Backward-Facing Man (24 page)

Throughout the spring and summer, the bedside vigil continued, with visitors and members of the Gutierrez family sharing meals from plastic containers and watching daytime television while Ramon—or what was left of Ramon—stared into the abyss, connected by wires and tubes to all kinds of equipment, his body stiff and atrophying under the sheets. Every few days, Alverez Gutierrez, matriarch of the Gutierrez clan, would make a scene, declaring that if God wanted her son to live, He would enable the boy to breathe on his own, until finally, with the support of their priest, she convinced a doctor that the family really did want Ramon taken off the respirator. A day or two later, the doctor conferred with the hospital administrator, who notified the U.S. attorney in Allentown of the family's decision.

On September 9, the very day Ramon Gutierrez was permitted to expire, a federal grand jury returned an indictment, charging Arthur and Charles Puckman Jr. with multiple violations of the federal Clean Water Act. Chuck was booked, fingerprinted, and then released on his own recognizance, while Arthur's mug shot was printed and distributed across cyberspace and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

America loves to watch someone's life disintegrate. There was a blurb on the
Inquirer
's Society Page, identifying Chuck and Eileen Puckman as former sponsors of equestrian and floral shows, and a long article in the Business Section about various business practices that could result in his criminal prosecution. Chuck's name was dropped from a few civic and art organizations he'd been a part of, and he was quietly removed from the online directory of Philly CEOs, a social organization made up of big cheeses looking to share tips about making money and living the good life. By fall, the accident at the Puckman factory had become a kind of socioeconomic parable and a topic on various radio call-in shows.

Then it seemed to fizzle. For one thing, the prosecution was unable to locate Arthur Puckman. In the nine months since he'd disappeared, there'd been no phone calls to his mother; no wire transfers; no sightings at airports, train stations, or bus depots—despite a material witness warrant and a search by a clerk at the FBI whose job it was to check ocean liner and airplane manifests, hotel registries, and Interpol. “The prosecution can't introduce Arthur Puckman's statement unless we have the opportunity to cross-examine him,” Crackford argued in a letter to the judge. “We see his flight as evidence of guilt.” More distressing to the Feds was that, even after drilling, sampling, collating, computer modeling, and analyzing soil samples around the factory, the EPA came up with nothing in the groundwater more toxic than heating oil and lead. So while Puckman Security had most certainly violated the Clean Water Act, the consequences simply didn't amount to enough to warrant locking the owner up. On top of all this, Agent Keaton's thoroughness had rendered Puckman Security defunct, with nothing in the way of assets for the government to seize. It was beginning to look as if Chuck would wind up with nothing more than a slap on the wrist, when the media started in again, making a mockery of the government's ineffectiveness. Reluctantly, a week after Chuck's arraignment, the U.S. attorney notified Wilkie Crackford that the government was going to drop the case.

Surprisingly, Chuck became despondent. Without the pressure of prosecution, his own aimlessness, his vulnerability, and his anxiety lay naked and exposed. In front of his bathroom mirror, he tried to feign jubilation, which seemed altogether inappropriate, given the fate of Gutierrez and his family's role in all this. He made an expression of relief, sighing deeply and releasing the tension from his shoulders, but he didn't feel it. Without the prospect of financial ruin, even jail time, he felt a strange surge of pressure, the phrase “Now what?” bouncing around in his head.

 

Three weeks later, after Wilkie Crackford and Fat Eddie Palmieri toasted Chuck's good fortune, two policemen climbed the fire escape steps and banged on Chuck's red door. Once again, he was handcuffed, pushed into a squad car, and taken to the Roundhouse, where he was fingerprinted and photographed. This time, he wasn't released so fast. “The U.S. attorney turned his files over to a state grand jury who decided to indict you and your brother for murder in the second degree,” Crackford explained to Chuck over the phone.

“Which means what?” Chuck asked, irritated.

“Criminal homicide constitutes murder in the second degree when it's committed while the defendant is a principal or accomplice in the perpetration of a felony. The arcane term is ‘depraved indifference,' if somebody were to drop a brick from the Empire State Building—”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Chuck said. He had swallowed twenty milligrams of lorazepam on his way out the door.

“Since they couldn't nail you for a Clean Water Act violation, the Feds leaned on the state prosecutor to do something.” Crackford sounded concerned. “It's politics, Chuck. We can probably plead it down to man three.”

“Where's that leave me?”

