The Gun Runner's Daughter (13 page)

September 4, 1994.
Ocean View Farm.

1.

After he left that evening, she lay watching grayness creep across the ceiling, the evening falling outside so starkly she could nearly hear it, a faint exhalation, like a sigh
of defeat.

He had dressed, standing next to the bed, his eyes on her body. Watching him watching her, she had wondered if anything ever happened in one focus, not two; if anything was
ever single, not double. She did not wish to hold him, she wished to
cleave
to him, her face buried in the crook of his neck, her breast against the muscle of his chest.

When at last he was ready, she sat up and swung her legs out of bed, wrapped the sheet across her waist and legs. They did not kiss, but watched each other, silent, serious. At last he leaned,
ran the back of his fingers against the inside curve of her breast.

And then he was gone. He was gone. By the morning, he would have spoken to Shauna McCarthy and she would have scheduled a hearing with the trial’s judge to have Dee replaced on the
prosecution team.

There might be some media attention to her following that. She needed, she knew, to be ready for it. But more important, at the moment, seemed to her that Dee was gone, with the deserting summer
crowd, leaving the island to its winter, empty, isolate, at the edge of the killing sea. From now until spring the Atlantic snows would drift over the duotone countryside, the ocean churning cold
and alien, the occasional ferries the single lifeline to the mainland. And when she, too, left this place to its bad season, it would be for the last time.

She rose and dressed, went downstairs and out to the car, moving slowly, deliberately, as if in mourning. By the time she reached Oak Bluffs Dee’s ferry would be gone, the Ritz beginning
to take on its winter desolation. She hit the main road and turned right, not even looking for Dymitryck, no longer caring if he was there.

The evening, against the windshield, falling, sighing, in defeat.

Inside the door of the Ritz the familiar noises of the bar swirled: the clink of glass, running water, the murmur of conversation. As she entered, Allison felt entirely,
irremediably, alone; so alone that as the door swung shut behind her she felt her mouth, entirely out of control, turning down at the corners. A few seats were available at the bar, and without
thought, she took one and slowly sipped a beer, looking over its rim to the bar mirror. In its frame she watched, behind her, a couple of men in Timberland boots shooting pool. They wore plaid
shirts and jean jackets. The few other people in the bar were also islanders. And the man who had just walked into the bar was Nicholson Dymitryck.

Even in the mirror she could see the bruise that spread from his right eye on to his cheekbone. He was carrying two bags, one for clothes, one a briefcase. That made her think that he had not
followed her here, but was waiting for a ferry—the six o’clock, clearly, had been full.

And he was approaching her. Without thinking she turned, holding him in her green gaze.

He noticed her now and stared back, his face grave.

For a moment, everything paused.

Then he altered his direction to sit next to her at the bar.

2.

Even with his bruised cheek, she could make out the extreme regularity of his features. His eyes, large and brown, his hair thick enough and well enough cut not to need combing.
Unshaven, his lower face was a perfectly even shadow of black, and his expression—curious, interested—held, as far as she could see, not the slightest aggression. She judged him to be
in his mid-thirties.

After a time he broke their gaze to gesture to the bartender and hold up two fingers. Felice approached with two beers and one shot of bourbon, asking Allison protectively: “You want this,
doll?” Alley nodded, and after Felice had gone the man extended the silence long enough to drain his shot and light, from a pack on the bar, a Marlboro Light.

When he spoke, it was in a low, hoarse voice, flat with a Californian accent, and a conversational tone, as if resuming a long-standing discussion between old friends.

“So, thanks for everything. Wanna do me a favor?”

He sounded, she thought, exhausted. She nodded, and for a moment he paused, as if noticing, with unknown perspicacity, something about her. Then he went on in a slightly less aggressive
pitch.

“Tell your old man I’m under subpoena to the House Intelligence Committee, and I got to be in Washington tomorrow. I don’t want him to think he chased me away.”

Alley nodded okay, and there was a silence, during which she drank a single sip of beer. Then she spoke again:

“I’m afraid your trip’s been a waste of time, Mr. Dymitryck.”

“Nicky.”

“Pardon me?”

