Don't Ever Get Old (18 page)

And to someone like Tequila, a pretty Israeli girl was all that history and all that symbolism wrapped in a tight little package that he could screw. And Yael was exotic: dark and hard and the complete antithesis of the milk-fed little princesses he usually dated, yet entirely kosher.

Under normal circumstances, I'd have been supportive of this kind of pursuit. Romance kept him from sulking all the damn time, Rose wanted to be around to see some great-grandchildren, and, really, I didn't like to see him unhappy. But circumstances weren't normal.

Still, Tequila knew what I knew about Avram Silver and his vaguely described “good job” with the Israeli government. He'd seen Yitzchak Steinblatt dodge our questions about standing me up at the Jewish Community Center.

Tequila was smart, and he'd had lots of schooling. He could rely on his brain to do what it was supposed to and not lose track of the objective or flood his spinal column with paranoid whispers. I had mild cognitive impairment. He trusted his own judgment more than he trusted mine, and I didn't trust either of us. If he thought Yael was safe, there was nothing I could say to change his mind.

The restaurant in the hotel was pretty crummy, so Tequila drove us to an Olive Garden we'd spotted from the highway. There was no-smoking permitted inside; these chain restaurants all seemed to be made out of cardboard, and I guessed they were worried a cigarette might burn the place down. I decided not to make a big deal about it. As we slid into the booth, Yael smiled at me. Her teeth were straight and white, her skin was smooth and brown, and her eyes were ringed by thick, dark lashes. Her hair hung loose in cascading curls. Tequila swooned stupidly every time she looked at him.

“So, I understand you are a soldier?” she asked me.

“I was, a long time ago,” I said.

She wrinkled her forehead. “If you are a soldier, you are always a soldier.”

That's the kind of thing that young people think is true. Everything seems permanent to people who are firm and strong and don't have to go to funerals all the time.

“No. I used to be a soldier, but I'm not anymore.”

Used to be a soldier. Used to be a police detective. Used to be a father.

“What you did is forever,” she said. “A distinguished accomplishment. What you did reshaped the world.”

And then the world passed me by. Just like my lawn; I took care of it for so many years, and then, one day, I didn't anymore. And the grass kept right on turning green in the springtime.

I considered telling her about the lawn and the Guatamalan, and about the bustling Criminal Justice Center in downtown Memphis, and the business-as-usual cops and techs buzzing around Lawrence Kind's body. I spent thirty years locking up killers. And while I was doing it, I really believed I was the last bulwark against some sort of social breakdown. But then one day, I stopped. And even though all those years had passed, nothing was any different, except, like Jennings had pointed out, the city kept setting new records for violent crime.

I thought about telling Yael what distinguished accomplishment was worth on the day I buried my son; on the day people started telling me to think about not driving anymore; on the day I looked across my breakfast table at an arrogant young man who had my face but didn't understand my values.

I cleared my throat and fiddled with my napkin, and I didn't tell her anything.

“I have seen the numbers on my grandmother's arm, and I have seen her crying in her sleep,” Yael said. “We must always be fighters, so we will never again be victims.”

“Yael came to the United States for college at the University of Pennsylvania,” Tequila told me.

“And then I went back, to serve in the army,” Yael said.

“You could have stayed over here, and not gone into the service?” I asked.

“I never would have done such a thing.”

I snorted.

“I considered volunteering, after the World Trade Center,” Tequila said.

“Why didn't you?” Yael asked.

“Because I told him he was out of his goddamn mind,” I said. “Ain't no reason to volunteer so you can go run around in some desert and maybe step on a IUD.”

“IED,” Tequila said.

I glared at him. “What?”

“Improvised explosive device. IED.”

I scratched at my scalp. “What did I say?”

“Something different,” Tequila told me. Then we were quiet for a moment, and he turned to Yael. “My father passed away. I needed to be here, for my family.”

“Your son?” Yael asked me.

