The Gun Runner's Daughter Read online

  “It means that he thinks there’s something to learn from you, Alley. That’s all it can mean.”

  “Well then, he’s wasting his time, isn’t he?”

  “I guess so.” Martha, to her friend’s dismay, sounded doubtful.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that this guy doesn’t waste a whole lot of his time.”

  And Alley, thinking about this, forgot to tell her friend about Dee.

  They were at the Ritz now. Just inside the door, Martha put her arm around the bouncer’s shoulders, and spoke in his ear. Allison knew what she was saying: there was a little bastard in a jacket bothering her, would he keep the guy out? Smiling, the bouncer nodded and took a twenty-dollar bill from her. Then someone put his arms a round Martha, and, with a worried look to Alley, she let herself be manhandled onto the dance floor.

  Alone, Allison shouldered her way to the bar and ordered a beer. Here, Ronald Rosenthal, who had poured millions of dollars into the island’s economy via the construction industry, was something of a popular hero. Someone made room at the bar—in fact, quite a few people, all men, made room at the bar—and beer in hand, she let herself concentrate on Dymitryck. Emily Harden, with her precisely phrased New Yorker questions, she could handle. This guy, however, scared her, and it took effort to stop thinking about him as, sipping her beer, she watched the band.

  Which was why she did not see Dee until he had pushed his way through the crowd at the bar, shyly, smiling uneasily, and leaned next to her.

  2.

  She did not seem surprised to see him, Dee perceived in the high awareness of his fright. Perhaps she seemed slightly disturbed. What did that mean?

  The answer came to him at once. It meant that she did not know he was the government’s attorney. It was so open a secret in Dee’s circles that it came as a shock to realize that to Allison it might not yet be known.

  Allison, however, was next to him, and there was no time to think of anything else. Leaning to draw the bartender toward him, Dee ordered drinks, for himself, for Alley. Then, the music too loud to talk, he waited, looking down at Alley, smiling slightly to mask his anxiety. What was he going to say? He had no idea. But when the song ended, he found himself talking.

  “Looks like the dry spell’s about over.”

  Her eyes on him, she licked her lips with the point of her tongue. His gaze moved up, onto her tanned forehead, very lightly freckled, down her cheekbone, and then to her red, red lips. With relief, he saw that they were smiling.

  “So I’m told.”

  He smiled too, now, broadly.

  “How’s your summer been?”

  “Good enough.”

  The band was introducing a new song with a long, loud acoustic lead. Now, in tiny increments, his nerve was returning. He leaned down and nearly shouted toward her ear, above which her blond hair was tightly pulled.

  “So I hear you’re in law school down in New York.”

  She answered, in turn, toward his ear, and he felt her breath as heat against his cheek.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That means we live in the same city.”

  “Does it?”

  For a time the song, Chrissie Hynde’s “Revolution,” was too loud to talk. When it faded, the band took a break and he spoke again at something closer to a normal conversational distance.

  “What year you in?”

  “Huh?”

  “School.”

  “Oh. Last.” That surprised him. She would be, what, twenty-seven? Dee had passed the bar at twenty-five. He started to calculate this, then stopped when she added: “I spent two years abroad before starting law school.”

  Ah. That made sense. “Really? Where?”

  “Paris, mostly.”

  “What’d you do?”

  She shrugged. “Hung. Took classes. Tried to get out of going to law school.”

  He nodded. This, the longest sentence she had spoken, sounded for the first time like the girl he had known. He wished he could get her to speak at length. He reminded himself that he had to go. “Any plans?”

  “Not to practice law.”

  And now, without any warning, she asked the question he had not yet decided how he would answer.

  “So where do you work?”

  She was facing him directly now, her face composed, her attention full on him. On instinct he answered with equal directness.

  “U.S. attorney’s office. Southern District.”

  A pause, an observant moment on his part, watching with satisfaction the surprise on her face.

  Good.

  3.

