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You can start with CONSPIRATORIUM PART I right here:
In his office Braxton watched the black-and-white footage of a hearing in front of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. Fifteen years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, the Committee’s Chief Counsel and Staff Director, took the lead in the inquisition into the identity of The Umbrella Man.
“When the Zapruder film of the Kennedy Assassination was made public,” Blakey said, “critics and people generally were fascinated by the sight of a man with a black umbrella standing just a few feet from the Presidential limousine. It was a sunshiny day so what purpose could anyone have for an umbrella? The theories about The Umbrella Man, for the most part, attributed to him some sinister intent. At the very least, he was a signal man for the actual gunmen, although one critic proposed the idea that a firing device concealed in the umbrella was the weapon used to assassinate the President. It also appeared curious that The Umbrella Man was one of the few spectators in Dealey Plaza who was not later identified. In fact, his identity has remained a secret to this day.
“When it studied all of the photographs taken in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, the Committee discovered one, taken by a Life photographer, in which The Umbrella Man could be seen from the front. It is moments after the President has been shot, and the man is sitting on the curb, his umbrella by this time lying at his feet. The only problem was that he is off to the corner of the picture, and the image is tiny—unrecognizable in fact.
“Nevertheless, through photographic enhancement techniques, the committee was able to obtain a blowup of the photo in which The Umbrella Man appeared clearly enough to be identified. The committee released the picture to the press, asking anyone who recognized The Umbrella Man to contact the committee. It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Richard Stewart Stitt.”
And there he was on the recording: The Umbrella Man, perhaps the most ordinary man Braxton could imagine, slim in build, with a wave of hair brushed into place and the gray suit of an insurance salesman.
“Mr. Stitt,” said Committee Counsel Robert Genzman, “I would like to direct your attention to November 22, 1963. Were you in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963?”
“Yes,” Stitt said. “I was.”
“Did you witness the assassination of President Kennedy?”
“Yes, sir,” Stitt said.
“Have you previously testified about the assassination of President Kennedy?”
“No.”
“Have you ever given information to any law enforcement bodies concerning the assassination?”
“No.”
“Mr. Stitt, what did you do on the morning of November 22, 1963?”
“I guess I went to work in the usual manner about 8 or 8:30.”
“Where did you work at that time?”
“Galveston Insurance Company.”
“What did you do at lunchtime on that day?”
“Well, I went out as I usually did every day when the weather was decent for a walk.”
Just an ordinary day? Braxton was thinking. An ordinary day when you just happened to take a walk at the exact spot where the President of the United States was shot?
“Were you carrying anything?”
“Yes,” Stitt said. “On this particular day I was carrying a black umbrella.”
“Mr. Stitt, can you identify Exhibit 405?”
“I would say that is the umbrella I was carrying.”
“Why were you carrying an umbrella that day?”
“Actually,” Stitt said, “I was going to use this umbrella to heckle the President’s motorcade.”
“How had you gotten this idea?”
“In a coffee break conversation someone had mentioned that the umbrella was a sore spot with the Kennedy family. Being a conservative-type fellow, I sort of placed him in the liberal camp and I was just going to kind of do a little heckling.”
Something he just happened to hear in a “coffee break conversation”?
“Are you saying you were going to use the umbrella as a symbol for the purpose of heckling?”
“I think that would cover it.”
It certainly would. An umbrella covers everything beneath it.
“On November 22, 1963, were you aware of the motorcade route?”
“No,” Stitt said. “Not really. I knew that they would be going down the center part of town somewhere noontime.”
How could he be “heckling” if he had no idea of the motorcade’s route?
“What route did you follow during your walk?”
“Well, when I left the building, located at the corner of Elm Street and Field Street, I went south on Field Street over to Main Street. This was where the crowds of people were, where the people were lining the sidewalks on either side.”
“When you reached Main Street, in which direction did you head?”
“I traveled west. This would put me turning right from the direction that I came.”
“West on Main Street?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you continue in that direction?”
