Due Preparations for the Plague (20 page)

Lowell is folding the canvas drop cloths and stacking them neatly in the back of his truck. From habit, he reaches between them for the backpack, and when his hand finds nothing, panic fizzes through his blood and his heart cavorts. Sudden dizziness overwhelms him and he has to lean against the side of his truck. Then it comes to him, with a great lifting of the spirit, that he has taken care of all that. He feels like someone waking from a nightmare. He does not need to worry anymore. The ring binders are safely sealed into his walls. They could stay there for a decade and the only risks would be from insects and damp. As for the backpack and the tapes: they are back where they started, where his own father had deemed them to be perfectly safe, in a locker at Logan Airport. He put them there yesterday and he alone has the key, which he has threaded on a thin gold chain around his neck. He touches the key through his T-shirt and its outline cheers him so much that he whistles as he folds and stacks canvas.
I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus … underneath the mistletoe last night …

He levers the aluminum extension ladders off the roof rack, balancing them against his gut, lowering them to the ground. They are awkward, but not heavy. He drags them down the drive to the cement-block storage shed that is shared by all tenants. He has his own key for the padlock, and his own section inside. He hangs the ladders on steel hooks high on the wall. He goes back to the truck for his paint cans. In the shed, he pries open a ten-gallon drum of oil primer, tilts it, and pours from its spout to top up a small gallon can.

“Hey, Lowell,” Kevin says from the doorway.

“Hey, Kevin. How’s things?”

“Great,” Kevin says. “Things are great. Great time in Buffalo. Great Christmas. And you?”

“Best Christmas in years. When d’ya get back?”

“Got back this morning, just after you left for work, probably. Met a girl at my brother’s Christmas party. Could be the one.”

“Go for it, pal. What’s her name?”

“Shannon.” He smiles when he says it. “Kevin and Shannon McCarthy. I’ve been trying it out. Has a good sound, don’t you think?”

“Sounds meant to be.”

Kevin grins. “She’s coming east next month, so I was thinking, you know, got to fix the apartment up a bit.”

“Hey.” Lowell grins. “Serious stuff.”

“You better believe it. So I was wondering … I mean, that’s your thing. I was wondering if we could trade some way. Like, you paint my apartment, I can get you box seats at Fenway Park for a game. I can get ’em from where I work, through my boss.”

“You got yourself a deal,” Lowell says. “I love to take my kids to Fenway Park. Hey, Rowena might even come.”

“Hey. Must have been a really good Christmas.”

“Fantastic,” Lowell says. “Best ever. Got my fingers crossed.”

“Looks like a good year coming up all around,” Kevin says. “Going to be the year for the Sox too. I got a good feeling about that.”

“I think so,” Lowell says. “Great lineup. I think it’s going to be a Red Sox year.”

“So, d’ya think maybe next weekend we could get a start on my place? Cream, I think. Almond. Whatever they call it.”

“Well, I don’t know, Kevin. I mean, I hope I’ll have the kids this weekend.”

“Oh, right. Well, yeah, your kids come first. So, ah, when d’ya think …?”

“How about late on weeknights, instead of weekends?”

“Sure. Sure. No problem. I mean, I can pitch in too. Can’t be that much to it.”

“Stick a roller in your hand, you can do it.”

“Great,” Kevin says. “Oh, listen, nearly forgot. The guys came with your sink today.”

“Came with my sink?”

“Yeah. The new one. They got it installed.”

“Not me. I didn’t order a new sink. Must be Darlene.”

“It was your apartment,” Kevin says. “They showed me the specs. I had to get the master key and let them in.”

Lowell can feel foreboding move through his body like heavy blood. “Must be Rowena, then,” he says clumsily. His tongue feels wooden in his mouth. “Must be a New Year surprise.”

“That must be it,” Kevin says. “Well, let me know what night you can start.”

“Right. Night, Kevin.”

“Night.”

