American Outrage Page 25

  He quickly extracted three of them and had them down before he said, “Okay, I’m eating. Now, what is this?”

  “Think of the Titanic,” Van Buren said. “There’s a lot of noise. It’s dark. Maybe one of us has a light and maybe the other knows where there’s a boat.”

  “Maybe I’ve got a life jacket and a pack of matches,” Jake said.

  “You mentioned your son,” Van Buren said.

  Jake swallowed. “And?”

  “It’s also about this family,” Van Buren said. “Which is something that goes far beyond me.”

  “You’re the congressman,” Jake said.

  “And I have a wife who’s in Paris right now,” Van Buren said. “Three children, two with children of their own. A mother. Cousins. I’m sure you know Maria, the movie producer, or know of her.”

  “What about Martha? You forgot her,” Jake said, swallowing and taking a drink of wine.

  Van Buren scooped out a mussel, chewed it deliberately, and swallowed, then dabbed the corner of his mouth with a linen napkin. “Martha is a sad story. Not her fault, not ours. I used to blame myself. Her mother and I, it just didn’t work. I thought that was part of it, our divorce. I did everything I could, believe me. But they didn’t know the things they know now. Even if they did, they didn’t have the kinds of medication they have today to help people like Martha.”

  “What do you mean ‘people like Martha’?” Jake asked, stabbing another orange-tinted mussel and freeing it from the black shell.

  “Paranoid schizophrenic,” Van Buren said, setting his fork down. “You know she’s ill?”

  “You saying nothing ever happened?” Jake asked, tapping the tines of his fork on the plate. “She’s not Sam’s mother?”

  “She’s someone’s mother,” Van Buren said, shaking his head and frowning. “It might be Sam. It might be someone else.”

  The servants came with the next course and another bottle of wine, removing the silver covers from the china plates in a flourish of steam, revealing thick veal chops sheathed in pearly fat and oozing the faintest traces of blood.

  “You admit that?” Jake said, slicing into the chop with a knife.

  Van Buren cut off a piece of his own, baby-pink strands exposed to the candlelight. He chewed it completely before swallowing and taking a long drink of wine. He sighed and looked at Jake.

  “She started drinking in middle school and went from there, but nothing like after she met that . . .rock star, drug addict, lunatic, whatever you want to call him,” Van Buren said. “When he died, she didn’t want that baby, but she was too far along to get an abortion. She tried to kill herself. We tried to bring her around. Have you ever had anyone who was mentally ill?”

  “I’ve seen them,” Jake said.

  Van Buren worked at his food, his hands performing deftly before moving offstage while he chewed. Jake thought he saw tears welling in the congressman’s eyes.

  “I was away when she gave birth,” he said softly. “I have no idea what she did to get the doctor to go along with this, forging a death certificate, giving her child away. I don’t think I want to know. I know she didn’t want the baby and, honestly, I never gave her the choice. I told her she had to keep it. I wasn’t going to have a Van Buren child just given away.”

  “So you had no idea?” Jake said.

  “Of course not,” Van Buren said, scowling at Jake, disgust pulling down at the corners of his mouth so that juice from his veal pearled in its crease. “Digging up a grave? I was ready to cut your balls off. Then I found out you were right.

  “If I have a grandson out there, believe me, I want to find him more than you do.”

  “What about when people find out?” Jake asked. “It’s not pretty.”

  “You mean your television show?” Van Buren said. “Too late to worry about that, right?”

  “Too late how?”

  Van Buren studied him, then said, “We thought if we could contain you, convince you of what happened, that we could preserve our privacy. Obviously we’re too late. Martha was on American Outrage two hours ago.”

  “That’s impossible,” Jake said.

  “I wish it were.”

  74

  THE DRIVER WAITING at the bottom of the escalator for Sam wore a dark suit. His head was shaved. A small silver hoop hung from one side of his nose but, other than that, he looked respectable. When Sam said hello, the driver flipped the placard bearing Sam’s name and examined it.

