Now, suddenly, Marty stared at Samantha intently. Suspicion was in his eyes. "Why?" he asked abruptly.
"Just wondering," Samantha replied, feeling her heart skip a beat. "The way this guy was talking, you'd think they were the New York Jets."
Marty started eating again. "I didn't follow football much," he said. "With all my family problems."
There was an awkward silence. Samantha felt a little ashamed. She'd forgotten.
"Come to think of it, though," Marty continued, now sounding more cheerful, "I remember they had an undefeated streak that went on for years."
For Samantha, there was instant relief. He knew. He remembered. "That's what he told me," she said. "You two would probably enjoy talking."
At that moment Samantha saw a subtle fear in Marty's eyes. He stopped eating, then caught himself and resumed. "You didn't give him our number, did you?"
"No."
Marty looked relieved. "Never give the number," he said. "You just never know." Then he looked at Samantha, almost sadly. "I sometimes have these nightmares about you, about something happening to you."
"Marty, nothing's going to happen to me."
"No, no, of course not. But you've got to be careful. I've seen so much in my life. Terrible things done to people."
He reached out and grasped Samantha's hand, almost too tightly, as if wanting never to let go. "Just be careful," he implored her. "You're my whole world."
"I'll watch out for both of us," Samantha replied. They were like that for almost a minute, just looking into each other's eyes, hardly moving, the feeling expressed through the grasp of hands. Marty needed her, Samantha knew. It was a very good feeling, even with the questions about his background.
Finally, slowly, they returned to dinner. Marty zeroed in on the main course, as Samantha knew he would.
"Great steak," he commented. "Where'd you get it?"
"D'Agostino's. On sale."
"Regular coupon clipper."
"Guess who taught me."
"Yeah," Marty responded devilishly. "Old Marty Shaw knows how to save a buck. Dumping clients is one good method." He laughed at himself.
Samantha changed the subject, still probing. "You know," she said, "I want to tell you this before I forget. I was watching that news channel today…"
"CNN?"
"I think so. They had this reporter on who was blasting journalism schools. He mentioned yours and Columbia, and another one."
"Probably Missouri."
"Yeah. He said they produced mechanics. Kind of made me angry."
Marty shrugged. "That line's been around for a long time."
"Did Medill help you?"
"Sure. I learned a lot, and made contacts."
"That guy said you could learn the same things on the job."
"You could say that about any field," Marty declared. "A medical student could probably learn the same thing from a practicing doctor as in med school." Marty had no idea that the TV interview Samantha was discussing had never occurred.
"What did you take at Medill?" she asked.
Marty leaned back in his chair. "Oh, let's see. There was newswriting, reporting, copy editing, photography."
"Does the journalism school have its own building?"
"Oh, sure."
"I'm surprised they never send you anything. They must have an alumni group."
"Yeah, but I didn't keep them up to date on my address." Then Marty looked directly into Samantha's eyes. "Boy, you're really going into my past tonight."
Samantha felt the ice, but feigned nonchalance. "Hey, I love you. Your past interests me."
"Well, I don't think it's such a hot past."
Samantha knew not to press the subject too far, fearing Marty might begin to suspect something. But she wanted to get in one more shot, one more probe, and she did it playfully. "Okay, I'll stay off your history," she said, "but I still intend to frame your birth certificate someday."
"If you can find it," Marty mumbled. But he didn't seem disturbed by the mention of the certificate.
They finished dinner and discussed the party. Marty approved some new guests, but was clearly preoccupied. Samantha assumed it was because of the lost client. Actually, Marty was fighting memories again, memories of an electric train going round on tracks laid temporarily on a living room floor. He didn't know what had triggered this episode, but a truck horn outside sounded remarkably like the diesel horn on his old train set. That's all it took for him to float into a different world, a world struggling to dominate him.
