Liberty Falling-pigeon 7 (23 page)

The Park Service, without being stiff-necked or hard-hearted about it, quietly discouraged private memorials on public lands. Not always easy in the southern and southwestern parks, where it was common practice for the locals to put a great Styrofoam cross bedecked with plastic roses at the site where the dearly had departed. Roads in New Mexico were strewn with these makeshift shrines.

"Interesting." Anna filed the information away with other fragments. "I'm off to the wilds," she said. "Thanks for talking."

"As long as it's just curiosity," Trey said, his feet going back up on the desk. "We've got people here to look into these things, just like you do in the 'real' parks out west."

From the derision in his voice, Anna guessed his heart was set on a western assignment but his hopes weren't high. The western parks were a little on the snobby side, as Anna thought only right and fitting.

"See you," she said by way of farewell.

"Be careful."

Anna wondered if he meant in her poking around on Islands II and III or poking around in James Hatchett's business.

As she stepped out of the registry building into the breezeway between it and the old powerhouse, the small company of actors was chattering back to the hall for the last performance of the day. Mandy was still with them, squished sausagelike into Corinne's costume, a sour look on her moon face. The ethereal blonde was evidently still AWOL.

"Macho Bozo was here again asking for Corinne," the black actress said.

"I wish he'd ask me for her. I'd give him a piece of more than my mind," Knickers and Cap replied.

"Yeah, except he's big and mean and fast."

"Good point," the actor conceded.

Not wanting to hear any more than she had to, Anna fled down the bricked corridor into the hypnotic mix of death-in-life that was the ruins of Ellis Island.

She had much to think about and needed space and silence in which to do it. Who was on Liberty when Hatch died? What was it about suicide that seduced or repelled the Park Policeman? Was Caroline important? Spud? How hard--how illegal--was it going to be to get a look into James Hatchett's personal locker in the law enforcement office's basement on Liberty?

And more to the moment, could she stand another honest-to-God put-on-your-panty-hose date so soon on the heels of the last?

14

During the boat trip from Ellis to Liberty the date lost out. Or at least was postponed a couple days. Anna wasn't sure why the idea was so off-putting. She'd had a nice enough time on their first date. Madison wasn't a firebrand when it came to conversation and he wasn't glamorous--at least not visually. To women who found power and prestige alluring, a cardiothoracic specialist at Columbia-Presbyterian would be considered a knockout. He wasn't sexually aggressive, which she appreciated. Slap and tickle was unsettling at sixteen when a girl didn't yet know she had a choice. Thirty years later it was likely to get somebody's arm broken. He did do a bit of what Molly, in her homemade psychiatric jargon, referred to as "leaning." A leaner was a man who stood too close, loomed in one's airspace, always seemed to be between his date and any convenient escape hatch. Despite his drawbacks Anna had to admit Madison was kind and attentive and oh-so-pleasant.
Like Elwood P. Dowd,
she thought. But some ingredient was lacking in Madison that Jimmy Stewart had in abundance.

Maybe she'd been out of circulation too long. He'd said he was newer to the game than she, but he seemed totally at ease. Anna hadn't the least excuse for turning down a night on the town. Except the way he slid that unmarked folder into his desk. Then locked the drawer.

Could be anything: politically sensitive patient, movie star in for cosmetic surgery, an abortion...

"Stop it," Anna ordered herself.

"I didn't mean nothin'," came a mumbled response, and she realized she'd been talking out loud. Not an uncommon practice in New York City, Dragged from self-absorption, she saw that the guys from the cleaning crew had come to the stern for the short trip from island to island. The speaker was the oversized white boy with the offensive tattoo. Anna wondered what he was apologizing for. He looked like one of those habitual screwups who either bow and scrape or stab and punch, and both with equal lack of provocation.

"No problem," she said, stepping away from his bulk. Clouds of smoke suggested the janitors had come out not to enjoy the late-evening air but to have a cigarette. Three had lit up. The fourth chewed. A quick survey: everybody smoked filter cigarettes. The observation was knee-jerk; Anna didn't doubt her ephemeral ash was from Hatch's Gauloise.

