The Darling

  “Dawn.”

  “Right.”

  I pushed my chair back and stood. “I’ll come back as soon as I know when everything will be in place. The passport is the hard part, but it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks at most.”

  “Can do it any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday morning. When the prisoners play the all-American game of baseball.”

  He stood and put his arms around me and kissed me on both cheeks. I liked his smell. It may have been the first time in my life that a man had smelled right to me. No, not the first time. My father always smelled right to me. No other man. Until Charles. And none since.

  TWO WEEKS LATER on an overcast Friday morning, Zack and I drove out from New Bedford on Route 1 in my mother’s car. I pulled over and parked on the gravel shoulder of the northbound lane. It was late August, unseasonably cool and threatening to rain, the trailing edge of a New England summer passing through. The leaves of the roadside oak and maple trees in the copse beyond had turned their dry undersides up, shifting the late summer morning light from pale green to silver. It was a little after nine.

  Zack lighted a cigarette and looked nervously back and forth along the highway. Morning traffic was thin; Cape Cod weekenders from the Boston suburbs hadn’t started their pilgrimage to the sea yet. On the floor of the backseat was a small nylon carry-on bag. Inside the bag was a tan, tropical-weight suit, size forty-two, and a dress shirt and tie from Filene’s Basement. Inside the breast pocket of the suit jacket was an envelope with five one-hundred-dollar bills and a one-way Egypt Air ticket for the 1:05 p.m. flight from Boston to Cairo—everything drawn from my going-away gift from Samuel Doe, an irony that was not lost on me.

  Also inside the jacket pocket was a U.S. passport in the name of Charles Davis. The photo was of a round-faced black man who resembled Charles only slightly, but close enough that a white man would think it was an exact likeness. This took place some fifteen years ago, remember, when it was safe to assume that Charles’s face and passport photo would not be examined by a black man in uniform until he got to Egypt. Also, back then, before Americans started seeing anyone whose skin wasn’t pink as a potential suicide bomber, security was light and the technology of surveillance was slow and unreliable.

  Getting a passport for Charles had been a simple matter. I’d driven Carol to the Federal Building in Boston, where for the first time in her life she applied for her passport. Ten days later it arrived in the mail, and that evening I doctored it with Whiteout and a photo-booth head-shot of one of the cooks at The Pequod, a handsome black man named Dick Stephens, divorced and lonely, Carol said. I’d pretended to have a crush on him, had spent a day in Provincetown with him, and had asked for a picture for my wallet, so I could memorialize the lovely day and had promised with lowered eyes future payment for the favor. We snapped four pictures each; I gave him mine, and he gave me his.

  Carol had been uneasy with what Zack and I were up to, especially after I assumed ownership of her brand new passport, which represented to her in tangible form the power and authority of the United States government. But by then she and Zack were once again sleeping together without me, and I had assumed the leadership position among the three of us and had made my mission the only important one. Zack happily complied. He believed that when I completed my mission, he would assume ownership of at least half, possibly more, of Charles’s million-dollar cache in some secret Caribbean bank account. According to Zack, well before we saw Charles off at Logan Airport, we’d stop at a Shawmut Bank branch in the suburbs, where Charles would arrange the transfer of the funds from his account to Zack’s little checking account at the New Bedford branch.

  I asked him how he could be sure Charles would be willing and able to do that.

  “No way Charlie won’t deliver the goods. Until he walks into the Libyan embassy in Cairo, we can always get him busted by the feds.”

  “Not without busting ourselves.”

  “We can drop a dime on him, and the feds’ll greet him when he lands. He’s connected to Ghaddafi and the fucking Libyans, man. He’s an escapee from an American prison. The Egyptians’d give him up in a minute.”

  “Zack, you do that, and I swear I’ll kill you.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Sure. Suddenly you’re Weather Underground again. A revolutionary. A true believer. C’mon, you just want to fuck the guy.”

  “Zack, I’m doing this to save my country.”

  “Your country? What, Liberia?”

  “Yes. My country. And my sons’ and my husband’s country. And their lives, I’m doing this to save their lives,” I said, and meant it, too. Believed it.

