All the Dead Yale Men (5 page)

He drooled, and I wiped it with my handkerchief.

“Don't waste the time,” he said. “Nothing but dots. Here's the way it was on that road in Poland. I knew I was going to die anyway if I didn't do something. And the guard thought he might buy a little goodwill. A chance for a deal. See? Pick your spots.”

The ambulance arrived.

“Just dots now,” he said. The men in white coats arrived and a woman, too, who pushed through the crowd to show that she was in charge. They brought in a sort of gurney and lifted him onto it with a rough, sudden gesture. The ambulance had its siren on as it went down the street, although everyone knew there was no reason to hurry.

The time of death was called at the hospital.

The world had been anchored by my father's existence, even down to its colors, the stink of the smoke in the air, the way women walked on the streets, the way light fell, the intensity of the shadows. In some subtle, pale way these things had changed, not so much in appearance, although there was a little of that, but in a more mysterious sense of not being so dependable. And, while the colors faded a little, and the stink of exhaust suggested the underworld, I turned into Christ Church in Cambridge and sat at the back.

A wooden bench, white walls, light coming in the windows, all at once ordinary and new, or at least different. The essential fact was the invisible wall between me and a man I wanted to talk to: maybe that is why the colors faded and the air seemed heavy. I opened the book in the shelf of the back of the pew ahead of me, and came to this:

         
1.
  
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? For ever?

How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?

         
2.
  
How long shall I take counsel in my soul,

Having sorrow in my heart daily?

How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?

         
3.
  
Consider and hear me, O LORD my god:

Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;

In the light, in the musty silence, in the sound of the street, I found that while my beliefs were gone, that didn't stop my longing for a minute. All I had was that infinite desire for comfort, so unrequited, and the words printed on that onionskin paper that, for generations, had been so desperately handled.

AROUND THE CORNER
,
in the Burger King, the young men and women moved back and forth from the counter to the kitchen where the sandwiches came out wrapped in wax paper or in those little boxes. The air smelled of french fries. I got a cup of coffee and then sat down by the window. A young woman, in one of those uniforms, came up to the table to wipe it down, since I had sat there, without thinking, after two junkies had been trying to eat a hamburger.

Still, the clatter and movement in the Burger King was at once reassuring and appalling: the sucking of the last Coke out of a cup through a straw (like a small death rattle), the crinkle of waxed paper, the laughter about a joke or comment, the shouts from the back of the kitchen, the alarm of a timer, as though the buns were on life support. And to make the collection perfect,
my cell phone chirped, too, as insistent as a cricket on a hot night. I guessed word about my father traveled fast.

But, of course, I should have been thinking of my grandmother, Mrs. Mackinnon, who would have known that fate, that intricate machine of the gods, was just showing me an aspect of my own problems, which, of course, had at their heart the certainty of a scandal.

The caller ID showed Tim Marshall, a good friend, deputy inspector of the Boston police, hair the color of a silver dollar, face with a rose tint, blue eyes fatigued with one too many bodies found in the trunk of a car at Logan Airport, but still cheerful, in a way, and a man who would mean his condolences. He'd given enough of them.

“Your father?” he said. “Well, shit, Frank, I'm sorry about that. I really am.”

“I know you are,” I said.

“I wish this was a better time, Frank. I really do. You know that.”

“There's never a better time . . . ,” I said.

“I'm not talking about your father. I'm talking about a friend of yours.”

“Someone else wants to call me?” I said.

“Cal Tolbert is getting ready to jump off the Tobin Bridge and he only wants to talk to you. Didn't he go to law school with you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I wish it were some other time,” said Tim.

“OK,” I said.

“The negotiator thinks Cal means it. So, when you get here, you're supposed to keep Cal talking. Tell him a joke. Do you know any jokes?”

“A couple,” I said.

“Just get over here,” said Marshall. “And Frank? Don't say anything about your father, all right? What good is that going to do?”

Maybe a lot, I thought.

“Do you know what's wrong?” I said.

“Who the fuck knows with a Dutch job? I'm a cop, not a shrink.”

The cup of coffee went into the trash, and I hesitated at the door, trying to recall the small peace of the church.

•
  
•
  
•

The Tobin Bridge looks as if it were made with an Erector Set, and that the kid who built it liked V-shaped supports along the side and Xs on top. It is painted a sort of Boston green, the same color as the wall at Fenway Park, as though the city got a deal on some green paint. Mostly, I guess, if they thought they could have gotten away with it, they would have dumped it into the harbor and bought some more, to get another kickback. Boston. Not the cleanest place in the world, but it has a certain honest graft that keeps it on the up and up. Sort of.

•
  
•
  
•

So, the Vs and Xs were there, and even from a distance, Cal showed in his white shirt and dark pants, his tie flying like a flag of desperation as he sat in the pigeon shit on the rail of the upper level. Just there, like a white bird, a seagull, that had been blown in by a storm.

