Freedom Road Read online

  His brother had hustled him out of that crappy little house in Chillicothe so fast it made Erica’s head spin, had pushed them out the front door with a holler and a fight for all the neighbors to see, had told him in no uncertain terms that he was to get the hell out of there and never come back. Ever. Goodbye and get lost.

  And Frank had spit back a bellyful of venom at the heavy blond man who was turning his back on his brother and sending him out in the middle of the cold naked night to fend for himself.

  But there had been a moment, while they were still inside, when Todd grabbed hold of Frank with both arms. At first Frank thought it was the start of a fight, that Todd was going to wrestle him to the ground like he did when they were kids, but then it turned into a hug, a full-blown teary-eyed hug, and when they finally pushed away from each other, there was a small wad of bills in Frank’s palm. It wasn’t much, his brother never had much on him, but it was enough to fill the tank full two or three times over and that could get them halfway to where they needed to go, and that was something. That was something.

  Damn.

  Frank could still feel the explosion in his heart when he recognized what his big brother had done. And the guilt when he realized what his brother was risking. And the determination to do something about it.

  So he used his brother’s money to fill his empty tank at a self-service Speedway on Main Street, east of his brother’s house, where they wouldn’t bother to look at the tapes. And then he made his way slowly west searching for a likely spot. When Frank found something that worked, a red-and-black mini-mart on a triangular spit of land still in Chillicothe, he turned right and drove a short way down the darkened side street until he parked in front of a school. He turned off the car lights while leaving the engine running.

  “What are we doing?” said Erica. “Do we have a place to stay?”

  “Not here,” he said. “We need to put some distance between my brother and me before someone gets hurt. We’ll drive until dawn, out of this stinking state, and then maybe find someplace to crash.”

  “I’m not crying about leaving Ohio. From what I can tell this whole state is where cool dies.”

  “That’s why I left in the first place. But I need to get myself a coffee to keep awake. Do you want anything?”

  “I’ll go with.”

  “No, stay here in the car. The place looks a little shady.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can, but do me a favor and stay, please. I want to keep the car running; something funny’s going on with the battery and it needs to charge.”

  “Okay. Then how about an iced tea and something sweet. See if they have Peeps. I could go for a Peep.”

  “What’s a Peep?”

  “Those marshmallow chicks? My dad used to buy them for us when our mother wasn’t looking. And the yellow ones, not the blue ones. The blue ones are disgusting.”

  “Iced tea and yellow Peeps if they have them. Fine. I’ll be back.”

  Frank knew his brother would have already called the Russian by now, and the Russian would have already sent someone out hunting, so Frank didn’t have much time. When they didn’t find him—and they wouldn’t, he’d stay on the back roads to make sure of that—they’d go back to Todd to find out what he had learned and what he had given to Frank. And the Russian wouldn’t believe Todd when he said nothing, nothing; he wouldn’t believe Todd because that’s just the way he was. Why believe words when there was more truth in blood. So it was up to Frank to convince him that Todd had given Frank not a cent.

  Frank slipped out of the car and slammed the door behind him and then went around to the back. He pressed the latch, opened the trunk, and hunted around the crap loaded willy-nilly in his haste to get away from the Russian. In a gym bag beneath his guitar he found the gun.

  As he grabbed hold of the grip his ears filled with the throbbing of his blood, each beat of his heart like the sound of a torch bursting into flame, one after the other, bad-a-bim, bad-a-bong, bad-a-boom.

  Don’t try telling Frank Cormack you can’t start new again, that you can’t create a future for yourself because he was doing it, one burned bridge at a time, leaving a path of infernos blazing so furiously that there would never be any going back and the path forward would be lit so brightly it would daze him with its beauty. Sometimes you had to see exactly where you were coming from so you could appreciate where you were headed.

  He drew the gun out of the trunk and pulled the slide, chambering a round.

  Freedom!

