The Tourist Page 31

  "Hold your fucking horses!" said an angry, rough voice.

  Suddenly, Tina worried about Stephanie. What was behind this door? Her great-grandfather, maybe-she still couldn't quite believe that Milo wouldn't have known about him, and if he knew, he certainly would have told her. But what kind of man was he? She pulled Ms. Shamus aside. "Is there a place Stef can wait? I'm not sure I want her in there with us."

  "Oh, Mr. Perkins is a firecracker, but he's-"

  "Really," Tina insisted. "Like, a television room?"

  "There's one down the hall.

  "Thanks." To Simmons: "Be right back."

  She walked Stephanie down three doors, and on the right found a room that held three sofas and a La-Z-Boy and seven elderly people staring at a rerun of Murder, She Wrote.

  "Hon, you mind waiting here a little while?"

  Stephanie waved Tina closer. "It smells here," she whispered.

  "But can you take it? For me?"

  Stephanie made a face to show just how bad it smelled, but nodded. "Not for long."

  "Any problems, we'll be in room fourteen. Got it?"

  On her walk back-number fourteen was now open, both Shamus and Simmons inside-Tina had a flash of paranoia. It was the kind of paranoia she'd lived with ever since Milo fled Disney World, ever since her own world had become populated by inquisitors and security agencies.

  The paranoia spoke to her in Milo's voice: "This is how it goes down, Tina. Listen. They get you to send the child away. When you're done with your chat, the child's gone. Just vanished. The old people, they'll be on medication; they won't know what's happened. Simmons won't actually tell you she's got Stephanie. No. It'll all be inference and suggestion. But you'll be made to understand that she's got this document, a little thing. She'd like you to read it out for a camera. It'll say that your husband is a thief and a traitor and a murderer and please put him away for life. Do that, she'll say, and we might be able to track down dear Stephanie."

  But it was just paranoia, she told herself. Just that.

  She paused at the open door and looked in. Shamus was full of smiles, preparing to leave, and Simmons was settled on a chair beside a hairless, shriveled man in a wheelchair, his narrow face misshapen by age. His eyes were magnified by large, black-rimmed spectacles. The special agent beckoned her in, and the old man smiled, showing off yellowed dentures. "Meet William Perkins, Tina. William, this is Tina Weaver, your granddaughter-in-law."

  Perkins's hand had been rising to shake hers, but it stopped. He looked at Simmons. "The hell are you talking about, woman?"

  "Toodle-oo!" Shamus said as she left them to their privacy.

  9

  It was hard for William T. Perkins to take. At first he claimed he had no grandson at all, then that he had none named Milo Weaver. His protestations were riddled with curses, and Tina got the impression that William T. Perkins had been a right bastard during his eighty-one years on the planet. He'd had two daughters, yes, but they'd left in their late teens without "so much as a single how-doyou-do."

  "Your daughter Wilma, sir. She and her husband, Theodore, had Milo. Their son. Your grandson," Simmons pressed. Finally, as if these words represented incontrovertible evidence, Perkins slumped, admitting that, yes, he did have a single grandchild.

  "Milo," he said and shook his head. "The kind of name you give a dog. That's what I always thought. But Ellen-she never gave a damn what I thought about anything. Neither of them did."

  "Ellen?" said Tina.

  "Trouble from the start. Did you know that in 1967, age seventeen, the girl took LSD? Seventeen! By eighteen, she was sleeping with some Cuban communist. Jose Something-or-other. Stopped shaving her legs, went completely off the board."

  "Excuse me, Mr. Perkins," said Simmons. "We're not sure who Ellen is."

  Perkins blinked his magnified eyes at her, confused a moment.

  "Ellen's my damned daughter, of course! You're asking about Milo's mom, aren't you?"

  Tina inhaled audibly. Simmons said, "We thought Wilma was Milo's mother."

  "No," he corrected, exasperated. "Wilma took the baby-I guess he was four or five then. She and Theo couldn't have one of their own, and Ellen-Christ knows what she was up to then. She was all over the fucking map. Wilma wasn't talking to me either, but I learned from Jed Finkelstein-Wilma still deigned to talk to the Jew-that it was Ellen's idea. She was running around with some Germans by then. Mid-seventies, and the police were even after her. Guess she decided a kid would just slow her down. So she asked Wilma to take him." A whole-body shrug, then he slapped his knees. "Can you imagine? Just drop the baby off, and wash your hands of it!"

