Pepper's Ghost Chs 1-2

Pepper’s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

Pepper’s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

Pepper's Ghost Mark R. Anderson

Copyright ©2009 by Mark R. Anderson All rights reserved

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©2009

Pepper’s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

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©2009

Pepper’s Ghost

Mark R. Anderson

©2009

All of the characters and events in this book, unless a matter of public record, are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The author makes no representations that the use of the products or technologies in the manner described in this publication will not infringe on existing or future patent rights, nor do the descriptions contained in this publication imply the granting of licenses from either the manufacturers or from the United States government to make, use, or resell equipment in accordance with the description.

Copyright ©2009 by Mark R. Anderson All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission. For more information, please contact the author at author@peppersghoststory.com Microsoft, Windows, Exchange, SQL Server, and Outlook are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

GMail and Google Maps are registered trademarks of Google, Inc. Sun Solaris, Java, and Java Virtual Machine, are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation.

SCO UnixWare, and SCO OpenServer, are registered trademarks of the SCO Group, Telepresence is a trademark of Cisco Systems, Inc. Musion Eyeliner is a registered trademark of Musion Systems, Ltd,

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Pepper’s Ghost

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For now we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face.

1 Corinthians 13:12

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Pepper’s Ghost

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©2009

Chapter 1

October 20, 2011: 3rd Harmonic, 3500th Cycle; 5th Harmonic, 2100th Cycle I got Dad’s first email about a year and a half after he was killed. We were all fine now for the most part, but the timing of these things is never good, is it? The invisible hand hitting the Send button could be scripted or ghosted--- it almost doesn’t matter. It ain’t over till it’s over, and what’s over here is not what’s over there. They are two completely separate networks.

Only now an email had slipped through, something that both God and man had sworn would never happen, and there was no telling what kind of hell would break loose.

The timestamp said 538PM. I had just gotten pulled onto a concall with a CFO let’s call Arev, who works for a client let’s call ShadowBox, Inc, when my smartphone whistled Old Spice to alert an incoming message. The client’s management team was in a conference room, and wanted to know how quickly we could turn around a term sheet for some Middle Eastern investors. They were pushing me very hard. The credit crisis had pretty much dried up any appetite for equity. Investors were hiding under their desks, and that giant sucking sound you heard outside was digits turning into cargoes---gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, wine and olive oil, flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, heavy machinery and tractor parts, and bodies and souls of men.

ShadowBox had a hot IT product that had gotten traction in DoD and Intel. They wanted to turn it into a hot commodity. Prime contractors like Lockheed, Northrop, and CSC were banging on the door trying to get them to sell the company when stock prices were cheap. Arev didn’t want to sell. He wanted an IPO. This had been his dream since he left Wall Street. Only now all his first-round investors were losing interest: “Why 6

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invest with you at $6 a share when I can put that money on something that doesn’t obsolete---like timber?” Sure it made sense, just not the kind of sense that Arev wanted to hear. Arev had grown up Armenian in Lebanon, gone to school in the US, and become a citizen, back when it was much easier to do that sort of thing. He was also a native Arabic speaker, so he got on a plane and spent a month scouring Mideast capitals tracking down friends from former lives. They were overjoyed to see him. It had been over twenty years, and they kissed him on both cheeks. Yes they were all fine, yes they wanted to hear what he was doing now, and yes they wanted to invest in it. What do you need? 500? A billion?

“David, we need to move quickly,” he was explaining in his Fertile Crescent accent... “There is no appetite for risk whatever in the venture markets in US, Europe, or Japan. We are being forced for our very survival to look at alternate sources of funding, and we are running out of time. We’ve got ninety days left before we are forced to take on debt that will force layoffs to maintain the growth our shareholders are demanding."

“Understood.” I was waiting for the message to pop up in my Outlook. “Where are these guys from?”

“This is a group of sophisticated Middle Eastern investors, Arev answered, “with holdings in multiple countries--- oil, real estate, banking, infrastructure. I have known them for a long time, and all are in cabinet and senior ministry-level positions. This is the equivalent of having our chairman of the Federal Reserve, Secretary of Defense and Speaker of the House invest in ShadowBox.” “But what color are their passports?”

“I am told that won’t matter in this case,” Arev reassured. “And you will agree as soon as you see who the parties are. They are cleared to engage in discussions of national security at the highest level, and the documentation is included in case you have any questions. Their identities need to be kept confidential, so I’m going to send the paperwork over with Moby. Mark it up and get it back to me by Friday, since I need to be back in Dubai on Saturday so we can close this on Sunday.”

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Arev’s marketable skill was passing himself off as that big, kindlylooking gentleman you couldn’t dislike, and putting you completely at ease. He was the most approachable person in any picture, and had instant credibility in any boardroom. Men trusted him; women adored him--- on sight. But he could throw the high heat when needed, and I was falling behind in the count.

“And they can kick in a billion without blinking? I’m thinking KSA.” There was a slow pause. “Actually, these gentlemen are of Lebanese origin.”

“But they’re Saudi nationals?” No way they couldn’t be. “Listen, Arev, it doesn’t matter. KSA is okay, as long as you’re okay kissing NSA goodbye. That’s the policy. We’ve been over it. NSA doesn’t deviate a millimeter, and the OIG does not hear vendor protests involving selections based on national security. Bring in the Saudis and you are giving your business to the Israelis. It doesn’t matter how good your shit is: unless you’re Microsoft, the government will just find someone else to do it. You can spend a lot of time and money with us. I will love you to death for it. But you’ll probably lose. And you’ll definitely derail your IPO.” There was some animated conversation at the other end. The email still hadn’t shown up in my Outlook. I looked down at my phone, and froze. The message was from Dad’s dotmil address. I shook my head, blinked, shook the smartphone and looked again. “Subject: Pls contact. Message preview: Hijacker wanted to fly to Afghanistan continued from 1A identification of the body...” I slowly touched the message to open it, and for several minutes there was no other light in the room except for a glowing, grainy photo of FBI agents crawling in the cockpit window of a hijacked Northwest 727 on the tarmac at Portland Oregon International Airport. I scrolled down. A 20 year-old drifter had been shot dead because he said he had a bomb and needed to get home to his wife and kids in Kabul. I panned around the page. There was an article about President Reagan going for a second term and blaming the 10.8 percent unemployment rate and a projected deficit of $190 billion on the policies of his predecessors. Dateline Friday, January 21, 1983.

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“Whatthefff ...?” I whispered.

“David, are you still there?” It was Arev. He was speaking now in ultimatums about needing to find solutions, not problems, about paying us very handsomely--- perhaps even too much--- because of the premium ShadowBox placed on our relationship. Everything was still very far away, so I defaulted to my own pre-recorded gratitude on behalf of Steiger, Black, and Wolfowitz for the continued opportunity to provide counsel to our valued client, and for my sincere apologies at having to take another call. “We completely understand my dear David,”Arev rejoined cheerfully, “and our apologies for catching you at a bad time. Moby will be over with the package within an hour. I know you will do an excellent job turning this around for us.”

By the time it occurred to me to ask what exactly that meant, and why they needed their best engineer to hand deliver a package, the receiver was back on its hook, the lights back in their sockets, and Midtown traffic back on the street outside.

I looked back at my hand, still opened to page 8A of the Daily StarLedger. “Portland Police Gun Down Lone Hijacker. “ The story had been filed the previous day. A white male upset with what he claimed was a US failure to assist the Afghans against the Soviet invasion had commandeered a Northwest Orient Boeing 727-200, using a shoebox supposedly containing a bomb. Flight 608 was enroute from Seattle to Portland OR, but the hijacker pulled aside a flight attendant and demanded to be flown to Afghanistan so he could see his family. The suspect was identified as Glenn Kurt Tripp, a high school dropout from Arlington, Wash. He was on probation for trying to hijack the same flight two years earlier. This time he wasn’t so lucky. While the parties were negotiating, an FBI agent crawled in through the cockpit window, entered the cabin, and killed Tripp with a single shot. All thirty-five passengers and six crew members escaped unharmed. During the standoff, Tripp said he had been in prison, and that it wouldn’t hurt the folks on the plane to sit with him for a while.

I absolutely did not get it. Dad had died in an aircraft accident outside Baghdad last May. I had just received a message from his locked email 9

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account about some random loser who’d gotten himself roadkilled nearly thirty years ago. And “Pls contact” who? I had no idea how to respond. Besides, it didn’t belong to me. Those were the terms of the settlement. I forwarded the message, typed, “This came to me,” and sent it off to the custodian’s drop-box at US Department of Defense General Counsel.

There had been a couple of robo-mails from what looked like service accounts at random servers worldwide over the last few months. Some seemed defense-related. Others were probably spam. I sent them off to DoD GC anyway. That was what they wanted. This, however, was the first message I had ever received. That stuff was not supposed to get out. Everything from Dad had been from his personal Yahoo.

Yet here I was, holding something that was not supposed to exist, about someone I never knew had existed, from someone who no longer existed. It was clearly a message from another world, and the form response that had just come from the Pentagon provided clear instructions for the prompt disposal of such communications. I had deleted from my inbox, sent messages, and cache when a sharp rap on my desk jolted me out of my seat. I looked up to behold none other than the flower of the Gotham data center, standing before me in ineffable Nubian splendor.

“Mo-beee!” my cry of relief shouldn’t have sounded as comic as it did. I whiplashed myself back in my chair and spun it around, better to behold one of enterprise computing’s finest creations. “Come in, sit down--I mean, sit down--- since you are already in. Arev said you would be by. “You look like you’ve just come from yet another successful install. Tell me, how did it go? Did you blind them them with your science? Did you leave them gasping by the server racks?“ “Partial credit,” she parried. “Install and training tonight.”

“Really? Where?”

“One of your competitors,” she singsonged, took a USB stick from her jacket pocket and handed to me, all business. “Arev says you need to work on this tonight.”

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“I thought he said COB tomorrow.”

“He needs it in the morning.” She looked at me, let a strand of shiny hair cascade into one eye, and waited for me to take the stick.

“Arev drives a hard bargain.” I was impressed. “And he wow does he know how to package it. Is he willing to pay for the expedited service?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

“I’m asking you.”

Moby is one of those women I wish every day I was not professionally related to. She turns more hot stares into revenue than Arev can forecast, while everybody pretends it’s the product and not Moby that’s flying off the shelves and working like a champ. This is by no means to insinuate that she adds no value. Moby is always better prepared, better expressed, and better dressed than anyone else in the room. And when she beats the geeks in predicting how applications such as email, Oracle, and SQL will use enterprise data storage to perform in virtual environments, she can name her price. Several clients have asked her out, but rumor has it she has already caught the eye of a couple of bankable industry celebrities, and most of the guys down in the data centers are ecstatic just to have her sit and talk with them for a while. As for me, I can only look on from a distance. And wish.

Moby’s trained her Xenon-HID smile directly into my face, but her eyes were all business. “Take it, Dave. I need to go.”

Okay, okay I’ll let you off easy. I need two things so I can get these terms out by morning. First, I need you to look at an email that I deleted off the server and out of cache. How do I get it back?”

“Did you delete it out of your destktop search?”

Nope, it was still there.

“Are you cleared?”

“To December 31, 2013.”

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“I won’t ask for proof.” I turned my laptop around at her. “This message came to me less than an hour ago and I need to know where it came from.”

“Oh, absolutely!” Moby seemed almost relieved to hear this. “Noooh problem! Let me just expose the header …Yes, here we go. The message originated MX4DPM.mi.ds.army.mil, through mi.ds.army.mil domain servers at Fort Monmouth and Fort Belvoir, and went straight to your carrier.”

That didn’t sound right. “No spoofing?”

Moby scrolled through the header again. “Dotmil directly to carrier. It’s clean. Oh, and the sender is Robert Jorgensen. That’s your...”

“Yeah--- my dad.”

“David, I’m so sorry,” Moby frowned at me for several seconds, then brightened. “Here, let’s try pinging that server and see what it comes back with. And just so nobody starts asking questions we’ll do through a proxy.”

Moby’s star-spangled nails clattered across the keyboard. Another one bites the dust, I thought. She was going to show some admins how to get servers into the shadow and play with them. And all the admins were going to talking about for the next two weeks was how they would play with her if they could get her into a shadow. I heard Arev was letting Moby keep all her training revenue since her onsite hours always resulted in add-on business. Better than a lawyer’s wage, plus she was getting a nice chunk of shares in return for letting herself get passed over for Director of Technical Services in favor of some industry greyhead.