  16

  FORTUNATE SON

  Chicago, 1975

  Oliver Cross took a commuter train to the tallest building in the world.

  On their way back west, after visiting Helen’s mother and ailing father outside Philadelphia, Helen and Oliver had stopped off to see one of Helen’s friends from Bryn Mawr, who was getting a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. Hyde Park in the fall of 1975 reminded Oliver of Ann Arbor: serious, busy, but with plenty of Frisbee action.

  Helen had taken enough courses to complete college and get a masters in art education at Berkeley, and Oliver thought now and then of going back to school himself. Maybe he would finish the law thing, or get a degree in journalism, since he had done a couple pieces for the Bay Guardian. But whenever he got down to getting serious about applying, something always came up, an act of political theater, a spiritual awakening he just had to experience, a collective here, a movement there. He and Helen were now headed to the mountains to plant some roots at a commune called Seven Suns, where Helen’s friend Gracie was starting to make a life. But if that didn’t work out he promised himself he would buckle down and get back to school, guaranteed.

  The Frisbees in Hyde Park must have lingered somewhere in the recesses of his thoughts, infecting his emotions, because, after taking the northbound train from the Fifty-Ninth Street Station, as he walked west on Jackson toward the Sears Tower, so solid and black with the twin white towers crowning its top, the astonishing sight filled him with a keen sense of loss. He had been destined to preside in a building like this; he had been destined to convey the same air of hurried importance that was carried, along with their briefcases, by the men and women in suits buzzing around him. He thought of the money he’d be earning, of the sprawling manse or townhouse he’d be living in, of the joy of barking orders to minions over the phone, of the way he’d be looked at as he walked down the street or took lunch at the club, so different from the snuffs he was getting now. He always thought he would have been a crackerjack lawyer and the sight of that high shiny building looming over him pressed a regret into his heart.

  But it wouldn’t have been his job; it would have been his father’s. And the life wouldn’t have been the rich multifaceted thing he was creating day by day; it would have been something he picked off the rack, like an ill-fitting suit. He tried to convince himself of the rightness of every choice he had made—even with the big house and high status in the world of business and money as the alternative—and he was doing a pretty good job of it, until he glimpsed his reflection in the shiny window of a passing shop.

  The sight stopped him cold.

  No briefcase, no power tie, no hundred-dollar haircut or thousand-dollar suit. Instead there were holes in his jeans, his sandals were ragged, his denim shirt was wet with sweat and crusted with salt, his beard was scruffy, and his long hair frizzled out beyond his shoulders. Compared to everyone else in the Loop he looked homeless. And then he realized, traveling from one coast to the other alongside Helen, with just a van to their names, that’s exactly what he was.

  For a moment he wanted to scream, or to cry, or to do both at once.

  The elevator zipped him high up into the tower, where he took a second elevator to the ninety-eighth floor and the lobby of the august law firm of Keck, Mahin & Cate, specializing in all manner of corporate quackery. The receptionist eyed him like he had fallen off a slop car.

  “Look at you, the
conquering hero,” said Finnegan, after coming out to the lobby to rescue Oliver from the receptionist’s hostile glare. Finnegan wore a brown suit, a yellow shirt, a wide striped tie, aviator glasses, and had grown the thick mustache of a man on the make. It took Oliver an awkward moment to recognize him. Finnegan had also stared back at Oliver for an uncomfortable span, not sure what he was seeing, before a smile of recognition broke onto his face and they embraced with genuine warmth.

  “Let’s go to my office.”

  Finnegan led him out of the lobby and hustled him through the white-walled corridors lined with secretarial desks parked outside endless rows of office doors. The secretaries typed, typed, the phones rang, rang, the fluorescent lights buzzed, buzzed as they painted the frantic scene of commerce in their too-white light. Everyone they passed rushed about as if being chased, everyone but Oliver, who made it a point to stroll casually through these halls of money, exaggerating his saunter, as if he had learned how to walk from Robert Crumb. Finnegan had to stop and wait for him a couple times as passersby gawked at Oliver, before shooing him into a small plain office with one wide window.

