Raj was standing as he watched the flat screen television. He was intrigued by what he saw in Gabriel Hauser. The man was striking. He had that slender muscularity of a professional soccer player. He was intense, he was well-spoken, and he was vengeful.
Raj Gandhi wanted to speak to Gabriel Hauser.
Raj was resourceful. He had not only his own instincts and training as a reporter, he also had the resources of a fading and uncertain but still potent newspaper that, for the most part, was not afraid of letting its reporters loose to do investigative journalism.
Using his computer, Raj learned several things about Gabriel Hauser. He was thirty-eight. He was the son of a failed concert performer, once a briefly rising star for the New York Philharmonic who had committed suicide when Gabriel was twenty-seven. After several years in the Army, Gabriel was dismissed, in the midst of service in Afghanistan and Iraq, under the don’t ask, don’t tell rules which were then still in place and rigidly enforced. He had sent an angry, bitter letter to the editors at the Times, which declined to publish it. Like all other letters submitted to the editors, it had been lodged in the infinite ether of the Times archival information.
Checking a database that was even more thorough than census data, Raj located Gabriel Hauser living at 17 East 82nd Street. There was no telephone number. Roaming through other data, Raj found that Cameron Kennedy Dewar lived at the same address and in the same apartment. Again, no telephone number or e-mail address. But a ten second Google search revealed Cameron Kennedy Dewar worked at a public relations firm on West 23rd Street, the area around the wedge-shaped Flatiron Building that had attracted PR firms, publishing houses, and literary agents over the last ten years. They had migrated there from the overpriced office space in midtown Manhattan. The only object on the walls of Raj’s sparsely furnished, undecorated apartment was a reproduction of Alfred Stieglitz’s photograph of the Flatiron Building, in the rain at dusk more than a hundred years earlier. He loved that strange, rain-drenched photograph.
Almost from the day more than six months earlier when his byline first appeared in the Times as a writer covering the city, Raj started receiving calls from PR people representing companies, executives, lawyers, actors, and sports stars, all that vast array of people who wanted favorable coverage for every jerk in the world in the New York Times. One of the cardinal rules Raj had learned when he was in journalism school at Columbia was that you never relied on PR people for information.
Raj was familiar with the firm where Cameron Kennedy Dewar worked. Raj also knew that, if he placed a call there asking for Cameron Kennedy Dewar and identifying himself as a reporter for the Times, he would get instant attention. This was his conduit to Gabriel Hauser. For any PR agency, a call from a reporter for the Times was like a summons from royalty.
“Can I ask you to hold?” a perky young woman who answered the phone said.
Sixty seconds later, an older woman with a crisp corporate style came on the line. “Mr. Gandhi? This is Jessica Brown. So good to hear from you. What can we do to help you?”
“I’m trying to reach Cameron Dewar.”
“Cameron’s not in the office today. Can I help you?”
“I’d like his cell phone number.”
“We haven’t heard from him since the attack. His cell may not be working. He lives right next to the museum. Are you sure I can’t help you?”
“You can, Miss Brown. I’d like his cell number.”
“Are you working on a story?”
Raj Gandhi was always unnervingly polite. “I’m really not sure. I’m just making calls that I need to make. I’d very much appreciate his number.”
“It’s 917-631-0011.” She paused, and in that pause Raj thought about how indifferent this woman was to the fate of someone she knew well. She clearly had no idea whether he was alive or dead, injured or not. She was all business. “Do you want me to repeat that?”
“No, I have it, thank you.”
“I hope I can take you to lunch when the dust settles.”
Raj, who never went to lunch with anyone, said, “That would be nice, Miss Brown.”
Three hours later Raj sat on a bench near the merry-go-round in the heart of the southern expanse of Central Park. The afternoon was limpid, as clear as the day before. Incredibly, the merry-go-round was operating. Gleeful-sounding kids sat on the big shiny horses while, less than a mile away, smoke still rose from the shattered museum. Most of the plaster horses reared up, forelegs in the air, perpetually ready to gallop. Raj, who had never seen a merry-go-round while growing up in India, was struck by how terrifying the frozen, brightly painted animals looked.
He recognized Gabriel Hauser. Dressed in a blue blazer and white shirt open at the neck, Gabriel walked toward Raj although he’d never seen him before. It wasn’t difficult to recognize an emaciated, intelligent-looking Indian man sitting in the area where they had agreed to meet.
Raj stood up. “Dr. Hauser, thanks for coming.”
Gabriel, who was at least a head taller than Raj Gandhi, said, “Not a problem.”
They sat next to each other. Raj let five seconds pass before he spoke. “I heard what you said on television.”
“That’s good. I said it because I wanted people to hear it.”
Gabriel was a man who had learned to hesitate before trusting anyone. He had never before dealt with journalists. He was still stung by that question he had heard two hours earlier as he walked through the door of the brownstone: Why were you thrown out of the Army? He realized that he shouldn’t have been taken aback by the question. There were hostile people in the world who were quickly searching Google and Yahoo for and finding negative, private information about him. Gabriel said, “Cam told me about your conversation with him.”
“I’m developing a story about the government’s reaction to the bombings. More precisely, about violations of people’s civil rights.”
“So Cam told me. Now I want to hear you tell me.”
Raj knew that sometimes he needed to give information before he got it. Often the information he let out was not completely accurate, just as many times information he got in exchange wasn’t accurate either. With his usual precise diction, an accent that he knew put some people off, he said, “I have sources who tell me secret arrests are taking place.”
Gabriel for the first time managed to get Raj to look into his eyes. He wondered whether the frail-looking man was shy or evasive. Or even a closeted gay man. Gabriel said nothing.
“I have reason to believe there are secret detention centers, black prisons, in Manhattan where these men have been brought.”
Between Gabriel and the frail-looking man was a silver commemorative plaque embedded in the bench’s green-painted wood. The engraved lettering read: To J.C. Lover of the park and of life. Gone too soon. C.T.
Who, Gabriel wondered, were these people? Did C.T. still grieve?
“So tell me,” Gabriel said, “why you wanted to see me.”
“I’m looking into more than the violation of their rights, if, in fact, these arrests and detentions have happened.”
“Draw the connection for me.”
“Your rights. Someone has tried to terrorize you.”
“No one is going to terrorize me, Mr. Gandhi. Do you know who’s doing all this?”
“I’m not sure, Dr. Hauser. The mayor? The police commissioner? Rogue agents? Homeland Security? I was hoping you’d have some information.”
“Do you?”