  It had started to rain. Zack checked his watch. “Ten twenty-five. Shit. Where the fuck is he?” Southbound traffic was building into a steady stream. Inevitably, a trooper cruising for speeders would spot us and pull in behind the Toyota, ask us for IDs, and run the plates. My driver’s license, like my passport, was phony and long expired anyhow, and I was driving a car registered in my mother’s name.

  “Maybe he fucked up getting over the fence,” Zack said. “I know that fence, and it’s not all that easy to climb. Maybe we oughta book.”

  “No. We’ll wait.”

  “How long? Some cop comes along, we’re in deep shit.”

  “I won’t abandon him, Zack.”

  “Yeah. Sure. C’mon, don’t go all high church on me. You’re in this for the money as much as I am,” he said.

  “No. For maybe the first time in fifteen years, I’m acting on principle.”

  “Those days, when it made some kind of sense to act on principle, are long gone, babe. Now the only people acting on principle are right-wing born-again Christians, and I’m not so sure about them. These are the eighties, babe.”

  “Charles Taylor is acting on principle.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said and turned to roll down the window and toss his cigarette, and there was Charles, standing in the rain beside the car, looking in at us with a broad smile on his wet face.

  “Can you give a man a lift?” he asked and pulled open the rear door and got in.

  DRIVING NORTH TOWARDS Boston we said little to one another. Charles exchanged his prison garb for the clothes I’d brought, and examined the ticket and cash and his new passport.

  “Who’s this a picture of? This black man s’posed to look like me? Hell, I’m much prettier than this guy.”

  “It’s the best I could do,” I said.

  We were outside Natick, barely a half-hour from the airport. I felt strangely calm and clearheaded, as if I were merely dropping a friend off and didn’t have to go much out of my way to do it. Twice we passed a police car, and I had to remind myself to keep to the speed limit, for God’s sake, I’m helping a man break out of a federal prison, I’m a fugitive myself with a forged passport and driver’s license, my partner in crime seated next to me is a parolee, and if we’re stopped and caught, he’ll cut a deal in a minute, he’ll say anything, and will betray both me and Charles to keep from going back to prison.

  Without turning, Zack said, “Charlie, maybe we should talk about our little agreement.”

  “Eh? How’s that?”

  “Well, as you no doubt recall, there was to be a certain payment for the services. You no doubt recall our earlier conversations on the subject. And now here we are, man. Almost home.”

  In the rearview mirror I watched Charles nod and look out at the passing suburbs and smile as if to himself. He was silent for several long minutes.

  Zack said, “Well? What about it? We gonna transfer those funds from your account in Switzerland or the Caymans or wherever the hell they are over to my account in New Bedford or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Or not. Because if not, then we’ve got a problem.”

  “Really? Is that true, Hannah? I mean ‘Dawn,’ of course. Is that true? If I don’t pass Zack the money that Samuel Doe say I stole wit’ your husband, then we have a problem, you an’ me?”

  “No,” I s
aid. “This is strictly between you and Zack.”

  “Good girl,” he said. “You a good girl. You a true Liberian patriot. But my friend Zack here, I dunno, man. Seems like he in this for the money. An’ once I give him the way to get it into his pocket, him don’t need me for nothin’ no more an’ can fuck up my travel plans real easy, if he want to. I think I’ll wait till I get me a boarding pass an’ they call my row to board the plane, before I give you what you want. You understand, Zack.”

  “Yeah. I understand.”

  Charles asked for a piece of paper and a pen. My mother’s list-making pad and ballpoint pen were clipped to a plastic holder stuck to the dashboard, and I handed him both. Charles wrote for a few seconds, tore off the top piece of notepaper, and returned the pen and pad. He folded the notepaper once and put it into his shirt pocket.

  “This here,” he said and patted his pocket, “is a telephone number and a man’s name. When I board my plane for Cairo, I’ll give this paper to you. Then all you got to do is say your name to the person who answers and tell him the man whose name I wrote down gave you permission to arrange for the transfer of Charles Taylor’s funds. This telephone is in Washington, D.C. It’s a secret contact number only I know about, and the name on the paper is a name only I use. My code name. No one else knows both these things. Whoever answers at that particular telephone number and hears that particular name, he’ll know the instructions are comin’ straight from me. He’ll know to give you what you want, no matter what it is, no questions asked.”

