Man of the Hour (44 page)

Maybe that’s what was going on here, Judy told herself. They’d all conspired to twist this poor woman’s arm and make her take her story back.

But without another word, Renee reached into her bag and started lining up little orange prescription bottles along the edge of Judy’s desk.

“You see?” she said.

“What am I supposed to be seeing?” Judy studied the prescription labels, the names of the drugs vaguely familiar from science articles: Lithium. Zoloft, Clozaril, Paxil.

“They don’t give you these for these cramps,” Renee said, bending gracefully and sweeping the bottles back into her bag. “This is who I am. This is what I’m up against. I want you to understand that.”

Judy looked around for Bill Ryan, to give her moral support, but again he wasn’t there. She felt a flash of resentment at him. It was all his fault, setting her up with all that hype about the good old days, integrity, and sticking your chin out. Didn’t he know all that went out with Sinatra’s fedora and Toots Shor’s restaurant? Now look what she’d done. Had she really gone and ruined an innocent man’s life?

“So what are you saying?” she asked Renee defensively. “I’m not supposed to believe anything you said before because you were taking pills and seeing a doctor?”

“No!” Renee grabbed Judy’s shoulder for emphasis. “I’m saying I need David around to raise our son. He can’t go to jail. Look at me, Judy. This is me. This is real. I’m a mess, but I’m trying to do the right thing. We won’t make it if he goes away.”

Judy tried to return her look but found herself quickly turning away. From the corner of her eye, she saw the green cursor on her computer screen blinking over and over, as if asking her,
now what are you going to do?
She politely excused herself, went into the ladies’ room, and threw up.

57

AS HE SAT
on the elevated platform of the Stillwell Avenue station—the last stop in the city for some trains—David felt he’d finally reached the breaking point.

His eyes surveyed the gaudy and wrecked Coney Island skyline. This morning, a woman had called him a “child killer” on the train coming in, mixing up two unfounded allegations. Then shortly after he arrived at school, Larry Simonetti had come down to his office even whiter than usual with fury, having gotten wind of David’s questioning students about the bombing instead of helping them with their essays. “I’ll have you bounced by the end of the day if it happens again,” he’d threatened. And worst of all, the story of the inconclusive lie detector test was in all the morning papers.

David laced his fingers on top of his head, feeling the full accumulated weight of the last two weeks descend on him. The interrogations, the raids, Renee’s breakdown, Arthur’s asthma, the lawyers, the talk shows. He was almost too tired to prioritize his worries. Up in the sky, seagulls looked like eraser marks against the clouds.

He didn’t notice Elizabeth Hamdy until she was standing right in front of him.

“So I saw you on television the other night,” she said, sucking in her cheeks.

A D train roared by on the other side of the tracks, sounding like a hundred aluminum trash cans rolling down a flight of concrete stairs.

“Great, huh?” He started to roll his eyes. “They ought to give me my own show.’”

“It got me thinking,” she said.

“‘Bout what?”

“About things we’ve talked about in class. Things you’ve said to me.” She looked away, raised her shoulders and then dropped them. “They keep going around in my head. Like what you read from the Stephen Crane book a few weeks ago.”

“What was that?” He felt like he was pushing through waves of fatigue, trying to hear her.

“About what you would do in a war,” she said. “Would you stay or would you run away?”

“I don’t really see the connection, but then again I’m pretty fried.”

Her eyes strayed, following a seagull walking by on the platform with a cigarette butt in its mouth. “You asked me something the other day and I didn’t really answer it honestly.”

“Oh yeah?”

He looked up at her, scratching his chin. She was transmitting, but he wasn’t set up to receive her yet. Something was happening here. He forced himself to focus. “Why don’t you sit down?” He patted the seat next to him.

She glanced around, as if she was thinking of bolting, and then gradually, reluctantly, lowered herself to his side, not daring to look at him directly. “It’s hard, what I have to tell you. I feel like I’m coming apart.”