Wilkie Crackford made a clicking sound with his tongue as if searching for an appropriate answer. “I'm not sure,” he said nervously. “Technically, no more than twenty years.”

Chuck's lips moved, but no sound came out.

“I'm gonna try to get you a bail hearing tonight,” the lawyer told him, “but we're gonna need ten grand. Try to hang in there,” Crackford said.

A heavy caseload kept Chuck from being arraigned until Monday midday. Over the weekend, Chuck saw a guy get beat up for not giving up a cigarette. Twice he was hassled until he gave up his seat on a bench. All night Saturday, he was regaled by ex-cons and junkies with stories about tattoos and hair dye and being somebody's fuck-boy in the slammer. On Monday afternoon, after Crackford showed up with a gym bag full of cash from Fat Eddie, photographers caught Chuck looking up at the sky and covering his eyes, an expression of horror pasted on his face. Crackford told him to take a few days, get some sleep, and try to clear his head. He had to decide whether to go to trial or make a deal.

 

That same day, Chuck visited his father at Elysian Fields. There was a single fluorescent light over Charlie's bed, and Chuck was surprised to see his father's upper arm, once thick and muscular, looking like his own wrist. A TV flickered at the base of his bed, and his eyes, which were glassy, seemed to have difficulty staying open. When Chuck came in, the old man looked in his direction.

“It's me, Pop.”

The old man nodded.

“How you feeling?”

Charlie Puckman closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then coughed a feeble, phlegmy little gasp.

The room had a rank, putrid smell. If only his father was strong enough, stand-up enough to take the heat, to call Crackford and serve himself up to the D.A. “Has Artie been to see you yet?” Chuck said. Silence hung between them like a sheet of glass. There was a general announcement over the little intercom that hung over the bedrail. Charlie Puckman didn't move. “How about Fat Eddie? Has he been here?” Nothing.

“They're gonna put me away, Pop,” Chuck said. The old man closed his eyes. They'd removed his dentures since Chuck had last been to see him, and he looked as if he'd swallowed part of his face. “They wanna nail me for what we used to do.” Chuck could hear the clock ticking over the bed, the steady flow of oxygen from the tank pressing into his father's body. “I need a hundred grand. Minimum. Maybe more. I got thirty in retirement, and Fat Eddie says he'll give me twenty, maybe twenty-five. Of course, the building is mortgaged.” All his adult life, Chuck had been in this position with his dad—on bended knee, a grown man beholden to his father. “You got anything hidden anywhere, now would be the time to tell me.” Charlie Puckman, who couldn't have spoken if he wanted to, dismissed his boy with an almost imperceptible wave of his index finger.

It was the last time they saw each other. The old man died in his sleep a couple of weeks later, leaving no assets, no cash, no life insurance, and no will—only creditors: a furniture dealer on Frankford Avenue, a Visa bill in the mid-four figures, and a bridge loan on a piece of real estate Charlie had long ago traded for cash.

“Unless you plead guilty,” Wilkie said to Chuck six weeks later, “this trial's going to be a disaster. We have no money for resources and no time to prepare.” Chuck was standing at a pay phone near Aramingo Avenue, trucks on their way to and from the steel distributor rumbling by. “As it stands now, we can't really mount an adequate defense, and the prosecutor is going for the maximum penalty.”

“Which is what?” Chuck said feebly.

Crackford ignored him. “I tried for a delay, but the judge denied it. I was hoping as the trial got closer, the prosecutor would offer up a deal.”

Chuck reached in his pocket for a pint of Seagram's and took a nip. “Maybe Rahim can gather the research and you can just read it.”

“It's not like I want to get rich off this case, Chuck,” Crackford said patiently. “But without money, I can't get any help, I can't prepare arguments of law, rules of evidence.”

“I just don't have it,” Chuck said.

“I know you don't. I just don't want to go to trial and lose,” Crackford said. A bus rolled by, its transmission obliterating part of what Crackford said next. “…in exchange for a lesser sentence.”

“I'm a dead man,” Chuck said thickly.

“I'm just saying—”

“Enter the plea.”

“I want to be sure you understand the implications.”

“I give up.”

“The sentencing guidelines are clear. If the judge wants to stick it to you, it's between nine and twenty—”

“What happens to Artie?”

Crackford paused. “He's a wanted man. If he shows his face, he's looking at the same thing.”

“If I plead guilty, will they let him off?”