“Well,” Stitt said, “every day I walk someplace, and looking back the only reason I can account for my going that direction as opposed to the other direction would be since I was carrying that stupid umbrella, intent on heckling the President, and not being a person who was given to—prior to this time—doing things that would bring myself into notice, the only thing I can say is that I went down the street where I assumed there would be fewer people, because the buildings on the west end of the street, or the lower end, were either low buildings or low buildings where there were not a lot of people.”
He wanted to heckle Kennedy where there would be the fewest people?
“What did you do when you arrived at Elm Street?”
“Well, I ended up turning left and going down into what is known as Dealey Plaza. The only reason I can think that I ended up down there was possibly I looked down there and saw an area where there were not a large group of people. There were people in that area but there was also in this area which later became known as the grassy knoll, there was no one out in that area in any great number.”
“What did you do when you reached the grassy knoll?”
“I think I went sort of maybe halfway up the grassy area, somewhere in that vicinity. I am pretty sure I sat down.”
“Were you waiting for the motorcade?”
“Yes.”
“Do you recall how long you waited?”
“I really couldn’t say. I don’t think I was there very long. Since I was not that all-fired determined to carry out what I set out to do, I am sure I didn’t wait a great length of time.”
Why was he there if he didn’t want to be there?
“Did the motorcade come soon thereafter?”
“Yes,” Stitt said. “It apparently did.”
“What did you do when you saw the motorcade coming into the area?”
“Well, as I recall, the motorcade had already made the turn and was coming down Elm Street going west on Elm before I became aware it was there, and it would have been from a straight-line position off to my left about like this when I saw it.”
“What did you do when you saw it approaching you?”
“I think I got up and started fiddling with that umbrella trying to get it open, and at the same time I was walking forward, walking toward the street.”
“You testified that you were opening the umbrella to use it as a symbol hoping to catch the President’s eye?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Could you elaborate further as to the type of symbol you thought you were applying?”
“I just knew it was a sore spot with the Kennedys. I just knew the vague generalities of it. It had something to do with something that happened years ago with the senior Joe Kennedy when he was Ambassador to England.”
So he wanted to heckle the Kennedys because of some “vague generalities”? Because of “something to do with something”?
“What happened next? I believe you testified you were moving forward opening your umbrella as the motorcade was approaching you?”
“Yes,” Stitt said. “As I moved toward the street, still walking on the grass, I heard the shots that I eventually learned were shots. At the time somehow it didn’t register as shots because they were so close together, and it was like hearing a string of firecrackers, or something like that. It didn’t at that moment register on me as being shots.”
“Did you react in any way?
“No. I continued to move forward and finally got this umbrella up in the air. I think by the time I got the thing up in the air I was over and possibly standing on the retaining wall.”
He put the umbrella up after the shots?
“Did President Kennedy see your umbrella?”
No. Because he was already good as dead.
“I have no way of knowing,” Stitt said. “I really don’t.”
“What do you next recall happening?”
“Let me go back a minute. As I was moving forward apparently I had this umbrella in front of me for some few steps. Whereas other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I did not see this because of this thing in front of me.”
So The Umbrella Man’s view of the assassination was blocked by his umbrella?
“The next thing I saw after I saw the car coming down the street, down the hill to my left. At this time there was the car stopping, the screeching of tires, the jamming on of brakes, motorcycle patrolman right there beside one of the cars. One car ran upon the President’s car and a man jumped off and jumped on the back. These were the scenes that unfolded as I reached the point to where I was seeing things.”
“What did you hear at that time?” Genzman. “Did you hear any voices?”
“I don’t recall any voices at that particular time. After I finally became aware that something had happened, you know, something terrible had happened, I just sat down. I was standing on the retaining wall, and I just sat down, just right straight down, and apparently—I don’t know if I had laid the umbrella down or dropped it or what I did. Nevertheless, I think it ended up on the sidewalk, and I just sat there. Some of the things that I recall, one of the things I remember seeing while standing, there was a couple. I looked down to the right and there was a man and a woman, and they were covering some children, they were lying down and they were covering the children with their bodies and this may have caused me to sit down or I may have just sat down because I was stunned. Because there for a few minutes or for a few seconds at least I didn’t seem to be able to collect my thoughts. Sometime later after the cars moved out, this is when all this activity in the cars stopping and the cars moved out, I recall a man sitting down to my right and he said something like: ‘They done shot them folks.’ He repeated it two or three times.”
