“She’s got keys,” Tomlinson told me as I followed him outside, “but she can’t let me use them. It’s the same reason she pretends not to know anything about my brother or father. She’s scared.”
I said, “If her job’s on the line, can you blame her?”
“For sure. I loved that lady, man. With a rack like that, who wouldn’t? She was my wet nurse.”
I said, “Huh?”
He wagged his eyebrows—End of subject—before saying, “If there’s a trust company running the place, it means my father’s still alive. Hell, he could be on the property right now and she’d be a fool to tell me. Or my brother could be holed up here. Fifteen acres—there used to be anyway—including two guesthouses, staff cottages and a machine shop the size of a barn.
“Old Hank would crap his burial skivvies if he knew the place was being rented. Commoners? Yuppies? God forbid, a Protestant. Damn, I should’ve brought a flashlight. But you’ve got one, I bet. The ultimate flashlight snob.”
I said, “I do, and you might be right,” as I took a mini ASP Triad from my pocket. Palm-sized, but it fired a beam so bright it was considered dangerous. I shined it through a garage window. Empty. Next, we went to the machine shop. It was a museum piece of 1890s technology. Industrial lathes, metal stock, instruments for precise threading and tolerances. Both guesthouses were locked, no sign of activity through the windows.
In a wooded area was a cabin where Tomlinson said he’d often slept on summer nights. I watched him stand on tiptoes, feeling along an overhead beam, until he said, “I’ll be damned,” then showed me what looked like a Wonder Bread bag twisted into a knot. Inside were two brittle Trojan packets and a rusted harmonica. Unfortunately, the harmonica still worked.
Outside was a faded outline of a catcher painted on the wall. Sixty feet six inches away was an indentation where there had once been a pitching rubber. Tomlinson stopped blowing on the harmonica long enough to tell me, “Fifty to a hundred pitches a day,” then showed me where his first and only dog, Elvis, a springer spaniel, was buried.
He was right, the estate was huge, at one time a self-sufficient village. It would take a full day to search the place.
We returned to the main house. As I followed Tomlinson up a winding staircase, I said, “When you told me rich, I had no idea,” hoping he’d put the damn harmonica away if I kept him talking.
He clomped up the steps, eyes sweeping over familiar details. “The only difference between doves and pigeons is where they crap. I was one of the fortunate ones—materialism sucks if you’ve had everything. Plus, my old man made us get jobs, so I learned at an early age that employment sucks, too. I didn’t choose to be a boat bum, God chose me. He replaced my thirst for status with a thirst for beer. It’s a calling, sort of like religion or drug exploration.”
He still had his sense of humor, and the harmonica was in his pocket. Good.
We’d reached the fourth floor. There was another door, this one sealed with a steel bar used as a dead bolt. Greta had told us only the first three floors were used by renters. The top floors were family storage.
I said, “If it’s okay, I think I can get in,” then took out a tiny restraint cutter. As I worked on the top bolt, I asked Tomlinson what it was like to return after almost twenty years.
“Weird, man. But it could get weirder if the old digs haven’t changed. My room was on the fourth floor, Norry’s on the fifth. It matched his elevated opinion of himself. What’s the antonym for identical twins? Mirror opposites? That works. Never once did I see him shed a tear. Farting was as close as he came to showing emotion. He was a mathematical wizard. And talk about a damn know-it-all!”
I said, “I’m convinced. As different as night and day, you and your brother. Know-it-alls get tiresome quick.”
“Okay, okay, but he was obsessive, too. You’ll see, if his room’s the same.”
It was. Library shelves alphabetized. Model cars and airplanes, a ’68 Corvette fastback, surfer blue I wanted to touch but the place was too much like a museum. Trophies for chess, basketball and . . . golf. Tomlinson gave me a knowing look before I leaned to inspect a bag of clubs.
“Is the nine iron still missing?”
I checked again. “No. Just the cover.”
