Empire of Lies

  "Come here, asshole."

  Serena heard footsteps on pebbles and dirt as the boys moved away from the car. They went on speaking in lowered voices. She had to strain to hear them, but she could still make out most of what they were saying.

  "We have a plan," said Jamal. "The plan's the plan."

  "Yeah, but we were supposed to lose her before we did anything. That was the plan."

  "It's still the plan. Only she passed out, that's all. It's the same thing. The plan was only him. He's taken care of. There's a whole story about him so no one will ... you know: come around, come looking. People would look for her. The cops would look for her. That's a whole different thing. That's not the plan."

  Another boy spoke. "What if the cops, y'know, like, interrogate her—whatever?"

  And another boy: "Right. What if she goes to the cops? I mean, if she saw something on TV about this or something..."

  There was a pause—as if Jamal was thinking it over, deciding whether the other boys were right or not, whether he should kill her or not. Serena, lying curled on the seat of the car, was startled by a small squeaking noise. After a second, she realized it was coming out of her own mouth. She forced herself back down, deeper away from the surface of her body. She lay in darkness there, waiting for Jamal to decide.

  "Nah," Jamal said finally. "It's the same as before. It's the same plan. If she goes to the police, we'll know. She can't go to them without us knowing. We'll take care of her then, if we have to. For now, it's the same as before."

  "Except she was here. That's not the same."

  "She's dead to the world," said Jamal.

  "Not dead enough for me," muttered another boy.

  Another boy laughed.

  "Fucking clowns!" said Jamal, and he laughed, too. "Get in the car. Let's get the fuck outta here."

  There were footsteps again. The doors of the green Cadillac opened, and the boys piled in. Three got in front, and two got in back with Serena. They shoved her legs roughly off the seat to make room.

  "Drunken skank. Get out of the way," one of them said.

  She groaned as if she'd been asleep and sat up reluctantly.

  "Where are we?" she murmured sleepily.

  "Nowhere," said the boy next to her. "You're crunked. Just keep sleeping it off."

  Serena stole a peek at him through half-closed eyes. It was the boy with the knife, the boy who had cut the white boy's throat. She could feel his haunch against her haunch, his arm against her arm. She could smell the musty boy-smell of him, a sweat smell now, and the dank smell of jeans wet with swampwater.

  She laid her head against the window and pretended to go to sleep.

  The engine started. The car backed over the dirt road. Serena laid against the door in a misery of fear, smelling the smell of them, feeling the touch of the boy who had cut the white boy's throat.

  Somebody turned on the radio. There were drums like the footsteps of a giant running after her and a street-black voice like a machine gun threatening machine-gun violence in rhyme.

  They drove with the music blaring all the long way back to the city.

  The Road to Disaster

  For a long time after Serena finished talking, I couldn't answer a word. I sat at the kitchen table and looked at her—that's all. I tried to appear calm. I kept my hands folded on the tabletop. I kept my expression more or less impassive, maybe a little fatherly, a little stern. I showed her nothing of what was inside me: the smothering awareness of catastrophe, my sense that the walls of catastrophe were closing in on me while my mind scrabbled like a rat looking for the exit.

  I kept picturing that boy, the white boy, his throat cut, his blood spewing into the moonlight, his body flopping in the swampwater. This was bad stuff. Big trouble. For her and for me, too. This was going to mean cops and courtrooms and killers with a grudge and maybe even jail time for Serena somewhere down the line. There'd be media, investigations, people digging into my past, people talking about my past in newspapers, on television. Cathy would wonder why I hadn't told her I was coming to see Lauren. The kids would hear that Serena was their half sister. The kids would hear all kinds of things, and my neighbors would hear. I could feel the walls of it closing in, and my mind was scrabbling for a way out. But I sat there, trying to look calm.

  "All right," I said after a while. I spoke slowly, carefully, thinking it through. "The first thing we have to do is go talk to your mother."

  Serena's eyes went wide, her mouth went wide. An enormous whine broke from her: "Why?"

  "Because she's your mother, Serena."

