Where the Truth Lies (35 page)

I turned right on Sunset, away from both our homes. Fairly soon, I saw a sign for the San Diego Freeway south. It came into my head that if I wanted to work as much truth as I could into my lie, as was my policy, it would be a good idea to take the Freeway to LAX, as if Ihad in fact been going to catch the next American Airlines flight to New York. I could see how long that would have taken, see what flight would have been the logical one for “Sharon” to have booked me on, and when it was supposed to arrive at either JFK or La Guardia. For all I knew, Vince, who was a very thoughtful guy, might call American Airlines himself to see when that was, when I might arrive, if the flight was delayed. It would help my recounting to base it on as much reality as possible. I certainly had nothing better to do with my afternoon.

I parked my car in the lot near the American Airlines terminal and headed over to the ticket counter to look at the Arrivals and Departures display. There was a nonstop to JFK at 4:30P .M. Flight 49. It was the last of their flights out of LAX to New York until the red-eye left at tenP .M. for a dawn arrival. The 4:30P .M. was the flight I would have taken, and I would have just barely made it had I really been trying to catch it, but the Departures board said it was now scheduled to leave thirty minutes later. That was good to know. I’d have to wait and see when the plane actually left, in case the flight got canceled. Fearful of being caught in a lie, I was collecting data as if creating a detailed alibi for a murder I planned to commit.

I thought of another piece of information that would be useful to know. I walked over to the ticket counter and asked a pleasant-faced women, “Could you tell me how much a ticket is to New York if I bought it right now, one-way, economy?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I know,” she said, apparently agreeing with me about something. “People come up to me and they’ve heard about it and they still don’t believe it. Up through next Thursday, ninety-nine dollars each way. The flight can’t be rescheduled, though, without having to pay the regular full fare, and you have to return within fourteen days.” She looked very pleased. “People ask me what the catch is, and I tell them the catch is that TWA lowered their rates, so our boss is undercutting them. American can absorb the loss because we’re bigger. And, we like to think, better. When did you want to leave?”

I instantly decided it would be worth eating ninety-nine dollars to have a receipt for my emergency flight. The tickets always came in layers of three. I could “accidentally” leave the receipt for the ticket on Vince’s coffee table one day, and later call and ask if he’d found it, since I needed it for tax purposes. To have concrete validation of my flight seemed cheap at any price. I wondered if there would be any problem when I didn’t take the plane. The airlines were getting warier of letting a plane take off when a no-show passenger’s luggage had already been checked on board. But I wasn’tgoing to be checking any luggage. People missed their flights all the time. I’d missed more than one, and no one had ever held the plane for me. It would be fine. I’d stay at the cheapest hotel at LAX and “return” to Los Angeles and my home late tomorrow night. Instead of killing off my nonexistent brother Clifford (which would necessitate my having to stay in New York for his funeral, et cetera), I’d plunge him into a deep coma and let him remain a vegetable until well after my book with Vince was published.

I gave the American Airlines clerk my MasterCharge card and told her pointedly that I had no luggage to check. She took a look at the Departures board; the flight was now scheduled to depart from Gate 4A at five-fifteen.

I went up to the Flight Deck Bar and readied myself to have a leisurely, much needed Scotch and soda while I waited to see when the flight I would miss actually managed to leave. I sat back against a black leatherette banquette and eagerly caught the eye of a waitress. She was still in the miniskirt and black mesh stockings she’d been issued in the mid-sixties, and even then she’d been a little too old for the outfit. Her name was Teena, or she had stolen Teena’s name tag out of sheer envy. I looked and saw that the bar had neither Ballantine’s nor Chivas. “Dewar’s and soda, please.”

I sat there, eyeing the Departures board to see if Flight 49 to JFK was being delayed further (and what did I care?), listening to Tom Jones sing “Delilah” over the American Airlines P.A. system, when Tom suddenly spoke my name. He said my name twice and asked me to pick up the nearest courtesy phone and ask for Guest Relations. It took me a moment to realize that the music had stopped and that this was an American Airlines employee speaking over the P.A. I asked Teena if the bar had a courtesy phone. It did.

The woman at the Guest Relations extension said there was an emergency phone call for me and that she was connecting me now. It was Vince. “I’m amazed I caught you,” he said. “When does your flight leave?”

