The Sirena Quest (9 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Lou rewound the last reel of microfilm—the one containing all issues of the
New York Times
for the first ten days of October, 1959.

He shook his head. “I don't get it.”

They were in the library of the Northwestern Law School. Lou and Gordie were seated at one reader, and Ray and Billy were at the other. More than a dozen reels of microfilm were piled between the two microfilm readers.

They'd been at it now for nearly three hours, reading every October second issue of the
Chicago Tribune
and
New York Times
from 1959 to 1984, along with all October issues of
Time
magazine for the same period.

Fifteen sultans had made the news over the course of those twenty-five Octobers. They'd delivered speeches, hosted world leaders, bought expensive diamonds, died in private plane crashes, sold oil, bought mansions in Beverly Hills, had their heads lopped off by revolting subjects, lopped off the heads of revolting subjects, and donated millions to charity. One of them—His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah, the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam—even shook hands with Mayor Richard M. Daley and members of his staff in City Hall on October 1, 1973.
Time
quoted his Hizzoner's quintessential Chicago introductions: “Sultan, dese are da boys. Boys, say hi to da Sultan.”

But in all those years—in all those articles and all those photographs—not one of those sultans pointed at anything. Or at least not in the presence of a reporter or photographer.

The thrill of anticipation they'd felt as Billy threaded that first reel of microfilm into the machine three hours ago had long since fizzled.

“We must be missing something here,” Ray said.

Gordie said, “Maybe we're looking at the wrong newspapers. What if it was reported in the
L.A. Times
, or the
Boston Globe
?”

“What if it was only reported in a foreign paper?” Billy added.

“Damn,” Gordie said, shaking his head. “I just thought of something.”

Billy stifled a yawn. “What?”

“You remember that
New York Times
article a month ago, the one on the hunt for Sirena?”

They nodded.

Gordie looked around at them. “It mentioned all the different places where people are searching for her.”

“So?” Ray said.

“It said there was a crew from the Class of Sixty-eight heading for Egypt.”

Gordie paused. No one said anything.

“Get it?” he asked. “Egypt? Sultans? They must have had a good reason to head over there.”

“Shit.” Ray pushed away from the table and stood up. “I need a drink.”

Chapter Nineteen

Lou called home from a pay phone in the bar back near the restrooms. He knew that Katie had her big math test that day and that Kenny had a ball game that night. Although conditions were hardly optimal for a long-distance family conversation—the noise in the bar was approaching airport-runway decibel levels—this would be his only chance tonight. It was already almost ten. He wouldn't be back to the hotel until after midnight. He missed his children and needed to hear their voices.

Both were home and still awake. He got to hear all their news, even though they had to shout for him to hear. Kenny went first, then Katie.

“I'll call tomorrow night, peanut,” he told her when she was done filling him in on the day's events. “From a quieter place. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Daddy. So?”

“So?”

“Are you getting warmer?”

He smiled. “I think so.”

“You going to find her?”

“Hard to say.”

“You having fun, Daddy?”

Lou smiled. “I guess so.”

“Good. Go for it, Daddy. We love you.”

He smiled as he hung up.

Turning toward the crowded bar, he repeated his daughter's words aloud. “Go for it, Daddy.”

The James Gang was down to three for the rest of the night. Bronco Billy had called his wife from a pay phone at the law library. The strained conversation—tense whispers on Billy's end—lasted five minutes. Billy replaced the receiver, his shoulders hunched. They said good-bye to him outside the library before they caught a cab to the bar. They pretended not to notice his embarrassment.

From across the room, Lou watched as Ray and Gordie flirted with the waitress. Ray poured the last of the pitcher of beer into Gordie's mug and signaled for another one—a gesture right out of freshman year. All those nights at Pete's Fine Pizzas and Grinders, with Ray pouring the last of a pitcher into one of their mugs and signaling for another.

Well
, Lou said to himself,
Ray was definitely going for it.

Ray had wanted them all back together again for his quest—back together like they once were. A return to the past, if just for these few days together.

Lou wanted that, too, but it was complicated. You couldn't just surrender to nostalgia. Not when there were children and clients and a mortgage and future college tuitions summoning you back to the present. Today alone he'd checked his voice mail twice, returned a couple of client calls, and spent ten minutes on the phone with Brenda giving her a new research project on an idea for the Donohue appeal that had popped into his head at two in the morning.

Twenty years was a lot of years, he thought as he watched Gordie and Ray through the smoky haze of the bar. So much had happened since college. To each of them. Bronco Billy—good Lord, look how much had happened to him since college. To Gordie, too—those bleak years in Hollywood, tainted with the copper taste of failure. And Ray.