  "So what? It's not like she cares about me."

  "She cares about you, and the two of you are going to have to decide what to do about this. Now come on. Get your stuff and let's go."

  "But they'll know," she whined—as if I were forcing her to go to school with a bad haircut. "Jamal and the rest. They'll know where I am."

  "Sweetheart," I said. "You've been wandering around the same clubs as always, drunk out of your mind—"

  "I'll stop. I won't drink anymore. I promise."

  "Well, that would be a good idea. But the fact remains: I found you. They can find you. So we're gonna go home and talk to your mother and figure out what to do. Now get your stuff."

  All this I pronounced with fatherly calm and fatherly demeanor and authority, but my heart was sour with anxiety and I felt the walls closing in.

  Dragging her heels and making that peculiarly ugly grimace teens reserve to express the illimitable vastness of their disgust with an unfair, hypocritical, and cruel adult world, Serena slouched back to the bathroom to prepare herself for the journey home.

  Meanwhile, I phoned Lauren. Finally she answered. She sounded harried. "What?"

  "Where the hell were you last night?" I said.

  "I was out, Jason. All right? People go out sometimes."

  "Well, I have Serena."

  "I know. I got your message. That's great. I really, really appreciate it. Can you keep her till I'm finished working? I'll come pick her up on the way home."

  "No," I said. "I'm bringing her over now."

  "There won't be anyone here now, Jason. I have to go to work. Guess what: Not everyone's rich. Y'know?"

  I remembered how she begged me to help her. I'm scared. I can't sleep at night. All that. I was glad she was on the phone just then, that she wasn't in the room with me. I'm an old-fashioned man in a lot of ways. I don't believe in hitting women. But frankly, I find the only way to avoid hitting women is to avoid women who need to be hit. Right then, Lauren needed a smack in the face, maybe a couple of them. I was itching to give them to her, so I was glad she wasn't in the room.

  I spoke through a throat tight with anger. "I'm bringing her over. If you're not there, I'm bringing her to your office."

  "You don't even know where my office is." Taunting me, she sounded just like her daughter.

  So I treated her like her daughter. "You're a paralegal at Watson and Mantle. I'll bring her there."

  That shut her up. It felt good to shut her up. Not as good as hitting her would've felt, but good.

  "So you want me to get fired?" she said finally. "I need this job, Jason."

  "Your daughter's in trouble, Lauren," I said. "I mean, real trouble—as in, you're gonna need to call the cops and get the lawyers you work for to help you. So look, I'm bringing her to your house or I'm bringing her to your office. Which is it gonna be?"

  There was another pause on her end of the line. Then she said, "Shit. Shit! You are such a self-righteous asshole!"

  "Yes, I am. And I'll be there in half an hour." I ended the call.

  Serena took a long time in the bathroom. When she was done, I ushered her out to the red Mustang. I drove for the expressway.

  We didn't try to make conversation. Serena huddled in her bucket seat, in her rumpled pink party dress. She pouted and stewed, sneering out the window. I sneered out the windshield, working the wheel. I was well pissed off by now. Pissed off at
Lauren, pissed off at myself. I was furious at that helpless feeling of catastrophe closing in—cops and courts and killers—and my mind scrabbling like a rat, looking for a way out.

