Concert of Ghosts Read online

  “Security for what?”

  Tennant had a moment in which his brain, like a bad tent, collapsed on him, and he couldn’t see anything. And then this cleared and he was watching two people come out of St. Mary’s and the way some of the security men formed a loose circle around this pair while the others spread out into the crowd. People were singing, We love you, Bobby. Oh yes we do. Maggie had raised her fists jubilantly. He remembered that, the glow on her face, the smile lit like a Christmas tree.

  He said, “Bobby and Ethel Kennedy came out of the church. They started to walk up toward the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. It was the day before the California primary, Bobby was campaigning here. I guess he’d been to mass in the church. There were all kinds of people round him and his wife. Well-wishers. Security. People singing. We love you, Bobby.”

  He thought: Bobby looks young and haggard, as if a premonition of his violent death, a little more than twenty-four hours away, already weighed on him. Ethel is bright, buoyant, and yet in some fashion somber at the heart of her appearance. They are doomed, both of them, but they don’t know it yet. Tomorrow, in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Bobby will die from gunshot wounds.

  The pantry.

  But that isn’t it either. That isn’t what caused you to raise your hand and point. You weren’t pointing at Bobby and Ethel Kennedy.

  “I saw something,” he said.

  “What, Harry?”

  Something. Somebody else. He stopped talking. The memory wouldn’t come. He remembered only this: raising his hand, pointing a finger, faces turning, Obe swinging his head around to follow the direction of Tennant’s finger.

  “What did you see, Harry?”

  “I can’t get a bearing on it—”

  “Harry.”

  “I can’t—”

  “One last step, that’s all.”

  The crowds, the security people, some of them with walkie-talkies, others with small listening devices attached to their ears, Bobby and Ethel emerging from the church. He saw all that, but he couldn’t grasp what it was that had drawn his attention across the street. He remembered the negative in Karen Obe’s house, and he thought: There is an accusatory quality in my gesture, and surprise. And cold cold recognition.

  But I can’t see now what I saw then.

  He was aware of a dark brown car edging up to the sidewalk outside the church and idling there. The man in the doorway glanced at the car, moved one hand. It was hard to tell what the motion meant. Quick, surreptitious, a gesture that alarmed Tennant. This is the wrong place, he thought. The wrong time. The vehicle started forward toward the intersection, where it was boxed in by traffic moving on Grant. The man in the shadowy doorway was still again.

  “Try, Harry,” Alison said. “Try.”

  Tennant’s memory was a shipwrecked thing. I lift my hand, I extend a finger, at what? They sweated it out of me, he thought. They made me forget. They went inside my head and killed me.

  He leaned against the wall. His legs were weak. I was instructed not to remember this. This is forbidden territory. There is barbed wire hung all around it, and warning signs. I touch the wire and I will bleed.

  He watched the dark brown car cross the intersection.

  “Harry,” the girl was saying.

  Tennant felt her shake his arm. He fought for the memory. He strained toward it. Nothing. Bobby and Ethel, security goons, cheers, we love you Bobby oh yes we do. Beyond that nothing.

  He looked at the girl. His head was filled with silences. He tried to speak. Turn the page, Harry. Look again. What did you see that day?

  The man in the doorway had taken a step forward and gray light struck him now.

  Something is wrong with this, Tennant thought. There was a confusing juxtaposition of past and present, time had gone all wrong, cogs and wheels had come undone and were rattling uselessly inside the clock. The man on the other side of the street walked to the edge of the sidewalk and stopped, gazing across at Tennant, who was no longer sure of the boundary separating now from then. It was an indistinct borderline badly etched in his brain. Past or present, did it make any difference? He had no way of knowing what the date was, whether he was suspended in a distortion of time—had he fallen through cracks in the flimsy edifice of the years?

  Rayland Tennant was crossing toward him.

  Harry, beset by confusion, heard the crowd sing, saw Bobby and Ethel besieged by supporters, saw the security men whose limitations would be tragically exposed twenty-four hours later in Los Angeles—all this clamored in his head as Rayland crossed the street. And then his father was standing a mere two or three feet away, his expression mournfully reproachful.

  He knew now what he had seen on this street on the day Bobby Kennedy had gone inside St. Mary’s to celebrate his last mass. He knew.