Lowell padlocks the shed. He pulls the cover across the back of his pickup and fastens it down. His hands are shaking. The muscles in his legs feel weak, stretched too far. They feel like elastic gone slack. His whole body aches. Dread rises with him up the stairs.

He opens his door and knows instantly. The worst has happened.

White powder floats everywhere like smog. Drywall has been pulled from the studs. The apartment has been stripped and ransacked. He knows without looking, but he looks anyway. His pantry shelves are bare, the milk safe empty. In the storage room, the pegboard lies in fragments on the floor. There is nothing in the space between the studs.

He feels for the chain around his neck. The key to the locker is there.

Very quietly, he closes his front door, pulls off his shoes, and walks downstairs in his socks. On the porch, he slips his feet back into his sneakers. He does not go to his truck. Keeping to shadows, he moves down the street. He is wearing the old paint-spattered running shoes that he uses for interior jobs, and the shoes slip and slide on the snow. He breaks into a run, making for the subway stop in Union Square. He begins to plan his route. He will take the Red Line to Park Street, but he will not take the Blue Line direct to the airport. He will need to be more devious and more cunning. He will need to plan a roundabout route.

On New Year’s Eve, Samantha buzzes Jacob’s apartment from the lobby. She sets the champagne in its insulated sleeve on the shelf beneath the mailboxes because she anticipates a wait. She pushes buttons randomly and waits for someone, anyone, to let her in. No one responds. Everyone is out. Everyone is partying, she thinks. A couple in evening dress (long velvet gown, tuxedo) emerges from the inner locked door.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she says brightly. “A friend in 807’s expecting me, but he must be in the shower or have his headphones on. Would you consider …?” She holds up the bottle of champagne. “You can frisk me if you like.”

“No problem,” the guy laughs. “You look harmless,” and he unlocks the inner sanctum and lets her through. The elevator takes her straight to the eighth floor without a stop. She knocks at Jacob’s door and rattles the knob.

She waits.

She tears a cheque out of her chequebook and scribbles
Let me in
on the back. She pushes it through the fine crack beneath the door.

She puts her ear to the lock, but hears nothing.

She takes the elevator back to the ground floor and bangs on the door of the super’s apartment. There is no answer. She goes back to the lobby and dials 911.

“My friend’s expecting me, but he’s not answering the door,” she explains to the police. “I’m afraid something’s happened to him in there.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Well, I’m half afraid he might have taken an overdose, or something like that. He’s been depressed.”

“Have you called him on the phone?”

“He keeps the phone unplugged,” she says. “Because he’s, ah, he’s been working on a project, he doesn’t like interruptions, and … as I told you, I think he’s been depressed. But he wouldn’t … not when he’s expecting me, and on New Year’s Eve. If he were okay, he’d answer the door.”

There is a silence at the other end. She has a sense of someone’s hand over the receiver, of a conferral going on.

“Officer?”

“You’re on our list,” the policeman tells her. “We’ll get to you, ma’am. Might take a while. I mean, New Year’s Eve. A lot of calls, a lot of high priorities. But we’ll get there eventually.”

And then she waits. And waits.

“Kind of a heavy night, New Year’s Eve,” two policemen explain nearly an hour later. “We have to prioritize.”

When they force the lock and enter Jacob’s apartment, there is no sign of him. Nor is there any sign of disorder.

“Well, ma’am,” one policeman says awkwardly. He coughs into his hand. “I think you’ve been stood up for your New Year’s date.”

“No,” Sam says. “It’s not like that. He wouldn’t do that. Something’s happened, I know it has.”

“Does he have a car?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Does he keep it in the basement garage?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know his license number?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Let’s go, then.” But Jacob’s car is not in the basement garage.

“We’ll let you know,” the police promise. “As soon as we hear anything.”

“Hello?” Samantha says, starting awake on her sofa and groping for the receiver in the dark. “Have you found him?”

