of magazines stacked up against the wall opposite the coat closet.
He moved into the apartment feeling his way along for light switches. Owen followed behind, moving himself sideways until coming to the living room.
“I’m just going to find my extra glasses,” Al told Owen before feeling his way toward his bedroom doorway. “Maybe you can put some water on the stove?”
When he stepped into the cramped kitchen, Owen thought that Callie ought to see the glorified closet. Compared to this, she wouldn’t have anything to complain about. Dishes and serving plates and Tupperware were stacked on top of the kitchen cabinets inside a kitchen where one person cooking alone needed to dance the cha-cha just to open up the refrigerator door.
“I’m having no luck, Owen,” Al called. “The problem with losing my glasses is I need my glasses to find them!” But he sounded cheerful, not frustrated. Trudy was gone, but Eamonn Cullen’s boy was there, inside his home. Cullens had given him life, two times!
Owen came out from the kitchen and squeezed through the narrow bedroom doorway to help out. The bedroom consisted of a single bed on a wood frame against the longer wall, three long shelves on l-brackets above the mattress, one with books, the others with model airplanes and miscellaneous electronic parts. Al had already felt his way along the shelves without success.
Owen scanned the child’s desk that had been raised up with bricks beneath the corners so that an adult could sit without hitting his thighs on the center drawer. Two desktop computers, two monitors, stacks of CDs. Owen pressed on the desk lamp to add wattage to the dark room lit by two small bulbs inside the only ceiling fixture. On the wall behind the desk, three frames displayed Al’s Bar Mitzvah certificate, his high school diploma, and his college diploma from Columbia.
There was just one window in the small room. Through the wide metal Venetian blinds held together by frayed, yellowed straps, Owen looked onto an interior light shaft shared between several apartments.
He didn’t say anything, but the surroundings weren’t what he expected. He probably always knew it wasn’t true, but he was still expecting to see a richer place; Al was a Jew, after all.
Collapsible television tables flanked both ends of the desk, fall leaf patterns set into the semi-clear plastic tops. On these, Al had ancient tubes of glue, scattered screwdrivers, soldering iron, magnifying lens, a pink plastic retainer that had once been for his upper teeth, pennies, nickels, and dimes. More coins were scattered on the worn green carpeting.
“Here they are,” Owen called, offering the glasses to Al. The glasses had been set atop one of the computer keyboards. Al’s hand reached out and closed over Owen’s before sliding down to grab hold of the glasses just as the kettle whistled.
Al poured out coffee then opened one cabinet after another in search of the powdered creamer until there was room only to stand and spin in place. Every nook and cranny was overflowing with odds and ends. Trudy had amassed years of accrued belongings. She never threw away anything.
Nothing had been touched since the paramedics took Trudy to Lenox Hill. Owen had to help Al shift the living room furniture back into place before they could sit across from one another.
“So you really think we did well?” said Owen. “How? Spencer got away. All our cell phones are ruined; somebody is on the hook for a new boat motor and a whole new boat.”
“Nobody got killed,” Al reminded. “And we got inside his head! The next time we get that close to him, we will get him. We know now that we can predict his targets, and that, my friend, is huge. If we had to get a little wet to prove the hypothesis, it was a small price to pay.”
Owen enjoyed seeing Al acting so animated, but he remained skeptical. Spencer wouldn’t walk into another trap. Wouldn’t he change his tactics after today?<
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“We know we are ahead of him, but he doesn’t know that,” Al reasoned. “He has no idea that we weren’t security for the Arcadia.”
“Firing automatic weapons?”
“He knows the stakes will be getting higher and higher. His target options are getting fewer all the time. Billionaires are paying extra for all sorts of after-market protection. Automatic weapons fire didn’t offer any “tell.”
“So why doesn’t he go to ground? With his skills, he might just disappear.”
“If Bigfoot really is Jonathan Spencer, he can’t have many resources. Spencer got $32,000 in cash. We know that he bought a new Harley-Davidson. That had to take most of it. Besides, would any man who does these things be thinking much or caring very much about having a future?”