Moby’s real name is Metasebiya. It means “remembrance” in Amharic. Her father is an Ethiopian who fled the toxic Marxist regime there in the late 70’s, with the shirt on his back. He made it to Egypt where he met his wife working at the pyramids. From there he was granted asylum in Italy, and eventually made it to the the US. He settled in DC, became a parking lot attendant, and later started programming government computers. His daughter got a tech school degree, and security clearance, 12

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but she what she really wanted was to be an actress. She came to New York, got a few advertisements and bit parts. She was struggling as an after-hours tech support specialist until she ran into another female who had given herself a guy’s nickname to gain the customers’ confidence and then take them completely by surprise. Moby tried it out, and found the role of a lifetime. She would open the case via email, and get them hooked. As soon as she picked up a phone or went onsite it was game over. They thought they were getting one of the boys, and not only had she exceeded their expectations, but their wildest dreams as well. She built a book of business, took it to ShadowBox, and recast herself as sub-Sahara’s answer to Lara Croft, venturing alone into hazardous, byzantine datacenters around the city.

“Look, David!” Moby spun the laptop back to me and leaned over the screen. “Click here and you’ll see that Belvoir and Monmouth are valid, but MX4DPM return ‘BOGUS or expired ID.’” “Meaning?”

“You can’t get to it.”

“And?” “You could be denied access for a variety of reasons--- server retired or name changed and not updated in DNS, firewall restrictions, etc. But we know two things---one, that you just got an email, and, two, that the server software on MX4DPM is SB_XEN 5.1.22D. That stands for ShadowBox Xen, which means that MX4DPM is hosted in a ShadowBox environment that is represented by a different IP address which has been masked.”

“How do you find that out?”

“The proxy service told me” “So it’s not spam, and not spoof?”

“Unless someone is doing it from inside a top secret network in a way that is going to very traceable internally. Here’s what I think. The server software is the version that had been released only to DoD. MX is the typical naming prefix for Microsoft Exchange email servers. Someone has inadvertently shadowed off an Exchange database for testing ---with your dad’s account and his contacts still in the system--and they are running tests 13

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unaware that there is a live civilian account in the global address list. You forwarded that back to DoD, right? Some poor GI Jane or Contractor Charlie is probably getting ripped a new one as we speak.”

I should have had more questions, but when I looked up, Moby’s face hovered one ultimate degree from mine. Either that, or I could have bitten off the second button on her blouse. As soon as she saw my eyes drop, she pushed herself back into the chair, crossed one leg and smiled at me wickedly. “I like feedback. How did I do?”

“Pretty bad” I shook my head and pretended to write on a pad, “’’Superior... technical... ability but... needs...work... on... closing skills.’ Want to try again?”

“No!” But her eyes were bright. “But do you feel better? mean, does my explanation make you feel better?”

“Yeah.” I smiled knowingly. “I feel much better now.”

“Good!” Moby chirped. “Two things. What else?”

“I need you to come with me for a drink and meet some people you will never forget."

“But I haven’t been to the gym today,” she objected, “and my training starts at 9PM downtown.”

“Great, there’s a vegetarian menu, and we’ll have you there in a taxi by 845.”

*

*

*

As long as I can remember, Nick and Yumiko have been doing Thursday Night Club. At least once a month their third floor walkup off Washington Square shapeshifts into an impromptu sushi bar, and you show up and eat sushi and whatever else been flown or carried in by neighbors and friends. Nick prepares the food. Yumiko does everything else, like making sure the video games work and the guests are mixing. Nick is in charge of 14

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the music, which are invariably bootleg jazz piano recordings. Jazz helps Nick concentrate and cut the fish.

Cutting and slicing fish comes very easy to Nick. He works at a company in Queens that does specialty crystal growth. His job is cutting, slicing, and finishing the crystal components to be sold to military contractors like those Dad used to work for would buy. The stuff is much more expensive per pound than raw fish, and you can’t hide your mistakes. You need to be able to stay focused for long periods of time. This is what Nick is really good at, which is probably why he is the only white man whose sushi I will eat.

Many people have told Nick that he looks like the Verizon guy, and that he should open up his own sushi bar, because he would draw a lot of customers. It’s a nice compliment, but the problem is that Nick also needs to drink beer when he is making sushi. And talk loud. And shriek uncontrollably at his own jokes, which are either very funny, or very septic. And at others’ jokes, which may not be so funny or septic, but seem that way because of the outrageous humor Nick finds in everything when holding a glass of Guinness which he is constantly diluting from a bottle of Budweiser. While this is what TNC regulars make the pilgrimage for, firsttimers can be a bit taken aback. After they meet Nick and see what a gentle soul he really is, they are okay, but as a business model, it probably wouldn’t work. Even Japanese, who love their drinking and their drinkers, don’t want their sushi prepared by drunks. So we keep Nick happy by showing up at TNC and bringing new friends, which he reciprocates with even more hilarity.

They had a pretty good crowd by the time Moby and I got there. Everybody was straight from work, and standing around the dining room table which was covered with sushi, sashimi, and chirashi platters I’d forgotten the names of. Nick was warming up in the bullpen, and you could hear him all the way from the first floor landing. He stood on the other side of the kitchen bar, looking down at what he was doing and talking to the guests as they came by to say hello. Every few minutes, he would put down the knife and start screaming and pounding on the counter at something that was incredibly funny. Then he would quietly pick up the knife and resume 15

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talking, slicing, and rolling as if nothing had happened. Seconds later he would be doubled over shrieking and stamping his feet, sometimes at the same thing.

Yumiko was in the living room playing Wii tennis with some of the regulars. Yumiko is not hard to spot in a crowd. She is usually the only platinum-blonde Japanese woman in the place. She has a low center of gravity, is always tanned and genki, and looks like she has been hiking for the last couple of weeks. That last is mostly true, since she gets dragged around the planet to do hair for model photography---places like Lake Titicaca, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands---because the magazines like to do their shots in exotic places. When she saw me she came over, gave me a big squeeze, and asked about Mom. “She’s great, she’s happy. Hey, I need to introduce you. Yumiko this is Moby, Moby, Yumiko. Yumiko runs a hair salon on Bleeker Street.”

Moby stared at her. “No! YumiYaz?” “Yes! “ Yumiko sparkled. “Do I know you?”

“You do my best friend‘s hair! She is always trying to get me to come see you” Moby and Yumiko started trading hair talk, which rapidly became technical. I stopped it by stepping between them, holding my phone at arm’s length and snapping a picture of the three of us. “My screensaver tomorrow!” I announced to the world.

I was pummeled with furious female fists.

“No! Stop! Wait!” I cried, turning to Yumiko in desperation. “My model/actress-friend’s diet is about to be compromised, and I am sore afraid! Please assist!”

“Unfortunately, I know nothing about sushi,” Yumiko apologized with mock seriousness. “I’m just normal Japanese. You had better talk to Nick. Nicky! Nicky!” she called. “You need to come out here!”

Nick was out of control again, but when he heard Yumiko he placed the knife carefully in its container block, removed his apron and hung it 16

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gently behind him, washed up, and came out wiping his hands in a towel, blinking attentively. Nick greeted me warmly and shook hands with Moby, and looked very intently at us both as Yumiko explained the situation.

Nick took over once he was sure he understood. “Everything is very fresh. Your best bet if you want to keep it around 500 calories is pick what you like from the bara sushi, the mixed platter over here. Everything you need: tuna, ika, octopus, ikura, tangy greens all laid over a bed of rice soaked in sweet vinegar. If you go with the rolls or the norimaki, you’re going to feel obliged to eat the rice and you don’t want to load up on the carbs. Does that make sense?”

Nick looked at Moby, with an intense look of concern as if he might have insulted her.

“Yes, absolutely!” You could tell Moby loved the spotlight.

“I’m so GLAD!” Nick was beside himself with relief. “If you don’t mind, I’ll tell you about the hamachi. Would you like to hear about the hamachi?”

“I’d love to hear about the hamachi!”

Nick squealed in delight, and turned to me. “She wants to hear about the hamachi!” He caught himself mid-thrill and continued. “It’s also called yellowtail, and you can tell it by the pink-white meat with the red and black skin. They farm it in Asia, but catch it wild in the Atlantic. It’s as tasty sometimes as the toro, but it’s very lean--- VERY lean! I mean less than 30 calories per slice!”

Nick paused to let that sink in, and then said, “The guy brought it down this morning on a truck from Maine. Can you believe that? He drove all the way from MAINE!” You would think that Maine was a vast storehouse of delight from the visions of sugarplums dancing around Nick’s head.

“Have you been to Maine?” he asked Moby suddenly.

“No, I haven’t.”

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“Neither have I. But I think I’d like it.” Then he said, “George Bush lives there.”

“Poppy,” someone said, “Not Dubya. We sent him back to Texas!” A few perfunctory cheers went up around the room.

“Oh, right.” Nick said in obvious disappointment. “He didn’t like broccoli. And he didn’t like their fish, either. He puked all over the Japanese prime minister. It was on television. You can see it online. They say it was the fish. It was farm-raised.” Nick nodded seriously. “Not my fish, though. All my fish is all ocean-raised.”

“Ocean-raised is definitely better.”

“Well, at least they have a chance.”

“They can change the channel,” someone yelled.

“CHANGE THE CHANNEL!” Nick shrieked. I LOVE IT! But Poppy Bush didn’t have a chance. He didn’t know what the hell they were feeding him. And you know what they did after it was on TV? They trained street monkeys to imitate him puking! I’m totally serious. Yumiko and I saw them in Tokyo two years ago. Throw them some money and they do the Bush for you.” He imitated an American president puking, and broke into hysterics, “THAT’S… SO… BAD!!!” But the crowd was on their feet, cheering.

Nick suddenly turned and went back to the kitchen. “I have to make something special for Moby. It’s her first time here.” Moby tried to stop him, but he would not hear it. “Grab something and come sit at the counter. You need to try my Village Roll,” he said excitedly. When we got our plates and got to our seats, Nick had rolled up a towel and tied it around his head. “Now I look like a real sushi guy, neh? “Dave, you’re very quiet tonight. Is that because I’m doing all the talking? Tell me what’s going on in your life. It feels like a hundred years since we last spoke. How have you been the past century?”

“Well, we got a new century?” I said lamely.

“Yeah?” Nick looked up briefly. “And how’s that working out? How’s your love life?”

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“I’m working on it. No status changes to report.”

“How about that med school girl you were seeing? Is she still in the picture?”

“I would call that one a stuck opportunity. Looks like she is stuck in Chicago, and I’m a Yankees fan.

“Moby will help you out,” Nick offered hopefully. “Right Moby?

You’re a nice girl. You must have nice friends.”

“Abso-LOOT-ly!” Moby agreed. I’m introducing Dave to some of my nice friends tomorrow!”

See, Dave?” Nick comforted. “She’s going to help you out. Things are going to get better!”

I couldn’t have been more disappointed.

“Oh, and I got a weird email today.” I said. “For a second I thought it was from my dad.”

“From your dad?” Nick didn’t even look up. “Isn’t he… like… you know… dead?”

“That’s right.”

“So how did he send you an email?”

“I don’t know. But Moby helped me out with that, too. She told me it’s not spam or someone spoofing the address. But it’s still pretty weird.”

“It’s fucked up,” Nick agreed. “Here, try this.” He placed two plates on the countertop. Each had a conically rolled sheet of seaweed containing vinegared rice, kiwi chunks, cucumber strips, shredded shiso leaves, and fermented natto soybeans. We both tried it, while Nick watched intently. Moby rolled her eyes approvingly, “Very interesting,” she said. “It’s like something … Mexican!”

“All the elements offset each other and, with my secret ingredient-- a little reduction made from Hennessy Prive--- create a flavor that otherwise would not exist. Like straights and gays. That’s why I call it the Village Roll!” He howled hysterically at the ceiling. “I’M… SO... BAD!” 19

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“It’s great,” I agreed. “You should publish it!”

Nick liked that. “Don’t worry, Dave,” he assured. “It’s a prank, that’s all. The email, I mean. It’s definitely a prank. They’ll figure it out. You’ll be all right.”

“Thanks, Nick, I really appreciate that.”

“It’s amazing the stuff they can figure out these days. Stuff like you wouldn’t believe. I just heard this yesterday. They wish they could fire my ass but I know too much. Anyway, they have figured out how to do time projection now through crystal.”

