Banquo's Ghosts (6 page)

The near-empty bottle on the table looked like he’d made a significant dent in the Tanqueray, but he knew the truth. If they thought he’d drunk himself stupid, all the better. The soft, insistent knock came again. Johnson knew he’d have to clean up good today. It was back with Jazril the Jazz Man and maybe even the Big Mullah—maybe this time the Big Mullah would deign to speak to him directly. The Jazz Man, the Sheik, the Big Mullah, and finally Dr. Proton. The object of all his desire.

“Hold on. Be right there.”

R
obert Wallets of Banquo & Duncan found him again in late 2002, over a year after the towers fell, after the invasion of Afghanistan but before the invasion of Iraq. Johnson was sitting on a panel at NYU law school devoted to the unpleasantness in Afghanistan and the unpleasantness still to come in Mesopotamia. It was called “Preemptive War: Crime Against Humanity or Legitimate National Interest? ” Talking to a room with about a hundred snot-nosed kids. The panelists: himself as Lefty Writer, Eli Pariser as Executive Director of
MoveOn.org
from the Lefty netroots, Lance Evers of the Society Against War/USA as Lefty Peacenik, facing off against Bruce Meyer from The Patriot Project (simply Pee-Pee to its detractors) as Fascist Neo-Con Journalist. A three-to-one advantage constituted fair-and-balanced NYU Law-style. Whenever Meyer talked, a kid stood up and shouted some asinine question, “Can you
prove
there weren’t controlled explosions in the Second Tower?” prompting derisive cheers and hisses aimed at Meyer, until the moderator settled things down enough for the discussion to keep going. Meyer was getting hot, too hot for his own good, and sputtering, “Look, where you people
live
. They want to kill
you
. If they didn’t already kill you or someone you love, it wasn’t for lack of trying. And they’re going to try again, don’t you get it?” Unbidden, Giselle standing in the hallway in her pajamas at the door that morning came back to Johnson, and he felt a
twinge of horror, then the relief all over again. “I forgot to text Mitch at the office. Can you call?” Correction, Mitch’s
widow
. Showing signs of Parkinson’s.

Boos from the audience: “Fuck
yoo!
” “Shut up!” “Nazi!” And Johnson felt that surge headed up his throat again as he had on the night of Jo von H’s party listening to the two pointy-headed profs nattering on about the Jews. “The numbers . . . 5 million Jews—yet we dance along to their every whim.” And here were three more pointy-heads—himself included—dancing along to the ugly faces in the crowd slathering spittle toward the stage. He found himself staring at his hands, then at his clean manicured fingernails. Fingers . . . that did it.

He stood up and addressed the room without the mike, his voice shaking, “Please, please just sit down and listen. Listen. Mr. Meyer has come here, and he has a right to be heard. Surely you understand this?” He stumbled for a moment, uncharacteristically. Then noticed the faces in the crowd. No, they didn’t think Mr. Fascist Neo-Con Journalist had a right to be heard. The faces thought the only right he possessed was to take a good thrashing. Take it and like it. But Johnson wouldn’t stop. “Look, you don’t have to be a fan of this administration or The Patriot Project to acknowledge there are Muslim fanatics, millions of them, both in foreign countries and here in the West, who want you dead. I’d have thought a couple of buildings burned off the face of the earth not too far from here would have made this point to any honest person’s satisfaction. And if you can’t acknowledge this simple fact, then you are an intellectual coward of the first order.” With that he sat down, feeling the flush on his face.

A hush fell over the room. Then the rumbles from the crowd began again. Eli Pariser of MoveOn leaned toward him and whispered in Johnson’s ear, brow knit and lips curling downward, “Whose side are you on, Peter?”

Meyer leaned over at another point, looking puzzled, “Thanks, but why don’t you ever write that?” Johnson just shrugged; it was the best he could do.

At the end, everyone avoided him. Usually he was mobbed after such events, but not this time. He felt embarrassed and so eager to get out of
there, he didn’t even bother to chat up the cute brunette with the shiny coal-black eyes in the second row. He walked down the stairs, avoiding the crowded elevator—no point in talking to
these
students—and failed to notice the guy from Jo von H’s party at his elbow. The man who had given him his business card that fateful September 10.

Fact was—that fellow Meyer had a point—why
didn’t
he write that way? Was he afraid of losing his perch at
The Crusader
? That his ex-wife boss would dump him again? That he’d lose his audience? He’d chosen his tin drum, beating it morning, noon, and night—finally reaching the point where he could write or say anything he wanted.

At the NYU building entrance, Meyer caught up with him, then invited Johnson for a drink, and they headed to a neighborhood Irish dive. “I’ve been following your stuff,” Meyer told him.

He should have felt flattered, but he didn’t.

He’d been writing his pickled little heart out, in fluid 80-proof prose. Damning himself at every click of the keys. He knew what
The Crusader
needed to feed the beast: “Why They Hate Us”; “Why They Hate Us More”; “Why There’s Nothing Else to Do but Hate Us”; “If You
Don’t
Hate Us, What’s Wrong with You?”—anything Jo von H wanted. She had rewarded him handsomely, giving him the use of one of her cars and drivers. Not that he needed much more positive reinforcement. The TV shows kept lapping it up. Dan Rather over at CBS offered him a guest commentator spot, but he decided to keep his independence—better to be able to provoke on any network, any time. He’d bypassed
The Crusader
’s little publishing imprint, left his agent of eighteen years, found a new agent, and taken $500,000 for a two-book deal with a big house. So hell yeah, he took the first half of his advance, spent the whole wad, and hadn’t written line one. Seizing every opportunity to rail against the sins of his adopted hateful country for the price of a drink at any party, in any apartment overlooking Central Park with floor-to-ceiling windows.