  Rayland said, “I told you to keep away, Harry. I warned you.”

  Tennant didn’t hear his father. “I saw you here,” he said. “I saw you in the crowd.”

  Rayland looked impassive. “So you saw me. What else?”

  “You and Harker. You were together that day.”

  Tennant looked toward the intersection. The chocolate-colored car had made an arc and was coming back. He jabbed his finger into his father’s chest. He prodded hard and the old man stepped back, wincing slightly.

  “I must have thought—what the hell is he doing here? What’s Harker doing here? They aren’t Kennedy people. They aren’t supporters. They’re opposed, like all their cronies in Pentagon circles, to everything Bobby stands for. So what the fuck are they doing here?”

  “And what were we doing, Harry? Do tell.”

  Tennant saw the picture clearly now. The glass sparkled, the images shone.

  The dark brown car was moving slowly.

  “You and Harker were standing on the edge of the crowd, Rayland. You were talking to a couple of security guys. One of them had one of those walkie-talkie things in his hand.”

  “Yes, Harry?”

  “You saw me. You happened to look across at Obe taking his photographs, and you saw me. Exactly at the same time as I noticed you and Harker.” Tennant paused. Rayland has his head inclined, the security men are listening as he talks, Noel Harker, in a felt hat, is standing in the manner of a man who fears discovery, recognition, Rayland turns and looks in the direction of Obe, and Harry Tennant, who shouldn’t have been there, raises his arm, Obe’s shutter closes, something is captured then and for all time. Five kids in a picture. A collision of realities. A murderous alignment. An accident of geography and history.

  “And then Harry?”

  “Next day Bobby was dead.”

  Rayland Tennant turned his face in the direction of the brown car. He appeared anxious, stressed. He looked a moment at Alison before turning his face back to his son. “And you draw some conclusion from my appearance on this street and Kennedy’s murder?”

  A conclusion, Tennant thought. That was the easy part, and the most difficult. “You had a foot in the door, Rayland. You had people on the inside. I don’t give a shit about the mechanics, but somehow you and Harker managed to buy your way into the circle. So the security guys look the wrong way. Or maybe they react too slowly. I don’t know. But they sure as hell weren’t doing their job, were they, Rayland? They took their eye off the ball long enough for Sirhan Sirhan to do his thing in the Ambassador Hotel.”

  “Sirhan was a sick man who acted alone, Harry.”

  “Yeah yeah. Here’s the way I see it. He was one of yours. Maybe you had Lannigan fuck with him the way he did with me and Maggie Silver. Maybe. I don’t know. But I’m not buying into this, Rayland. You and Harker and your associates did the spadework. Sirhan was the cannon.”

  Rayland caught Harry’s hand tightly. “All you have is some pretty wild stuff, Harry. Faces in a crowd. Ancient history. Nothing you can substantiate.”

  “Substantiate? Jesus Christ, what kind of word is that? How can you stand there and spout crap, Rayland? Kids are
dead. Lives have been ruined. All because you had to cover your bloody tracks. Don’t talk to me about proof. I don’t want to hear about confirmation. I saw what I saw. And so did those other miserable bastards who just happened to be passing along a street when somebody says, ‘Hey kids, I want to take your photograph.”’ Tennant, who could no longer stand Rayland’s touch, pulled his hand away.

  “You blame me for them, Harry?”

  “Yeah, I blame you. What do you expect? An award?”

  “You don’t understand, Harry.”

  “What’s to understand? You were involved in Kennedy’s murder. You tried to cover your tracks. You killed. You wrecked lives. What is there to understand? What can possibly justify the things you did? And don’t feed me bullshit about how you weren’t in this alone, you had associates, the decision wasn’t just yours—”

  “You can still be very naive,” Rayland said. “You have no grasp of reality at times.”

  “Fuck off, Rayland—”

  “Try to see it from another angle, Harry. Certain parties felt, quite rightly, that Bobby would be a complete disaster for this country.”

  Quite rightly. A good Rayland phrase. “What parties? Your chums in the Pentagon? Noel Harker’s crowd? Your friends in the arms business? They didn’t like Bobby, did they?”