  “This you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m Sam,” Sam said. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Johnny,” he said, looking around. “Where’s your parents?”

  “I’m meeting my dad later,” Sam said. “Don’t worry. He’s an investigative reporter. I’m helping him out.”

  “Reporter?”

  “For American Outrage. You seen it?”

  “I heard of it.”

  “Okay, well, we sat on the runway for a goddamn hour, so we better get going.”

  “It says ‘as instructed,’” the driver said. “Where are we going?”

  “Onondaga Lake,” Sam said, removing the recorder from its box. “You know where the Salt Museum is?”

  “That’s not open now,” the driver said.

  “Believe it or not, you get used to this kind of crap when your dad’s in television,” Sam said. “We’ll park a couple blocks away and I’ll walk. How long to get there?”

  “Five, ten minutes.”

  “I got till ten o’clock. Any place to eat around there?” Sam asked. “Something quick.”

  “Heid’s Hot Dogs, I guess.”

  “Any good?”

  “If you like that kind of thing.”

  Sam flipped open his computer and pulled up the park map, making doubly certain that he knew every detail of the area he could before they got there. Heid’s was just inside the village line, two blocks from the museum. The low yellow Art Deco building had big round windows that must have given the place a space-age look when it was built in the twenties. Now it looked like a relic, but the dogs were good enough that there was a line to get them, even at nine at night.

  “Want something, Johnny?” Sam asked the driver.

  “Thanks. I’m a vegan, man.”

  Sam paid cash for two dogs and two Coneys, slopped on relish and plenty of mustard, mixed a pint of chocolate milk with a pint of white in a thirty-two-ounce cup, put on a plastic spill cap, stuck in a straw, and carried the mess back to the car. With a mouthful of food, he directed the driver through the village, scoping the area as best he could from the backseat before licking his fingers and pointing out where he wanted the car to wait for him, on a street corner overlooking the lake.

  “Can I have your cell number?” Sam asked.

  The driver gave it to him.

  “You gotta be ready to go quick,” Sam said, punching it into his phone. “Probably just a few minutes after ten. We’re going to follow some people. You okay with that?”

  “What are you doing, kid?”

  Sam considered the guy for a moment, then asked, “Does it matter? Look, I’m gonna add on a thirty-percent tip if you get this right.”

  “It’s just weird,” the driver said. “I can’t do anything illegal.”

  “Do I look like a drug dealer? Come on. Look at me. I’m a kid.”

  “A kid with a credit card.”

  “And that’s how you get paid. I told you, I’m helping my dad. I let you know when this thing airs and you can tell your friends. We good?”

  The bald driver stared at him for a moment in the rearview mirror before he nodded and said, “Okay, sure.”

  Sam got out. The faint fog of his breath floated into the glow of a nearby streetlight. He shivered and wished he had a coat. The sun had gone down long ago; only the hint of burnt orange remained in the bruised, purple sky.

  Sam hugged the shadows of the sidewalk, making his way down toward the water. He had enough time, he presumed, to check out the area befo
re anyone got there. He stayed on the fringes of the parking lot and its burning lights, circled the dark museum, and picked his way among the thick old trees along the shore where the water licked at the stony beach. He stopped at the head of the pier without walking out onto it in the open.

  He looked at his cell phone and cursed at the single battery bar, but hit the driver’s number anyway.

  Quietly, he said, “Johnny?”

  “I thought you said around ten.”

  “Just testing. Be ready,” Sam said.

  To his left was the Salt Museum, to his right a marina bursting with fifty or more boats, mostly cabin cruisers, resting in the arms of two stone breakwalls quite similar to those at the pier. Sam walked out onto those and through the docks, searching for a place where he could see, but not be seen. Finally, he decided to board one of the boats, climbing up over its railing and settling in on the bow, tucked under the edge of the small skiff that was mounted there.

  It was just after nine-thirty. He rolled onto his back to get comfortable and stared up at the sky, clutching the cell phone. There were no stars to gaze at, only the bellies of high heavy clouds lit from the city’s night glow.