“What’s that?”

“They can now replay past events using a proprietary crystal structure. You can already do it with live events now. There’s a guy is in San Jose, and Cisco makes it look like he is in Mumbai. You can’t tell the difference unless you try to touch the other person. It uses a phenomenon called Pepper’s Ghost.”

Moby understood what Nick was talking about. “Two identical spaces with a piece of glass between them,” she explained, drawing on a napkin. “The glass is angled at forty-five degrees to the viewer, who cannot see the second space. You shine light on an object placed in the second space and it appears in the first space.”

“Since the 1850’s,” Nick confirmed solemnly. “They’ve been fucking with people’s minds since at least the 1850’s. So now they can extend the space dimension by using the internet to funnel the light to the mirror, so you can have people on other sides of the globe sit across the table from each other without traveling. Off -the- shelf, commercially available but still basically the same idea--- you see what’s happening now, just not here.”

“Cool!” I was impressed.

Nick beamed. “You want to know what’s REALLY mindblowing? Now they can alter the optics to change the TIME dimension, so what you are seeing is happening here but not happening now. It could be something in the past. As long as there is a spatial reference point, that’s all you need.”

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He leaned across the counter and stared at us gleefully. “Now is that just sick, or what?”

“So you could---“ I looked around the room for an example.

“Exactly!” Nick couldn’t wait. “Shoot the bad guy and bring him in for questioning later. Don’t keep waterboarding the sonofabitch until he can remember something. As long you can positively confirm one place that he’s been--- scene of a crime, cell meeting, mosque, whorehouse, whatever--you’ve got him!”

With a single deft motion Nick swept up the scraps of the Village Roll in a piece of wax paper, flung it into a garbage can behind him, and glared at us---”Disposable forensics! Virtual justice! No Miranda rights, no due process, no Fifth, no Gitmo, no food allergies, no Korans in the toilet. Just replay the ghost --- because the ghost can’t lie--- and record it. You have perfect knowledge of everything that happened. So the poor bastard died?"

Nick grabbed my arm theatrically. “Hey mon, LISTEN! I’m SORRY. It was an accident. We don’t mean it. We’ll never do it again!”

“But can they change outcomes?” Moby jumped in. “Can they replay an event and intervene? In the bank robbery, suicide bombing, whatever?”

“Version 2,” Nick footnoted soberly. “On the roadmap, but they didn’t want to discuss it.

“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked.

“Government guys. You know--- they wear dark sunglasses and drive Fords with blacked out windows.”

“When did this happen?” Some of the other guests had moved over to listen in.

“About a year ago. They came to visit us. Sat right in the conference room. They asked us to do the optics… AND WE TURNED THEM DOWN! Can you BELIEVE that?” Nick lowered his voice and frowned. “Management didn’t want to get sued. Everything was going great. We’re profitable. Nobody pays attention to us. So our attorneys said, ‘Just lay low, and don’t get greedy. Let someone else build it for Jack Bauer, and see what happens. If the coast is clear, they’ll need more than 21

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one supplier. And the rest of DoD will want it, and then law enforcement, and then consumers will want it for stocking stuffers.”

“That's what happens when they bring in the lawyers." Two of Yumiko’s customers, a blonde with black eyebrows in a flame dress, and her rough-shaven pinstripe boyfriend had joined us at the bar.

“You’re absolutely right,” Nick agreed cheerfully. “Meet Moby. She’s an actress. And Dave. He’s a hotshot lawyer.” Neither statement was true, but both Moby and I have learned how not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

“Oh, we’re so sorry!” They started looking about desperately, as if for something to wipe me off with.

“Sorry that I’m a lawyer?” I grinned. “Now I really like you guys! Can I buy you a drink?” It was all they could do now not to fall over the bar looking for napkins. We chatted for a few minutes and it turned out that Gavin and Wendy were both from different Jerseys--- Gavin from the Channel island, Wendy from Exit 143--- and were with an entertainment company we had represented on a couple of buy-side transactions.

“So get this,” Nick continued. ”They let the sales manager go last month, and brought in a golf buddy of one of the board members. The manager they let go was pissed. He had built our entire government business. They promised him VP and stock. Instead they fire him for this new schmo. So he’s going around the plant floor introducing himself and he comes up to me and says I’m Bill So-and-so. I come from the chip industry. Chip industry? Okay that’s interesting. Which manufacturer were you with---Intel? Motorola? AMD? No, the guy says, the kind you eat. I sold Frito-Lay to hotel chains.” Nick shrieked. “The POTATO chip industry!” I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!” “So does the guy they let go want to sue?” I asked helpfully.

“I think they’re going to settle,” Nick shook his head. “But he showed me the spec! We could have done it. I know exactly how I would have grown the crystal and cut it. And Version 2 could be designed right on top of Version 1. It would have taken us three months max.”

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“So then why isn’t Gitmo closed?” Moby asked.

“There’s only one other company that can possibly make this stuff. Even if they had enough raw material they could probably only build one unit a month, because the crystal yields are so low--- you have to throw away so much good shit out before you get one that hits spec. That’s what keeps the price so high and delivery times so long--- not the cost of what you actually make, but the cost of what you waste.

“But think about it. You don’t even have to buy one of these things. Just build an amusement park. Or rent it out for parties. All these people out there who walk around believing they have missed their big chance, made some huge mistake that cost them their career or marriage or net worth. If you could go back and do one thing over, what would it be? And how much would you pay for THAT?” Nick eyes were in Candy Land. “That would be huge business. HUGE! Even if you could just SEE it again, people would pay for that. They want to know what it was really like--- the best AND the worst things.”

“Like the first time you got laid?” winked Gavin.

“Oh I’d love to see THAT again,” Nick grinned, “but I don’t think Yumiko would.”

“Anything you would change about it?” Wendy egged him on.

“No, not really,” Nick said thoughtfully. “The experience was very pleasant. Maybe I’d change the beef burrito I had for dinner that night. I should have gone with the chicken. Never have sex after eating beef burritos. Your sphincter starts making peculiar noises. It can kind of break up the mood, if you know what I mean.” Moby was laughing with her mouth closed, trying not to inhale the last of her Village Roll.

“You don’t believe me!” Nick accused, looking hurt. “Try it sometime! Tell me if you don’t hear this noise…” he puckered up his face in his best anatomical representation and began emitting quick, balloon-like bursts of air to the tune of God Bless America. We were all rolling on the floor now. Nick was howling so loud you had to be able to hear it out in the street. He would pause for another blast, and shriek some more.

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Some new guests had appeared at the door, greeted by all with shouts of welcome. Moby had managed to climb back up the bar and looked at her watch. “Oh, I need to go…now! Nick, thank you for everything! The food was wonderful. The folks are fabulous! And the fun was--- well, more than I’m going to have at Cadwallader tonight.” We said goodbye to Yumiko, whom Moby promised to call for an appointment, clattered down the stairs, and got a taxi. She rolled down the window, and grabbed my sleeve. “Dave, let’s come here again! Don’t forget the documents for Arev-- he needs them tomorrow.”

I stared at her blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“Stop it!” she scolded. “Just pretend I kissed you--- it’ll ruin my lipstick!” The window closed and the taxi sped off to catch the light.

I turned around and saw Nick standing beside me in his shirtsleeves, his hands sunk like small weights into his trouser pockets. You would think he had nothing else to do. “I sure hope she meant that,” he said sadly.

“About the kiss?”

“Sometimes I get carried away and become pretty raunchy. Yumiko says it can make people uncomfortable. Do you think she felt uncomfortable?”

“Stop apologizing!” I cried. “She had a great time. I’ll make sure she has Yumiko do her hair.”

Nick brightened. “That would really mean a lot, Dave. It really would. You’re such a good friend--- you and Steve, and your Mom and Dad. You’ve all been there for us. Always” He gazed down the street. “But I don’t know what the hell I would do.”

“About what?”

“If I could go back and do one thing over,” he said. “I’ve really fucked it up, mon--- my education, my job, my family--- my whole goddam life. I don’t know where I would start.”

*

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November 19, 2011: 3rd Harmonic, 3510th Cycle; 5th Harmonic, 2106th Cycle

No response from DoD GC to the email I forwarded to them last month, so I’ve been taking advantage of timezones and football halftimes to see what remains of Glenn Kurt Tripp.

I’m afraid there is not much to report. Tripp got his fifteen minutes of media attention --- twice --- in his short life. But aside from coverage of his airborne achievements, I’ve been able to find nothing--- no birth, death certificates, no transcripts, no place of burial, no next of kin that picks up a phone--- no primary source confirmation that he even existed.

Not that I am surprised. It was, after all, thirty years ago, and everyone else has either moved away, forgotten about it, or died. I’m sure the evidence is out there buried in the county document repositories, but as the one ferociously indifferent reporter I managed to track down pointed out, “This is so prehistoric, why is this even worth your time? Are you supposed to be on some kind of medication too?”

I’m pretty sure about the second question. It’s the first question that’s giving me trouble. Maybe it’s because, like Dad, Tripp was killed in an aircraft-related incident, and there is a certain unreality surrounding things that happen on takeoff, at high altitudes, and landing. Lives can suddenly and completely disappear, leaving little more than a smoking fuselage, a floating seat cushion, or some flowers stuck in a chain-link fence at the end of a runway. The spokespeople say the same things over and over because no one who was on board is special: everybody met with the same fate. Sorry, they’re just not there anymore. And I think maybe it’s getting an email from someone who is not there anymore, at an account that’s been deleted, on a server that’s been taken offline, asking me to pls contact someone who may have never existed--- it all disappears when you try to 25

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touch it. Your hand goes right through. I think that’s the real cause for the wondering inside my head. If something here just existed, if I could touch it, I know it would all go away.

That being said, it’s surprising we know as much as we do about Glenn Kurt Tripp, who made aviation history not only as the youngest person to ever hijack an airliner, but as the only hijacker to take over the same plane twice. He was the youngest of fifteen children, born in Escondido, CA. His father was twenty-four years his mother Lena’s senior, and their first child was born when she was seventeen. Glenn was epileptic, and would go into seizure under emotional distress. He was also learning disabled, and was eventually placed in Riverside County’s special education program in Ramona, where he was classified as educable-mentally retarded.

Tripp went through vocational training and counseling to prepare him for a career in menial labor, but discovered petty theft when he was twelve. At fourteen, he spent a year in a detention home, and in 1979 at age sixteen had maxed out of Riverside’s special ed program. He started to drift. One of his teachers at Riverside, Larry LaCaille, was familiar with Tripp’s abusive domestic situation, and had stayed in touch. When he heard that Tripp was getting pulled toward the edge, he enrolled the boy in a youth work training program in Seattle, where he now lived. Tripp left home for good just after Thanksgiving, and moved into LaCaille’s apartment.

Seattle’s fast-paced environment overwhelmed the boy. As a psychological evaluation at one of his court hearings would later show, Tripp was not only dangerous to society but to himself as someone “open to exploitation and impressible”. He was robbed twice and stabbed once in less than six months, and responded by retreating into a fantasy world that revolved more and more around DB Cooper, the name most often used to describe an unidentified man in a dark suit, black clip-on necktie, and mother-of-pearl tie pin who hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 in midflight between Portland and Seattle on November 24, 1971. Cooper received his demand for $200,000 in unmarked bills, parachuted out the rear exit door of the Boeing 727 somewhere over southwest Washington State, and was never heard from again. Despite extensive manhunts by both 26

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FBI and National Guard, a suspect has never been identified, and the incident remains the only unsolved airline hijacking in US aviation history.

For years, it seemed as if Cooper had disappeared without a trace, until February,1980, when an eight-year old boy on a camping trip on the Columbia River, near Vancouver, WA, dug up three packets of the ransom cash, deteriorated but still in the serial number order in which they were delivered to Cooper. Tripp was excited by this development and told LaCaille that he wanted to become a hijacker, too. He would talk about how he could make a lot of money by bluffing or using a fake bomb. He was going to use the money to go where no one would find him, and there were no mean people. LaCaille said this was not the way the world worked, and that he should put the idea out of his head. He started driving Glenn out to work on a horse ranch over the weekends. This was something the boy enjoyed. He would get up at 5AM, work until 3PM, and then ride horses for a couple of hours.

