It is much later in the evening—one-too-many-cognacs o’clock, to be more precise—when Patricia finally says, “I remember the tattoo.”
We are alone in Granddad’s parlor. I am sprawled on the couch, my head tilted back, staring up at the art deco inlaid-tile ceiling. Patricia sits in Granddad’s chair. I wait for her to say more.
“It’s funny what you forget,” she continues, and I hear the slur of the cognac in her voice. “Or what you make yourself forget. Except, I guess, you never totally forget, do you? You want to forget, and you even do forget, but you don’t. Am I making sense?”
“Not yet,” I say, “but keep going.”
I hear the clink of ice being dropped in her snifter. It is something of a crime to drink this particular lineage on the rocks, but I’m not in the judging business. I stare up at the ceiling and wait. When Patricia is settled back in Granddad’s chair, she says, “You push the memories away. You force them down. You block. It’s like…” The slur seems to be growing. “It’s like there’s a basement in my brain and what I did was, I packed that awful shit into a suitcase, kind of like that damned monogrammed suitcase you gave me, and then I dragged that suitcase down the basement stairs and I jammed it into a dank back corner, and then I rushed back upstairs and locked the door behind me and hoped I’d never see that suitcase again.”
“And now,” I say, “to keep within your colorful analogy, that suitcase is upstairs and open.”
“Yes,” she says. Then she asks, “Wait, was that analogy or a metaphor?”
“An analogy.”
“I’m terrible with that stuff.”
I want to reach out and put a hand on my cousin’s arm or do something innocuously comforting, but I’m very comfortable on the couch, enjoying the buzz, and I’m too far from her perch in Granddad’s chair, so I don’t bother.
“Win?”
“Yes?”
“The shed had a dirt floor.”
I wait.
“So I remember when he was on top of me. In the beginning, he would pin my arms down. I would close my eyes and just try to ride it out. After a while…I mean, you can’t keep your eyes closed forever. You can try, but you can’t. I would look up. He wore the ski mask, so I could only see his eyes. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to look at his eyes. So I would turn my head to one side. Just trying to ride it out. And he’d be holding himself, on top of me, and I remember his arm, and there…there was that butterfly.”
She stops now. I try to sit up, but it isn’t happening.
“So I would stare at it. You know? Like focus on its wing. And when he’d thrust and his arm would jiggle, I could imagine the butterfly’s wings were beating and it was going to fly away.”
We stay in the dark. We sip some more cognac. I am drunk so I start thinking about existential nonsense, about the human condition, perhaps, like Patricia, trying to block what I just heard. I don’t really know Patricia, do I? She doesn’t really know me. Do we all ever know one another? Man, am I drunk. I’m enjoying this silence. Too many people don’t get the beauty of silence. It is bonding. I bonded with my father when we would golf in silence. I bonded with Myron when we would watch old movies or television shows in silence.
Still, I feel compelled to break it: “You were in New York City the day Ry Strauss was murdered.”
Patricia says, “I was, yes.”
I wait.
“I told your friend PT the truth, Win. I go to New York City all the time.”
“You don’t call me.”
“Sometimes I do. You are one of the shelters’ biggest supporters. But you wouldn’t want me calling you every time I come to town.”
“That’s true,” I say.
“Do you think I killed Ry Strauss?”
I’ve been mulling that over for the past few hours. “I don’t see how.”
“What a ringing endorsement.”
I sit up a little. The liquor hits me, and I feel the head rush. “May I speak bluntly?”
“Do you ever speak any other way?”
“Hypothetically, if you did kill Ry Strauss—”
“I didn’t.”
“Ergo my use of the term ‘hypothetically.’”
“Ah. Go on.”
“If you killed him, hypothetically or otherwise, I would not blame you in the slightest. I might, in fact, want to know, so that we could get in front of it.”
“Get in front of it?”
“Make sure that it would never trace back to you.”
Patricia smiles again and raises her glass. She is fairly wasted too.
