Beehive Page 18

  The phone machine tossed me right back into my life. We have a machine that flashes a red light the number of messages you received. I couldn’t keep count with the flashes, I lost track somewhere in the twenties.

  I got a piece of paper and sat with the playback.

  First call, from the people at VISA: Suspicious use of my credit card. I tested my memory: what had I done with it? Given it to my father that day he showed up. Maybe he tried to buy a liquor store with it. I took the number.

  Then a call from Jim. Any news of Lizzie? Meeting with her dad? Control Tower showed the first signs of beginning to swarm. A new girlfriend on view if I could come that weekend.

  Another call from VISA. Same information.

  A call from Professor Nusanti. Back at Columbia, wishing me luck. Call him when I return. Number.

  Then the phone rang. I halted the machine and answered it. It was someone from some magazine somewhere. I said, “For calling me at home, you get on the list of people who will not be called to the press conference.”

  “We don’t want a press conference. We want an exclusive. Ten thousand dollars!”

  “I’ve got your name. I might get back to you.”

  So I set the machine back up to answer the phone with a new blank tape and put the other one into the stereo. Terrible sound, but I could make it out if I turned the volume up. So now I could screen the calls and listen at the same time.

  Mr. Bienenkorb. “Ron? I’m just calling to let you know I know you’re OK. I’m getting calls from all over the map telling me not to worry about you. So I’m worried.” Then he grunted for a while, like he wanted to say something more. He didn’t, though, and the tape clicked to a dial tone.

  Then Jim again. “Where are you? Any news on Lizzie? It’s first thing Friday morning, figured I’d catch you before you headed off to work. It’s muggly and ugly out here on the farm. If it doesn’t rain we’ll get a swarm today. Are you OK? I’m worried about you, man, deeply worried. So call me.”

  After the tape.

  The phone rang again then and it was another reporter.

  The next message was from VISA again, this time someone higher up, a different number and name, but the same problem. Friday afternoon.

  Then Jim again. “If you don’t call me soon I’m going to come hunting for you. Where are you? I don’t get any news from any place. Help me out here. Call me.”

  And then Jim again, right away. “I forgot to tell you. Control Tower’s out of c-c-control. The first swarm left yesterday, Friday. Half the hive. Now another swarm’s getting ready. The queens are just letting each other be. What should I do?”

  Phone again: Jim for real. I kill the tape deck and grab the receiver. “Jim!”

  “Man, you there? That’s you live?”

  “And lucky to be that way.”

  “I can’t tell you what a relief it was to see you were safe. I’m coming over. I want to see the hero in the flesh.”

  “I’m tired, Jim.”

  “Of course you are. You want to sleep, it’s OK with me. I never seen a hero sleep either. I’ll be there in an hour, just stay up ‘til then.”

  Then, on the tape, the calls from reporters started. One after the other, names and newspapers, TV and radio stations, magazines. I didn’t even write them down. But then came one call that really surprised me. A literary agent, called himself Kent Boomer, claimed he already had offers of fifty thousand dollars in advance against book and movie sales of my story. He left a New York number. I wrote it down. You don’t know, ever really know, what you’d do for money.

  The reporters had kept calling. One after the other, several repeats. One radio guy called the machine while I was listening to his message from days before. The stereo ID’ed the guy while the voice on the phone machine in the bedroom said, “I know you’re there, I saw you go in, just pick up the phone. Come on, just pick it up. A quick statement is all I want, just a quick one. I’m not going to hang up until you answer.” I turned down the volume on the phone machine and let him stew on the line. I don’t know how long he stayed on; I went back to listening to the messages.

  Jim again. “My hero! Way to go, Ron! Welcome home, Lizzie! I always knew you were a hero, but what about Ron? Surprised the hell out of me. So, Ron, why didn’t you ask me to c-c-come? I wouldn’t have, you know, but I would have come up with really good excuses. I love you both. Call me.”

  And then scattered among the reporters’ requests were calls of congratulations, some of them from strangers, one from my mother, one from Bienenkorb, a whole lot from people Elizabeth knew sideways, I guess. Names I hadn’t heard but who I could tell knew her or her family. Even Nusanti called again.

  But then, between two calls from the same reporter, was this message: “This is Detective O’Connor of the New York Police Department. I am looking for a Mr. Ronald Stutzer. I have information which may relate to your father, James Stutzer of Cleveland, Ohio. Please call at your earliest convenience. It is eight o’clock Wednesday morning.” His voice had a slow deliberate pitch to it, so the message sounded older than half a day.

  I copied down the number and went over to the phone. It had the dial tone back. I pushed the buttons while I heard the tape say, “This is your boss. I just want — “ before it hissed and clicked to a halt. Sometimes even a ninety-minute tape isn’t enough.

  85.

  “Detective O’Connor speaking.”

  “This is Ron Stutzer. You left a message on my tape.”

