The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(102)

Ask.

Could you have guessed your life?

Hardly a day of it.

You’re not going to ask me though, are you?

All right. Could you?

No. Of course not. Do you think we have any say in it?

There’s no way to answer that question. My friend John maintains that if things are going reasonably well it’s all your own doing and if not then it’s all bad luck.

Yes. In my experience when you reach for something there’s a good chance that it’s not going to be there.

I have to go.

Okay. Are you all right?

No. Are you?

No. But we’re on reduced expectations. That helps.

Do you think I’ll see you again.

You might. You never know.

I think you do.

Take care, Bobby.

You too.

He thanked the woman at the desk and had turned to go when she spoke to him.

Mr Western?

Yes.

There are some things here. Your sister’s things. I had them brought down. Did you want to take them?

He stood looking down the hall towards the door.

Mr Western?

I dont know. Her things?

The woman had picked up a box from the floor and set it on the desk. I think it’s just her clothes. Some papers. You dont have to take them if you dont want to. We can send them to the Goodwill. But there’s a check here for you too.

A check.

Yes. It’s the balance of her account. And there’s another envelope that was left here for you.

Left for me.

Yes.

By who?

I dont know. A woman left it.

He took the two envelopes and looked at them. One was addressed to him at his apartment on St Philip Street.

What’s in this one?

It’s a chain and I think a ring. Maybe a wedding ring. Apparently they belonged to your sister. It was sent to you in New Orleans but it came back. It’s been here a while.

And some woman left it here.

Yes.

How did she know it belonged to my sister?

I dont know. She said that her husband found it. She didnt leave her name. Did you want to open the box?

That’s all right.

Did you want to take it?

Yes. Okay.

She handed him the box and he put the envelopes in his back pocket and took it.

Thank you.

I’m sorry, the woman said. I’m sorry that I didnt know her.

Western didnt know what to say. He nodded and put the box under his arm and went down the hallway and out the door.

He sat in the truck and put the box in the seat beside him. It was fastened with tape and it had her name written across it in black marker. He had the envelopes in his hand. He looked at them. The envelope with the ring inside was marked Robert Weston. He opened the other one and looked at the check. Twenty-three thousand dollars.

He looked out the window. Well, he said.

He put the check back in the envelope and sat looking out at the trees beyond the parkinglot. He thought of her walking out through the woods in the snow and then he couldnt stop thinking about her and he pressed his fist against his forehead and closed his eyes. After a while he reached and opened the glovebox and put the envelope inside and shut the glovebox door. He sat looking at the other envelope. There was a ringshaped impression in the paper where someone had pressed their thumb against the ring inside. He tore the corner in his teeth and opened the envelope and tipped it up. The ring and the chain slid into his palm. He sat looking at them and then he slowly closed them in his hand. Oh baby, he whispered.



* * *





When he got to New Orleans he checked into the YMCA and called Kline from the phone in the hall.

Where are you?

I’m at the Y.

Why dont I swing by and pick you up out front in about an hour.

Around five.

Yes.

I’ll see you then.



* * *



—

They sat at Kline’s table and ordered Sazeracs. The waiter called Western Mr Western. Cheers, said Kline.

Cheers.

It was five thirty on a Thursday evening and the restaurant was all but empty. That’s Marcello, said Kline, lifting his chin. He likes to eat early.

Who’s that he’s with?

Dont know. You dont drink water.

Not much. Probably not a good idea.

Probably. What was your sister doing up in Wisconsin?

She was in a sanitarium.

Why Wisconsin?

She tried to get into the place where they’d confined Rosemary Kennedy.

Did she think that they’d just let her in?

Yes. They didnt, of course. She wound up in a place that had once been run by some order of sisters.

Is the State a hotbed of looneybins?

Probably not enough to accommodate everybody.

You didnt have some connection with the Kennedys.

No.

I worked with Bobby in Chicago in the early sixties. Briefly. We were working with a guy named Ed Hicks who was trying to get free elections for the Chicago cabdrivers. Basically Kennedy was a moralist. Before long he was to have an amazing roster of enemies and he prided himself on knowing who they were and what they were up to. Which he didnt, of course. By the time his brother was shot a couple of years later they were mired up in a concatenation of plots and schemes that will never be sorted out. At the head of the list was killing Castro and if that failed actually invading Cuba. In the end I dont think that would have happened but it’s a sort of bellwether for all the trouble they were in. I always wondered if there might not have been a moment there when Kennedy realized he was dying that he didnt smile with relief. After old man Kennedy had his stroke the Kennedys for some reason felt that it would be all right to go after the Mafia. Ignoring the longstanding deal the old man had cut with them. No idea what they were thinking. All the time Jack is schtupping Sam Giancana’s girlfriend—a lady named Judith Campbell. Although in all fairness—quaint term—I think that Jack saw her first. Or one of his pimps did. Some guy named Sinatra. What are you going to say about the Kennedys? There’s no one like them. A friend of mine was at a houseparty out on Martha’s Vineyard one evening and when he got to the house Ted Kennedy was greeting people at the door. He was dressed in a bright yellow jumpsuit and he was drunk. My friend said: That’s quite an outfit you’ve got on there, Senator. And Kennedy said yes, but I can get away with it. My friend—who’s a Washington lawyer—told me that he had never understood the Kennedys. He found them baffling. But he said that when he heard those words the scales fell from his eyes. He thought that they were probably engraved on the family crest. However you say it in Latin. Anyway, I’ve never understood why there is no monument anywhere to Mary Jo Kopechne. The girl Ted left to drown in his car after he drove it off a bridge. If it were not for her sacrifice that lunatic would have been President of the United States. My guess is that with the exception of Bobby they were just a pack of psychopaths. I suppose it was Bobby’s hope that he could somehow justify his family. Even though he must have known that was impossible. There wasnt a copper cent in the coffers that funded the whole enterprise that wasnt tainted. And then they all died. Murdered, for the most part. Maybe not Shakespeare. But not bad Dostoevsky.