"Hey, Idaho, you bidding for S-six again tonight?" This from a wiry Hispanic man. Smoke came out with every word. At the end of the sentence he took a deep drag lest any moderately unpolluted air should make its way into his lungs.

Anna sneaked a look at his chest. "Jason" was embroidered over his pocket, proving fashion could be thicker than culture.

"Yeah. S-six," mumbled the lunk they called Idaho.

"White guys," Jason said with disgust. "Boohs is everything. Latinos know the power's in the hoot. The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin'."

Anna let this sexual shorthand rattle around in her head till she made sense of it. S-6: the sixth level in the statue. That would be about where the lady's bosoms would be located, if she had bosoms. Anna moved away. She didn't want to get to know these guys that well. If she thought her obvious aversion might offend, she was mistaken. Nobody noticed. To a clot of twenty-year-old males, a middle-aged woman was only slightly more interesting than a stray cat.

Having drifted toward the bow, she joined Dwight in the cabin. "Fine night," she said, because it was.

"It's always a fine night on this harbor. Fog's fine. Gales are fine. The sea never makes a mistake. Of course she's not very understanding when we do," he said, and laughed. "But that's part of her charm. Sailors who get bored aren't paying attention. Everything's always changing."

Anna attained her accustomed perch and let her legs swing with childlike freedom, her heels bumping the wood gently. She asked after Dwight's son, Digby, and found, as she'd expected, that the boy was perfect, had done and said any number of funny, dear or genius things. Letting Dwight ramble on about this scrawny child who had taken over his heart, Anna basked in his contentment, his love and his pride. Without hearing each and every word, she let the essence of happiness wash over her, removing the sting from the paper cuts life had left on her psyche.

When he'd finished and silence, made isolating by the guttural roar of the engines, had slipped between them, Dwight said, "I hear you got marooned the other night."

"Yes," Anna replied in sepulchral tones. "You abandoned me and I wandered the streets in the rain fending off gang-bangers and stepping on drunken homeless people."

"Terrance said you sacked out on the Coast Guard table."

"God, I hate small towns," Anna said mildly. "Nobody can get away with anything."

"I couldn't wait." Dwight was explaining, not apologizing. "At eleven-thirty when I get home, I tippy-toe in to give Digby his goodnight kiss. If I'm late he don't sleep so good."

Anna doubted much would disturb the rest of a boy Digby's age, but Dwight's reasoning delighted her just the same. "Did Mandy make the boat?" she asked, remembering her flashing by, framed in the window of the subway train.

"Nope. She got left behind too. You party girls have got to pay for your sins."

"She didn't stay at MIO," Anna said.

"She might not even have been headed to the boat. She's got a boyfriend stashed away somewhere. She's tucked up in her own little bed tonight, though. I took her on the four forty-five from Ellis."

Anna laughed. "Fishbowls have got nothing on islands when it comes to lack of privacy."

"You got that right," Dwight said amiably. "Somebody knows everything. Maybe not a single somebody, but all the somebodies added up. Right down to how much toilet paper you use."

Patsy was home, and despite Dwight's assurance to the contrary, Mandy was not "tucked up in her own little bed." She was nowhere to be found. An ideal situation, from Anna's point of view. She left an apologetic message on Dr. Madison's phone machine, changed into her bear cub pajamas, accepted a glass of her own wine and folded down on the sofa with a heaping plate of spaghetti left over from Patsy's dinner. A far superior evening to dining at Windows on the World with the double burden of having to be pleasant and attractive simultaneously.

As Anna twirled pasta and wiped sauce from her chin, Patsy talked on the cordless, her lush and compact body draped over a chair only a woman as loose-limbed and well upholstered as Patsy could make look comfortable.