  For a moment she had been feeling okay. The very fact that he was speaking to her had assured her that he must have been passed over for the job on her father’s prosecution. Now she suddenly felt betrayed. Before she could talk, he had leaned toward her and was, as much as the bar’s noise allowed it, speaking softly, his lips toward her ear.

  “I was offered a job that interested me awfully. The constitutional issues were important. And it was clean: only an exchange of assets was at stake. The defendant had already departed the country; his financial loss was irrelevant to him. And then, it was a pretty good deal for him because he’s guilty.”

  She said nothing, and he went on, speaking carefully, and avoiding, she noticed, saying the one or two words that would put him outside the law. “I think, however, that personal considerations are probably going to make me less than entirely appropriate as the line prosecutor. I was foolish not to realize that when I took the job.”

  That was all. He fell silent, expectantly so. As if waiting for her to make a decision.

  He was right, she thought, to put his cards on the table. Masked by the loud music, watching out the window as she fumbled for purchase in her understanding. In a way she was flattered by his bluntness, by the assumption of her preference to hear the truth.

  So Dee Dennis was prosecuting her father after all. She pronounced the words voicelessly, with wry wonder. So Dee Dennis was the line attorney on the federal prosecution of her father. Jesus fucking God almighty, what was going to happen next?

  Then, as her initial shock passed, she thought, why not? He was, what, three years older than she? He was qualified, she had no doubt: he had been in grooming for this job since the day he was born.

  Then what exactly did he want? It was extraordinarily dangerous for Dee to be talking to her. She had only to turn to him and say, “Falcon Corporation,” and he was compromised. Already what he had done was probably unethical.

  Her heart was beating hard now, very hard in the cage of her chest under her sleeveless T-shirt. She turned her face to him for the first time in minutes, but still she did not speak.

  He was much heavier than the thin child she had known, and to all appearances the weight was muscle. His hair was blond, like Allison’s, but very light where hers was wheaten, straight, shaved close at the sides and left full at the top. The greatest change, however, was in his face, which seemed to slip in and out of familiarity as she watched: now familiar, wry and inquisitive, blue eyes shining, mouth curving sardonically at the corners; now a stranger, the settled expression of an adult, unafraid and, seemingly, in judgment of what it was watching. His hands, she was surprised to see, were long, with knuckly fingers and surprisingly thin wrists, more than a little graceful.

  He was a beautiful man, as beautiful, in his way, as Pauly, who had been the handsomest man she had known. She wondered, for a moment, if Pauly would have developed this sense of adulthood that Dee showed, this ease of authority. They were, after all, both males, no matter how different in kind. But of course Dee was not Jewish, and Dee was not gay.

  Finally, she answered, speaking calmly, as if making a neutral observation.

  “It is unethical for you to speak to me.”

  He nodded, but said nothing, and she went on.

  “I think you’re being foolish.”

  He smiled now, as if enjoying the danger of this meeting. “Maybe. I
want to talk to you.”

  She did not answer that but instead asked herself again, what did he want?

  He was still looking down at her, still waiting for her answer, apparently unafraid. His light eyes smiling. His face so open, so cleanly shaven, the lines from his mouth to his chin so defined, like a vision of hope. Perhaps she watched him a second too long: she felt a blush rising to her face, and his expression was shifting. And now he was precisely the person she remembered, little Dee Dennis, reckless and charming, never doing what he should, always just on the outside, and now desire was rising in her. She spoke very carefully.

  “Why?”

  He answered immediately. “I can’t tell you here. Please. Meet me tomorrow.”

  She turned away, feeling the heat spread through her face and over her chest, her thighs tighten and her legs, just the slightest bit, grow tired. She drank from her beer, composing herself.

