He tooled the big car out into the street. We rolled past the glittering water of the Kensico Reservoir, the flat-faced wall of its dam. We got on the highway and sped by the city of White Plains. The only thing that glittered there were the silvered windows of its faceless office parks.
Holloway kept his eyes on the road. I smoked a cigarette, toyed with it.
“Nice service,” I said.
“Yeah. Weird, though,” Holloway said. I looked at him, waited. He went on in his low, rolling voice. “Couple of days ago, Tim’s sitting at the table with us. Laughing, telling stories. Making passes at your pal Lansing. Man, he had the heat on for her, you could tell.” He wound the car onto the Bronx River Parkway. Plenty of trucks, traffic into the city. It kept moving. Holloway paid close attention to the road. “What I mean is: he was alive. Thinking things, saying things, wanting things. A couple days later they put him in a box, put the box in the ground, and that’s the end of it.”
I sneered at my cigarette. “Anyone ever tell you it’d be different?”
“No, I know, I know. It’s just weird, that’s all. That’s all I’m saying.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
Outside the windows, the gray winter woods of Westchester were giving way slowly to the gray towers of the Bronx. Holloway let out a heavy sigh.
“So,” he said, “can the bullshit, John, let’s have it.”
I smiled. He was right. He was a friend, and I couldn’t con him. I’d met him five years ago, when he first came to New York to take over the bureau there. Before that, he’d been in Lebanon and London. Before that, there had been Sentu. As long as I’d known him, he’d been as he was now: tough, wicked but restrained, with a quiet sense of mockery. But you heard stories about Solomon Holloway, about the way he was before he’d proved himself in Africa. Then, with the shadow of his famous father hanging over him, it was said he could be pretty wild. Hard drinking, quick with his fists. They said he’d been fired off a paper in Chicago for it. There’d been an editor there, the story went, who lopped off the last two graphs of one of his stories. For space. It happens all the time. My friend Holloway apparently approached said editor at the city desk and uppercut him so hard the guy’s head hit the floor before his butt did. In those days, I’d been told, Holloway had a red-hot rage buried in him that could erupt at any moment. There was, as far as I could tell, no sign of that now.
Holloway could still surprise you, though. He surprised me the day I met him. That was at a press convention at the Harlington Center, one of the glitzy Sixth Avenue hotels. The theme of the conference was supposed to be “Responsibility in Media.” The actual subject was: “How Can We Avoid It?” At that time, the news business was rapidly shedding the grim-watchdog guise of the post-Watergate era and revealing the party animal underneath. News executives were catching a lot of flack for ditching depth in favor of sensationalism. Basically, a bunch of managing types had decided to hold this conference to convince everyone that dull stuff like facts, balance, and restraint didn’t have to get in the way of fun stuff like ratings, circulation, and profits. Perelman had ordered me to attend.
In the dark days before Cambridge was hired to make the Star relatable, Perelman had been hired to give it zing. He did not think I was zingy enough. He thought three days of zingy seminars would help. I was on my second day when I met Holloway. I was not feeling zingy.
As the new bureau chief for the wire, Holloway had shown up at the conference out of curiosity more than anything. He sat at my table during a dinner lecture entitled “It’s Still a Business.” He drank martinis throughout this lecture with an intensity and perseverence that would have awed an Irish poet. When the speaker—a TV executive—asked for comments, Holloway stood up.
He introduced himself. Then, in his deep baritone, he said: “My comment is this: Journalism is indeed a business. Like running a factory. People who churn out pablum to the voters of a democracy for high ratings are the same as manufacturers who produce shoddy and dangerous goods for quick profits. In a system of private enterprise, we are each all the more responsible for what we produce.” He paused, then added dramatically: “You asshole.’’ He cleared his throat. “And now I’d like to sing a little song.” With which, he regaled us with several verses of “Red River Valley,” some of which I suspect he made up on the spot.
He sat down.
“Can I buy you a drink?” I said.
“Please,” said Holloway.
