Carnival of Shadows (55 page)

Travis extended his hand. Doyle took it. They maintained that grip, each looking back at the other for a good half minute, and then Doyle said, “I am not Irish, Michael. And my name is not Edgar Doyle.”

“I have thought as much for a good while.”

“My name will change, and you won’t find me.”

“I don’t plan to look for you.”

“Everything else I have told you is the truth, however, though there are some things that I have not said. Not because I didn’t trust you, but because there was no need for you to know.”

“Such as the real nature of your relationship to Mr. Hoover.”

Doyle looked back at Travis, and—but for an almost imperceptible flicker in his eyes—Doyle’s expression did not change at all.

And then Doyle smiled and gripped Travis’s shoulder firmly. “Live a good life, eh?”

“I will do my best, Edgar.”

“I know you will, Michael… I know you will.”

52

Clyde Tolson, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was a precise man, not only in his dress, but also in his manner, his speech, his actions. A Missourian by birth, a lawyer by study, an FBI man by default, Tolson had formerly worked for three different secretaries of war—Baker, Weeks, and Davis. Upon first application to join the Bureau, believing that such experience would advance his law career, Tolson was rejected. However, he reapplied and was accepted in 1927, achieving successive promotions to the rank of assistant director within three years. Hoover called Tolson his alter ego. Other people had a different term for him. Despite being present when Alvin Karpis was arrested, having engaged in gunplay with the New York gangster Harry Brunette, even fulfilling an operational role in the capture of Nazi saboteurs, Dasch and Burger, Tolson was more an administrator, a policy maker, a desk man.

And so, on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 19, 1958, Clyde Tolson was the man who met with Executive Assistant Director Bradley Warren in Tolson’s D.C. office. Warren knew Tolson well enough, respected him more for his judicious and measured attitude than anything else, and though Warren himself was among those who had—on more than one occasion—questioned the nature of Director Hoover’s relationship with Assistant Director Tolson, Warren was also sufficiently careful never to allow such thoughts to become words. Hoover’s sudden and fickle mood changes were legendary, and the merest hint that some impropriety had taken place between the two men would have seen Warren dismissed just as easily as he himself had dismissed Michael Travis.

The meeting took place at three in the afternoon, and present was a stenographer, seated quietly in the corner of the room, her machine audible only in the conversational pauses. However, the word
conversation
did not perhaps apply. More accurately, it was a debrief, an admission of assignment failure, and a stern reprimand.

“The director is not pleased, and that is perhaps an understatement,” Tolson began.

“I understand his response completely,” Warren said. “However—”

“There is no
however
, Mr. Warren. This has been, to put it mildly, a monumental disaster. You realize that your section chief, Frank Gale, was in fact maintaining a homosexual relationship with a university lecturer by the name of Stephen Longmuir?”

“Yes, sir, I realize that now.”

“You also realize that the suicide of a Bureau section chief is not well received by the director?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And do you have even the slightest appreciation of the amount of time and money and effort and energy it takes to keep something like this out of the newspapers?”

“No, sir. I do not.”

“Well, I do, Mr. Warren, and it is not insignificant, let me assure you.”

“I have no doubt, sir.”

“So, not only do we have a failed assignment, and to be honest, that in itself is hard enough to fathom, considering how little was actually required of this Michael Travis, but we have a compromised department, a dead section chief, and the objective of this assignment now seems even further away than it was before we started.”

Tolson paused. The stenographer became audible.

“So, what do you have to tell me, Mr. Warren?”

“We got it wrong, sir.”

“You did, indeed. I would have expected a little more of an explanation, however.”

“The agent we assigned failed to carry out his orders in every regard.”

“So it seems. And he is where now?”

“We don’t know, sir.”

“He has been dismissed?”

“Yes, he has. I dismissed him personally.”

“And what do we have on him?”

“Sir?”

“Material, information… This Agent Travis, what do we have on him?”

“Very little, sir, as far as I can tell. He was somewhat of a loner. Lived alone, no relationship, didn’t seem to make friends, no real social life.”

“A blank page, then?”

“You could say that, yes sir.”

“Good, so write a biography for him. Give him some background that can be exposed if he ever decides to resurface and cause trouble. We have had enough to deal with already without further embarrassments and unpleasantness.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And these people we were supposed to bring home?”

“They won’t be coming home, sir.”

“Well, I can imagine that Dulles and his crowd of thugs will be far more disappointed in that than either myself or the director. I never did much care for that sort of thing, personally. You start in that direction and it can’t lead to anything but trouble, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Warren?”

“Yes, sir, I would.”