  Simmons said, "Mr. Finkelstein-do you know where he is now?"

  "Six feet under as of 1988."

  "So, what was Ellen actually doing?"

  "Reading Karl Marx. Reading Mao Zedong. Reading Joseph Goebbels, for all I know. In German.”

  “German?"

  He nodded. "She was in Germany-the west one-when she gave up on motherhood. That girl always gave up on things once it got tough. I could've told her-being a parent is no walk in the park."

  "But you didn't talk to her at all during this time."

  "Now, that was her choice. Total silence for her flesh and blood while she went off with her Kraut comrades."

  "Except her sister, Wilma."

  "What?" Another moment of confusion.

  "I said, Except for Wilma. She kept in touch with her sister."

  "Yes." He sounded disappointed by this. Then he brightened as a memory hit him: "Finkelstein-you know what he told me? He was German, you know, and he read those newspapers. He said Ellen was picked up by the police. Put in jail. Know what for?"

  Both women stared at him, expectant.

  "Armed robbery. That's what for. She and her merry band of commies actually sank to robbing banks! Tell me, how does that help save the workers of the world?"

  "Under her name?" Simmons asked sharply.

  "Her name?"

  "Was her name in the newspaper?"

  He considered that, then shrugged. "Her picture was. Finkelstein didn't say-wait! Yes. It was some German name, wasn't it? Elsa? Yes, Elsa. Close to Ellen, but no cigar."

  "What year?"

  "Seventy-eight? No-nine. Nineteen seventy-nine."

  "And when you learned this, did you contact anyone? The embassy? Did you try to get her out of jail?"

  Silence returned like an unwelcome guest to William T. Perkins. He shook his head. "I didn't even tell Minnie. Ellen wouldn't have wanted that. She'd cut us off completely. Didn't want us to come to her rescue."

  Tina wondered how many times in the last twenty-eight years this old man had repeated this to himself. His only justification for abandoning his daughter was weak, but it was all he had, like Tina's justifications for abandoning her husband.

  When Simmons straightened, she looked to Tina like the consummate professional. Her face and tone were hard but not unbending. She was here for a reason, and she would only stay long enough to satisfy her needs. "Let me make sure I've got this right. Ellen leaves home and falls in with a bad crowd. Drug users, then political malcontents. Communists, anarchists, whatever. She travels a lot. Germany. In 1970 she has a baby. Milo. Around seventy-four or -five, she gives Milo to her sister, Wilma, and her husband, Theodore. They raise him as their own. Last you hear of Ellen is in 1979 when she's arrested for a bank robbery in Germany. Was she released?"

  With the facts laid out so concisely, William Perkins seemed shocked by the story. In pieces, perhaps, it made sense, but lined up like this it became tragic, or simply unbelievable. The story was having the same numbing effect on Tina.

  When Perkins spoke, it was a whisper: "I don't know if she was released. Never checked. And she never contacted me."

  Tina started to cry. It was embarrassing, but she had no control anymore. Everything was turning up shit.

  Perkins stared at her, shocked, then turned questioningly to Simmons, who shook her head fo
r his silence. She rubbed Tina's shaking back and whispered, "Don't make any judgments yet, Tina. Maybe he doesn't even know this. Remember: We're just trying to get to the truth."

  Tina nodded as if those words made sense, then pulled herself together. She sniffed, wiped her nose and eyes, and took a few breaths. "Sorry," she told Perkins.

  "Not to worry, dear," he said and leaned forward to pat her knee, which disturbed her. "We all need the waterworks now and then. Doesn't make anyone a sissy."

  "Thanks," Tina said, though she didn't know what she was thanking him for.

  "If we can," said Simmons, "let's get back to Milo."

  Perkins sat straighter to show how much energy he still had. "Shoot."

  "Ellen disappears in seventy-nine, then six years later, in 1985, Wilma and Theo die in a car crash. Is that right?”

  “Yes." No reflection, just fact.

  "And then Milo was sent to an orphanage in Oxford, North Carolina. Correct?"

