Nobody Knew They Were There Read online

  “The lights going on like that. They’re either on or off, but I’ve never seen them actually going on.”

  I do not believe her, but I make no comment. Instead, I ask her where the meeting will be.

  “At Professor Raines’s house.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Of course. Without me, no one will ever know you existed.”

  “I don’t find that comical.”

  “Sorry,” she says, and grins.

  The house is English Tudor covered with ivy. Leaves are burning in a small pile near the low stone wall at the property’s edge. The living room is warmly lighted; an amber rectangle falls upon the front lawn. We walk up the path together in silence. A bird chitters somewhere in the surrounding woods. The cold mountain air has already descended upon the town, and our breaths plume out ahead of us, heralding our approach.

  The three of them are sitting around a blazing fire in the living room. Raines rises to draw the drapes. He is a tall thin man with white hair and a prominent nose. He wears a dark suit and black shoes. A Phi Beta Kappa key hangs across the front of his vest. I fully expect him to exchange the secret handshake with Sara. In a wing-back chair near the fire, Epstein—the money man—sits with his hands folded over his chest. He is a man of approximately my height and build, balding, with pinched cheeks and a sallow complexion, looking like an unfrocked rabbi in a houndstooth jacket and gray flannel slacks. He is a French professor. For nine years, ever since the end of World War II, he went to Paris every summer. He stopped going in 1954. He told me this the first day we met, and there was a look of intense longing in his eyes. Hester Pratt is on a hassock to the right of Epstein’s chair. She is wearing a simple green suit with a white blouse, her customary low-heeled walking shoes. She smiles when Sara and I come into the room. There is something in her smile that is calculating and knowledgeable.

  “Well now,” Raines says, “I understand you’ve chosen a site, Mr. Sachs. Is that so?”

  “A tentative one.”

  “The railroad bridge just outside of town, eh?” he says.

  “Sara has filled us in,” Hester explains.

  “I see.” I wonder exactly how much Sara has reported. Has she told them that I kissed her all night long, that I was the first man who ever kissed her all night long? I glance at her, but she is busy taking notes, recording all these words for posterity, just in case we happen to save the world at the beginning of November.

  “Would you like to tell us your plan?” Raines says.

  “I plan to blow up the bridge while the train is on it.”

  “Will the train be on it?” Epstein asks.

  “I checked at the depot this morning, before I went out to the ravine. The California train is due here at eleven-twenty on the second of November. It must cross that bridge to get here. I don’t know exactly what time that will be, but I’ll find out well in advance.”

  “You say you checked at the depot this morning?” Hester asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Discreetly, I hope.”

  “No, openly. I told the stationmaster that I planned to blow up the California train and was therefore interested in the time of its arrival.”

  “There is no need for sarcasm, Mr. Sachs,” Hester says mildly. “We are, of course, concerned.”

  “How long is the bridge?” Epstein asks.

  “Two hundred yards across the ravine.”

  “How long is the train?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you think you should find out?”

  “I fully intend to.”

  “So that you’ll know when to set off your blast.”

  “That’s what …”

  “So that you’ll get the entire train,” Epstein continues, “and not just one or two cars.”

  “It would be a pity to go to all that trouble,” Raines says, “and then miss our man.”

  “Yes,” Epstein agrees thoughtfully.

  “I think you had better check on how many cars there are,” Raines urges.

  “I will.”

  “And how long each car is. You say the bridge is two hundred yards long?”

  “Yes, I measured it this afternoon.”

  “How?” Epstein asks.

  “With a tape measure.”

  “On the bridge itself?”

  “Yes. On the bridge.”

  “Then your measurements were fairly accurate.”

  “Completely accurate.”

  “Good,” Epstein says.

  “When do you plan to set your charges?” Raines asks.

  “The night before the train is due.”

  “Will you need help?”

  “Is there help available?”

  “Well, we hadn’t considered …”

  “I think I can manage it alone. But I’ll let you know if I can’t.”

  “You’d better let us know well beforehand,” Hester says. “We may not be able to enlist anyone at the last moment.”

  “I’ll give you plenty of notice.”

  “What sort of explosives will you use?” Raines asks.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Will you be able to obtain them?”

  “I can’t tell you that until I know what I’m going to use.”

  “What do you ordinarily use?” Hester asks, and leans forward on the hassock, watching me intently.

  “It varies with the job,” I tell her.

  “What have you used in the past? On various jobs.”

  “Dynamite. Plastic. Even nitroglycerin.”

  “Very dangerous, nitroglycerin,” Epstein says.

  “Yes.”

  “Volatile, extremely volatile.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, of course,” Hester says, “that when we spoke to Mr. Eisler on the telephone we were not bargaining for wholesale murder. We hired you to assassinate one man, not to demolish a trainload of reporters, advisers, secretaries, assistants, and so on.”

  “I realize that. This seems the best way, though.”

  “To kill a lot of innocent people, along with the man we want?”

  “It seems the best way, yes.”

