FOR MY FATHER, WILLIAM B. EIDSON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Frank Robinson, Richard Parks, David Hartwell, Jim Minz, Chris Dao, Catherine Sinkys, Rick Berry, Kate Mattes, Nancy Childs, Sibylle Barrasso, and John Cole for their help with my career and this story. And a special thanks to Donna for everything.
PROLOGUE
“Company, Thad,” Louise said. She stood looking out the barn door for a moment, and then came over to him with a cup of coffee.
“Somebody in a hurry,” she said.
Thad Greene looked over his wife’s shoulder. Over a mile away, he could see the plume of dust rising from the road. A car, coming along pretty fast. Greene felt a touch of irritation. He liked these mornings alone with his family; he had since he was a boy on the very same farm. Get everybody up, feed the animals.
“Early.” Greene set the wheelbarrow down, and shoveled a scoop of grain into SnackPack’s bucket. His daughter, Katy, was grooming the horse.
Lost tourist, he figured. It happened all the time—the main drag was a dirt road, and plenty of times people ignored the private property sign and simply took a wrong turn at the bend onto his road. Some apologized, some got out with their cameras and asked him to stand in front of his old red barn like a real farmer.
Katy said, “SnackPack says thanks, Dad.”
“And she’s welcome.” Greene took the coffee from Louise, and put his arm around her shoulders. As always, she felt good under his arm. Together, they watched Katy groom her horse.
The chestnut mare stretched her neck out, inhaled deeply from the bucket, and then stepped forward to take in the first mouthful.
Greene said, “Must be a boyfriend for Katy here. Come to take her to school, I bet.”
Katy rolled her eyes. “Boys, gross.” She was eight.
“That’s my girl, keep that attitude.”
Behind him, his son, Thad Jr., tossed out a section of hay into the stall. He was twelve, but as big as a fifteen-year-old.
Thad Jr. leaned on the pitchfork. “Dad, he’s flying.”
Greene let go of Louise and went to look out the window himself. She followed him over.
“Thad …” she said.
But he had already felt the first jab of alarm himself.
“Cops,” Thad Jr. said. “There’s cops behind them.”
The car in the lead, a Ford, must’ve been up near sixty or seventy on the dirt road leading to his house, his barn.
His family.
Behind the Ford was a Virginia State Police car with the lights swirling.
“Get in the back,” Greene said. He waved at Katy. “All of you get behind the tractor.”
He felt tired all of the sudden. Married late, ten years after he got out of the army. Damn near fifty now.
“I’ll go with you,” Thad Jr. said.
“You’ll do what I tell you,” Greene snapped. He hurried over to the open barn door, looked back at Louise who was frozen for just a second. Standing there in her quilted coat and jeans, coffee in hand.
He said, “Right now, honey.”
She suddenly began to move. “You heard your father,” she said to Katy. “Out of that stall.”
Louise grasped Thad Jr. by the upper arm.
Greene saw the crowbar sitting there beside the doorjamb. It had been there for God knows how long, just sitting and rusting, waiting to be put away. He grabbed it, feeling as much foolish as anything, walking out there. Feeling that this could be nothing, this could be a speeder who got a little rambunctious, took the wrong turn, and went down a farmer’s road.
But the siren on the Virginia State Police car was now wailing, and the car in front was floating up and down on the road, the engine roaring.
“Dad!” Katy said.
Greene turned. The three of them were standing there, scared. “Get them in the back, goddamn it,” he said to Louise. He tried for frustration, but to his own ears, he sounded scared.
Louise did what he said. She hustled them away.
Greene turned back to the car. Wishing he could lock the barn behind him, but it’d take him fifteen minutes to find the padlock for the hasp on the sliding door.
“Get out of here,” he yelled, as the Ford slewed into his barnyard. He kept the crowbar behind his leg. “Get the hell out of here!”
The cop car came right after it.
And the cops banged into the other car.
Greene’s breath was rushing now. “Oh shit,” he said, “Oh shit, and goddamn it.”
Because it looked like the cops had rammed the car on purpose. Trying to shake up the two men inside.
But it was too late. The two men fell out of the open doors and scrambled to their feet. One of them bald. With a gun. Not just bald, a skinhead. With the leather.
The other was tall and handsome. Salt gray hair. Somehow familiar. “Get off my farm!” Greene yelled.
The skinhead fired his gun. Automatic weapon. Just a little thing, a big pistol. But the windshield of the cop car blew in, and then the two cops were out of their car and shooting from around the doors.
Then the man with the gray hair looked at Greene and then yelled to the skinhead. “The barn, Billy. Go for the barn!”
Greene began backing up. Looking to the cops.
Get them, he was thinking. Put them down.
And indeed the cops were shooting.
But Greene had done a tour in Vietnam. He knew how many shots it could take. Everyone running. Everyone scared. Harder to hit people than it looked in the movies.
The skinhead was out front, the familiar man was in back.
Greene backed up to the barn door. He kept the crowbar close, angled his left side toward them so they couldn’t see it.
The skinhead saw him, just a glance, raised his gun, and there was flame. The barn door beside Greene splintered, and behind him, Greene could hear Louise scream out. He glanced back to see Thad Jr. rushing out to help him, and Louise took him by the arm again and pulled him back.
Greene shoved away from the wall and swung the crowbar.
It connected neatly, right on the guy’s hand. The skinhead’s. Must’ve broken the goddamn thing, the way he screamed, the way he dropped the gun and held his wrist.