But when Tripp was let go from his janitorial job on Thursday, July 3, and over the holiday weekend was told by a girl he had a crush on to leave her alone, all that came apart. He accused LaCaille for telling the girl to ignore him, and threatened LaCaille with a knife. Police were called and Tripp was evicted from the apartment. Still hanging on the refrigerator door were two typewritten pages of what appeared to be the beginning of Tripp’s autobiography, and his personal calendar, completely blank for the month of July except for the 11th, which was circled and marked “Payday.” LaCaille thought nothing of this until the following Friday, when someone told him that a hijacking was taking place at the airport. He turned on the TV, heard the negotiations on police-band being re-broadcast live, and recognized Tripp’s voice.

According to accounts provided, Tripp commandeered Northwest Airlines Flight 608 as it taxied toward the runway shortly after 1PM, claiming he had a bomb in his briefcase, and held the Boeing 727 on the tarmac for ten hours. He demanded $100,000 and two parachutes, saying that he was going to jump from the plane in mid-flight. An FBI negotiator was brought in, and convinced Tripp via radio to let all 52 passengers and the flight attendants leave the plane. The negotiator then convinced Tripp 27

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that his original plan was too dangerous, because since the DB Cooper incident all Boeing 727 rear exits were now welded shut, and that he would be killed by the engine blast if he jumped from one of the cabin exits. Tripp asked for a twin-engine plane, but eventually, he settled for a fast rental car, three cheeseburgers, and a head start. He was tackled by FBI agents as he dashed for the car. The briefcase contained only a light jacket.

Tripp was tried as an adult, and pleaded guilty to one count of firstdegree kidnapping and one count of first-degree extortion. Tripp’s limited mental capacities were taken into consideration. At the sentencing, the judge agreed to defer a 20-year prison term in favor of closely supervised treatment for five years at a vocational training facility for developmentally disabled young adults. A prison sentence would be reconsidered if any problems arose. “Your are accountable for your own behavior,” the judge told Tripp. “You must keep that in mind.” Tripp was admitted to Victoria Village on November, 1980 and discharged in December, 1981. During the following year, he lived alone in a rented house outside Stanwood, WA. His means of support during this time is unknown, but he met regularly with his probation officer, and said he was taking classes at a local community college. According to his mother, he had been sinking into a depression since not being allowed to attend his father’s funeral during his treatment. “Mama, what good is life for if I can’t even see my folks? I’m better off dead,” he allegedly told her. Lena later theorized that her son’s second hijacking attempt was an attempt to carry out that wish. By late 1982, Tripp had become obsessed with the idea that someone was trying to kill him. He was scheduled to appear in court to answer to an obstruction of justice charge regarding a false report he had filed with the police, but instead on January 20, 1983 he again boarded Northwest Flight 608 from Seattle to Portland, dressed in a dark suit and black workboots. He was carrying a single shoebox. At about 130PM, when the plane was about 60 miles from Portland, Tripp got up, walked down the aisle to a cabin attendant and told her to get on the phone. No money, no parachutes, just fly me to Afghanistan.

The flight landed at Portland International Airport at 145PM PST, and things began to unravel from there. This time Tripp adamantly refused 28

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to release any of the passengers or crew, but it was pretty clear that at some point they would have to change planes. The maximum loaded range of the Boeing 727 is 2400 nautical miles, meaning they would need a 747 if the flight was not going to refuel in Soviet territory. They would then have to switch back to a smaller body plane because there were no mujahideencontrolled airstrips in Afghanistan that could accommodate a 747. Also, instead of routing through Anchorage, Tripp was insisting on a stop in San Diego, presumably to see his mother. He would yell incoherent attempts at slogans in a thick imitation accent, talk how he had not seen his family in years, and how his father had been killed with a bullet through a window.

As it became increasingly clear that the hijacker mentally did not have both oars in the water---and probably nothing in the shoebox--- several of the passengers and crew came up and tried to persuade him to surrender. The Feds were also on the radio in the cockpit trying to get him to do the same thing through a negotiator. Confused by all the voices talking at him, Tripp ordered passengers and crew to the back of the plane. As soon as he had done this, two armed men burst through the cockpit door and yelled “FBI---Freeze!” Tripp is reported to have made a sudden motion as if to throw the box at the agents, one of whom fired a single shot from a .38-caliber pistol into Tripp’s chest, killing him instantly. All 35 passengers and six crew members slid down an emergency exit chute to safety.

The FBI later stated they did not know the identity of the hijacker and, if they had, would have handled the situation differently. A Multnomah County grand jury, however, concluded that the fatal shooting of Glenn Kurt Tripp was absolutely necessary, and praised the agents for their actions. One question that has never been answered is how Tripp could have managed to pull off both hijackings alone. Tripp has been described by nearly all who knew him as operating at the mental level of a 9-12 yearold. As an educable-mentally retarded person, his teachers and counselors say he was incapable of making a decision that involved any kind of planning. “If you put him on the curb in front of any large airport,” one of his special ed instructors stated, “Glenn would have a difficult time even finding airplanes.”

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While this assessment may oversimplify things, no one has adequately explained how Tripp, who had never flown in a plane before and had difficulty learning the skills necessary to sweep floors, could figure out how to get to an airport, find the terminal, purchase a ticket, find the gate, board the plane, get to his seat, and know when and how to advise the crew that he was hijacking the plane. I’m not a grassy knoll guy, but this kind of lightning does not strike twice without some kind of premeditation, and Tripp could barely premeditate himself to show up for work on time. “He is not capable of having planned out what happened by himself,” his courtappointed lawyer said, “Somebody had to have put him up to it.”

*

*

*

I wrote that on a Friday evening, and let it sit. I’ll do that when I’ve been drilling myself into legal drywell that’s going nowhere. Throw it onto a hard drive and let nature take its course. In the end, Glenn Kurt Tripp was just another kid who had stepped off the curb one time too many. The more I learned about him, the less there seemed to be worth knowing. And there he would have stayed if I hadn’t called Steve.

He actually picked up, which is he typically does not do on Saturdays. Steve is my brother. He is a programmer in Santa Cruz, which means he surfs and writes device drivers for a living--- in that order. He is one of that dying breed who believes that Windows is the work of the devil. “Why would you want to outsource your thinking to people in Seattle? Can’t you do that for yourself?” he would ask. “You surf,” I would reply. “Aren’t the waves doing all your thinking, while you enjoy the ride?

Some people just prefer not to build their own car, or their own computer. Or bake their own bread. Or churn their own butter.” “Surfing’s different,” Steve would reply, “The source code is exposed. You’re plugging in to the only visible manifestation of the harmonic principle by which all time and matter is composed and recycled.”

This was too California for me. Steve had gotten his start writing UNIX device drivers on an internship Dad had set up for him at a software 30

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company in North Jersey. He schlepped himself out to a few code-fests, and then got hired away to work at Livermore Labs. He did a lot with Sun until they got bought, with SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) until they went bankrupt, and then with Silicon Graphics until the Japan quake slowed them down. Now he’s a contractor working mostly on Linux and mobile apps. People can tell we’re brothers once they get past the tattoos, industrial libertarian attitude, and shock of hair that has gone prematurely white, which he blames on the sunshine and a chronic deficiency of workrelated stress.

“What’s happening on the Right Coast, bro?”

“Too much and not enough,” I said. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

“Preparing the stovetop stuffing. One seat left at the table. Still need someone to show up with the herb-crusted smoked turkey. Interested?”

“Thanks, but won’t be able to hold it on my lap, or keep my tray table up and my seatback in the full-upright position. But everybody sends their love.”

“Boo-yah” he saluted lamely. “Anything from Mom?” “Just the usual. Shopping. Friends. Shopping and friends. Friends and shopping.” Suddenly I asked, ” You know anybody in Escondido?”

“So you got the email?” Steve deduced.

“And... you didn’t call me?”

“Sorry, boss. Did we have a plan for that in place?”

I ignored the bait. “How about Mom? She didn’t call me. Did she call you?”

Long pause. “No.” “Maybe it’s in her spam filter.” I speculated.

“You want me to have her check?”

We both knew what that would mean.

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“So before I sent it in to DoD, I had a cleared engineer ping the server. Said someone was probably mistakenly doing some testing on a shadow machine.”

“Don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“It came to the Gmail account I opened for my contracting business. This January.”

A long pause on that one: Dad had been killed last May. “So... what are you saying, Steve?”

“I’m going to stick to what I know: (A) I don’t know anybody in Escondido, and (B) I’m pretty sure Northwest 608 is the flight she was on.”

“Who? Mom?” “Pre-Mom. Some girl Dad was dating when he first got sent overseas. She went over to see him. Her connecting flight back got hijacked. It was the end of their relationship.”

“What do you mean it was the end of their relationship?” It had never occurred to me that either of my parents had existed prior to meeting each other.

“That was all he said.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“Last spring. He came to see me after heard Yasmina and I were over with. He was worried I was going into a tailspin. Think it was around March... no, April.”

Yet another first. Dad hadn’t even contacted Mom or me let us know he was back. And now a pre-Mom. “And where did he go when he left?”

“Said he was going back through Miami.”

“That’s all?”

“What else do you think he was he going to tell me?”

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“So, Steve, just let me make sure I’ve got everything correct here,” I had slipped into my annoyed, attorney-client tone, “You also get the email.

It comes to an account you opened eight months after Dad’s death. Dad was in a relationship with someone on that flight. He was back in the country a month before he died. He leaves through Miami, without telling anyone else he was here. And you wait until now to tell me all this. Any other roadside bombs I should be aware of?”

“Dave, go fuck yourself.”

“Huh?” “I lost my girl, my job, and my Dad--- all in ninety days. I never asked for your 20-fucking-20 hindsight at the time, and I don’t need it now. What I would suggest to you is catch your breath, and take a step back: two emails were sent from a retired server sitting on SIPRNET. That’s it. Nothing else has happened before or since. Someone, something, somehow was able to reach us through Dad’s classified email account on that machine. May be a deathswitch. May be a bot. May be a person. Or a celestial being. Until someone can get on the server and go through those logs, we don’t know. And probably never will, since all this is government property, including those emails. You’re the lawyer, so you tell me. Should we even be having this conversation on an unsecure phone line?”

I took the subtle hint, apologized, and changed the subject. Steve was all I had left for family on this continent, and his reaching for the measured, rational response was correct and protective. Freedom from what would have been certain want had come at a huge price. Anything that would jeopardize what Dad had left us was unwise. Despite a somewhat fearsome appearance, temperamentally Steve is much better suited for the law that I am. In his world, everything, including time, snaps together and stays in place. We talked about work, the weather, made some predictions on the Giants, and pretty much left it there. I just could not see Steve on a long screaming line at the airport, cramming himself into a seat for ten hours just to eat a depressing turkey with me on a freezing day.

After we hung up, it struck me that, however intolerable his presence could sometimes be, Dad’s absence had held everything together. His loss 33

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had now scattered us. This holiday season I would be in New York, Steve in California, Mom in Tokyo. We were all doing well, all on speaking terms, still close, but the Jorgensen family had essentially been liquidated. It was one of those unanticipated costs of national security which, in terms of a net outcome, consisted in things we were not supposed to know. There were quite a few things Dad had apparently chosen for us not to know, judging from the size and terms of the settlement Mom had received. And yes, even with my 20-effing-20 hindsight, I can’t really imagine any reason it should have been different. Mom is home, she is happy, and she is provided for. She should have never left, but she did it for us, and never once complained. But I’d been around long enough to know that uncontested generosity is always less than the giver can afford. Dad had walked the earth, boarded a plane, and was no more. He had disappeared into a noiseless, dimensionless whitespace, leaving a wife and two sons holding a benefits package with no gaps, no answers, and no closure. Not even for himself, which I had been suspecting that for some time now--- actually ever since he had signed up for Iraq. It was what he had been working for since just after college, he told us expansively but without specifics. What exactly he meant by that only began to enter the picture in the months following his death. When everything you’ve ever known, loved, heard of, or dreamed about--- down to a tiny untraceable signal from cyberspace: Pls contact. It won’t hurt you to sit with me for a while--- becomes government property, you know right there that silence is more valuable than virtue.

But the day and hour must have finally come, because what was hidden had apparently gotten more unbearable for those who were concealed than for those still in the dark. People and events that longer existed nor were bound by any legal instrument were pepperghosting themselves through a virtual machine named MX4DPM. You couldn’t see it. It was the invisible image of a physical machine that once was. You couldn’t touch it. It was nothing more than a swarm of ones and zeroes floating around an unbreachable network. But it was there, like a massive, diagonal plate of dark glass, and later that evening its half-mirror tilted one final degree to reveal her to whom all these signs and wonders were pointing.

