The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

31

THE SUN WAS COMING UP AS WE DROVE INTO BOSTON. Dan had to get home and get cleaned up for work. I dropped him off at his place. Then I drove over to Felix’s house of electronics, figuring to head off any Kraft requests before he even made them. Felix used his digital camera to take photos of the token. The one I liked best showed it lying on the front page of the Boston Globe right next to the date. Then he used his scanner to scan it in and his computer to send it to an e-mail address Kraft had provided. In the process of doing all that, I learned how to open the damned case.

When I got back to Harvey’s, I was covered in mud and sweat and smelled as if I’d marinated in a swamp. Not surprisingly, Rachel was the first to greet me.

“Did you get it?”

“I got it.”

“Oh, my God. Where is it? Let me see it.”

I opened my backpack, pulled out the plastic bag with the token in it, and held it up. She reached for it, but I snatched it back.

“No one touches this but Felix.”

Harvey was in his office. The empty popcorn bowl was still on the coffee table.

“Harvey, are you okay?”

“Did you have success?”

“We did.” I found myself feeling good, for a change, that I had actually accomplished something I’d set out to do, something important. “I beeped Kraft. We should hear from him soon.”

“She won’t let me see it.” Rachel had followed me in. I took out the second bag, the one with Vladi’s personal items-the pinkie ring, the wallet, and the chain from around his neck-and tossed it to her. She held it for a matter of seconds before she figured out what it was and dropped it onto a side table. She glared at me, and I couldn’t help but enjoy it a little. For someone as tough as she was, she seemed awfully delicate sometimes.

“I’m going upstairs, babe, to finish packing.”

I needed to get showered, too, but it was pretty clear Harvey was upset, probably about the packing. I decided to sit with him for a few minutes. I was about to collapse into the wingback before remembering my encrusted condition. I sat on the floor and leaned against the couch. I dropped my head back and closed my eyes and enjoyed for a few moments not having Rachel sitting between us. There were few of those moments left to enjoy anymore.

“There is not much left of us,” Harvey said, “after we are gone.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him. He had found his way over to the side table and was holding the bag that Rachel had dropped. He studied each item carefully through the plastic as a blind man might-with the tips of his fingers.

“There was more of Vladi left than I would have preferred.”

“I am not speaking in terms of the material things or the biological matter we leave behind.”

I put my head back again. “I suppose what you do with your life is more important than how much stuff you leave behind, even if it is a lot of stuff. Vladi Tishchenko left a billion dollars behind, yet he’s in a grave where no one will ever visit because of the life he lived and the things he did.”

I heard him pushing his chair closer. The wheels still needed oil. I knew I should have gotten up and done it right then-I would never remember to do it when I actually had the time-but I was too exhausted.

“Did you know that I was drafted to go to Vietnam?”

That woke me up. Harvey hardly ever told me anything personal about himself, and he never reminisced. I lifted my head to look at him. “You were drafted?”

“In 1968, I was eighteen years old.”

I did know that, but not in the way you really know things. I knew how old Harvey was, but I had never considered him to be anything but the middle-aged guy who wore glasses and drank tea.

He smiled a little. “The answer to your question is no, I did not serve. I requested and received a deferment, and then I enrolled in college.” He shrugged and looked down at me. “Accounting.”

It was odd being the one looking up at him. “Sounds like a good decision. You’re lucky you had a choice.”

“It was an exciting time to be young and away from home for the first time. Everyone had an opinion on absolutely everything, as you might well imagine. It was an age of debate and discussion. I listened and read and tried to inform myself, and I began to develop my own opinions.” His voice had taken on a warmth and verve that made him sound like a much younger man. “I cannot express to you what a wondrous thing it was to have an opinion of my own. One of the things I was drawn to was the peace movement.”

“Really? You were a peacenik?”

“Not the violent antiwar radicals but those making reasoned arguments against U.S. involvement in a region of the world that neither wanted nor needed our help. The arguments of those who wanted peace seemed more compelling to me than the logic of those defending the war.” He put his elbow on his armrest and rested his chin in his hand, as if thinking it through all over again. “I also could not see a way to win, which meant men…boys were dying for nothing. And so I became an activist for peace.”

Had I given it any thought, I would have had him hanging out at the library, working as a proctor, afraid to talk to girls. I almost smiled as I pictured him with long hair, granny glasses, and a bong. “Did you march?”

“I did everything that was asked of me that was not violent in any way. I was not a leader but a follower, a fact that my father was gracious enough to point out on more than one occasion.”

“You father didn’t approve?”

“He was desperately disappointed in me, in the things I believed in, the things that I did. He accused me of intellectualizing my fear, of making up an argument to justify a decision that came from cowardice. He called it postdated conviction.” His voice had developed a sharp edge, and the warmth was gone.

“He wanted you to go to Vietnam and get mowed down in the jungle? Or addicted to heroin? Or so damaged by your experiences you could never be a fully functioning member of society again?”

“My great-grandfather came from Poland to settle here. Several members of the extended family, particularly on my mother’s side, came over before and after World War II. Other family members-aunts and uncles, older cousins-were lost in the camps. Another uncle died in the Warsaw uprising. He is a hero to them…to us, as he should be. My father believed we should give back because this country had given us so much.”

“And he was willing to offer up your life to pay the family debt? Screw that.”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t even seem to hear me. I was participating in a conversation he was having with himself, maybe had been having for years.

“Postdated conviction,” he said. “I have never forgotten that term. All my life, I have never truly known if he was right.”

“No, Harvey, you are not a coward, and fuck your father.”

He looked at me. “What did you say?”

“It takes a lot of courage to stand up to your father for the things you believe. There’s nothing you need to do to prove yourself to me or your father or…or Rachel or anyone else.”

Dust and dried mud rained down from my jeans as I unwound myself and got up from the floor. It took me a good thirty seconds to straighten up with my lower back so stiff, but I had to get up and pace around, because Harvey couldn’t, and his father had pissed me off.

“Fuck all fathers. Mine, too. Mine especially. Kids are sitting ducks to bad fathers. They believe everything Daddy tells them because they don’t know any better. It doesn’t make it true. It makes them cowards.”

He fiddled with the loose pad on the armrest, something else I should have fixed. “She has decided to leave. That is what would be safest for her, would it not? To leave Boston?”

He looked up at me with this futile hope in his eyes, and I realized he meant for me to disagree. I couldn’t.

“Yes, it would be safest for her to get out of Boston. At least for now. Maybe later, she can-”

“Yes, of course.”

I really needed to get cleaned up, but I didn’t want to leave him alone this way. For the first time-maybe the first time ever-I wished Rachel were there. I pulled my watch from my pocket, and he noticed. “Go and do whatever it is you must do. I will be fine.”

“I’ll just be upstairs in the shower. Call me if you need anything.”

He had made his way over to his desk and his computer. He pulled up a game of Minesweeper. Rachel wasn’t even gone, and the old Harvey was back.