The cops were shooting again.
And suddenly the skinhead staggered, and blood poured from his mouth.
Greene raised the bar and went for the familiar man. The guy who looked like he was supposed to be somebody.
But that guy lifted his revolver and shot Greene point-blank.
It was like the time Greene had been kicked by a horse. Big black stallion called Breaker that his dad kept for no more than a year. Broke Thad Greene’s ribs badly, laid him up for almost six months.
Now Greene slid down the wall, suddenly weak and tired.
The cops were firing again, but the man wasn’t hit. He slid open the barn door all the way, and Greene could hear the man grabbing Louise and maybe slapping Thad Jr. down.
“Stop,” Greene said. He gasped, and coughed blood on himself. Praying even as he did that he wouldn’t hear a gunshot inside the barn.
God, he felt so weak.
“I’ll do it,” the man screamed behind him. “So help me God, I’ll do what I’ve got to do!”
Greene put his hands up to the cops. “Don’t,” he cried. His voice was barely a whisper, and his hands just fell to his lap. “Don’t push him,” he said. But his voice was barely audible even to himself.
The cops stopped anyway. Two tall, young cops. No older than thirty, either of them. They stood there, guns poised, uncertain. And then they backed away to the police car.
Greene looked up. He saw the man holding a gun to Louise’s neck.
That familiar man.
“Back off!” The man screamed. “Back off, and get me the media. Get me reporters, get me TV. I want cameras on this! You try to hurt me, these people die. Give me access to the people of America, or this family dies! You got that? I’ll do what’s got to be done!”
Greene coughed, and then there was more blood on his chin. Hell, on his shirt and lap, too. Just covered. And though he desperately tried to pay attention, tried to think of how he could get his family away from this terrible, familiar man, his ability to think seemed to be pouring out of him into the barnyard dirt.
The dirt of the farm where he was born, and, apparently, dying.
CHAPTER 1
AGENT PARKER’S RADIO CRACKLED. HE TURNED AWAY AND SPOKE into it and then came back to Ben. “OK, the two from NBC have agreed.”
Ben said, “I’d be the only photographer?”
“That’s right,” Parker said. “You and two television guys from NBC that Johansen remembers from some interview before. He says he remembers your face, so I can’t put one of my men in.’’
Ben looked over at the barn. Five days had passed since Jarrod Johansen had shot Thad Greene. Last night, the word had spread among the sandbags that Greene was now conscious and expected to survive.
The morning mist was just beginning to burn off the fields behind the barn, but the light inside would still be poor. Ben double-checked his camera to make sure he was shooting with his fastest film.
Parker said. “So what do you say?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Ben knew that even if he didn’t have a camera, he would have helped get those children out. Just as he hoped someone else would do the same for his ex-wife and kids.
But Ben also knew he simply wanted the shot.
“You talk to me first when you get out, OK?” Lucien said. He was the Insider reporter assigned to cover the story along with Ben. His black eyes were shining, his aftershave was coming on strong. “It’s not like I have to actually be there. You know that Kurt is going to want us to tell our story first, not let everyone else have it. So even if Johansen starts shooting, kills somebody, don’t talk in front of the TV cameras or anybody else. All right?”
“Jesus,” Parker said. He was an enormous black man with skin so dark it was almost blue in some light. The black Kevlar bulletproof vest seemed to draw in even more light and somehow had the effect of making him appear larger.
Parker made Ben feel small, and Ben was six-two, two hundred pounds, himself.
Lucien pointed to the tripod-mounted camera with the six-hundred-millimeter lens and said, “I’ll even cover you. Kurt’ll like that.”
“Who’s Kurt?” Parker asked.
“Our editor,” Lucien said.
Parker looked at Ben and the faintest of smiles crossed the agent’s face. He swept his hand toward the barn door. “Then, by all means—cover him.”
They wired Ben and strapped a bulletproof vest onto him. Parker waited with him just inside the command post vehicle, ready to begin the walk across.
Ben turned to watch the hostage negotiator, a guy by the name of Burnett, finish outfitting the two from NBC.
“How long?” Parker asked Burnett.
“Three minutes, we’ll be all set.”
Parker grunted. He looked over at Ben. “Tell me about this photo shoot you did of Johansen before.”
Ben shrugged. “It was nothing special.” Ben had photographed Johansen a year ago, back when he was making a surprisingly strong senate run from his home state of Alabama.
The day of the interview, Johansen had refused to allow any shots until he was ready—and that meant wearing jeans and an open-necked plaid shirt, one foot up on a bale of hay, the flag waving gently in the background. Strictly cornball.
“I hear you got yourself some prize for pictures of those prison kids in Rwanda,” Johansen had said as Ben had settled in to take the shot. “I’m a great believer in the power of the press. So you help get me in the senate with this shot, and I’ll send them nigras some food, tell them to stay home instead of coming here. Fair deal?”
“You meet Saunders?” Parker said.
“He looked familiar when I saw his picture later. He was there, but I guess he was keeping himself away from the camera.”
“I’m sure he was,” Parker said, dryly. “Something that undercover agents learn early.”
When Johansen had somehow discovered that Saunders was an FBI agent, he shot him himself. He did this even after the agent told him that he was wired, that surveillance cameras were tracking them right then. “I’m the America that you have forgotten,” Johansen said.
That video appeared on the news every night for almost a week, making Johansen a hero to what a New York Times editorial called “… a depressingly large minority.”