“Then just say it already,” he said, feeling pressure moving around inside of him. “Come on, we’ve known each other a long time, Elizabeth. If you don’t trust me by now, then you’re never going to.”

“All right. Okay.” She tried out three different expressions, before settling on a tight-mouthed determination. “You were asking me before about the day of the bombing,” she said finally. “Right?”

“Right.” He swatted a fly away. “And you reminded me you weren’t there.” Another in the classic series of frustrating dead-end conversations.

She took a deep breath as an out-of-service train pulled into the station. “There’s a little more to it.”

“Okay.” He felt like he was cautiously peering around a half-opened door.

“My brother asked me to stay home that day. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” She turned her feet at the ankles and contemplated them, avoiding his eyes. “He said he was going to take me shopping. And then he showed up late.”

“And this is significant
why
exactly?” He noticed her eyes were sunken and her cheeks were drawn, like she hadn’t gotten much sleep lately. “Come on, Elizabeth. Just tell me what you want to tell me. I’m no good at reading between the lines anymore.”

The out-of-service train pulled out of the station and she squinted, making little asterisks appear near the corners of her eyes. “He showed up right after the bomb went off,” she said. “Because he was the one who put it there.”

The train was gone, but the station was still reverberating. “How do you know that?” said David.

“He told me.”

David sat very still. Wide awake now. Not wanting to disturb the moment.

“Your brother planted the bomb.” David coughed and replayed the last five seconds of conversation in his mind, trying to make sure he hadn’t imagined it.

She turned away, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes to keep from crying. “You see? That’s what I mean. It’s like the things we’ve talked about. Do you stay or run away when you’re in trouble? All this time, I’ve wanted to tell you, but I’ve been afraid. I’ve gone back and forth on it a hundred times. It’s like a hand over my heart.”

David held himself in check, trying not to overreact. But in his mind, he heard a crowd starting to cheer. It sounded like long-dead fans at Ebbets Field, rising in the stands again.

He looked at Elizabeth. She was a beautiful doorway between one part of his life and another.

“Have you told anyone else about this?” he asked cautiously.

“I haven’t said anything to anyone.”

David closed his eyes and pictured the after-image of a train disappearing down the tracks on his inner lids. No, no, he wouldn’t believe this. He wouldn’t let his guard down so easily. There had to be a catch.

“So what are we going to do about this?” he said.

He had to go slowly and carefully here. It was like walking on thin ice in baseball cleats.

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth murmured. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Have you thought about going to the police?”

She looked up, hurt, worried that he was about to betray her. “A detective already came to our house. He said my brother would get the death penalty if it turned out he had anything to do with what happened. So I lied to him too.”

“Okay.”

David glanced down the platform at a pay phone, wanting to call his lawyers immediately. But then he stopped himself, realizing she was still like a bird on a railing. If he moved too quickly to grab her, she’d fly away.

“It’s not just him, you know,” she said in a choked voice. “It’s what he’s been through and the people he’s with. The political situation. The terrible choices.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah
, thought David. And if pigs had wings and your aunt had a mustache and all the other Hall of Fame rationalizations. To understand isn’t always to forgive. Sometimes, to understand is just to understand.

“Do you think he’s capable of doing it again?”

She sniffed and wiped her face with the side of her arm. “I don’t know. He asked me to rent him a storage space in the city. He told me he was going to put some material there. Compressors. So I don’t know.”

David sucked on his teeth and thought of Nasser. Their fight in the parking lot, their conversation in the office yesterday, his flickering, edgy presence in class. It’s always the quiet ones.

“We gotta deal with this, Elizabeth,” he said. “If your brother killed somebody in another bombing and you hadn’t told the FBI about this, you could go to jail. Okay?”

“I know, I know.” She doubled over on the bench, arms against her stomach. “But if I tell anyone, he could have me killed. You don’t know what they’re like, the people I think he’s hooked up with. My father’s told me about them, the fanatics from back home. Their whole lives are about killing.”

