The Family Hightower

by Brian Francis Slattery

  Agents George Guarino and Anne Easton have been put onto the Cleveland office’s organized crime investigations, Easton because she’s smart, Guarino because he’s almost as smart and knows a thing or two about Cleveland; he grew up around here. We’re in the days before September 11, before organized crime takes a backseat to terrorism in the FBI’s priorities. So Guarino and Easton have some bureau money to spend. They’ve set up a nice little network of informants, they’ve been doing surveillance. They know the restaurant Petey and Curly visited, though they didn’t see them go in there. They know the man who owns the place and have been tracing the connections—of money, for the most part, because it’s all about money, right?—back to Russia and Eastern Europe, to someone, or something, called the Wolf. They know about a rival international group, whose Cleveland contact appears to be a man named Feodor. They know about someone called the White Lady, who they’re pretty sure lives in town, appears to have connections to a few different organizations, including Feodor’s and the Wolf’s—as if she’s playing a few sides at once. But they’re not sure why she’d do that, or even who she is. They’re just gathering their information on who’s dealing with whom, trying to build up an organization in their files that matches the one in the world. Their desks, not far apart from each other, are piled with pictures and printouts—we’re just at the beginning of the point where everything goes electronic—and now and again Guarino, who’s better at finding things than Easton is, gives her a tap on the shoulder: What do you think of this? And Easton, who’s better at making the connections than Guarino is, gives whatever he’s holding a good stare. Starts to talk. They must be involved. I’d say this is some kind of code, except they don’t seem to work that way. They’re catching up, figuring out how the new crime organizations work. But here’s the discouraging thing: The organizations don’t ever seem to end. The connections lead only to more connections, all over the world. They jump from country to country, never-ending webs of people and currency that involve as many rackets as the agents can think of, from money laundering and loan-sharking to arms dealing and human trafficking. If there are real lines between them, the agents can’t see them; they have no idea what the structures of these things look like on paper, let alone who’s running them. So they keep having the same little confrontation between them. Look, it’s okay, Guarino says. We can still use RICO to get them, right? We just define the organization how we need to. He’s trying to move the case forward, put some guys away. But Easton doesn’t want to do it that way. That’s not the organization, then, she might say. It’s just something we made up. We can do it that way, but it doesn’t change anything. We never get the guys who matter. Sometimes she hauls out the tired old analogies to hydras, to octopuses—you know, cutting off one tentacle when there are a hundred more, and the one you cut off grows back anyway—and Guarino just shakes his head. They both know what the problem is: They’re hacking apart the facts to make a story, and that their story’s got a lot of truth in it is beside the point. Maybe that truth’ll be enough to do the job, to serve some kind of justice, to do right by the people who’ve been wronged. But the people left out of the story—the victims and the perpetrators—are going to notice what’s been done. They’ll see the places the story doesn’t touch, and know that there, it’s open season.

  Curly’s friends, his family, his mother, are calling each other more and more, getting more frantic with every call. Have you seen him? He didn’t go somewhere without telling us, did he? He wouldn’t do that. Where is he? It feels like a prophecy coming true. He was such a good kid, just a little wild, but that wildness led him somewhere they couldn’t follow, and they lost him. How could that ever end well? For the Hightower clan, though, things are a bit more complicated. Muriel’s been too afraid of her son for a couple years to ask what he’s been up to, too used to him being gone for months to know that he’s in trouble. Jackie doesn’t talk to anyone but herself. And Sylvie doesn’t say anything. She’s known for thirty years that her best chance of surviving in her family, and keeping her family alive, is to embody her mother’s spirit most of the time, friendly, steadfast, quiet. To observe and wait, and act only when she thinks she can make things better. Then her father comes out of her, and man, watch out.

  Henry and Rufus are another story. They both have so much of their father in them. The same fire, the same shrewdness, the same cynical understanding of laws as things to be manipulated, skirted, ignored when necessary; the same quick separation of laws from morals and values. The same desire to take care of the people closest to them, the Old World instinct that helped so many people get out of Europe when they had to, and if Rufus and Henry could ever talk about it with each other, they would lament, together, how they failed in not giving it to their children. That conversation will never happen, though, because the things that make them so similar are the same things that drive them apart.

  Henry still lives in New Canaan, in the same house Peter found him in nine years ago, and it’s been an interesting decade for him. In 1992, a premature heart attack puts him into semiretirement. His doctor shrugs, can’t diagnose what caused it, but says maybe he should stop working so hard. His wife is more specific: She tells him he has to work on eliminating the things from his life that are causing him stress. So he divorces her. Cuts back on his hours, starts doing everything by phone, starts talking about being bought out. He’s done. He throws out all his old clothes, buys new ones, dresses casual, or at least more casual. No cufflinks, no ties, blazers only when necessary, though the cut of his pants, the style of his shirts, give away that he’s got some money. That’s intentional. Henry’s too aware of the signals himself, knows that he can’t hide everything and can’t be bothered working so hard to try. He’s seen too many rich people try to pass themselves off as middle-class; everyone he knows, his neighbors, his former coworkers, all think they really are middle-class. It’s laughable. They fail to pass and don’t know they failed. People who don’t have their kind of money can get the right order of magnitude of their wealth just by looking at their European-sized shoes, the angle of the collar of their designer T-shirts. Maybe that’s why the rich are always building walls and fences around their houses, Henry thinks. If they didn’t, everyone would be able to see right through them.