  “Because it’s safest for you this way, isn’t that so?”

  “I don’t know if it’s safest for me or not. I do know …”

  “Please, Mr. Sachs.”

  “I do know that the odds against getting him in a crowded railroad depot are overwhelming. I think this way will work. I’m sorry if innocent people will die, but he’s been responsible for the deaths of innocents as well, hundreds of thousands of them. And more to come if we don’t eliminate him now.”

  “It still sounds rather cold-blooded,” Raines says.

  “It is.”

  “One would not guess from appearances alone,” Hester says drily, “that you are such a ruthless man.”

  “I am. Either we’re serious about getting rid of him, or we’re not. Either we want an end to all of this, or we don’t. Security measures are getting tighter every day. I’m afraid that if we don’t do it now, if we don’t do it effectively, we may never get the opportunity again. If you …”

  “We’re all afraid of that,” Raines says.

  “Fine. I want to do it this way. If you don’t want me to do it this way, say so now, and I’ll pack my bag and go home.”

  “You always seem to be going home, Mr. Sachs,” Hester says, and smiles.

  “You always seem to be inviting me to leave.”

  “Now, now,” Raines says.

  “Yes or no?” I ask.

  “Of course, you must do it as you see fit,” Raines says.

  “Thank you,” I answer and nod. “This is what the bridge looks like. I think I can send the whole thing tumbling into the ravine if I place my charges correctly.” I extend the lined pad to them. One after the other, they study my sketch.

  “I hope you are a better dynamiter than you are an artist,” Hester remarks drily.

  “I have to keep tellin
g you, don’t I?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That I’m an expert.”

  “Oh, I believe you,” Hester says. “I believe you implicitly, Mr. Sachs.”

  In the automobile outside, I ask Sara where she’d like to go for dinner.

  “I don’t know where you’re going,” she says. “I’m going home.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve got an exam tomorrow. Lots of studying to do.”

  “The studying can wait.”

  “No, it can’t.”

  “Well, bring your books over to the hotel and study there.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “All right, I’ll come over to your place.”

  “Gwen’s home,” Sara says. “Besides, I don’t want to see you any more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Gee, I don’t know how to make it any plainer. I don’t want to see you any more.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, let’s not go into it, okay?”

  “No, let’s go into it, okay?”

  “You’re doomed, okay?” she says.

  “What’s that, some kind of teen-age shorthand?”

  “I’m not a teen-ager, and that wasn’t shorthand, it was simple English. You are doomed. D-O-O-M …”

  “I may surprise you. I may survive.”

  “No, you won’t. Whatever happens, you’re dead. If you bungle the job, you’re dead. If you pull it off, you’re dead.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “You go back to your wife and seventeen kids in Larchmont.”

  “I don’t live in Larchmont. And I don’t have seventeen kids.”

  “How many then? Fourteen? Four? Who the hell cares?”

  “You do.”

  “I couldn’t care a fucking whit,” she says.

  “You’re a liar, Sara.”

  “I’m the most honest person you’ll ever meet in your life.”

  “Just between you and me, I’m getting tired of hearing young people telling me just how honest they all are. That’s usually a good time to start hiding the family silver.”

  “I’m not ‘young people.’ I’m me. Sara Home.”

  “Honest Sara Home.”

  “Yes, Honest Sara Home, who knows what’s good for her.”

  “What’s good for you, Sara?”

  “You’re not, that’s for goddamn sure.”

  “Neither is involvement in an assassination plot.”

  “Who’s involved? I’m as safe as a sparrow, I already told you that.”

  “And that’s what you want to do, right, Sara? Play it safe?”

  “Certainly. What am I supposed to do? Hang around with you? Why should I? What’s your future?”

  “I thought your generation was the one taking all the risks.”

  “We took all the risks, yes, and lost. Now it’s your turn. Go blow up your dumb bridge, if you want to. Just leave me alone.”

  “The bridge is necessary, Sara. You know it is.”

  “Necessary? It’s imperative. But I’m not about to blow it up.”

  “Then why should I?”

  “You’re asking me? You volunteered for the job, how the hell should I know why? Listen, Arthur, when I was an undergraduate I got hit on the head often enough. If it doesn’t make you stupid, it makes you smart. Let them hit you on the head a little, see how you like it.”

  “Sara …”

  “Do you want me to let you off at the hotel, or will you walk back from my place?”

  “Sara, you can’t do this.”

  “Can’t I? I’m doing it.”

  “Not after last night.”

  “Last night. When was that? I’ve forgotten last night completely.”

  “Sara …”

  “I don’t want to go to bed with you again,” she says flatly. “I don’t even want to kiss you again.”

  “Let me off here.”

  “I’ll take you to the hotel.”

  “Let me off here, goddamnit!”

  She pulls the car to the curb. I get out, close the door gently, and walk away without looking back.

  In the room, I sit drinking scotch.

