“Wanna see what got my brother killed?” John said motioning upstairs in the two family house that the Remos lived in since their sons were three and thirteen. On the way up the stairs was a framed photo of John and other hard hats down at “the pile.” It made Bill stop.
“John, you were there?”
“No, not just me — the whole union. We all turned out. There was thousands of metric tons of steel there, had to cut it where it lay. Every time we came across remains, we had to stop. Then there was a ceremony; then we’d start working again. There was 250 tons of human remains compressed into the 10-story pile.”
As they went up the stairs, the effort made John cough. 9-11 sickness Hiccock thought. At the top, under a table, were work boots that looked like they were sitting in pancakes. John bent down and got them. “No, look see, these were brand fucking new, first day look, look here, the souls are melted. That fucking pile was like walking on an oven for 10 days. Brand new fucking pair of steel toes — instant garbage. That was some hell of a place. But we cleaned it up in record time.”
“You guys were amazing.”
“No, sometimes I think we should-a let it sit there forever, to remind everybody what those fuckers did to us. People, they are forgetting, getting soft, letting down their guard. It’s not good, I tell ya.”
“The President and me, we’ll never forget, John.”
“No, you’ll keep all those Washington jerks on the trigger, no, I know that.”
Bill suddenly remembered why John’s nickname growing up was “Johnny ‘No’.”
“C’mere, let me show you what I brung you up here for.”
Bill remembered the hallway, from when they were kids and the bathroom at the end of the hall. How embarrassed he was one night, when, on a sleepover, he walked in on Anna washing her nylons in the sink. She was in a slip, but in those days, even seeing your friend’s mom in a slip was a weird and creepy thing. They went into what used to be Peter’s room. There, amid the guest bed and older furniture, was a box of stuff. John reached in and pulled out a gray envelope with the old, interlocking blue NBC logo on it. Inside was a brown binder with yellowed pages. John flipped open the binder; it was a photocopy of a book. It looked as if someone had laid it flat on a copy machine.
Bill was frozen. Just as Peter described. Holy shit he wasn’t hallucinating…at least about this part.
“This is what I figured got Petey killed.”
Bill felt as though someone had just showed him the original draft to a Shakespeare play. This was the book Peter told him about on the steps of the Memorial.
“How do you know he was killed over anything more than a bar fight?”
“No, what the fuck was he doing in France? No, he never cared about places like that. I’m telling you, that old man got whacked, then Peter went on his crusade shit and bam now he’s dead.”
“Old man? You mean Professor Ensiling?”
“Bingo! Dat guy!
“I hear you, John, but Joey Palumbo — you remember Joey — he works with me now.”
“No, Palumbo? No shit. Last I heard he was working with the feds.”
“Yeah, I kinda screwed that up for him, so now we…anyway, he checked the Ensiling thing out, and he says the fat lady sang natural on this professor guy.”
“No, Billy, I don’t mean to argue here, but that’s bullshit. Peter told me about the threats, the attempts, the time they missed him and the old guy and killed that broad.”
“John, I never heard about any woman being shot.”
“No, all I’m saying here is that this book, with all this gobbledygook and fucking formulas, got everybody killed. You want it?”
“After a sales job like that? Yeah, sure I want it, John. I’m dying to have somebody come after me, too.”
“Then at least you’ll know Peter was right? No?”
Bill just looked at his childhood friend’s smirking face. “Thanks a lump.”
Between what was in Peter’s files and Mrs. Remo cajoling him to stay for cake and coffee, Bill just made the 8 o’clock back to D.C. from La Guardia and decided to skip going to the office and had his driver take him directly home. It was 9:30 and the funeral had taken more of a toll on him than he realized. The thought of going home to Janice and splicing into some iota of a normal routine was a comfortable idea.
He rolled out the garbage cans to the front of the driveway and went into the house from the garage entrance into the kitchen. As if he were eight years old, there on the fridge, being held up by magnets shaped like bananas, oranges, watermelon slices, and lemons, was the Time magazine cover. Under it was a Post-it note that read, “I always wanted to tramp around with a ‘cover boy.’ I await you upstairs Mr. Bond.”
Bill smiled, opened the fridge, grabbed the orange juice, and was about to take a slug from it, when the door closed and he was looking right at the cover picture of him with the President of the United States. Self-consciously, he got a glass from the cabinet and poured.
Janice was under the covers and her body was radiating heat. He snuggled close and she spoke softly into the pillow. “You look like you should be the President in that picture, Billy boy.” She reached around and pulled him into her.
Bill kissed her neck. “You’re just saying that to have your way with me…”
“I’m going to have my way no matter what I say, Mr. Commander n’ Geek.” Then she rolled over and made good on her promise.
Forty-five minutes later, she was curling Bill’s hair around her finger while he dozed off with his arm over her stomach, his head on her chest. “Did you read it?”
“What?”
“The article; did you get a chance to read it?”
“Yeah, good writing. Like a serialization of a novel.”
“Bill, I am concerned.”
Now he was up. He rolled over on his back, sat up, and took a swig of the orange juice in the glass. He jutted it to Janice as if to ask, “Want some?”
She shook her head. “The article makes it seems like you single-handedly caught the terrorist mastermind.”
“Jan, you know I can’t really talk about this…”
“Yes I know. But what if these guys get pissed off at you?”
“Who?”
“The terrorists; what if they come after you, personally? If I were them, and I read that article, I’d want to kill you for ruining my plans.”
“Hey, I’m an American, so they’d want to kill me for that alone. I’m in the government, so that’s another reason. And I let you speak back to me and go out in public with your face and ankles showing, so they can cut my head off three times before they ever get to ‘I ruined their party.’” He dragged his index finger under his chin in a slashing gesture for emphasis.
Janice grabbed the finger, pulled his hand to her lips, and kissed it. “God damn you, I am serious!”