  “Oh, yeah, Mr. Stutzer.” He shuffled some papers. It had taken me ten minutes to get through to him. If I hadn’t been tired enough to drop I would have gotten impatient. “Are you the same Ron Stutzer what saved that girl?” he asked, still sifting papers. “Ah, here it is.”

  I didn’t want to talk about Elizabeth. “You said you have news about my father.”

  “I might have news. Is he missing? Have you spoken with him recently?”

  I wanted to say, We’ve all been missing, but I couldn’t. “I saw him here in Washington I don’t know how many weeks ago. Then he disappeared. I didn’t know what happened to him.”

  “I think we may have found him for you.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “No, Mr. Stutzer, I’m afraid he’s not.” My head spun. I had been standing, but now I carried the phone with me to the chair by the stereo. “Are you there, Ron?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “We don’t have a positive ID on him yet. We found him early this morning, just after sunup. Looks like alcohol poisoning, but we need someone who knows him to identify the body before we can do an autopsy. I’m sure this is an awful thing for you, but could you come up to New York and have a look for us?”

  “How did you get my number?”

  “Just plain good detective work,” O’Connor told me. “He had it in his pocket.”

  86.

  “Man, you don’t look anything like what a hero should look like.”

  Jim got there ten minutes after I’d hung up with O’Connor. Of course I’d go to New York. “I think my father is dead,” I said to Jim.

  “What do you mean, you think?”

  “I just talked to the police. In New York. They have a body they think is his. I’m going tomorrow to see.”

  “Are you well enough? You don’t look it.”

  “You look wonderful, too.”

  “You know what I mean. Lebanon is no party.” The phone rang twice, and I didn’t move to it. Jim asked, “Want me to get it?”

  I turned up the volume on the machine. “I’m screening calls.” Another reporter. “The life of a hero.”

  “Hey, now. Don’t scoff. You done good.”

  I smiled. A compliment meant more from Jim. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “Me? You didn’t even ask me for help!”

&nbs
p; “Yeah, but you got me into bees.”

  “Bees? So what, bees? What are you talking?”

  “Bees, the secret of my success.”

  “You are not bopping up to New York tomorrow if you can’t talk sense tonight. What’s this about bees?”

  “The bees I used to get Elizabeth out.”

  “You better rewind. This is the first thing I heard of bees and I’ve read every scrap of news I could find on this thing.”

  So I told him, and Jim couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “I can’t believe they left out that p-p-part. What for? National security?” he wheezed.

  “I guess no one would believe it.” I didn’t feel giggly about Beirut, so I asked, “What happened to the Control Tower?”

  “Oh, bad news,” he told me, calming down. “You got the message about the queens?”

  “Yeah. What does it mean?”

  “I didn’t know myself until they started to swarm for real. I called my experts. Seems that sometimes, no one knows why, the swarming instinct goes out of control.”

  “Out of control how?”

  “Well, n-n-normal swarms, a princess comes back from her bump and grind and, instead of killing the old queen, she takes off with half the hive, right?”

  “Sure. So what went wrong?”

  “The rest of the hive didn’t kill the remaining princesses, like they’re supposed to. One by one they grew up, got stuck, and took off with half the hive.”

  “Shit.”

  “No shit.”

  “Just took off?”

  “Yup. Four times, five. I lost count.”

  “What’s left?”

  “Not much. Under ten thousand, maybe under five. Some brood, but not enough nurse-bees to raise it. The old queen keeps laying, but she looks mighty lonely.”

  “We could find one of the swarms, kill the new queen and put them back.”

  “I don’t know where they are. I don’t think any of them set up house in one of the free hives. Not yet. This just happened over the p-p-past few days.”

  “Oh, man.” I sat down hard. Pain came back.

  “Not been the best couple of weeks, has it?”

  “The stuff I’ve seen.”

  “Where’s Lizzie?”

  “Work.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Some new stuff coming down with Lebanon. I better call her, let her know I’m going to New York.”

  “Is there anything I could do for you?”

  “Find some way to keep the press off my back until I figure out what’s what.”

  The phone rang again, and another reporter begged to talk to me. Jim picked up the phone before I could stop him. “Mr. Stutzer has asked me to tell you there will be a press conference tomorrow morning.”

  Through the machine, I heard the reporter ask when. I flashed Jim both hands, fingers up. I meant ten o’clock. Jim spotted my wound. “Nine-thirty,” he said. “At the Pentagon. Ask for the room when you get there.”

  I heard the reporter ask, “Anything else?”

  Jim said, “Yeah. Spread the word.” He cradled the receiver home, but upside-down, so it stood from the phone like a pair of mouse ears. His turn to ask me, “Anything else?”

  “Uh-huh. Stick around. I need a friend. I need you.”

  87.

  Jim stayed over and handled the phone, night and morning, and joyfully greeted Elizabeth on her late-night return from the Pentagon. Come day, she was up before me and on the phone to her father, asking for use of an Upper East Side apartment the family had held for decades.

  “He said there’d be no problem using the place. The doorman has the keys, and my father will stop by tonight around eight to make sure you’re comfortable.”