From that moment on, the conference was a free-for-all. And Holloway and I were pals.
Now, as he drove his long Lincoln past the red-brick projects of the Bronx, I smiled at him from the passenger seat.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not a cop. I just want to know.”
Holloway chuckled deeply. “Sometimes the things you just want to know end up on the front page. Is this off the record, John?”
I thought it over. Shook my head. “No.”
“I didn’t think so.” He hesitated another moment. “Okay,” he said then. “Shoot.”
“Why were you there, buddy? At the raid last night. When Paul escaped, you looked like a man whose medical tests just came back negative.”
I turned from him, looking toward the window. Beyond the projects near the road, the ashen desert of the northern borough spread away before me.
“I didn’t tell the police anything about Lester Paul.”
“So Gottlieb says.”
“But I knew him. I knew him in Sentu.”
I nodded, at the window.
“Look, I mean, I don’t want to make any excuses. But most of what I could have told Gottlieb … it was in the papers this morning. That Paul was a … a criminal. A fence. A smuggler. A wheeler-dealer type. The rebels bought guns from him, the government bought drugs from him, electronics. He had ins everywhere.”
I put a fresh butt in my mouth, lit it.
“I mean, hell, man, I would have told Gottlieb,” Holloway said. “I would have. But I knew it was all right there in his record. I didn’t have much to add.”
“Okay,” I said.
I heard Holloway take a deep breath. I looked at him. His forehead was furrowed now. The crow’s-feet showed at the corners of his eyes. His lips worked over what he was going to say for a long time before he said it. “The thing is,” he finally let out, “when I was in Sentu, I got … involved … with the rebels.”
“Involved?”
“You have to understand,” he said quickly to the windshield. “No one from the Western press had gotten to them. No one had gotten so much as an interview, and now, I don’t know, maybe because I was black, here they were offering me a chance for an exclusive. A chance to make my name.’’ There was a pause. He added quietly: “My own name.”
The smoke hissed out between my teeth. It ran out my open window. “What did they want?”
“I had to prove myself to them. I had to let them know I was trustworthy.”
“What did they want?” I said.
“Paul had brought in a small shipment of weapons … grenade launchers, I think, I’m not even sure. They needed someone—someone clean—to contact him. To talk to him about … times and places where the weapons could be exchanged for cash.”
“Okay,” I said quietly.
I saw the corner of his mouth curl as he drove. “Come on, man. Don’t get all ethical.”
I snorted. “Who, me?”
“I was ambitious, and there was a price for what I wanted.”
“Did you pay it?”
Now he laughed outright. “I’m afraid we’ll never know. I was walking the streets, trying to decide, when a jeep drove up beside me, government soldiers jumped out, dragged me into the car, and drove away.”
“What?”
“They took me to Imperial House.”
The smoke rolled out of my open mouth. I remembered what Wexler had told me about Imperial House. You could scream your lungs out as you died inch by inch in its cellar, he’d sa
id, and no one would know. I glanced at Holloway as he drove. A portly gentleman in a three-piece suit. A witty smile at the corner of his mouth. Intelligence and education in his deep brown eyes. I tried to imagine him in the cellar of Imperial House.
He said: “They had a chair there, Wells. In Imperial House. In the cellar, they had a chair. A chair with straps on it. And all around the chair, there were little stands with trays on them, like you have at a dentist’s office. And in the little trays on the little stands, there were instruments. Gleaming, metal instruments I can’t begin to describe to you. The minute you saw them, your imagination started working. What were they for? What exactly?” Holloway took a deep breath. He swallowed hard. His expression remained wry as he looked through the windshield. “The soldiers tear your clothes off and then they strap you in that chair. They leave you there: alone, naked. And you wait, alone and naked, staring at those instruments, and you wonder what those instruments are for. And then two men come in. They wear white coats like doctors. And they look at you, you sitting naked there, they look at you the way doctors do, with that look that’s somehow both concerned and evil at the same time. With that look that tells you you have completely lost control of your own life. And they say to you—just like doctors—‘We understand we have a problem here.’ And you want with all your heart to believe in the benevolent sound of their voices, you want to open up to them, tell them everything. But they don’t even ask. You hear me, man? You beg them to let you tell them everything and they just start looking through their instruments. Picking them out.”