I nodded.

Tequila leaned in close to Yael, and I could tell he had his hand on her thigh under the table.

“These terrorists and insurgents, though, they have no real army,” Yael said. “No means to pose a real threat to America. No tanks and no ships. They can destroy a building, maybe, but they cannot create for you the danger we face where I come from. We are surrounded by hostiles. Here, you must stay for your family, but in Israel, it is for our families that we must fight.” She looked up at me. “To think this is crazy, you must not know what it means to face a constant existential threat.”

“Constant existential threat?” I laughed a little. “Honey, I'm eighty-eight years old. If the guy who makes my sandwich forgets to wash his hands, there's an existential threat.”

The waiter showed up, and I ordered the noodles with the red gravy.

*   *   *

Something I saw on television that I don't want to forget:

I found a panel discussion on AMC about depictions of aging in film, to go with a Clint Eastwood marathon they were running. Tequila was off someplace with his suspicious Israeli girl, and I didn't expect to see him again until morning.

“We have a rapidly aging society. Baby boomers are becoming senior citizens,” said the television host. “Why don't we see more elderly characters in the movies?”

The camera cut to a bearded NYU film professor, the same guy who had been talking about Nazis the night Rose got hurt. I had been seeing that guy on television a lot lately. Probably had a book out; I reminded myself to remember not to read it.

“There's a very small set of stories to be told about older characters,” the professor explained. “They don't begin new romantic relationships. They aren't usually wrapped up in international intrigue. They live lives of routine, and that is not drama. Where you are going to find them as protagonists is in stories about continuity, about passing knowledge on to a younger generation, and about death.”

“And that's all that's out there?” the host asked.

“Those are pretty powerful themes. Any movie you are going to see where an older character takes a younger character under his wing is about the younger man coming into his own as the old guy passes off the stage. These characters are going to go on some kind of literal or metaphorical journey together, they'll gain respect for each other along the way, and at the end, the younger character is equipped to continue alone.”

The host rubbed at some kind of rash on his neck. As a regular watcher of talking heads on cable, I got to see some ugly, ugly people. “And the older man always dies?” he asked.

The professor nodded. “Everybody dies. Old people are just going to die sooner than the rest of us. The elderly in our cultural narratives signify mortality, either the annihilation of the self, or the preservation of wisdom by passing it on. This character's story arc is a journey toward death, and toward finding his peace with that inevitability.”

“Always?” asked the host.

The professor stroked his beard diffidently. “Well, sometimes, at the end of one of these, the old guy learns something that reinvigorates him, and he throws away his walker and starts dancing or does something otherwise implausible, given the character's physical limitations. And that is fine, I guess, in
Willy Wonka
. But, I mean, let's not traffic in denial here.”

 

29

The SunTrust branch where we thought we'd find Ziegler's safe deposit box was in a big old-fashioned bank building, with marble steps and Corinthian columns in front and, most likely, a secure vault dug into the basement. We certainly weren't going to be able to get into that vault by force or any other coercive means, so our plan was to confuse the people in the bank enough that they wouldn't question me when I claimed to be Henry Winters.

The way I figured, getting somebody to let me into a bank vault would be a pretty similar process to getting someone to confess to a crime or inform on a friend. It would just take a little psychology. Confidence men called this play “the Good Samaritan.” Police called it “the good-cop, bad-cop.” But by whatever name, it was always the same shtick. One belligerent antagonist would unsettle and threaten the subject. A second conspirator would present himself as an ally or rescuer. The idea was to use this staged situation to trick the patsy into trusting the “Good Samaritan” or “good cop.”

Tequila and I had gone over the plan the night before, at the hotel, and rehashed it again in our parking space across from the bank as I sipped coffee and tried to steel my nerves.

“Is this going to work?” he asked me.