  “Hold my calls, Debby,” said Finnegan before closing the door behind him. “Nice view, huh?”

  The window was facing north, and from up so high the northern part of the city spread out like a carpet running toward the John Hancock Center and the lake. Oliver could just make out Wrigley Field in the distance. Well beyond that, as the coast continued up toward Milwaukee, would be his father’s house in Highland Park.

  “On windy days,” said Finnegan, “this whole building shifts back and forth like a ship on the ocean. Get a chick up here at night, put her against the window as the building’s heaving, and man, I can tell you from experience that’s something.”

  “Good thing the window glass is thick as a finger,” said Oliver.

  “You’re telling me.”

  “Are you married, Finn?”

  “Not yet, I’m having too much fun. Division Street is like an inexhaustible market of twiff. And the truth is, I’ve been too busy to get serious about anything but the job. How about you? You still with that girl you met at the demonstration?”

  “Yep. She’s pregnant.”

  “Wow, Oliver. Congratulations, man. When did you two get married?”

  “We’re not. I mean, we had a ceremony of sorts with a Wintu shaman out in the woods, drums banging, sparks rising from the fire, all that, but it wasn’t, you know, sanctioned by the state. We’re not big on being sanctioned by the state.”

  “Ah, okay. Is she still as hot as she was?”

  “Well, you know, six months pregnant.”

  Finn made his classic no-ice-cream-for-you face and Oliver laughed.

  “I was so glad to hear from you, man,” said Finn. “How long has it been? Why did you just disappear?”

  “I didn’t disappear, I was just doing my own thing. But we’re heading cross-country and decided to stop in Chicago on the way. I thought I’d say hello. I didn’t even have to look you up, I remembered your mom’s number.”

  “She was so happy to hear from you. She always thought you were going places. She used to call you the senator.”

  “I thought you said she liked me.”

  Oliver looked around at the office, as claustrophobic as a coffin. There was the window, sure, and a file cabinet, and cartons filled with ever more files on the floor, and a desk, piled with papers and the kind of law reporters he had lived with as a law student, but that was it. Finn’s office was as personal as a rock, so why did it look so cozy and full of possibilities?

  “Tell me, Finn, what do you do at this place?”

  “Mergers and acquisitions,” he said, and Oliver had to turn to hide his expression. How often do you get to see your alternative life playing out in real time? This could have been his office, that caterpillar over Finn’s lip could have been his lush mustache, he could have had the bachelor pad in Lincoln Park, he could have been bringing girls in tight dresses up from Division Street to bang from behind at the high window while the tower trembled beneath their feet. If Helen were with him one look would have blunted the dagger of jealousy, but Helen was still in Hyde Park and the dagger was stabbing deep.

  “The big time,” said Oliver.

  “The hours are killer but the issues are really interesting and we make the front page of the Journal when the deals are announced. There is more work than we can handle and bigger and bigger deals are coming our way every day.”

  “So how did a middling student from Loyola land a gig at a high-class joint like Keck, Mahin & Cate?” Oliver asked, a little cruelly.

  “Well, you know, I have some charm, along with a sort of runtish ambition,” said Finnegan, laughing. “But also, your dad made a call.”

  “My dad?”

  “He’s become like a mentor.”

  “My dad?”

  “Yeah. He’s been really helpful. He helped get me the job and he’s been referring deals his firm can’t handle because of conflicts. I don’t know where I would be without him.”

  It took all of Oliver’s willpower to put a smile on his face now when facing an old friend who had just died to him.

  “Well good for you, Finn. It’s what you always wanted. You didn’t, like, tell your mentor I was coming, did you?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Finn.”

  “Man, he helped me. I owed him.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “He’s your father.”

  “I know who the hell he is.”

  “I thought we could maybe all have lunch together.”

  “Bad idea, man.”