What an absolute godsend that I was here when he called. Now my story was rock solid. “It was supposed to leave twenty minutes ago. At the moment they’re saying five-fifteen, but who knows.” I looked at my ticket and reeled off the detailed information impressively. “American Airlines Flight 49 departs LAX four-thirtyP .M., arrives JFK twelve forty-fiveA .M.”

“Flight 49, that’s what I figured. You said American, and I know that’s the last one of the day. I’ve taken it myself a couple of times. You get the tailwinds, which knocks fifteen, twenty minutes off the flight. Listen, I ordered a limousine to pick you up at JFK. He’ll be holding a sign that says ‘O’Connor.’ This way, no matter how long the flight is delayed, you’ll have someone who can take you directly to your brother.”

Oh God. “Oh no, Vince, no. My family’s going to meet me.”

He wouldn’t have any of this. “I’m sure they don’t want to leave your brother’s side. And they’d have to get out to JFK after midnight and they’d have to park the car. It’s already booked with Fugazy. The driver’s name is Adolfo, I know him—the airport police always let him park right by the baggage claim area, so you’ll walk out and you’ll be on your way. He knows all the quickest routes. You want me to call your family for you? I’ll let them know they don’t have to pick you up. What’s their number?”

“No, no, I’ll call them,” I said. “It’s very nice of you, Vince. Very thoughtful. But really, you know, I’d much prefer—”

“Have you heard anything about how your brother is doing, and what hospital he’s at?”

What hospital. If I said anything, he’d have flowers or surgeons on their way. Even if I didn’t, he would just have his secretary start calling every hospital in Manhattan searching for a patient named O’Connor who’d been admitted in the last six hours. I had to at least block that from happening. “Vince, he’s not in Manhattan, he’s in—hold on, I think they may be calling—and his name isn’t O’Connor, he’s my half brother, it’s— Vince, sorry, they’re boarding my plane, thanks so much, I’ll call you when I know where I’m staying and let you know what’s going on.” Go ahead, let his goddamn secretary accrue a list of every patient in every borough except Manhattan whose name is anything other than O’Connor.

“Hey, wait, you haven’t—” Vince began.

“I have to call my family and tell them they don’t have to meet me. Thanks so much for the limo, Vince.” I hung up the phone. Fuck. “Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!” I cursed, causing Teena to race my drink over to me and fearfully set it down at the bar.

I was going to have to take the next frigging plane to New Fucking York. For no good reason other than to let Adolfo report that he had picked me up successfully.

I could think of no way around it. If I didn’t show up, Adolfo would call his dispatcher at Fugazy, and Vince, worried, would start searching even harder for me and my brother Clifford. The only hope I had was that goddamned Flight 49 would be scrubbed completely. If so, I’d kill off Clifford tonight and say that in his will, he’d requested there be no funeral.

I took a big pull on the ample Dewar’s and soda that Teena had brought over. My mouth reacted, my lips reflexively drew back across my teeth. It tasted really weird, but I didn’t think Scotch could go bad. I tried the drink again and detected the strange sweet-tartness of quinine.

“You made me a Scotch andtonic !” I yelled at the bartender. His stupid thumb had hit the Q button on one of those hateful multifunction spritzers instead of the S button.

He was going over receipts with Teena. “Oops. Call me Mr. Dumb-Thumb!” he laughed, forgiving himself with ease. “Make you a fresh one in a minute,” he said affably. “No extra charge.”

“All passengers for Flight 49 destined for New York JFK International Airport must now be boarding at Gate 4A. This will be the only boarding call for all passengers in economy and first class. Final call for Flight 49—“

The bartender was nowhere close to finishing his totals. I took the Scotch and tonic, gritted my teeth, and downed it in two long pulls. I slammed a five-dollar bill onto the bar and started rushing and cursing my way to Gate 4A, which I knew would be nowhere as near as “4A” might sound, and I was right. God help me, I was taking a cross-country flight for no purpose, I’d have a limo waiting to take me to a hospital where I had no business—and then I also remembered I was flying economy on the last flight home for the day, seating configuration three-five-three with an undoubtedly packed house. I’d have to beg and cajole the stewardess for a miniature of Dewar’s at two bucks a pop, and when I wanted a third, she’d tell me they’d locked up the liquor cabinet because they were arriving so late, whatever that would mean. The meal would be meat ŕ la thing with a tiny roll and a three-greens salad, meaning that’s how many lettuce leaves there’d be to soak up my plastic thimble of Kraft French dressing. I had no book to read, no yellow legal tablet, no bevy of Bic pens with which to write. And the in-flight movie would turn out to beThe Black Windmill. Arguably the worst film ever made that starred Michael Caine.