“Can you describe this man?”
“I remember him as being a Negro man,” Stitt said. “I don’t know if I ever actually looked at him for any length of time or not.”
“Did you hear any other voices?”
“Well, there was sort of a pandemonium all around. The other thing that stands out in my mind, there was a woman or a girl, a female voice up behind me shrieking and crying, and she again repeated the same thing several times. She said something to the effect: ‘They shot those people right before my eyes,’ or something like this. Anyway, there was repetition in what she said. She said it two or three times.”
“Mr. Stitt, some assassination critics have alleged your actions with your umbrella were a signal to an assassin or to assassins to fire or a signal that the President had in fact been hit. Were you signaling to anyone besides the President?”
“No. no one.”
If it was all a coincidence, Matthew X. Braxton was thinking, then why did Dickie Stewart Stitt fall off the face of the earth?
***
In front of the Flatiron Building Professor Jane Suzuki crossed paths with ghostly figures dusted like donuts in Twin Towers debris. Even their eyeglasses were a ghastly white, as if they could go blind without noticing they could no longer see. The ghosts bumped into Jane Suzuki as if she were not even there and left decay on her clothes like glancing blows. Like the ghosts, her eyes had gone completely blank.
“Professor Suzuki?” Mariela said at the intersection.
Jane looked at Mariela and Tom Renner as if they too were ghosts no different than the apparitions stumbling past.
“You can’t go downtown!” Mariela said as they crossed a street with no traffic. “No one’s supposed to go down there!”
“There have been other attacks!” Tom said. “All over the country! They’ve grounded all the planes!”
“I’ve got to find my father,” Jane said.
“He’s going to be all right,” Tom said.
Jane Suzuki was already moving past the Flatiron Building toward more ghosts and chaos downtown.
“Don’t you get it?” she said over her shoulder. “Nobody’s going to be all right.”
***
Bobby Malone loved digging up real facts hidden in the real world, but his younger brother became a hacker in love with data on the virtual frontier. NYPD Lieutenant Seamus Malone never married. He never mentioned a boyfriend or a girlfriend to his mother or brothers. He ignored the phone in all its permutations. With no people skills he became the go-to in the NYPD when it came to using a computer instead of a gun.
Seamus Malone asked himself a simple question: could Building Seven fall of its own weight once the debris from the Twin Towers turned the building into a bonfire?
The problem, as he discovered, was fire had never brought a building of that size to the ground.
The official government reports were years away, so the Malones had no real help other than Braxton’s contact Roberto Hidalgo, a walking encyclopedia for terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center. After the car bombing in 1993, Hidalgo’s job was to know every business and government agency in the WTC better than they knew themselves. As everyone else lost interest in the car bombings, Hidalgo zeroed in on the vulnerabilities of Building Seven, particularly the steel columns that kept it upright. Hidalgo told Seamus the conspiracy crazies were only half-crazy about Building Seven.
“Why do you say that?” Seamus said.
Hidalgo flipped open his laptop to schematics of 7 World Trade Center. The Malones could not take his eyes off the pressure points marked by red dots.
“Here,” Hidalgo said, “and here and here and here. Four bombs in strategic locations. That’s all they needed to bring down Building Seven. That’s all it took.”
“So the conspiracy crazies are right,” Seamus said. “Somebody got in there and blew it up.”
“Slow down,” the Chief said. “They wanted to knock down the Twin Towers with jets synchronized with explosions on the ground? I’m not buying that, Mr. Hidalgo.”
“Al-Qaeda had eight years to get this right after the car bombing at the World Trade Center. That’s plenty of time to plant bombs in an office building when people are looking the other way.”
“You got proof?” Bobby asked.