Wilkie Crackford said nothing. He'd seen Porter's tape on the Internet. He'd heard all about the family from Fat Eddie. “You want me to ask?”

“Might as well,” Chuck said.

“If we go ahead with the plea, there'll be a sentencing hearing in about a month. It'll be very important for you to line up what we call character witnesses. Credible people who'll say something good about you—an ailing relative, a dependent child, a key business employee—even better, somebody who could plead hardship as a result of your prolonged absence.” Chuck didn't say anything. “Think about it,” Crackford said.

In addition to being his best friend and confidante, after the accident, Rahim Rodriguez became Chuck Puckman's shithouse lawyer, financial manager, and public relations agent; he helped Chuck manage cash flow, keep creditors and tax authorities at bay; he got Coleman Porter to send the
Daily News
pictures of Chuck in a playground surrounded by Latino kids. He even talked the Gutierrez family out of filing civil charges against him, citing, as evidence of Chuck's intention to do right, monthly statements of the trust account he'd suggested his friend set up for the benefit of the widow and her kids. When Rahim heard Crackford's suggestion to get character witnesses to testify on Chuck's behalf, Rahim began a series of inquiries that resulted in his locating Chuck's daughter, Ivy. The Thursday before the sentencing hearing, he presented Chuck with a hand-drawn map with her address on it.

“But I haven't talked to her in seven years,” Chuck said, running his hands through his hair.

“She's a human being, and she's your daughter.”

“She's her mother's daughter. I'm not sure about the human being part.”

“She has nothing to lose.”

“She has nothing to gain.”

Nonetheless, the next afternoon, Chuck put on a sweater, a pair of sweatpants, and sneakers, and left the factory with Rahim's map wedged in his back pocket. He walked four long blocks east, past a yard with giant spools of wire crated and stacked for shipment, past a strip mall with a thrift shop, a dollar store, and an upscale Italian restaurant, where he'd made deals with pawnshop owners and suppliers, surviving the silent assessments and the big lies they told each other over rich meals—people he didn't like and who didn't like him, alternately sucking up and then slinking down in their seats, knowing none of them would deliver what they were promising.

Along Aramingo Avenue, a bus rumbled by, spraying pebbles and diesel fumes over his shoes. He imagined God as a cameraman, recording every move, monitoring his thoughts. What makes a human defective is in his soul. Not cell phone radiation, not chemicals in his carpeting or vapors from his air-conditioning system, not nicotine or a lifetime of bad habits. As he walked, Chuck counted cars, slid coins from his pocket into parking meters, and avoided stepping on cracks, little rituals of contrition—rhythmic, soothing, nervous gestures—tonic for a lifetime of betrayals.

Crossing the street, he climbed a steel staircase and stood next to shift workers, women on their way home from work, and high school students wearing headphones and feigning nonchalance while checking out one another's clothes and piercings. He shoved his hands in his pockets. The membrane separating Chuck's most private self from the world was stretched so thin that every ding, every noise, every slight, every violation of his nature, was transmitted to his brain as an out-and-out assault. He knew when he stopped medicating, all his misdeeds, his secret life, his entire past, would lay raw and open before him. He faced the hearing Monday with dread, but also with relief. Deep down, he believed that no penance, no humiliation, and no authority could punish him adequately for the sin of living a false life.

When the El terminated at Frankford Avenue, he transferred to a bus. A trio of teenage boys in cargo pants and long black coats walked past him toward the back. A large black man with a huge belly moved down the aisle, grabbing the seat backs to steady himself. The bus lurched forward, passing newsstands, Laundromats, convenience stores, bowling alleys, and pedestrians standing in intersections governed by complex traffic light sequences that were impossible to anticipate. He ran his tongue over his front teeth, fingered the little bottle in his pocket—Xanax, the palindrome that calms—then swallowed a pill dry. He looked at his watch. How would he ever survive without medication?

In the seat next to him, a bookish man with a wooly comb-over was reading the obituaries. Miniature characters from Chuck's past dangled from an imaginary mobile—corporate weenies and cheek squeezers in pin-striped suits, union men with braided arm muscles and angry eyes, the aging secretary prattling around the office with her bruised feelings and her fallow womb. Since the arraignment, Chuck had stayed in a sixteen-square-block area that occasionally extended down to the Union League, focusing on simple tasks—buying food and booze, picking up his prescription refills. It was a shock to his system to be out, passing Holmesburg with its guard towers and imposing brick walls—the place where, years ago, doctors had inflicted harrowing medical procedures on hapless cons. Chuck closed his eyes and pictured a bare cell with a small window high up, vans with metal cages, porcelain bowls in the middle of dank cells. He imagined himself in lineup or in the yard, being forced to the ground. He had no illusions about his past. What was happening to him now had been set in motion a long time ago. He checked the map and moved toward the aisle, passing a woman holding a brown bag, squeezing out a small gesture of arrogance.