  But she could not focus her thoughts on Dee. She could only think: if only she were someone else! If only she could make it appear! Appear like her father wasn’t a crook who was about to lose his house to federal seizure. Appear like he was not the man the whole nation had watched testify before the Iran-contra committee. If only she could make the truth inadmissible, not to evidence but to reality. To make love to Dee, right now, tonight, would eradicate everything: the empty house, the dying summer, everything, for the minutes it lasted; it would be like being sixteen again in the days before her brother died and her father was arrested; it would be like being perfectly whole again, entirely at home. She looked at him now and on his face was an unambiguously tender expression, too clear to pretend not to see, and she watched him openly.

  “Where?” The music was growing louder, and the word sounded like a shout.

  “Anywhere.”

  Watching him still, watching him, her mind traversing a wordless fantasy in which she did not have to fake and nothing separated her from him.

  And then, with an interior sense of factitiousness that was only too familiar, she leaned toward him and raised her voice through the mounting volume of the band, speaking with decision at which she could not remember arriving; at which she could not remember ever not having arrived.

  “I’ll pick you up at the parking lot at Wasque at noon tomorrow.”

  When she stepped back again, it was in time to see relief visibly relax his frame, his eyes losing focus as a hint of tears filmed over the so blue irises, and he nodded, and left some money on the bar, and without showing her his face again, pushed through the crowd and out into the street. And Allison, alone, stood in total disbelief at herself, staring at herself in the back-bar mirror until, behind her, she felt the warmth of a soft body, and then arms around her neck, and then saw Martha’s face reflected beside hers, cheek to cheek, while Martha’s voice spoke in her ear, filled with surprise: “Alley girl, Alley girl, what the fucking hell do you think you’re up to?”

  4.

  “Stop worrying. Who’s gonna tell? I’m not.”

  Saturday morning, Martha lay on the living room floor in light moving from the rain on the windows, smiling ruefully as she talked: Allison had taken her to task, until far into the morning, for omitting to tell her that Dee had after all been tapped for her father’s prosecution. Now that the fact was known, however, Martha saw not only practical but erotic possibility in it.

  It had not surprised Allison that Martha should hide this information from her. Martha, who came from somewhere very similar to Borough Park, had protected Allison since the first day they met, eleven years old, at St. Ann’s School. This was because Martha, like Allison, had been subject to a profound deculturation.

  The very first day after school Martha had taken her—Allison’s first time on the subway—to Greenwich Village to equip herself with the rudimentary requirements: jeans, oversized plaid shirts, a pea coat. Then, together, they’d taken care of Pauly.

  Not moving her eyes from her friend, Allison answered.

  “Who? Anyone. Anyone at all is going to tell.”

  “Bullshit, Alley girl. Stay away from old Goodwoman Dennis and you’ll be fine. There wasn’t a soul there last night that knew Dee.”

  Allison turned now. “What about your pal from Kennedy’s office?”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about him. I know what he saw last night, and it wasn’t your lover.”

  There was a wide, slightly crooked smile on Martha’s face. Allison savored it for a moment, its familiarity, its pure, brute beauty. But Martha, Allison thought, was babying her: she knew how important this was.

  “Martha?”

  “Yeah, baby.”

  “Stop fooling around. Why is Dee Dennis talking to me?”

  Martha looked up now, curious. “ ’Cause you’re beautiful, baby.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Okay then. ’Cause he wants to know whether you’re going to speak to the press about your childhood love affair. ’Cause if you do that, it’s going to make a lot of people, like, very nervous.”

  “Who?”

  She hesitated. Then, less jocularly, “My father. Ed Dennis. At least. I don’t know for sure.”

  Allison gazed at her friend, blankness on her face masking her thoughts. “Your dad’s cabinet. Dennis is White House staff. What do they have to do with it?”

  “That’s just the point, Alley girl. Nothing legal. Drawing media attention to what will, at the very least, be a serious embarrassment to the prosecution, that’s going to make them very, very nervous. You know what’d make them even more nervous? If you met him out on the beach at Wasque. You’re gonna fuck him, I presume?”

  “Martha.”