Death had changed things as well. Irreversibly.

Gordie's father was dead. Stanley Cohen—a diminutive, slightly stooped, balding accountant with a bushy mustache and a wonderful smile who loved to tell zippy little jokes in his rapid-fire, Borscht-Belt delivery
. Hey, Lou
, he said during Lou's visit with Gordie's family over one of the holidays,
they just opened a new Chinese German restaurant over on Dempster. Food's not bad
—pause two beats—
but an hour later you're hungry for power.

Lou smiled. You could almost hear the snare drum riff in the background—
ra-ta-boom
—and then Stanley Cohen chuckled and repeated the punchline.
Food's not bad, but an hour later you're hungry for power.
More chuckles.

Both of Ray's parents were dead.

“I'm an orphan,” Ray had told him last year with a sad smile.

Lou remembered Ray's parents so clearly from the time he had spent a weekend at Ray's house in Pittsburgh on his drive home at the end of freshman year. His father had seemed so young and vigorous, his mother weary but good-natured. Lou had joined the eight members of the Gorman family around the roughhewn dinner table that Ray's father had made in his basement shop. Ray's father died of a heart attack at the steel mill—dead before the ambulance arrived. Six months later, his mother died of liver cancer, quickly and painfully and quietly.

Billy, too, had been touched by death. His younger brother Robert had been killed in a car crash three years ago. Lou had met Robert at Barrett during the spring of his freshman year when he'd come up to visit his big brother. He was in eighth grade at the time—an extremely polite, formal boy with a slight stammer. And now he was dead.

And death had visited Lou as well. He frowned, staring down at the floor.

Not now
, he told himself.
Not now.

Gordie looked up as Lou rejoined them. “So? How're the kids?”

“Good. Katie thinks she aced her math test. Kenny hit the game-winning double.”

Gordie pumped his fist. “Way to go, Kenny Ballgames.”

The waitress set down their second pitcher of beer and another order of guacamole and tortilla chips.

Ray took a sip of beer and shook his head. “We're missing something here. There's got to be a way to figure this out.”

Lou dipped a tortilla chip in the guacamole and ate it. “What do we know?” he said. “We know our sultan never made it into the
Chicago Tribune
or
New York Times
.”

Gordie groaned. “Don't even think what that could mean. We'd have to read through newspapers from around the country, or even the world, for chrissakes.”

Lou crunched on a chip. “Worse yet, it might not even be in a newspaper. Or even in this century. We could be dealing with a mythical sultan. Like the one in Aladdin.”

They sipped their beers in silence.

Gordie said, “Maybe it's got something to do with that crazy codicil with the animal cemetery. What was the pet's name?”

“Canaan,” Lou said.

“The Promised Land,” Ray said. He looked at Lou. “Gordie's right. Let's see if Gabe Pollack knows anything about it.”

“We can drop by his office tomorrow.”

They were silent for awhile, sipping their beers and crunching on tortilla chips.

Gordie printed the word SULTAN on his napkin and turned it to face them.

“What are you doing?” Ray asked.

“You think it's an anagram?” Gordie said.

For the next several minutes, they fiddled with the letters:

Stun.

Lust.

Salt.

Slut.

Slant.

Last.

They couldn't come up with any word using all six letters.

Other possible codes proved equally unenlightening, although Ray's idea of focusing on the first letters of the words in Marshall's will yielded a disturbing message: Sultan Pointed On October First.

“Spoof?” Ray said. “It better not be.”

“We used to be good at this stuff,” Gordie said.

“What stuff?” Lou asked.

“Figuring things out.”

Ray gave him a dubious look. “We did?”

“Sure,” Gordie said. “Don't you remember? It was Bronco Billy's finest hour.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Ray,” Gordie said.

“What?”

“I'll give you a hint.”

“Okay.”

“Yakov Blotnik.”

“Who?”

“Yakov Blotnik.”

Lou and Ray gave each other a baffled look.

And then Ray smiled. “Oh, yeah. Yakov Blotnik.”

SCENE 34: THE EXAM {3rd Draft}:

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. BARRETT COLLEGE QUADRANGLE - NIGHT

CAMERA ON CLASSROOM BUILDING

Dead of winter. Snow gently falling. The building is dark except for a single brightly lit classroom on the second floor. We are too far away to make out the identities of the four people inside, but we recognize them as they speak.

LOU
(straining for the answer)

Some sort of eye doctor, right?

BRONCO BILLY
(patiently)

But what is his name? You have to know his name.

INT. CLASSROOM - NIGHT

It's one of those seminar rooms with a long conference table surrounded by chairs.