  He didn't answer at first. He frowned, ticking off his memories beside what he'd heard, then shook his head. "No. His father took him."

  "Father?"

  "You got it."

  Tina stifled the next wave of weeping, but that only brought on nausea. Everything-everything-she knew about Milo's life was a lie. Which made a large chunk of her own life a lie. All facts were now up for debate.

  "The father," said Simmons, as if she knew all about this-perhaps she did. "Now, he showed up just after the funeral, I suppose? Maybe at the funeral itself?"

  "Wouldn't know exactly."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I didn't go to the funeral, did I?”

  “Okay, so what happened?"

  "I didn't want to go," he said. "Minnie kept at me. It was our daughter, for Christ's sake. Our daughter, who wouldn't speak to me when she was alive. So why should I talk to her when she's dead? And what about Milo? He's our grandson, she kept saying. Who's going to take care of him now? I said, Minnie, we haven't been in his life for fifteen years; why do you think he wants us now? But she didn't see things that way. And you could say she was right. Maybe." He held up his hands. "Okay, I can admit that now, but back then I couldn't. Back then I was stubborn," he said with a wink that brought bile to Tina's throat. "So she went. I stayed, and she went. Cooked for myself nearly a week before she came back. But she didn't have a kid on her arm, and she didn't even seem upset about it. I told her I didn't want to hear, but she told me anyway. That's how Minnie was."

  "What did she tell you?" asked Tina, her sick body paralyzed.

  "I'm getting to that," he said and sniffed. "Turns out Milo's father had been watching the news, I guess, and he came to claim his son. That's according to Minnie. And get this-not only was he some absent father, but he was a Ruskie. Can you believe it?"

  "No," Tina whispered. "I can't believe it."

  Simmons had left doubt at the door. "What was this Russian's name?"

  William T. Perkins squeezed his eyes shut and clasped his forehead, as if hit by a stroke, but it was only his way of dredging up memories that hadn't been touched in decades. He took away his hand, red-faced. "Yevy? No. Geny-yes. Yevgeny. That's what Minnie called him. Yevgeny."

  "Last name?"

  He exhaled a sigh, spittle white on his lips. "That, I don't remember."

  Tina needed air. She stood, but the higher elevation couldn't help her get out of this cloud of sudden, brutal changes. Both looked at her as she settled down again and worked out the words: "Yevgeny Primakov?"

  Simmons stared at her, shocked.

  Perkins chewed his upper lip. "Could be. But my point is, this pinko pops up out of nowhere and talks Minnie into letting him have the boy."

  Simmons cut in: "Didn't Milo have any say in it?"

  "What do I know?" Then he conceded he might know something: "Way I see it, the boy didn't know Minnie, did he? This old woman shows up and wants him to come home with her. On the other hand, there's a Ruskie who says he's his father. You know how those Russians are. They'll convince you the sky's red. Probably filled his head with all kinds of stories of how wonderful Russia is and why doesn't he come enjoy it? If I was fifteen-God forbid-I'd go east with my daddy. Not head off with some old biddie obsessed with pot roasts and dusting." He paused. "That's what Minnie was like, if you must know."

  "What about social services? Certainly they wouldn't just let this foreigner walk off with a fifteen-year-old boy. Would they?"

  Perkins showed them his palms. "What do I know? Don't listen to me. I wasn't even there. But…" He wrinkled his brow. "These kinds of guys, they've got money, don't they? Money gets you everything."

  "Not everything," Simmons insisted. "The only way Mr. Primakov would get him is the will. If your daughter put him in the will, giving him paternal rights."

  Perkins shook his head. "Impossible. Wilma may not have liked us. She may have hated me. But she wouldn't've given the boy to some Russian. I didn't raise a stupid girl."

  Simmons checked on Tina with a glance and a sly wink. She seemed satisfied by the talk, though Tina couldn't get her head on straight enough to understand what, exactly, she'd gotten. None of this helped Milo. Simmons said to Perkins, "Maybe you can tell me one last thing."

  "Will if I can."

  "Why did Wilma and Ellen hate you so much?" Perkins blinked five times.

  "What I mean is," she continued, as if running a job interview, "what exactly did you do to your daughters?"