Once, a long time ago when he was a kid, he fantasized that he was Mighty Mouse, the cartoon hero who puffed out his little chest and flew into harm's way to save the world. Human beings begin life too hopeful, he thought. A man carrying a large Panasonic carton maneuvered his way down the aisle. You're born, and, almost immediately, you start making concessions. All his life, Chuck had guessed what kind of person he needed to be to get by or to get over on others. Obligations, possessions, and promises piled up in a museum of detritus and debris. Over the course of fifty-five years, his life had become a catalogue of betrayals, large and small.

 

It was getting cold. Dusk settled over the Great Northeast like gray soot. Across the street was a hotel—a Sheraton or a Doubletree with a glass rotunda over a swimming pool that nobody used. Roosevelt Boulevard was eight lanes across, impossible to cross in a single cycle. Standing on the median strip, waiting for the light to change, Chuck felt a momentary kinship with humanity. How exquisite to be among regular people—not exactly free—but not in prison either. He crossed the lobby with its worn carpets, bad art, and signs welcoming forensic accountants and small-aircraft pilots.

The bar was an alcove—not even a separate room—with a television suspended over a cash register. A sullen woman sat at a small table in the corner, smoking. On a television, tiny hockey players slid back and forth across a white surface. A couple of guys in suits called out the names of microbrews, none of which the bartender seemed to recognize. Chuck ordered a double shot of vodka, knocked it back with another Xanax, and slid off the stool.

At the front desk, he asked the clerk if they maintained a lost and found. From a large cardboard box, Chuck pulled a plaid jacket and carried it into the men's room. He looked himself up and down in the mirror. His hair was matted like a toupee. Earlier in the week, he'd cut it himself in short uneven clumps. He had dark creases around his eyes, and the jacket made his shoulders look even thinner. It was at least one size too small. He walked back through the lobby, past a man in a suit who was arguing about a room upgrade. Chuck imagined himself suspended in liquid—petroleum jelly—heavy, translucent, vague, inchoate.

Crossing back over the boulevard, he entered a maze of streets with names like Robin's Way, Carole Circle, and Steven Drive, after the sons and daughters of developers who'd gambled fifty years ago that someday this farmland would become commuter territory. He tried to orient himself to the map. The houses, with their aluminum siding, bay windows, lawn ornaments, minivans, and fences were identical. Occasionally, headlights forced him to cower on the sidewalk. He followed a street to the end, then turned, when, from out of nowhere, a blur of fur tore across a little patch of lawn yapping at his ankles, coming within inches before it miraculously stopped, its hind legs lifting, its torso spinning, as it reached the end of its tether. He lit a cigarette and looked up at the sign. Sharon Court. Ivy's street. Squinting at the curb, he steadied himself: 13658, 13644. 13630.

Chuck paused to catch his breath and let his eyes adjust. Smoke curled from a line of chimneys. An electric garage door engaged and then shut off. The house next to Ivy's was dark, and Chuck tiptoed down the driveway and into the backyard before crouching behind a doghouse set next to a clump of bushes. Behind Ivy's house, a spotlight shone on the back patio, giving the air a bluish tint. Someone drew the shades. After a few minutes, a light clicked on behind the second-floor window. Chuck crawled over to the fence and stood up. The metal felt cold. A swing set for a toddler trembled in the breeze. He put both hands on the fence that separated the yards, swung one leg up, and put his face next to the rail. His brain conducted a series of calculations. Then he put his weight on one leg and swung the other up, lifting his torso until it was on top of the fence, parallel to the ground. As he rolled, his pant leg snared. At that moment, the bushes and the doghouse flipped skyward. When Chuck opened his eyes, he was looking up at the stars. An alarm sounded in the distance. The little terrier started barking again.

