PART TWO
I
“Branford.”
“Thanks for accepting the charges.”
“Well, maybe you’ll give me a story and I can expense them to the Globe.”
“Maybe not. Plus if they find out you’re a newspaper reporter they’ll probably take you off my PIN list.”
“PIN list?”
“In order to be able to call anyone I have to submit their name and phone number for approval, and they give me back a slip with the approved names and a PIN number, like a password.”
“From what I read in the papers that should be right up your alley.”
“It’s not true, Tuckerman.” The last name shtick that we have going serves me well right now. I have to summon up any toughness I can muster or I could quickly find myself at the other end of the toughness spectrum.
“I know that. I mean, I know it fundamentally. But the ‘facts of the case’ sure don’t seem to help you. What about the sex business?”
“Not true, in spite of the pictures in the paper.”
“They are pretty damning, Bradford. Gee, if I had known you like to get your kinks on I might have offered to do a little role playing with you, Daddy.”
“Ouch. Maybe some day I can explain why it is hard for me to see the humor in that right now.”
“Sorry.”
“Anything new in the papers this weekend?”
“New? No. More of the same. Your story has legs. Supposedly the dollar figure is over ten million now. What’s it all about, Branford?”
“I don’t have a clue. Somebody’s out to get me and he’s doing a pretty good job of it.”
“You don’t know anything about the money?”
“Not even a dime of it, Tuckerman. Maybe you should ask Indrisano to turn you loose on the story while the trail is still hot.”
“Tell me you’re kidding, Branford.”
“I wasn’t, but why?”
“You want me to work my fine young ass off so I can by-line some stories that purport to show you are innocent? What, so I can cement my reputation as a bimbo who got her job by screwing her middle-aged boss? No thanks.”
“Oops. I see what you mean. I guess my brain is turning to oatmeal in here.”
“Well, maybe I can scout around a bit off-hours.”
“Thanks, Amy.” I am tearing up and my breathing is constricted, and for once I know exactly why.
“You okay, Branford?”
I hold my breath, bite my lip, widen my eyes, and try everything I can think of to recover. It’s good that I am being held in solitary using a phone that has been passed into the cell to me through a small opening in the sliding steel door, because as little as I know yet about this place, I understand already that public tears are considered bad form in prison.
“Branford? You still there?”
I find a small reservoir of grit at the pit of my stomach and summon it just in time to keep myself from losing it.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Maybe. It doesn’t sound like you are.”
“Well.”
“What are they doing to you in there?”
“Nothing. I’m in solitary.”
“Why? Tell me you didn’t do something to piss them off already.”
“No, nothing like that. It’s actually more disturbing than that. They have a very specific kind of solitary called PC.”
“Politically correct? Just for you, Branford?”
“No.”
“Okay, what’s the punch line?”
“It stands for ‘protective custody.’ They are supposedly protecting me from other inmates who might want to hurt me.”
“Because?”
“Because the newspapers are saying I am a ‘skinner.’”
“Which means, what, a pervert?”
“Very good, but it’s more specific than that. It’s prison-speak for pedophile. They apparently think I’m a Father Geoghan waiting to happen.”
“Jesus. Has anyone bothered you?”
“Pretty constant barrage of abuse from the guards, but I haven’t had any direct contact with my fellow inmates except when they let me outside to get some exercise yesterday. I wish I’d had some earplugs. They have an exercise area called the Big Yard and it’s bordered on two sides by three of the housing units for the general population.”
“And?”
“And I think it makes the general population feel better to have somebody beneath them in the moral pecking order.”
“And you’re that somebody.”
“Apparently.”
“What do they do?”
“They yell stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t want to hear it.”
“Probably not, but tell me anyway.”
“No.”
“So they’ve seen the papers.”
“Yes.”
“And they know your name.”
“Yes. Stannnnn-ley, they call me.” I draw it out the way they do. “I was hoping they would get hoarse, but there were some real leather lungs, maybe twenty of them going off on me for a solid hour, the whole time I was out there. ‘Stanley, kill yourself, you ripper.’ ‘Stanley, you’re a fucking diddler.’ ‘Stanley, put down the camera and step away from the playground.’ ‘Stanley, let me run into your skinner ass on the street so I can cut your fucking throat.’ ‘Stanley, why did you take dirty pictures of your daughter and her friends?’ ‘Stanley, blow me, you sick fuck.’ ‘Stanley, Daddy, please don’t do that, it hurts me when you do that.’”