For Samantha, Marty's being preoccupied was a rarity—such was the attention he normally paid her—but it did happen. It almost always involved the office. But she was less concerned about that now than with the results of her discreet probes. She suddenly realized that she had learned very little. So Marty knew about Elkhart High's football record. So what? Any man faking his past could've familiarized himself with local sports legends. The same held true for his knowledge of Medill's curriculum. Easy to learn. Samantha hadn't had the chance to ask anything so detailed that only the genuine article would know. With Marty's sensitivity about his past, she sensed she never would.
She did, though, cook up one more scheme that night, although realizing that it might antagonize Marty. It was a go-for-broke shot, something that might crack the logjam and expose at least part of the truth. As Marty was getting ready for bed, Samantha entered the room. Intentionally, she looked apprehensive.
"What's wrong?" Marty asked.
"You really want to know?"
"Yes." Marty stopped undressing. He looked concerned. "Did something happen?"
"No, but something may be about to."
Marty was all curiosity.
"All right, here goes," Samantha said. "You were a little touchy about your past tonight."
Marty stiffened slightly, then laughed. "Not really."
"Oh yes," Samantha insisted. "You got testy. Maybe I should've understood. At any rate, I wanted to get you this really great birthday gift."
"Sam, the party's my gift."
"Besides that. Something for you. For us."
"You're terrific."
"Listen on. I thought it would be super if I got you…got us…some plane tickets."
"A vacation?"
"Kind of." She shrugged innocently. "I thought we could go to the Midwest. You could return to Elkhart, visit your old home, then hop over to Northwestern. I know you had it tough, love, but every man wants to go home again." She turned away, playing it to the hilt. "Maybe it's not such a hot idea."
There was a pause. "When would you like to go?" Marty asked quietly.
"After the party. Christmastime. It's cold, but festive."
"Let's do it!"
"You mean it? Elkhart? Northwestern?"
"Absolutely. It's a great time to go. Business is sluggish. And I'd love to."
A thrill began forming in Samantha's heart.
"Hey," Marty went on, "I'll take you to the same places I took my old dates."
"The combat zones, eh?"
"Look, I knew the best spots. I'll show you my room at Northwestern. It had a view of Lake Michigan that…well, I'll just show you."
"I want to see the house you lived in."
"Little white place, clapboard, with two chimneys. That was the odd thing," Marty said. "Everyone knew the Shaw house by that."
A new optimism was beginning to come over Samantha. By agreeing to the trip, Marty was hardly evading his past. He seemed, in fact, to be suddenly enthusiastic about it, Samantha couldn't figure out why. Maybe her suggestion of the trip just stirred some deep, sentimental feelings that Marty himself never knew were there. Whatever the reason, Samantha was sure of one thing: A man hiding his past would never agree to this trip. No, she still couldn't explain all the lost records and confusion she'd encountered at Northwestern and in Elkhart. Maybe Marty had been the victim of a string of negligent administrators. Or maybe records had been removed by order of some court, for reasons Samantha c
ouldn't conceive.
"I'll get the tickets," she said.
"Try United," Marty replied. "Why don't we fly into O'Hare in Chicago and start with Northwestern? We can rent a car and drive to Elkhart. I used to do it all the time."
"Any good restaurants in Evanston?"
"Sure. And they'll remember me. There was a guy at the journalism school who wanted to be a food critic. He changed later and opened his own restaurant. I'd get a kick seeing him again."
Samantha was in heaven. This was what she'd wanted to hear.
Then Marty did what he'd done only once before, just after she'd agreed to marry him: He did a little Irish jig around the bedroom. He stopped. His eyes widened, like those of a little boy.
"I'm ordering out for ice cream," he announced. "That new place that delivers twenty-four hours. Chocolate chip okay?"
Samantha laughed at him, but she loved the scene. "Okay," she replied.
Marty made the call.
He was sanguine.
He knew that trip to the Midwest would never happen.
5
"So it's still there, with the two chimneys. That's wonderful. And, look, thank you for the name of the family that lives there now. Well be contacting them."
