American Subversive (20 page)

THE FERRY'S FOGHORN SOUNDED JUST AS I HURRIED ABOARD—A DEEP AND strident moan. I climbed the stairs to the top deck and went to the rail to wave good-bye, but Touché was already driving off. Just as well, I thought. We'd gone the entire length of Fishers Island without mentioning Paige Roderick once. Instead, he'd chatted up inclines and joked around curves, anything to avoid acknowledging the sudden awkwardness between us. I'd never seen him shy away from anything, especially an adventure like this. What the hell was wrong with him?

The ferry slipped through the harbor and into open water. It was only a fifteen-minute trip to Connecticut, time enough to call my mother. When she didn't pick up, I left a message: “Hope you're home tonight, because I'm on my way up to see you. I need a good meal. And a comfortable bed. And your car. Not necessarily in that order. Love you and see you soon. Like in four hours.”

The train station was less than a hundred yards from the dock in New London, and Amtrak's Northeast Regional was already there, waiting, apparently, for me and the half dozen other ferry transfers. I bought a ticket and climbed into the closest car. At this hour, on a sunny Saturday afternoon in August, the train was mostly empty. I found a window seat and was soon gazing out across warehouses and factories, the remains of Connecticut's modest coastal industry. Connecticut: the state depressed
me. I could never get through it without thinking of my poor father, the country tenderfoot, stuck up there in Litchfield with young Julie. How was he getting along? I'd know soon enough. His sixtieth birthday was a few weeks away, and I'd promised to drive up, have dinner, and spend the night. At least his bar would be well stocked.

Determined to put my stepmother out of mind, I dug out the paper I'd taken from Touché's front stoop
—
the Saturday
Times
and part of Sunday's that had arrived early—and flipped out of habit to the more “cultural” sections: Arts & Leisure, Styles, Travel, the Book Review, and the Magazine. These were a gold mine for a blogger like me. Entire days of material could be culled from wedding announcements, scathing reviews, and supposed trend pieces hyping some already outmoded craze or fashion. Then, of course, there was Cressida's column. I thumbed intently through the
Magazine,
but she appeared, thankfully, to have the week off (her relationship pieces only ran once or twice a month). When nothing else caught my eye, I picked the Saturday paper back up and opened it to the national news.

How had I not seen it earlier? It was the lead story:

U
LTRA
-P
RIVATE
I
NVESTMENT
G
ROUP
E
YED
A
S
E
XTREMIST
B
OMBING
T
ARGET
By C. J. EDGERTON

Indigo Holdings, a powerful but little-known private equity firm with offices on the fourteenth floor of 660 Madison Avenue, was the likely target of the bomb that exploded on the fifteenth floor of that building early last Sunday morning, FBI officials close to the investigation said on Friday.

The officials, who asked not to be identified citing the active nature of the case, also confirmed reports that Islamic extremists plotted and carried out the attack, but stressed that no credible individuals or groups have claimed responsibility or yet been named as suspects.

The bomb, which detonated at 3:45 a.m. in the studios of fashion designer Claudio Valencia, left a large hole in the side of the building and scattered debris over a two-block radius. No injuries or fatalities were reported.

The New York City Police Department, which has been
criticized for what many see as a stalled investigation, released a statement Friday calling Mr. Valencia a “victim of circumstance.” When asked late yesterday about Indigo Holdings, department spokesman Len Jacobs would not comment specifically, saying only that “the NYPD is actively investigating all leads.”

Based in Washington, D.C., Indigo Holdings invests in corporations operating in the energy, aerospace, and defense industries. Many have contracts with the U.S. government in Iraq or Afghanistan. Since the Indigo Group is privately held, it is not required by law to report earnings and other financial information, and it is not clear how many people work in the company's New York offices.

“Certainly, Indigo fits the profile of a company that could be targeted in some kind of anti-West attack,” said Riley Cooper, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corporation. “They operate in the shadowy Golden Triangle where government, defense and corporate interests collide. Or, in their case, coincide.”