“It's the best idea I've got,” I told him as I climbed out of the passenger side of my Buick. For this little adventure, my .357 would be waiting in the car; I wasn't quite dumb enough to carry a heater into a bank, even though I felt sort of naked without it. I left my coffee cup on the dash to keep it company. The memory notebook and the Lucky Strikes went in with me.

In our scheme, I was the bad cop, so I barreled through the bank's revolving door wearing one of Tequila's ratty sweatshirts, with my eyeballs bugged out of my head, and I filled the place with noise, up to the high-arched ceilings.

“I want my goddamn safe deposit box,” I shouted at no one in particular. “Where are you hiding it?”

I paused my tantrum for a moment, to light a cigarette.

A worried-looking teller with short hair and delicate hands scurried up to help me. “Sir, you can't smoke in here.”

I glared at him.

“I can't smoke in here?” It was more of a howl than a question.

“You have to take that outside.”

I gave that a long moment to make sure everyone in the bank was looking at me, and then I opened up both barrels on the poor kid.

“You'd better get yourself some manners,” I bellowed. “I bled on the beaches of goddamn Normandy, and you're going to put me out on the sidewalk like a dog that's fixin' to piss on the rug? Where'd they teach you how to act?”

He swallowed, hard. “Sir, this is a nonsmoking area.”

I emptied my sooty lungs, blowing out a cloud of smoke and a fine mist of phlegm right in his face. “Either get me my safe deposit box, or get out of my sight.”

Tequila was at my side; he had come in quietly behind me. He had a couple of wheeled duffel bags slung over one shoulder.

“Grandpa, that's not the way we speak to people.” He laid a hand on my shoulder and physically interposed himself between me and the teller. “You should apologize to this gentleman.”

“I will not.”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and sighed at the teller. “We're really very sorry.” He was a good enough liar to seem earnest if he wanted to, and the teller seemed to be buying his shtick.

“We are not sorry. And you've got yourself a lot of balls to be apologizing for me, kid. You are a dirty little thief, and you're here to steal my things.”

He seemed flummoxed, but just for a second. “Grandpa,” he said sternly, “we can deal with our problems without airing them in public.”

“Eat shit,” I shouted at him. It's helpful for the subject and the good cop to appear to be similarly aggrieved and abused by the bad cop. I turned to the teller and jabbed my lit cigarette close to his face. “I want my box. These crooks are trying to get at what's in it, and I aim to see it's safe from them.”

“Our vault is among the most secure—”

“Stuff it, you little turd. Those are my things, and I'm taking them out of here.” I thrust Ziegler's key at him.

“Grandpa, give me a moment, and I promise, we'll let you see your things,” Tequila said. He took the teller by the arm, and the two men took a few steps away and began whispering to each other.

I decided to stay quiet; if it looked like Tequila could keep me under control, the bank teller would defer to him. I stuffed my hands in the front pocket of the sweatshirt and tried to listen to their conversation. Normally, my hearing is a little unreliable, but in the marble-floored lobby, I could pick up most of what they were saying pretty well.

“Look, this is a bank,” said the teller. “We can't have him behaving like this in here. I'm going to have to get security.”

Tequila's expression turned sad and pained. “He's not really like this. He's always been a sweet and generous man. This is the disease making him act out, and I hope you can have some sympathy for our situation.”

“Yes, but we have got to do business in here. He's frightening our other customers.”

“His brain isn't working the way it's supposed to. He is suffering from senile dementia, and it's just horrible. He's frightened and paranoid all the time, and he can't understand what's happening to him.”

“Look, I'm sorry. That must be very difficult for your family.”

“What you've got to understand is that, as aggressive as he seems, he's very fragile. If you have your security guys put their hands on him, he could get hurt.”

“I mean, I certainly don't want that to happen.”

Tequila leaned toward the teller. “All kinds of liability issues for you. Problems you don't need.” I smiled a little. My grandson was kind of good at this game. “Look,” he said. “I'm sure if we let him see his things, he'll quiet down.”