“I see what you mean about the earplugs. You have to listen to that every time you want to get some exercise?”
“Apparently. I don’t know which is worse though.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, to hear all that and know it is unfair because I’m not that guy, or to hear it all if I knew I was that guy.”
“Do they bring you out there all by yourself?”
“No, there were about five of us yesterday. They yell at the others too.”
“Only fair, I guess. Are they all, uh—”?
“Skinners? Maybe. I guess the general population assumes they are either skinners of snitches, or they wouldn’t be in PC. They’re probably right more often than not. One of the guys walking around the track yesterday was that Reardon guy who pled guilty to fondling over a hundred boys.”
“Are you afraid?”
“What, that they’ll Geoghan me?”
“Well, yeah, for instance. Stranger things have happened, right?”
“I suppose so.”
“There must be something I can do.”
“Smuggle me in a weapon so I can kill myself, Tuckerman.”
“Don’t joke about that, Branford.”
“You’re making an assumption that I’m joking.”
“Why would you want to kill yourself, Branford?”
“Why would I want to live?”
“Have you spoken with Diana?
“Tried to.”
“She’s actually refusing to speak to you?”
“She brought the kids to her sister’s, I think.”
I explain that, yes, I tried to call Diana. I tried our house and there was no answer, and I also put Diana’s sister Lia on my PIN list. When I tried Lia’s house my first two calls were answered by hang-ups, so obviously she has Caller ID. On my third call Lia answered the phone and said simply: “She’s not here. Don’t call again.” My response, to ask, “Where is she?”, was interrupted by a click.
“How’s that feel?”
“I hate it. I don’t believe her, and I want to keep trying, just on the office chance that Sam or Rachel might pick up.”
“Sam must be desperate to speak to you.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, sure, why wouldn’t he be?”
“You’re worried about what they’ve told him.”
“Wouldn’t you be if you were in my shoes?”
“I just don’t get how Diana could turn against you so quickly.”
“Amy, I appreciate that, but think about it from her point of view. She’s presented with this terrorized fifteen-year-old girl and they are just feeding on each other’s fears that I’m behind all of this. It’s in the newspapers and it’s on the internet, so it has to be true, right?”
“I just find it amazing that the two of them, after everything that has happened, are ganging up together against you. Is there anything that you’re not telling me?”
“Like what?” I can feel myself bristling.
“Oh, I don’t know. Nothing. I’m sorry, Stanley.”
“After everything that’s happened, Diana has a pretty strong need to show Rachel that she can be her ally.”
“But they aren’t stupid. They are two perfectly intelligent and otherwise discerning people, being led by the nose by, well, who?”
“Wish I could tell you.”
“But really, let’s talk about who would do all this. It’s not just one thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, somebody hijacked your bank accounts, right?”
“And then he used my bank accounts to steal ten million dollars from a bunch of people who don’t know me from Adam.”
“So, maybe he wants the money, but he really wants to get at you, too.”
“Well, he wins. He got me.”
“And just to make sure he ruins your life, he puts the kiddie porn on your computers.”
“My computer. Singular. It’s just my home computer.”
“Oh.”
“What oh?”
“I guess you didn’t know this part.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yep. There have been e-mails and instant messages popping up on reporters’ and politicians’ computers all over the country all weekend.”
“From StanBran?”
“Nope. These would be from Stanley dot Branford at Transcript dot com. ‘Click here if you would like to see what I’m into.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Yes. Pretty eye-catching stuff, Branford. Kiddie porn, golden showers, bestiality, bisexuality, you name it.”
“So he wants to ruin my family, my finances, my career, my life. Sort of a grand slam, eh?”
“Yeah. But I have this feeling there is something else going on, too.”
“What would that be?”
“It’s like he is trying to prove something to you. Like that he is smarter than you or something.”
“How do you figure?”
“Maybe not only smarter than you, but something else, too. The strip club and the pornography, maybe something else is going on with all that.”
“Sure there is. He’s a creep. He gets his jollies over little girls, but he’s trying to pin it on me.”