“Win?”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
I believe her. I also believe she isn’t telling me everything. Then again, I could be wrong on both counts.
“May I ask a hypothetical now?” Patricia asks.
“But of course.”
“If you were me and you had the chance to kill Ry Strauss, would you?”
“Yes.”
“Not much hesitation there,” she says.
“None.”
“Almost like you’ve been in that situation before.”
I see no reason to reply. Like I said before, I don’t really know Patricia, and she doesn’t really know me.
* * *
Years ago, I was at a private weekend “retreat” with a number of Washington, DC, politico types, including Senator Ted Kennedy. The location of said retreat is confidential, so the most I can tell you is that it was held in the Philadelphia area. On the final night, there was a party where—I kid you not—the United States senators took turns performing a karaoke number. I admired it, truth be told. The senators looked like fools, as we all do when we perform karaoke, and they didn’t care.
But back to Ted Kennedy.
I forget what song Ted—even though we had just met, he insisted I call him that—chose. It was something from the Motown family. It may have been “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Or was that Barbara Boxer? Or did Ted and Barbara do it as a duet like Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell? I can’t remember. Anyway, even though we disagreed on many issues, Ted was ridiculously charming and fun. He drank at the party. A lot. He started to stumble-dance, and if he didn’t put a lampshade on his head, it was only because he was too drunk. By the end of the night, Ted needed to lean on a loved one to get through the door and find his room.
Why am I telling you this?
Because the next morning, I had to depart the retreat early. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and hit the breakfast room at six. When I arrived, only one person was up. You guessed it.
“Good morning, Win!” Ted called out to me. “Sit with me.”
He was reading the Washington Post with a cup of coffee, a mountain of food on the plate in front of him. Ted was clear-eyed and showered and wide awake. We had a spirited discussion on a variety of topics, but the gist is this: I have never seen someone handle spirits quite like that, and I don’t know whether that was a positive or negative.
My guess is, it was a negative.
The long and short of my name-dropping tale? I am very good at handling spirits. But I’m no Ted Kennedy. My head aches when I wake up. I let out a low groan and as though on cue, there is a knock on my door.
“Good morning!”
It is Nigel. I groan again.
“How are we this morning?”
“Your voice,” I manage.
“What about it?”
“It soothes like a jackhammer against a cranial nerve.”
“Are we hungover, Master Win? Be grateful. I brought you my top-secret cure.”
He drops two pills into my palm and hands me a glass.
“It looks like aspirin and orange juice,” I say.
“Shh, I’m thinking of applying for a patent. Should I open the curtains?”
“Only if you want to get shot.”
“Cousin Patricia is getting dressed.”
Nigel leaves the room. I shower for a very long time and get dressed. Patricia is gone by the time I get downstairs. I down a quick breakfast with my father. The conversation is stilted, but that’s not a surprise. When I’m done, I head out to see Edie Parker’s mother and Billy Rowan’s father at the Crestmont Assisted Living Village in New Jersey.
Mrs. Parker gave me her first name, but I don’t recall what it was. I like to use titles, such as Mr. or Mrs., when I converse with my elders. It is how I was raised. The three of us are in Mr. Rowan’s room, which has all the warmth of a dermatologist’s office. The colors are beyond-bland beige and golf-club green. The décor is Contemporary Evangelical—plain wooden crosses, tranquil religious canvas prints of Jesus, wooden signs with biblical quotes like PUT GOD FIRST, which is cited as Matthew 6:33, and one that really catches my eye from Micah 7:18:
FORGIVE AND FORGET
An interesting choice, no? Does Mr. Rowan really believe that, or does he need the daily reminder? Does he look up on that wall every day and think about his son? Has he come to terms with it? Or is it more the flip side? Does Mr. Rowan embrace this particular passage in the hope that the victims of the Jane Street Six will pay heed?
Mr. Rowan is in a wheelchair. Mrs. Parker sits next to him. They hold hands.
“He can’t speak,” Mrs. Parker tells me. “But we still communicate.”
