My father used to lecture me about being too impulsive. “Don’t ride your emotions so much, Pepper Pot. Take the time to think it through first. You can save yourself a lot of grief, and me as well.”
He’d said that more than once, but I vividly remembered his voice from a day he’d been called to meet me in the principal’s office. I’d tried to stage a sit-in to protest a schoolmate’s expulsion. I thought they’d done it because Joey lived in a shanty and stank; it turned out to be because Joey was setting fires in the lockers. I wondered now if riding my emotions was leading me to shelter another Joey, whether Benjamin Sadawi would prove to be a fire starter as well. I didn’t seem to have learned much in twentyfive years.
I took the dogs for a short run, then went to the safe in my bedroom closet for my Smith & Wesson. I drove out to the range and fired a hundred rounds, venting my frustration with myself more than anything else. I was off the target more than I was on it, which didn’t improve my mood; I went to my office feeling that I’d better be able to use finesse to solve my problems.
I didn’t remember any finesse when Bobby called me a little after ten. It was his turn to chew me out, for not letting him know that Vishnikov was already working on Whitby. “You heard that whole discussion about where the body was and who would do the second autopsy, and you didn’t let out one peep that you already had Vish working on it.”
“I’d been the subject of a hostile interrogation for over two hours. If I said anything to that crew, I’d have been there another two hours.”
“But later, when you were alone with me?”
“Bobby, you were focusing on the Egyptian kid, and I was tired-I forgot. Have you found him yet?”
“I’m telling you, Vicki, this isn’t a joke. If you know where Benjamin Sadawi is and you’re sitting on him, like you sat on the autopsy, I am personally going to tie you up in pink ribbon and deliver you to the federal marshals.”
“Use some other color, okay?” I forgot I was going to think things through before speaking. “You know I hate sex stereotyping.”
He slammed the phone in my ear. I sat staring at nothing for a long time. The front door bell finally roused me from my stupor.
It was a messenger with a large envelope from Cheviot Labs, which included the salvageable material from Whitby’s pocket organizer, separated and placed in protective plastic, as well as several pages summarizing the work done on them and the results. Excitement at the contents made me forget my frustrations for a moment.
Kathryn Chang’s cover letter explained that she’d had to come in on a different project yesterday and had found my packet.
You said your need for analysis was urgent, so I took care of it. Most of the paper had been destroyed, first by being wet too long, and then by drying out. For future reference, if you ever need this kind of work done again, keep the paper damp until we can work on it. As far as I can tell, a small notepad suffered the most damage.
Two documents had been folded and placed in a side compartment; these were relatively intact and I was able to restore them. Of course it’s very difficult to judge paper and ink after they’ve been soaked as long as these pieces had. One was handwritten on school exercise paper that dated to the nineteen-thirties; the other typed on a 20-pound cream stock, around forty or fifty years old. I’ve placed the originals in protective casings; you should be very careful about touching them. Attached are photographed copies and transcriptions (photography preserves the original document better than photocopying).
I laid out the photoed pages. One was a typed letter to Kylie Ballantine, the other her own spidery handwritten response. So Marc had found some documents. The letters so precious that he’d kept them in his breast pocket, over his heart. My own heart beat faster as I read the typed letter.
Dear Kylie,
Despite the turns of Dame Fortune’s wheel, which dictate when we mortals shall enjoy fame and money and when we shall live by writing bilge for women’s magazines under pseudonyms (my own, in case you haven’t been reading Woman’s Day lately, is Rosemary Burke) I have a few friends remaining at the august institution you no longer grace. One of them tells me that Olin Taverner somehow came by a photograph of you dancing at the lodge for ComThought back in ‘forty-eight. He sent it to the university president with a demand that they dismiss you. I don’t know who was at the resort with a camera, and who would have supplied that prize Fascist with a picture, but you might ask Taverner.
What are you living on these days? Calvin is giving me fifty cents for Bleak Land and being hoity-toity about it in the bargain-but at least it appears under my own name, not Rosemary Burke (and does she ever at the tripe she produces!), probably next April.
Ever yours, especially when I remember that night under the stars, Armand
That didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know from the material Amy had found in the university’s archives. I pulled out my magnifying glass to help me read Kylie’s response.
Dear Armand,
I am tired of the whole wretched business. I did write to Olin Taverner, and received back a reply expressing hauteur to the nth degree, as one would expect from someone who knows he is the sole right-thinking person on the planet-Walker Bushnell is only protecting the rest of America from the likes of you and me, and instead of inveighing against Rep. Bushnell and the rest of his feebleminded ilk I should talk to “those of my own blood” to find out how Taverner got the photograph, etc., etc. If you want to pursue this with Calvin or try to find a public forum for grievance, I won’t attempt to dissuade you-but I leave on the 18th for Africa, where I shall celebrate and renew myself as my mother celebrates and renews herself. Let America chew on itself, I no longer care. I can taste and feel freedom’s canopy over me already.
Her signature flowed from the K, indecipherable as when I’d seen it at the Harsh Collection.
I turned the two documents over and over in my hands, as if somehow
that would make their meaning clearer. When Marcus Whitby found these letters, he’d taken them to Taverner. Surely even Sherlock Holmes would assume that much. Or maybe not. But something had taken Whitby to Taverner, and what else could it be but these letters, Whitby wanting to know about the photo Taverner had sent to the University of Chicago president all those years ago.
I wished Whitby’s notepad had survived the immersion, or that I’d known enough to keep it wet until I got it to Cheviot Labs. Marc had taken notes during his meeting with Taverner, that’s what Taverner’s attendant had said; the mess of gray pilling which Kathryn Chang had sealed into a protective wrapper was all that remained of those notes. Kathryn been able to pull some of it apart into fragments of pages, but only a few individual words survived: inform, disgrace, and, tired, now, the, dead, sixty. I doubt if even the Enigma machine could have put those into a meaningful sentence.
I glanced back at Kathryn Chang’s letter to me. I hadn’t read the last paragraph, in which she explained that Whitby’s PalmPilot had also been in his pocket organizer. She could send it to the electronics division to see if they could recover the data, “but this is likely to be quite expensive, so I don’t want to proceed unless you authorize the work.”