“Web, come on!”
“I want Claire.”
O’Bannon was silent for a bit. “Are you sure?” he finally said curtly.
“I’m sure.”
“Then I’ll have Claire get in contact with you. I hope you two click,” he added brusquely.
The line went dead and Web continued driving. Two minutes passed and the phone rang again. It was Claire Daniels.
“I guess you feel like quite the pursued man,” she said in a disarming tone.
“It’s nice to be popular.”
“I like to finish what I start, Web, even if it means upsetting a colleague.”
“Claire, I appreciate everything, and I know I told O’Bannon it was okay, but—”
“Please, Web, I think I can help you. At least I’d like to try.”
He thought about this for a bit as he stared over at the cardboard box. What treasures did it hold? “Can I reach you at this number?”
“I’ll be here until five.”
“After that?”
He pulled into a gas station and wrote down Claire’s cell and home phone. He said he’d call her back later and clicked off. Web punched the numbers into his phone’s memory, pulled back onto the road and tried to think all this through. What he didn’t like was that she was trying really hard, maybe too hard.
Web drove back to the motel room. He checked his messages at home. A few people who had seen the press conference had called to wish him well. And an equal number of voices he didn’t recognize were basically telling him that they wanted to punch him in his cowardly, messed-up face. Once Web thought he heard Julie Patterson’s voice and kids bawling in the background, but he couldn’t be sure. He wouldn’t exactly be at the top of the woman’s phone list.
He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and suddenly felt so sorry for Julie he started to shake. Sure, things were going rough for him right now, but that would blow over. She had the rest of her life to work through, with the weight of a lost husband and child forever around her neck and four young kids to raise on her own. She was a survivor, like Web. And survivors hurt the most of all, for they had to pick up the pieces somehow and go right on living.
He dialed the number and a child answered. It was the oldest, Lou, Jr., all of eleven years old and the man of the house now.
“Louie, is your mom in? It’s Web.”
There was a long pause. “Did you get our dad killed, Web?”
“No, I didn’t, Louie. You know better than that. But we’re going to find out who did it. Go get your mom, son,” he added firmly.
Web heard the boy plunk down the phone and walk off. While he waited, Web felt himself start trembling once more, for he had absolutely no idea what he would say to the woman. His nervousness grew as he heard footsteps approaching the phone and then it was picked up, but the person said nothing.
“Julie?” he finally said.
“What do you want, Web?” Her voice was tired. Ironically, the weary tone was more painful to Web than her angry screams at the church.
“I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.” “There’s nothing you or anybody else can do.”
“You should have somebody with you. It’s not good to be alone right now.”
“My sister and mother came down from Newark.”
Web took a breath. Well, that was good. Julie at least sounded calm, rational. “We’re going to find who did this, Julie. If it takes the rest of my life. I just want you to know that. Lou and the others meant everything to me.”
“You do what you need to do, but that won’t bring them back, Web.”
“Did you see the press conference on TV today?”
“No. And please don’t call again.” She hung up.
Web sat there while he absorbed this. It wasn’t that he had actually expected her to say she was sorry about trashing him the other day. That was far too much to expect. What bothered Web was that he felt dismissed by her. Please don’t call again? Maybe the other wives felt the same way. Neither Debbie nor Cynde nor any of the others had contacted him to see how he was doing. Then again, he reminded himself, their loss was much greater than his. They had lost their husbands. He had just lost his friends. He supposed there was an enormous difference. It was just in his case there didn’t seem to be.
He ran across the street to a 7-Eleven and bought a cup of coffee. It had started to drizzle and the temperature had dropped. What had started as a beautiful warm day now was gray and wet, so common for this area, and so reinforcing for his suicidal spirits.
Web returned to his room, sat on the floor and opened the cardboard box. The documents were musty, some mildewed, the few photos yellowed and torn. And yet he was enthralled by it all, for he had never seen these things before. Partly it was because he had never known his mother had kept these items from her first marriage. And he had also never searched the house for them before either. Why not, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps his relationship with his stepfather had smothered all interest Web had in dads.
He arranged the photos fanlike on the floor and then examined them. His father, Harry Sullivan, had been a handsome man. Very tall and broad-shouldered, he had wavy dark hair worn in a greased pompadour and possessed a confident look as he stared out from the photo. He looked like a 1940s-era film star, young and commanding, with a mischievous gleam in his blue eyes. Web could see how Harry Sullivan could be attractive to a young woman who was naive perhaps despite her intelligence and her world travels. Web wondered what his father would look like now, after years in prison, after decades of what he assumed was a fast life to nowhere.
In another photo, Sullivan had his arm around Charlotte’s tiny waist. The man’s arm was so long it curled around her torso and his fingers were placed just under her breasts, maybe even touching them. They looked very happy. Indeed, Charlotte London in her pleated skirt and flip hairstyle looked more beautiful, more enchanting and more excited to be alive than Web had ever seen her. Yet that was part of youth, he supposed. They hadn’t experienced the hard times yet. Web touched his cheek. No, the hard times weren’t great, and they didn’t necessarily always make you stronger. Looking at her so full of life, Web had a hard time believing that the woman was actually dead.