The conversation was centered on the disposition of a Honda and a battered old pickup truck she had left behind in Cortez when she abandoned Mesa Verde for the fast track. Anna remembered Patsy's daughters, both blond and as sumptuously constructed as their mother. They'd be in high school now, one maybe off to college. Both had opted to stay the year out with Grandma in the Southwest when Patsy moved. From the one-sided conversation, Anna figured the younger had just been divested of the Honda in honor of the elder's pilgrimage to the university and was arguing the damage her deep and abiding shame at being demoted to the pickup truck would cause her. Not to mention the end of her social life for all time.

Anna enjoyed the byplay. A year younger than Anna, Patsy sounded like a "modern" mom, the kind that read the books and knew it was important to be firm yet validate feelings, compassionate yet authoritative. A thin and faded line between mother and friend.

Not for the first time, Anna was glad she was childless. It was traumatic enough to deal with the emotional needs of a dog. Children were probably worse. At least dogs couldn't call you on the phone. The guilt trip had to be laid on as one left, and by the time one returned, the silly buggers were so overjoyed, all sins were forgiven. Dogs were eternally optimistic. They seemed to believe each abandonment was the last and each homecoming eternal. They were Catholic not only in their ability to inspire guilt but in their unwavering faith.

"So," Anna said as Patsy hung up, "were you on the island the night Hatch tried to learn to fly?"

Patsy laughed her wonderful laugh and said, "Shouldn't you be on Prozac or something? Or did you come visit because not enough people were dropping dead in Mesa Verde?"

Anna spun up another forkful of pasta. There was a touch of the compulsive about her. Maybe when her mother was pregnant with her she'd been frightened by a bloodhound. Anna had been sniffing out the truth most of her life, one way or another. Usually it wasn't worth knowing. Still, she had to search. Prozac could perhaps save her--if salvation was what she needed.

A folk art exhibit she'd seen once in New Orleans bloomed in memory. Fabulous stuff done by strange fundamentalist people with unique visions executed on old barn siding, corrugated metal, pipe, rocks, weathered pickets from decayed fences. Much of it was inspired by the Bible. There were many depictions of heaven and hell. Anna's favorite was made in an old potbellied stove. Heaven was on top, slathered with sky-blue house paint, clouds and hand-carved angels with wings hefty enough to keep a B-52 aloft. Inside, where the wood had once burned, lurked hell. It dripped in red paint, was floored in cracked black rocks and housed devils holding pitchforks, each sporting an erection a third his body size.

Prozac was going to wipe out an entire art form, Anna was sure of it.

"I'm used to being me," she said. "If I were nicer, I'd annoy myself."

"Yeah, me too. Mellow is too weird to contemplate. So. What? You think Hatch was pushed?"

"He could have fallen by accident, I guess, but suicide doesn't sit right with me." She told Patsy about the cigarette and was gratified to see her take it seriously. It was a first for that particular string of revelations.

"I used to go up with him sometimes. Night shift's a bore and I tend to stay up late anyway. He did his cigarette ritual a couple of times," Patsy volunteered.

"What time?"

"Eleven forty-five on the dot," Patsy said with a laugh. "Irregularity was not Hatch's problem."

In law enforcement, however, regularity was a problem. It made the officer predictable and therefore vulnerable. Bad guys--assuming there were bad guys involved--could watch and know precisely when one was at one's weakest.

"I can't see him dropping his cigarette butt either," Patsy continued. "Hatch cared, I mean
cared,
about almost everything. Too much. He was a softie with everybody else but hard on himself. He'd never litter. Maybe he accidentally dropped the cigarette, was totally appalled and dove off to retrieve it."

They both laughed, albeit a little shrilly.

"God, we're awful," Patsy said. "I really liked Hatch."

"Funny image, though." An undercurrent of giggles rippled the surface of the silence for the next several seconds.

"Hatch was moody," Patsy said after a while. "I can't imagine him littering, but I can sort of see him killing himself if I squint and try real hard. I've been here--what? Eight months. You get to know people quick on an island."