Shift: A Novel

by Tim Kring

  “Oh, I like that!” the CIA man said as the conductor scurried off. “‘S-s-s-s-s-sir.’ Trying to show some respeck to the Negro people, even though it don’t come nat’ral.” The man leaned back in his seat, kneeing BC’s legs toward the aisle so he could stretch out his own. His accent, which came and went with the conductor, shifted once again, from the fields to the Big House. “Lemme guess,” he said in the relaxed drawl of a plantation owner, “you a Southern boy, but just barely. Maryland, maybe DC proper. Maybe even Arlington. But no farther down. If you was from farther down, you wouldn’t-a stuttered when you said sir. You wouldn’t-a said it a-tall.”

  BC stared at the man, trying to decide what to say. In the end, manners won out.

  “I’m from Takoma Park.”

  “Hell, you almost home then.”

  With a start, BC realized the train was moving. Had been for some time—they’d crossed the Maryland border already.

  “Lemme guess. PG County? You got yourself a little bit of a race problem in PG, don’t you? Darkies moving in, flatbed trucks loaded down with corn-shuck mattresses and pickaninnies. Your people get out in time? Hell, what am I saying? Look at that suit. Of course they didn’t. Stuck with some big old row house, I bet, tall and narrow in the front but stretching way back to one-a them little kitchen gardens that don’t get enough sunlight to grow anything besides beans and lettuce. Couldn’t sell a place like that for ten cents on the dollar right now, what with the character of the neighborhood changing the way it has. Well, you couldn’t sell it to a white family anyway.”

  The man’s ability to read BC was a bit unnerving. There was a stunted apple tree in the back garden, but still.

  He reached for his book and held it up as if it were a shield. “If you don’t mind—”

  “Wuzzat?” the man said, screwing up his face and squinting at the book as though it were a Polynesian totem or the innards of a Japanese transistor radio.

  “It’s, uh, a novel. A work of, um, ‘alternative history.’”

  “Huh. Not too redundant.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “C’mon, Beau. History’s full of alternate versions, depending on who’s doing the telling. What’d your momma call the Civil War?”

  BC colored slightly. “The War of Northern Aggression.”

  “See what I mean? To good old-fashioned Christians like your momma, the war was all about common Yankees trampling on Southern pride. To Negroes like our overstepping conductor, it was about ending slavery. To Abe Lincoln, it was about preserving the Union. It’s just a matter of who you ask.” Without warning he snatched the book from BC’s hands. “Lemme guess. J. Edna told you to look for ‘anti-American content’ so he can decide whether to put”—he glanced at the book cover—“Mr. Philip K. Dick on a watch list, along with Norman Mailer and Jimmy Baldwin and Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller and Ken Kesey and—stop me if I get one wrong. No? Jesus Chris, Beau, who do you work for? The FBI or the Library of Congress?”

  “I’m looking for subversive content. Not anti-American.”

  “How in the hell can a novel be subversive? It’s all made up.”

  “It can put ideas in people’s heads.”

  “Well, golly, we wouldn’t want to do that, would we?”

  BC smiled tightly and held out his hand. “Still, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll get back to it.”

  “Get back to it?” the man scoffed. “You haven’t even started it.”

  “How did you—”

  “No bookmark. And if I know my Beau Query—and I think I do—I bet you got yourself a personalized bookmark that moves from book to book, and you never start a new one before finishing the last.”

  “My name is Querrey. Beau-Christian Querrey.”

  “Don’t blame me for that. I only just met you.” The man grinned. “C’mon. Show me the bookmark. Come on.”

  Despite himself, BC snorted and reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a wafer-thin rectangle the size of a charge plate. It was made of ivory, however, rather than cardboard or plastic, and had a finely engraved image of—

  “Why, that’s just too poignant, ain’t it?” The CIA man snatched the bookmark from BC’s hand. “Huck and Tom rafting down the Mississippi. Poignant and pointed. Practically on—the—nose,” he said, tapping his broad nostrils with the corner of the card. “Well, now, that’s got a edge to it.” He rasped the bookmark over the shiny stubble on his cheek. “Bet you use that to cut pages, too, don’t you?”