  Ruefully, I remembered evenings sitting on my patio, on the patio of my house on the Hill. I remembered sitting with my wife whom I loved, watching my children, whom I likewise loved, playing in the grass. Everything was pretty much A-OK back then. What was it? Three days ago? I had money in the bank and a cheerful spouse who brought me lemonade and happy kids who got good grades in school and were eager to do well in the world. And when I thought back to those bygone times, I could remember how once or twice, my wife and I, gossiping together the way couples do, would sit on the patio and talk about some friends or neighbors who had gone down the Road to Disaster. We couldn't help but notice, at those times, that their turn onto the Road to Disaster was always very clearly marked. It was always very obvious what they had done wrong. Maybe they'd spent too much money or neglected their children or cheated on their spouses or become addicted to drugs or alcohol. Whatever it was, it was never anything subtle; it was always very plain what had led them down the Road to Disaster. Sometimes it even happened that these friends or neighbors would come to Cathy and me at some point and ask us for our advice. "We are heading down the Road to Disaster," they would say. "What can we do to avoid the Disaster at the end?" And Cathy and I would answer, "Stop. Stop going down that road. Stop cheating on your wife or spending too much money or neglecting your children or drinking. Turn around and go back and go down another road instead." And every time—every single time—they would say to us, "Oh, no. Oh, no, we can't do that. We can do anything else, but we can't go down another road. We have many good and sound and necessary reasons why we must go down the Road to Disaster. Therefore give us some other advice. Give us some advice that will make the Road to Disaster end somewhere other than in the Disaster to which it inevitably leads." It was the strangest thing, but that's what they would say. Then, when they reached the Disaster at the end of the road, when it loomed like a brick wall in front of them, and they struck it with a devastating crash that left everything they cherished in ruins, my wife and I would sit on the patio together and shake our heads and say to each other, "Why didn't they stop? Why didn't they turn around and go down another road?" We would talk like that, you know, in that way you do, as if you're sorry for your friends, and maybe you are sorry, but you can't help blaming them a little, too, and you're even secretly satisfied that it happened to them and not to you, that you are the sort of person who doesn't go down the Road to Disaster, who goes down a different road instead.

  These conversations with my wife on the patio came back to me now and it was a bitter business. Because here I was, sure enough, hurtling along the Road to Disaster myself, and I had many good and sound and necessary reasons why I couldn't stop, why I couldn't turn around—Serena might be my daughter, Serena needed my help, Lauren had neither the money nor the common sense to do what was necessary—and at the same time it was as obvious as it could possibly be that I was a raging fool to be here, that I'd been a fool every stupid step of the way. Why had I agreed to go see Lauren in the first place? Why had I let her talk me into finding Serena? Why hadn't I told my wife what I was doing so we could discuss it, so I'd have someone on my side when things went wrong? What was your problem? I asked myself angrily. Was the good life too boring for you? Was it the idea of adventure that drew you away from your patio on the Hill or the fantasy that you might have sex with an old girlfriend or the need to show her what a big, solid, responsible man you'd become by rescuing her from her fucked-up existence, by fixing everything for her? Jesus in his Heaven, boy, are there ever going to be ten solid seconds between the cradle and the fucking grave when you aren't governed by vanity or greed or your heat-seeking dick?

  So I drove on, past the car dealerships and gas stations. Turning onto the expressway service road away from the sun and into the bright blue sky. It was late morning. The rush was over. The traffic was breaking up, moving fast. I hit the entry ramp and gunned the engine just to blow some of the frustration out of my system. The Mustang sliced into the stream of cars, and melded with it. We headed toward Queens.

  I stole a glance at Serena as I settled in at speed. The sight of her small and sullen there against the window made me hurt inside. God, I hoped to hell she wasn't mine. In my heart, I knew she was, but I hoped to hell she wasn't. I hated to think I had fathered a child and left her alone to this: this life, this trouble. It was more trouble than she knew, I think. I think she probably expected she could cajole and stomp her feet and whine, and it would all go away. But I knew it wouldn't, and I hurt for her.

  She sat up suddenly.

  "Shit, there they are!" she said. Flashing her face at me, then back at the window, pressing against the glass, looking into the sideview mirror. "They're following us."

  I lifted my eyes to the rearview and saw the green Cadillac on my tail.

  It was in the center lane, about three cars back. A 1970s Coupe de Ville, that old galumphing monster they called The Tank. Long and sleek from the side and broad across, with a great big angry grille up front like a shark coming at you. The sight of it got to me—as if the thing had leaped alive out of Serena's story, out of the scene at the swamp with the darkness and the frogs croaking and the boy thrashing and dying in the water. I had pictured it all in my mind as she was telling it, and now here it was, real as life on the highway behind me. It made the thing seem inevitable somehow, connected to my own imagination, impossible to shake.

