Randy White - Dead Silence

The Cubans.

Will ran harder, still favoring his rib, not sure if he could get to the house and bang on the door before the Cubans turned in to the driveway

Should he keep running or hide?

Will was thinking, It’s going to be close.

At midnight, I heard Barbara Hayes-Sorrento’s fingernails on my door. I checked the peephole, then flipped the bolt.

The woman said, “What a night,” as she slipped into the room, nodding over her shoulder to someone in the hall. I got a glimpse of her chief of staff, his face illustrating patient disapproval. Maybe because he recognized me, he rolled his eyes: I can’t control her.

I knew better than to try, not just because Barbara was a political star. Women perfect the subtleties of control-how to deflect, when to pressure-long before the small percentage of males who finally understand that control is acquired through skillful restraint, not won through confrontation.

“Were you asleep?” Barbara’s shoulder brushed my ribs as she passed me, and I felt her tremble as I turned the dead bolt.

I said, “I was on the computer.” I didn’t add that a car was picking me up in five hours. Harrington had arranged a direct flight to the municipal airport in Fort Myers.

“If I’m interrupting, I can-”

“No,” I told her, “I was researching the kid’s background. I found the place where he grew up. It was in Oklahoma. The reservation’s not as bad as some. And the little town, Wewoka?-I’m not sure how to pronounce it-it looks like a nice place. A good high school rodeo team.”

We were in the room where I’d used the phone earlier. I had spoken with Harrington again, twice. It was a room, not a suite. I slipped my arm into Barbara’s and led her to the desk where my laptop was open, the lights of neighboring offices showing through the window, snow crested on the windowsill.

I wore Navy-issue swim shorts, khaki with brass rings for a buckle, no shirt and wire-rimmed glasses tied around my neck on fishing line as always. She was in the same business suit she’d worn at the briefing, the charcoal jacket on but not buttoned. It gave the impression she wasn’t going to stay. Or that she had stopped, hoping I would invite her to come back after she had showered and changed.

Gesturing to my computer, I said, “The boy’s foster parents, Otto and Ruth Guttersen, right?”

“They’re not adopting, it’s temporary. He’s been in Minnesota for eighteen months.”

“Otto Guttersen-there can’t be many guys with that name-he was a pro wrestler. Not real wrestling, the soap opera stuff. Ten years on the Great Lakes circuit, shows in Minneapolis, Keokuk, Cleveland, Davenport. Small-time. Take a look.”

Barbara was sitting at the desk. I leaned over her to retrieve a fifteen-year-old photo from the St. Paul Pioneer. A wide-bodied man, overstuffed in his hairless body, biceps and big belly flexed, showing the camera a crazed grin. He wore chaps, boots with spurs and a black cowboy hat. The caption read, “Outlaw Bull Gutter vs. Bobo Godzilla Tonight, Civic Auditorium.” I said, “Minnesota has cowboys, too.”

Sounding weary, Barbara laughed. “An Indian kid living with a make-believe cowboy… I don’t know if it’s sad or funny.”

“Ironic anyway.”

“Or maybe it’s worked out. Half an hour it took us, from the airport to Midtown, and Will hardly said a word. But he took off his hat when we met. Shy but polite, you know? ‘Very nice to meet you, ma’am.’ That type. And he loved riding in a limo. But I could tell he was… different, somehow.”

“Oh?”

“I expected a scholar, I guess. A nerd with glasses… No offense.”

I said, “None taken,” thinking about the kid’s vocabulary.

“Maybe I understand now, one foster home after another. Tonight, he was reserved because he was overwhelmed-flying in at night, his first look at New York City, skyscrapers and all those lights. But he loosened up by the time we got to the Explorers Club. In fact, he asked if I wanted to get together later for a drink.”

“An adolescent boy?”

“That’s what I’m saying. It was unexpected. A boy without a male role model. No one permanent anyway. Maybe thinking that’s what men in the big city say to women. A line he heard in a movie.”

“Have a drink, as in have a drink -coming on to you?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. At fourteen? He was trying to fit in. His whole life, Will has probably been trying to fit in. Dressing like a cowboy after a year with Outlaw Bull Gutter. He wears whatever costume it takes.”

I was thinking twelve years on an Oklahoma reservation was a more likely explanation as I opened the courtesy bar. “I have bottled water, beer… wine, too. But I might have to call room service for a corkscrew…”

Barbara said, “No need to do that for me,” meaning the shirt I’d grabbed, not the corkscrew. Her staff had delivered my things from the Explorers Club and my hotel.

I put the shirt on anyway but left it unbuttoned, as the woman said, “Let’s talk about this,” then explained that one glass of wine wouldn’t help. It was impossible to sleep after what had happened.

“When I’m this wired, there are only a couple of things that relax me. But I have to be with someone I can trust.”

I didn’t know what that meant. Because she saw me look at the clock radio, she added, “Plus, there’s something personal I’d like to discuss.”

I’d hoped to get five hours of sleep, but maybe the car Harrington was sending would be late.

I said, “Anything you want.”

She said, “Don’t volunteer before you know the mission,” a line she’d probably heard at some military briefing, giving it an inflection that made me think, Uh-oh! “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I was buttoning my shirt as she went out the door.

Now she was sitting at the desk, sipping wine from a water tumbler, a half-empty bottle of red next to my laptop. She had closed the computer and rearranged the desk before using the corkscrew-a woman accustomed to taking charge.

She was wearing jeans and a green denim blouse, no makeup, her hair still wet from the shower. Barefoot, I noticed, as if she’d dressed in a rush, the emotional overload showing. I sat and listened, hoping she would burn adrenaline by talking.

The boy wasn’t the only thing on her mind.

Her in-laws were flying in from Chicago, she told me. She was talking about her late husband’s parents. Favar Sorrento had been an entertainment mogul before he went into politics and married Barbara, a TV anchor who was twenty-five years younger than the wife he’d just divorced.

Barbara said, “His mother’s bearable in a passive-aggressive sort of way, but the father’s a bastard. He’s old-school Castilian Spanish. Left Havana just before Castro took power and still thinks a woman’s place is on her back when she’s wearing shoes and in the kitchen when she’s not.” The woman folded her hands behind her head and leaned back in the chair. “When Favar was alive, Favar Senior tried to undermine my influence in every imaginable way. Now he tries to take advantage of my influence in ways you can’t imagine. He still treats me like a brainless trophy wife. Like the only reason I won the election is because I’m his dead son’s proxy. Next election, I finally drop the hyphen and the Sorrento and run under my own name.”

Mostly, though, Barbara was awake because she was worried about the boy. I stood, took the wine bottle and filled her glass, watching her nervous hands as she drank, her gray-green eyes showing more color when she turned from the window, saturated with light from the desk lamp. It was touching listening to her fret about a boy she barely knew. She had collected a lot of background and shared it with a harried energy that was symptomatic of guilt.