“Samantha? This is Lowell. I’m calling from a pay phone beside—”

“Who?”

“Lowell. Lowell Hawthorne.”

“Lowell? Oh, Lowell.” She blinks at the sun beyond her window. “What time is it?”

“Time? It’s, uh, about eleven, I think. Listen, I’m in a pay phone booth beside the Mass Pike—”

“Eleven. Oh my God. Look, Lowell, I’m sorry, but I’m in the middle of an emergency here. I have to make a call. Sorry.”

She cuts Lowell off and calls the police department.

There is no information, she is told.

At midday on New Year’s Day, Samantha rouses the superintendent of Jacob’s building. The superintendent is hungover, and none too pleased.

“Police have already been here,” he tells her irritably. “I don’t need this kind of shit.”

“Did you see Jacob Levinstein yesterday?” she asks.

“I can’t remember if I did or I didn’t,” he says. “I got a hundred apartments in this building, lady. I don’t sit all day and watch who’s going out, coming in. Especially not on New Year’s Eve.”

Samantha fills her car with Renaissance songs. Cass’s mother is singing, Jacob’s father plays violin. Sam turns the volume up to leave no space for anything else. She drives almost blindly, east of the city and then south around the curve of Chesapeake Bay, oblivious to road signs, sometimes wondering with a start if she has missed her exit, watching for the next signpost but then forgetting to attend to it. Nevertheless, instinct brings her to the stretch of salt marsh and to the small unpaved road that leads to the reed-sucking edge of the bay where the boathouse is. There is no sign of Jacob’s car.

Samantha parks and climbs the ladder to the loft.

The heaped fishnets and the orange life vests remain undisturbed.

It is cold. The damp of the wooden roof has whitened to a wafer of frost. Sam puts on a life vest for warmth and drapes one of the nets around her shoulders like a shawl. She huddles into the tangle of knotted rope and stares for hours at seagulls and marsh. The flash of wings and the soft slurp of water against wood pylons mesmerize her. She listens for Jacob’s car.

She takes two oars from the rack and drops them carefully, one by one, so that they fall onto the boardwalk edge of the shed below. She climbs back down the ladder and tests the rowboat. She and Jacob and Cass have used it before. It is old and weathered but does not seem to have sprung any leaks. She gets in, unhooks the mooring rope, and pushes herself off with one oar. The mooring rope is crusted with ice and thin wafers of ice float between the reeds. Within a few yards of the boat shed, she enters the labyrinth and has vanished from the view of anyone who might have been watching from the shed. The brittle brown stalks of the marsh weeds, four feet high, close in around her and she peers ahead for the scribbled blue thread of the channel. The channels shift with the tide, sometimes closing behind or ahead of careless boaters. She does not plan to get lost. She rests the oars, lies back in the boat, and looks up at the bleak wintry sky.

Clouds telegraph messages. One looks like a violin, another resembles a row of children hurrying along behind a nurse. She sees towers, high-rise apartment buildings, a map of North Africa. She sees Jacob hunched over a desk. She lifts the oars and rows back to the boat shed, sometimes batting at the canyon of reeds, once ramming an oyster bed and having to push herself off it with an oar.

Twilight already. She drives back into the city and parks and checks her answering machine as soon as she lets herself in the door. Not a single message waits for her. She feels desolation. She cannot concentrate on television, she cannot read. She lies on her bed and closes her eyes and summons up the school gymnasium in Germany in minute detail: the smell of the cots, the smell of the blankets, the ammoniac smell of wet underwear. She recalls the nurses, the slim blondes and the big heavy ones with dark hair. She walks up and down between the cots, concentrating, remembering each row, seeing Agit here, Cass there, Jacob there. She and Jacob sit together on a cot.

The phone rings and she falls off the bed in her haste to reach it.

“Can I speak to Samantha Raleigh, please?” a voice asks, official.

“Speaking,” she whispers.

