In Sunlight or In Shadow Page 6

  32¼ × 40¾ in. (81.9 × 103.5 cm). Indianapolis Museum of Art,

  William Ray Adams Memorial Collection, 47.4 © Edward Hopper

  THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED

  BY LEE CHILD

  I came out of my deposition feeling pretty good about it. My answers were brief and concise. My control was good. I said nothing I shouldn’t have said. I used an old trick someone taught me long ago, which was to count to three in my head before replying to a question. Name? One, two, three, Albert Anthony Jackson. The trick mitigates against hasty and unwise responses. Because it gives you time to think. It drives them crazy, but there’s nothing they can do about it. The oath doesn’t say “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all within three seconds of opposing counsel shutting his yap.” Try it. One day it will save your ass. Because unwise responses are tempting at times. As in my case that morning. The committee chairman had a clear agenda. The very first substantive question out of his mouth was, “Why aren’t you in the armed services?” As if I was a coward, or a moral degenerate of some kind. To take my credibility away, I supposed, if necessary, if the deposition ever came to light.

  “I have a wooden leg,” I said.

  Which was true. Not from Pearl Harbor or anything. Not that I discourage the assumption. Truthfully I was run over by a Model T Ford in the state of Mississippi. A narrow wooden wheel, a hard tire, a splintered shin, a rural doctor miles from anywhere. He took the easy way out by taking the leg off below the knee. No big deal. Except the army didn’t want me. Or the navy. But they wanted everyone else. Which meant by the summer of 1942 the FBI was hurting for recruits. The leg didn’t worry them. Maple, like a baseball bat. Not that they asked. They gave me training, and then a badge and a gun, and then they sent me out in the world.

  So a year later I was armed, at least, if not in the service. But even then the guy gave no ground. He said, “I’m sorry to hear about your misfortune,” disapprovingly, accusingly, as if I had been careless, or long premeditated a plan to avoid the draft. But after that we got along fine. He stuck mainly to procedural questions about the investigation, and one, two, three, I answered them all, and I was out of the room by a quarter to twelve. Feeling pretty good, as I said, until Vanderbilt grabbed me in the corridor and told me I had to go do another one.

  “Another what?” I said.

  “Deposition,” he said. “Although not really. No oath. No bullshit. Strictly off the record, for our own files.”

  I said, “Do we really want our files to be different than their files?”

  “The decision has been made,” Vanderbilt said. “They want the truth to be recorded somewhere.”

  He took me to a different room, where we waited for twenty minutes, and then a stenographer came in, ready to take notes. She was an ample, hard-bodied thing. Maybe thirty. Brassy blonde hair. I figured she would look good in a bathing suit. She didn’t want to talk. Then Slaughter came in. Vanderbilt’s boss. He claimed to be related to Enos Slaughter of the St. Louis Cardinals, but no one believed him.

  We all sat down, and Slaughter waited until the hardbody had her pencil poised, and then he said, “OK, tell us the story.”

  I said, “All of it?”

  “For our own internal purposes.”

  “It was Mr. Hopper’s idea,” I said.

  Always better to get the blame in early.

  “This is not a witch-hunt,” Slaughter said. “Start at the beginning. Your name. For posterity.”

  One, two, three.

  “Albert Anthony Jackson,” I said.

  “Position?”

  “I’m an FBI special agent temporarily detached for the duration.”

  “To where?”

  “Where we are right now,” I said.

  “Which is what?”

  “The project,” I said.

  “State its name, for the record.”

  “The Development of Materials Group.”

  “Its new name.”

  “Are we even allowed to say it?”

  “Relax, Jackson, will you?” Slaughter said. “You’re among friends. You’re not under oath. You don’t have to sign anything. All we want is an oral history.”

  “Why?”

  “We won’t be flavor of the month forever. Sooner or later they’ll turn on us.”

  “Why would they?”

  Vanderbilt said, “Because we’re going to win this thing for them. And they don’t like to share the spotlight.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “So we better have our own version ready.”