The plan he envisioned had Al feeling energized. Awake. The hypothesis was proven. What they had been unable to do was to control the terrain.
“He isn’t going to shy away from risk. He thrives on it. Now we’re going to leverage that to take him down.”
Al put his mug down beside a manila envelope atop the coffee table. He had been dreading taking up the stickers inside the envelope that the real estate lady had given to him to label everything as “keep, sell, or give away.” He looked around and suddenly realized that he didn’t want anything at all from the apartment. He was going to start fresh.
“Owen, where do you get boxes?”
“What sort of boxes?”
“Boxes-boxes. For all of this.” Al looked over the apartment. Tchotchkes were everywhere. All the dark years, when Trudy had nothing, experiencing the living nightmare of the camps; after Auschwitz, she kept everything.
“Time to move. I’m putting the apartment up for sale.”
Owen’s mind drifted to his own mountains of accumulation. Just between the shed and the basement, there was so damned much stuff he needed to get cleared out.
“If you put it up as ‘Free Stuff’ on Craigslist, you can get rid of pretty much anything. Just list all the things you want to have gone and tell people to bring their own boxes.” Strange, it sounded so easy when he said it to Al. It did not occur to him that he could just leave behind anything he didn’t want to keep, that a whole new industry had formed around clearing out other people’s junk when banks foreclosed.
“Looks like we’re moving, too,” Owen revealed. “Callie
hasn’t ever wanted the house. It’s always going to be Eamonn’s, not hers, and now our only good friends are moving away.”
“You’re young, strong. Look how you saved me. Take your wife and your sons and make a new home.”
Owen sipped the coffee, feeling the warm liquid against his lips.
He hadn’t told Mike or Tremaine, yet here he was, nearly at midnight, spilling everything to Al.
“We owe much more to the bank than the old place is worth now,” Owen blurted.
“You’re not alone,” Al reminded him. “Thousands, millions of people are owing more to the banks than homes are worth. I read about that in the papers.
Start fresh. Hand the keys to the bank and good riddance.”
Owen shook his head no. “Not that easy. The bank, or whoever it is who owns the loan, can come after us for huge money. They get to seek what’s called a ‘deficiency judgment’ in court for everything we owe beyond whatever they recover by re-selling the house. We saw a lawyer and the guy is telling us to stop making our payments. He wants us to destroy our credit and let them foreclose on the house, get their deficiency judgment, and then have us declare bankruptcy.”
Saying it out loud made it sound even worse. Why did he just say that? Al couldn’t have any answers. Why did he burden Al?
“Look, Al. Thanks for the coffee. I really should get home.” Owen had to pee, but he didn’t want to ask to use the toilet here.
“You do that, you know.” Al saw the pattern.
“Do what?”
“You open up a little bit and away you go.” Al patted the sofa cushion. “Sit. I want to tell you about your father.” It felt good, and right, to be passing along something to Eamonn’s boy. Al was sure that he could never be as capable at mentoring as Eamonn, but he could try.
“Your father was a mensch, a man of character. It’s not so easy giving up a bottle of vodka every night. So he would sit with me, late, for hours and what did he talk about? You. You pitching the baseball. You doing that business with taking back in the trash cans for everybody. You getting to be the Eagle Scout. Your father was good and you are good and anybody who is judging can go to hell,” Al insisted. “So stop with judging yourself. People are not perfect. We’re not meant to be perfect.”
He said: “Look at the strength that you have, enough to handle whatever comes your way. I can see that strength, but don’t put all this on yourself. Share the good, but share the bad, too. Give your family, give everyone who cares about you, the chance to help. I know your father! Eamonn would tell you ‘to hell with the house!’ You don’t need to do that, to shoulder everything alone.”
Owen nodded. He listened, but nothing had changed. “Thanks, Al. You get some sleep. I’m going to head home.”
“Owen, I’m going to have all this money from the apartment. Let me help you and your family.”