TWENTY-THREE

It got worse, of course. I found myself in the highly uncoveted center seat of three, between a keypunch operator named Rory who wore a necklace of hand-carved African fertility symbols (although he himself was Caucasian) whose various symbolisms he felt compelled to explain to me in detail and a heavyset fellow who never introduced himself because he was busy snoring.

I determined that there had to be something good or useful I could harvest out of this astoundingly pointless trip other than seeing Beejay, who at twoA .M. was not going to be that thrilled about seeing me.

I knew I had already played around far too much with both of these boys. Some aphorism my mother had imparted to me about mud and lying with pigs came vaguely to mind, although only Lanny could sustain the analogy. Vince had been far from hoggish and nothing but a gentleman. I, on the other hand, had been every bit the unsavory sow. Once, after a particularly unpleasant sexual encounter when I was nineteen, I had had the momentary wish that I could move to another town and be a virgin all over again. I wished there was a way to do that now, to get clean again.

Another town.

As before, the most clean I ever felt in this matter was when I dedicated my concern to Maureen O’Flaherty. I had no idea how much danger either of the boys represented to me nor how dark that unholy night in Miami had been, and I would never know any of that until I had answered the question Maureen’s mother had wanted me to ask the boys. I would now make itmy overriding question as well.

Why did Maureen have to die?

Not whether it was Vince or Lanny or both of them. Not which minion of Sally Santoro’s might have put her dead body in the tub or what hold the mob boss would then have had over either of the boys. Simply the “why” of her death. Once I had that, I suspected that the answers to all my other questions would come rushing at me like sharks to a swimmer with a nosebleed.

Nothing in my research in either Los Angeles or New York had brought me closer to the truth. I’d gleaned little from Palisades Park or the O’Flahertys’ home in New Rochelle. But wedged in my economy seat, I remembered the little shrine Mrs. O’Flaherty had assembled on the dresser in her austere bedroom. And I remembered being amused by the return address on a postcard Maureen had mailed her parents from Florida. It would be easy enough to call Mrs. O’Flaherty in the morning and ask her to give me the full address over the phone.

I was flying to the East Coast for no good reason. There was nothing I could do about that now. But if tomorrow I then flew from JFK to Miami, the flight would be two and a half hours shorter than if I’d flown to Miami from Los Angeles. It was not a powerful rationale for the flight I was currently taking, but it would make me feel a shade less stupid about having taken it.

We landed at something close to our originally scheduled ETA, there being at that hour no delay in getting landing clearance. The charming Adolfo was indeed there at the exit from the baggage-claim area, holding a sign markedO .CONNER , which I took to be me. I asked Adolfo to wait while I made a call from a pay phone. I called Information and, in what I hoped for Adolfo’s benefit was an agitated voice, told the operator I needed the phone number of a hospital where my injured brother had been taken. All I knew was that it was not too far from JFK airport.

“Do you have a name for the hospital?” the operator asked. I said that I thought it began with the wordSaint. She said she had a number of those in the area. She named a Saint Mary’s in Far Rockaway, which seemed a credible distance, not too far, but enough of a drive to give Adolfo something to do. She gave me the address as well as the number and wished my brother a speedy recovery.

I told Adolfo the address and he said he knew where that was. I sat back in the limo and noticed three cut-glass decanters, a small bucket of ice, and some sparkling-clean tumblers set into a mahogany bar planted midway between my seat and two rear-facing jump seats. I helped myself to ice and reached for the decanter filled with brown liquid. It was probably Johnnie Walker Red, not my favorite, but who was I to complain? I would have asked Adolfo to play some music, but I thought that might seem odd. A woman flying in to visit her dying brother might need a stiff drink to bolster her nerves, but she probably wouldn’t need to hear Steely Dan.