  BC would have snatched the bookmark from the man’s hand, but it had belonged to his mother, and his mother had taught him not to snatch.

  “But now lemme think here,” the man said, scratching his face with the bookmark and staring at the book in his other hand. “Subversive content, sub-ver-sive con-tent. Why, that sounds like COINTELPRO work to me. So I gotta ask: what’d you do to get demoted?”

  “Counterintelligence is one of the most prestigious—” BC stopped himself. This interrogation had reached an absurd pitch. Had the man researched him before getting on the train? And if so, why?

  “See, only two kinds of agent end up in Counterintelligence: the ones who’ve served the Bureau long enough to prove to J. Edna that their first loyalty is to him rather than the law, in which case they’re sent out to infiltrate whatever group’s got his panties in a bunch—socialists, suffragettes, and of course the darkies—and the ones who’re a little too independent for their own good. Maybe they open up a closed case to prove someone was convicted on faulty or, dare I say it, falsified evidence, or they call the local paper before they make a bust to make sure their picture ends up on the front page. The only thing J. Edna hates more than an open case is when a story about the Bureau mentions someone’s name other than his. Of course he can’t fire you for doing your job, so instead you get mustered out of—” He squinted at BC. “Organized Crime? Behavioral Profiling?”

  “Profiling.” BC sighed.

  “And now you’re reading weirdo novels looking for subversive content and taking long train rides to—well, I guess we’re back where we started, ain’t we? Where are you heading today, Beau?”

  The man’s read on his career was so accurate that BC had to laugh, if uncomfortably.

  “At this point I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I can say about myself that you don’t already know, so why don’t you tell me something: were you really in Cuba?”

  The man’s lips curled oddly around his cigar, and it took BC a moment to realize he was smiling.

  “Would you like me to have been in Cuba, Beau?”

  “I’d like you to be in Cuba right now.”

  A roar of laughter erupted from the man’s mouth.

  “D’you hear that, boy? He’d like me to be in Cuba right now! That’s the best thing I heard since you called me a nigger!”

  BC looked over his shoulder, saw the Negro conductor marching slow and steady down the aisle with a glass in each hand. He set the drinks down and scurried away, even as wet smoky laughter continued to burble out of BC’s companion’s throat.

  “Let me explain the difference between an intelligence agent and a federal agent, Beau. See, a spy understands information’s value isn’t its accuracy, but how it can be deployed. The question isn’t, Was I in Cuba, but, Can I make you believe I was in Cuba?”

  BC couldn’t help himself. He made a grab for his book, but the man was faster, held it above his head like a game of keep-away. But then, smiling, he tossed it to BC, who held it in both hands like a puppy for one embarrassing moment, then set it on the table.

  The man sucked on his cigar and smiled wickedly. “What was his name?”

  “Who?” BC said, although he knew what the man was talking about.

  “The guy you got out of jail.”

  BC rolled his eyes. “Roosevelt Jones.”

  “Well, that answers my next question, don’t it?”

  “Yes.” BC sighed. “He was a Negro.”

 
The CIA man scrutinized him a moment, and then a broad smile spread across his face.

  “You got your picture in the paper too, didn’t you?”

  BC had been waiting for the question. “Well, I couldn’t very well get an innocent man out of jail and then leave a crime unsolved, could I?”

  The CIA man laughed even louder than he had before. “Well, get a load-a you! I wouldn’t-a thought you had it in you.” Suddenly the man’s voice leveled. “Well?”

  Once again BC knew what the man was referring to; once again he pretended ignorance.

  “Well what?”

  “Yeah, you might be a good detective, but you’re a terrible actor. So just tell me: did the Bureau manufacture evidence to convict Nigger Jones?”

  BC steeled himself.

  “No.”

  The man smiled again, but this time it was a mean smile. Mean, but not surprised, which only made BC’s shame greater.

  “Like I said, Beau: you’re a terrible actor.”

  BC’s eyes dropped, and there was the novel the director had given him that morning. He couldn’t decide which was more absurd: the man sitting across from him, or the fact that he was being paid six thousand dollars a year to read a book.

  Suddenly an idea came to him.