“I’m afraid we have bad news,” the voice says.

Samantha is sitting on the floor of her apartment, arms hugged across her stomach, rocking herself back and forth. What does that mean:
identify the body
? She sees pieces of Jacob, disconnected, like a puzzle that must be put together: that impatient little grimace he had, for example, when he was exasperated with her.
You’re reckless, Sam. More accidents
… His lips float in front of her, grimacing. She remembers the pressure of them, and the taste. She tries to summon up Jacob’s face, but all she can remember is his lips.

Car found in Rock Creek Park
, the police said.
Hose from exhaust
…
stereo still playing, one of those automatic recycling types, classical music, Schubert or something, the same piece over and over …

She can see the back of his hand as he reaches to adjust the balance of treble and bass. One knuckle is lumpy and swollen. It was broken when he fell down the chute from the plane because he was more concerned with protecting his father’s violin. He shielded it with his body as he fell.
I’ve found a safe place, Sam. It’s where I belong.

The phone rings and she reaches for it in a dazed automatic way.

“Sam,” a voice says. “Thank God I’ve reached you again. Don’t cut me off this time.”

“What do you want?”

“Something terrible’s happened.”

“Yes, I know.” She frowns, her thinking sluggish. “I have to identify the body.”

“Sam?”

“Yes,” she says. “Is this the police or the morgue?”

“Sam, this is Lowell.”

“Lowell?”

“Lowell Hawthorne.”

“Oh,
Lowell.
”

“I tried to call you on New Year’s Eve, but you—”

“Yes. Sorry I couldn’t—”

“I was calling from the Mass Turnpike then. I’ve been coming south on 87, and now I’m in the Greyhound Terminal in Jersey City. Damn pay phone won’t take a card and I’ve used all my coins, so we have to be quick—”

“Emergency conditions,” she says, “so I’m sorry, but I couldn’t—”

“
Major
emergency,” Lowell says.

Sam is conscious of a small space that outlines her body, a vacuum barrier that sound has to pass through. Lowell speaks, and the words seem to skywrite themselves against the space and Sam reads them slowly and waits for a meaning to drift by.
Sirocco
, he is saying.
Salamander.
Sam knows this means something important, but the meaning is still floating and groping for the words.
The things my father left
, he says.

“Almost no one left now,” she says. “Besides me.”

“Samantha, I’ve got one minute left. Can you take down this number and call me back? Got a pencil?”

“No,” she says, trying to concentrate.

“Damn it, Samantha,
listen
to me. You started this, you wouldn’t leave me alone.” His voice is rising, exasperated. “I’m being followed, and you started this, God knows what you’ve started with that goddamn website, your declassified documents, with all your goddamned calls—I’m in a pay phone. Get a pen or a pencil!” he shouts.

“I’m sorry, I’m in such a—I’m in bad shape, I’m sure I’m not making any sense.” Sam tries to think where a pen or a pencil might be. “I think I’m in shock,” she says. “I’ve lost Jacob. I’ve lost half of myself. I’ve been
amputated
,” she says, because that’s what it feels like.

“Please deposit two dollars,” a voice says. “Or recharge your calling card and try again.”

The line goes dead.

Shock? Is that the problem? Sam tries to assess her hypothesis. She does seem to be able to go through basic motions. When she hears ringing, she knows to move toward the telephone and she knows to pick up the receiver and speak.

She must find a pencil and paper for when Lowell calls back. Pencil, she thinks. Where? She finds one on her desk and writes on a piece of paper:
Jacob’s body
.
Must identify.
Desire for Jacob’s body overwhelms her. She can identify exactly what she wants. She hugs a pillow between her legs and curls herself tightly around it. She keeps the pencil and notepad in her hand.

The phone rings.

Samantha catapults awake and searches for it.

“Yes?” she says. “Have I identified the body?”

“Sam? This is Lowell.”

