The Return: A Novel (4 page)

Now Marder drove south on Fourth Avenue, then cut over to Second, passing under the Gowanus Expressway. At a stretch of waste ground near the rail yards, he spotted a group of homeless men standing around a fire barrel. Dressed in the usual thick layers of clothing, red-eyed, their faces demonic in the lights of the low flames, they were passing around a bottle, laughing and joking. The fights and assaults had not yet started. Skelly always brought good times to these gatherings, and Marder thought it was fortunate that the evening was young and the crack pipes were not in evidence as far as he could observe. Skelly on crack was not amusing.

He approached the group, waved a greeting, and sidled next to one of them, a small but powerfully built man with a shaved head partly covered by a filthy Red Sox baseball hat.

“Hello, Skelly,” Marder said. “Are we having fun yet?”

Skelly looked at him with a belligerent stare; his eyes were unfocused and he stank of peach schnapps. “Marder. If you’re here to join the party, have a drink. If not, fuck off!”

“Let’s take a little walk, Skelly. I want to show you my new camper truck.”

With the exaggerated diction of the very drunk, Skelly said, “Fuck you, Marder, and fuck the camper truck you rode in on. I’m having a little drink with some old army buddies. These are my good buddies here. Hinton, say hello to Marder. Marder isn’t an old army buddy. Marder was in the air force. He was rear-area motherfucker.”

The men laughed at this, Skelly loudest of all. If this anniversary celebration went the way of all the others, Marder would receive a call from a pay phone at three
A.M.
a couple of nights from now and he would call a hire car and drive to where Skelly would be waiting at some all-night place, sans wallet, cowboy boots, watch, coat, and other items, plus any number of bruises and abrasions. Once or twice he’d been standing there in his T-shirt and shorts. Marder no longer had time for that.

He tugged at Skelly’s coat. “Come on, man. I need to talk to you.”

Skelly pulled away so hard he staggered. “I’m busy,” he said. “Get the fuck away from me!”

The other men were observing this with interest. Marder started to feel crowded. Hinton, the buddy, a large person with a wild Afro escaping from his knitted hat, and eyes like spoiled eggs, growled, “Yeah, leave him alone. Skelly’s our friend. We having a good time here and we don’t need no rear-area motherfuckers, you know?”

This remark was funny too. Marder addressed the big guy. “Yeah, I get that. Look, I need to talk to my friend here, and I’ll give you each fifty bucks to help me get him over to that camper there. What do you say?”

Money changed hands. The men, ignoring Skelly’s protests, picked him up and stuffed him in the passenger seat of the Ford.

“Nice camper,” said Skelly. “Now can I go?”

“In a second. The thing is, I’m leaving, and I know you’d’ve had to call me later and I wouldn’t be here. I wanted to let you know.”

“So? I could’ve called somebody else. I mean, fuck it, Marder, you’re not my
mom
.”

“Somebody else? Like who? You mean I have a backup? I wish to Christ I would’ve known it sometime during the last—what is it?—forty
years
you’ve been pulling this shit. I would’ve told you, ‘Get fucked, Skelly. It’s three in the morning, call number two on the list.’”

Skelly was silent for a moment, and then asked, “So what’s with the camper? You becoming a Good Sam?” In a familiar way, he seemed to have dumped his drunk by an act of will.

“Yes. It’s always been my dream to tour America’s national parks and meet wonderful people along the way.”

“That’s good, Marder, I like how you’re easing into being an old fart. You need to get you some of those pants with no belt and wear more bright colors. And a plastic hat. Of course, it shouldn’t be much of a change—you were sort of an old fart when you were young.”

“I’m glad you approve. Should I drive you home or drop you off at the nearest saloon?”

“A saloon, thank you. If you cut right up there on Forty-Fourth Street, there’s Mahoney’s on Ninth Avenue.”

Marder drove as directed. After a while, Skelly asked, “So how long do you figure this trip is going to take?”

“I don’t know,” said Marder. “It’ll be a while. Ours is a big country.”

He pulled the truck to the curb across from the dimly lit little tavern. He held out his hand and Skelly took it.

“Goodbye, Skelly.”

Skelly gave him an odd look, a smile edged onto his mouth. “Yeah, well, I’ll see you when I see you. Have a safe trip, and I know you’ll obey all the relevant traffic laws.”