“We have a building that could not have fallen any other way. And we know Iran had been funneling millions to terrorist organizations through the Standard Chartered Bank office at 7 World Trade Center. That left the bank particularly vulnerable to attack. I saw it fall with my own eyes.”
“Why blow up Building Seven when the jets had already destroyed the Twin Towers?” Chief Malone said. “There’s no point?”
“We know the jets hit their targets after the fact,” Hidalgo said. “Building Seven could have been an insurance plan. Or icing on the cake.”
Roberto Hidalgo was not wired to embrace the sadness and suffering of the surviving Malones—so sincere, so steadfast—but he watched them closely as they went through the looking glass at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency charged with getting to the bottom of what happened to Building Seven.
Robert Hidalgo made sure Frankie Malone’s father and two brothers would never find out who blew up Building Seven after he sent them down a rabbit hole of their own making.
THREE
Two lean and elegant sisters in their early thirties waited beside a shiny new Piper Saratoga jet at a private airport in New Jersey. Lauren, the younger, was still a brunette; her older sister Carolyn was pure bottle blonde. Both wore their hair long and straight. Both wore expensive play clothes perfect for a summer weekend in July 1999 on Martha’s Vineyard.
“It’s getting dark,” Carolyn said. “I don’t want to fly in the dark.”
A mechanic came out of the Piper cockpit so slowly the two sisters could hear his knees crack.
“She’s good to go, Mrs. Kennedy,” he said. “A real beauty.”
“I’m not a Kennedy, Stewie,” Carolyn Bessette said. “I just play one on TV.”
“Sorry, ma’am. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Call me Carolyn. That way there’s nothing to remember.”
“Just don’t call her Caro-line,” her sister said.
“Is this jet everything you say it is, Stewie?”
“Even better, Mrs. Bessette.”
The mechanic walked back to the terminal.
“Sometimes,” Carolyn said to her sister, “I think John loves his magazine more than he loves me. Other times I know he does.”
“That’s not true,” Lauren said. “Or fair. You have to remember who he is. Starting George as a magazine was a heavy lift. None of this is easy for him.”
“Everyone thinks he’s Prince Charming. Except me. I know who he really is.”
“You are way too hard on him.”
“Am I really? He’s got a name for a son already!”
“That’s totally normal,” Lauren said. “Even for a Kennedy.”
“Go ahead and ask,” Carolyn said.
“Do I have to?”
“Flynn.”
“F-F-K?” Lauren said.
“I’ll give him Flynn,” Carolyn said. “But he gets Fitzgerald over my dead body.”
Carolyn looked at her watch.
“He wants me to get pregnant. He never stops talking about it.”
“And?”
“And we’re not even living together.”
“What?”
“I’m in the loft. He’s at the Stanhope.”
“You didn’t tell me!”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
“But you’re going to his cousin’s wedding together?
“If I don’t the media will never let me forget it. I’m completely trapped. Easier just to give in and give everyone what they want. One more time.”
Carolyn looked at her watch again.
“You can do this, you know. You can make this marriage work.”
“I don’t want to,” Carolyn said. “I’m done.”
“Do you have any idea how many women would like to have your problem?”
“That’s the problem,” Lauren said.
A beat-up Jeep blew into the parking lot and pulled to a stop. John F. Kennedy Jr. grabbed an overnight bag from the back and slammed the hatch shut. Just out of a cast, he was limping badly from a broken ankle. He gave his sister-in-law a hug, but Carolyn flinched when her husband tried to kiss her on the cheek.
“Thanks for coming,” JFK Jr. said to his wife.
“You sure you got this, John?” Carolyn said. “It’s going to be pitch-black by the time we get to the Vineyard. Then we have to make it to Nantucket.”
“It’s just a hop and a skip—and this baby practically flies itself.”
JFK Jr. strapped into the front seat of the Piper facing forward. The two sisters faced away from him to the rear. At precisely 8:59 PM, in the last flicker of daylight, the Piper piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. taxied down the runway and flew off into the summer haze to his cousin’s wedding.