He nodded slowly, thinking about it but not surprised. “My mother was still alive then. That woman would have gone to the gallows for Norvin. But me? She threatened adoption after my first arrest for possession. On the phone, I said, ‘Mother, I chose LSD, not IBM. Think of it as a business trip.’ She didn’t think it was funny either. What’s funnier is how some parents say they don’t have favorites.”
I smiled but was picturing something else, the mother sneaking in to replace the nine iron. If true, a young girl’s death had taken seed in this space, a room that was more like a shrine.
Virgil Sylvester’s bitterness was not misplaced.
Put her head on a tee, he had said. A commercial fisherman, not a golfer. Or were rules about using tees different in the Hamptons?
I looked at Tomlinson, who wasn’t smiling now. I didn’t ask.
After finding the Yale photo, I began picking out other mementos associated with Skull and Bones. Miniature death’s-heads, a map of Deer Island—Bonesmen owned the place, supposedly. There were also caricatures of a flat-faced Indian holding a Winchester: Geronimo.
Tomlinson told me he’d heard the same thing: Bonesmen had stolen Geronimo’s skull from an Apache cemetery out west and kept it locked away in their Tomb stronghold.
“We got into a big fight after I jumped Norry’s case about it. It was just after he’d joined. You know me, simpatico with the Skins. I kept pushing, but he wouldn’t answer the question. Simple: Do you assholes have the great chief ’s skull?
“Some of the AIM founders, the American Indian Movement, they were like my brothers in those days. I did sweat lodges and the whole Ghost Dance thing. Four days, no food or water. Ate my first peyote button, which wasn’t part of the ceremony. Not smart, it turned out. Peyote on an empty stomach. Wow!
“Back then,” Tomlinson added, “I was an absurd adolescent only about ninety percent of the time. But there were moments of clarity.”
I was looking at lists of names in a trifold frame, as Tomlinson told me that his mother’s family and his father’s family all went to Yale. “When I chose Harvard, it was like I’d pissed on the flag . . . which I’d actually done, by the way.” He started to elaborate, then reconsidered. “No need for the nasty look. Shallow up, Doctor.”
“These are all Bonesmen?” I turned the frame so he could see it.
“The oldest to the newest, left to right. Every member of Skull and Bones since whenever the hell it started. Eighteen hundreds? You’ll find my father’s name and Norvin’s. Plus a surprise. It’ll jump out at you.”
The roster started with the class of 1838. The list was alphabetized. My eye slowed on familiar names. Four U.S. presidents. Lesser-known State Department and CIA icons: William Bundy; Richard Drain; Dino Pionzio, a CIA deputy chief; Winston Lord; William Draper, an early proponent of the United Nations.
Beside every name was a date, with one exception.
Henry A. Tomlinson. No date.
Tomlinson was looking over my shoulder. “Google it on the Internet. Type in ‘Skull and Bones membership list.’ It’ll come up the same way.”
“No date? I don’t get it.”
He shrugged, and picked up a bronze figurine of Geronimo. “No idea. We’ll never find out. It’s why they scare me. Part of the reason I turned traitor. But Norvin joined the corporation. Every Bonesman gets a big chunk of money from an endowment . . . and one of those.” Tomlinson looked from the photo to an ornate grandfather clock in the corner. “They’ve got their fingers in everything, man. Oil, the military-industrial complex. The whole New World Order thing. Some people even believe they were behind the JFK assassination.”
I had been nodding patiently until then. Tomlinson is among the many ed
ucated, intelligent people I know who are willing to believe that world events are steered by sinister groups and secret alliances, but I have my limits.
I said, “Skull and Bones, it’s part of the great Right Wing Conspiracy. Or is it the Left Wing now? I can’t keep track.”
“Make fun if you want, but power attracts power, and power corrupts.”
“Yeah? I think there’s a genetic conspiracy that compels primates to believe in dragons and herd like dumbasses. Fraternity boys don’t participate in murder just because they share a secret handshake—especially after they’ve become successful adults.”
“I don’t know, man . . .” Tomlinson lost the thread as his eyes moved to the ceiling, the walls. “Norry will inherit this place if smack doesn’t kill him. He’s welcome to it—and all that bad juju that’s hooked to the package. I feel guilty saying that, Doc. Blood . . . family. They’re still in my heart, you know? I envy the ones who stay close, but it’s not my karma. Some people are born alone. I was. You were, too.”