Skelly left the truck and crossed the avenue. More than anything else, more than giving up his profession and his home, more than bidding his child farewell, this parting told Marder that the life he’d known was truly over. Or not. It would depend on Skelly.

2

In the morning Marder made himself a plate of eggs and bacon, toasted a bagel, and dripped a full pot of coffee. He had worked hard on making this kitchen as perfect and as well supplied as he could, and he had vowed not to miss it, but he knew he would. After eating his meal and drinking a couple of cups, he poured the rest of the pot into a thermos. Marder was traveling light, but it took several trips to load his truck. He put the rifle in the back of the wardrobe in the main cabin, together with his pistol cases, stuck his bag in an overhead, locked everything up, and went back for his laptop, the money, and the blue ceramic urn that held the earthly remains of Maria Soledad Beatriz de Haro d’Ariés y Casals, or Chole Marder, as she was known in New York. He placed this in a cabinet drawer, buffered by towels so it wouldn’t roll. His bedroll he tossed up into the sleeping loft. The time was just past dawn; the garbage trucks rumbled, a siren wailed from afar, the sky above the canyons of Manhattan was taking on a tint of blue. It would be a good day for traveling.

As it turned out to be, the weather clear and mild, the traffic light until he got to Philadelphia and caught the morning rush on the interstate. Yes, something terrific about leaving a city at dawn on a long journey. He planned to drive a simple, swift route, down 95 to Jacksonville, where he’d pick up 10 west, and then across the bottom of the country to Tucson, hang a left, and cross the Mexican border at Nogales. He would leave the interstate when he became tired, would stay at no-name RV parks and pay for meals and parking space with cash. He was behaving like a fugitive, he knew, although he had committed no crime under the law. But he often felt like a fugitive, like someone who would be found out someday and brought to justice. He’d felt like that for a long time, since the war, in fact. Survivor’s guilt? He had that, and plenty of the other types as well.

*   *   *

He stopped at a plaza north of Richmond, Virginia, dashed in for just a moment to pick up a bag of burgers and coffee to go, looking nervously out the window at his rig. When he got back to it, he found it untroubled by thieves and Skelly sitting in the passenger seat. Marder was not surprised; he had counted on it, in fact, but now he assumed a hard face, stepped into the driver’s seat, and put his paper bag on the console between the seats.

Skelly said, “Hey, great! I was starving,” and lifted out a foil-wrapped burger. “So where are we going, chief?” he said around the first mouthful.

“To the nearest airport and put you on a plane back to the city.”

“Not a good plan, chief. You need someone to look out for you.”

“
I
need someone? That’s a laugh. Look, Skelly, no offense, but this is a one-man trip. For one thing, this camper has only one bed.”

“Bullshit! It’s rated to sleep three. There’s a padded seat in the main cabin that’ll do me fine.”

“Oh, the camper expert! No, I’m sorry, it’s impossible. This is not what you call a fun trip.”

“Really. What kind of trip is it, then? By the way, I was interested in your gear. A ton of cash. You’re packing enough artillery for a minor war, and I couldn’t help noticing Chole’s along for the ride. I peeked in there looking for something to eat. Unless that’s someone I don’t know.”

Marder cranked up the truck and rolled it out onto the interstate. So far, so good. Keeping Skelly in the dark as long as possible was part of the plan. He did not bother asking how Skelly had entered a securely locked camper and inspected a locked suitcase, because he knew Skelly would say, Hey, I’m a security consultant.

Skelly leaned back in the seat, adjusting its angle to a more comfortable slant. He pulled out and lit a cigarette. Marder rolled his window down.

“And you’re going to stink up my new truck too.”

“Am I going to get a lecture on secondhand smoke? Don’t pretend to be more of a pussy than you are, Marder. It’s unseemly. Face it—you’re going to Mexico and I’m coming with you.”

Marder snapped a startled look at the other man. “How did you know I’m going to Mexico?”

“I checked the email on your laptop. I see you’re still dealing with the lovely Nina. Are we still getting any in that quarter? No? A pity; it looks like a nice place. So you’re traveling to Michoacán with a lot of guns and a shitload of cash and won’t say why. That’s not characteristic of my pal Marder. So I’m thinking you’re in trouble and you need a friend to watch your six.”