  Slaughter said, “State the name of the project.”

  I said, “The Manhattan Project.”

  “Your duties?”

  “Security.”

  “Successful?”

  “So far.”

  “What did Mr. Hopper ask you to do?”

  “He didn’t, at first,” I said. “It started out routine. They needed another facility built. In Tennessee. A lot of concrete. A lot of specialist engineering. The budget was two hundred million dollars. They needed a man in charge. My job was to run the vetting process.”

  “Tell us what that involves.”

  “We look for embarrassing things in their personal lives, and suspicious things in their politics.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t want them to be blackmailed for secrets, and we sure as hell don’t want them to give secrets away for free.”

  “Who were you investigating on this occasion?”

  “A man named Sherman Bryon. He was a structural engineer. An old guy, but he could still get things done. The idea was to make him a colonel in the army and put him to work. If he came up clean.”

  “And did he?”

  “At first he was fine. I got a look at him, at a meeting about something else entirely. Concrete ships, as a matter of fact. I like to get a look at a guy first. From a distance, when he doesn’t know. Tall guy, well dressed, silver hair, silver mustache. Old, but erect. Probably very well spoken. That kind of guy. Patrician, they call it. There was nothing on paper. He voted against FDR all three times, but we like that, officially. No leftist sympathies. Considered to be a seal of approval. No financial worries. No professional scandals. None of his structures ever fell down.”

  “But?”

  “Next step was to talk to his friends. Or listen to them, actually. To what they say, and what they don’t.”

  “And what did you hear?”

  “Not much, initially. Those type of people are very discreet. Very proper. They talked to me like they would talk to the mailman. They were polite, and I was left in no doubt I worked for a solid and useful organization, but they weren’t about to share confidences.”

  “How do you get around a thing like that?”

  “We tell part of the truth. But not all of it. I hinted there was a top-secret project. War work. National security. Concrete ships, I hinted, absolutely vital. I told them these days sharing confidences was a patriotic duty.”

  “And?”

  “They loosened up some. They like the guy. And respect him. Business-wise he’s a straight shooter. He pays his bills. He treats his people well. He’s very successful in a high-end niche.”

  “All good, then.”

  “There was something they weren’t saying. I had to push.”

  “And?”

  “Old Sherman is married. But there are stories about a piece on the side. Apparently he’s been seen with her.”

  “Did you classify that as a blackmail risk?”

  “I went to see Mr. Hopper,” I said.

  “Who is, for posterity?”

  “My boss. Director of Security. It was a big decision. Mr. Hopper especially liked the part about being a success in a high-end niche. He was thinking about making him a brigadier general, not a colonel. He was the exact type of guy we needed. To pass on him would be a big step to take.”

  “Did Mr. Hopper think blackmail was likely?”

  “No
t really. But where do you draw the line?”

  “Did you advise Mr. Hopper one way or the other?”

  “I said we should get more information. I said we shouldn’t take a big step based on rumor alone.”

  “Did Mr. Hopper listen to your advice?”

  “Maybe. He’s not a stuck-up guy. He’s got time for us all. Or maybe he agreed with me anyhow. Or maybe he’s getting gun-shy about going to meetings and putting a wrench in their gears. Maybe he wanted to put it off. But whichever, he said he wanted more information.”

  “How did you go about getting it?”

  “There was nothing I could do for the first three days. Old Sherman wasn’t seeing either one of his women. He was stuck in a concrete boat conference. I mean, do you think they could possibly work?”

  “Do I?” Slaughter said. “Concrete boats?”

  “Sounds like a dumb idea to me.”

  “I’m not a nautical expert.”

  “It’s not like steel plate. They’d have to mold it real thick.”

  “Can we stay on the subject?”

  “Sorry. The guy was in the boat conference. He was working hard. He wasn’t spending the day between the sheets. But Mr. Hopper wanted to see it with his own eyes. He really liked the guy. Liked him for the job, I mean. He wanted no doubt about it. So we had to wait.”

  “How long?”