For what seemed like a very long time, he lay on the ground, unable to breathe. For a split second or perhaps an hour, he had the cognition, beautiful and clear, that unless he forced himself to inhale, he would die. In that moment, Chuck experienced a complete release from anxiety. Just before the Soviet Union collapsed, U.S. immigration eased up, and this part of Philadelphia had flooded with Russians. Ethnic supermarkets replaced the record shops in strip malls; PhD electrical engineers took jobs as janitors; doctors operated cash registers in all-night markets; and symphony violinists became data-entry clerks. Seconds passed. He considered what it would be like to disappear into another country, to start over as a laborer, inarticulate, oddly dressed—a worker in a factory. He groped at the dirt with his fingers, indifferent to outcome. Then he was aware of the ground beneath his head—cold and hard—and the sound of his own blood pulsing. He thought about Ivy, the equestrian; Ivy, the yellow-haired girl; his little girl, Ivy, once so clear and pure and defenseless and guileless.

 

The last time he saw her was the week his marriage ended. He'd gone home after work to pick up his clothing, papers, photographs, antique wooden jewelry box, and audio equipment, all of which Eileen had seen fit to toss out of the second-story window. After loading what he could into his truck, he stopped for a drink at a nearby hotel. At around eight, the bartender told him about an outdoor concert being held at the township municipal complex, a half mile from his old house. By the time he arrived, the music had already started, and he was righteously buzzed.

He followed a manicured pathway through a playground with intricately assembled equipment toward the stage. A paunchy guitarist, an accordion player, and a stand-up bass player struggled through a cheesy arrangement of a Jim Croce song. In the distance, a small covered bridge extended over a man-made pond with a huge, extravagantly lit fountain. To this misappropriation of tax dollars, Chuck ascribed everything that was wrong with the suburbs—a furious falseness, vainglorious and virtueless—the ceaseless march from Norman Rockwell to the Toll brothers.

Soon, it was intermission and a balding emcee with a scraggly ponytail dispatched a dozen boys and girls in green Day-Glo shirts with buckets to canvass the crowd for donations to the township soccer program. One hundred thousand dollars for stadium lights was all they needed. People started reaching in their pockets. Chuck took a swig from a pint bottle of vodka and lit another cigarette, one of several delicious vices he could fully indulge now that he and Eileen were through. All around him, people stared. Yes, I have been drinking, he thought, and, no, I will not be buying a raffle ticket. He was rehearsing his tirade—lamenting the fact that for all the money he paid in taxes, the ground was too muddy to sit on—when a fat man in a green shirt approached him.

“There's no smoking near the crowd, sir,” the man said calmly. Chuck looked around. They were outside. There was a nice breeze coming from the gazebo, where an elderly couple slow-danced in the declining light. Chuck took a long drag and exhaled into the man's face. He felt a little tingle rising up his neck. The man recoiled, then recovered. “Excuse me, sir, would you mind leaving the concert grounds”—he paused—“to smoke.”

“As a matter of fact,” Chuck said slowly, staring at the man in the green shirt, “I would mind. We're standing in the open air. The last time I checked, the township ordinances
require
me to smoke outside. So how about you leave if it's bothering you.” The man in the green shirt disappeared. Chuck was pleased. It had been a stressful week. He'd lost an account to a competitor; he'd ended his marriage; and, only hours ago, he'd picked up pieces of an old Gibson hollow-body from his former front lawn. He continued smoking, and, with each inhalation, the cells in his body rejoiced. Early in every confrontation, his anger energized him.

A minute or two later, the guy in the green shirt returned. This time, he brought the emcee with the ponytail, a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. “Enter the King of Prussia,” Chuck said, bowing. A small crowd gathered now. A second later, a uniformed cop who had been standing off to the side approached and said something about not wanting any trouble.

“Then go hassle the geezers on the fucking gazebo.”

“Sir,” the emcee said, putting his hands out in front of him, “this is a family concert.” He seemed mildly disappointed, as if he were talking to a child. “We don't think it's such a big deal to let the kids breathe clean air.”

Around them, people had turned in their lawn chairs. Why were people always invoking the health and moral purity of their kids? “I think it is,” Chuck said defiantly. “I pay my taxes. Show me the law I'm violating.” The man with the ponytail gave him a doleful look. A boy and a girl in identical green shirts approached them with their buckets, but they were shooed away by the emcee. The speakers played a smarmy melody over a polka beat. “All my life assholes like you have been telling me how to live,” Chuck said, much louder now. The emcee's walkie-talkie emitted a frothy static. Chuck reached in his jacket pocket for another cigarette. It was the principle of the thing.