“Well, okay. Is there anything else?”

“No, sir. I don’t think so.”

“Very well.”

“Just one question, sir.”

“Yes, Mr. Warren?”

“Are we going to just let Travis disappear, Doyle and the others too?”

“I cannot answer that question directly. I am not at liberty to divulge the director’s longer-term intentions. However, I will say this much. The work that has been undertaken in this field by Gottlieb and Cameron, among others, has proven to be unreliable, certainly as far as immediate and applicable results are concerned. It has been a considerable financial burden as well, and even with the seemingly endless Communist challenges to contend with, the director feels that we should be returning to good, solid, proven investigative techniques. He feels that our association with the CIA has not been productive for the Bureau. It is his Bureau, and he wishes to direct its energies and resources toward more relevant and immediate concerns.”

Tolson paused, and then he smiled sardonically. He glanced over at the stenographer, and she nodded in acknowledgment.

“There are those who believe that one of Joe Kennedy’s boys might actually make it to the White House, God forbid.”

The stenographer did not transcribe Tolson’s comment.

“So we leave Doyle and the others be? We let Travis go as well?”

“What can I say, Mr. Warren? They are all small fish, are they not? Most of them swim in seas populated with far bigger fish. There is a natural order in such things, and sometimes it is better to let nature take its course than to fight it.”

“You do not believe they will be the cause of further trouble?”

“You are being too imaginative. If Doyle and Travis and the others surface, then we will deal with it. Contingency plans are in place for all such eventualities. You should know that by now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Well, your timely and succinct report was appreciated, despite the ultimate outcome of the operation. Though, having said that, the damage control we undertook has kept all reference to what happened off the radar, as they say.”

“It could have been worse.”

“Not for Frank Gale, I wouldn’t have thought,” Tolson said, and there was a slightly mocking tone in his voice that Warren didn’t like at all.

“One’s improprieties and proclivities, if and where they exist, should never be a matter for discussion or revelation, save with those who are directly engaged in such things, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

“Excellent. You are a good man, Warren. I have always liked you. You know where your loyalties lie, and that is acknowledged. I have discussed this most recent case with the director, and he feels that you are not to be held directly accountable for what happened. Bishop will survive too. He shows promise, as do Carvahlo and Erickson. The failing was with this Michael Travis, and with Frank Gale, of course, but that unpleasantness is now well and truly behind us.”

Tolson rose from his desk.

Warren rose too, and together they walked to the door of the office.

Tolson extended his hand, and he and Warren shook.

“And Mr. Gale’s name shall not be uttered again. Are we clear on that point?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“The Bureau does not forget, Mr. Warren, but I am sure that you are already fully aware of this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Warren headed out of the office and down the corridor. Present in his mind was one overriding and inescapable certainty: He understood that Frank Gale would have undoubtedly resigned, acceded to a divorce, have suffered the most extreme public and private humiliation, but the Frank Gale that Warren knew would never have committed suicide.

There were other Andris Vargas, and they were always available when a little housework was required.

This was the way of things. It was all for the greater good. Such knowledge carried a burden of responsibility, but those who were insufficiently strong to bear such a burden were also unsuited for public office.

It took a certain kind of man, and those such as Frank Gale and Michael Travis were evidently not of the required caliber.

By the time Tolson’s door was closed and Bradley Warren had made it to the top of the stairs, Tolson had already dismissed the stenographer and placed a call through to another department.

“Yes,” he said, “I wanted to let you know that Mr. Warren is to be admitted for treatment as soon as possible.”

A moment’s pause.

“Yes, of course,” he went on. “And I think perhaps that Dr. Cameron might wish to supervise this case personally.”

Tolson replaced the receiver and leaned back in his chair.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and then he rose and walked to a small safe in the corner of the room. He opened it, withdrew a file, and returned to his desk. He leafed through pages, through photographs, all faces that he knew, faces that were so familiar, until he came to one in particular. The gunmetal gray hair, now close to white at the temples, aged the man so, but the expression was unmistakable. So many times Mr. Hoover had taken this file from the very same safe and looked at this image, as if believing that to look at it enough would somehow change the past. But the past had not changed and never would.

Attached to the photograph was a certificate of birth, now yellowed, ragged at the edges, more than sixty years old. Tolson scanned the parents’ names printed thereon—Dickerson Hoover and Anna Marie Scheitlin, and the name of the child registered on Tuesday, July 6, 1897, just four days after its birth.

From his desk drawer Tolson took a lighter and held it beneath the corner of the certificate. He watched as it started to smolder and catch. There was little smoke, and Tolson dropped it into the trash basket and stood over it until it was finally consumed.