Parker sighed. “You see his 7-Eleven video?”
“Who could miss it?”
Johansen’s name had faded from the media until three weeks ago, when he escaped from prison. A few days after his escape, he bolstered his hero status by politely introducing himself to a 7-Eleven convenience store clerk and making a statement into a handheld tape recorder saying that he was on the way to Washington, D.C., to “kill that draft dodger.” The audio was mated to the security camera video and once again he made the nightly news.
“His little media campaign almost took a hit right here,” Parker said, moving his chin toward the barnyard. “White farmer. Vietnam vet.”
Ben looked over his shoulder at the top of the hill where picketers were holding up signs. From the distance, he could just make out some of the larger ones: “Not another WACO,” “Free America— Free J. J.” One with the old standby, “God Bless Jarrod Johansen.”
Parker snorted quietly. “People.”
“Think we’d be seeing those signs if Greene died?” Ben said.
“Sure,” Parker said. “You watch the news—lots of people went for Johansen’s spin.”
Ben nodded. Since the first news truck had arrived, Johansen had maintained that the cops had shot Greene, not him. All evidence to the contrary, it seemed many people still believed him.
“Just another government conspiracy,” Ben had seen a woman in Alabama say. “Just like the Kennedy boys, only this time it’s one of our own.”
Parker looked at Ben. “The man knows his audience. And that you folks in the media are the way to them.”
Ben rolled his shoulders, and exhaled, looking at that open barn door, the darkness inside. “Yeah, well here we are.”
“They’re all set,” said Burnett. “Wired and vests.”
Parker and Ben turned. Ben knew the reporter on sight as most people would. Chuck Haynes was rumored to be next in line for a national anchor slot at NBC if he could keep his visibility up. The videographer, Ben had never met before.
“Gentlemen,” Parker’s voice was a deep rumble. “Understand that we’ve only agreed to let you folks from the media in to appease this fool long enough to walk him out of the barn. You operate under our orders. You do not ask him questions that will incite him, do you understand me?”
“I know I speak for all of us, when I say we’ll cooperate,” Haynes said.
Ben turned back to look at the open door, scratching distractedly at his beard. He felt scruffy. Suddenly aware that in that small barn, he would be part of the news, too. On the other side of the lens. That had only happened once before in his career, and it had been a distinctly unpleasant experience. Ben had a beard for the last few years, and he wondered what he looked like underneath it now. He looked down at himself. His jeans were dirty from the days of lying on the ground peering through the camera at that barn door. His shirt was damp with sweat. He yawned, feeling that curious combination of sleepiness and excitement that he’d felt whenever he was waiting for something to start. Like high school football, back in Portland, Maine. Later, it was waiting with his camera in hand, ready to jump out of an armored car with the marines in Sarajevo, or capturing images of young Zapatista rebels in Mexico.
Ben knew he usually did fine once things got started. But at the moment, he couldn’t help but wish he was back at the motel, taking a shower, the exposed rolls of film tucked in his bag.
The two television guys were talking between themselves. Ben could hear the same nervousness in their voices, but Haynes was trying bluster over it. “Just be damn sure that thing is on the whole goddamn time,” he was saying to the cameraman.
“Got it, got it, got it,” said the cameraman.
Ben glanced back, smiling. Haynes was a big, good-looking guy with just the right amount of gray at the temples. But he didn’t have a reputation for brains.
Haynes saw Ben’s smile and he snapped, “Don’t get in our way, clear? We’re capturing this live.”
Ben laughed, shortly, and didn’t answer the man. Instead, he looked over at Parker. He thought of the Newsweek issue that had just been distributed behind the sandbags that morning. Under the headline, “Collision Course,” the cover had depicted high school photos of Johansen with a winning smile, Parker solemn and serious.
“Nervous?” Parker said.
“Hell, yes.”
Both of them started slightly when the telephone on Burnett’s belt sounded. He flipped it open. “All right, Mr. Johansen. Give us a second to secure everybody here.”
He nodded to Parker, who spoke rapidly into his radio to the SWAT team. “The girl’s coming out. Everybody be goddamn sure you hold fire.”
Katy was shoved into the doorway. Around Ben, he could feel everyone relax slightly. This was the first they’d seen of her in the whole stand, and although she seemed terrified, she looked all right otherwise.
“I’ve got one her age at home,” Parker said. He clapped Ben lightly on the arm. “Swap with her.”
Ben started across the grass. He lifted his camera slowly to his eye and captured a shot of her standing in the doorway. Her lower lip was trembling. “Hey,” he said, as he got closer. “Hey, Katy.”
Johansen spoke around the door. “Keep on coming. Once you’re in, she goes.”
Ben stepped into the gloom of the barn. In an instant, he took it all in: Johansen standing by the concrete wall, the gun on him; the mother and boy, bound and tied to a farm tractor. A shaft of light revealed the mother’s face, looking imploringly between Johansen and her daughter. “Please now, can she go?”
“I don’t want to,” the girl said. “I want to stay with you, Mommy.”
“Move it,” Johansen snapped.
Ben did a mild double take when he looked at Johansen again. Somehow, the man had shaved and cleaned himself up. Ready for the cameras. “Can I?” Ben said, gesturing to the girl.
Johansen nodded abruptly.