“I’m not in trouble and I don’t need my six watched. My
six
? Now we’re talking army talk. Jesus, the war’s been over for forty years and we lost. Get over it.”

“You never get over it, and if you think
you’re
over it you’re more of an asshole than you usually are. How about passing this semi here, unless you want to breathe diesel fart for the next hundred miles.”

“There’s an airport in Richmond.”

“I’m sure, but we’re not going there. Look, chief, I saved your life. We’re mutually entwined. Why do you think I let you hang out with me all these years and do all the shit I do for you? Believe me, it’s not your charm. I’m responsible for you, end of story.” Skelly yawned, stretched, and said, “And now I believe it’s rack time. Actually, I fell into conversation with a young lady in Mahoney’s last night, and with one thing and another I didn’t get much sleep. Wake me when we arrive at a point of historical or scenic interest.”

With that, Skelly lay his cheek against the window glass and was asleep in thirty seconds. It was a talent he had, one that Marder envied. Skelly could sleep in a helicopter under fire. Marder had seen him do it many times; he’d seen him sleep through a rocket attack. He could sleep in mud, on concrete, and of course he’d be perfectly comfortable on the padded bench of the camper. His sleep seemed deep and genuine, but if anything occurred that needed his attention he would be instantly awake, focused, ready to receive information, act, or give orders.

Marder drove past the Richmond exits. Of course, he was not going to take Skelly to any airport; he was going to take him to the house in Mexico. Mutual entwining, yes.

The last time Marder had spent any extended time on the interstates was after the breakup of his first marriage a long time ago, when he’d driven a motorcycle from New York to Mexico, a fateful journey, and one that he was repeating now. The difference in mass between the camper and the Harley Shovelhead he’d ridden then, with his every earthly possession in the saddlebags, was indicative of the draggy accretions of maturity. He always looked back on that lightness as particularly sweet, and he wished to taste it again, if but a little. He could have bought a bike, but the thought of old guys on motorcycles violated his sense of seemliness, like an octogenarian wearing a miniskirt.

He found that when alone at the wheel his mind spun free. The journeying being mere limbo, the mind of the highway traveler casts forward into plans or backward into memory. Marder’s plans were still too immature to bear much thought, quite aside from the death-at-any-moment thing, but his past was rich, solid, there for the viewing. Marder glanced over at his sleeping companion, and his thoughts rolled back through the years to the first time he’d met Patrick Francis Skelly and started whatever this connection was, farce or tragedy, he couldn’t be sure.

*   *   *

Marder had joined the air force right out of high school. By 1968, in the working-class neighborhoods of New York, boys Marder had known, who had been in and out of his mother’s kitchen, had returned in coffins or shattered, and he knew she could not bear the thought of her only child slogging through jungles. Marder would actually have liked slogging, despite his father’s experience in New Guinea, for jungle slogging was clearly what a real man did; besides which Marder was a reader, and much of his reading had been tales of manly adventure—Kipling, Hemingway, and their lesser epigones. Not to mention the war movies. The antiwar movement then roiling the media of the nation seemed an affectation of the higher classes, like golf or yachting.

From the start he’d done well in the military. It took him only a few days to understand that the service was a game, like baseball, and separate from real life. You had to take it seriously but not personally, and therefore it was as absurd to fight the system as it would have been to bitch and moan that there were only three strikes in baseball. He also understood that the USAF labored under the rep of being the most pussy service, so that its NCOs were at pains to be extra tough, although it was easy to see that this was a faux toughness and easily distinguishable from that of, say, the marines. After basic training and after blowing the top off the air force qualification tests, and after a certain amount of communications and radar training of a most select kind, he found himself at Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, at the huge air base that everyone called Naked Fanny. He was attached to a unit of the Infiltration Surveillance Center, an outfit known as Task Force Alpha.

This was the heart of an immense project code-named Igloo White. Its purpose was to stop the flow of supplies along the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail, a vast braided network of roads and tracks issuing from communist North Vietnam and threading through Laos and Cambodia to Vietcong supply points in the south. The theory was that if you interdicted the supplies, the communist resistance would collapse.