  “A lot of people didn’t like Bobby,” Rayland said. “But the lines are not quite as clear as you might wish, Harry. You’re looking for simple answers, but you aren’t going to find them. It’s far more complicated than you’ll ever understand.”

  “What’s complicated? I think it’s dead simple, Rayland. Bobby wants us out of an idiot war. Right? He’s running on that platform. No more Vietnam. And that means no more profits for your friends. No more fancy expensive weapons for Southeast Asia. This is what I understand, Rayland. You killed people. Directly, indirectly, you think I give a damn? You’re a fucking monster.”

  “A monster, Harry?” The old man gazed at Harry with a look of profound sorrow. “Would a monster have protected his son the way I’ve done for years? Would a monster have spared Maggie Silver because she happened to be carrying your child?” And here he smiled in a forlorn way at Alison. “I don’t think so, Harry. A monster would have disposed of you long before this. That’s what Harker wanted, Harry. He wanted you—what’s his nice expression?—deep-sixed? He wanted you out of the way once and for all. I fought hard against that. For you. For your child.”

  Your child, Tennant thought. Maggie’s little girl. “Protection. Is that what you call it? Is that the nice antiseptic name you give to fucking with other people’s minds?”

  Rayland Tennant said, “I did what I could, Harry. I did what I thought I had to do.”

  “Yeah. You’re a terrific father all right. A prince. Couldn’t have asked for one better.”

  Alison touched Tennant’s hand. In other circumstances, vastly different ones, Tennant thought that this might be quite a reunion. But it was tainted, and dreadful, and all the life had gone out of Alison’s face, all the vibrancy vanished. He put his arm around her shoulder and drew her against him. She turned her face into his shoulder.

  The brown car was coming toward the place where they stood. Tennant watched the wheels come up over the sidewalk, saw the back door open.

  The men who emerged from the vehicle were not strangers. Noel Harker stepped out first, his face dark and angry and determined. Noel Harker, who had been that day in Chinatown with Rayland, conspiring among the crowds. Behind Harker was fat Walter Swin, without sunglasses. Walter Swin, insurance agent. The man with good plastic credentials. And then there was Frank Rozak, fake attorney, Rayland’s man in upstate New York; Frank Rozak, whose big arthritic hand concealed a pistol.

  Rayland gave a quick little signal. The men spread out, moving in Tennant’s direction. Tennant pushed the girl aside and said Run, but she didn’t move. She had once said she was going all the way. And this was it. This was all the way. There was no place left to go.

  He drew her closer to him and gazed at his father. The old man’s look was of inexpressible regret.

  “I am going to ask you and Alison to get into the back of the car,” Rayland said politely. “I don’t want a scene.”

  All this would lack the necessary refinement for him of course, this unseemly situation on a public street. He would feel exposed here. Indelicate matters were best dealt with in less obvious places. Back rooms, clinics, private clubs, locations where men met to decide the course of history, who would live, who would die. The brokers of power, the corrupt, the criminal.

  “Where are we going, Rayland?”

  The old man didn’t answer. Tennant knew anyway. He was crowded toward the car, Alison and himself jammed between Rayland’s people. He thought of the gun in the pocket of his coat. He’d go for it because there wasn’t any alternative. He’d drag it out and use it here on this street corner with cable cars clattering past and people moving along the sidewalk into the heart of Chinatown. He put his hand in his pocket quickly and fumbled the pistol out, but Noel Harker struck him with a fist to the side of the neck, and dizzied by the blow, he slackened his hold on the gun, which tumbled to the ground. Rozak picked it up quickly.

  Noel Harker struck him again, a short, sharp, angular punch directed to his throat. It was as if Harker had been waiting years for this opportunity to inflict pain on Tennant, a personal matter, a grudge grown out of the strategic differences between himself and Rayland Tennant. I want to hurt your boy, Rayland. I want to kill the sonofabitch.

  “No more,” Rayland was saying. “Enough, for the love of God. Enough, Harker.”

  Harry went down on his knees. His voice was all but gone, his senses in disarray. He raised his face, looked at Alison, tried to say something to her, he wasn’t sure what. Noel Harker dragged Tennant to his feet. For a moment Tennant found himself looking directly in the colonel’s eyes, and what he saw there was the light of rage, the kind of fire in which conspiracies are forged and murders elaborately plotted. Tennant was afraid because there was no bottom to Harker’s expression, no place where you could say: This is it, this is where the rage dies.