“Call me Nicky. And not at all. I’ve had a very interesting time.”

Now Alley allowed herself a smile. It was, she thought, her first in a long time.

“Well, Mr. Dymitryck, you have an interesting idea of what’s interesting.”

“Um-hmm.” He seemed to say this to himself. Then he returned his attention to her.

“Hey, Allison?”

“Yes, Nicky.”

Still speaking pleasantly, the man went on. “You think I’m one of your little pals from the
New Yorker,
right? You think I’m looking for a quote from you to dump in my
chatty little fact piece? Well, let me tell you something. I don’t give a fuck about you. So, think what you want to, okay? But don’t kid yourself that you know the first thing about
what I’m looking for, or what I found.”

Absorbing the change in pace immediately, she found herself, suddenly, glad. She smiled now, widely, and as she spoke, in a new tone also, she watched this man coming to
attention.

“Excuse me, you’re quite right. I thought you were a knee-jerk liberal from a paranoid rag come out here looking to confirm, somehow, what you already believe. Now I see you’re
in fact a deeply mysterious character with a black eye who can use the word
fuck.
”

He smiled back, as if happily, but she noticed his eyes squinting.

“Oh, my dear. My worst enemy wouldn’t call me a liberal. A liberal’s someone like your buddy Martha’s father. Or his good friends John Kerry or Ted Kennedy, who so
support your father’s business activities. You can say whatever you want about me. But you can’t call me a liberal.”

Allison felt her smile fade. That both Democratic senators from Massachusetts were friends of her father’s had to do with the high importance of munitions manufacture on the East Coast: no
one could be elected here without the support of the enormous high-tech defense industry, with the thousands of jobs it guaranteed to the state. But was this guy really inviting her to debate the
politics of the arms trade? That, she thought, for sure was a change from what most people wanted from her. She licked her lips and then answered precisely.

“I follow you exactly. The difference between you and someone like Kennedy or Kerry is that they got themselves elected. That’s called a constituency, Nicky dear, and their
constituency, like it or not, works for Raytheon and Electric Boat. Please don’t interrupt me.”

This last statement was in response to his indraw of breath, ready to answer, and in turn he exhaled and watched her go on.

“Their constituency built this country’s defense during the Cold War. Now that the war’s over, they’re supposed to be fired, right? They did their job, and they’ve
got families, and pensions, and mortgages, but sorry: we don’t need them any more. Well, Mr. Dymitryck from the
North American Review,
you know, and I know, that every piece of
equipment we build and sell can be just as easily bought from France, or Germany, or Russia, or England, and those bastards’ll equip them for nuclear payloads in the bargain. And you know,
and I know, that if
we
don’t sell them,
they
will. So don’t give me your moralizing, tired, liberal—repeat, liberal—bullshit, okay?”

Far from silenced, Nicky answered the moment she stopped.

“You know, that answer’s always depressing. But it’s the worst when you hear it from someone your age. Listen, the same company that builds F-16s in America sells separately
packaged nuclear conversion kits, so so much for your precious moral high ground. And as for your heroic blue-collar constituency who needs arms exports to survive, open your eyes. They’re
being pink-slipped from Lynn to Salem while their employers conduct a massive industry downsizing and hold up shareholder profits by exporting
our
jobs and
our
technology in offset
deals, and no one in this country, in this whole fucking country, gives a good goddamn. You take what the CEO of Defense Dynamics makes in one year, it could pay two hundred people
fifty-thousand-dollar salaries and still leave him seven figures to keep up his house on South Beach. Don’t kid yourself: Kennedy’s constituency, and Kerry’s, and Clinton’s,
aren’t blue collar, but they
are
your father: CEOs drawing multimillion-dollar salaries and feeding them into election coffers while they’re downsizing workforces and laying off
thousands
of workers. You know that.”

“No, I don’t. I know that there’s an industry in trouble, and millions of people depend on it.”

“Bullshit. There were larger military drawdowns after Korea, after Vietnam. We survived those. The Pentagon Defense Conversion Committee just last winter said the national impact’s
smaller now than after those.”