As the rain started to pour harder outside, Web sat in his motel room and sipped his coffee and looked at some of the other items. He fingered the Sullivans’ marriage certificate. Web was surprised his mom had kept that. Then again, it was her first marriage, however awry it might have gone. His father’s signature was surprisingly small for such a big, confident-looking man. And the letters were badly formed, as though old Harry were embarrassed by the exercise of signing his name, unsure of how to make out the letters. An uneducated man, Web concluded.
He laid down the certificate and picked up another slip of paper. A letter. At the top was the heading of a correctional facility in Georgia. The date of the letter was a year after mother and son had fled the convict that the husband and father had become. The letter was typewritten, but Harry Sullivan’s signature appeared at the bottom. And this signature was written bolder, the letters larger and more exactly formed, as though the man had been really working at it. But then, he had had a lot of “free” time in prison.
The contents of the letter were brief. It took the form of an apology to Charlotte and Web. When he got out, he would be a changed man, he claimed. He would do right by them. Well, actually, the letter said that Harry Sullivan would try hard to fulfill all these promises. Web had to concede that it was perhaps brutal honesty on Sullivan’s part, not an easy thing for a man rotting slowly in prison. Web had conducted enough interrogations to know that steel bars and big locks and no future as a free person tended to make people lie shamelessly if they thought it would help their cause. He wondered if the divorce papers had reached his father soon after he had sent the letter. What did that do to a man in prison? His freedom taken and then his wife and son gone too? It certainly didn’t leave a person with muc
h. Web had never faulted his mother for doing what she did, and he didn’t fault her now. Yet these little snippets of his family history made him feel a little sorry for Harry Sullivan, wherever he might be, dead or alive.
Web put the letter aside and spent the next couple of hours going through the other contents. Most were items completely useless to him in tracking down his father, yet Web spent time over them all, if just to get a better feel for the man. His hand closed around two objects that promised a lead. One was an expired driver’s license that had his father’s photo on it, and the other, more importantly, was his Social Security card. These opened up all sorts of possibilities. Web also had another angle to work.
He swallowed his pride, called Percy Bates and apologized to an almost embarrassing degree. Then he told him Harry Sullivan’s name, Social Security number and a guesstimate of the dates of Sullivan’s incarceration in the Georgia prison. Web had thought about calling Ann Lyle with this request but he didn’t want to go to that well too often. Ann had enough to do, and HRT really needed her full attention right now. Besides, she hadn’t gotten back to Web yet on Cove, and he didn’t want her to feel pressured.
“Who is this guy?” Bates wanted to know.
When Web had applied to join the Bureau, he had had to put down his real father’s name, and the investigators had wanted further particulars. He had asked his mother back then to supply more information on the man, but she had absolutely refused to discuss it. Web had told the investigators he didn’t know the whereabouts of his father and had no information to help them track him down. As far as he knew, that had been the end of it. He had passed the background check and was off and running in his FBI career. His last contact with his father had been at age six, and the Bureau couldn’t exactly hold it against Web that his father was a con.
“Just some guy I need to find,” Web told Bates. Web knew that the Bureau was very thorough in its background checks and could very well have information about Web’s father. Web had just never felt inclined to check the file over the years. And yet Bates might know that Harry Sullivan was Web’s father. If so, he was lying very well.
“Any connection to the investigation?”
“No, like you said, that’s off-limits, but I’d really appreciate the favor.”
Bates said he’d see what he could do and then hung up.
Web packed the box away and slid it into a corner. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed his voice mail again. He had been obsessive about it since the courtyard and not really sure why. When he heard the voice, he was glad he was so diligent. Debbie Riner wanted to know if Web could come to dinner tonight. He immediately called her back and said he would. She had seen the piece on TV. “I never had any doubts, Web,” she said. He let out a long breath. Life seemed a lot better right now.
He brought up the number he wanted on the phone screen. It was after five, so Claire Daniels wouldn’t be at her office. His finger hesitated over the button. And then he called her. She was in her car heading home, she told him. “I can see you first thing in the morning. Nine A.M.,”she said.
“So, you’ve got all my problems solved?”
“I’m efficient, but I’m not that quick.” He found himself smiling at this remark. “I appreciate you letting me counsel you. I know change is hard.”
“Change I can handle, Claire. It’s the going crazy part that’s bothering me. I’ll see you at nine.”
21
The dinner with Debbie Riner and her children did not go nearly as well as Web had hoped. Carol Garcia was there too, with one of her kids. They sat around the dining room table, made small talk and mostly avoided matters having to do with the total destruction of their lives. When the Garcias made the sign of the cross on their chests, Web thought about what he told Danny Garcia before every mission. Web had been right, for God had not been with them that night. Yet all Web said was, “Would you pass the potatoes, please?”