  “Are you really CIA?” he said. “Or is this just some elaborate prank the director worked up to, I don’t know, trick me into divulging Bureau secrets to unauthorized personnel?”

  The man placed a spread-fingered hand on his chest, and for the first time BC noticed the hole under his lapel, just over his heart. “Did I ever say I was CIA?”

  “Because if you are CIA,” BC continued, “it seems like an awfully big coincidence that we’re on the same train, in the same car, at the same time.”

  “Coincidental?” The man waggled his cigar like Groucho Marx. “Maybe even suspicious? Or just too good to be true? Who knows, maybe the Company sent someone to follow you up to Millbrook?”

  BC opened his mouth, then closed it. This wasn’t proof that the man was CIA, after all. He could still be the director’s stool pigeon. He’d heard stranger rumors about his boss.

  “So tell me, Beau.” BC’s companion was clearly enjoying his indecision. “What’d the director tell you about Project Orpheus? I’m guessing from your choice of reading material that he either told you nothing at all, or, even more likely, he told you everything, and you can’t quite bring yourself to believe it, because then you’d have to admit to yourself that not only the Central Intelligence Agency but the Federal Bureau of Investigation is spending thousands—millions—of dollars on investigations that can only be called, well, stupid as shit. Pure science fiction,” he said, tapping the cover of BC’s book. “Truth serums. Brainwashing. Manchurian candidates even.”

  “The Manchurian Candidate8 is a novel,” BC said, grabbing his book and staring down at the cover. An electrifying novel of our world as it might have been. He flipped the book open and pretended to read the first page, which happened to be blank.

  “C’mon, Beau, I’m trying to help you out. Restore your faith in your employer. You don’t think the director’d send an agent of the prestigious Counterintelligence Program all the way up to New York State to check out a bit of science fiction, do you? There’s got to be something else involved, right? Someone else maybe? A VIP who has to be handled delicately? Lemme guess. He mentioned Chandler Forrestal? Told you how prominent his family is?”

  BC did his best to remain impassive, even as he turned the page so violently he nearly ripped it. If this guy didn’t work for the director, he had a bug in his office.

  “Lemme save you the trouble of guessing. It’s not Mr. Forrestal Director Hoover’s worried about. It’s Jack Kennedy.”

  Despite himself, BC giggled. “What, does he nip up there for the weekend in Marine One?”

  “Gosh, that’d be fun, wouldn’t it, albeit a misallocation of taxpayer dollars. But the truth is the president of the United States of America doesn’t have to travel four hundred miles to get his fix. One of his girlfriends brings it to him. Now, how do you think the public would react if they found out, one, that the president has a squeeze on the side, two, that she’s supplying him with a drug that has the potential to render the leader of the free world susceptible to mind control, and, three, that said drug is being tested by the Central Intelligence Agency—an organization that just happened to put together a private little war in Cuba a few years back that almost launched World War Three?” The man puffed on his cigar. “I mean, certain people might get a little worked up about that, don’t you think? If not John Q. Public, then maybe Barry Goldwater or Nelson Rockefeller?”

  BC could only stare at the man. One heard stories, of course. Rumors. Marilyn Monroe. But who wouldn’t sleep with Marilyn Monroe? Even Jackie couldn’t hold that against him.

  “You seem skeptical, so let me give you a few more details. A few years back the Company tasked several agents with recruiting prostitutes as part of a project called Ultra. In exchange for not going to jail, the girls slipped their johns whatever drug the Company was investigating—LSD, psilocybin, what have you—and the supervising agent recorded the results on a movie camera. Ultra’s pretty much fizzled out by now, but the practice lives on in Orpheus. Only this time it’s not just hookers. See, the field agent in charge is one of those prep school boys, an entitled East Coast establishment prick, and just for kicks he shares his wares with his society friends, one of whom is Mary Meyer.” The man paused to puff on his cigar. “She’s the president’s squeeze,” he said, “in case you didn’t put all that together.”

  BC continued to stare at the man. Finally he laughed. “You’re your own worst enemy. Don’t you know the first rule of lying: keep it simple, and keep it short.”

  “That’s two rules,” the man said. “And I ain’t lying.” All the mirth had vanished from his voice.