  Sam listened to the sound of his own breathing as it mixed with the lap of tiny waves. He was thinking about his dad.

  75

  MULDOON ONLY WANTED ONE MAN to accompany him. Skip Lehman had spent time as a cameraman in Somalia and in Kuwait during the first Gulf War and although Muldoon never told him, he had a deep-seated respect for the crew manager. Inside their van was everything Muldoon needed to break the case and burn his name into the mind of every television executive for the next two decades.

  Using a map, he directed Lehman to the parking garage for the Liverpool Public Library. The library was two short blocks from the lake, close enough for a good transmission, but not so close that the Albanians would notice. Even if they were keeping a thorough eye on the area, the van, tucked inside the garage, would never be noticed. When they arrived, however, a black-and-yellow-striped arm barred their way in.

  “Run it,” Muldoon said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Run it,” Muldoon said. “Drive right through. It’s wood. It’ll break. Don’t worry, I got you covered.”

  “Okay,” Lehman said, stepping on the gas and blasting through the arm with a tremendous snap and a loud clatter as it bounced off the concrete floor with a hollow-sounding echo.

  Lehman pulled into a dark corner and turned off the engine. The two of them sat there, listening for sirens or shouts or whatever else might be coming. After several minutes, Muldoon looked at his glowing watch and climbed into the back of the van. Lehman followed and took up his position at the desk, slipping on a set of headphones. Muldoon rigged the mike, clipping it inside his shirt collar and running the wire down his back.

  “Here,” Muldoon said, handing Lehman the transmitter, “tape this to my back. Here’s some duct tape.”

  “Why don’t I just clip it to your belt?” Lehman asked.

  “Just tape the goddamn thing.”

  “Okay. Take it easy.”

  “Don’t tell me to take it easy,” Muldoon said. “I’m going into the line of fire here.”

  He hefted the briefcase, opened it, and switched on the camera. Lehman turned on the monitor, and even in the dim light of the van, the green-and-white images of the night-vision lens let them see the backs of the front seats and part of the dashboard. Muldoon turned the briefcase and angled it up toward his own face until he saw his profile image in the monitor.

  “This thing is beautiful,” Muldoon said.

  “Latest and greatest,” Lehman said.

  “I love the look,” Muldoon said, angling his jawline and studying it in the monitor. “It’s fucking covert. What are you looking at me like that for?”

  Lehman shrugged and started fussing with knobs on the control panel.

  “What?”

  Lehman turned to him and said, “You don’t think this is a little dangerous?”

  “Remember Dan Rather in Vietnam?” Muldoon said. “Bullets flying all over the place? Him in a helmet? A foxhole?”

  Lehman shrugged and said, “I guess.”

  “Just don’t guess getting this all on tape,” Muldoon said, swinging open the van door and stepping out into the garage. He left the building with the briefcase in one hand and his map in the other, taking Tulip Street straight down to the water and hanging a left, past the OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY sign and along the parkway drive. Across the water, the lights of several smokestacks blinked at him along with their corresponding reflections on the water’s rippled surface. The bellies of the clouds above glowed with orange light from the city of Syracuse, but thick black shadows filled the space beneath the trees.

  He passed a marina, silent except for the gentle slap of water on the fiberglass hulls. Up ahead, at the end of a turnaround, the Salt Museum stretched out on the grass, a long low building with a steeply peaked roof. Off to the right, the stone pier jutted out over a hundred feet into the lake. At its farthest point, a ruby buoy light throbbed atop a steel post, reminding Muldoon of a dying firefly.

  His heart doubled its pace, and he became acutely aware of just the hint of cigarette smoke. His eyes scoured the surrounding trees, bushes, and benches for the glow of an ember or any sign of a person. He saw nothing and remembered the Albanian’s words about no tricks and hurried ahead with long strides to reach the pier. Rocks the size of small desks fit perfectly together to create a straight and narrow breakwall that sloped down to the water on either side. Dead fish and rotting algae overran the scent of cigarette smoke. Out on the pier, the city now glowed and sparkled importantly and Muldoon could make out the mid-rise buildings, the glass shopping mall, the university on the hill and the white sheet of material that covered its domed stadium.

