They moved to the river side of the path, taking in the rush of water as it made its way out to the sea. The East River was a source of endless fascination for Bernard; he could spend hours watching the current sweep all manner of debris past their vantage point. It was just one of the many wondrous things the world reserved for the entertainment of the young.
“Look! Over in the water. Is that some kind of animal?” Bernard asked, gesturing with his small hand at an object bobbing against the concrete pilings near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The old man peered at the area where his great-grandson was pointing, straining to see. His vision wasn’t what it used to be. Nothing was, really, but it beat the alternative.
“I…I don’t see what you’re looking at,” he admitted.
“Right there, in the water, by the posts. It’s floating,” Bernard urged.
“Oh, I see. Nah, it’s probably some kinda garbage. Don’t look like no animal. Too big for a dog,” he said, and then finally was able to better focus and get a clearer look at the mystery object. He gasped, then concentrated on getting his voice under control so he wouldn’t alarm Bernard. The little boy sensed something was wrong and looked up into the old man’s dim eyes.
“Bernard, come on, come away from there. We gotta go call the police. It looks like somebody mightta fallen in the water.” In spite of his efforts to stay calm, the old man was twitching with agitation by now. He’d gotten a good enough look to know that what they were looking at was indeed no dog.
They made their way to the nearest pay phone, and with trembling hands he dialed 911. The operator took down his information and assured him there would be a squad car on site within a few minutes and asked that he wait for it to show up so he could pinpoint the location. He agreed to do so, more because he wanted to see how the cops would react than anything else.
The old man and Bernard sat expectantly on a nearby bench, watching the joggers as they waited for the police to show up. It was exciting for them both when the car arrived and the two uniformed officers got out and asked him to show them what they’d seen. It wasn’t often that Bernard got to stand in the spotlight and be the center of adult attention. He nervously walked to the edge of the path, trailed by the old man and the police, and thrust his tiny finger in the direction of the object in the river.
The cops exchanged glances, and the old man read their faces, knowing that this was going to present an interruption in their morning traffic patrol routine.
A grossly distended body bumped against the pilings, wedged there by the current as the river forged its way out into the harbor on its journey to the sea. The submersion had already begun to take its toll on the bloated pale blue flesh of the waterlogged corpse.
Michael woke late and went through an abbreviated workout before showering and making his way down to the coffee shop. He’d toyed with the idea of trying the other place at the far end of the block, but decided against being adventurous with his breakfasts. There was a certain comfort to knowing the food was going to be good and the coffee hot and plentiful, so he saw no reason to broaden his admittedly narrow horizons.
He bought a paper from the magazine vendor and settled into his usual booth. The café was filled with older folks, who had the distinct aura of having no particular place to be or adhering to any well-defined schedule. He supposed that was what retirement must be like — endless mornings at the corner diner, arguing politics or religion with the same acquaintances you saw every day, whose minds had consistently failed to be changed for years. Michael was by far the youngest person in the place, with the exception of a sketchy twenty-something year old couple in the back who looked either badly hung over or in need of a fix. Or both.
He opened the paper and scanned the news with a cynical eye. The government was claiming the economy was in fair shape, which everyone knew to be an outright lie. Inflation was said to be tame, which ignored that items like food and gas were excluded from the data. So as long as you didn’t need to eat or go anywhere or buy anything that got onto a truck or a boat, inflation was low. Gold and silver were up fifty percent over the last two years, signaling that the dollar had fifty percent less buying power. But the talking heads ignored such trivialities, choosing instead to focus on home prices, which were carving fresh lows.
It was funny because, at the time Michael had been growing up, his parents had been staunchly patriotic; to the point where they automatically assumed that Michael would spend some time in the military serving his country. There was never the slightest hesitation. But since then, something had changed. The disenchantment that had begun with the Iraq war had grown deeper after the economy fell apart in 2008, when former Wall Street bankers leading the treasury handed out the nation’s cash to their friends like it was play money. The politicians who accepted the largest funding from the financial sector nodded along like it was all business as usual. And now, many in the middle class had lost much, if not everything, even as those same banks, which wouldn’t even exist were it not for the country’s tax dollars, booked record profits quarter after quarter, and speculators who had helped structure the mortgage vehicles that collapsed the economy made billions while the rank and file picked up the tab.
Everyone Michael knew was in harsher financial shape than they had been a decade earlier, and it didn’t look like it was going to get better any time soon. New York was largely an exception because the entities that had most benefitted from the taxpayers’ generosity were based there, so the money tap was never shut off. But in the heartland, in the states between Los Angeles and New York, the country was struggling as those in positions of power shortchanged them time and time again. It sucked, but nobody had ever told Michael life was supposed to be fair, so he wasn’t in the least surprised. Abuse of power had been a constant throughout human history, and he didn’t see why anything would suddenly change, absent divine intervention.
He supposed he was thinking along these lines because of the manuscript, which made abundantly clear that there were two sets of rules: those for the general population and those that the rich and powerful lived by. That was one of the reasons the allegations in the document were so incendiary — it documented a system so cynical and so different than what was represented outwardly, as to make a mockery of the country’s identity. It was a manifesto to create social unrest on an epic scale. Michael could envision rioting in the streets as a very real consequence. But the real question was, what would the population do if it turned out its leadership had been provably running a drug smuggling, murder-for-hire and financial swindling racket for decades with the most nefarious criminal cartels on the planet — all the while pretending to be their mortal enemies?
That was one of the most troubling aspects of the manuscript for Michael at a personal level. He’d been in active duty and seen his friends take bullets in the 1990s in the Middle East, and he knew more than a few families who’d lost children during almost a decade of continuing action in Iraq and Afghanistan while battling in the name of democracy. It was impossible for him to believe that it was all artifice, but if the document’s revelations turned out to be true, then facts were facts, however unpalatable. It would mean that a lot of what he held sacred and had fought for was a living lie. He could see that there would be a whole lot of angry people out there who wouldn’t take kindly to such information.
How in the hell had he gotten involved in this in the first place? What a nightmare. He almost wished he could just rewind a few days and remain blissfully ignorant. Knowing such truths wasn’t exactly a peace-of-mind builder.