  "What are you gonna do?" said Serena. "Don't lead them back to my house, okay? Go somewhere else."

  I stepped down on the gas. I pulled into the left lane, passed a car or two, and drew back over to the right. I watched the Caddy in the rearview to see how it would respond. The driver stayed cool, stayed back. He waited for the Toyota in front of him to slide out of his way. Then he moved up naturally, closing the gap between us. As if he was just rolling along the highway, not bothering anyone.

  "Are you sure it's them?" I said.

  "Yes! Yes! Definitely! I know the car."

  Another car, a Volks Passat, cleared out of the Caddy's way. The green monster pressed ahead again, getting closer. Three cars back, same as before.

  "Damn it," I said.

  I watched it in the rearview. As far as I could tell, there was only one man in the wide front seat, only the driver. If there were others in the back, I couldn't make them out. I couldn't make out the license plate, either. It was too far away and—maybe intentionally, maybe not—it was dark with dirt so the numbers were obscure.

  I looked up ahead and around. Where the hell were we? I saw a golf course, a couple of weathered white apartment buildings, a mall at the edge of the highway, a flat gray wasteland of a town petering out in the distance beyond.

  "I'm gonna pull off," I said. "If he follows me, then I'll be sure. Then I'll have to call the cops."

  I expected Serena to object, but she didn't. I shot a look at her. She was staring eagerly straight ahead. I knew the cops scared her, but it seemed these guys scared her even more. Well, they scared me, too. I didn't want to go to the police yet, either—not without Lauren, and not before Serena had herself a lawyer. But assuming these were our friends from the swamp, I wasn't going to tangle with them alone.

  I saw an exit up ahead. I glided out of the stream of traffic, slowing on the ramp. My eyes flicked to the rearview as I pulled to the stop sign at the corner. I couldn't see much of the freeway from there. I couldn't see whether the Caddy kept going or not. But it must have—I figured it must have. I waited at the sign for several seconds. No one came off the expressway after me.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. "I think they're gone," I said.

  "Maybe we should pull over and wait, you know," she said. "Wait and see if they show up again."

  I turned the corner and went down the street. It was a street of small houses, clapboard-and-shingle two-stori
es with peaked roofs and porches out front. It was one of those sad streets that must've been all right in the old days, before the highway came, before the traffic got to be what it was. People must've scrimped and saved to live in these homes back then. But now the paint was chipped on the clapboards and on the porch columns and some of the shingles had fallen and the lawns were shaggy and pocked with patches of brown. The only person in sight was a shapeless old lady in a shapeless blue dress. She shuffled along the sidewalk, bent over her cane, not going much of anywhere, I thought, just going, just about gone.

  There were scraggly plane trees on either side of me. The sun came through their branches on my right. I rolled over the dead yellow leaves on the street beneath them. I heard them crunching under my tires.

  There was another stop sign up ahead, and I saw what looked to be a broad boulevard about three blocks beyond that. I figured I'd head up there, put some gas in the car, make sure there was no one after me before continuing on. I slowed to a stop at the sign.

  Then—without warning, without a word—Serena leapt out of the car.

  It took me completely by surprise. A foolish-sounding half-syllable of protest came up my throat. The next second, the Mustang's door slammed. She took off running.

  "Damn it!" I said.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. I saw her racing like hell up the middle of the street, her arms flailing on either side of her. She was gripping her purse in her left hand and her shoes, too. She couldn't run in those pointy little heels, so she'd slipped them off in advance. Son of a bitch! She'd been planning her getaway the whole time!

  I pushed my door open. She wasn't going very fast. I was pretty sure I could run her down if I had to. I stepped out into the street.

  I remember, for some reason, that when I felt the autumn air and smelled the leaves and got a long view of the road with its porched houses and its lawns and saw the dead leaves blowing over the pavement in a light breeze and heard the rattle of them rising under the whoosh and rumble of the traffic—I remember a pang of loneliness and nostalgia hit me, as if I could feel the dreamless lives of the people who lived here, their loss and disappointment.