“I’ve got a pencil.”

“Take this number.” He dictates ten digits. “Got it?”

“Got it. Where are you?”

“I’m getting closer. Heading south on 95. How fast can you get to a pay phone?”

“Pay phone?” Sam’s mind goes blank again. “I don’t know.”

“Your phone is probably being tapped. Find a pay phone fast and call back this number.”

Lowell hangs up. Sam, flustered, thinks:
Pay phone, pay phone
. Mini market, she thinks, round the corner. But that phone isn’t private, not at all. She runs downstairs and knocks on the door below. “Doug? Hi. Bit of an emergency. My phone seems to be on the blink and I’ve got to be—Could I use your phone?”

“No problem. Take the cordless,” he says. “Here. Lock yourself in the bathroom and have some privacy.”

“Angel,” she says.

In the bathroom, she fumbles with the scrap of paper and dials the number Lowell gave her. Lowell answers on the first ring. “Okay,” he says. “I’m scared shitless. I figure we’ve got about five minutes before they put a trace on this phone too.”

Sam can hear the terror in his voice, and now she can feel her own terror too, the electric panic of two people who have reason to know that bad will never stop at worse.

“We have to talk,” he says, “but we can’t do it over the phone. We have to meet. Somewhere safe, though I don’t know if anywhere is safe. My apartment was ransacked and the stuff that my father—”

“Stuff that your—”

“I never told you … You remember I had a bag with me in New York?”

“You wouldn’t let it out of your sight.”

“My father sent me classified stuff and it’s been stolen. We have to meet somewhere safe.”

“I know somewhere safe,” Sam tells him—the only safe place left in the world, she thinks—and the boathouse, the abandoned boathouse, is so vivid to her that she can smell the dried salt, smell Cass, smell Jacob, smell a king tide of sorrow that swamps her, and sucks her down. “I do know somewhere quite safe.”

“Don’t tell me,” he says quickly. “Don’t say it into anything electronic. I’m being followed, so I’m traveling on Greyhound buses and hitching rides. I have to keep changing routes.”

“Is it really that—?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think so. I mean, I might be cracking up, I know that. I also know my house was ransacked, and I do think I’m being followed, and when I can tell you why, you’ll understand.”

“So how will we—?”

“When I get to D.C., I’ll call you from a pay phone and give you the number. Get to another pay phone fast and call me back. I’ll tell you where to pick me up. Probably late tonight. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sam says. “I have to go and identify—”

“See you later.” Lowell hangs up.

In the dark, Sam pulls up to a diner in the dangerous northeastern section of Washington, D.C. A man in a bomber jacket and woolen cap, with a blue backpack slung in front like an Indian papoose, gets into her car. They drive east and then south around the curve of the bay without speaking. Eventually, on the unpaved road that leads to the boathouse, Sam says, “The police found Jacob’s body in his car. We used to come here. I don’t believe it was suicide, by the way.” She turns off the lights and nudges the car as close as she dares. “I mean, I know it could have been. It’s possible. But I don’t believe he would. Not without making arrangements for the violin.”

“Elizabeth’s disappeared too,” Lowell says. “My father’s widow. Not that she knew anything. But someone was afraid she did. Or she was so afraid that someone was afraid that she knew something, she’s moved. She’s gone away.” He holds his backpack as though it were an infant. He cradles it. He strokes it constantly with his hands.

In the boathouse, Sam wraps herself in the fishnets that heap themselves where Jacob used to sit.

“… Greyhound buses,” Lowell is saying, making a nest for himself in the nets. “If you want a crash course on race and class in America, Greyhound bus is the way to go. The last time I traveled Greyhound, I was a student coming home on spring break. And that’s the thing. Who uses Greyhound? Students do. American students, and foreign students seeing America on the cheap. Apart from that, it’s blacks, Mexicans, the poor, and the desperate.” He laughs bitterly. “The plus is, the FBI or the CIA or whoever the hell it is who’s after us, they don’t go Greyhound. I don’t believe those guys have ever set foot in a Greyhound terminal, which is another country, believe me. Got to be one of the most depressing zones on earth, but at least it’s a safe one.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.”