The mechanic locked the door to the terminal at 9 PM and left in darkness without looking back.
***
Matthew X. Braxton knew how to find people—all kinds of people.
The people you read about in the newspapers and the scum you see on the street. People living with their heads down or hiding behind private memberships and/or offshore shells—and everyone in between.
Braxton looked for Richard Stewart Stitt for years on Calhoun’s dime with no luck, but he still believed finding the Umbrella Man was only a matter of time.
He started at the beginning, right after Stitt’s testimony to Congress. Braxton had the scent as the Umbrella Man moved from job to job in Texas and Arkansas and then outside Wichita to work in the service department for a car dealer.
Had his colleagues been asked to sit down with a police artist, they would have been hard-pressed to recall any signature features aside from the wave in Dickie Stitt’s hair. Braxton interviewed Stitt’s co-workers at the Galveston Insurance company and Fort Worth Title and even tiny Sunshine Investment Advisors in Little Rock. People assumed Stitt lived alone but Braxton could not find a soul who ever visited his home.
The only thing anyone could remember was Dickie Stitt had a thing about cars: he was good enough for co-workers to let him work on oil changes and lube jobs and the like. Braxton went unannounced to the Jake Elliott Jeep dealership in suburban Maize, Kansas, Stitt’s last known job. Everyone in Maize remembered Dickie Stitt flat on his back, sliding beneath cars to repair anything from random hiccups to a serious engine malfunction.
Braxton found his target’s last known location in a slim phone book encompassing Maize in 1980. On a day way too cold for spring he knocked on door after door in the neighborhood where Stitt once lived. The only thing his neighbors remembered was a graying man with wavy hair who seemed to care more for cars than people.
Jon Joe Calhoun showed no signs of disappointment when the ex-cop from New York kept bringing bad news to the gazebo in Aurora, Colorado. If anything dead ends were turn-ons for the Texan: every time a trail went cold Calhoun’s face got so flushed he looked like he was having great sex out of wedlock.
“Dickie Stitt’s old enough to be dead now,” Calhoun said.
“He’s not dead.”
“Why would you say that, Mr. Braxton?”
“I’ve tracked his Social Security checks to a Post Office box in the middle of New Jersey. He’s cashed them all.”
“Maybe no one’s looking because there’s nothing there,” Calhoun said.
“The Umbrella Man was at Dealey Plaza that day for a reason. Maybe marking the spot for Lee Harvey Oswald to open fire.”
“You’re speculating, Mr. Braxton.”
“It’s a working hypothesis.”
“You must be running out of ideas.”
“Not even close.”
“That’s what I like about you, Mr. Braxton. I’ll have to kill you make you stop.”
“I’m starting over, looking at everything from the beginning with fresh eyes. It’s the only way I know how to do it.”
“Godspeed Mr. Braxton. Just keep me posted.”
After too much sweet tea supplied by Missy Calhoun, Braxton took the next plane from Denver to LaGuardia and caught a taxi to his office, arriving just after 6 o’clock that night. He went through all the drawers in a filing cabinet dedicated to Dickie Stitt and the infamous umbrella. By 6 AM next day he was slumped over in his chair with his head on the manila folder so full of Galveston Insurance it felt soft as a pillow. He woke up when the elevator in the building started running, then he opened a folder in Stitt’s personnel file under “reasons for departure.”
“Mr. Stitt found a new position in the company,” the file from Galveston Insurance said.
Braxton flipped through the folder for Fort Worth Title. Under reasons for departure it said almost the same thing: “Mr. Stitt moved to a new position in the company.”
As with Galveston Insurance, Dickie Stitt left but somehow stayed in the same company. Braxton flipped open the folder from the brokerage in Arkansas. Stitt left again “for a new position in the company”—the one at the Jake Elliott Auto Dealership in Maize.
Rinse. Repeat.
Dickie Still hopscotched through jobs selling insurance, real estate, then stocks and bonds and even cars—but he worked all those years for the same employer until the moment he disappeared for reasons unknown.
That made no sense—and Braxton lived in a world where everything had to make sense.
