Little Easter

Their Own Shadows

I did a rarely sensible thing and paid a visit to my safe deposit box. In it I placed the pertinent documentation I’d gathered, stolen, or stumbled onto since the night before Christ’s birthday. I also managed to squeeze in two other items; a few neatly word-processed sheets outlining what the hell I thought was going on and the bundle of one hundred large in its original envelope. In a giddy moment, I’d entertained thoughts of just depositing the big money directly into my account and giving the teller apoplexy. Even in these days of junk bonds, arbitrage and leveraged buyouts, a hundred thousand dollar cash deposit will raise eyebrows and blood pressures. And let’s face it, Suffolk Midfork Trust ain’t the Bank of England.

I stood out in the street and the snow for a minute, admiring the bank. The bold Victorian dated back to the dying reign of Conrad Dugan. This quirky conglomeration of clapboards, granite, gingerbread spindles, turrets and a widow’s watch was to have been Dugan’s great house. His empire failed before he’d slept a night inside. The bank took it. The bank kept it. It had been a bank, with one name or another, ever since. I wondered what Conrad Dugan would think of automatic teller machines in the pantry. I think he’d probably like them.

I turned my back on the bank and trudged down Main Street to the less than considerable offices of the Sound Hill Whaler. I’d been in bigger cab stands and in train station toilets that were cleaner and less cluttered. But the first amendment says something about the press being free, not clean. An acne-faced teen-age boy I took to be a high school intern sat at a computer terminal mesmerized by its orange light, picking unconsciously at his acne-ravaged nose. Whistina Knox, the Whaler’s waspy, matronly business manager, was on the phone arguing the merits of advertising in her publication as opposed to the local pennysaver. She didn’t seem to be winning, but managed to smile at me politely and acknowledge my existence. I pointed to my left and mouthed the name, “Ben,” to her. She smirked and waved me in.

Ben Vandermeer’s family went back to a time when most Long Islanders wore feathers and buckskins and Jay Gatsby was still a few centuries away from moving to West Egg. Vandermeer’s family had been old money, but thanks to Black Tuesday, only the old remained. Ben learned his craft at the News, the Brooklyn Eagle and the Tribune. Mailroom clerk to managing editor; he’d done it all. In the late sixties he bought the Whaler and has been its only editor ever since.

“Ben,” I rapped my knuckles on the inside of his office door. He sat with his back to me, thin wisps of white hair limply hanging over the top of his chair.

“What?” he swiveled around. “Oh, it’s you, Dylan. I thought it was that pimply-faced twit the high school saddled me with. Used to get good interns once.”

“Kate Barnum, for instance?”

“For instance,” he raised his Fuller Brush eyebrows. “You here to talk or collect my bar tab for MacClough?”

“The former.”

“Talk, huh? Shut the door and sit.” He waited for me to follow his instructions. “Katy Barnum,” Ben began, sensing what I’d come about, “was the best damned intern that travesty they call a high school ever sent me. At seventeen, Katy could out-think and out-write most of the cigar-smoking old farts I’d run across at the city papers.” He grabbed a dormant pipe out of an ashtray and put a lighter to its bowl. “But I don’t suppose you came in here to discuss Katy as an intern,” Vandermeer blew sweet smoke my way.

“Maybe another time.”

I flipped my safe deposit box key into his ashtray. I slipped a signature card out of my pocket and asked him to fill in the blanks. He did so without question and slid the card back into my palm.

“I’ll drop this off at the bank,” I waved the signature card at him. “I promised Kate Barnum a story, but there’s a chance I may not be around to keep my word. I think I’ll be okay, but you never know. Even if I maintain my health and boyish good looks, there’ll be some people pretty anxious to get their mitts on the stuff in that box. If anything should happen to me. . You know the script. And if nothing happens, I want someone known only to me with access to the goods.”

“Big story?” the old newspaperman tried to act nonchalant, but I knew he could almost taste it.

“Barnum thinks so.”