  “I mean, good Lord. Isn’t Mary Meyer Cord Meyer’s wife?”

  “Ex-wife.”

  “The man’s number three or four at the—”

  “At the good ol’ C-I-of-A.” The man’s smile was not so much triumphant as vindictive. “Yes sir, Special Agent Query. You are the president’s harem boy. You are John F. Kennedy’s eunuch.”

  BC didn’t know what was behind the anger on the man’s face, but he knew it was a lot older than this train ride, and, despite the heat in the car, he felt a sudden chill on his sweat-dampened spine. He reached for his drink, took a big swallow before he remembered what it was. He wasn’t a teetotaler, but he could count the number of alcoholic beverages he’d consumed on the fingers of one hand, and the rum entered him like a furnace blast. In a matter of seconds he felt sweat on his forehead, under his arms, trickling down the small of his back into the little gap where the waistband of his underwear (which had indeed been marked “Querrey,” so that the Negro laundress his mother had used for more than twenty years wouldn’t give her son’s jockey shorts to someone else) pulled away from the cleft of his buttocks.

  The thought of perspiration pooling in his underwear made BC sweat even harder, and the thought of his own buttocks made him blush like a high schooler pantsed in front of the whole school. He desperately wanted something cold to drink, but the only thing in front of him was a glass of warm rum. He looked at it, then looked at the man across from him, who was following BC’s internal debate as if he could read his mind. Fuck it, BC thought, although he didn’t think the word “fuck.” He didn’t think the word “it” either, since just thinking the word “it” doesn’t make a lot of sense. He didn’t think. He just reached for the glass and drank it all down.

  The man across the table looked at BC for a moment, then, without taking his eyes from BC’s, put his cigar out on the cover of BC’s novel.

  “My oh my. This is going to be a fun ride, ain’t it?”

  It wasn’t.

  New York, NY

  November 4, 1963

  Five minutes outside Pennsylvania Station, BC excused
himself to use the lavatory. As he stepped out of the W.C., he noticed the Negro conductor farther up the car, pulling ticket stubs from the tops of seats. BC approached him, waited until the man had finished what he was doing.

  “Yes, sir?” The conductor didn’t look at him.

  BC had already pulled a pair of fives from his wallet—all the money he had until the banks opened on Monday. “I’d like to pay you. For our drinks.”

  The conductor unfolded the bills and handed one back.

  “Keep it,” BC said. “For the trouble.” He tried to meet the conductor’s eye but the man refused to look at him. “If there’s a problem with my companion. If he makes a complaint. I’d like to …” He didn’t know how to finish. “I’d like to speak in your defense. If I may.”

  The conductor continued to stare at the two bills in his hand.

  “It’s just that, well, how could I do that?”

  “How …?”

  “How can I identify you?”

  For the first time, the conductor looked up, and BC was surprised to see that his eyes were filled not with fear or shame but fury.

  “I have a name.” The man’s voice was so guttural that BC thought he might actually bite him.

  A glint of gold on the man’s chest caught the agent’s eye. BC Querrey, who had noted that the soles of the conductor’s shoes were more worn on their outside edges than the inside, suggesting an internal torsion in the tibia, as well as the fact that the middle button of his jacket had fallen off at some point and been sewn back on with yellow thread rather than the gold that adhered the top and bottom buttons to the placket, had not noticed that the man who had visited his seat thirteen times in the past four hours was wearing a name tag:

  A. HANDY

  “Ah,” BC said, or sighed. “Yes.” Having seen the man’s name, he now found it impossible to use it. “Well, if there’s a problem, please don’t hesitate to contact me.” He handed the man one of his business cards even as, with a lurch and a hiss, the train came to a stop.

  With a start, BC turned from the conductor and hurried down the aisle. He’d been so focused on making amends that he’d completely forgotten the train was reaching its destination. He weaved in and out of passengers, pardon-me-ma’aming and excuse-me-sirring his way with increasing speed, until he burst through the doors of his car. The seats were empty, the passengers queued at either end of the aisle waiting for the doors to open. It took only the briefest glance for BC to see that the CIA man was gone, along with his—i.e., BC’s—briefcase.