  Silence, then a long exhale that could have meant that the old man was preparing to bare his soul and sins to these strangers. It didn't mean that. His voice was suddenly young and full of venom as he pointed at the door: "Get out of my fucking home!"

  As they left, Tina knew that she would tell Simmons everything. Milo was a liar, and at that moment she hated him.

  It wasn't until they picked up Stephanie from the television room full of doting old people that she realized something else. "Oh, Christ."

  "What?" said Simmons.

  She looked into the special agent's eyes. "When we got back from Venice, Milo came with me to take care of Stephanie's birth records in Boston. He begged me to let him give her a middle name. I hadn't planned on one, didn't really care, and it seemed to mean a lot to him."

  "What's her middle name?"

  "Ellen."

  10

  About a half hour before they arrived, two doormen removed the Chinese takeout boxes, replaced his water bottle, and cleaned blood off the table, chair, and floor. It was a relief of sorts, because over the night, the stink of old kung pao and sweat had kept him on the edge of nausea.

  Then Fitzhugh stepped inside, followed by Simmons. Milo hadn't seen her since Disney World, hadn't talked to her since Blackdale. She looked tired, as if she, too, had spent a sleepless night caged with her own stink.

  Remember, Yevgeny had said, Simmons is your salvation, but don't treat her that way.

  So Milo crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not talking to her."

  Simmons produced a smile. "Nice to see you, too."

  Fitzhugh wasn't bothering with smiles. "Milo, it's not up to me, and it's not up to you."

  "You don't look well," said Simmons.

  Milo's left eye was swollen and purple, his lower lip broken, and one of his nostrils ringed with blood. The worst bruises were under his orange jumpsuit. "I keep walking into walls."

  "So I see."

  Before Fitzhugh could reach for it, she had taken his chair. He asked the doorman for another. They waited. During that minute and a half of silence, Simmons stared hard at Milo, and Milo returned the gaze without blinking.

  When the chair arrived, Fitzhugh settled down and said, "Remember what we said before, Milo. About classified topics."

  Simmons frowned.

  "I remember," said Milo.

  "Good," said Fitzhugh. "There's something I want to discuss first." He reached into his jacket pocket, but Simmons placed a hand on his lapel.

  "Not yet, Terence," she said, t
hen let go. "I want the story first.”

  “What's that?" Milo sat up. "What's he got in there?" Fitzhugh took out his hand again, empty. "Don't worry about it, Milo. The story first. Okay? From where we left off." Milo looked at him.

  "You were just about to head to Disney World," Simmons said, proving that she'd at least been given an interview summary from yesterday. She opened her hands like a well-trained interviewer. "I have to say, your last-minute escape from there was pretty snappy. Nicely done."

  "Is she going to talk like this the whole time?" Milo put the question to Fitzhugh, who shrugged.

  "Just talk," said Simmons. "If I think sarcasm's appropriate, I'll use it."

  "Yes," Fitzhugh agreed. "Get on with it." To Simmons: "And try to temper the sarcasm, okay?"

  He told the story of Disney World as it had happened, with a single omission: Yevgeny Primakov's appearance at Space Mountain. Though he had lied to Tina about so much, he hadn't lied about the purpose of the old man's visit-he had wanted to know what had happened to Angela Yates.

  It was easy to leave out that meeting, because it had no bearing on the cause-and-effect that is the one concern of interrogators the world over. This ease allowed him to observe how the two people across from him acted.

  Fitzhugh sat rigid, straighter than he had the day before. Whereas yesterday he had seemed as if he had all the time in the world, today he was in a rush, as if the contents of the interview no longer mattered. Occasionally, he would say, "Yeah, yeah. We already know that."

  Each time, though, Simmons would cut in: "Maybe I don't, Terence. You know how uninformed Homeland is." Then, to Milo: "Please. Go on." She wanted to know everything.

  So Milo obliged. He told his tale in a slow, purposeful way, leaving no detail untouched. He even mentioned the color of Einner's Renault, to which Simmons said, "It was a nice car, was it?"

  "This agent has good taste."

  Later in the day, when Weaver finally got to his meeting with Ugrimov, Simmons cut in again and said to Fitzhugh: "This Ugrimov. Do we have him on our arrest lists?"

  Fitzhugh shrugged. "I don't know anything about the guy. Milo?"