“Why give me the key? Why not your Brooklyn soul mate or, better yet, Katy herself?”

“I’ve got reasons, Ben. Look, if you don’t wanna get in-”

“The key’ll be in my safe when you want it back. You just call me if you need any other help.” He extended his hand and I shook it.

“Remember Christmas Eve, Ben?”

“I remember about sixty-five of them,” Vandermeer choked on pipe smoke, giggling at his rare wit. “When you found Jane Doe on the platform? I remember.”

“Was Kate assigned to work late that night?”

All the giggly merriment went out of Ben Vandermeer’s face. Something had just occurred to him that had come to me in my night of black flashing dreams. He didn’t need to answer. His face had already spoken.

“The Whaler’s closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It’s tradition,” he put lyrics to the sad music of his expression.

“Strange thing, Ben, your Katy just happening to be conveniently on the scene; pad, pen and mini-recorder in hand. Newsday carried it as a wire service story and didn’t even have a reporter call me until the day after the holiday. Was she in town working on anything?”

“No reason for her to be around that I can think of. The Whaler isn’t exactly on the cutting edge of investigative journalism,” the pipe smoker tested a smile and failed it. “And what’s in Sound Hill to investigate on Christmas Eve anyway?”

“Zoning variances?” I prodded.

“Any newspaperman knows the right questions to ask. Only the good ones know what questions not to ask. Dylan, I’ve always flattered myself by believing I fall into that second grouping,” Ben put down the pipe and ran his age-spotted fingers through the sparse white clouds of his hair, “but I’m gonna ask you one I shouldn’t just the same.”

“So ask.”

“How deep is Kathy involved?”

“I don’t know yet,” I took a breath big enough for two. “But if she’s in up to her toes or the shit’s above her eyeballs, it doesn’t really matter. Does it Ben?”

“I thought that ugliness at the Times might’ve taught her something,” the old reporter went limp with defeat. “Her career was shot and I was hoping she’d adjust to it back out here in the boonies. I was gonna turn the Whaler over to her someday.”

“If you were an all-star backstop for the Mets and got thrown out of baseball for drugs or gambling, how would you adjust to being the bullpen catcher for Oneonta?”

“I never looked at it that way.”

I nodded and started out of Ben Vandermeer’s office, but his curious voice called me back.

“If she’s dirty, Dylan, why give her the story?”

“Dirty or not, she’s worked harder for it than you could ever know. In an odd way, Kate’s earned it.”

I never made it to the bank. Dusk had crept into town while my back was turned and all humanity had fled the confines of Suffolk Midfork Trust. The cash machines in Dugan’s pantry had no use for signature cards and I no use for them. The safe deposit box routine was pulp novel kitsch, yet I’d seen it work to perfection.

On my way over to the Star Spangled Deli, more than the wind gave me a chill. The lights in the Scupper were flicking off and a few seconds later MacClough’s paws appeared at the front door flipping over the “We’re Open” sign. Eventually the busy hands vanished and the sign read, “Sorry, We’re Closed.” Johnny would leave through the alley. That was natural enough. Only problem was, normal closing time was seven hours away.

I thought about following him. Don’t believe that TV shit about cops. Cops can’t follow their own shadows without a roadmap and an itinerary. And they couldn’t spot a tail if it was stuck to their asses. Johnny was better than most. I’d seen evidence of that myself, but he was still a cop; retired, but a cop just the same. Cops wear uniforms to stick out, to be a presence. They want to be seen. They strive to be seen. Even their unmarked cars stick out like armadillos at a dog show. And because they’re so accustomed to being observed, they have trouble spotting individuals in the audience. It’s a difficult mind-set to shake.

Insurance investigators, even rusty ones, are like road chameleons. But to shadow MacClough, I’d have to be a stealth fighter or just plain invisible. He knew my car and, given my refusal to back off, he might be looking over his shoulder for it. After a minute’s meditation, I realized there was no need to follow. I knew where he was headed. His time to act had come. I ran back into Ben Vandermeer’s office and commandeered his phone.