Ben knelt down next to her. “Hey, I’ve got a girl your age.” He pointed to Parker. “So does he.” Ben looked back at the phalanx of men with guns and he understood her hesitation. He flapped his hand down to Parker and the agent got his point immediately and knelt down to the girl’s level. “Run to him, honey. He knows you’re scared.”
The girl looked at Ben closely, and then abruptly ran to Parker.
Without thinking, Ben raised the camera and captured two shots of the girl with dirty blue coveralls and pigtails, running for the kneeling FBI agent.
“Never miss a shot, do you, Ben?” Johansen said. “Now come here, and take off that vest.”
Ben hesitated, but Johansen simply raised his gun to Ben’s right eye. “You’ll miss that, in your business.”
Ben took off the vest and Johansen had him kneel with his hands on his head while he put the vest onto himself. “Open your shirt and your pants and show me where the wires are—and then pull them.’’
After a moment’s hesitation, Ben did.
“All right. You go against that wall and you can keep shooting. Just save a shot or two for me.”
And that’s what Ben did. He took shots of the twelve-year-old boy, looking back at his mother as Haynes and the cameraman walked toward him. After that, of Parker and Burnett filling the barn doorway, silhouetted by bright light. Johansen had all of them pull their wires. “You’ll forgive me, I’m sure,” he drawled. “I had a bad experience with these once.”
Johansen’s diatribe took a surprisingly short time to complete. “I make no apologies for my actions,” he began, looking into the video camera. “Although I was saddened that Thad Greene was pressed so violently into service in the war against the disintegration of America, I am delighted to hear the news that he’ll recover …”
And so on.
A self-serving monologue that placed all of Johansen’s acts of terrorism into “the larger context.” This, with a gun jammed against Mrs. Greene’s neck. Most of it had a singsong, practiced sound. Johansen kept his eyes on the video camera, except when he would discuss the “institutions of entropy” that had “softened and weakened this great country in the name of equality.”
Then he would look at Parker.
When he did that, Johansen’s mouth turned ugly and his voice shook just slightly. Ben almost raised his camera to capture it, and then decided against it.
Johansen might read it as encouragement.
Finally, he was done.
Johansen bowed his head, and then waved the two television guys back.
“I’ve got some questions,” Haynes said.
“Just shut up and keep your camera rolling,” Johansen said.
Parker and Burnett stared at the newscaster, and he backed off, but didn’t look too happy about it.
Abruptly, Johansen shoved the woman away. “Thank you, Mrs. Greene. You may leave now. I’m sorry for the trouble.” He waved the gun at Burnett. “Walk her out, see that your guys don’t kill her.”
She seemed stunned, and then her face flushed crimson. She looked as if she were going to say something, but then looked to the gun and the other men, and simply turned away.
“What’s going on here?” Burnett asked.
“Do it,” Parker growled.
Burnett hesitated.
“Move!” Parker said.
Burnett took the woman away.
“Now how about these guys?” Parker said. “It’s time for them to walk.”
Johansen shook his head. “The fourth estate stays. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that leadership is all a matter of making the right symbols. Well, I’m going to make one right now.”
Faster than Ben could have imagined, Johansen lashed out with the gun butt and cracked Parker on the head. The agent staggered, and Johansen did it again. Blood gushed from a scalp wound. “Get on your knees, nigger.”
Ben started forward and Johansen swung the gun to him. “Time for your picture, you whore. Get over here!”
Ben’s hands were shaking, but in a glance, he double-checked everything. He had already put the flash on a coil cord so he could hold it off the camera. The power light on the flash was glowing red. He zoomed the lens back to its widest setting.
“You about ready there, Ben?” Johansen smiled slightly as he placed the gun inches from Parker’s head.
“Just about.” Ben stepped closer.
“You got my flag waving in the background? Is it still flying out there?”
“I’ve got it all.” Ben’s voice was shaking, too.
“Maybe you’ll win some more awards here. The niggers have been good for you, haven’t they?”
“You’re fucking cold, Harris,” the cameraman said, letting his video camera down.
“Keep rolling,” Haynes snapped.
The cameraman shrugged and lifted it up, the red light gleaming above the lens.
“Don’t do this, Mr. Johansen,” Haynes said, his voice conveying just the right sense of urgency and dismay. “I’m asking you—the world is asking you—not to do this.”
The audio was, of course, rolling too.
Johansen struck a pose and, indeed, a part of Ben knew it was a hell of a shot: the powerful black man staring up at Johansen. Parker was bloodied and confused, but still defiant. Out of focus, the running SWAT team, clearly too late. Johansen held the big gun rigidly in his right arm, his entire body conveying self-righteous judgment.
“Look at me,” Ben said, with the assurance of years.
Damned if Johansen didn’t comply, the gun moving just slightly as he did so.
Ben reached over with the flash and jammed it mere inches away from Johansen’s eyes.
And took the picture.
CHAPTER 2
“SO IT WAS PARKER WHO GOT THE GUN AWAY FROM JOHANSEN?” Peter Gallagher said.
“That’s right.”
“And it was Parker who clubbed him to the ground?”
“Well, I smacked him on the head a few times with the camera, but Parker did the heavy work. Then I backed off and covered the SWAT team as they came storming into the barn.”
Peter laughed and took a sip of his beer. They were sitting in a small bar on Boston’s waterfront overlooking the harbor. From long habit as a reporter, Peter kept his voice low. “So all this hero shit I’ve been hearing is just Ben Harris giving yet another subject a bad case of red eye.”