  He meets Holly, a woman from Winsted, not six months after the divorce is final, marries her in 1994. Alex seems to understand. She’s nice, she says to his father, and Henry’s glad that Alex is comfortable around her. But deep down, at the time, Henry doesn’t think about that too much. He’s too busy putting another life together for himself, wants Alex in it only if she wants to be in it, too. He’s not being callous; just loosening the rules, trying to give his daughter her freedom. When Henry was young himself, he used to think that the family bond was iron. After their father died, he never made that mistake again. He understands now that it’s just a question of keeping the lights on, the door open. Doing what you can to help that doesn’t kill the other’s pride. Though now and again he forgets, and has to relearn the lesson all over again.

  It’s 1995. Henry’s smiling when he sees the taxi pull up at the front of the house, sees Peter get out, squint down the driveway. The boy’s leaner, sharper than he was 1986. A decent haircut, the hang of his clothes more suitable to his frame. Still not a shred of America in him. The taxi driver must have asked him some questions, or maybe he was afraid to. Or maybe he already knew what Peter was all about, being the same way himself.

  “You could have called first,” Henry says. “I would have picked you up at the airport.”

  “Your phone number changed,” Peter says.

  “Good thing I didn’t move,” Henry says.

  He’s in trouble, Henry thinks, but doesn’t ask how. Figures Peter will get around to it. It takes five hours, after a tour of the property, the things that have changed since Peter last saw it. The first wife’s office is gone; it’s a study now, with a loom folded in the c
orner. They’ve filled in the pool and let the land go, let all the land go around their house. They like the way the trees are taking over. Soon we’ll have our own little preserve here, Henry tells him, and chuckles in a loose, genuine way that Peter doesn’t remember him doing back in 1986. Holly is the kind of woman who glows; she’s warm and nurturing. Thick curls woven into a loose bun at her neck and tied with a colored scarf. The kind of woman my dad should have ended up with, Peter thinks. They make fish and rice, curried vegetables. Split a bottle of wine, open another one, and at last Peter begins to talk.

  “I got a call from someone named Curly,” he says. “From Cleveland.”

  “Curly? I’m assuming that’s not his real name. Who is he?” Henry says.

  “I have no idea who he is. But he says he was looking for Petey.”

  Henry nods. In his brain, the first pieces are clicking into place. “That’s what they’ve been calling your cousin for years, now,” he says.

  “I think Curly thinks I’m him,” Peter says.

  “I was about to say the same thing,” Henry says, and becomes very still. Takes his wife’s hand. “What happened after the phone call?”

  Peter tells him, about the break-in, his escape. The train from Spain to Portugal, the flight out of Lisbon. He’s almost positive no one saw him do any of this.

  “How’d you get the money for the flight?” Henry says.

  Peter doesn’t know which question Henry’s asking, decides to answer both.

  “I’m a journalist,” he says.

  Henry raises an eyebrow.

  “And my dad gave me some money I’ve been hanging on to for a while,” Peter says.

  Something in Peter’s voice tells Henry about what’s happened between Peter and Rufus. Father and son haven’t talked in a while.

  “Peter,” he says, “I think it’s time you start to know a few things. Do you know what your father does for money?”

  “No.”

  “Well. Maybe he does something to help support himself a little. But the money comes from me. It’s always come from me.”

  “I see,” Peter says. Henry can almost see the young man putting it together; a big part of his life that never made much sense is starting to make lots of sense. “Why did you do that?”

  “Because we’re family.”

  “Why did my dad go to Africa, then?”

  “Because we’re family,” Henry says. “At first, I think it was disgust. But once you were born, I think he was trying to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?” Peter says.

  “Rufus really didn’t say anything about us, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Peter, you may be in a lot of trouble,” Henry says.

  “Why?”

  “Because, Peter, the grandfather you were named after was a criminal. Oh, he made plenty of legitimate money. But at the beginning, it wasn’t legitimate at all, and, well, what can I say? He never quite escaped.”

  “Did you?” Peter says.