His lips were pursed as he stared at the figurine. “I knew the girl who disappeared. She was sweet. She had a pale violet aura: poetic. Her family worked for us. To hurt someone defenseless. To take a club and . . .” He grimaced. “I don’t want to think my brother could do something so . . . vile. Or my dad. We never got along, but he’s my dad, man.”
I said, “It could have been someone else. Or maybe it didn’t happen the way you think. Her body wasn’t found, no charges filed.”
“I’d like to believe that, but I don’t know.” He sat on the bed. “It took a while after the girl was murdered, but they both flipped out. Dad went to the Amazon to study fossils and never came back . . . that I know of. Norry went to Indonesia to study Islam but found the Poppy God instead. Running from their consciences. I think.”
I said, “A Bonesman leaving the country to become Muslim?” It made no sense, unless Norvin actually had worked for an intelligence agency. He wouldn’t have been the first to be consumed by his own cover story.
Tomlinson said, “Some people attack their old lives to validate their new ones. Valid point, though. Skull and Bones is a one-way religion.”
I placed the frame on the desk and began going through a stack of magazines as Tomlinson opened his hand, showing me the Indian figurine.
“There’s not a strip mall in the country that isn’t built on Indian bones. Geronimo was a shaman. Marion, they stole his head. I know you don’t believe, but I’ve seen it work too many times. It’s a different kind of power.” He paused. “The Apache graveyard is in Oklahoma. Did you know that?”
“No. Now that I do, I’ll try to forget it.” The man had littered my mind with so much oddball trivia that I was trying to do some housekeeping.
“Geronimo lived in Florida, too. With a bunch of imprisoned Florida Indians before they were all shipped west. You told me Will Chaser was from a reservation in Seminole County, Oklahoma. Synergy, man, it’s becoming clear to me now . . .”
I knew what Tomlinson was implying but didn’t want to hear his fairy-tale notions of spirituality and noble Indians. I was more interested in an article I had found. After years of court battles and injunctions, Skull and Bones had recently been forced to allow in female members.
“This magazine’s only a few months old,” I interrupted. “Someone’s been here.” I handed him the magazine, then looked at another that was folded open.
Tomlinson began to grin. “Women, the source of reason and light. Also, the ultimate ball-breaker cannibals. Skull and Bones has finally had its cherry busted. Older members, they’ve gotta be mad as hell. In a room full of Bonesmen, I bet Charles Manson would seem bedrock solid, the last nickel bargain in CEOs.”
“Even for you, that’s absurd.” I was trying to concentrate. “Do you know if your brother ever visited Cuba?”
He appeared surprised. “Not when I knew him.”
“Your father?”
“Same answer.”
Tomlinson had been to Cuba at least twice. No need to ask.
I continued going through magazines. Obsessive people dog-ear pages, use a highlighter, underline passages. Someone—maybe one of the Tomlinson men—circled things. He’d been keeping track of the females petitioning to get into Skull and Bones. He’d also been following the battle for Castro’s confiscated files. Key names had been circled.
I said, “On the fraternity roster, did you notice some of the other names? A couple of members helped plan the Bay of Pigs invasion. The country’s first attempt to take down Castro after he came to power. A generation older than your brother, but still . . .”
“You’re looking for a connection. Cuba, a kidnapping, Bonesmen.”
I said, “I don’t look, I collect—or try to. The Bay of Pigs was a disaster. Someone in a top spot tipped off the Soviets. No one’s ever figured out who.”
“A traitor.”
“Depends on which side you’re on.”
“It’s what I’ve been thinking all along. Castro’s papers could expose the wizard behind the curtain. Like Judas—that’s what I was telling you on the plane. The Tenth Man . . . Tinman. Same thing.”
I said, “Since 1959 there have been a lot of men behind a lot of curtains.”
Judas, the tenth disciple. J—the tenth letter in the alphabet—Tomlinson loved all symmetrical intersectings that suggested the world was orderly, design-driven.