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She is standing among the lights, a woman I have never seen, but immediately recognize. She is of a beauty no longer seen in an age like this, a prepossession that I struggle to describe. Her thoughts are deep, and honey-colored like the veil of hair parted to reveal eyes that see only your worth, a smile that wishes you only well, and lips that whisper things only for you. It is a face for which a man will sacrifice all, even his soul, for there could be nothing sweeter in this world than to feel her graceful arms pulling you toward her. She sees me, and comes footlessly forward. Earth and sky have fled away. She is dressed in something dark, summery, and sleeveless. To behold her is an unspeakable gift, but as soon as I open my mouth to give word to my unworthiness, I am ruined. I cannot breathe or make a sound, for I have seen things a man is not permitted to tell. And so this is how I must die, as she looks sweetly on, until there is only an awful and final separation, far as tundra, black as space.

The vision knocked me out of bed and clear across the room. I came to my senses clutching the windowsill in terror, refilling my lungs with the air that had been sucked out of them. The screaming coming from the dark side of the moon was my own. The pounding coming from the inside of my head was the neighbors upstairs trying to get some sleep. As the evidence mounted that I was still alive, I began looking wildly about the room for what else had been destroyed in the violence of her passage. But she was gone, leaving only my bedcover turned neatly back. Outside stretched a crystal clear nightscape. The stars were so close you could touch them, and the entire Triboro was soaked in a soft, wet light. Far off on the Long Island Sound, a tiny green beacon winked once, like something enchanted, and disappeared, and with it the vast emptiness that had engulfed me.

Somewhere a siren had gotten over its grief. The only other traffic was a taxi, twenty-three floors below, stopped irrelevantly at York and Somethingth..

It was then I remembered she had been holding wildflowers. There upon the lampstand lay two fresh, ghost-white stalks of pearly everlasting.

*

* 35

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Chapter 2

December 4, 2011: 555th Harmonic; 19th Cycle I got out to Peconic Island a lot sooner than I expected.

Our department was coming up short on billable hours, which is another way of saying I was going to be chained to a computer screen through New Years. Late Friday I got called into the partners’ offices. As expected, it was to squeeze another load of documents out of me by Monday. That, and one of the portfolio managers at a hedge fund client had booked his first billion, and was going out to look at houses in the Hamptons. The partners wanted me to go along. “Attorney-client relations,” they told me solemnly. “Trevor’s a rainmaker. He’s going places. A good lawyer always starts the conversation before he’s needed.”

So I found myself waiting that Sunday morning outside a Park Avenue co-op with the rest of the entourage. It didn’t take long to figure out that I had been selected for this plum assignment not to manage attorneyclient relations, but attorney-client envy The guy was an ex-jock, nice enough, with a quick, locker-room sense of humor. His wife dressed like a porn starlet, and played Angry Birds on her iPad while their twin daughters threw food and toys, and took turns soiling themselves for their Dominican nannies. Every once in a while, the wife would look up, sigh Fffuhhhck with no particular conviction, and continue playing, apparently unaware that the two screaming girls seated across the aisle were her offspring.

A macaw-colored limo bus complete with a bar, a chef, and a DJ had been chartered for the occasion. I boarded with a supporting cast of trainers, coaches, architects, groundskeepers, personal assistants, accountants, and other bag-carriers. We all had a decent time, even though it was pretty much 36

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the same thing at every stop-- the twins rioting, the wife uttering copulatives into her video game, the husband yelling numbers and ticker symbols into his phone. You hear about it so much now that it’s easy to get jaded, but seeing money in astonishing amounts get handed to kids who did almost nothing for it just never loses its wonder. I honestly do not think the partners would have been able to hold down their breakfasts. I did manage to strike up a decent conversation with the guy, and think I impressed him with my knowledge of securities law.

A few minutes before lunch in Sagaponack, Trevor got a call from his director telling him that he needed to scurry back to the office. He explained the situation, thanked us for all our help, and told us to enjoy the ride home, feeling free, he motioned floridly with one hand, “to stop off anywhere!” He hopped into a Spyder which had been readied as an exit strategy. We all stood in a row in front of a half-built beachfront castle covered with Tyvek and looked on as the getaway car squealed onto Peters Pond Lane in a hail of pebbles, pursued by the family’s tinted black Escalade.

People checked their messages, and each other, to make sure they had heard right. Then we broke for the bus as one. An afternoon of staring at houses designed for the gods at play had just turned into party time on the winner’s dime, and we had until midnight to make it back to the city. The bartender suddenly discovered a whole case of Dom Perignon hiding under the counter, the DJ spun up his personal playlist, and the chef started calling around to the wineries for tour times. Money attracts not only looks but luck, and from the way the women were looking, my chances were better than even for a try-and-buy later on that night. If I could just stay on the bus.

Which, by some massive fatuity on my part, never happened. I have no idea who told the driver I wanted to drop off and see some distant relatives in the area--- it couldn’t possibly have been me--- but it seemed like only minutes after my second toast with a tight-fit Filipina yoga instructor that I found myself standing at a deserted ferry landing, watching the bus pulse gaudily out of sight. No idea how I would make it back for work the next morning. Or how I had managed not to at least find out where her studio was.

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©2009

Peconic Island is one of those places that tends to get brushed aside for more pressing matters. It hangs, on the map, just off the lower carnivorous jaw of the East End, a tiny seahorse about to be lost in the turbulence of the great fish’s rush towards larger, unseen prey somewhere up in Connecticut. Originally purchased in the early 1600’s by a West Indies sugar merchant, it was technically the oldest English crown colony in what would become the State of New York. Most native New Yorkers, however, would not be able to tell you where Peconic Island is, even if they were standing right across the sound from where it hides in plain sight of the Hamptons’ long summer riot, tethered just offshore by a single, slender car ferry line.

Not that there is a whole lot to do once you get there. Peconic Island is a more about what you are getting away from than what you are trying to get to. Its original settlers, whose manors have been turned into the preserves that keep much of the island in the state of nature in which it was found, would be the first to tell you that their holdings were the spoils of heroics that took place off-island, not on. Even those devoutly starched Methodists--- whose dreams of a New Jerusalem rising as a summer camp colony on the Island’s north shore were flipped by real estate speculators into a yacht mecca that sank with the Depression --- were all about getting the hell out of New York, not taking it with them. And that has pretty much been the story of the local economy ever since.

Not a lot of traffic passes through the Island, unless it has good reason to. Those reasons decline precipitously after Labor Day, when the point-andclick mansions start to close up, the boats fly south, and the glitterati remember where they left their sweaters back in the City.

I was the only passenger on the ferry, and a swarthy blue deckhand with hair sticking out in tufts from under a Cat Diesel cap somehow felt responsible for making sure I was not on the wrong boat.

“One way or coming back tonight?” he started clipping out the fare.

“Not sure.”

He looked at me curiously. “Staying on island?”

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“Just looking around.”

“Nothing open until Memorial Day, but my cousin has a bed & breakfast” he offered. “Sometimes he’ll do off-season. You want his number?”

“No thanks. Hey, is there a historical society or someplace where they keep records around here?”

“Closed after Halloween. Looking for anything in particular?

“Yeah. A house with someone standing in front of it."

The deckhand thought about that one for a minute.

“That would be Hoppy,” he declared. “You’ll find him at Carol’s” “Hoppy?”

“Can’t see much, but if you’re looking for something, he’ll find it.”

I nodded. “Hoppy, huh?”

“Hoppy,” he nodded back. The deckhand stuck out his hand, “Augie.”

“Augie? I’m Dave. Round trip.”

“Five bucks, Dave.” He clipped furiously with his punch, “and I’ll get you a ride.”

He handed me a chad-ridden ticket stub. We talked about some Island things to do, but the stripers and blues had run out to sea, the crabs were in the mud, and the country club was closed.

“Let me know next time you’re coming out.” Augie consoled. “My buddy’s got a 38-foot cigar, eight hundred horses, keeps it over at the marina. Un-fucking-believable. Want to know what’s in it?”

“Sure. What’s in it?”

Augie put away his punch and ticketbook, hooked both thumbs in his belt, and looked straight at me. “540CI Dart Blocks... Brodix aluminum head... Callies crank & rods.. Crower lifters... JE Pistons... Jesel push rods... with ALL NEW-pulleys, drive couplers, starters, alternators, flywheel mount

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oil coolers, AND...water pumps!” He almost sang it, as if it were from a fine Italian menu.

I whistled appreciatively when he had finished, “A woman is just a woman, but that cigar is a boat! Does he charter it out?”

Augie whipped out a smudged business card from his shirt pocket. “Menantic Charters, Limited”, he responded grandly, and guided my attention to the catchy corporate jingle . “Cruise fifty miles an hour at fifty dollars an hour---oh wait!” He took the card back and wrote something nervously on the back. “Call this number first---my cell.”

“Okay, write that down, too--’Call Augie first’.”

The ferry is a pretty short ride, and the boat was pulling into the Peconic slip, steel making styrofoam noises against the wooden pilings, scattering the seagulls perched atop.

Augie pointed to a peeling green station wagon sitting just off the landing. “That’s Mario. He’s the island taxi. Twenty bucks he’ll take you anywhere you want. Tell him I sent ya.” Augie began fastening the mooring lines. “And let me know if I can change your mind about staying... and look me up next time!”

“I’ll tell Hoppy you sent me,” I called after him.

Augie flashed two thumbs back, leaped up onto the ramp and started lowering it to the deck.

*

*

*

We are rounding a leafy bend in Dad’s blue Wrangler. The top is down, and he is talking, probably in one of his teachable moments. Suddenly Dad says “oh God,” like he had just dropped or spilled something all over himself. I look over, and his hands whitely grip the steering wheel. He stares through them at a tall, white-haired woman in a faded print dress standing beside the road. She moves deliberately, looking about with startling eyes, until she notices us coming toward her. The 40

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wildflowers about her are waist-high, and she is holding some she has just cut. The petals are white and yellow. Behind her a house fades to green the harder I try to remember it. She is looking with affection toward the Jeep, and intently at me in the passenger side. I struggle to break her gaze. Dad slows, and we pass so close that I can touch her if I put my hand through the open window. She is speaking in a mezzo soprano, but the words do not come through, as if trapped behind glass. If Dad hears them, he does not stop. I look back at him, but he is staring straight ahead, like one just pierced by a wound he knows is mortal. He sees me watching him. “It’s okay, Dave,” he says quietly. “I just remembered something. That’s all.” I look back outside, but now only trees fly slowly past.

There is not much more to frame this. I couldn’t have been more than eleven at the time, because we left New York right after fifth grade and did not return until I was a junior in high school. The only reason Peconic Island could have been involved is because there is a ferry in the picture. And the only reason we would have been out there was for the fishing, which Dad loved. Which would have made it the late summer, when the stripers, blues, and weakfish are running. I remember nothing about the fishing; I do remember driving our car onto a large white boat with a grey deck. One of the crew came up and started talking with Dad as if they were old friends. Then Dad told me to wait while he got out of the car. I didn’t see him for a while. Finally I grew tired of waiting and got out of the car. He was standing up on the bridge with the captain who was piloting the boat, along with two or three other guys. Everybody was wearing sunglasses. The air was bright. The wind was blowing. They all seemed to be having a good time.

On my desk at work is an old New Yorker cartoon. Some cops are investigating a murder scene. There’s a pool of blood in the middle of the living room rug, and the victim’s legs are sticking out of a doorway. A police photographer is clicking away, while a detective dusts for fingerprints. Finally, one of the cops straightens up, scratches his head and says, “Don’t you hate when you plant evidence but forget where?”

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©2009

That’s supposed to be funny, and on a number of levels, I guess it is. But when you’re dealing with artifacts and forensics on a daily basis, there’s a certain truth to it as well--- not about cops planting gotchas or bad guys skating on technicalities --- but about a deeper fear of being forgotten. Genius, they say, must out. The more we hide it, the more elaborate its attempts to escape whatever dungeons we fashion for it. Nobody wants to be unknown for his or her greatest achievement--- or failure. And so we leave clues. Otherwise what is the point of all our toil under the sun? Even among those perpetrating the worst deceptions--whether on family, company or country--- pretty much all of them admit to their lawyers that they expected to be discovered. And often express genuine surprise that they weren’t apprehended sooner. Many say that they felt forced to give themselves away, laying down a trail of Fruit Loops to their front porch, IP address, or monthly parking space. And as the prosecutor points an outraged finger, they at last experience in chains the bliss that eluded them while at large. We Americans claim to be all about freedom, but we really don’t want to be free. We want to be loved. If we can’t be loved, we’ll settle for being loathed. But we dread being forgotten. That, I was beginning to think, was Dad’s fear as well.