Samantha put down the phone, thoroughly pleased, and turned to Lynne. "That's the kind of phone call I like. Makes my day."
"The house is just the way Marty described it?" Lynne asked.
"Exactly. That's what the police captain said. He doesn't think there've been any additions. I'll write the people who live there. Maybe they'll let us in so Marty can see his old room."
Lynne was stretched out on Samantha's white couch. "I've got an idea," she said, yawning. "If you pay for it maybe they'll send pictures for you to show at the party."
"I'll ask them," Samantha replied. She was rolling now. The call to the police precinct in Marty's old neighborhood in Elkhart had been reassuring. The captain confirmed every description Marty had ever given of the area. And Samantha had made another successful call too. Recalling that Marty had a passport, she called the State Department and learned he had used his birth certificate as proof of citizenship. It had been issued in Elkhart. Elkhart City Hall, Samantha reasoned, had given her the wrong information.
Her full confidence in Marty restored by his own words the night before and by these calls, Samantha still had to tackle her main objective: getting people who'd known Marty to share their recollections. No one in the precinct remembered him, but none had been in the neighborhood more than fifteen years. Samantha decided against calling Northwestern again, primarily because the school was connected with Marty's career. If she was seen as a pest, it might get out to some well-placed graduate who was in a position to hurt Marty.
"He talks so much about the Army," Samantha said to Lynne. "You know, he enlisted."
"I can believe it," Lynne replied, taking an apple from a basket of fruit on a glass table. "Marty's gung-ho. My Charlie would've just surrendered and left it at that."
"They wanted him to be an officer, but he refused," Samantha went on. "He liked the enlisted guys. So here he was in some office, a private with a journalism degree."
"Probably had more education than the big shots," Lynne said.
"Sure. He told me they treated him almost as an equal. One major told him he was embarrassed because he didn't even have a college degree."
"He ever tell you the names of his Army buddies?"
Samantha reflected for a moment. "There was a Corporal Bose. That was his best friend. Richard Bose. Marty's lost contact with him. Too bad."
Lynne bit into her apple and got up. "Create a miracle," she said. "Call Washington and find out where Bose lives now. Maybe they'll know."
Without even responding, Samantha went to the phone. She'd been thinking of tracking down Marty's Army chums, and Lynne gave her the push to do it immediately. She got the number for the Defense Department and called. Within seconds she was phone-to-phone with the military bureaucracy. By her own count she was transferred nine times before reaching a personnel sergeant who had some idea that men had served in the military prior to the week before.
"Sergeant Mulligan."
"Sergeant," Samantha replied, already exhausted by her trip through the defense establishment, "my name is Samantha Shaw."
"Yes, ma'am. How may I help you, ma'am?" Mulligan's voice gave the impression that he was literally sitting at attention as he responded to her.
"My husband, Martin Shaw, was in the Army back in the sixties, after college."
"In Nam, ma'am?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Was he in Vietnam, Mrs. Shaw?"
"Only for a short time. He was mostly at Fort Polk."
"I was stationed there. This about veterans' rights, ma'am?"
"No, Sergeant. It's nothing that important. My husband was a volunteer."
"RA."
"I'm…sorry. Again I don't…"
"Regular Army, ma'am. He joined up."
"Yes, he did. He had some close friends. I'm trying to find one of them."
"And you want us to give an address if we got it."
"That's right."
"No big hassle, Mrs. Shaw. We get action requests like that all the time. There are always reunions, stuff like that."
"Well, I appreciate this." Samantha threw one of Marty's mock salutes to Lynne, who loved it. Lynne was already putting on her coat to leave for still another obligation, but she gestured that she'd be back soon.
"If you'd give me the name of the serviceman, ma'am," Mulligan requested.
"Bose. Richard Bose."
"Army?"
"Oh yes."
"Service jackets are in St. Louis, ma'am, but we're computerizing. I'll see if Bose is in the computer bank."