“Yeah. It’s arms exports that’s keeping it smaller. It’s people like my father who are giving us the breathing space to convert technology.”

They were both speaking very quickly now, and without smiling.

“No way. It’s people like your father keep us from retooling. See Japan have a problem with conversion after the Second World War? See Korea struggling to convert to auto production?
How come they can do it and we can’t?”

“Oh, write the president. My father doesn’t make these damn things. He just fulfills orders
your
c

His face showed contempt, seeming to age with the expression. “I’m surprised to hear the daughter of the great Zionist using that kind of defense. And in any case, it’s wrong
and you know it. Your father originates deals all over the world. It’s the backbone of Clintonian democracy that anything can be sold, anywhere, and he’ll throw in the State and
Commerce Departments as salesmen. Do you know you can get an export license for cattle prods under the Export Administration Act? Who exactly do you think’s defending democratic sovereignty
with cattle prods? And if, in the unlikely event that the administration won’t sign off, then what the fuck, your daddy just ships to Taiwan and diverts. Or uses Israeli stockpile. Or does
whatever he wants: an end-user certificate means nothing anymore. If I had a Falcon jet at my disposal, I could be back here with a Thai EUC for two dozen AMRAAM missiles before this bar fucking
closes.”

“Well, that’s likely, given that last call here’s at four. So tell me this, Mr. Dymitryck from the
NAR.
What did my father get his ass arrested for, if it’s the
goddamned Wild West out there in the arms market?”

And at the question Nicky, suddenly, stopped and slowly smiled.

“You see, you haven’t been listening to me. I told you, I’m not writing an article for the
New York Review of Books.
I know all about the sleazy politics behind your
dad’s arrest. I don’t give a fuck about that.”

3.

Allison hid her shock in a draw from her beer. This was, she thought, a very, very smart person, as smart as Dee, as smart as Martha.

He was, even with the black eye, an oddly attractive person. She watched him now, for a moment, watching her while he ordered another drink with an authoritative nod down the bar. When he turned
his face to her again, she noticed the thickness of his lips around the cigarette they held, and again, the diffuse bruise from his eye onto his cheek. Her dad’s people had hit him, she
thought, very hard indeed. Would they have killed him had Dee not shouted?

“Jesus, Mr. Dymitryck, I don’t know what. You were interested enough to get him arrested in the first place. I’m sorry you didn’t hit the end of your attention span a
little earlier.”

He laughed outright now, his face transforming with the smile, and Allison had a feeling that, under other circumstances, this was a person who laughed easily. When he stopped and spoke again in
his funny, raspy voice with its flat Californian accent, it was with a different expression. Appreciation, or very nearly, Allison thought.

“I’m gonna tell you something, Allison, and you can take it to the bank and deposit it with one of your daddy’s checks from Bank Leumi. You ready? When I’m done with your
dad, he’s going to be truly sorry he didn’t have me killed this afternoon.”

Quickly, something tightened in Allison’s stomach. But without taking the time to understand what, she answered.

“You’re living in a fantasy, Mr. Dymitryck. My father doesn’t have people killed. Or beaten up.”

Nicky answered only with a withering look.

But there was something else bothering her, and now, with a small shock, she defined what it was: how had he known her father sent her checks from Bank Leumi?

She thought about that for a moment, feeling her cheeks suddenly hot, before she turned back.

“Now let me tell you something. In fact, let me tell you two things. Firstly, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Secondly, if you’re looking for some secret about my
father, don’t even bother asking.”

“Thanks. Thanks for your advice. Now, I got to go check my boat.”

“Your boat?” During their conversation, she had forgotten that he meant to leave the island tonight. Suddenly it seemed extremely important that he not leave. Not until she knew what
he meant by that Bank Leumi reference. She spoke quickly.

“Good luck. I’ll keep your seat warm. There’s no way on earth you’re getting a seat on that boat.”

He stood. “I agree. But I do believe I can get a ticket on the freighter at eight. Watch my bags?”

Looking down, she saw at the foot of his stool a small leather garment bag and a matching briefcase. Her heart quickening, she looked up, and nodded. Then the small man was walking, slightly
unsteadily, out of the bar, and she was alone.