I waited back from the cop cars and from Marshall, who shifted his weight from one leg to another and stared in my general direction. Now, it seemed, was the time to cry, if I could, and
so I sat at the steering wheel and thought of those times when my father and I had gone to that piece of land he had inherited from my grandfather and how he had made plans there for things he'd never do. How it was now mine. Or would be after probate. Or his advice about the facts of life:
You know, Frank, let it soak for a while. Women like that
. The steering wheel of my Audi was covered with black leather, and while I waited and hoped it would come (the crying) and that I would be over it, at least that part of it (not knowing it happened more than once and that grief, or tears, could begin when you saw beauty or horror, at a flower show, a museum, or at the scene of a murder), but for now nothing happened. Just that weight.

Cal was a bald man of medium height with the blue sky now showing in the sheen of his scalp. He owed me ten thousand dollars, and the first thing I wanted to say to him was that he didn't owe me anything.

Below the bridge were a row of houses, all made of brick, and in the spring light they seemed to harbor some chill, as though the winter had penetrated so deeply that it took months of heat to pull it out. Or maybe it was built into brick: constant winter.

The road was empty and in the distance the cops' lights flashed with a sort of patriotic display: red, white, and blue. Cal sat on the edge of the bridge, hands next to his thighs, head down, the empty air below studied and memorized. Or maybe it was just the fascination of the last thing you ever see. But that just showed how little I knew: at this stage, things like that don't matter at all.

“Nice day, huh?” I said.

“Little windy,” he said.

“What do you expect, up in the air like this?”

“It could be a little more still,” he said. “But you can't have everything.”

“No,” I said.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “Hope you weren't doing anything important.”

“No,” I said. “Same old. You know.”

“Well, when we were in law school, I bet you never planned on meeting me at a place like this, did you?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“What does that mean? You expected this?”

“No,” I said. “I wasn't thinking about the future too much. Who had time for that?”

The new buildings in the skyline, all glass and aluminum, just squares and metal with jagged roofs, showed against the blue and smoky sky. Inside one of the windows, a man typed at a computer as though his life depended on it. Presentation, I guessed, an explanation of losses. Always a tough sell.

“How's your father?” he said.

“Fine,” I said. “You can't kill a guy like that.”

“You mean he has to do it himself?” said Cal.

“No,” I said. “No.”

“You know what's wrong with this bridge? I'm sitting in a layer of pigeon shit. Or maybe seagulls. Which do you think it is?”

“Cal,” I said, “I really don't know. I'm not going to lie to you about that.”

“Uh-huh,” said Cal. “That's why I asked them to get you. You never told me any lies. You always knew what to say.”

You poor son of a bitch, I thought. You're turning to
me
?

“So why are you sitting in the pigeon shit?” I said.

Down below, Burger King wrappers blew under the bridge, bits of colored paper in a wind tunnel. I guessed if Cal jumped, he'd be swept in the same direction: under the bridge, toward the houses.

“I'm having marital problems,” said Cal. “At least I was having them. Now I've got something else.”

“So what?” I said. “Everyone has trouble.”

“Not like mine,” he said.

“So, tell me about it,” I said.

He moved his feet back and forth, a kid sitting on a pier.

He closed his eyes and started to cry, and I thought, no, no. It's catching. I bit my lip until my eyes watered.

Cal said, while sniffling, “What's wrong? Got a toothache?”

“Yeah, that's it,” I said.

But I thought of those bits of memories, like newspaper becoming blank, as my father's head exploded. Was I one of those things that disappeared? Learning how to ride a bike or how to lick an ice cream cone? Did I exist a little less because he didn't think of me anymore? That's the horror of being on your own.

Cal's wife was an insurance administrator who had red hair, freckles, and a restrained air about her. You'd expect her to go around with kids on Halloween with a box for UNICEF. Wholesome, moral, distant.

“So, what's wrong between you and your wife?” I said.

“I wanted her to do something with me . . . ,” said Cal.

“What was that?”

“Well, I don't know,” he said.

The wind made his pants flap as though he were riding a motorcycle.

“Jesus,” I said. “If you can't tell me . . . ”

He nodded.

“That's why I wanted you to come over.”

“OK,” I said.

The layer of guano was a white-green, and as I put my hand in it, as though to steady myself, I slid through it to get a little closer to him. A little at a time. Like sneaking up on a mosquito that's sitting on the arm of a chair.

“I wanted my wife to sit on my face,” said Cal. He still looked down, but he was absolutely still. “She didn't want to.”

“So,” I said. “Maybe we can work something out. There's got to be a woman on the planet who likes that. I bet I could find someone in a half hour. Come on. Let's go find one.”

“I'm married. I can't have a scandal. I'm a prosecutor. Just like you.”

The word “scandal” hung there, a kite in the breeze. So, what advice did I have about that?

“If that's all it is, let's go home,” I said. “Come on.”

“It's not that simple,” he said.

“I guess not,” I said.

“I bought this video clip, you know, a woman doing what I asked my wife to do, and I played it in my office. I thought I had disabled the software that keeps an eye on things like that . . . ”

Cal's pants flapped in the wind and made a little shudder.

“But it wasn't the software. It was Jimmy Blaine. He comes in and sees it.”

“You should have locked the door,” I said.

“You're telling me,” he said.

“So,” I said. “Why don't we go over to a bar I know? You can see it from here. See. Over there.”

“Listen,” said Cal. “Blaine wants my job. You know that.”