Contacted by phone in Washington, an Indigo spokesman refused to comment on any aspect of this article.

There are 32 companies listed in the lobby directory of 660 Madison Avenue, and Indigo Holdings is not among them. According to a building employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, there is no sign outside their suite on the fourteenth floor. “It's just like this known thing,” the employee said. “If there's a package for Indigo . . . you call a number and they send someone down. They don't like people coming upstairs.”

One theory being discussed by officials involves a feature common to New York buildings, including 660 Madison Avenue: a missing thirteenth floor. “It is possible that someone climbing a stairwell at night could have miscounted the flights, thus believing the fifteenth floor was in actuality the fourteenth floor,” said the FBI source.

The shopping wasn't so good. The blowout sale was on the wrong floor.
Oh my God. Reflexively, I took my phone out to call Derrick. Or
Cressida. But then I took a deep breath and put it back in my pocket. I didn't want them involved. Not yet.

My plan was to switch trains in Yonkers and take the Adirondack line up to Rhinecliff. My mother hadn't called back, which was mildly worrying, but cell phones weren't her forte, and anyway, there'd be cabs at the station. I had second thoughts only once, waiting on the platform, the city so close I could feel it in the air. Home. It wasn't too late to turn around, only a matter of changing tracks. The pointlessness of the pursuit no longer bothered me. The opposite did: the mounting evidence. Whatever had scared Touché away. But I stayed where I was, and when the train came I climbed aboard and immediately began feeling better. More sure of myself. Maybe it was the simple decision to do something.

I couldn't sleep and then I could, and when I opened my eyes again, the conductor was tapping my shoulder. The sun was lower. We were pulling into a station.

“Don't forget your bag,” the man was saying.

“This is Rhinecliff?”

“It is.”

I hopped down and walked with a handful of others through the quaint stone station house. It was a wistful place, that room—what waiting room isn't?—and our heels on the hard floor echoed back through decades of teary departures and solitary arrivals. Outside, three cabs were parked off to the side, their owners huddled nearby. One of them broke reluctantly off as I approached, and motioned toward his backseat.

“Where to?”

“A town called Shady,” I said. “Just past Woodstock.”

“I know where it is.”

He didn't speak again, and that was fine; I was on a down cycle with cabs. We followed River Road along the Hudson, which was wide and tranquil this far north, as if catching its breath before the final run to the city and the sea. It was a grand landscape, everything manicured beyond perfection: the vast lawns behind split-rail fences, green even in the fading light; the mansions and horse fields on
not-so-distant hillsides; and the old carriage barns by the road, paint peeling on purpose, rustic in that wealthy way. We took 199 across the river, skirted Kingston, and eventually picked up 28 at the base of the Catskills. The weekend estates of Dutchess County gave way to roadside enterprise—diners, gun shops, gas stations. We turned at the sign for Woodstock and wound into the hills, the night. I tried my mother again, and this time she picked up.

“Aidan, where have you been?” she asked. I could hear noise in the background.

“Did you get my message?”

“No, did you leave one? You know me and those machines. They're endlessly beeping.”

“Then check them.”

“I haven't had time. I've got people over, a little party.”

“Well, that's why I'm calling. Do you have room for one more?”

Shady was a small hamlet outside Woodstock, a patch of land between road signs. Its famous neighbor had seen ups and downs, renewals and revivals, attempts at tourism and campaigns against it, but Shady just plugged along in a timeless limbo that worked fine for my mother and her friends. If Woodstock, with its head shops and hemp boutiques, was a kind of hippie Disneyland (and it was: forty years after the concert—which actually took place an hour away in Bethel—they were still pouring in), the surrounding valley was a haven for the more sensible left, people who'd chosen a certain kind of life and stuck stubbornly to it while the rest of the country grew muscular and unrecognizable.