Carol turned out to be a pleasant, hoarse-voiced woman hanging up the phone behind the counter at the black & white-era diner bearing her name. It’s right there on the bend as you come down the hill to the marina where the boats fuel up. Only no boats were fueling up, and nobody else was in the place. But the sign on the door said OPEN, and the TV was on, so I slipped Mario a fifty, told him I’d call him when I was done, and walked in.

“I’m looking for Hoppy,” I called.

“That was just him,” Carol answered. “His driver is running late. Maybe another thirty minutes, but he’ll be here in time for the Giants game. You can wait here if you like.”

“Okay.” I walked across the checkerboard floor to the counter, took a seat, and stared at the chalkboard menu on the wall behind her. The selections looked kind of old. “Any specials?”

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“Just what’s up there,” Carol pointed her chin brightly. “Oh and we’re out of the tuna steak. Truck comes tomorrow. But the loaf is really good.”

“How about the chicken? Can you make me the chicken parm?”

“I can do the chicken. I need time for the parm.”

“How much time?”

“You’ll probably just make the last boat,” she said slyly, brought a ceramic mug of coffee. Carol pre-heated the oven and started moving back and forth between the stove and the fridge. I caught a bit of the GiantsPackers pre-game. It was shaping up to be a grudge match.

“You a Giants fan?” I asked at the commercial break.

“Hoppy is. My family is all Jets fans.”

“So who’s Hoppy?”

Carol looked at me. “Thought you said you knew him?”

“Augie on the ferry told me to meet him at Carol’s. That’s all I know.”

“So Augie’s my little brother. Bet you didn’t know that!”

I stared at her carefully. “I would never have guessed.”

“You... and everybody else!”

Chicken clove to the skillet in an oily rage.

“Augie looks totally like my dad. Me, I’m totally like my mom. So you’ll like this: when we were younger, people who grew up with our parents would see us at family gatherings and be like, ‘Omigod! For a minute I thought you were Adamo and Andrea just out of school!’ For a while it was kind of annoying, but then a few years ago we decided to run with it. We got some pictures of my parents, and looked around stores and garage sales for the same clothes. Augie got a haircut like Dad’s, I got mine done like Mom’s, and we went a family reunion on Long Island where a lot of folks hadn’t seen us in a long time. People were looking at us really funny, but the old folks just freaked. They were like ‘My God what are you 43

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doing here? I thought you were dead!’ One of the aunts passed out right in her chair. Another guy on my dad’s side started saying how he hadn’t forgotten and was going to pay us back and all. We had to stop him. ‘Hey Uncle Frankie, it’s okay: it’s just us, Augie and Carol!’ Even then he kept trying to stick a hundred dollar bill in Augie’s shirt pocket. Finally we just had to get out of there. It was too much!”

“You and Augie were too much!” I agreed.“ “You can say that again. You like garlic?”

“Sure. I like garlic.”

She pulled a yellowed jar from the fridge. “So Hoppy--- his real name is Greg Hopkins--- he’s the real estate agent on Island. He’s been doing that for the last forty years. Ever since he lost his sight.”

“He can’t see?”

“Legally blind.”

“And he’s a real estate agent?”

“Happened to his brother, too. Some kind of genetic disorder. Started coming on in their early twenties or so. Well, his brother decided to start a chicken farm and a truck garden on his parents’ summer property. Raise what you eat and sell the rest for what you need. That was his line of thinking. And he had his brother to help him out at the beginning. But Hoppy always said he never liked getting dirt under his fingernails. You can tell by the way he dresses. You will never see him not in a suit. Gets all his clothes in the city. Anyway, so then Hoppy starts losing his sight, and decides of all things to take the real estate exam. Everybody’s like: ‘Hoppy, what are you going to do with a real estate license if you can’t see?’ And Hoppy says, ‘You just watch!’ So he passes the exam, and then he starts memorizing all the houses on island---every street, every lot, every house--who built it, when, what style, who had lived there, what happened there, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen fixtures, electrical, plumbing, everything. It didn’t take him long. Things were pretty slow around here back then. Maybe two or three houses a year plus the rentals. Nobody wanted to be bothered coming out here just to show a house. But it was 44

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enough for one guy living here. So the off-island brokers started sending their clients to Hoppy. It was a good deal: Hoppy was local, and knew more about the island than anybody. So what if he couldn’t see?”

“But how did he show houses?”

“At first he rode a bicycle. Can you believe that? Then after he started making money he got a car and had his wife drive him around. She did all the typing too. When she passed away a few years back, he finally got a driver. Not that he has to be a lot of places--- Hoppy’s pretty much retired now. His name is still on the sign, but they’ve got agents working there now. He stays around mostly because he remembers stuff that everybody else has forgotten.”

I thought about that, then asked, “Hey, would it be okay if I checked in on the Jets game?”

“Remote’s behind the condiments” she pointed. “Channel 2.”

It was tied at 13 up to the end of the 3rd, but the Jets had just turned on the afterburners, and we watched them score three touchdowns in just three minutes of play, leaving the ‘Skins looking, well, pretty skinless.

“Wow!” I said. “Sanchez is hot!”

“Sanchez IS hot,” Carol agreed, placing a bubbling plate of chicken parm in front of me. “Let’s hope he’s stays hot against Philly in two weeks.” She flanked the parm with sides of spaghetti in oil, garlic bread, and a green salad. “Tell me what you think.”

“I think it’s gorgeous.” I said.

“Try it.”

Captured juices flowed at the stroke of a knife. I let my eyes roll back in my head. “Is this heaven?” I sighed.

“No, it’s Peconic Island!” Carol laughed. “But people confuse them all the time!!”

I launched a coordinated assault upon the postponed reward before me. When it looked like I was finally winning, she said, “So you looking for a house?.

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“Yeah. One with a woman standing in front of it.”

“What’s that mean? Like a statue or something?”

“No a real woman.” I described her as best I could. “Sound familiar?”

Carol shook her head. “Anyhow, all the women here have gone back inside for the season. Or back to the city. Don’t you have a name?”

“I don’t.”

“Maybe Hoppy will,” she encouraged. “He remembers the darndest things. You sure you never been here before? You look familiar.”

“I’ve never been here.”

“But you have name, right?”

“Dave. Dave Jorgensen.”

“Sounds VERY familiar”. She furrowed her brow to convince me. “You remind me of someone who used to hang around Engel’s.”

“When was that?”

Jeez... It has to be thirty years. Charlie just passed away in September.”

“Charlie?”

“He was the owner. Charlie’s on the Beach.”

“Charlie’s on the Beach?” I stopped myself. Isn’t that like a restaurant or something?”

“It was. Closed down several years ago, over on Cherry Beach.”

Carol went over to the sink in the corner and started scrubbing on a large kitchen pot. “We asked his kids if they wanted to sell but they wanted too much. Sure, it’s beachfront property, but how are you going to pay the mortgage when you’re open only half the year?”

A big hand squeezed my shoulder and filled the room with a rich baritone, “That’s because their daddy got such a great deal when he bought it that told his kids not to sell the property unless I told them to!””

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I turned around and was looking up at a well-built African American exec somewhere in his upper sixties, complete in camel-hair coat and fedora, white scarf and wingtips, and tasteful flashes of gold about the wrists. He winked down at me and then continued in mock severity at Carol, who had come over to the counter, toweling her upheld hands, face alight. “You didn’t tell me you had a new customer... I would have been back here in five minutes plus ferry time!”

“That’s because Dave came in after you hung up!” she protested. “Besides, he’s a Jets fan. You don’t sell to Jets fans!”

“Don’t believe her, Dave!” the exec warned. “Charlie was a Jets fan to the day he died. Kept an autographed photo of Joe Namath over the register” Then he took Carol’s hands, kissed them both daintily. “The usual, my darling... with just a splash of cranberry.” He placed his hat and coat carefully on the stool beside him, and took a seat at the counter. “And one for my new best friend here, too!”

Two rocks glasses looking as if they had been chipped out of ice floated up from the freezer, so cold you could see their breath. A bottle of Ketel One appeared from stage right.

“Hey,” I looked around. “I didn’t see any drinks on the menu--” “You didn’t,” Carol confirmed cheerily.

“Things can get busy around here awful fast, son,” the exec took me into his confidence, “so I jump in and help Carol with the cooking. Isn’t that right, Carol?”

“Couldn’t make it through Fourth of July without you!” her eyes fluttered ceilingwards, then looked helplessly at me as she filled the glasses with vodka and coated them over with a sheen of cranberry. “And it’s the only payment he’ll take!”

The exec raised a reddening glass to his lips, and smiled approvingly. “Carol, you are still the only woman in the world who knows what a man means by a splash of cranberry” “Welcome to Peconic Island!” he toasted me. “Greg Hopkins. But everyone calls me Hoppy. Maybe because I’m always hopping off somewhere to do some kind of deal?”

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“You’re Hoppy?” I was confused. “But I thought--” “No, Dave, I can’t see you,” he chuckled. “It just looks like it.”

“But Hoppy knows where everything is!” Carol pushed my drink encouragingly towards me. “Dave says he’s looking for a house with a woman in front of it. Augie said you could help him.”

Hoppy laughed quietly to himself. “Carol, you’re killing me. I’m good, but I ain’t psychic!”

“Well, tell him about Charlie’s, then” she persisted. “Dave came all the way out from the city this morning just to see us. We just can’t let him go back empty-handed!”

“No, we can’t do that” Hoppy agreed quickly. “Otherwise he might start saying bad things about us and nobody’ll be out here next summer. And I’m gonna be sitting on the porch pouring my own drinks!”

They both burst into laughter at an old Island joke nested out of sight somewhere under Hoppy’s porch. Hoppy wiped an eye and turned to me apologetically. “Sorry, Dave, but trust me---that’s one you’d kill me for wasting your time telling you. What is it you’d like to know?”

“Not sure. I guess where this came from would be good.” I fished up the old receipt out of my wallet and placed it on the counter before him. “I got it from my dad.”

Hoppy picked it up, felt its texture, and handed it to Carol, who looked at it for a while in wonder and finally announced. “This IS an oldie, Hoppy: ‘Charlie’s Cherry Beach Restaurant. July 14th, 1981. Food, drink, and tax, total $5.65!’ Were things really that cheap? And it’s even got the old logo...Look!” A cheeky-looking double cherry was hoisted atop the masthead proclaiming, ‘Family Owned and Operated since 1965.’

Hoppy put his hands on his knees. “Charlie was my first commercial deal. And I didn’t even have to sell it: Charlie did all my work for me.”

“Who was there before Charlie?” Carol asked.

“Charlie’s Snack Shack,” Hoppy said. “Owned by another Charlie’s on a stretch of beach he had inherited because his name was 48

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Bostwick. Charlie Engel, on the other hand, was a hustler. Worked hard, played hard, always having a good time, always doing things spur of the moment, never looking back. He was working at Grumman, banging heads with his bosses, and came out for a weekend to get away from the rat race. So he happens to drop by the snack shack for a bite, sees the For Sale sign that had been hanging forever on the door, and is taken with the idea of a restaurant on a beach in paradise with his name on it. So he asks Bostwick if he was serious about selling. Charlie B., who essentially ran the place to pay for his booze, by that time had forgotten the sign was even there. So of course has to say yes, which prompts the next question, ‘Okay, how much do you want?’ Charlie B. kind of thinks about that one, and says seventyfive hundred. Charlie E. says “Sold!”, cuts him a check on the spot, says he’ll be back next weekend to take over, and to have the papers ready to sign. Then he drives off, leaving Charlie Bostwick standing in the parking lot holding a check.”

“Pretty ballsy,” I was impressed.

“Not the half of it,” Hoppy continued, “Charlie E. didn’t even have the money. But check float times were much longer then, and he figured if Bostwick forgot to take down the For Sale sign, he would probably forget to deposit the check. Which is exactly what happened. So Charlie E. spent the week borrowing money from friends and relatives, and came out the next weekend, closed on the place, and gave me a nice tip for my troubles, which consisted of nothing more than telling Bostwick to call his lawyer.”

“Nice work when you can get it!” Carol whistled respectfully.