“Al, you don’t owe me anything! What I did today, I just did.”
“Did I say I owe you?” Al insisted. “I want to help. Let me. It will be a gift to me much more than you. Think on it, will you? Accepting is a kindness to me.”
“It’s been a long day, Al. I have to go.”
By the time the old elevator had bumped to a stop and its doors urged open, Owen reached the street level bursting. He cleared the building and peed against the corner, not giving a damn whether he was caught doing it on one of his department’s cameras.
He had plenty more important concerns to occupy his mind on the drive home. How was he going to lie to Callie? It wasn’t like Callie was going to miss that he was coming home wearing a blue jumpsuit.
Dansk was even less likely to let him slide. She had given him a direct order to keep her informed on FBI activities in the case.
* * * * *
He undressed in the bathroom and hid the blue jumpsuit at the back of the linen cabinet behind the towels. “You didn’t answer your phone,” Callie grumbled, still more asleep than awake when Owen came into the bedroom. It was a cooler night, finally, and she could sleep without the air-conditioning on. She always woke up with her throat dried out from the A/C.
“My phone broke,” Owen whispered. “I’ll need to get a new one.” He leaned to kiss her but she rolled away from him.
“Some woman called twice,” Callie remembered. “A reporter. Her number is by the phone.”
Whoever she was and whatever she wanted would wait until morning.
* * * * *
Owen was up again before six, showered and out the door before Callie leveled any more questions. He grabbed the note with the reporter’s name and telephone number on his way. To gauge whether the river debacle had drawn much attention, he turned on Emerson Elliot. He was hoping that no casualties might translate into no news attention.
“Looks like Bullets for Billionaires was blocked last night before he could up his score card with a nasty pack of blue-blood billionaires,” Elliot announced with exaggerated disappointment.
“Aw crap,” Owen griped out loud. So much for flying under the radar. And it was about to get worse.
Emerson Elliot sounded disappointed. “These guys, the Twenty-Fives, are Tea Party-meets-Skull and Crossbones. All taxes are evil. Mandingo black men are putting it to the white women and diluting the race. Yellow hordes are waiting to pounce upon the diluted white race. Separate, and anything but equal.”
Elliot had been glancing down a list of well-known
Twenty-Fives and in just a quick pass he found four congressmen and Carlton Jeffers, head of Americans for Patriotic Action.
“FBI agents and our own NYPD Blue saved the day,” EE continued. “Bullets shot holes in their police boats, but no police officers were hurt and Bullets escaped without a trace. Our tax dollars protected Herbert Hoover billionaires who don’t want to pay taxes! Now isn’t that precious?”
Police and FBI had shot one to two hundred rounds at Bullets, but he was long gone.
“We have the video and dozens of eye witnesses,” Elliot said. “He could have been shooting ducks in a barrel, but Bullets didn’t harm any of them. Instead of hurting them, he disabled their boats and left them swimming.
I’m probably not supposed to say this out loud, but did they really need to save Carlton Jeffers? Like this country really needs APA writing legislation into every state in the Union!”
Owen wondered what Elliot was talking about. A video?
“Good job, Bullets, and our first and finest.” EE closed the segment by asking his audience, “Kinda makes you wonder why they’re not on the same side, doesn’t it?”
Upon getting to The Bunker, Owen left a message with tech support. He needed to turn over his SIM card and have them make arrangements for a replacement telephone.
Nothing could get done until 09:00, which meant waiting two and a half hours. Owen planted himself with two Styrofoam cups of black coffee and a land line, then pulled the reporter’s number from his shirt pocket. If she was going to call his home number, he’d call her at 6:55 in the morning. See how she liked that.
“I’m calling for Sarah Bannerjee. This is Detective-Lieutenant Cullen.”
“Hello,” she answered, extending the long o. She sounded delighted to hear from him, as though she had been up for hours. “Lieutenant, I am so pleased to hear from you.” Bannerjee introduced herself as a freelance reporter and blogger. “You have over three hundred thousand hits.”