  “We spread a little grease around. Hotels, mostly. We got a call from a clerk that old Sherman had booked a room for Friday night. A double. The names given were him and his wife. Which no one believed. Why book a hotel? They have a house. So Mr. Hopper made a plan.”

  “Which was?”

  “First we went to look at the hotel. Mr. Hopper wanted to do it in the lobby. He felt the bedroom was wrong, for that type of guy. So we measured it up. There were gray velvet armchairs, three on one side and two on the other. There was a reception hutch, all heavy carved oak. There was a curtained doorway to the breakfast room. Mr. Hopper figured out how he wanted to do it. There was a window. To the right of the door. A person on tiptoe could see in from the street. Which was good, except it wasn’t really. He couldn’t spend hours peering in at the window. Not out there on the sidewalk. Passersby would tell a cop. He would have to time it just right. He couldn’t see a way around it.”

  “How did he solve the problem?”

  “He didn’t. I suggested I take over from the reception clerk for a couple of days. Like an undercover role. I figured I wouldn’t have much to do. I figured I could hide behind the lampshade most of the time. No one would be looking at me. So I figured I could flash the outside neon when the time came for Mr. Hopper to take a peek. The switch is right there.”

  “Your idea was you would alert him as they were checking in together?”

  “We figured it would work two separate ways. He would get the visual he wanted, and I would see the girlfriend signing in as the wife, up close and personal. Mr. Hopper wasn’t happy, because he liked the guy, as I said, but he had to draw the line somewhere. This project is a big deal.”

  “Did the plan work?”

  “No,” I said. “It really was his wife. She showed me her driver’s license. Kind of automatically. I guess she travels with him a lot. To all those secure conferences about concrete boats. So she does it without thinking. The name was right and the photograph was right.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Nothing. I played at being a hotel clerk. Then the phone rang and it was Mr. Hopper in a booth across the street. Urgent. We had a tip the other woman was on her way to the same hotel. Right then. Mr. Hopper told me to stand by. I was to get old Sherman to come downstairs. Which I figured wouldn’t be a problem. He wouldn’t want me to send her up. Not with his wife in the room.”

  “Did the woman arrive?”

  “It was like something in a motion picture. One of those screwball comedies. I heard the elevator moving. It was between me and the breakfast room. The gate opens and out steps old Sherman. He’s carrying his wife’s fur wrap. She steps out right behind him. In a blue dress, carrying a magazine. Half of me is thinking like an agent, and half of me is thinking, come on, pal, get the hell out of here before it’s too late. But the wife sits down in a chair, right in front of me. She starts reading her magazine. Old Sherman just stands there, two steps from the elevator. By this point I’m hiding behind the lampshade. Then the other woman walks in. Fur coat, fur hat, a red dress. An older woman. Sherman’s age. She bends down and kisses the wife on the cheek and then walks over and does the same thing to Sherman. I’m thinking, what have we got here? Three in a bed? That would be worse.”

  “What happened next?”

  “The other woman sat down, and the wife kept on reading. The other woman looked up and said something to Sherman. Polite conversation ensued. I flashed the neon and I saw Mr. Hopper look in the window. He saw it all. He remembers all the details. The painting on the wall, of a mountain lake. But he couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He didn’t know what the scene was about.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He stood down, and waited on the sidewalk. Old Sherman left with his wife. The other woman stayed behind and asked me to call her a taxi. I took the initiative and showed her my badge, and I gave her the same spiel I gave his friends. National security, and all that. I asked her some questions.”

  “And?”

  “She’s old Sherman’s mother-in-law. Younger than him by two years, but that’s how the cookie crumbles. Old Sherman is very happy with his child bride. She’s very happy with him. The mother-in-law is happy with them both. She’s visiting for a month and he’s showing her around. She thinks he’s sweet to take the time. We think he’s doing it to please his wife. And she’s worth pleasing. Especially for an old guy. They were in the hotel not their house because they had an early train. So panic over. Plenty of men marry younger women. No law against it. Mr. Hopper passed him fit for the job, and he’s out there in Tennessee already, making a start.”