David listened for a minute, to the sound of car alarms and seagulls crying in the distance. What could he tell her? What possible relevant experience could he offer to advise her? Come on. You’re supposed to be a teacher. Teach.

“So which way are you leaning?” he asked, taking off his glasses and trying to give her some space.

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” She moved against him and rested her head lightly against his shoulder. “It’s going to kill my father to find out about this. It’s against everything he ever wanted for us.”

The weight of her head on his shoulder stirred him a little, even though he knew it shouldn’t.

“You have to make a choice, Elizabeth.” He tried to move and subtly shift his weight. “You know, it’s like what we’ve talked about in class. Sometimes, you gotta step to it and see what you can live with.”

“
No.
I don’t want you to give me choices.” She began crying and burrowing into the folds of his jacket. “I want you to tell me what to do.”

He thought about putting an arm around her, but stopped himself. What if one of her classmates or another teacher saw them? The train they’d both been waiting for finally pulled in, but he ignored it.

“You know, I know what you’ve been going through. I’m not just this stupid girl.” She pulled away suddenly, so she could see him whole. “I know you have a wife and a child and they’re blaming you for something you didn’t do.”

“There is that,” he said.

“Well, I
can’t
live with that. I just
can’t
.” She started to touch his knee and then took her hand away. “It’s not the right thing. It’s
haram
.”

He looked over, surprised to hear her using her brother’s word. But she’d moved on.

“Maybe it’d be different if you were somebody I didn’t know or care about.” She took out a Kleenex and blew her nose. “Then I could just side with my family and hope no one would find out. But this is
you
. Right? This is you.”

For a few seconds, he couldn’t respond. He felt like she’d dropped her raw, bleeding heart into his lap.

“We gotta work this out,” he said.

“Oh God, I am not ready for this. I am not.” She balled up the Kleenex and kicked at her book bag, threatening to send it tumbling over the edge of the platform. “Okay,” she said, sighing and straightening up. “Just help me with this. Help me think it through. What will happen if I do tell the police about Nasser? Would he get the death penalty?”

“I don’t know. You could probably plead mercy on his behalf.”

“And what about his friends? They’d kill me if they found out about this. How would you protect me from them?”

“How would
I
protect you?” A good practical question that had never occurred to him. David put his glasses back on. “Um, well, you know, they have witness protection programs they could put you in, the FBI. They can change your name, give you a new place to live, a new school …”

The more he talked, the farther Elizabeth leaned away from him. She looked seasick and pale.

“You mean, I could never see my family again?”

“Well, I don’t know, maybe you could all go in …”

“Then I can’t do it,” she said. “My father couldn’t handle this. To take away everything he’s worked for and make him live like a criminal and ruin my sisters’ lives … It would kill him.”

The train closed its doors and pulled away with a jolt. David watched the last car disappear down the tracks and knew he shouldn’t miss the next one.

“Well, maybe they won’t have to play it that way,” he said. “Maybe they could use your information without making you testify in court. That’s something you could talk to my lawyers about. Making sure you’re protected.”

That’s right. Fob it off on the experts. Don’t take any responsibility yourself. Manipulate this poor girl against her brother. Maybe you’re not such a big man after all. She’s the one taking the real risk here. Self-preservation wrestled with self-disgust. Self-preservation had the natural weight advantage, but self-disgust was pretty good in the clinches, David remembered.

“You sure this is the right thing to do?” Elizabeth asked. “I need you to tell me.”

All of a sudden, she wasn’t just a doorway anymore. He could see what was going on inside of her, and it made him unhappy. The vulnerable brown eyes, the mouth trying to be strong, the delicate shoulders. Why couldn’t she be harder, more self-centered, like an American girl? Yes, he’d jarred a little information out of her by his questioning, but she’d come all the way across on her own, looking to do the right thing and help him. So could he let her just go ahead and risk her life for him? Self-disgust said:
Think about it.
Self-preservation said:
Go for it, dude!

“Yeah, I think it’s the right thing,” said David.