It was cool in the car. The chill air blew back and forth from his open window to mine. But Solomon Holloway’s bald head was glistening now with sweat. And sweat ran down from my temples, as well.
“Lester Paul bought me out.”
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath till I released it. “Jesus,” I said.
“Robert Collins—he was a Brit journalist over there, friend of mine. He came by my room to see me that evening and found it ransacked. He started asking questions of his government sources. Got most of the story. He contacted Lester Paul. Paul pulled a few strings and I was released. Just like that.”
“Why?” I asked him.
He shook his head. The skyline of Manhattan rose before us. Its scarps and pinnacles were gray against the hazy blue sky.
Holloway shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he felt bad that he was part of the reason for my arrest. Doesn’t sound like a smuggler’s motive to me, but … No one really knew all that much about Paul. Why he did what he did. All I know is that he got me out of Imperial House, man. And that’s why I didn’t tell the cops anything about him. And that’s why I was relieved when he got away.”
I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my palm. I took a last tug at my cigarette and tossed it out onto the highway. “What if he killed Colt?” I asked.
Holloway gave me his deep, rolling chuckle. “What if?” he said. “What if? Hell, he probably did. You saw them in the Press Club together.’’
“And?”
For the first time since the trip from the cemetery had begun, Holloway looked over at me. “The rules were different there, John,” he said. “They were different in Sentu. What was between Colt and Paul was just between them.”
I thought Gottlieb might disagree. I didn’t say it, though. I said: “What was between them? Do you know?”
He frowned. “Nah. Not really. Part of it, I guess. Colt was in love. With a missionary he’d met. A sort of local legend, woman named Eleanora.”
For a moment the image of a woman in white rose before me. A woman with golden hair passing among the sick and the frightened.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve heard.”
“Well, as I understand it, this Eleanora ran something of an underground operation. And at the end, when the rebels were headed for Mangrela, her network collapsed, she had to get out. Colt wanted to help her.”
The city loomed larger. Its million windows glinted in the sun. The traffic began to congeal around us. I heard myself say: “Were they—when you say in love, I mean … were they lovers?”
“Oh yes, oh yes. That they were.”
I felt myself dip inside a little. The way you do when an elevator drops too fast. Startled, I realized I was a little jealous.
Holloway went on: “I mean, Colt was my friend, my close friend. We’d talk about these things. You know how it is. Man, he would go on and on about her forever. Not like any of his other women. They were lovers all right. He was crazy about her. I remember he used to talk about how white her skin was, like marble. And then he’d say that she’d flush all over when he made love to her, so that she looked like a statue coming to life.” He gave an evil little chuckle. “Colt had to be the only man alive who could make sex sound even better than it is.”
I tried to answer with a laugh. It didn’t come out that way. I said: “Yeah,” again, but this time it was barely audible. I was thinking about what a statue would look like if it came to life.
“Anyway, at the end, with the rebels coming down on us, Colt was desperate to save her. He came to me and asked me to help him find Paul. I guess he thought Paul might have some influence, be able to pull some strings. I directed him to Robert Collins. Collins took him to Paul. And together, the three of them went off to rescue Eleanora.” The cars gathered thick around us. Holloway guided the Lincoln onto the FDR Drive. The East River sparkled to our left. To our right, the uptown projects towered over us. “By then,” Holloway went on, “by then, man, shellfire was hammering at the outskirts of the city. The exodus toward the sea was never-ending. Men, women, and children with everything they owned on their backs moved in one continuous snaking motion through the streets and off to … somewhere. I don’t know. Nowhere, maybe. Away. Away from the shells and the rebels. Running for their lives.” He took a breath. He was trying to tell it calmly.