Returning to the file, he once again looked at the photograph that had accompanied the certificate. He slid it back among its neighbors, suspecting that despite everything that had happened between them, the director might wish to keep at least one photograph of his stepbrother.

The file back in the safe, Tolson looked at his desk calendar.

He smiled. So unlike him to forget such a thing, but he and the director were leaving for a weekend in Martha’s Vineyard the following evening.

That would be good. A welcome respite, and too long overdue.

53

STATUS REPORT
Reference: AV-067980-011E
Originator: SSA Raymond Carvahlo
Recipient: Section Chief Tom Bishop
Please confirm that Operation Black Dog has now been retired. I need to submit completion documentation on behalf of Unit X.

STATUS REPORT
Reference: AV-067980-011E
Originator: Section Chief Tom Bishop
Recipient: SSA Raymond Carvahlo
Black Dog is retired. Unit X has been reassigned to Operations Oswald, Camelot, and Bloody Elm. All three operations are class 7 security clearance and above only. As covered in the most recent briefing, I am transferring to Dallas, TX, for the foreseeable future, and will be supervising one of the aforementioned operations. Your promotion to section chief has been approved by the assistant director, and we are awaiting confirmation from the director. On a more personal note, your continued diligence is acknowledged and appreciated. No doubt we shall work together again at some point in the future, and until then I wish you success in your new posting.

COMM EXCHANGE TERMINATED AT 11:22 a.m. BY SSA TOM BISHOP

54

The nineteenth of August, 1958.

Sixteen years.

Sixteen years to the day since his mother had murdered his father.

Michael Travis could not believe that the house had stood empty for sixteen years.

Successive winters had begun a slow and irrevocable decay, the steps up to the porch now gone, the outer door a bare and rotted frame, the screen itself long since vanished. Rust had taken the locks, the latches, the striker plates, and even the floor beneath his feet felt insubstantial as he made his way through the ground floor, pausing for a moment at the top of the basement stairwell, peering into the darkness, unable to face the prospect of going down there.

And so he did not.

He walked back to the hallway near the front door and looked toward the kitchen.

Even as he stood there, he could hear her voice, those small fragments of songs she used to sing—“Over the Rainbow” and “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”

Perhaps he should have been afraid, but he was not.

Perhaps he should have been concerned that the Bureau would now never let him be, that he had broken the faith, crossed the lines, committed the ultimate betrayal.

He did not know what he felt, not really, but it certainly wasn’t fear or trepidation or anxiety.

He felt free of something, as if he’d been released from some unknown jail.

He had tried to explain it to Laura, but she had said—as she had said so many times—that he did not need to put everything into words. Not everything needed a label. Not everything needed a box.
Some things
, she said,
just are
.

Travis did not risk an ascent to the second floor of the house. The banister had sagged and now leaned outward like some crazy optical illusion. What was meant to be straight was twisted, and what was meant to be twisted was straight. Like his thoughts, perhaps.

There were many things with which he would wrestle. He knew that. He was prepared for that.

A stone recovered from the sea will always carry salt.

There are some things that would always be part of identity, personality,
self
, and to consider anything other than acceptance would be to attempt erasure of something that could not be erased.

Take any number of layers away, and fingerprints always return. Innate, inherent, whatever word might be used, there are some aspects of a person that would always be that person.

Perhaps that was the soul; perhaps it was something else.

Michael Travis did not know, but he knew that in time he would stop fighting himself and the rest of the world. Perhaps there were some questions that could never be answered in this life, because the answers could only be found after this life was done.

And so, finally, he came to the room where it had all happened.

He approached it tentatively, as if on eggshells, and he heard nothing, not even his own breathing, not even his own heart, and he waited for that voice to start in his head.

You think your mother would be proud of you? Jesus, you are a sick kid; you know that?

And he felt his pulse then, that quickening sensation, that awareness on his skin,
under
his skin.

You think you have the right to judge me? You don’t have the right to even speak to me, let alone judge me, you self-righteous hypocritical son of a bitch!

And he placed his hand against the wall as if to steady himself, even though he knew he was not going to lose his balance. Not now. Not again. Not ever.

And I’ll tell you now, that ain’t never had more meaning than it does right now. Son of a bitch. You are a son of a bitch. Because she was a bitch, kiddo. She was a fucking nasty fucking bitch, and I hope she burns in hell forever…

And the table came into view, the chair also, the chair where he had sat in life, in death also; the chair from where Jimmy had risen and walked forward, the sound of cockroaches scuttling across the plates, the smell of rotted food, the
drip-drip-drip
of blood as it spooled out between items of crockery and cutlery to find the edge of that table.