“Not just trying. Succeeding, I would say. Showing you that he can do it. Maybe trying to expose something about you, even if only to yourself. And all the time he is making you out to look to all the world not only like a pervert but like some sort of moral hypocrite.”
“Yes. You know what? I was struggling with this last night as I was not falling asleep, but that – what you just said – that’s the worst thing about all of this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, if I did have a problem with pornography or some fetish or I was a thief or a compulsive hacker, well, that would be what it was. It would be lousy, and of course it could wreck my family, but I would try to deal with it, I guess, the same way that a person would try to deal with a problem with booze or drugs or whatever.”
“One day at a time, yadda yadda yadda.”
“Sure. But to be seen as a moral hypocrite by all the people by all the people who have believed in what I have had to say in the paper over the years, it strips away something that is very important to me.”
“Pride goeth before a fall.”
“Or after a fall. It’s pride, I realize that.”
After a few seconds of silence Amy speaks again. Even through the telephone lines, I sense that Amy is restraining her feelings of frustration with me, almost as if she is a test-conscious teacher trying to hurry along a slow child.
“But you need to think about this, Branford. Is there anybody you know who could do all these things, who really needs to prove to you, or maybe to somebody else, that he is smarter than you, or better than you?”
“Funny, it never occurred to me that it could be someone I know. I’ve just been assuming it’s some internet hacker somewhere out there and he’s picked me at random.”
“Not likely, Branford. If that was true, I doubt he would have lured you to the strip club.”
“He didn’t really lure me there. I was playing at being a private eye and I tracked him down. If I hadn’t been picked up by the cops I would have been able to confront him right there at the club a few hours later on Thursday night.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
“You may be lucky that you were arrested when you were. You may have walked right into a trap he had set for you. Maybe he had something a lot worse than being arrested in mind for you.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Think. Showing you all those credit card charges at the strip joint was like leaving the trail of M&Ms for ET.”
“Reese’s Pieces. Anyway, at most maybe he wanted those pictures of me to get into the paper to complete the frame-up and make it clear to my family and friends and the general public what an asshole I am.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’m thinking that whoever it is must have a very deep reservoir of anger directed against you. It’s even possible he had this whole thing scripted out so that you get nailed with the sick stuff and then you get killed or you commit suicide or something, which accomplishes two goals at once.”
“It kills me off and it gives him a free pass, because suicide is tantamount to a confession?”
“Yeah, well, it’s a theory, right? Who knows?
“You have a very interesting mind, Tuckerman.”
“Interesting to you, maybe, Branford. To me it’s just like always having too much caffeine in my coffee. But okay, I’ve got the bug. I’m going to get on this. I just need two things from you, Branford.”
“Shoot.”
“First, I need access information and passwords for all your accounts that are online. Second, I need you to really sit down and think about who in the world might hate you enough to do all of this to you just to prove that he is smarter than you.”
“Before he whacks me.”
“Well, it’s an option I wouldn’t rule out if I were you. I kind of think he wanted to confront you at ‘Little Girls’ the other night.”
“Okay. I’m not convinced where we are going with this, but it’s better than anything I’ve come up with on my own. Got a pencil?
I then proceed to give Amy Tuckerman all I can think of for online accounts: bank accounts, email and internet accounts, credit cards, my Fidelity account, my newspaper professional subscriptions that allow me to search the Times archives from home, my Lexis-Nexis database account, shopping and search engine accounts like Amazon and Google, and even my patron’s account at the Belmont Public Library. My performance at these rather elementary memory challenges is slow and incomplete at best. Not only am I hampered by the fact that I have become dependent upon Rachel’s little family web page gizmos that log me on automatically and save me the need to remember my user IDs and passwords myself, but I am also experiencing another, perhaps more general incapacity:
After just two days in prison I am finding that all of my previous life on the outside seems more distant and inaccessible with each passing hour. It is almost as if it is an involuntary blocking-out response to keep me from being consumed from inside by the hole in my heart, the intense aching misery of missing that I feel for Sam, for Rachel, and for Diana. By hacking away with a mental meat cleaver at what I can remember, the biological processes of my own mind may be cutting my losses, sacrificing some of the data and detritus of daily life – information that I surely do not need here – in order to help protect me from a pain so intense and irreducible that it might keep me from functioning.
Not that a great deal of functioning capacity is strictly necessary in my present position.
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