“The rest of us,” he said, “the Westerners—the press—we left according to our ambitions and our fears. I filed stories until the electrical lines went down. Then I grabbed a camera and took pictures of the chaos in the streets. Finally the shells began to score on the city. I knew I had to go.”
The FDR wound south. Manhattan welled up beside us like a stone sunrise. Holloway kept the Lincoln in the right lane, moving slowly. For the first time, I noticed how tightly he was gripping the wheel.
“There was an airlift on,” he said. “American choppers had flown in to take embassy workers and the rest of us. I got back to the hotel, packed what I could. I went downstairs, out past the bar. And as I passed the entranceway, I saw a solitary figure sitting in the empty room. Sitting at a table, smoking a cigarette, staring into space.”
“Colt.”
“Yes. He’d come back.”
“Alone.”
“Yes. Without Lester Paul. Without Collins.”
“Without Eleanora.”
“Yes. Collins, I gather, had stayed behind, trying to file dispatches somehow. We later found out he was killed by shellfire. Paul—until the other night, we assumed he’d died, too.”
“And Eleanora?”
“Colt spent months, almost a year, trying to find her. The word was she’d been captured by the rebels. Died at their hands. Colt would never tell me what had happened. Why he’d come back like that, alone. He just sat there in the bar with the cigarette, as if he were waiting for the place to sink into the earth, taking him with it. I screamed at him. I said, ‘Colt, we’ve got to go! Now, man, now!’ He just waved at me vaguely. I grabbed him by the arm. He didn’t resist. He didn’t do anything. I dragged him out into the street.”
Holloway stared out the windshield. His stare was hard. His mouth was tight. I saw his throat working under his tie. “The sky—it was night, Wells—and the sky was red with fire. I fought through the crowd toward the embassy compound where the choppers were. The streets were jammed solid with people. All I could feel was that soft-hardness of flesh pressed against me. All I could sm
ell was the sweat and the terror. Sometimes my feet didn’t even touch the ground as the crowd carried me. Sometimes I could fight for a yard and then another. Sometimes … sometimes I only saw the sky—the red sky—floating over as the crowd closed in.”
He nodded curtly. “I just held Colt’s arm. I held it and held it. He was like a rag doll. I held on to him and pushed toward the embassy. Eventually—like when you get close to the shore of the ocean—eventually, the tide carried us. The people—in their panic—were trying to get onto the American airlift. Trying to get out of the country any way they could. They carried us to the embassy compound. There was a fence around it. Marines stood behind it, their rifles raised. The marines …” He snorted. “Teenage boys. Under their helmets, they looked like they wanted to bury their heads in their mothers’ laps and cry for mercy. They stood behind the fence, fighting off this … this tidal wave of humanity. It kept crashing against them and they kept pushing it back. Only when they saw a white face would they open the gate and let it pass.”
I saw sadness in his eyes. I saw bitterness in his smile. “I dragged Colt to the gate,” he said. “They opened it and pulled him in. Then one of the marines hit me in the chest with the butt of his rifle, shoved me back. The gate slammed in my face.”
“Oh man,” I said.
“The crowd, then, the crowd started to pull at me, to pull me away from the fence. Clawing at me, trying to get around me, trying to get close themselves, to talk, to beg, to bribe the marines standing guard. And I just started to scream.” His voice melted away on the word. He spoke in a near whisper. “I started to scream, ‘Reggie Jackson! Reggie Jackson! Reggie Jackson!’ It was the only ballplayer’s name I could think of. I just kept screaming. I just kept fighting off the hands that were pulling me away from the gate. And finally … oh God, finally … the gate cracked open, and a hand reached out. And I screamed and screamed, ‘Reggie Jackson! Reggie Jackson!’ And that reaching hand grabbed me—grabbed me right by the front of my shirt and pulled me through the gate. And, Wells, I was looking into the whitest, roundest midwestern face of a marine you ever saw in your life. And the tears were streaming down those pink, pink cheeks of his, and he said to me, ‘Pete Fucking Rose, man. Pete Fucking Rose.’”