Every bone in his body told Braxton what had been staring him in the face since he made his first pilgrimage to the gazebo in Aurora, Colorado. Without opening his file devoted to Calhoun Enterprises he knew Galveston Insurance, Fort Worth Title, Sunshine Investment Advisors, and Jake Elliott Automotive all belonged to the man paying him to find Dickie Stitt.
***
In the day after the attacks on 9/11 the families of the missing papered the city with photographs of their lost loved ones.
Jane Suzuki hoped her father was still alive because everyone else in Building Seven was alive except for a New York City Police Captain named Frankie Malone who went in alone at the last minute. Her father, Hiroshi Suzuki, head of information technology for New York City’s Emergency Management at 7 World Trade Center, kept the command center open on 9/11 at the cost of his own life. Not a single survivor had been found because no one survived when the three World Trade Center buildings collapsed.
Jane Suzuki knew posting her father’s photograph was a fool’s errand made worse as she looked at the rows of pictures like Most Wanted posters gone rogue. In the days after the terrorist attacks she spoke to enough of her father’s co-workers to know he never left Building Seven, but even so his daughter spent days putting up flyers with his photograph on every wall or any telephone pole she could find. After a week she was down to her last batch of flyers, with a lovely photograph of Hiroshi Suzuki in a sky blue Polo shirt on his last birthday. His daughter would distribute all the flyers of her father but print no more.
Toby Kind came up from Washington to help his fiancée empty her backpack with the last flyer for the last time. The act of putting up photographs of lost souls buried in rubble was as good as a public declaration of insanity. It was a lost cause and she and Toby knew it.
Jane tacked the last photograph to a tree for no good reason.
“Sayonara, Daddy,” Jane said.
She held Toby so tight his cameras rattled against her body.
“You didn’t have to come,” Jane said. “There was no point.”
“It’s part of the job,” Toby said. “And the job is to love you.”
Tony waited for Jane to stop shaking.
“Somebody’s going to get blown to kingdom come for this,” Toby said. “If they ever figure out who to attack. They can’t find the Taliban in Afghanistan, but they’ve wanted to go after Saddam Hussein in Iraq since the Gulf War.”
“Governments need excuses to do what they want to do in the first place,” Jane said. “That’s what governments do.”
Toby and Jane came to what was now called Ground Zero, the renamed rubble where the Twin Towers used to be. Jane stared up at the 23rd floor of Building Seven where her father used to work. Soon she was crying on the sidewalk with Toby holding her close in the crook of his arm.
“Would you feel better if you were married to a staff photographer at The Washington Post,” Toby said.
“You got the job?”
“Healthcare and everything,” Toby said.
Jane was still sniffling when a firefighter came by with a silent walkie-talkie no longer tuned to the search for survivors who would never be found. On the day the planes hit the Twin Towers the firefighter might still have been a young man—but by now he was something else.
“This ain’t over, lady,” the firefighter said. “Not by a long shot. Nobody does this to us and lives to tell the tale.”
Post-9/11 everyone agreed firefighters and first responders like Frankie Malone would heretofore be referred to as heroes.
***
All the Malones had a moral compass they carried like a badge. They knew right from wrong, good from bad, so nobody in the family blinked when Frankie became a cop in New York City, because being a cop was the Malone family business. When Bobby and Seamus joined the NYPD after Frankie, their father had all three boys on the side of good with Joe still bringing up the rear.
The Malones never put up any pictures of Frankie in New York City on trees or telephone poles or anything else—not the Chief, not his wife, not Seamus or Bobby trying to find out what the hell happened. They all knew Frankie was gone forever and wishful thinking would not bring him back.
Frankie Malone’s funeral made Joe want to be a cop but now Chief Malone’s youngest was dead twenty years later in another kind of explosion.
Frank and Martha Malone had been through this first with Frankie and 9/11, now again with Joe on Lily Pond Lane, and both times God never gave them a body to bury. Even so The Chief made sure his youngest got the 21-gun salute with policemen in uniform from all over New York state, just as Frankie had after 9/11.