I assume that I am supposed to ask how, but I’m not all that interested.
“He squeezes my hand,” she tells me anyway.
“I see,” I say, though I don’t. How does squeezing a hand lead to genuine communication? Does he squeeze once for yes and two for no? Does he squeeze out some kind of Morse code? I would ask, but again I can’t see the relevance for me or what I’m after here. I soldier on.
“How did you and Mr. Rowan meet?” I ask.
“Through my Edie and his Billy.”
“May I ask when?”
“When…” She makes a fist and puts it up to her mouth. We both look at Mr. Rowan. He stares at me. I don’t know what, if anything, he sees. Oxygen cannulas run from his nostrils to a tank attached to the right side of his wheelchair. “When Edie and Billy disappeared.”
“Billy and Edie were dating though, yes?”
“Oh, more than that,” Mrs. Parker says. “They were engaged.”
She hands me a framed photograph. Sun and time have faded the colors, but there were college students Billy Rowan and Edie Parker, cheek to cheek. They were on a beach, the ocean behind them, their smiles as bright as the sun, the sweat leaving a sheen on their deliriously happy (or so it appeared) faces.
Mrs. Parker says, “They look so in love, don’t they?”
And the truth is, they do. They look young and in love and untroubled.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
I let myself nod.
“They were just dumb kids, Mr. Lockwood. That’s what William here always says, don’t you, William?”
William doesn’t blink.
“Idealistic, sure. Who isn’t when they’re young? Billy was a big lovable goofball, and my Edie wouldn’t hurt a fly. She just watched the news every night and saw those boys coming back in body bags. Her brother, my Aiden, served in Vietnam. Did you know that?”
“I did not, no.”
“No, they never talked about that on the news, did they?” Her tone is bitter now. “To them, my Edie was just a crazy terrorist, like one of those Manson girls.”
I try my best to look sympathetic, but this is where having “haughty resting face” becomes an issue. Myron is so good at this. He would put on a display of empathy that would make Pacino take notes.
“When was the last time you heard from Edie or Billy?”
Mrs. Parker seems taken aback by my query. “Why would you ask that?”
“I just—”
“Never. I mean, not since that night.”
“Not once?”
“Not once. I don’t understand. Why are you here, Mr. Lockwood? We were told you could help us.”
“Help you?”
“Find our children. You were the one who found Ry Strauss.”
I nod. It’s not true, but alas, I go with it.
“When William and I saw Ry’s picture on the news, I mean…do you want to hear something strange?”
I try to look open and accepting.
“When you found Ry Strauss…” Again she turns to look at Mr. Rowan. He doesn’t turn or even react. I don’t know whether he hears us or not. He may have aphasia, or he may be totally out of it, or he may have a great poker face. I simply don’t know. “Do you know what the weirdest part was?”
“Tell me,” I say.
“Ry was an old man now. Do you understand what I’m saying? Not old like William and me, of course. We are in our nineties, but for some reason, even though we knew better, of course, we still think of Edie and Billy as being young. Like time froze when they disappeared. Like they still look exactly like this.” Mrs. Parker takes the frame back from me. Her finger touches down on her daughter’s image, and her head tilts tenderly as it does so. “Do you think that’s strange, Mr. Lockwood?”
“No.”
She taps Mr. Rowan’s hand. “William here, he was a golfer. Do you play?” she asks me.
“I do, yes.”
“Then you’ll get this. William used to joke that he and I were on the ‘back nine’ of life—now he says the two of us are walking up the fairway on the eighteenth hole. See, we still call Edie and Billy ‘our children.’ But his Billy would have just turned sixty-five years old. My Edie would be sixty-four.”
She shakes her head in disbelief.
Normally I would find all of this tedious and beside the point, but in truth, this is why I am here. I don’t suspect that I will get any useful information from Mr. Rowan or Mrs. Parker. That’s not really the point. What I want to do is cause a stir and see what happens. Let me explain.