"Thank you."
Samantha could hear Mulligan tapping something on a computer keyboard. Then she heard her own door close as Lynne left. Everything fell silent as Mulligan worked. All Samantha could think of, over and over, was the party and her upcoming trip with Marty.
"Ma'am?"
"Yes?"
"I don't get a Richard Bose on my terminal, but that's not unusual. I could cross-reference it by punching up your husband. I'll get his unit designations. Was Bose in one of his units?"
"I think so," Samantha recalled. "You know, I hate to take up your time like this, Sergeant. I'm sure you have more important things to do."
"Not really, ma'am. By the way, do you know your husband's unit designations?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
"I guess you wouldn't know his service number either." Samantha's eyes lit up as she swung around in her chair. "Now that I know. I once memorized it as a joke. It's RA38567194."
"I'll punch it up."
Again Samantha waited, this time going down her list of people to contact after she'd located Bose. Marty had worked for a small paper in California, and she thought they'd have stories about him from his reporting days, before he got into public relations. They'd be next.
Mulligan soon came back on the line. "That number came up, ma'am. Shaw, Martin." Then there was a pause. Samantha thought nothing of it. "His service history," Mulligan went on, but there was a distinct change in his tone. He was quieter, less flamboyant. "It's all in front of me, ma'am."
Samantha noticed the change. "Is something wrong?" she asked.
"I'm…I'm sorry, ma'am."
"Sorry? About what?"
"About your husband, ma'am."
"What about my husband?"
Mulligan hesitated. He thought Samantha's behavior strange. "I'm sorry he was killed in Vietnam, Mrs. Shaw."
It was as if someone had hit Samantha between the eyes with a hammer. For a few moments she almost blacked out. She said nothing, but simply removed the receiver from her ear and stared into it, almost believing she could see Mulligan's face. It had all been so wonderful just hours before, when Marty had agreed to the trip west. Now everything was in ruins once again. She had heard words
she would not believe. They were too bizarre, too sick. Marty was alive. He was flesh and blood. But who was dead?
The conference room was filling with smoke, sucked upward by the vents that Marty had insisted on. He sat at the head of a long teakwood table, presiding over a strategy session with an important new client—an airline whose passenger business was falling off rapidly. Marty and a much younger woman were the only people from his firm. The airline was, naturally, represented by eight executives, including two lawyers, an accountant, and a psychologist retained to show the executives how to relate to their passengers. Marty had a bunch of looseleaf presentation books in front of him, had his tie pulled slightly down, and looked like a man ready for combat. It was an act. He knew these clients liked their public relations people to look as if kilowatts of creative energy were ready to spring forth and engulf the competition. It was the image of an image-maker and Marty knew how to turn it on.
"Your problem," he told the gathering, "is that no one sees your airline as having an outstanding trait. You're Mr. Average."
The airline president was a trim man of forty-eight, suntanned and healthy, a former pilot. "What is your solution?" he asked in a clipped, almost military manner.
"We've got to identify things that make you outstanding," Marty replied.
The room erupted in laughter. Marty looked around at each person from the airline. He was not laughing. "That bad, eh?"
"Look," the president answered, "we're not Delta or Lufthansa. That's why we need you."
"I think that's the source of the problem," Marty countered. "You're too modest. You've got a fine record, but you only see the shadow of the big guys. Now, instead of me talking, I want you to tell me what you're proud of in your operation. I mean it."
Marty leaned back in his chair and gestured toward the president, who began to speak, first haltingly, then rapidly, about the technical talent he'd been able to attract. But as he spoke, Marty's mind started to drift. It had happened fairly often, but now was happening every day. This had been the pattern in other years as well. As December fifth approached, his mind simply couldn't stick to business. Now words came back. He heard the voices again.
"Afraid the kids'll find out about you? The way you lose jobs?"
"Maybe they'll find out about you! Where'd you spend the night, Alice?"
Surprise Party Page 5