“But wait---there’s more,” Hoppy held a finger in the air. “By definition I was the seller’s realtor. Sure I hadn’t put in any work on the deal, but that don’t change the etiquette--- some deals you work and get nothing, others you do nothing and hit payola. The proper thing for Bostwick to do would have been to offer me something, which I would have properly declined. But he never did. Just picked up his stuff and left the Island. Got heavy into drinking, eventually found him in Texas, face down in a ditch. Charlie E., on the other hand was the buyer. Never met me in his life; didn’t owe me a dime. Came by the office a few days later to thank me 49

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for my help. I told him I’d done nothing. “You’re a damned poor liar as well.” he says, and sticks an envelope in my hand. ‘If you ever try to return this to me, you will never set foot in my restaurant.’ So I said, ‘Then I will come and spend it in your restaurant.’ Charlie shook my hand, gave me a big hug and said, ‘You got a deal... and a friend!’ And so did Charlie. That envelope contained what I would have gotten in commission if the property had changed hands for its real value at the time--- about ten times what Bostwick asked for it.”

Carol moralized, “Don’t step over dollars to save pennies---” “---Or you’ll wind up face down in a ditch,” I finished in crude acrostic.

“I’m Gregory Hopkins,” Hoppy raised himself and looked around the room, “and I do not approve of this message.” He straightened his tie and cuffs. “So anyway, Charlie Hustle, as some of us fondly called him, is building up his snack shack into a full-service family restaurant and beachfront motel. Working round the clock, seven days a week, when he suddenly remembers it’s been ten years since he had a break. In fact, he hasn’t stopped working since he came out and bought the place. So he says to himself, “Man I need to get away from here!” And decides to get off Island and blow off some serious steam. Pretty much the same thought process that got him out to Peconic Island in the first place, which tells you right there that something was going to happen. So he promises Abby he’ll be good, grabs me and a couple of the guys, and pays our way to Vegas. We all put together a pile of cash, vow we’re gonna come home broke, and manage to do it in just under a week. The last day, we’re at the airport, totally hung over, and Charlie goes over to the slots in the waiting area for one more round. He calls back, “Boys, ain’t gonna be seeing many of these where we’re going!’ and pulls the handle Up comes three double cherries: five, six thousand bucks maybe--- biggest pot we’d won all week. We split it four ways, get our picture taken in front of the machine, and fly home.

“About a month or so later, Charlie decides he’s going to expand his restaurant and motel into a summer entertainment mecca. So he takes his 50

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copy of that picture with us by that slot machine to a local artist, and has him make up a logo with those double cherries. Now any harelegger can tell you Cherry Beach is named for the cherrystone clams they used to dig off the shore, not for any fruit trees growing on a beach---” “‘Harelegger’ means someone born on Island,” Carol footnoted for me. “Hoppy is one of the few true natives left. His ancestors came here with the first settlers from Barbados. You can see them up the street in the Presbyterian cemetery.”

Hoppy acknowledged the citation with a nod. “But that didn’t matter to Charlie. He thought jackpots were more fun than shellfish. And he figured that if you could get people out to a desert in the middle of nowhere, you could get them to an island off of New York. So he offered up weekend bands and fireworks, bumper cars, buggy pulls, cherry pie-eating contests, bellyflop and cannonball contests, wet T-shirt contests. Well, he got the crowds. What he didn’t get was a lot of money, because fun doesn’t turn a profit. Gambling does. Also, in the middle of a desert, neighbors don’t complain like they do back East. Eventually, Charlie figured this out, and dialed it back to a couple of magic shows, and the annual pie-eating contest. But he kept the logo, the great memories of Charlie’s on the Beach and his double-cherry good times.”

“That’s a great story,” I said enviously. “Wish I could have seen it.”

Hoppy smiled and handed the receipt back to me. “The year after we went out to Vegas, the original Charlie’s Angels was all the rage on primetime TV. All the guys had Farrah Fawcett posters in their bedrooms and garages. All the girls were buying wonderbras, and hotrolling their hair. So that summer Charlie hires a crop of college girls for the summer, and calls them Charlie’s Angels. And that did last, right up until the place closed. You could make good money as an Angel, so getting selected was a big deal. Girls came from all over to audition. Of course I never saw them, but judging from the number of guys who found reasons to spent money at Charlie’s, they were positively angelic.”

“So maybe my Dad went there to check it out?” I speculated. “He was just twenty-one.”

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“Wouldn’t blame him,” Hoppy agreed. “Wouldn’t blame him at all. Hey Carol, could we see how those Giants are doing?”

“On Fox, Dave,” she called from the stove.

Things had just gotten started. The Packers were coming in to MetLife Stadium 12-0 on the season, and things were on edge. Second play of the game, Eli Manning uncorked a 67-yarder to Travis Beckum who zigzagged it for another twenty yards into the end zone. The crowd went wild. Hoppy raised his arms. “My friends, there may be no I in TEAM. But there IS an ELI in BELIEVE!” That called for another round of Ketel and cranberry, which Carol joined, along with a heaping plate of calamari, just as Green Bay received and started grinding down the field.

“Yes,” Hoppy reflected grandly. “One pass changes everything.”

“If that’s not a chapter in Eli’s bio it should be,” Carol chirped.

Hoppy turned to me. “So your dad is Robbie Jorgensen.”

“How did you know that?”

“Superior powers of deduction, lad,” Hoppy tapped a finger to his skull. “Heard the name. Just needed a voice to place it. Robbie worked on the ferry a couple of summers. Never heard from him after that. How’s he doing?”

“He’s dead. Killed in Iraq last year”.

“I am sorry to hear, lad.” he put his hand on my shoulder. “I truly am. Your dad was a fine young man, you know.”

“Actually I didn’t, but I appreciate your telling me that.”

“Carol says you’re looking for a house with a woman standing in front of it,” Hoppy said gently. “Anything else you can tell me about her?”

“I think my dad said she was almost my grandmother.”

“Hmm...so that would mean a daughter was somewhere in the picture?”

“I guess...”

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“How do you like those deductive powers?” Hoppy winked. “Now, you think there is any chance this daughter might have worked down at Charlie’s?”

“Yes!” Carol answered eagerly for me. “That’s where I saw him-down at Engel’s and on the ferry. Such a nice guy---I think he was going to one of those Ivy schools. And he was dating one of the angels!”

“Okay, So now how about the house?” Hoppy continued methodically. “Anything you can remember about the house?”

“Just a gable facing the road...”

“Was there a circular window on the second floor, and a picture window on the first?”

“Don’t remember,” I shook my head.

“Don’t matter,” Hoppy said decisively. “There’s only one house left on Island with its gable facing the road--- 89 Ferry Lane. You passed it when you came up here.”

“I’ve been going past that place for years,” Carol . “Who lives there now?”

“It’s a summer house,” Hoppy dug up the property in his mental database. “Owned by a lovely English lady named Regis. She was the Island’s poet laureate for many years, but moved to Italy. Her kids rent it out now and come out a couple weekends a year to check things out, fix things up.”

It was the end of the first quarter. Giants were up 10-7, but it looked like this was going to be a knife fight down the finish.

“Carol, I’ll have that stew if you’ve got any,” Hoppy requested.

“Something in it last time really made the meat just fall apart. It was beautiful.”

“Truffle butter,” Carol said. “Some Cisco guy who studied at the Culinary Institute came in last summer. Told me to try it. Said he uses it on his steaks. Isn’t it amazing?”

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“The power of the human network,” Hoppy agreed. “I need some more of wherever that came from.”.

Then he said, “Dave, I’m thinking about who might still on the ferry from when your Dad was around, and Barry Gardiner might be able to help you. Barry captains one of the boats. In fact he does the three-to-midnight on the weekends. You might want to talk to him, see what he knows.”

*

*

*

I mapped the address on my phone and just before we got to the bend, told Mario I wanted to get out.

He looked at me in the mirror, startled. “But the ferry’s just a minute from here. What’s the matter? Carsick? Too hot? Bad odor? I can roll down a window.”

“Everything’s fine. I’ll look you up next time I’m out.” I dropped a twenty on his seat, slammed the door, and slapped the car on the roof for him to skedaddle. Even so, he kept slowing down and looking back. I had to wave with both arms a couple of times to scare him off, but he finally did as he was told, and disappeared over the rise and into the trees. Exactly as Dad’s jeep had done, fifteen years earlier. I watched him go.

The house was still there, pretty much as Hoppy had described it, but my recollection was almost illegible through the trees and fallen foliage.

Along the road was a picket fence, from which a couple of tines were missing. The spot where I remember my near-grandmother standing could not have been correct--- a huge white pine rose, obscuring the view of the house. There was a low pile of leaves where the driveway had been blown off, and a shallow path to the back door, but the only thing that looked new was a delivery of some 2x4’s off to one side of the garage, Other than that, things were pretty much closed down for the season.

But it was real, and so close I could touch it. I lingered for awhile at the road’s shoulder, wondering since I had come this far if I shouldn’t at 54

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least knock on the door or peer in a window. I was about to step through the gate when an approaching car reminded me that we were on an island, I had a brief due tomorrow at 8:30 on over five hundred pages of cases I hadn’t even started reading. The pre-recorded harangue in my head said I needed to be moving towards a train. I turned and headed for the ferry landing, about a half-mile down the road.

A single boat sat throbbing emptily in the slip. There was nobody around. Not even up in the pilot house. Suddenly there was a thundering steel sound beneath my feet. It stopped. Then started again. I looked around, and heard the noise coming up through a small manhole off to one side of the deck, cover tilted against the gunwale. I walked over and called down into the noisy darkness. The banging paused for a second, resumed wildly for about a minute, then trailed off into a steady diesel rattle. A bright-faced chap wearing a Steamboat Willie cap popped his head above the deck, periscoped around, and looked at me, blinking.

“You’re Barry?” I asked.

“You’re not Jorgy.” he replied.

“I’m his son.”

He squeezed a shoulder up through the hole and stuck his hand out to me.

I took it. “Dave Jorgensen.”

“Dave?” he clung to my hand and did not let go.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, continuing to shake his hand. “Hoppy sent me.”

“Pleasure would be mine, Dave,” he grinned up at me. “If I didn’t have to slither out of this hole by myself---” “---Oh I’m sorry!” I braced my feet, yanked, and popped him up onto the deck. He landed feet first in a pair of bright yellow rubberized coveralls.

“Helluva racket down there!” Barry screwed up his face in goodnatured exasperation. “All I could hear was Carol saying something like Rob 55

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Jorgensen’s on his way. So I say back to her to let me finish with this bilge pump. If it’s Jorgy, he’ll figure out where I am.”

He peeled off the coveralls and hung them on a hook inside behind an alcove door. Then he began ratcheting the cover back onto the manhole.

“So what do you do if someone drives on while you’re down there and parks over the hole?” I wondered.

“Dunno,” he shrugged and glanced at me. “You ever see anyone park over an open manhole? C’mon, let’s go up.”

I climbed up after Barry onto the bridge and up a set of steps to the pilot house. He was sandy-haired and wiry, with small, bright eyes and face ready to break into a smile at any time, kind of like a base-stealer taking his lead off first. If Ichiro was American, I thought, he would look like Barry Gardiner.

The pilot house was a glass-enclosed crow’s nest crowded with instrument clusters, radar displays, hydraulic controls, a marine band transceiver, and a car stereo system playing episodes of Prairie Home Companion. Barry motioned me to a swingout stool tucked under a tiny log table in the corner, took a seat on the leaning post across from command central, and looked me over admiringly. “Well, you’ve grown up, Dave. What’d you finally become?”

“I work in a law office. Financials, mostly. A lot of paperwork back and forth. Not really interesting. We’re the tail that the deal wags.”

“A lot of back and forth here too,” Barry motioned across the bay humorously. “Point A is right here; Point B that dock over there. What brings you to the Island?”

“Trying to follow up on something from my dad.”

“Yeah? Haven’t heard from him in a while. What’s he up to these days?”

“Actually, I’m not sure. He’s dead.”

That shook him. “I’m so sorry. I never heard anything. The last time I saw him was when you were with him on this boat. Was he sick?”

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“No, he was in aircraft accident in Iraq.”

“When?”

“May 28th, last year” Barry looked down. “I’m sorry to hear that, Dave. He was a good man. And a friend.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That means a lot. Hoppy told me you worked together for a couple of summers.”

“Yes we did. Lot of fun, great memories. They just don’t make ‘em like your dad anymore. He used to stay over our place sometimes.”