  He was being hustled inside the car. Frank Rozak’s pistol was stuck into his ribs. Resentful, Tennant found strength enough to bring his elbow up and thrust it into Rozak’s chest, and for a moment the man lost his balance, but the moment wasn’t long enough for Tennant to grab the girl and run, because Harker brought up a fist again and, despite Rayland’s cry of protest, struck Tennant in the side of the face. Tennant’s mouth filled with the bitter saliva of nausea. Somebody gripped him under his shoulders and dumped him into the back of the car. He was dimly aware of Alison—protesting, swearing, kicking out in angry gestures that were ultimately futile—being pushed in beside him. She raised a hand to the side of his face. He thought he saw his own blood on her fingertips.

  Through the zigzagging waves of his pain he was conscious of a figure in the front of the car. The man turned.

  “This time we’ll heal you properly, Harry,” Lannigan said and smiled his graceful solicitous smile.

  Tennant heard doors close. Not just inside the car, but everywhere. Door after door after door.

  19

  He didn’t know where he was, or how long he’d been sleeping. When he awoke he was stunned by the searing whiteness of his surroundings. He twisted his head, seeing a small window set high up, gray light beyond.

  Then he knew.

  He tried to rise but couldn’t. A straitjacket confined him to the bed. In frustration, he thrashed against it, a useless pastime. His face throbbed. The inside of his mouth was intolerably dry, his gums adhering to his inner lips. He’d been given drugs. Painkillers. Painkillers to begin with. Then some kind of massive downer.

  He drifted off to sleep.

  When he awoke next, he had a faint recollection of somebody standing over him and sticking a needle into his arm with great care and consideration. He hadn’t felt the injection. He slept again. Later
, he was given water to sip through an angular straw and injected again. He had no idea how long this routine went on because time had imploded, broken into fragments of dreams in the course of which Lannigan appeared—friendly, cheerful, shirtsleeves rolled up in the way of a man who means business. Lannigan talked to him quietly. He used the tones of a schoolmaster speaking to a difficult child.

  Sometimes a man goes to the edge, then goes a step further, boyo, and before you know it, why, he’s fallen over the goddamn cliff.

  What we have to do, Harry, is take you apart and rebuild you like you were a car. We lubricate this, change that, make an adjustment to your suspension—just like a car. And then you’re whole again, you’re off and running.

  Tennant swore at the man and kicked against the restraints of the harness that tethered him to the bed. He kicked until his muscles ached painfully. Fuck you, Lannigan. Fuck you. I’m not a goddamn machine.

  Ah, you’re wrong. We’re all machines, Harry. Wonderful machines. Intricate and lovely. And repairable. That’s the best part. We can salvage ourselves.

  I know your kind of salvage, Lannigan.

  Sleep easy, boyo.

  I don’t want to sleep, you sonofabitch.

  A needle punctured Tennant’s flesh. His anger disintegrated. He slept, didn’t dream. When he awoke, dehydrated, bound to the hard narrow bed, he thought: I know what I saw in San Francisco. I know what happened there. They can’t exorcise that. I will hold on to that. During everything that follows, I will hold hard to that.

  He wondered where Alison might be. He asked Lannigan once or twice, but the shrink merely made reassuring noises. You’ll see her soon, boyo. Trust me.

  Trust you?

  Lannigan had an easy manner. Sometimes we suffer delusions, Harry. We think we see things that don’t exist. And sometimes we experience what I’d call false memories. We believe such and such happened but in reality it didn’t. And that’s where your problem lies.

  Tennant kept his eyes shut tight and thought about Alison. If he concentrated on the girl, he’d stand a chance against the drugs and the sweet persuasiveness of Lannigah’s voice and those periods in which he drifted out into a warm welcoming ocean of sleep. Sometimes, when Lannigan came into his room and Harry cursed him, the Irishman would sigh, a prolonged expulsion of air, a weary sound. Dear oh dear oh dear. Lannigan had a way of seeming to blame himself for the shortfalls of his patients; his sighs were little arrows of despondency, as if the limitations of his profession made him despair.