Ben nodded. “About sums it up. That distance from the flash, he’ll probably have some permanent vision loss.”
“Well, there’s that.”
“The picture was cool, though. Parker is this huge black force erupting from the floor; what you can see of Johansen’s whited-out face has this funny little expression like he’s just getting how much trouble he’s in.”
“I saw it. You might have a career in this business.” Peter touched Ben’s mug with his own. “Congratulations. And when I write the article I’ll make you a hero too.”
“Get in line.” Ben told him that after NBC released the footage, his answering machine at his studio in Fort Point Channel held over twenty offers for interviews. Kurt Tattinger, the new editor-in-chief, had fielded dozens more at the magazine. A literary agent who had unsuccessfully shopped around a book proposal of Ben’s work about two years back had called to say, “Better strike while you’re hot. Time/Life just returned my call, and they want to take a fresh look at you.”
Peter lifted his eyebrows. “Enjoy your fifteen minutes. May work out to a half hour or more, given the TV coverage.”
“Better than last time.”
Peter nodded. “That thing with the priest? That was before I knew you, but I read the articles at the time. Thought you were a sleazeball paparazzi. Same kind that chased Princess Diana into that tunnel.”
“You and several million people. This time, if I can land that book and guarantee some autonomy from Kurt it’ll all be worthwhile.”
“The book, maybe. Kurt, he’s a fact of your life that’s not going to go away as long as you work for Insider. Get used to it.”
Peter Gallagher had joined Insider shortly after Ben, about three years ago. They had hit it off immediately. Gallagher was about twenty years out of Columbia’s journalism school, and had traveled the world looking for stories ever since. He was tall, lanky, and prematurely gray. A recurring case of malaria he had contracted while covering a story in Papua New Guinea had cut into his health, contributed to his divorce, and forced him into the marginally more sedate pace of a weekly magazine rather than the adrenaline-pumping pace of his Chicago Tribune days.
At forty, he looked about fifty.
But none of that dampened the intelligence or curiosity in his steady gray eyes. Along with the publication’s emphasis on photojournalism—one of the few remaining publications as dedicated— Gallagher’s political and criminal investigative reports were the backbone of Insider’s growing reputation.
“So what have you got on?” Ben asked.
“Me? Nothing that would interest a man of your caliber.”
“C’mon.”
“Hell, I can’t take you places. Robert DeNiro comes to town to promote his new movie, and I take you up to the Ritz to cover the interview, next thing he’ll be asking you about your motivation, your love life, and all about those shutter speeds and f-stops. And you know I hate to hear about that shit.”
“Like Kurt would send you in to interview someone who could cause him trouble.”
Peter shook his head, marveling. “He’s got a reputation for standing up for his people. That was his reputation at Boston Magazine.”
“Uh-huh,” Ben said, not wanting to pursue it. Because he knew Peter was right. Kurt was a solid guy, took his hits, seemed to be fair. Ben just didn’t like him, and he had the best of reasons. “Tell me what you’re working on now.”
“Let’s see, we’ve got a politician who can’t keep his pants on, challenged me to prove different.”
Ben made a face. “Leave it for the tabloids.”
“The line gets blurry sometimes.”
“Uh-huh.” Ben sipped his beer.
Peter, ever observant, got the point and moved on. “Another round of women who killed their husbands looking to get out of prison early. Most of them deserve to. Maybe you can come out and improve upon their mug shots for me.”
“I can do that. What else is local? I’d like to stay around long enough to see my kids before they start calling me ‘Uncle Ben.’”
“When do you see them next?”
“Tomorrow. Weekend visitation.”
“That sucks. Beats once a month, though.”
“When are you down to New York?”
“Week after next.” Peter told Ben about his last trip to see his daughter, and the afternoon they had spent at the Museum of Natural History. “That’s all she wants to do. Third time in a row. Whole city of New York I’d give her if I could, and she just wants to go back and see those stuffed animals.”
“She’s four,” Ben said, smiling. Thinking of his daughter, Lainnie, at that age. It struck him how he and Peter still talked freely about their children—Peter’s one and Ben’s two—but how they rarely talked about their ex-wives anymore.
Maybe a late-breaking sign of maturity, he thought.
He and Peter had a fair amount in common in regards to ex-wives. Both women were working journalists. Andi and Ben met when they were both in their early twenties back at the Portland Press Herald in Maine; Peter and his ex-wife, Sarah, had been a nationally recognized investigative team before their divorce. Her byline continued to turn up on major stories in the New York Times.
Ben was glad he and Peter had left off talking about Andi and Sarah. He never slept well afterwards. And Peter needed to be careful when it came to drinking. He swore that he never had more than their two beers here at the bar, and Ben never saw any evidence to the contrary.
“Hey, back to business,” Peter said. “I’ve got a hood who’s a real comer. Out of Southie, but he’s more than a tough Irish kid. Been all the way to Stanford and back. Runs a commercial real estate consulting business supposedly, but the word is that he’s not afraid to get his own hands dirty.”
“Sounds promising.”
“Oh, yeah, but he’s a work in progress. You got some spare time, we could build a file on him.”
“I’ll have my agent call yours.”
“Yeah, you do that.” Peter lifted his glass. “Meanwhile, see if your wife’s new boyfriend will cut you a break tomorrow. Tell him heroes sell magazines.”