  “Why can’t we stop at a pay phone and make that call now?”

  “Not enough time, Zack. Don’t want to miss my flight. Only one a day, y’know.”

  “Sounds a little funny to me,” Zack said. “Can I trust you?”

  “‘Course you can trust me, man. It’s what I owe you.”

  We reached the airport at 11:45. I parked the car in the first empty space I saw, which put us on the third level of the parking garage, and the three of us raced down the stairs and into the international terminal, Charles loping along ahead of us as if he’d made this run many times before. When we arrived at the gate for Egypt Air, they had already begun the boarding procedure. A knot of first-class passengers, men in business suits with briefcases, an old lady in a wheelchair, and two couples with small children were already passing into the access way. Charles handed his ticket and passport across the counter to the young woman attendant, who hurriedly punched out his boarding pass and went back to calling out the rows. Charles turned around and faced me and Zack.

  “Well, my fellow freedom fighters, we at a parting of the ways.” He reached for me and kissed me firmly on the lips, more a promise than a thank you. He released me slowly, then stepped away in the direction of the passengers lined up to board.

  “Wait a minute!” Zack said sharply. “That little piece of paper in your pocket is mine, I believe.”

  “Oh, sure, almost forgot,” Charles said and handed the paper over. “All the excitement of departure, I guess.” He smiled again, then quickly moved into line and walked through the gate and disappeared from sight.

  Zack stared down at the piece of notepaper.

  “Is it what you wanted?” I asked.

  “I hope the fuck it is. It’d better be.”

  “What’ll you do if it isn’t? What if the money never left Monrovia? It’s possible Samuel Doe has it by now, you know. It’s even possible the U.S. government has it.”

  “Charlie knows I can still get to him, man. He won’t fuck me over. I know people, man. African people.”

  “Oh, Zack.” I started walking back towards the main terminal. Quickly Zack caught up and touched my elbow and asked if he could have five dollars. I gave it to him, and he crossed to a newsstand and made change while I waited.

  He stopped at the bank of phones just inside the main terminal. I moved next to him and stood there while he fumbled with the quarters and dialed. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a uniformed cop watching us. On a bench next to him two men with briefcases read newspapers as if they wanted to be seen reading newspapers. A maintenance man with a dustbin and push broom came to a meaningless stop twenty feet away and looked straight at me.

  “Zack, I’ll be outside,” I said and walked with careful nonchalance through the door into the parking garage. No one appeared to follow me. The elevator crawled to the third level, and as soon as I was free of it, I ran for the car. I jumped in and started the motor and raced, tires squealing, for the exit, down the ramp to the second level—still no one following in the rearview mirror—and on down to the first level, and there was Zack crossing into the garage from the terminal, looking for me. He saw the car and ran towards it, his face angrily bunched, and I jammed on the brakes and stopped. He got in and slammed the door hard, and I hit the gas and exited the garage, stopping barely long enough to pay the parking fee, then drove full bore towards the tunnel under the bay and downtown Boston beyond.

  Zack said, “I thought you’d pulled out on me, man. Why the hell would you want to do that?”

  “I was just bringing the car down to meet you.”

  “Oh,” he said, glum and downcast. He still held the piece of paper in his lap and studied it as if it carried a message difficult to read.

  “Well? What happened?” I glanced at him. He looked like a child ready to cry putting on a big man’s face to hide it.

  “You’re right about me,” he said.

  “How?”

  “I’m an asshole,” he said. “I fucking hate myself.” He turned away from me and toward the window so I couldn’t see his face.

  “Was it a working number?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “And…?”

  “It was the number of the Liberian embassy in Washington, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Oh, dear,” I said, not very surprised. “So you just hung up?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t just hang up. I should have. But I followed instructions. I told the guy, who had this fucking British accent, I told him my name and gave him the name of the guy that Charles wrote down. I said this guy was supposed to transfer the money being held for Charles Taylor into an account that I had the number for.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing at first. Then he asked my name again, and I told him. And then he laughed like hell. And hung up.”