HRT operators didn’t really encourage support groups among their wives. In some cases it was because they didn’t want their spouses to gossip among themselves about their husbands. Operators showed many sides of themselves at training and during missions, and not all good ones. An inadvertent slip by one of them to his wife could spread like wildfire among the women if they seriously networked. In other cases it was to discourage the wives from collectively worrying themselves to death, swapping incorrect information, speculation and outright falsehoods generated by fear of where their husbands were, how long they would be gone, whether they were dead.
The kids poked at their food, slouched in their seats and clearly did not want to be there. They treated Web, who had been their bosom friend, playing and joking and watching them grow up, like they had no idea who he even was. Everyone, even Debbie Riner’s seven-year-old daughter, who had loved Web from almost the day she was born, looked relieved when he said his good-byes.
“Keep in touch,” Debbie said, pecking him on the cheek. Carol merely waved to him from a safe distance, while she clutched her glassy-eyed son to her wide hips.
“You bet, sure thing,” Web said. “Take care. Thanks for dinner. You need anything, just let me know.” He drove off in the Vic, knowing he would most likely never see them again. Time to move on, that was clearly the message of the dinner.
At nine sharp the next morning Web stepped into Claire Daniels’s world. Ironically, the first person he saw was Dr. O’Bannon.
“Web, good to see you. Would you like some coffee?”
“I know where it is. I’ll get it, thanks.”
“You know, Web, I was in Vietnam. Never under fire, I was a psychiatrist back then too. But I saw a lot of guys who were. Things happen in combat, things you never think will. But you know what, you’ll probably be stronger for it. And I worked with POWs who’d been tortured by the damn Viet Cong. It’s terrible what they were put through, classic physical and mental manipulation, ostracizing troublemakers, robbing them of every scrap of moral and physical support. Controlling their lives down to the position of their sleep, turning each individual against the other in the name of the group, as it was defined by their captors. Now, of course it’s not ethical for one psychiatrist to poach patients off the other, although, frankly, I was a little surprised about what happened with Claire. But I think Claire would agree that the paramount issue here is your best interest, Web. So if you ever change your mind about working with Claire, I’m here for you.” He slapped Web on the back, gave what Web assumed was intended to be an encouraging look and walked off.
Claire came out of her office a few moments later, saw him and they made their coffees together. They watched as a uniformed repairman with a box of tools came out of the closet housing the office’s electrical and phone lines and left.
“Problems?” asked Web.
“I don’t know, I just came in,” answered Claire.
As they were making their coffees Web checked the woman out. Claire was wearing a blouse and knee-length skirt that showed off nice tanned calves and ankles, but her hair, though short, was in a bit of disarray. She seemed to note Web’s observation and swiped at the errant strands.
“I’ve been fast-walking around the building in the mornings to get a little exercise. Wind and humidity aren’t really good for hair.” She took a sip of her coffee and added some more sugar. “You ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Once in her office Claire perused two files for a bit while Web stared over at a pair of sneakers in the corner. Probably what she fast-walked in. He looked over at her nervously.
“First of all, Web, I want to thank you for having enough confidence in me to let me take over your treatment.”
“I’m not really sure why I did,” he said candidly.
“Well, whatever the reason, I’m going to work hard to make sure your decision was a good one. Dr. O’Bannon wasn’t very happy about it, but the primary concern is you.” She held up a small file. “This is the file Dr. O’Bannon gave me when I
took over your case.”
Web attempted a weak smile. “I would’ve thought it would have been thicker.”
“Actually, I was thinking the same thing,” was Claire’s surprising reply. “It shows the notes from a number of standard sessions; he prescribed various medications, antidepressants, again nothing out of the ordinary.”
“So? Is that good or bad?”
“Good, if it helped you, and I’m assuming it did, since you returned to a productive life.”
“But?”
“But maybe your case deserves a little more digging. I have to tell you that I am surprised that he didn’t hypnotize you. He’s very skilled at that, and that is usually part of his course of treatment. In fact, O’Bannon teaches a course at GW, where every third or fourth year he hypnotizes a student and does things like making them block out a letter from the alphabet so they’ll look at the word ‘cat’ on the blackboard and pronounce it ‘at.’ Or make them believe a gnat is flying around their ear, things like that. We do that as part of a routine to demonstrate visual- and auditory-induced hallucinations.”
“I remember we talked about it the first time I saw him years ago. I didn’t want to do it, so we didn’t,” he said flatly.
“I see.” She held up a much thicker folder. “Your official Bureau file, or at least part of it,” she said in response to his inquisitive look.
“So I gathered. I thought they kept that confidential.”
“You signed a release when you agreed to counseling. The file is routinely given to the therapist for help in treatment minus any top-secret or other sensitive information, of course. Dr. O’Bannon transferred the file to me when you became my patient. I’ve been going over it thoroughly.”