The whole town came out to put Joe Malone to rest—including Rosa Quito’s Aunt Maria, the Malone’s housecleaner for as long as they had the house. The only reason Rosa told her aunt about her wedding was to get her to stop worrying about the ICE police, and Maria took her niece’s secret with her to the church for Joe’s funeral. She watched Mrs. Malone the whole time—how dignified she was, how gracious, trying to make everyone around her feel better. Seamus and Bobby looked white as sheets, like they were falling into a black hole, and Chief Malone struck her as numb, uncomprehending, with life draining out of him with two sons now dead and buried.
Maria Quito cried as she left Joe’s funeral—the same way she cried when she put her Rosa to rest the week before in a service with only half the seats full of Ecuadorians, legal or not, in the small Catholic Church in Amagansett.
Maria knew this was not the time to tell Joe Malone’s mother her son and Rosa Quito were ready for a life together as man and wife. Maria’s dead niece left her with a secret about their marriage, and at Joe’s funeral she wondered whether she could keep it. Someone had killed her niece and her husband, the nice cop, and somebody had to find out why—or admit they died for no reason.
In her heart Maria believed God was good, but on the day of Joe Malone’s funeral, He could not have been worse.
***
The environmentalist and the economist were in the Azores on their honeymoon when J.J. Patrick decided he was never going to see them again. The lovebirds were nowhere to be found at the funeral of his wife, his daughter, and his son in St. Paul, Minnesota, but then mistresses—bisexual or not—were at times among the excluded at Catholic funerals and wakes.
Jameson John Jr. was 7 and Polly was 9 when they died in their beds in the explosion at the mansion in Minnetonka. Both were raised Catholic because their father wanted no say in matters of faith. Had he the inclination to be anything he would have been an atheist, but all his wife’s sacred gobbledegook about devils and saints meant nothing to a man who lived according to the singular God of money.
Patrick looked over his shoulder at the thousands of mourners happy to worship at the altar of his wealth—and/or to rejoice at his bad luck. He recognized a few faces from among hundreds at J.J. Patrick Worldwide headquarters, but years had gone by since he darkened his own door downtown. The titans of the Twin Cities corporate world came out in force, of course, if only to be seen and/or to see the billionaire in the flesh. The nonprofits came early for pews up front to be in his line of sight.
J.J. Patrick wished they would all go to hell.
The Patricks were Twin Cities royalty who did as they pleased. His wife was beloved because she carried an open checkbook for local charities—proving money could certainly buy you love in a modest, mid-sized, Midwestern city. Patrick himself always made sure dollops of his largesse were delivered locally to deflect any criticism regarding his compounding ego and wealth. His wife had always been more than happy to distribute as much of his fortune as he allowed close to home.
Insurance would pay to restore his homes but that was of no significance whatsoever to the richest man on the planet. He would not miss his wife or his mistresses because they no longer spent time together. He would not miss the houses, not even the one on the beach in East Hampton. He would miss his children though he barely knew them. In truth J.J. Patrick was not thinking about his wife or his children in the Cathedral of St. Paul during his obligatory public mourning. Nor was he interested in the sea of gawkers packing the church behind him all the way to the sidewalk. Instead he was obsessed at that moment (and every moment) with finding the criminal trying to bring him to his knees. Police around the world were investigating—so were his own people—but so far they had no leads in the case.
In the Cathedral J.J. Patrick closed his eyes and made a promise to find and kill his tormentor no matter what it took. He would spend every penny if it came to that because nothing else mattered.
He could live with losing (and rebuilding) his homes but Patrick faced an existential threat as yet undetected: a perpetrator drawing down hundreds of thousands of dollars every day from J.J. Patrick Worldwide into the black hole of the Dark Web. The explosions blew up Patrick’s homes but those crimes were nothing more than a fatal distraction meant to conceal the systematic plundering of JJP Worldwide.
Everyone expected Patrick to cry at the funeral of his wife and children and he did not disappoint. To his consternation tears rolled down his cheeks during the closing hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, with just enough lubrication for grief undeserved to appear on the front pages of newspapers and news sites around the world.