“I do count on it, though, relatively speaking, I mean, because you can
feel
being followed on the back of your neck, and I felt
un
followed on those buses. Of course, I didn’t dare go to sleep.”

“The boathouse is safe. We’ve never seen another human being anywhere near.”

“I’m exhausted,” Lowell says. “I’ve been on the run two days. Can hardly keep my eyes open.”

Sam can smell Jacob on the fishnets and she balls a wad of her jacket sleeve into her mouth. She sleeps. They both sleep. She dreams that Jacob is asking her to get the violin from his apartment and keep it safe and she is trying to untangle it from his clothes. Someone else is in the room giving orders and when she swims up to the surface of Lowell’s words, she is tangled up in him and they are both tangled up in the nets and a brackish wind is coming in off the marsh, and gulls, perched in the open gable, swoop off as Sam moves.

Lowell is talking in his sleep.

He sleeps awkwardly, his backpack pushing him out of shape, but when Sam tries to ease it from his shoulders, he cries out and jackknifes up and backhands her across the face.

“Lowell! It’s me, it’s just me.”

He stares wild-eyed, still ready to strike. He is trembling violently.

“We’re in the boathouse,” Sam says. “We’re safe here.”

“Oh God, Sam.” He takes great gulping breaths, and hugs his knees. “Listen: this blue bag is practically radioactive. My father sent something back from the other side. Some of it’s been stolen, and some of it’s still in here.”

Sam’s heartbeat is erratic. “Tell me slowly,” she says. “I can’t hear properly if you tell me too much at a time. I can’t take it in. I get interference or reverberation or something.”

“How I got this stuff—” His hands flutter, and the flutter implies:
The explanation won’t make any sense
. “Too long a story, but I haven’t let it out of my sight or out of my reach since it came.”

“What’s in there?”

“What
was
in the bag was a bunch of videos and two thick ring binders. One of the binders was in some sort of code and I never made any sense of it. My father wanted it hidden, I don’t know for how long. Decades, maybe. He wanted me to hide it until it could safely be read. The second one was classified stuff, reports on Salamander and Sirocco, kind of a logbook, I guess, and I read a lot of it.”

“Salamander. You’ve got classified reports on Salamander.”

“Did have. Both binders were stolen.”

“But
Salamander
!”

“I think my father knew him well. I think my father was killed because he knew who Salamander was. Knew Sirocco too.”

“Shit,” Sam breathes. “No wonder someone’s after this stuff.”

“I’ve still got the videotapes he sent me.” He pats the bag that rests in the curve of his body. “I haven’t watched them. I haven’t had a chance to play them yet.”

“What’s on them?”

“I have no idea. I’ve been afraid to find out. I’ve been afraid for anyone else to see them, and I’ve been afraid to watch them alone. But I think we have to.”

“Yes.”

He opens the backpack and pulls out a drawstring bag made from a child’s pillowcase. He shows Sam the tag at its neck.

“Oh no,” Sam says faintly. “I can’t watch that.”

“We have to. People have been murdered for what’s in here.”

“I’m not sure I can do it.”

“We have to watch before they’re stolen or destroyed. But the question is, where? Where can we watch them? You don’t have a VCR in the boathouse, I assume.”

“The Saltmarsh Motel,” Sam says quietly. “It’s nowhere. Nobody goes there off-season.”

“How far?”

“Not far by water. There’s an old rowboat below us. We can’t do it in the dark, but if we wait until dawn.”

“No,” Lowell says. “You can’t show up at a motel in the morning, especially not out of season. We’ll have to wait till tomorrow afternoon.”

“All right. Late afternoon. We’ll wait until dusk.”