If Edie Parker and Billy Rowan have been alive this whole time, chances are they would have reached out to their families at some point. Perhaps not the first year or two when the heat was on them. But it has now been over forty-five years since the Jane Street Six went on the run. If “her” Edie and “his” Billy were alive, it is reasonable to assume that at some point they would have been in touch.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that Mrs. Parker (let’s leave the silent Mr. Rowan out of this for now) would tell me. Just the opposite. She would do all in her power to persuade me that she has not seen her daughter in all these years, even if she had. So—is Mrs. Parker telling me the truth or is she playing me?
That’s what I am trying to discern.
“How did you first hear about the”—what is the tactful word to use here?—“incident involving the Jane Street Six?”
“Do you mind if we don’t call them that?”
“Sorry?”
“The Jane Street Six,” Mrs. Parker says. “It makes them sound, well, like the Manson Family.”
“Yes, of course.” So much for my attempt at tact. “How did you hear about the incident?”
“A bunch of FBI agents crashed into my house. You’d have thought they were looking for Al Capone the way they busted in. Scared me and Barney half to death.”
I know this already. I’ve looked at the file. Again I’m not trying to gather information. I’m trying to gauge truthfulness and perhaps, as you’ll see in a bit, cause a reaction.
I try to make my voice properly solemn. “And you never saw your daughter again?”
She nods once. No words. Not much emotion. Just a nod.
“And you never spoke to her either?”
“I spoke to her,” she says.
I wait.
“That night. An hour before the FBI came.”
“What did she say?”
“Edie was crying.” She looks over at Mr. Rowan. He still doesn’t move, but his eyes start to water. “She said something went terribly wrong.”
“Did she say what?”
Mrs. Parker shakes her head.
“What else did she say?”
“That she and Billy would have to go away, maybe for a long time, maybe forever.”
A single tear runs down Mr. Rowan’s face. I glance at their hands. They are gripping one another’s so tightly, their skin is transforming from parchment to white.
“And then?”
“That’s it, Mr. Lockwood.”
“Edie hung up?”
“Edie hung up.”
“And?”
“And I never heard from her again. And William, he never heard from Billy.”
“What do you think happened to them?” I ask.
“We are the parents. We are the worst to ask.”
“I’m asking anyway.”
“We thought they were dead.” Mrs. Parker bites down on her lip for a moment. “I think that’s why William and me got together. After our spouses died, of course. We would never before that. But it was like our relationship was an echo of our children’s, like a tiny sliver of their love lived on and brought the two of us together.” Then Mrs. Parker echoed my very thoughts: “If my Edie and his Billy were alive all this time, they’d have found a way to let us know. That’s what we used to believe anyway.”
“You don’t believe that now?”
She shakes her head. “Now we don’t know what to believe, Mr. Lockwood. Because we also thought Ry Strauss was dead this whole time. So now, well, that’s why you’re here.”
With her free hand, Mrs. Parker reaches out for mine. I want to pull away—gut impulse, sorry—but I make myself stay still. Now her left hand holds my hand, her right hand holds Mr. Rowan’s. We probably stay that way for a second, maybe two or three, but it feels much longer.
“Now William and I have hope again,” she says, choked up. “If Ry Strauss survived all these years, maybe our children did too. Maybe Edie and Billy ran off somewhere and got married. Maybe they have children and even grandchildren of their own, and maybe, just maybe, we can all be reunited before, well, before William and me finish that eighteenth hole.”
I am not sure what to say.
“Mr. Lockwood,” she continues, “do you think Edie and Billy are alive?”
I choose my lie carefully. “I don’t know. But if they are, I will find them.”
She looks into my eyes. “I believe you.”
I wait.
“Will you contact us when you learn the truth?” Mrs. Parker asks. “Either way. We’ve been waiting a long time for closure. Do you know what that’s like?”
“I don’t,” I admit.
“Promise us you’ll tell us when you learn the truth. No matter how awful. Promise us both.”
And so I do.