Randy White - Dead Silence

He clomped up the steps, eyes sweeping over familiar details. “The only difference between doves and pigeons is where they crap. I was one of the fortunate ones-materialism sucks if you’ve had everything. Plus, my old man made us get jobs, so I learned at an early age that employment sucks, too. I didn’t choose to be a boat bum, God chose me. He replaced my thirst for status with a thirst for beer. It’s a calling, sort of like religion or drug exploration.”

He still had his sense of humor, and the harmonica was in his pocket. Good.

We’d reached the fourth floor. There was another door, this one sealed with a steel bar used as a dead bolt. Greta had told us only the first three floors were used by renters. The top floors were family storage.

I said, “If it’s okay, I think I can get in,” then took out a tiny restraint cutter. As I worked on the top bolt, I asked Tomlinson what it was like to return after almost twenty years.

“Weird, man. But it could get weirder if the old digs haven’t changed. My room was on the fourth floor, Norry’s on the fifth. It matched his elevated opinion of himself. What’s the antonym for identical twins? Mirror opposites? That works. Never once did I see him shed a tear. Farting was as close as he came to showing emotion. He was a mathematical wizard. And talk about a damn know-it-all!”

I said, “I’m convinced. As different as night and day, you and your brother. Know-it-alls get tiresome quick.”

“Okay, okay, but he was obsessive, too. You’ll see, if his room’s the same.”

It was. Library shelves alphabetized. Model cars and airplanes, a ’68 Corvette fastback, surfer blue I wanted to touch but the place was too much like a museum. Trophies for chess, basketball and… golf. Tomlinson gave me a knowing look before I leaned to inspect a bag of clubs.

“Is the nine iron still missing?”

I checked again. “No. Just the cover.”

He nodded slowly, thinking about it but not surprised. “My mother was still alive then. That woman would have gone to the gallows for Norvin. But me? She threatened adoption after my first arrest for possession. On the phone, I said, ‘Mother, I chose LSD, not IBM. Think of it as a business trip.’ She didn’t think it was funny either. What’s funnier is how some parents say they don’t have favorites.”

I smiled but was picturing something else, the mother sneaking in to replace the nine iron. If true, a young girl’s death had taken seed in this space, a room that was more like a shrine.

Virgil Sylvester’s bitterness was not misplaced.

Put her head on a tee, he had said. A commercial fisherman, not a golfer. Or were rules about using tees different in the Hamptons?

I looked at Tomlinson, who wasn’t smiling now. I didn’t ask.

After finding the Yale photo, I began picking out other mementos associated with Skull and Bones. Miniature death’s-heads, a map of Deer Island-Bonesmen owned the place, supposedly. There were also caricatures of a flat-faced Indian holding a Winchester: Geronimo.

Tomlinson told me he’d heard the same thing: Bonesmen had stolen Geronimo’s skull from an Apache cemetery out west and kept it locked away in their Tomb stronghold.

“We got into a big fight after I jumped Norry’s case about it. It was just after he’d joined. You know me, simpatico with the Skins. I kept pushing, but he wouldn’t answer the question. Simple: Do you assholes have the great chief ’s skull?

“Some of the AIM founders, the American Indian Movement, they were like my brothers in those days. I did sweat lodges and the whole Ghost Dance thing. Four days, no food or water. Ate my first peyote button, which wasn’t part of the ceremony. Not smart, it turned out. Peyote on an empty stomach. Wow!

“Back then,” Tomlinson added, “I was an absurd adolescent only about ninety percent of the time. But there were moments of clarity.”

I was looking at lists of names in a trifold frame, as Tomlinson told me that his mother’s family and his father’s family all went to Yale. “When I chose Harvard, it was like I’d pissed on the flag… which I’d actually done, by the way.” He started to elaborate, then reconsidered. “No need for the nasty look. Shallow up, Doctor.”

“These are all Bonesmen?” I turned the frame so he could see it.

“The oldest to the newest, left to right. Every member of Skull and Bones since whenever the hell it started. Eighteen hundreds? You’ll find my father’s name and Norvin’s. Plus a surprise. It’ll jump out at you.”

The roster started with the class of 1838. The list was alphabetized. My eye slowed on familiar names. Four U.S. presidents. Lesser-known State Department and CIA icons: William Bundy; Richard Drain; Dino Pionzio, a CIA deputy chief; Winston Lord; William Draper, an early proponent of the United Nations.

Beside every name was a date, with one exception.

Henry A. Tomlinson. No date.

Tomlinson was looking over my shoulder. “Google it on the Internet. Type in ‘Skull and Bones membership list.’ It’ll come up the same way.”

“No date? I don’t get it.”

He shrugged, and picked up a bronze figurine of Geronimo. “No idea. We’ll never find out. It’s why they scare me. Part of the reason I turned traitor. But Norvin joined the corporation. Every Bonesman gets a big chunk of money from an endowment… and one of those.” Tomlinson looked from the photo to an ornate grandfather clock in the corner. “They’ve got their fingers in everything, man. Oil, the military-industrial complex. The whole New World Order thing. Some people even believe they were behind the JFK assassination.”

I had been nodding patiently until then. Tomlinson is among the many educated, intelligent people I know who are willing to believe that world events are steered by sinister groups and secret alliances, but I have my limits.

I said, “Skull and Bones, it’s part of the great Right Wing Conspiracy. Or is it the Left Wing now? I can’t keep track.”

“Make fun if you want, but power attracts power, and power corrupts.”

“Yeah? I think there’s a genetic conspiracy that compels primates to believe in dragons and herd like dumbasses. Fraternity boys don’t participate in murder just because they share a secret handshake-especially after they’ve become successful adults.”

“I don’t know, man…” Tomlinson lost the thread as his eyes moved to the ceiling, the walls. “Norry will inherit this place if smack doesn’t kill him. He’s welcome to it-and all that bad juju that’s hooked to the package. I feel guilty saying that, Doc. Blood. .. family. They’re still in my heart, you know? I envy the ones who stay close, but it’s not my karma. Some people are born alone. I was. You were, too.”

His lips were pursed as he stared at the figurine. “I knew the girl who disappeared. She was sweet. She had a pale violet aura: poetic. Her family worked for us. To hurt someone defenseless. To take a club and…” He grimaced. “I don’t want to think my brother could do something so… vile. Or my dad. We never got along, but he’s my dad, man.”

I said, “It could have been someone else. Or maybe it didn’t happen the way you think. Her body wasn’t found, no charges filed.”

“I’d like to believe that, but I don’t know.” He sat on the bed. “It took a while after the girl was murdered, but they both flipped out. Dad went to the Amazon to study fossils and never came back… that I know of. Norry went to Indonesia to study Islam but found the Poppy God instead. Running from their consciences. I think.”

I said, “A Bonesman leaving the country to become Muslim?” It made no sense, unless Norvin actually had worked for an intelligence agency. He wouldn’t have been the first to be consumed by his own cover story.