“So I wanted to ask you this. There have been some suggestions that he was involved with a woman who lived near here. I’m wondering if you might know anything about that?”

“He never told you?

“No”.

“Well, it’s not exactly the kind of bedtime story you’d tell your kids,” he laughed, a little quickly.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I offered.

“Well, it’s not so much that,” he folded his arms and feet. “He stopped talking to me about it years ago. I’m thinking it just something he wanted to forget.”

“What if he later changed his mind?”

“What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath. Carol and Hoppy I liked, but here was an Islander in whom there was no guile. I could tell by the way the news had affected him Jimmy was someone Dad would have trusted. “I was contacted,” I said simply.

“By--?” Barry waited for me to fill in the blank.

“Yes,” I stared at him and kept nodding.

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That set him back another minute. He stood very still, staring at the back of his hands resting on both throttles. ”Okay, we’d better load and go,” he said finally, ”or we’ll be in this slip all night.”

*

*

*

I came out here summer of ‘81. Things were a lot different then. The place was mostly old money, year-round folks, and summer cottage owners/renters. That last group was here for the Hamptons, and when things got really expensive around July-August they’d kind of perch out here on Island and take the ferry in. It wasn’t a bad Plan B. But you had to figure the cost of the ferry if you wanted to do anything. Plus you had to be back by 2AM for the last boat, which meant you damn well better be wheels up out of the parking lot by 130AM if the party was in Southampton. Which kind of sucked because that was just when a lot of places over there really started rocking. Every once in a while a car would come tear-assing up to the landing after the last boat had just pulled out of the slip. Some of the older skippers would be real pricks and just leave them there, honking their horns, flashing their lights, dancing along the jetty like little ants. And then wouldn’t honor their round trip ticket the next morning since it was only good for the same business day. As captain now, I try not to be a hardass--I’ll give folks a break whenever I can. Do unto others, right? But at some point you gotta go home. And you gotta let the maintenance guys do their thing. At two in the morning that’s double time and they ain’t cheap.

Me? I was on Plan B. Maybe Plan C. I’d just finished two years of running track at Farmingdale. I was all-conference in the 10K both years that wasn’t going to even get me a walk-on at a Div 1 school. A bunch of underclassmen returning that fall had rented a bungalow on Coecles Creek. Their idea was to do hill training on Island and windsprints on the beach. Really had no idea what else to do, so I thought I’d hang out with my buddies for one last summer, work out with them, and see what came of it.

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The first thing that came of it was I needed money, so I got a job--- working here. At first part-time. But eventually it turned into full-time. I think one of my first shifts was with Jorgy. He was another summer guy, but had been here a little longer. Kind of took me under his wing, showed me the ropes. Made things easy to understand. Let me shadow him until I was confident. He was good that way as a big brother figure.

Because of that I guess I got to know him better than most. He was this Yale guy. Kind of hard to approach. Not a snob or anything. I think it was because nobody really knew what he was doing there. You never saw those people except driving bimmers with the tops down, and here was one right in plain sight. Only he didn’t have much to say about himself, or how he got there, or what he was doing punching tickets when the rest of his classmates were doing internships in New York or DC or on their grand tours of Europe. He worked hard. Good team player, would talk when you got him going, funny as hell when he wanted to be. Most of the time, though, he preferred to just hang in the background. But when it was time, you would know.

It happened twice. The first time I was not there.

They had a female working deck that summer. Well, for a few weeks anyway. Kind of unusual for back then but hey the guys loved it like Bay Watch. Until she got her foot caught in the hydraulic gate just as the boat was pulling into the slip and ripped her toes off. She screams this unearthly scream, and everything just stops. People get out of their cars. Captain comes out on the bridge. Boat is rocking around in the slip. Panic and confusion. Jorgy is standing on starboard side, sees everything, and just goes into action. He comes hurdling over three car hoods to port, and without breaking stride grabs the lever, lifts the gate off her foot, and gets her into the cabin. Comes back out and yells up to the pilot house, “Cap! I need you to land this boat, and get me an ambulance!” Then he jumps up on a bumper and orders the passengers, “Get back in your cars, we’re clearing this deck!” Jorgy moors the boat, pops the gate, and starts 59

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directing cars off. Then this jackass decides to peel rubber out of there just as another car is pulling out of the corner. There’s gonna be a nasty fender bender right there on the ramp, forget about getting an ambulance in there. So Jorgy steps right in front of the guy, and smacks his hand down on the hood just as the car screeches to a halt not even an inch from him.

Glares the jackass right through the windshield: “NOT until I tell you!” So sixteen cars on the boat; they’re all off in under a minute. By the time the emergency squad arrives, Jorgy has tourniqueted the ankle, elevated the leg under a pile of lifejackets. He can see she is afraid, so he is telling her to hold onto his hand as tight as she can. “You are going to make it!” he keeps saying. “I guarantee it!” They get her into the ambulance, over to the other side, and a police escort to plow the way. Jorgy goes back into the cabin, sees all the blood. And passes out. They swear that’s how they found him. Jorgy said it was the last thing he remembered. You just don’t make that stuff up. And yes, she did get all her toes back. But no she didn’t want the job back. So they gave it to me, and here I still am!

The second time was when he saw Ginevra. It’s just after supper, steamy day in the middle of July, sea breezes finally starting to kick up. Me and another guy are down on deck, the boys coming off shift up in the pilot house, when the car pulls onto the boat, and out steps this... vision. She’s tall, honey-blonde, and looking around helplessly. I think we all turned into statues on the spot. She must have stalled out both engines under the deck as well, because you could suddenly hear everything, and nobody was saying anything, just standing there with these dumbass looks on our faces until Jorgy just kind of glides in out of nowhere, walks right up to her and says “Hi, I’m Rob. How can I help you?”

So that was a shock. There was kind of an unspoken protocol among deckhands about hitting on the women. Kind of a courtesy thing--- you know, look around at your buddies, see who wants to go next. Jorgy had no interest in this ritual at all. He’d kind of roll his eyes, and wave the others ahead. “Look, if that’s your best shot at meeting women,” he’d say dismissively. “You guys can have all of my at-bats.”

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Not Ginevra, though. He saw her and literally walked right out of himself. I don’t think he could have helped it if he wanted to. Sailed right through us like a ghost. He knew she was so far out of our leagues there wasn’t even going to be a discussion. And the effect she had on him was just unreal. You were seeing the person you knew was in there all along --outgoing, commanding, charming, unconcerned about what anyone else thought--- but had been waiting to be set free. He was suddenly just all there, like a butterfly out of its cocoon.

Jorgy found out from her that there was some kind of emergency, needed to get over to the other side pretty quick. So he signals for us to pull out, which we do. Finds out where she’s gotta be, has the captain radio ahead to the local state trooper who had kind of adopted us as his beat ---”[Static noise] Lee, first car off the next boat coming through on urgent business --over!

[Static noise]”. And then goes back down and just stands there talking with her like it’s the most obvious thing to do.

After her car left, he stood there a long time and then went inside the cabin. I followed him. He was shaking, crying and laughing at the same time, trying to put coins in his coinchanger. They were dropping all over the floor. “Barry, I can’t believe I just did that. I mean, did you SEE her? I have never done that in my LIFE! She bought a round trip from the Island. She lives here and she’s coming back tonight. Barry I am one and done--- I have seen the one and I am DONE!” I went up to the pilot house. The captain, crew and a couple of deadheads were yukking it up big time. They had the other boat on the radio. “Watch out! Jorgy’s out of control! Jorgy’s got a girl! He’s got dibs on Rapunzel!“ His standoffishness had become a joke. The Ivy League boy seemed to think he was too good for local girls. He hadn’t got laid yet that summer and there was a running bet how long he would last. Finally Jorgy comes up, pokes his head in the door, takes his ribbing and backslapping and then he goes, “Okay boys you’ve had your fun. Now it’s my turn. That car returns on this boat. Let me know if you can’t make it happen and I’ll step off here and wait till she comes back.” Cap just looks at him, picks up 61

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the mike and tells the other boat, “The red Capri comes back on SF2 --Jorgy’s orders.” Everybody went wild.

And that was it. Ginevra comes back, he finds out she is one of the Angels, goes down to Charlie’s that night to see her at work, asks her out right on the spot. There was no way he was taking no for an answer. And I think that’s exactly what she was looking for. And it transfigured them both. You could see it when they were together. She would say something to him, and he would just kind of radiate, like he’d gotten some message from the stars. There was this intense... life-- that’s the only way I can describe it --between them. Something invisible that you could actually see. They just fit together. Kind of like those ice dancers in the Olympics. You could only imagine what they were doing to each other behind closed doors--- and I think they wanted you to. Sure you had to put up with the PDA, but they were great to be around. The way they would just look at each other. It was like they were laughing at themselves... and everybody else. “Yeah, we DO look pretty silly, don’t we, but hey, people like us fall in love too. And it’s just AWESOME!” Made you feel like there is something wonderful about being alive. Made you feel like hey, dreams do come true.

Jorgy and Ginevra were the Island’s summer lovers that year and the next after he graduated. Then she transferred to some school out West, he went overseas on some assignment, and that was the last I saw of them. Never got a letter, a card, nothing. Then suddenly she shows up without him. And then a year or so later with another guy. And then maybe a year after that, Jorgy shows up and sits right where you’re sitting. Said he was going fishing somewhere. I asked if he wanted to go out afterwards. He said he was already booked, but that it was really great to see me again. Said he was doing electronic stuff for the Air Force. Couldn’t say much about it, or anything else for that matter. He came by a couple more times. Always sat up here for a few trips, never offering much at all. You could tell something was on his mind but if you tried to find out what it was, he’d suddenly remember he had to be somewhere. The last time I saw him was when you were with him.

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Ginevra’s family moved away a while back but they still own the house. I see her on island every once in a while. She’s either forgotten or unknown me. Heard she’s a doctor in Florida, doctor husband, a couple of kids, doing well. Actually I think I saw a car in their driveway a couple days ago. They might still be around. *

*

*

The sky had tilted from west to pink, almost encircling the narrow sound, and the moon rose, smoothing the island into something low, black, and familiar. Barry flipped on the running lights. Floodlamps perched atop the pilings as we pulled into the slip. I looked at my watch. I had just under an hour to catch the last train to the city. Red lights were flashing in my head, and in a room somewhere a telephone kept jangling. I asked Barry to have a ride waiting for me on the other side, then walked back up from the ferry landing through the thickening dusk.

I found the house. It was completely dark and abstracted beneath the fading glow above the trees. A late fall wind had picked up, whipping branches and scattering leaves. For everything there is a season, but something had happened within these darkened windows that was beyond all seasons. Someone my father had loved and lost so perfectly that he could never bring himself to pronounce her name, not even from beyond the grave. I had learned it, but as one untimely born. I thought about what Barry had said and wondered, in the intensity of what had taken place, if my father had forfeited something of himself to that silvery darkness, kind of in the way celluloid captures a photonic reflection, or walls capture shadows fleeing an atomic blast. And if by saying aloud what had been unsaid these thirty years, I might see it again, or set it free.

I stepped through the gate and onto the lawn, ankle-deep in fallen leaves, and moved slowly toward the house. I think I was almost afraid it might disappear. I could not have been more than a few yards off the porch when suddenly a light came on in the living room, revealing a woman I had never seen but recognized immediately. She was standing at the window 63

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staring straight back at me. I must have jumped out three feet of my skin, but if she saw or heard me she wasn’t startled. The light was behind her, and I glimpsed her only briefly. Then she drew the curtains to and moved away.

I was standing there in amazement, just beyond the window’s yellow glow, when a car came around the bend and pulled into the driveway. A light came on over the garage. I stepped slowly back into the shadows, and watched as a man and some kids got out, bearing bags of take-out, yelling, scolding, tramping towards the house. The woman I had seen came out in a white sweater, and opened the back door to greet them. More lights came on, voices lit up, figures moved about. The empty cottage filled out with warmth, and resumed the familiar lineaments of a home. I stood on the road, now just a ribbon of darkness, and tried to remember what I had come to say. It was gone, but not before I had beheld something I believe my father had longed to see, even from afar, with a desire exceeding that of angels.

Later, on the train, I got the answer on my smartphone. Subject: Re: pls contact. The message was empty except for a link. It opened into a Google map. The red marker hovered over Peconic Island, pointing to the place where I had seen her through the glass, darkly.

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