I hadn’t told him that the real name of the covert operative, Tinman, had been confirmed. But which Tomlinson?
“That song was in the dream—Tinman ! The dream that pulled me back to the old homeplace. ‘But Oz never did nothing to the Tin Man/That he didn’t, didn’t already have—’ ” An old habit, perhaps, he reached for the harmonica in his pocket.
Before he got to it, I asked, “When you were in the Hamptons last week, who did you tell that you knew Senator Hayes-Sorrento? Or that I was meeting her for dinner last night?”
“A couple of people, I guess.”
“Barbara and I made our dinner date almost a month ago. Any late-night gabbing? Or text-messaging with your Long Island pals?”
He said, “Hey!,” offended. On his computer, Tomlinson had pasted a cryptic note: “No Es or Cs while D & S”—No E-mails or Calls while Drunk and Stoned. It had saved him money and cut down on next-day apologies.
I tossed the magazine into Tomlinson’s lap and watched his face change as he read.
“Sonuvabitch. It’s them. Bonesmen are behind the kidnapping deal.”
I said it again: “Fraternity boys don’t participate in murder just because of a secret handshake.”
“Well . . . it means my brother’s involved, at the very least.”
I said, “Is he?,” studying his reaction. I was thinking about the Cuban Program, scanning for a way to link it with an Ivy Leaguer from the Hamptons. If there was a connection, what completed the triangle?
Tomlinson stood. “We’ve got to search this place. I mean, really search it.”
I told him no, what we had to do was seal off the area as best we could until an FBI crime team arrived, plus the local cops and more search choppers.
I added, “I want to go back to that horse farm. If the trainer wakes up, you’ll do the explaining.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Why? All day the cops were there.”
“Because . . . Just because.”
I didn’t have an answer, but it was true when I told him that the helicopters were equipped with heat-sensing radar. The corpse of a dead horse, still cooling, could mask the heat signature of a live human.
I told him to find a phone or I’d get mine from the car.
“Call in the cavalry,” the phrase I used, unaware of the irony until I referred to Will Chaser, adding, “Saving the Indian kid takes precedence.”
I watched Tomlinson’s hand become a fist, squeezing the little bronze statue of Geronimo.
“I’m taking this with us for luck.”
> I replied, “Good. Something to keep your hands busy,” which he chose to ignore.
18
A harmonica . . . ?
Someone’s playing a damn harmonica!
Uh-huh. Like a cartoon. Some doofus swallows a harmonica and makes haww-heee . . . heee-haww notes as he walks.
Will Chaser could picture it, although he couldn’t see.
A man. No, two men, talking. Close.
Nothing he could do but listen, until the sound of the harmonica was transformed in his head and began to resemble Cazzio’s wheezing scream.
Harmonica. Sounded like a donkey bloated on helium, something he knew about because he’d joked around with some girls using a helium balloon a few years back at the fairgrounds in Oklahoma City. Native American Rodeo Championship. Senior Division, even though he was twelve at the time. The Yavapai Apache team had brought him in as a ringer. How could he lose riding Blue Jacket?
“The kid wants to wager how much . . . ?”
Skins off the Rez loved gambling and vodka—vodka because bosses couldn’t smell it on the job. The more booze in their bellies, the stupider they got, which was fine because Will had cashed in. Made . . . six bills? About that.
Shak-oh-pee!
A word from the old language. Another thing about Skins when drunk. They’d throw together the few phrases they remembered, getting belligerent, as their eyes glazed, pretending to be real Indian warriors like in the movies that Old Man Guttersen watched. Just as fake, too.
An excuse for acting like assholes, is what it was. Same as when they passed out, curling up in some alley—Will had seen it—then later, claimed they’d been on a Vision Quest. Visited by the Old Ones in their dreams.
Vision Quests. Dreams. All bullshit.
Haww-heee . . . heee-haww.
The harmonica again. Or maybe he was dreaming now? A nightmare, all of it. Which meant he was imagining men’s voices, too.
Dead Silence Page 16