  It is close to midnight, and I have not had dinner, and I am getting very drunk. I do not understand Sara. I do not even understand myself. There is a reproduction of Rembrandt’s Man with the Golden Helmet hanging on the wall opposite the desk. The son of a bitch keeps glaring at me. I get off the bed, go into the bathroom, rip some toilet tissue from the roll, come back to the framed painting, wet the edges of the tissue and stick it over the baleful bastard’s head, covering his eyes. There, I think. If you can’t see me, I don’t exist. Which is Sara’s point exactly, isn’t it? If I die alone with no one to mourn me, I will never have lived. Without her to record my passage, I will never have existed. Smart-assed teen-ager. Anything I can’t stand, it’s a smart-assed teen-ager.

  I decide to call my son in Boston.

  First I will call Sara to tell her I’m going to call my son in Boston. You’ll probably like him better than me, I will tell her, more your age and style, long hair, beard, sloppy clothes, dropping out of school next month to head for San Francisco, start a commune there with three other guys and two girls. Maybe you’d like to go to bed with him, Sara, and then drop him cold the next day. I don’t understand you, I really do not.

  I decide not to call her after all, hell with her.

  I dial my son’s number.

  A girl answers the phone. Her voice is a whisper. I tell her I want to speak to David, and she asks who this is, and I say David’s father, and in the same mournful whisper, she asks me to hold on a moment. There is no sound on the other end of the line. No music, no voices. It is only twelve, twelve-thirty, but there is no sound in my son’s apartment in the biggest college community in the United States.

  “Pop?” he says. “God, you must be psychic. I was just about to call home.”

  “I’m not home,” I tell him.

  “No? Where are you?”

  “Salt Lake City. Important contract to negotiate. How are you, David?”

  “Well, I’m fine. But we’ve got all kinds of trouble here. That’s why I was going to call. I’d like your advice.”

  “Legal or paternal?”

  “Both,” David says.

  “Oh-oh.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty bad, Pop. You know Hank and Stevie, two of the guys I was going out to San Francisco with?”

  “Well, I don’t know them, son.…”

  “Yeah, I know you don’t know them, though I think you met Hank once. He wears a headband. He came home that time during the spring break, don’t you remember?”

  “I think so, yes. What about them?”

  “Pop, they both got busted last night.”

  “For what?”

  “Somebody planted some stuff in their apartment, and the cops came around with a search warrant about two o’clock in the morning.”

  “Planted? What do you mean, planted?”

  “Just that.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Grass.”

  “Any hard stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Speed. And acid.”

  “Heroin?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “How much of the stuff?”

  “Enough, Pop. Lots of it.”

  “Who planted it?”

  “Well, Hank and Stevie’ve got some ideas, but they can’t be sure. They think it’s this guy they hassled with a couple of weeks back.”

  “What have they been charged with, David? Do you know?”

  “Hank’s been charged with possession, presence, and conspiracy. Stevie and the girl who was there have been charged only with presence.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They’
re still here in Boston. They paid the bail.…”

  “How much?”

  “Three thousand dollars.”

  “Who paid it?”

  “A bondsman. Pop, the cops confiscated all the money that was in the apartment—as evidence that Hank was dealing.”

  “How much money, David?”

  “Close to fifteen hundred dollars. It’s the money he was going to put in for the California trip. He got it by working, Pop. He’s doing drugs, we all are—but he’s not dealing. I swear to God, Pop, he’s not dealing.”

  “Has he notified his parents?”

  “He’s going to do that tomorrow. Pop, here’s the point.…”

  “What’s the point, David?”

  “The point is this really screws up the California thing, you know? Also, he’s my best friend, Pop.”

  “So?”

  “Pop … he plans to jump bail and leave the country.”

  “That isn’t wise, David.”

  “It’s wiser than spending five to ten years in prison. That’ll ruin his life, Pop.”

  “I know it will.”

  “I mean, you know what that’ll do to him.”

  “Yes, David, I know.”

  “So he’s going to leave the country. The point is should I go with him or not? He’s my best friend.”

  “Are you asking my advice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him not to jump bail. If he does, he adds an additional charge to all the others. And if he goes to a foreign country, he can be extradited.”

  “They can extradite for drugs, huh?”

  “Yes, son.”

  “Still, Pop, he’s my best friend.”

  “David … friends come and go.”

  “Pop, please don’t give me that shit.”

  “All right. But you’ll be traveling with a fugitive. And the way things are now in this country, guilt by association is as real as it was during the McCarthy era.” I hesitate. I don’t know what more to tell him. I am suddenly very fearful for him. “David,” I say, “leaving the country is a cop-out. I don’t want you to cop out.”

  “Deserting a friend is a cop-out, too,” he says.

  “David …”

  “Especially when the goddamn stuff was planted.”

  “That’s his allegation.”

  “Hank says it was planted, and he wouldn’t lie to me.” He pauses. He is trying to think of what to tell me next. When he finally speaks, it is not as a twenty-year-old young man; it is as a child sitting on my knee. “Pop, it isn’t fair.”