  You got some balls, kid, Henry thinks. Good for you. “Financially? Legally?” he says. “Yes. But the same thing isn’t true of everyone. And now Petey, your cousin, is a criminal too. I don’t know what kind—he’s not nearly as smart or as careful as your grandfather was. I don’t know how bad it is with him, either. Sounds like pretty bad, though. He was pretty bad already when you visited last, though you probably figured that one out even then. Who goes to summer school, right?” Henry smiles. Peter doesn’t, and Henry feels a little chastened. Peter doesn’t have the luxury of seeing the humor in it. Would Rufus see it? He thinks so. If Peter weren’t caught up in it. If Rufus knew how bad it was getting, the things he would say. This is why I left. This is why I didn’t want to see any of you ever again.

  “Do you know where Petey is now?” Peter says.

  “No. He’s involved in something I can’t see from where I’m standing. Maybe Sylvie can see it, but I can’t. I haven’t talked to him in years, Peter. Haven’t even talked to Muriel about him.”

  Henry doesn’t want to get into it, the last few years between him and his sister. It’s 1987. Henry sees Petey at a family reunion for Easter, thinks he looks like a little thug and tells him so, before he gives it the kind of thought he should have. Petey just stands there, doesn’t say a word, and Henry regrets opening his mouth. But he can’t take it back now. Muriel screams and screams at him. How dare you say that. And then later on the phone, when Henry gets back to Connecticut, she connects everything to everything else. Just because you have a shitty home life, it doesn’t mean you have to make our home life shitty too. Henry listens, winces, sorry all over again he said anything, but hopes to salvage some good from his mistake. He doesn’t bring up the selling drugs, the sentencing, the mild incarceration. I’m trying to help. Petey’s going in the wrong direction, you have to see that. Muriel does see it, Henry knows that, but she’s not going to admit it. Henry hasn’t given her a way to do it without implicating herself, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to admit to her brother, under these circumstances, that she made a mistake.

  We’re lousy parents, Henry thinks to himself—even then, back in 1987—both he and his sister. They had every chance with Petey, they had him right where he should have been, and they let him get away. And Henry knows he can’t take credit for how good his own kid is, except as a foil; Alex is good, always has been, always will be, even growing up around people as toxic as her parents, and even if she is, almost without a doubt, going to watch her father and mother say some terrible things to each other before they call it all off at last.

  He gets all his information about the family from Sylvie after that. How Petey’s moved out of the house, gone who knows where, though it seems to be somewhere in Cleveland. Petey shows up at Muriel’s house, at Sylvie’s house, a couple times a year. At first, to ask for money, but soon enough, that stops, as soon as it looks like he’s come into money of his own, though it’s clear it’s not from working in a bank. The young man’s got a strut about him, Sylvie says, like he’s gone a little feral. Though to Sylvie, it’s as much an act as a real transformation. There’s a part of him that’s still that boy at my wedding in a little blue suit, Sylvie tells Henry. And I think that boy is scared to death of what the rest of him has become. A bit of Sylvie’s toughness showing, just enough that Henry realizes that if it had been Sylvie instead of Muriel raising that boy, Petey would be the straightest arrow of them all.

  Peter stares at him from across the coffee table, and for Henry, it’s as though the entire family is in the room with them now. His brother and sisters; their spouses, whom he has never gotten to know; all their children, some of whom he wouldn’t recognize now. His own parents: his mother in the chair in the corner, knitting and humming, his father near the window, smoking in the house when no one smokes in the house. His father’s brother, Stefan, who had the kindest face Henry can remember seeing in his life. He looks again at Peter and glimpses a bit of Stefan in him, the one who, if he had been the patriarch instead of his brother, would never have taken the family so far, or let them drop from so high.

  Henry’s earned enough of his own wealth that he doesn’t think he has to justify it to anyone he sees. He hasn’t let it turn him into a child or a crank, either, a man who confuses money with wisdom. He doesn’t glorify poverty. He’s not sentimental or stupid. But sometimes he wonders if they wouldn’t have been happier with less. This thing of having too much, of not having enough; it makes people insane, he thinks, makes them do insane things. They scramble and scream, they fight and scheme. They set traps and swindle. They bring each other down, then pile up the bodies to ascend even farther, even faster. Somehow there has to be some balance, doesn’t there? Of having just enough? But where is it? And why is it so hard to find?

  “I think you need to go to Cleveland,” Henry says at last. “You need to keep moving. And you
need to talk to Sylvie.” He gets up and leaves the room while Holly smiles at Peter and refills his wineglass. Then Henry comes back with a roll of bills folded in his hand. That old habit from Dad, he thinks, having all this cash lying around. Have any of us broken it?

  “I want to help you get out of this,” he says. “How much do you think you need?”

  “I can’t take your money now,” Peter says.

  Henry smiles. “Peter. Just take it. And get in the car and let me give you a ride to the airport. And let me pay for the ticket.”

  Peter stands there, just looking at him. So smart, and so much pride, Henry thinks. He looks just like his father right now.

  “Are you sure?” Peter says.

  “I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Good. It’s settled. I’ll call Sylvie and tell her to tell Muriel you’re coming.”