LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, NICK MET SEYMOUR on a park bench adjacent to the ocean seawall. Over the sound of crashing waves, Nick thanked Seymour for the impromptu meeting.
“To what do I owe the unexpected pleasure, Nick?”
“I’m in a jam, Seymour. Looks like someone got annoyed when I subpoenaed Trent Hamilton.”
He handed Seymour the envelope of photos of Rachel and Nick. “Little present waiting for me.”
As Seymour fumbled open the envelope, he asked, “Wonder why they’re so goddamned concerned about this guy testifying?”
“I think it’s because he might run for governor, and they don’t want him exposed to anything that’ll screw up his chances.”
“I see,” said Seymour, as he rifled through the pictures. He smirked. “Lovely as I remember her, or rather, imagined her.”
Nick grimaced, “You think it’s funny, and I’m having nightmares.”
Freedman took a long drag on a shrinking Lucky, puckered his lips and smiled wryly.
“You know, there’s probably not one clean defense contractor in these United States. Every one of them has something buried. Hamilton could prove to be the exception, but I doubt it. Hell, recently they clipped Whitlsey Jet Engines for sending engineering drawings to Japan without clearing them through U.S. Export. Didn’t get an export license. Not even the Reds. Deep shit. It doesn’t take much to step in it.”
“You know, I was about to rest my case. I’ve taken this as far as I need to prove Girardin was a POW. But you know what? I’m pissed. Fucking pissed. And that they would go this far tells me there’s something real big at stake here. How quick can you turn the screws?”
“How about I start cranking tonight?”
Nick was surprised by Seymour’s enthusiasm. “Tell me what I owe you for this.”
“The Korea connection is the best thing that’s happened to me since I left government. You owe me nada.”
“Then tuck in your shirt, and zip up your fly, for God’s sake. What’ll people think?”
Freedman smiled, stepped on his cigarette butt, stuffed in his shirt and fixed his pants.
***
That night Nick went home, and as had become routine, he could not sleep. Listening to Diane sleeping, he played out the possibilities. What if the photos were made public? How would he explain to Diane? Over and again without discovering a new way out, until he began to doze. He remembered when Jamie had got lost on a field trip to the Grand Canyon the year before. As Nick fell into a deep sleep, Jamie appeared walking the floor of a canyon of maze-like wonder, a three dimensional world with circuitous trails leading to more trails folding back on its mysterious geometric beauty that had turned deadly. Together, they walked on one of a thousand switchbacks in a desert of brown dust and an ruby sun hanging high in the western sky. A buzzard screaming, “Jack, Mac,” flew over vertical crimson cliffs winding for miles from where they saw thousands of marching troops. Hexagons on an unfolding map, a river, that snaked into a blind canyon, wooing them into the canyon’s umbilicus, penetrating her inner parts. Nick, his mouth cotton-dry, tried desperately to call out to his son, warn him of thousand-foot falls, of minefields, of errant slips, of one’s fragile mortality, but each step sank deeper into a sandy earth, and the boy vanished, lost. The night skies twisted beneath a spiraled path in an endlessly alien world, until, finally, step by step, he reached a rim and Jamie turned and smiled, and the sun’s rays showered Nick, himself prostrate as if praying to some pantheistic god.