  Slaughter paused a beat, and then he said, “OK, I think we have what we need. Thanks, Jackson.”

  So for the second time that day I came out of a deposition feeling pretty good about it. I had said nothing I didn’t want to say. Some of the truth was recorded. Everyone was happy. We won it for them in the end. Then they turned on us. But old Sherman Bryon was dead by then, so it didn’t matter.

  NICHOLAS CHRISTOPHER is the author of seventeen books: six novels—The Soloist, Veronica, A Trip to the Stars, Franklin Flyer, The Bestiary, and Tiger Rag; nine books of poetry, most recently, On Jupiter Place and Crossing the Equator: New & Selected Poems; a nonfiction book, Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir & the American City; and The True Adventures of Nicolò Zen, a novel for children. He also edited two poetry anthologies, Under 35 and Walk on the Wild Side. His books have been widely translated and published abroad. He lives in New York City.

  He writes: “Edward Hopper lived and worked in a fourth-floor studio at 3 Washington Square North from 1913 to 1967. I live a couple of blocks from his brownstone and pass it nearly every day. I see the light outside his windows that illuminates so many of his canvases, the red brick and mansard roofs that were among his touchstones, and the neighborhood buildings (including my own) that appear in the paintings, often rearranged geographically to suit his composition. It’s always made his work that much more special for me.”

  Rooms by the Sea, 1951

  29¼ × 40 in. (74.3 × 101.6 cm). Yale University Art Gallery,

  Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903

  ROOMS BY THE SEA

  BY NICHOLAS CHRISTOPHER

  1

  There were two doors into this house. The first, in a small unfurnished room, opened directly onto the sea. It could only be entered from the water. When it was left wide open on a sunny day, the light slanting into the room illuminated half of the near wall on a diagonal. As the sun descended to the horizon, the wall could be read like a sundial: its illuminated half s
hrinking until the entire wall had darkened.

  The second door, in a foyer on the other side of the house, opened onto a rough path that wound through a forest and ended in an obscure park at the city limits. The fountain in that park, centered by stone mermaids that spout water, had been dry for months. The buildings that lined the city streets were red and brown. The sun ate into their brick, sending up puffs of dust. At dusk their blue windows turned amber. On the fire escapes women were smoking and reading, gazing up occasionally at the river of bruised clouds that flowed to sea. One of them, a redhead, was reading a slim memoir entitled Rooms by the Sea, written a century ago. The author, Claudine Rementeria, was married to a Basque shipping magnate who had immigrated to America. She herself was Basque, and shortly before her untimely death at thirty, she wrote the book in their native language, Euskera, in order to please her husband. Aside from a small private printing at the time—of which only a few copies have survived—her book hadn’t been translated and published in English until recently. The redhead, Carmen Ronson, the thirty-year-old great-granddaughter of Claudine Rementeria, owned both the English translation and one of the extant Euskera copies.

  Carmen arrived at the house today at nine o’clock. She emerged from the forest and strolled down the path, a cigarette between her fingers and both editions of Rooms by the Sea under her arm. She took a key from under a stone at the end of the path, unlocked the door, and entered the house. She was wearing a green dress, a green silk scarf imprinted with tridents, green shoes, and a blue suede hat with a peacock feather in the band. Her lipstick was coral, to match her fingernail polish. In the black-and-white photograph that comprised the frontispiece of Claudine Rementeria’s memoir, she was wearing the same hat.

  Carmen walked down a long corridor with a dozen narrow white doors that had been salvaged from the Sabina, an ocean liner shipwrecked in the Bay of Biscay. She passed through the room with the door open to the sea, and sat down on a red sofa in the adjoining room, which had a window opened to the water, but no door. She removed the hat and scarf and unclipped the barrette that held up her wavy hair. She was tall, with fair but unfreckled skin, a fine delicate face, and strong hands. Her hazy blue eyes matched the curtains fluttering in the breeze.