  A choking noise escaped his throat when two dark figures materialized at the head of the pier, walking slowly toward him. The briefcase trembled in Muldoon’s hand. He crumpled the map and jammed it into the pocket of his jeans, quickly removing his hand and holding it up in the air, fingers splayed so they wouldn’t think he had reached for a gun.

  Second thoughts filled his mind long before he realized the men wore ski masks, and when he did, an involuntary whimper rang out in the night air. Before he could react, one of the men reached down, snatched his briefcase, and heaved it out into the water with a splash. The second one frisked him, found the transmitter, and ripped it off his back, pulling up two hunks of skin that made him squeal.

  The second man threw the transmitter into the lake and the first man gripped Muldoon by the voice box with a gloved hand, bringing him to his knees.

  “Where is the fucking kid?”

  “I got the kid,” Muldoon said. “I’m on the inside. I just want to talk to you guys. Cut a deal.”

  “We said bring the kid,” the man said, squeezing Muldoon’s throat. “You fucked up. Bad.”

  With his other hand, the man removed a pistol with a fat long silencer from his coat and wormed the thick metal nose into Muldoon’s cheek. The newsman closed his eyes.

  His bladder let go, and he started to cry.

  76

  THE MUTTERING VOICES were incomprehensible to Sam, but the splash of the briefcase was clear enough. His head felt light and his heart raced when one of the men brought Muldoon to his knees. Sam thought the man held a gun, but didn’t know until he saw the small orange flash followed by a metallic spitting sound.

  Muldoon fell over sideways.

  The man pointed the gun down at him and there were two more flashes. The second man slung down a duffel bag from his back and removed a meat cleaver. The fat blade gleamed and flashed in the dim light, and Sam turned away.

  He heard several metallic notes ring out and he lost his tether. Floating six feet above his body, he realized what his father had been saying about these people all along. His stomach churned and vomit pushed up into his throat. He looked back. Both
men had walked off down the pier wearing their masks.

  Sam rejoined his body, frozen for a minute before the urgency of following them made itself heard. He rolled to his feet, staggered off the boat, and stumbled along the dock toward shore. When he got to the grass, he clung to one of the large trees, unable to embrace even half its circumference.

  The immovable trunk and the thick rough bark felt good and solid and he rested his cheek there for a moment until he realized what he had to do next. He peeked around the edge of it and saw the dark shapes of the two men disappearing into the shadows in the direction of the museum. They weren’t heading toward the village, but the parkway that ran along the lake between Heid’s and the city of Syracuse.

  Sam fumbled with the phone and redialed his driver. He kept the phone close to his mouth, swallowing and hissing into it.

  “Johnny? Come get me. Come get me.”

  “Where, man? Are you okay?”

  Sam needed to pee. “Go toward the parkway. Don’t hang up.”

  Sam lost sight of the men. He gripped the phone tight and started to run, not directly at them, though. Some force, like a colossal invisible hand, pushed him away from the men, so that his path was neither toward them nor away. When he got to the edge of the parking lot to the museum, he spied some movement under the trees on the far edge. Sam dashed around the edge of the lot, weaving through the shadows of the trees until he came to an open field across from a playground. Now he’d lost them.

  The force wouldn’t allow Sam to cross the open ground. The image of Muldoon flashed in his mind. He went to his left, toward some buildings that he could hide behind. He made it to the wall of a concrete skating area and peeked around the corner. He saw a car waiting on the far side of some other baseball fields. Maybe it belonged to the Albanians. Sam pressed his palms against the concrete. He closed his eyes, recalling the map and that the only way out from the baseball diamonds was an entrance connected to the parkway.

  He brought the phone to his lips and spun around, sprinting up a narrow lane that joined the parkway at its end, right in front of Heid’s, where Johnny was headed.