  “Aw, Alley, come on. Someone’s got to pay for something sometime. Tell you what: you fuck him, then I’ll publish an article in the Observer. That’ll take care of Dee’s worries, ’cause he’ll be off the case. Okay?”

  And when Allison didn’t answer, but rose to keep her appointment with Dee, Martha leaned up on one elbow and spoke, to Allison’s surprise, with a wide smile.

  “Alley girl? You know, you can take out the clown. But it won’t stop the circus.”

  Moving toward the door, Alley snapped at her friend.

  “I know that, Martha. I’m not an idiot.”

  5.

  Dymitryck’s rented Jeep appeared behind Allison just before the airport road. That made her heart quicken. Still, she had already decided what she was going to do. She slowed down and was able to see, in her rearview mirror, that he wore sunglasses and was smoking as he drove.

  She cruised slowly toward Edgartown, then, at Whippoorwill Farm, picked up speed, passing one, two, three cars before the traffic slowed to town speed. Like this she entered Edgartown proper with a number of cars between them. In town, she turned left, then right, pulled into the Chappy ferry, and by the time the short man was entering town, the ferry was already unmoored, leaving him stranded at the dock. She sighed, relaxing, in the cab of the Cherokee. And that was when she saw, just in front of her, Dee, leaning lightly against his little Fiat, unprotected in the light rain.

  Their eyes met through Alley’s windshield. He looked away toward a man in a disheveled Barbour who was stepping out of his car, and Alley recognized Ronald Dworkin. At the Chappy-side dock he climbed into his car without looking back, and watched her through the rearview as she followed him through the dirty roads of Chappaquiddick and past Dyke Bridge to the parking lot at Wasque Point.

  A strange lightness was in Dee’s stomach now, a strange inability to focus on the gravity of what was occurring. Dimly, he felt that the difficult part of his business with Alley had already been completed: in their conversation the night before something had made him sure that this cool, quiet woman was not going to compromise him. This, he knew, could turn out to be more of a hope than a valid intuition. Still, it was all he had, and he could not afford to let go.

  At the Wasque parking lot two men in wet suits were loading sea kayaks onto the top of a Range Rover. Alley circled the
lot, parked facing him, and while they waited for the men to finish they watched each other through their windshields at a distance of some ten lightly fogged yards.

  Or, Dee thought to himself, ten years.

  When the sea kayakers left, Dee climbed out of his Fiat, crossed the small parking lot, and got into her Jeep.

  Within the car, the gray light did not flatter him as had the soft lights of the Ritz. But it did bring out the pallor of his cleanly shaven cheek and light the light blue of his eyes and so, to Alley’s eye, did something more than flatter. She watched him for a moment, smelling shaving cream and the warm, humid rain.

  A Suburban drew into the parking lot, carrying two deep-sea fishing rigs on its roof. She shifted into first and went out onto the beach, fishtailing slightly on the low dune, gathering speed along the water’s edge. As they breached the point, the fog cleared, a warm, wet sea wind carrying it north. She stopped and they opened their doors, then sat sheltered in the cab of the car, steamy rain dripping on sand.

  There was a long silence that she did not try to break. He watched out his door to the water, eyes at quarter profile to her, focused out to the enormity of the sky. When he turned, his face was perfectly flat.

  “This is a hard place to lose.”

  That statement, she thought, contained two separate meanings.

  One was undeniable: the fact that he, like Martha, like herself, had been formed in this landscape. It was a sentiment impossible to explain to city people, this lifelong rapport with a natural place. It was a sentiment, she knew, that they shared.

  She reacted, however, to the other meaning. “Oh? Are you losing it too? I thought you were taking it.”

  Now he turned toward her, and she had the chance, once again, to appreciate the power this man had assumed. He spoke, as he had in the bar, entirely directly. “Very funny. Look. I didn’t commit any crime. I didn’t do anything but play by the rules. You see me being invited back here a lot after my dad finds out about me and you?”

  She kept expression out of her voice. “How’s he going to find out?”

  “Shauna McCarthy’s going to tell him.”