Seven

The next morning saw me tooling west on a highway that the rest of the country calls Route 90, but that we call the Mass Pike. The Pike runs the 120-mile length of the state connecting Boston to Worcester, Springfield, and, eventually, Pittsfield. Beyond that, you’re in New York, heading for Albany.

While John Tucker had worked at the western Global Defense Systems plant in Pittsfield, my father had mostly worked in the eastern plant in the town of Wayland. Wayland, Sudbury, and Framingham made up the northern edge of a region called
MetroWest, which lay twenty miles west of Boston.

The three towns had all been centers of Revolutionary fervor back in the day. At that time Wayland was part of Sudbury and had contributed seventy-five troops to the effort of breaking away from England because of taxes. Then, right in the middle of the war, Wayland broke away from Sudbury because of taxes. The people out here really hated taxes—an incongruous fact given that tax money funded Wayland’s biggest employer, Global Defense Systems.

Wayland’s GDS plant sat on the town’s only “main road,” Route 20, an old Indian path that had become a mail route (still called Boston Post Road) and had eventually morphed into a two-lane highway.

I arrived at GDS at eleven o’clock, which meant that the parking lot was full. I parked a quarter mile from the entrance, peered into the distance to find the lobby, then walked for five minutes through a vast asphalt desert.

Uncle Walt’s car, on the other hand, sat next to the front door. GDS employees who had been with the company for forty years got a parking row right up front. It was a perk of longevity, and perhaps an admission from GDS that their forty-year employees might not survive the trek from the back row. My dad would have had one of these spots if he had lived long enough.

Dad had met Uncle Walt in this very parking lot. Neither believed in rising early enough to get good parking. Both believed a morning walk would make them stronger. So, every morning, they’d arrive in the back row at the same time and hike to the lobby together. My father, the engineer, and Walt, the janitor, had formed an unlikely friendship out of their daily battle against the New England elements.

Uncle Walt was not really my uncle. He was a pseudo-uncle, and we were connected by pseudo-blood. His uncleness derived from my parents’ discomfort with me calling him either “Walt” (too informal) or “Mr. Adams” (too formal). Thus my dad’s best friend, Walter Adams, became “Uncle Walt.”

Uncle Walt leaned against his pickup truck waiting for me, his ropy arms crossed in front of his small runner’s body, his bald head acting as a navigational beacon in the sunlight. He watched me navigate the last few rows of cars. We shook hands and hugged, Walt’s strong, bony frame jabbing me in the shoulders. I gripped his bicep.

“Jesus, Uncle Walt, you are in great shape,” I said. “Life’s good?”

“Hell, Tucker, I got a truck, a motorcycle, and a mobile home. Couldn’t be better! Let’s go inside and get a cup of coffee.”

We approached the security desk. A plump woman with black hair and crow’s feet smiled up at us. “Walt, who is this young man?”

Walt clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Agnes, this is my buddy, Tucker. He’s John Tucker’s boy.”

Agnes’s smile dimmed, then brightened. “Oh, you mean our John Tucker.” She patted my hand. “Your father was a wonderful man.”

I said, “Thank you. What do you mean, your John Tucker?”

“We had a security briefing this morning and—well. I really can’t get into it.”

Uncle Walt said, “I’d like to sign Tucker in and get him some coffee.”

“Certainly,” said Agnes. “Sign in here. Do you have a phone with a camera on it?”

I said, “Who doesn’t have a phone with a camera on it?”

“I know, it’s just terrible. You’ll need to leave your phone here with me.”

GDS, like all defense companies and some commercial ones, staged elaborate scenes of security theater. These little dramas demonstrated that the security department had done all it could to prevent bad guys from stealing information, though they rarely did anything that would actually keep a bad guy from stealing information.

The problem with security theater is that it relies upon the bad guy to be honest. You ask me if I have a phone with a camera on it, and I hand over a phone. But if I’m a bad guy, I keep a camera in my back pocket.

I handed over my Droid, silencing it so that its ghostly Droid voice wouldn’t scare anybody.

Agnes took my driver’s license and put it into a machine that printed a temporary badge with an indecipherable little black-and-white copy of my license picture. She put the badge into a plastic holder with a clip on it.

“You need to wear this on your shirt front,” she said. “Be sure to return it before you go. Have a nice visit!”

Uncle Walt and I entered the GDS labyrinth. I slipped back to a time when my dad had walked me through these same halls. I had just started at MIT and had enrolled in computer science. Dad was upset. He told me that I was smart enough to be a “real” engineer, and he had taken me on a tour of GDS to show me what “real” engineers could accomplish.