After Peter headed off in a taxi, Ben decided to walk to his studio. The city lights alone would clear his head and evoke a certain amount of magic. He stopped to look back when he was halfway across the bridge. When Boston was placed as a lighted backdrop to shifting water, and vaguely threatening black pilings, the effect was visually fascinating—both ominous and beautiful.
He counted the interesting view as one of the few—maybe the only—benefits of his new life. Because going home alone to the empty loft was just as dreary as it was cracked up to be.
As he slid the key into the lock, he placed his hand on the door, feeling the dead silence behind it. No sounds of Lainnie and Jake playing or arguing. No sound of a television or radio. No Andi telling the kids to calm down, that their father was home.
He swung the door open.
Everywhere he looked, he saw himself. On the white painted brick walls hung with his own work and that of other photojournalists and fine art photographers he admired: Robert Capa, Eugene Smith, Eddie Adams, Koresh, Stieglitz. Powerful images all, Capa’s black and whites of children in wartime Paris, Ben’s own shots taken throughout the U.S. and all over the world: Mexico, Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia, Columbia. Mostly of people. People in war, people in trouble, people experiencing joy, people at work, caught mid-step in their daily lives.
Ben’s answering machine was blinking, and when he played the messages back, he had three more offers for interviews and another call from his agent saying Time/Life had called again on the book idea and were moving “from a nibble to stretching their jaws for a fairly good bite.”
Ben played all of the messages back from the beginning, ostensibly because he wanted to write them down, but truthfully, because he was hoping he had somehow missed a call from Andi.
He hadn’t.
He consciously ignored his feelings about that and smiled again at the message from his agent. Ben moved to his light table and thumbed it on, feeling a bit like a midnight alchemist as the fluorescent light flickered. He began pulling out transparencies, fingers moving quickly through his files. He laid a sheaf of them across the table and colors and shapes began to spring to life in front of him, each a visual story that played before him when he bent to look through the loupe. He did the same with the black and whites, pulling out file after file of contact sheets. Soon, if the book possibility became a reality, he would need to organize his thoughts and images into a consistent theme. And truly, there were genuine patterns in his work, and nothing would delight him more than to pull it all together. But for the time being, he simply looked at his past.
And because it was all intertwined, and because it was late at night and he was lonely, he pulled out the file of family pictures. These were the better shots culled from more than a thousand rolls he had taken over the years: his and Andi’s first apartment in New York, their dog, Burglar, long since gone. Jake’s birth. Andi looking not much older than a teenager in the hospital gown. Exhausted. Wonderfully happy. At home, he and Andi holding their fat little baby in front of the old mirror with the cracked frame. It came back to him standing there over the light table, the exhilaration of those days: equal parts of fear and euphoria. The baby is healthy, my wife is safe. How the hell am I going to feed them?
And remembering that brought up the contrast, the difference between then and now.
I fed them, he thought. I clothed them, I housed them, and I loved them. I still love them. And yet I’m alone.
This book that his agent was calling about was something he and Andi had talked about for years. A project they could work on together: his images, her writing and editing.
Maybe now he would ask Peter if he was interested in writing it.
When Ben looked up at the clock, he was surprised to see it was almost two in the morning. “Oh, Christ.” Ben didn’t need much sleep, but he needed more than four hours. He filed the transparencies away and turned out the lights on the images surrounding him on the walls.
He was suddenly tired of his own thoughts and those who thought like him.
CHAPTER 3
ANDI MET KURT AT HER FRONT DOOR.
God, she was beautiful to him. Rich auburn hair, carelessly brushed. When she stepped out of the shadow of the doorway, the morning light brought out the gold in her green eyes, in her hair.
Like him, no longer a kid. Faint wrinkles at her eyes and mouth just added character. Her intelligence was there to read, right in those eyes. She smiled, which made him euphoric and more than a bit scared. There was no denying it, he was shaking inside.
What have you decided? he wanted to say.
Instead, he asked, “Have you been watching the recap on the news this morning?” His voice sounded perfectly calm. Sounded like him.
“As if I had a choice. Both of them hauled me in front of it every time they played that tape. Ben, the hero.”
He smiled. “Come on, now. It was pretty impressive stuff.”
“I’m just glad you’re here.” She came down the steps and draped her arms around his neck. She kissed him so sweetly that he was convinced that they were all right.
“You thought about what I said?” Kurt whispered.
“All night. And the answer is yes.”
He had to look away. He wanted to look at her so she could see his happiness, his outright exultation. But he felt so wide open he couldn’t show it. Instead, he said lightly, “No worries?”
“I’m a little nervous,” she said. “But I’m happy. So happy.”
He held her tight, feeling in her heat against him the new life opening before him with her and the children. “I love you, Andi.”
She pulled her head back so that she could look at him, her eyes welling with tears. “I love you too, Kurt. Let’s go in and tell them the real news around here.”
“Sure,” he said, looking up at his new home. Ben’s former home. An old colonial that Ben and Andi had carefully restored. Beautiful piece of property in Sudbury, up against conservation land.
Kurt wanted to take them away from it. As soon as possible. Andi, Lainnie, and Jake. He loved them all. More than he knew how to show them. He wanted to take them away and put them in a house he had built just for them. Start from scratch. He said, “Let’s go in.”
CHAPTER 4
KURT OPENED THE DOOR FOR BEN TWO HOURS LATER.
Even though Kurt had had plenty of time to figure out what to say beforehand, he was still at a momentary loss.
Apparently, so was Ben. Finally, he said, simply, “The kids ready?”
