“I keep trying to tell you, and you keep trying not to believe me, but money ain’t gonna make your life any better. People in this neighborhood spend their whole lives on the clock, but they still get married and have kids. Money don’t make ‘em nicer. It don’t make ‘em live longer. It didn’t keep those other bastards in the Trade Center any safer than Harry.”
“Maybe I’m doing something a lot more complicated than just grubbing for money. Ever think about that?”
Fred shook his head. “Nope.”
Brent let out a laugh. “Why didn’t you take your own advice, smart guy?”
“What? Get married?” Fred looked at himself. “Who’da put up with me?”
“Plenty of stupid women out there.”
Fred became suddenly serious. He shrugged uncomfortably. “Putting out fires is dangerous—I don’t gotta tell you.” He turned to his flowers. “It hurts the people around you. Your mom—she wasn’t evil. She just couldn’t take it without your dad. Shit like that happens.”
Brent swallowed. This was a subject he hated. He took a deep breath then pointed toward the stakes along the back fence. “Tomatoes look good.”
Fred nodded. “Good call. Let’s talk about global warming, or the Yankees and how I hope the team plane goes down right into Stein-brenner’s fucking house when he’s in it.”
Brent sucked down about half his beer and let out a silent belch. “These conversations are always a pleasure.”
“You know, before you went off to that phony-ass west coast business school, you were gonna teach. What ever happened to that?”
Brent finished his beer and crumpled the can. “You and Maggie,” he said sourly. “I’ll do it when I’m ready.”
Fred shook his head. “You think you gotta have ten million bananas first.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Never stopped me before!”
“That’s for sure,” Brent said as he started into the house for a fresh beer.
“Get me one, too,” Fred called.
They worked in the yard until six when Fred lit the grill, and they cooked burgers and ate on the old backyard picnic table. Fred had run out of verbal steam, and by the time they finished dinner, he seemed to be in a reflective and melancholy mood.
“I give you a hard time, but I worry about you in that place,” he said after a long silence, during which they each worked on bowls of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.
“You shouldn’t.”
Fred shook his head, his eyes turning inward, giving a brief hint that he wasn’t as tough as he liked to pretend. “Nobody’s fine in New York. It either kills people or turns them into assholes.”
“People die out here, too, “Brent said. His father had raced into a burning building when Brent was twelve. Fred had been pulling hose off the truck and watched it collapse.
Fred nodded. “But lemme tell you, I put out fires in these people’s houses for thirty years. I know what these Wall Street bastards’re like, with their slicked back hair and German cars and wives that look like they been chained in the basement and starved. They don’t say ‘Thank you’ when you risk your ass saving their stupid house; they ask why you didn’t get there faster.”
Brent stood up, wiped his mouth, and picked a load of plates to take into the kitchen. “I’ve got it under control.”
“That’s what your mother said after your dad died,” Fred said with a scowl. “Anyway, you look like a goddamn lump.”
Brent straightened up as if he’d been slapped. “You know, Fred, I’m not my mother!” He went into the house then came out a moment later and collected the bowls. “It’s just my job.”
“Not everything it’s cranked up to be?”
He shrugged.
“You just remember something,” Fred said when Brent came back outside again. “When you need help and those city assholes don’t know you no more, you know where to come.”
“I know where to come.” Brent went over and put an arm around his uncle’s shoulder. “Thanks for dinner.”
Brent didn’t drive straight back to the city. Instead, he took a detour across town to a neighborhood of similar bungalows, turned onto a familiar street, and slowed toward the middle the block. To his surprise all the lights were burning in Maggie’s house. Cars were parked in the driveway and along the curb. Tightness gripped his chest, a sudden wild fear. Maybe she’d met someone else. Maybe this was some kind of celebration. He knew he should simply drive away, but he had to know.
Feeling like a fool, he pulled out his cell phone and punched in her number. It rang five times, and he was about to hang up when a man answered.
“Is Maggie there?” he asked, surprised by his hot surge of jealousy.
“Is this Brent?” the guy responded. He had a hoarse voice, New Joisey accent, and sounded older, maybe forty for forty-five.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, kiddo, it’s Spud,” the guy said with a laugh. “Where you been? How come we don’t see you ‘round the station no more?”
Joe Spedowski, or “Spud” as he was known on the Morristown PD, was Maggie’s best friend on the detective squad. “Ask your partner,” Brent said.
“Women don’t know shit. Ain’t you figured that out yet?” Spud said. “I’ll get her.”
The phone clattered on the kitchen counter. In the background, the refrigerator door opened and closed, and beer bottles clinked in the door racks. The back door creaked, and over the sudden wash of other voices came the shout, “Brent’s onna the phone.”
A second later footsteps approached, and then Maggie’s voice. “Brent?”
“Yeah,” he said, finding himself at a total loss, everything he wanted to say trapped behind a wall of reserve.
“What’s up?” she asked, already sounding distant.
“Nothing. I just wanted… sounds like you’re having a party.”
“Some people from work.”
Another voice suddenly called out, “Call him back, Maggie. You’re missing your going away party.”
“Be there in a second,” Maggie replied.
Another touch of panic. “You’re moving?” Brent asked.
“Oh,” she said dismissively. “I just got kind of transferred.”
“To what?”
“This thing called Project Seahawk. It’s port security. FBI, Coast Guard, and different police forces, kind of a task force. They wanted another computer nerd.”
“It’s a big deal!” Spud shouted. “Don’t let her tell ya it ain’t.”
“Where?” Brent asked.
“Newark.”
He felt a flood of relief. “Now you’re a commuter!” he said, trying to sound hearty. “Well, congratulations. I’ll let you get back to your party.”
“We can talk some other time.”
He tried to sift her tone for some note of encouragement, but heard nothing. “Sure.”
He clicked off the line then drove through the sparse traffic, back to his empty apartment.
SEVENTEEN
PROJECT SEAHAWK OFFICES, NEWARK, NJ, JUNE 26
FBI AGENT ANN JENKINS GRABBED an escaping strand of kinky red hair, stuffed it behind her ear, read several more paragraphs, and cursed. The document before her was labeled “Top Secret,” but as far as she was concerned it might as well have read “Transparent Ass-Saving Excuse.” It was typical CIA bullshit, full of double-talk and equivocation and void of a single hard fact. What pissed her off most was the tone, sort of a “You’re Extremely Lucky We’re Sharing This With You,” and its implication that the CIA was the REAL INTELLIGNCE SERVICE while the FBI was a bunch of bozos masquerading in dark suits.
The memo implied that some Russian-made Strella-18 missiles “might” have been stolen from a military base outside Kiev and “may” have been sold to some Middle Eastern terrorists associated with the Wahaddi Brotherhood. It concluded with the warning that what the CIA termed the “package” “might” be headed for the continental U.S.