The place hadn’t changed in all these years. The long hallways were painted a generic gray, a color that complemented the thin maroon carpet. Murals adorned the walls, successors to my first-grade drawing. They showed planes, ships, and tanks communicating within a web of network lines.

We reached an intersection where a large photograph showed a soldier in full battle gear. It was mounted under a sign that said, Serving those who protect us. Quality is Job 1! Next to the picture was a wall of military headshots. They were the adult children of GDS employees, a reminder of who would die if GDS’s products didn’t work.

The quasi-shrine made me feel as inadequate today as it had when my dad pointed it out years ago. While I was messing around with viruses and security software, real engineers like my dad and, apparently, John Tucker had been designing real hardware with a real purpose. We walked past the shrine without comment.

We bought coffee and sat against a window in the empty cafeteria. Breakfast was over, and the lunch rush was an hour away.

Uncle Walt said, “You know, your dad and I used to get coffee here every day. He’d sit right in that chair. It’s nice here. Private.”

“You guys talk about much that needed privacy?”

“Hell, Tucker, every man needs some privacy. Speaking of which, what’s on your mind? I haven’t see you in years.”

I looked out at the trees. The leaves were a dark, tired green. It was almost time for them to turn orange and die. “Remember when Agnes called my father ‘our John Tucker’?”

“Yeah. That was strange.”

“Well, last night I saw the other John Tucker.”

“Who is he?”

“He was a GDS employee who got murdered in front of my house last night.”

“Holy crap. You mean he was mugged?”

“I don’t think so. He was holding a drawing from the Paladin. The cover art.”

“You mean that picture you drew for your dad when you were a kid?”

“My dad showed you that?”

“Yeah, before he used it on the Paladin. After that it was classified.”

“This guy, John Tucker, had a copy of it. He had circled my name on the picture and written ‘My brother’ next to it. So the police think this guy was my brother.”

“This guy was named John Tucker?”

“Yeah, from Pittsfield. You’ve never heard of him?”

“I never get out to Pittsfield. It’s a hundred miles away. Your dad got to drive back and forth, but I was stuck here. Janitors don’t travel.”

I looked around at the little nook. Walt and I were wedged in the corner of the cafeteria, far away from everyone. It was time to ask the question.

“You were Dad’s best friend. He’d have told you if he’d had another son. So I’m asking you. Do I have a brother?”

“No.”

“My dad is dead now. You don’t need to protect him.”

Walt drank his coffee despite its burnt flavor. Maybe he liked it. I had given up on mine after smelling it.

He said, “It’s not like your father didn’t want to give you a brother—or a sister. Your mother put the kibosh on that. You don’t have a brother, as far as I know.”

“As far as you know.”

Walt spread his hands. “What more can I say? There were lots of things your dad wouldn’t tell me. The man worked at GDS. He knew how to keep a secret.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” I said. “It was weird, though. I bumped into John Tucker’s mother at the police station. She was really familiar. Maybe I should ask her.”

Walt stood. I followed him back toward the front desk. “Doesn’t make sense to me. If your dad was screwing around, he wouldn’t have brought the girl around the house. If your mother got a whiff of anything, she’d have given that girl concrete galoshes.”

“Come on, Walt. That’s silly.”

“Silly? Your mother and all those Rizzos are nuts. I’ll tell you this, I told your Dad to stay away from your mother.” He pointed two fingers toward his face and waggled them. “She had the crazy eyes.”

I was silent.

Walt stopped walking. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, Tucker. I shouldn’t have talked that way about her. She’s your mother. I apologize.”

“That’s okay, Walt.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Fine, I guess.”

We started walking again. “You should go see her. She’s right around the corner.”

Guilt shot through me and I frowned. “Yeah. I should.”

Walt raised his hands. “None of my business. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

We were silent until I reached the front desk and Agnes handed me my phone. I’d missed a call. I’d check it later.

I said to Walt, “You know, you’re right. I should go visit my mother, and I shouldn’t let this thing with her keep me from reconnecting with my cousins in the city.”

Walt shook my hand. “Reconnect all you want, but I wouldn’t mention this thing about John Tucker to your cousin Sal, or to any of the Rizzos. They scare the shit out of me.” Walt put a finger aside his nose. La Cosa Nostra. He turned and walked back into GDS.

I shook my head. Walt came from an older generation who believed that all Italians were in the Mafia and all Irishmen were drunks. My generation was full of mutts like me. We didn’t buy the generalities. People were people.

I headed back to my car, fiddling with my Droid. The missed call came from a 413 area code.

Pittsfield.