“Actually, we were hoping to talk to you a minute.”
Andi joined him then. “Hey, Ben, home from the wars. Come on in.” Her tone was sunny because that was her way when first greeting anyone. Kurt expected Ben knew she was furious with him.
Andi gave Ben a fierce hug before pulling back to give him a short, hard shot to the arm. “I’d like to have killed you.”
“Jesus.” Ben was half laughing, but hurting too. “You haven’t lost a thing.”
“You still have two children,” she said.
“And where are they now?” Ben stepped around Kurt, his eyes eager for Lainnie and Jake.
“We asked them to stay upstairs while we talked,” Andi said.
Ben glanced between Kurt and Andi. “About what?”
“Hey, Daddy.”
It was Lainnie, standing at the head of the stairs.
“Ben, let’s go into the library,” Kurt said.
But Ben ignored him. He moved to the foot of the stairs. Lainnie’s face was blotched, as if she had been crying. She said, “I saw you on TV.”
“What’s the matter, honey?”
Jake was behind her. Thirteen years old, everything was more complicated. He tugged at Lainnie. “Come on. Let them alone a minute.”
“Hey, stranger,” Ben said.
“Hi, Dad. You nailed that guy.”
“Sort of.”
Jake grinned and there was no equivocation there. “Not ‘sort of.’ I saw it on TV. So did every kid in my school.”
“Well, that’s got to be worth something.”
“Kids, your dad will be right with you,” Kurt said.
Ben glanced at him, but said to the children, easily enough, “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Jake nodded abruptly and began to pull Lainnie toward her room. “Come on. I’ll play with you.”
She was crying again.
Ben noticed the library had changed. Once he ran the business end of his freelance work out of this study, and Andi had done her writing. Now her desk was pushed over by the window and on his former desk there was a computer set-up complete with CD-ROM, scanner, and color printer.
“Somebody’s finally gone digital around here?” Ben asked.
“It’s mine,” Kurt said. “It’s an interest that Jake and I share.”
Ben winced internally, but he kept it to himself. Strange stuff when your ex-wife is dating your boss.
Not for the first time, Ben thought, So this is who she wants.
Kurt was about the same age as Ben, somewhere in his early forties. But while Ben saw himself as all angles and bone, Kurt was fighting a gut and pale. Carefully combed brown hair, blue eyes. Not a bad-looking guy, Ben knew objectively. In spite of the slight potbelly, Kurt looked as if he worked out, played handball, did something. He was just a little bland. Edges worn a bit too smooth by years of corporate life. A gloss of sophistication and respectability that probably showed better beside Andi at her various fund-raising functions and dinners than a weather-beaten photographer husband.
Ben forced away the dour expression he could feel forming on his face. He said, “So what’s up?”
Kurt flashed him a quick smile to acknowledge the question had been asked, but he didn’t answer. Something Ben had seen more than once at the office, but something he appreciated even less in his own former study.
Kurt poured coffee from a white carafe for all of them, and Andi laid out a plate of bagels and fruit. Ben sat back and watched. This was Kurt all the way. Andi was many wonderful things, but an organized hostess she was not. Kurt had a precision about him at the office that apparently extended into the weekend. Although he wore jeans and a simple cotton shirt, there was a crease in the jeans showing they had been ironed. His white leather running shoes didn’t show a single grass stain.
“Will you be following up on the publicity possibilities for yourself on this thing?” Kurt asked politely. Andi settled in on the love seat beside him.
Ben’s heart sank. He could feel what this was about and he found himself talking, not wanting to hear their words. “Not too much,” he said. “I’m not that comfortable being on that side of the lens.”
“You won’t be in the public eye for long, take advantage of it.” Kurt’s voice was rich with assurance. The businessman telling the artist how to cash in on his talent and luck. “I know Peter will do a wonderful job with our coverage itself. And I’ll assure you latitude as other opportunities come up.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Speaking of Peter, I know he wants to work with you on some of his projects coming up. Why don’t the two of you get together and talk them through and come back to me with a plan.”
Ben nodded. Kurt knew full well the way he and Peter worked and this was just his way of trying to regain some control. Ben told them about the book, as much to keep from discussing the real issue as anything else. “The offer is now firm. We’re still negotiating money—it won’t be huge, it never is for photo books. But I can take from my existing body of work and anything new I want to shoot. Develop my own themes.”
Andi’s hands flew to her mouth and Ben was gratified to see her pleasure was genuine. She said, “It’s what we always wanted.”
“You were going to write and edit it,” he said. And then, because he suddenly realized it was so, he added, “You still can.”
He saw her lower lip tremble ever so slightly and he knew what was coming. “Look,” he said, gently. “Whatever’s happening here, we still have those two upstairs to see through life. We might as well stay friends. We always had that.”
She looked down, smoothing her skirt. When she looked up, she said, simply, “Kurt and I are getting married.”
Hearing the words felt like getting punched in the stomach.
Ben paused. “I figured that.”
He saw the light of victory in Kurt’s eyes and the slightest smile touched his mouth before he forced it away.
Ben forced himself equally hard to keep his face calm. That, and to not stand up and kick the guy onto his ass.
Kurt said, “I expect this must be hard to hear.”
“You expect right. When?”
“Tomorrow,” Kurt said.
Ben looked between the two of them, not sure he’d heard right. “What?”