And there was nothing.

Not a sound. Not a word. Nothing for him to see and nothing in his mind. The table was still standing, the chair also, but the seat had gone, the back also, and whatever color the fabric might have been had long since disappeared, bleached out by daylight, by damp, by time.

In that moment, Michael Travis believed that he was in front of himself, as if he could turn around right there and then and see his own face looking back.

He shuddered. It was a strange and disorientating sensation, and then it passed, almost as quickly as it had come.

He stood for a moment longer, trying to feel anything at all, but the house was empty, as were his feelings for it, the only extant memory that of his mother in the kitchen, her voice gentle and melodic.

If happy little bluebirds fly… beyond the rainbow… why, oh why can’t I?

And then the memory was gone.

Michael retraced his steps and left the house. He paused for a moment on the veranda, and then he walked to the edge and stepped down.

From his jacket pocket, he withdrew the letter that he had recovered from his apartment in Olathe. He had left everything behind but for a few articles of clothing. Even the book he had given Esther so many years before had stayed there on the bookshelf.

Michael

Just one word on the front.

He turned it over and opened it.

There were two sheets of paper. The first was from Esther, and even as he read her words, he felt a wave of emotions deep enough to drown him forever.

January 28, 1950

Dear Michael,

The truth can both hurt and heal. I trust that what I am telling you now will bring you more of the latter and none of the former.

Your mother, dead now more than two years, never lost her mind. She was never crazy. She knew who you were, and she always knew who you were. She made two decisions in her life, both of them harder than any decision I have ever had to make, harder than any decision I will now ever have to make. The first was to end the suffering she endured from Jimmy and also any possibility that Jimmy might hurt you. The second was to leave you long before her death. She knew that you would only suffer more if she did not disconnect. And so she feigned her madness, and she pretended to you and the rest of the world that she no longer recognized you. It broke her heart, but she did not believe she had a choice. Once she had decided, there was no going back.

I was there with her in the very last moments of her life, and she wanted me to tell you how much she loved you, how much she had always loved you, and that she wished you all the happiness in the world.

And she gave me something for you, and this I have enclosed.

She said that she never told you for fear that you might—perhaps in anger—say something to Jimmy, and if he knew of this, then he would have reason to really hurt both you and her. And even after his death, she could not bring herself to tell you, for fear that you might think her a liar, that if she had withheld this from you, then what else had she not communicated?

There was nothing else she did not tell you. She wanted you to know that.

And so, facing my own death as I do, I want to send my blessings as well, Michael.

I loved you with all my heart, just as your mother did, and I trust that you will find happiness in whatever you decide to do with your life.

Take care, my sweet.

Esther.

Tears were on the page before Michael had finished reading. The ink bloomed and spread, and words merged together here and there. He folded the page, and before he tucked it back in the envelope, he withdrew the second page.

It was a birth certificate, and it was a moment before he appreciated that it was his own.

Michael Travis

Birth registered in Howard County, Nebraska, this day 12 May 1927

Name of mother: Janette Alice Travis

Name of father: unknown

Travis looked at the word again.
Unknown
.

There was something written on the other side of the certificate, and when he turned it, he saw his mother’s unmistakable hand.

I am sorry, my darling. You lived with a lie. Jimmy was not your father. You father’s name was Jack Fredericksen, and no, he does not know and never will. He died in the fall of 1931. He was a good man, and though I should have married him, it seemed that Fate had a different path mapped out. Whatever happened, I always did what I thought was best. I hope you will forgive me. x

Michael held the paper in his hand.

Doyle’s words came back to him.

And sometimes a man can find out that his past was not what he believed it to be.

He did not know what to feel. He was unsure that he would ever know what to feel.

He was not his father’s son.

Michael stood slowly. He took four, five, six steps away from the veranda. He paused for a moment and then glanced back over his shoulder at the house of his childhood. There was nothing there. He believed that whatever ghosts might have followed him had finally been laid to rest.

Reaching the Fairlane, he looked once more at his mother’s words. He folded that page, tucked it into the envelope, put the envelope in his pocket.

It was no more than four or five hours back to Seneca Falls, and there was a girl he needed to see.

He caught sight of his own shadow then, stretching out before him across the cracked and arid earth.

Somewhere a crow laughed.

The setting sun had reached the tops of those too-familiar trees, and Michael Travis felt that final ghost of warmth upon his face.

He started the engine and drove south.

There was silence all around him and silence within.