  We were silent for a few seconds. It had stopped raining, and the clouds were breaking up, and patches of blue sky behind them skidded south ahead of us. I asked Zack, “What was the name of the man who was supposed to do this, transfer the money into your account?”

  “Sam Clement,” he said. “Who the fuck’s Sam Clement? You ever heard of him?”

  “No,” I said. “I never heard of him.”

  WHEN ZACK DECIDED to move out of the apartment we weren’t disappointed. His presence had become confusing and burdensome to Carol, who preferred my authority to his, although I don’t think it mattered to her which of us she slept with. In a strange way, Carol was never less present and accounted for than in bed; she was merely accommodating there, blandly accepting other people’s needs as if they were her own. Carol’s mentality was that of a permanent servant, ingrown and generations old, and what she liked and needed most, what she understood best in the world and in all her personal relationships, was authority. My apparently principled control of Charles’s breakout and flight and Zack’s humiliation by Charles’s million-dollar promissory note had deflated Zack’s ego and made his male bluster sufficiently defensive and obnoxious to put me in charge of our little family.

  We live in packs as much as dogs or wolves, it sometimes seems, and like them need to be clear at all times about who’s the alpha dog. It’s a practical matter. For Carol, as long as I was in the pack, Zack’s ongoing presence only confused the question of authority. He didn’t announce his departure or even discuss it with us and didn’t leave a note behind to explain or say goodbye. Simply, one morning, a week after Ch
arles’s breakout, Zack and his few possessions and clothes were gone.

  “I guess he felt crowded here,” Carol said and shrugged. That same night I moved from the living room sofa to Carol’s bedroom, and the next morning at breakfast, Bettina said to me, “I like it better now, with you and Mommy together and him gone.” Bettina had learned early, practically from infancy, to be scared of men. It had always been men who took her mother from her, stuck her with her aunt or her grandmother while her mother behind closed doors did mysterious, private business with the men. Or if, like Zack, the men stuck around, they talked too much and treated her as if she were an inconvenience. They were too large, had rough cheeks and hands, loud voices, and were often drunk or high on drugs. Even Zack, who to his credit did try on occasion to pay attention to Bettina, because she was diffident as a cat and withdrawn around him, grew quickly bored and turned his attention elsewhere. With me she was only slightly less suspicious and distant, but I warmed to it; I knew it was merely a self-protective affect that probably resembled mine. Our innate shyness had a hostile edge to it, and she seemed to recognize and like the similarity as much as I, and soon we were like a favorite aunt and favored niece. I was still living off the money Samuel Doe had slipped me for leaving children, husband, and home with minimal fuss, so I didn’t need a job yet and was usually at the apartment when Bettina came home from school and took care of her nights when Carol was at The Pequod.

  In the mornings before leaving for school, Bettina sat silently at the table and ate her Cheerios, while I, also silent, braided her long, pale hair into pigtails like mine, and Carol slept in. At night, before Bettina went to bed, I brushed her hair out again. Grooming. Before long, my days and nights were organized around Bettina’s, which helped me avoid thinking about what I was doing living here with this child and her mother and what I would do when my money ran out. It helped me avoid thinking about Liberia and Charles’s promise to give the country back to its people and what that might mean to Woodrow and our sons and to me, which meant that I didn’t have to ask myself if the promise Charles had made to me was as empty as the promise he’d made to poor, gullible Zack. And it helped me avoid thinking about the children I had left behind in Monrovia, my three African sons and their father, and the life I had, after a fashion, led there. Then one Friday late in September, Carol borrowed my car—my mother’s car—and she and Bettina and Carol’s mother drove to the White Mountains of New Hampshire to view the technicolor fall foliage, an annual rite for them, apparently, but for me little more than an occasion for making intelligence-deprived declarations about the beauty of nature. Not my cup of tea. I declined the invitation to join them, and for the first time since my return to America was alone for two whole days and nights. In the gray silence of the empty apartment—once I had vacuumed and dusted every room, finished the laundry, mopped the kitchen floors, and scrubbed the refrigerator down, once I was unable to come up with anything else to do that was in the slightest way necessary or merely useful to me or anyone else—my thoughts turned helplessly to my home in Monrovia. I sat down at the kitchen table with Bettina’s school tablet in front of me, opened it, and began a letter to my husband.