  “Yeah, he thought it was a bad idea, too.”

  “Good.”

  “He wants to have lunch with you alone.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Twelve thirty at the University Club.”

  “Finn.”

  “I’m up for partner in two years, Oliver. You don’t know the pressure, man. And where the hell have you been?”

  The University Club, housed in a narrow Gothic skyscraper on East Monroe, had been an integral part of Oliver’s childhood. When Oliver’s mother was still alive, she would often take Oliver and his brother to the Art Institute and the three would invariably lunch at the club. In a formal room overlooking the park, wearing jackets and ties in accordance with the club’s strict dress code, Oliver and Fletch would saw at their steaks and sit stiffly with the manners of the well-born as Oliver’s mother kept the conversation lightly rolling along in that enthusiastic way of hers. Oliver’s grandfather on his mother’s side, a graduate of Yale, had been a longtime member of the club, and Oliver’s father, a graduate of Northwestern, had been admitted shortly after his marriage. When Oliver had decided to forego his own acceptance at Northwestern to go to Beloit, he assuaged his father’s concerns about the lefty reputation of the college by pointing at Beloit’s stained-glass window in the club’s Cathedral Hall.

  But now, in the face of the University Club’s Gothic grandeur, Oliver hesitated.

  He had thought about not going, had absolutely decided to head back down to Hyde Park and get the hell out of Dodge, leaving his father waiting at the table with his anger and his martinis. Whatever interactions he had had with his father after leaving law school had been like life in the Middle Ages as described by Hobbes: nasty, brutish, and short. There had been a few awkward calls, all of which went very poorly, and a surprise visit by his father to a house squat he and Helen were sharing in San Francisco, a crowded, rat-infested tumbledown that felt like a new world to Oliver but was a sign of squalid mental illness to his father. Oliver hadn’t seen or talked to his father in almost four years, and that seemed to suit them both. There was no reason to ruin the good thing they had going.

  But the feelings stirred in Oliver by his visit to Finn, the jealousy and a nagging sense of his own failures, forced him to make his way toward the puzzled doorman standing guard under the g
reen awning at the club’s entrance.

  “This is the University Club, sir. I don’t think—”

  “I’m expected,” said Oliver, brushing right by and striding like Mr. Natural through the front door.

  He was building something new with his life, exploring radical freedom, radical love. He was creating a new kind of family, a new way of being in the world, and he wasn’t going to let anything, and certainly not the specter of his father or his own newly honed sense of regret, make him feel ashamed about his path. Just showing up was a statement, and Oliver was always one for statements.

  When Oliver appeared, finally, at his father’s table in the grillroom of the club, a table set discreetly by the tall windows in the corner of the vaulted room, he was wearing a blue blazer with a crest on its pocket and a pair of shined oxfords a size too big. The outfit change had been suggested, or rather insisted on, by the staff at the front desk, and when Oliver tried to make a scene he was frankly told that the only reason he would be allowed to dine, even in the more socially approved outfit, was that his father was a respected member of the club and his grandfather had a plaque in the locker room, which Oliver was urged to visit so he could wash up before his luncheon. “There are razors available at the sink,” he was told.

  “So you made it,” said Oliver’s father, glaring at his son with an angry smile from above the sharp lapels of his navy pinstriped suit. His voice was hearty and full of false cheer. “I thought you would chicken out.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because that’s what you do, Oliver. Chicken out. And I see you cared enough to dress for the occasion. The generic club jacket always sends the right kind of message. Don’t be shy, take a seat.”

  Oliver pulled out a chair and slumped into it. He always seemed to revert to a rebellious twelve-year-old around his father. His father took a drag from his cigarette before snubbing it out in an ashtray, already well butted, and finishing off his martini. He looked strong, well heeled and well fed, but also older than Oliver remembered. His face had broadened, his hairline had risen, his teeth seemed too big, his forehead was starting to spot, and his eyes, his eyes were narrow slits topped with unruly eyebrows.