“Tomorrow,” Kurt said. “The kids and us here at the house with the justice of the peace. We’re anxious to begin our new life.”
“When did you two decide this?”
“What difference does that makes?” Kurt asked.
“It didn’t correspond with me walking into that barn, did it?”
“Of all the ego …” Kurt said.
But Andi’s face blanched.
“Jesus, Andi,” Ben said.
She kept her voice low. “We need someone who’d think about us before taking a suicidal risk just to impress a piece of film. Kurt loves us in a way that doesn’t leave room for disappearing for three months to capture a war on some other side of the globe.”
There were a lot of things Ben could have said. Not the least of which was the “us” instead of “me.” Or that her husband-to-be was the one who typically sent him off on those long shoots. Or that she was once a reporter herself so she should understand the goddamn obligations of the profession.
But these were old arguments.
Ben said, “Kurt, could you give us a minute alone?”
“I will not,” he said.
Ben exhaled carefully, aware of the kids upstairs. “I would appreciate a moment of privacy to talk to my former wife. You think you can cut me that break?”
“Please, Kurt,” Andi said, squeezing his arm.
His face flushed crimson suddenly and for a moment, Ben saw a side of him that he hadn’t seen before. But then Kurt regained himself and said, “I’ll be back in five minutes.” He closed the door quietly on the way out.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling quickly. “Kurt feels things more deeply than you might realize. And while I know this is bad for you, it’s hard for him to accept the place you’ve already made in our lives.”
“Kind of immature, wouldn’t you think?” Ben snapped.
“I don’t call being passionate about me—and therefore, a little jealous—as being immature. If it is, I can live with it.”
“I was always passionate about you.”
She smiled. “Of course you were. That’s the way you do everything. But we were down the list.”
“So you’re telling me this idea of us getting back together is something I’ve been carrying around all by myself?”
She took his hands in hers and kissed the back of his wrist. “Neither of us tried to really make it happen, did we? I accept that the things that worked for us in our twenties aren’t working for us now. We’ve got two children who need a real father, and I need a real husband—not someone who’s just blowing in for a few days between shoots.”
“What if I said I would change?”
“I’d say you’re too late. I’d say I don’t believe you.”
“You love him?”
“I surely do.”
Ben wanted to be big about it all.
But what he felt more than anything was angry. How could you do this to us? he thought. This is me.
What he said was, “This wasn’t what I had in mind for us.” His voice was hoarse.
“Who would?” She lifted her shoulders.
“Right.” He nodded. Looked about the place, his old home, because he could no longer look at her directly. He wanted to get out of there. Upstairs, he could hear Lainnie and Jake moving around, the soft thud of their feet on the floorboards. Ben said, “We’ll have to make it work between us until the kids are grown. Agreed?”
She put her hand out. “Agreed.”
After they shook, she dabbed her eyes. “I’m going to call Kurt back in.”
When he arrived, Ben surprised both of them by reaching over to cover their tightly clasped hands. “Congratulations, then. I wish you the best, wherever your lives take you.’’
Kurt looked surprised and Andi laughed suddenly, a sudden gust of relief. “We’ll be here,” she said.
Damn straight, Ben thought. Their child custody agreements precluded either of them from moving out of state without mutual consent.
“In the area, anyhow,” Kurt said. “Sudbury is a good town and this is a nice enough house, but if some of my investments pay off the way I expect, we’ll be building a new home.”
“Good,” Ben said, nodding. Change every goddamn thing, why don’t you. “Good.”
Andi said, “Maybe we’ll even still work on that book together.”
“Sure. The offer still stands.”
“Well, let’s talk about it.” Kurt put his arm around Andi, The man of the house.
Ben paused. This was going to take more than a little getting used to. “I’d better get going.”
They began to follow him and he waved them back. “Please. I’ll let myself out.”
He closed the library door behind himself and hesitated a moment in the hallway. He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, and then walked to the stairwell and called up, “Let’s go, Jake and Lainnie. We’re going to have some fun now.”
CHAPTER 5
JAKE FOUND HER ON THE SIDEWALK.
“I’m getting out of here,” Lainnie said. “If you had any balls you’d come with me.”
Jake grabbed the seatpost of her bike. He pulled her back, gently enough so that she didn’t fall, hard enough to show her he meant it. “Got the balls to knock you onto the floor, mess up that pretty dress, Garbage Mouth.”
“Do it,” she said. “They wouldn’t do this stupid-ass wedding if I got a big grease spot all over me. Kurt couldn’t stand it.”
Jake liked that but he didn’t have it in him to smile right then. “If I thought that’d work, I’d drop you in a tub of motor oil. But they’d do the wedding anyhow. You see the way Kurt looks at Mom?”
“Why isn’t Daddy stopping this?”
Jake could see she was swallowing hard to keep from crying. He couldn’t think of a thing to help her. He felt like crying himself, but, at thirteen, he was way too old.
Their dad had taken them out to Nahant the day before to go swimming at Forty Steps, where a lot of the scuba divers came in. Water so cold it made you scream when you first hit it. But lots of sun-heated rocks to climb on afterwards, great tidal pools to explore. When they were younger, their dad used to play hide and seek out there with them.
But Dad didn’t act much like himself yesterday.
It was like he had turned gray. His dad tried to make it seem like everything was all right. He put his arms around them, told them he and Mom knew what was for the best and that they would all make it work. Told them that he thought Kurt was a good man.
And the funny thing was, Jake mostly agreed.