  “He doesn’t have to do that.”

  “I know,” she said, easing the adhesive off my neck so she could change my dressing. “I told him that.”

  I gritted my teeth against the pull. Before we’d left the hospital for the flight, my nurse replaced the post-surgical cotton, which had been in my ear for days. It felt like taking a Q-tip out of your left ear, if you’d put it in your right. Everything around the ear was sensitive but the ear itself. I still couldn’t hear anything out of that side. I sat on the flat-top of the down toilet seat, sweating with fear of pain. “I hope I can get my hearing back,” I said, “at least a little.”

  “I hope I can stomach your wound,” Elizabeth said. But as she lifted the bandage off she blanched. I thought for a moment she was going to faint. She surprised us both by staying up. Applying the new bandage, she hardly showed the same sensitivity she’d shown removing it.

  “I can get plastic surgery for it, Elizabeth. Once inside the ear heals and I’m well enough, I can fix it.”

  “It’s all pocked,” she said, but not to me.

  The phone rang again, and Jim answered it. Elizabeth left me sitting in the bathroom, sweat-slick and recovering from the ordeal.

  Never become a hero. Being one is even worse than what you have to do to become one.

  “You want to talk to your boss?” Jim called out to me from the living room.

  Jim sat bare-chested and shrouded with bedclothes. He’d made coffee already and answered phone calls — playing secretary for us. He’d slept on the couch without folding it out, a big man made stiff by the small space.

  I took the receiver from him. “Mr. Bienenkorb.”

  “Ron?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I take it you’re not coming in today.”

  “I can’t. I have to tend to some family business in New York.”

  “The media guys tell me you have a press conference this morning, that’s what I meant.”

  “The press calls you?”

  “I think they think Housing Characteristics is a CIA cover or something. They can’t figure out what we do, so they figure we’re spooks.”

  “Don’t tell them I’m going to New York. I want them all at the press conference.”

  “Lie for you.”

  I gulped. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m asking.”

  “Can you do me a favor in return?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t listen to the other job offers?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been getting calls for days, not only reporters, but the White House, Congress, private industry. They all want you, and I don’t think it’s to give you a medal.”

  “I can’t promise anything yet, except you’ll be the first to know if I stop working for you. How many days can I take?”

  “All you need. Just call me every now and again.”

  88.

  I shaved my moustache last thing before I left the house. I thought it would be even more a dead giveaway than the bandage. Every morning paper had that picture of Elizabeth looking up concernedly at me. I had only luck to thank that no one recognized me until I stood on the platform ready to board the train. Real people are more polite than reporters; they keep clear. I slept on the train and no one but the conductor dared to wake me.

  I took a cab from Penn Station to East 77th, washed up, and then took another cab down to the police station. The headquarters in Manhattan occupies a triangular brick building in a nondescript neighborhood near Chinatown. Except that the streets were paved and the buildings more recent, the feel of the place reminded me of Beirut, as though the teems of people who once lived here had drained away. The buildings were shells, shed and abandoned.

  At the front desk, a burly black woman asked me to fill out a form, checked the information against nothing and issued me a visitor’s pass. She seemed reluctant to give me directions, so I just wandered into the maze of police-central, hoping to find O’Connor. Fortunately, police are people who stay alive based on the faces they can remember, so it wasn’t lo
ng before one of them recognized me and ushered me to Detective O’Connor.

  “Got a hero for you here, Frank,” my escort boasted.

  “Ron Stutzer?” O’Connor stood. He had the bulk of a football player and the fleshiness of a beer drinker. He came from behind the desk fast for his size and took my right hand before I could wheel it away. He felt the bandage as he squeezed and lifted it up for inspection. “Oh, sorry.”

  “I’m going to have to get used to it.”

  “You lose a finger?”

  “Half of one.”

  “Don’t worry about it. In another couple of months you won’t notice. The wife got nicked by a runaway electric knife ten years ago, lost the same finger. Says she only misses it dialing the phone.”

  “I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first.” O’Connor led me to the elevator and we took it down to the basement. “This is the part I hate the worst of the job. Bad enough when you lose somebody to a bad guy the courts let free on a technicality, what can you tell the family? Or having to handle suicides, terrible what a subway car can do to a person. But dealing with the families on stuff like this stinks, any way it’s cut. Nobody’s doing anybody any good. In here.”

  We went from the dim and incandescently lit corridor into the white fluorescent brilliance of the morgue. The attendants floated around like ghosts, pads on their feet, white pants, loose white jackets.

  “The doctor here?” O’Connor asked. Someone pointed to a corner office. “Lady coroner,” the detective confided and then walked me over to her door. “Afternoon, Doc. We got a viewing.”

  She was Indian, I guessed, but her color had me thinking a moment she was Lebanese. I felt a freeze in my legs, but it might have been from the cold of the place.

  “The Stutzer connection,” she said in unaccented English. “Sorry for this. After a triumph, you come home to a mess.”