Ray, Lou, Gordie, and Billy are in there cramming for an English exam. Books and notebooks are strewn around the table, along with empty cans of Coke, Styrofoam coffee cups, and a bag from Dunkin' Donuts. Billy sits at the head of the table, as much in charge as anyone could be after all these hours.

Lou leafs through a dog-eared copy of
The Great Gatsby
, looking for the answer. Gordie crumples sheets of loose-leaf paper and tries to toss them into the waste basket in the corner. Ray stands by the window and peers into the snowy night as he takes a drag on his Camel cigarette.

BILLY
(looking up at them)

Well?

LOU
(still searching through the book)

Egg-something. Egbert?

BILLY

No.

GORDIE
(as a crumpled paper
drops in basket)

Bradley shoots, he scores!

LOU

Okay, Bronco. We give up. Who?

BILLY

Dr. T. J. Eckleberg.

GORDIE

And who is he again?

BILLY

The face on the billboard in the valley of ashes in
The Great Gatsby
.

RAY
(disgusted)

This is total chickenshit.

BILLY

Professor Berger said this kind of stuff would be on the exam.

RAY

This is college, for chrissake. What's he doing giving us a goddamned seventh grade quiz?

BILLY

To make sure we read the books he assigned. He said we'd have to know names, places, things like that.

RAY

Total chickenshit.

BILLY

It's fifty percent of our grade.

GORDIE
(with a new “ball”)

Dr. Eckleberg at the head of the key. Dr. E shoots. HE SCORES!

LOU

How about some Philip Roth?

GORDIE
(pausing in his game)

Goodbye, Columbus
. What a great tush, eh?

RAY

Whose?

GORDIE

Whose? My God, man. Whose? Ali MacGraw's, that's whose. Remember that scene at the country club when she gets out of the pool and reaches back to snap the bottom of her swimming suit down. There's not a Jewish guy my age who doesn't get a woody remembering that scene.

LOU

He won't ask about
Goodbye, Columbus
. Too easy. We need to focus on the other stories.

BILLY

Good point, Lou.

RAY
(mimicking Billy)

Good point, Lou.

BILLY
(studying his class notes)

Okay, who was Yakov Blotnik?

GORDIE
(laughing)

Who?

BILLY

Yakov Blotnik.

RAY
(rolling his eyes heavenward)

Fuck if I know.

BILLY

Anyone?

GORDIE

Yakov Blotnik? Uh, Jay Gatsby's real name?

LOU

F. Scott Fitzgerald's real name?

GORDIE

Ray Gorman's real name.

BILLY

This is serious. Yakov Blotnik.

LOU

We give up.

BILLY

Yakov Blotnik is the janitor in Philip Roth's short story, “The Conversion of the Jews.”

A moment of silence, and then the other three burst into laughter.

EXT. QUADRANGLE - NIGHT

They are still laughing as the camera pulls further away until all we can be see is the illuminated windows of the otherwise dark building.

GORDIE

Cousy to Russell. Russell back to Cousy. Over to Hondo. Hondo to Blotnik. Yakov Blotnik shoots, HE SCORES!

RAY

The janitor in “The Conversion of the Jews”? Unbelievable. Total chickenshit.

CUT TO:

INT. LECTURE HALL - DAY

The next day. Exam time. All rows of seats in the tiered lecture hall are filled, a closed bluebook on every desk. Professor Berger stands at the lectern below as student proctors pass out the exams. Billy is seated down in the front row. The other three are interspersed among the rest of the class, with Ray all the way in back on the top row.

ANGLE ON PROFESSOR BERGER

as he glances back at the clock over the blackboard and CLEARS his throat.

PROF. BERGER

You will have exactly one hour to complete this exam. No talking whatsoever.

He pauses to glance back at the clock again.

ANGLE ON STUDENTS

Gradual zoom in on Ray Gorman, who is seated way up in the back row.

PROF. BERGER
(off screen)

You may now…begin the exam.

The SOUND of 70 exam booklets opening.

CLOSE ON RAY

as he opens his booklet and starts reading.

INSERT OF FIRST PAGE OF THE EXAM

where the following question is visible:

1. Who is the janitor in Philip Roth's “The Conversion of the Jews”?

ANGLE ON RAY

His frown relaxes into a smile and he looks up.

RAY'S POINT OF VIEW

Three rows below Ray to the right, Lou turns and looks back with a grin and then glances down to his left, where Gordie is seated.

ANGLE ON GORDIE

as he looks back at Lou with raised eyebrows and an expression of wonder.

RAY'S POINT OF VIEW

From all the way down in the front row, Billy sneaks a look back at Ray.

ANGLE ON RAY

as he winks at Bill and gives him a thumbs-up.

ANGLE ON BRONCO BILLY

as he smiles.