In the dark, empty, sticky-floored bar, he and Meyer fell into a deep discussion of the war, ignoring a bar-top video game flickering luridly at
the end of the bar—the game,
Poke’ Her
, your hand of cards dealt by a cute showgirl in a black brassiere and not much else. A finely crafted stained-glass FDNY 9/11 commemoration sat on a shelf by the hard liquor. Poker, girls, booze, and dead firemen.

Johnson watched the barmaid make each of his black-and-tans, pouring the Guinness over an upside-down spoon—so thick, so milky, and seemingly miraculously floating on top of the Bass Pale Ale. He couldn’t help drawing doodles with his pinky in the top of the Guinness foam, a habit of his for as long as he’d been drinking them.

They talked point by point and pint by pint: about the veil, the Saudis, the death of Arab pan-nationalism, Taliban teenage head-choppers, the insane cult of suicide bombings in Palestine. By 2 AM, they couldn’t agree on much, except this: that the Islamo-Nazis belonged on the short list of Johnson’s honest-to-God enemies.

Not a radical thought, but one Johnson had never let climb entirely to the surface of his mind. So obvious. So undeniable. Maybe he’d never wanted to deal with the regret over everything he’d done through the years to turn attention away from these honest-to-God bastards. Men who would do anything. Cut off people’s heads on video. Blow up a chunk of Manhattan, scattering human remains into neighborhoods miles away. Johnson left the Irish dive sensing how much he had given away to his companion. An intellectual fault line had shifted underground somewhere in his mental world, and he headed home feeling he had committed some ill-defined indiscretion. A single honest thought that hurt.

As the wee hours began to get bigger, the pints of black-and-tan had their way with him. Staggering in the street before his apartment door, he fumbled with his keys. Somehow there were too many keys on the ring, and he couldn’t decide which one fit. That’s why he didn’t notice when a pack of kids in hooded sweatshirts scoped him out to play a favorite New York game: roll-the-drunk. What these kids
might have known about Paki weasels or Middle Eastern suicide cults was anybody’s guess. Not much likely. What they did know were the rules of the street, and in fifteen short seconds Johnson was surrounded at his doorstep, his trousers belt sliced with a knife, his pockets ripped, and his billfold gone. The sound of their running steps echoed off the buildings.

A nearby taxicab parked by the curb turned on its headlights, and the window rolled down.

“Mr. Johnson?” He turned and tried to focus on the man inside, holding up his pants with one hand. He squinted, puzzled. “We met at a Josephine von Hildebrand affair,” the man said. Johnson’s memory wasn’t at its sharpest. “I kept you from slugging some professors.” A light bulb in Johnson’s head flickered, but that’s all.

“Then called the next morning. About a year ago.”

The bulb flashed to life, a low forty watts.

“Ahhh,” Johnson said. “Yes, yes. You’re the guy who called me on 9/11. Robert Wallets. Vice President. We meet again. I lost your card.”

“I’ve got another.” The assured voice of the man named Wallets annoyed him in all its quiet self-control. “Why don’t you hop in, Peter? Let’s see if we can recover your plastic before it goes radioactive.”

Johnson climbed in back, and suddenly Wallets’ voice wasn’t so quiet. “They went that way,” he barked at the cab driver. “Let’s get on it.”

“Are we chasing them?” Johnson asked to the crew-cut back of Wallets’ head, slouching in his seat to get his pants hitched up.

Wallets looked back at him with a curl of a knowing smile. “The predators have become the prey. Any objections?”

“I really, that’s . . . it’s not necessary,” Johnson fumbled out. But it was the smile that scared him.

Wallets forgot him and talked to the driver in a quieter voice. “Take a right here. They usually don’t run any more than a block or two before strolling again, congratulating themselves on finding an easy—” He never finished.

Three hooded figures walked together in a clump on the sidewalk to their right, waving their arms and laughing. “And here they are,” Wallets said. “Take it slow.”

The cab doused its headlights and crawled to a halt about thirty feet behind the lads. The cab door unlatched, and Wallets eased himself out onto the sidewalk like a cat, leaving the door open so it wouldn’t slam. And what Johnson saw then was everything he’d ever imagined a human weapon might be. Even in the dark. In fact the dark seemed like Wallets’ friend. Flitting quietly from shadow to shadow, in six steps he stood right behind the kids. One of them sensed something coming up behind, glancing over his shoulder, too late, “Oh, snap!”

Wallets dropped Snappy with a punch in the kidneys. It must have been a punch, because Johnson heard a
woof
, and the kid just folded, falling to his knees. Then started the hard business of trying to breathe. The second Snappy turned, surprised, his mouth agape. Wallets hit him next.

So fast, Johnson missed the punch, but what he did hear was a kind of
crack
. And two white teeth skittered across the pavement. The hood held his face, crying now and huddled beside the street lamp. “Oh man, oh man . . .” was all he said.

Snappy Number Three just stood there, hands at his sides, waiting to die. There was nowhere to go. It was as if he’d been corralled by the sheer force of Wallets’ will. Even if he was packing heat, he didn’t have the nuts to pull it. Wallets frisked him with practiced hands and led him gently back to the car where the driver rolled down Johnson’s window. Johnson peered at his assailant, a sixteen-year-old black kid with fear in his eyes. Snappy One was still working on that breathing thing. Snappy Two, still huddled by the lamppost, covered his mouth as blood seeped between the fingers and looked around for his teeth. Bloody gums, but no guns.