My mother's 1860s farmhouse near the base of Overlook Mountain was encircled by what had once been grazing fields. Now, though, the fields—clearings, really—were planted not with hay but strange monolithic sculptures of varying shapes and proportion, the work of my mother's close friend Simon Krauss (yes,
that
Simon Krauss). Driving past them felt like entering some new dimension, and on cue the cabbie slowed down and stared at the looming objects in the twilight.

“What the fuck?” he said.

I paid the burgeoning art critic and watched him drive off. The top of my mother's driveway looked like a used-Subaru dealership, the cars all dented and splattered with mud. I could see their owners through the dining-room window, eight people at a lively table, everyone happily talking and gesturing—a film with no sound, just before the plot takes off. My mother and Simon were seated at opposite ends of the table, monitoring the proceedings like lifeguards on a public beach. I opened the screen door and walked in, choosing to do so just as my mother disappeared into the kitchen. My sudden presence caused a chain reaction. A woman I'd never seen before gasped, and immediately six strangers turned around to face the intruder. Simon saved the moment.

“Aidan,” he said, his voice low and reassuring. The congregation looked at him, then back at me.

“Hey,” I said, waving to the room.

“This is Susan's son,” Simon continued, rising to come shake my hand.

My mother walked back in, holding a bottle of wine. When she saw me, she made that face that mothers the world over make when a wayward child has returned home—joy mixed with a reflexive kind of worry. Mostly, though, it was joy. With the exception of two days at Christmas, I hadn't seen her in more than a year. I just never felt comfortable with her upstate friends. They were relics of an era long past, preserved like rare animal bones and just as brittle. Even then, as Simon made introductions—my mother had hugged me and set off to find an extra chair—it seemed as if I were meeting the same person six different times, a person who'd retreated from some larger life to gain a voice in a smaller one, traded in the big ideas for a sense of diminished achievement. They combated globalization by drinking free-trade coffee, rescued the environment one energy-saving lightbulb at a time. Call it what you want—paring down, going local,
dropping out
—but I could never shake the feeling that such peace of mind came at the price of significance.

I'd interrupted a debate concerning the development of the nearby Awosting Reserve, and as I settled in beside my mother, the talk began anew. It was a well-worn issue, marked by a decade of lawsuits and protests and bumper-sticker campaigns, and soon everyone was
talking over one another, their separate voices rising in unison like some great classical crescendo. For they were all on the same side! I focused on the only two at the table who remained silent.

My mother, ever the host, kept coming and going, clearing and replenishing. She'd never been able to sit still, and the constant movement had served her well. Her lean, handsome features glowed in the candlelight, and although she'd aged in the last few years—lines and veins were cropping up and out—she'd retained the energy of her city days. And the elegance, too. She wore blouses and fitted slacks, even a wrap dress now and then, but it was a subtle glamour, subdued, perhaps, so as not to upstage the various earth tones of her oft-sandaled guests.

Beauty is beauty, in town or country, and Simon must have thought the same, for he watched my mother with wry bemusement as the racket around them grew with every refilled glass. His silence emanated a kind of authority, and after a while it seemed the guests were performing for his benefit. And awaiting his verdict. But I admired his reserve, as I admired him. Sure, he was famous—at least in art circles—but he was also a good friend to my mother, a partner of sorts, sometimes in love, increasingly in life. They'd been together, in their way, for years now.

She likes to say their friendship started with a bang. Really, it was a screen door slamming shut. She had just moved to Shady—this was a decade ago—and boxes and artwork from the New York apartment sat stacked against the walls. As I recall, she was unpacking plates in the kitchen when she heard the noise, and rather than grab a knife or run out the back door, my mother, out of some misguided understanding of country life, waltzed into the front hall to see which friendly neighbor had brought over an apple pie or communist pamphlet. But the only thing the hulking man in the foyer had with him was a duffel bag. For Simon Krauss thought he'd just come home.

Where he'd been and how long he'd been gone, I have no idea, but it must have been months, because Simon's former landlord had put the house up for sale and my mother had bought it soon thereafter. Most
of Simon's shit had been moved to a storage unit, with the exception of a few industrial-size creations scattered across the property.