***
Roberto Hidalgo found his place over the rainbow.
To disappear was not so difficult as you might think—no different than in the movies when the assassin unearths passports, credit cards, and fistfuls of cash in multiple denominations.
As soon as Roberto Hidalgo made it to shore on J.J. Patrick’s speedboat he set out for Cyprus under the assumed identity of Orlando Torres, an IT consultant with degrees from MIT and CalTech and world-class expertise in quantum computing.
Long before the explosions obliterated J.J. Patrick’s homes, Roberto Hidalgo knew he would be living under an assumed identity in a place where no one would think to look. This nowhere place in no man’s land lay in the Tabuk Province along the Red Sea coast, the centerpiece of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, a master plan to move the Kingdom beyond oil and gas into a sustainable zero-carbon world. The Line was a figment of the future, expected to be 100 miles long with 9 million people within a 20-mile footprint energized by wind and solar power. The new city by the sea was to be car-free and walkable, with 95 percent of the land left natural and unspoiled.
Everything was possible if only the Saudis could hack a city out of the desert.
No one but the Saudi government pretended this was anything but greenwashing on a heretofore unheard of scale. Orlando Torres, AKA Roberto Hidalgo, could have cared less as long as he could live like a ghost lost among the hundreds of thousands of workers making something out of nothing simply to make a point.
In the desert Roberto/Orlando felt like he had all the time in the world. He had already won by destroying Patrick’s houses and that was not even the punchline. Every morning at his terminal he punched into his private quantum server to follow the money from J.J. Patrick Worldwide into his own hidden accounts in dozens of counties. From the master dashboard Roberto Hidalgo watched the inexorable accumulation of his unimaginable wealth in holographic living color. In another month, give or take, he would be eligible for the lists of the wealthiest people in the world, though he would be the only one to know it.
***
The global conspiracy economy became a way of life for Jane and Toby Kind.
After Toby’s pictures of the Pentagon popped up around the world The Washington Post finally hired him full-time for the dumb luck of being stuck in traffic when terrorists attacked the Pentagon. After he won The Pulitzer Prize, Toby knew he had a job at the newspaper for life—and the 9/11 notoriety for his wife was so valuable she became a tenured professor at John Jay a year ahead of schedule.
As the daughter of a father killed in the terrorist attacks, Jane represented all the other victims on radio and television talk shows all over the country. Like Toby she gave speeches—spontaneously at first and then for an honorarium to go with reimbursement for transportation, accommodations, and meals.
The Kinds started to appear together to spend more time with each other because the money was much better than good. A speaker’s bureau found dozens of college campuses where conspiracy theorists were treated like rock stars—though Toby Kind, as a journalist, always played it straight. Even Sid Vicious went along with the speeches because of the free publicity for the newspaper.
The money from their celebrity was more than enough for a downpayment on a light-filled two-bedroom co-op with a laundry nook on the West Side of Manhattan, within walking distance of Jane’s classes. A book called 9/11 Real-Time Terror was in the works featuring Toby’s pictures, and their cells sang every time anyone did a documentary about 9-11.
By the time Jane and Toby Kind were invited to speak at the CONSPIRATORIUM Trade Show and Exhibition at the Loew’s Hotel and Convention Center in Arlington, Virginia, life was full of conspiracy theories—and the neverending sadness of losing Jane’s father on 9/11.
“Disneyland for dopes,” Toby said.
The Kinds dodged their way through exhibits about everything from Dealey Plaza to the moon landing built to scale as a television set with a cardboard lunar landing unit—and the inevitable ladder to the surface of another planet.
“The moon?” Toby said. “Really?”
Alexx Fugazy’s radio voice boomed live from a stage in the big ballroom at the end of the hallway. His name and face were everywhere at the conference, and people bellied up three-deep to tables for his survival gear. You could buy Fugazy First Aid Kits and Fire Starters guaranteed to work in bad weather. Folding knives were featured for their “durability and versatility” next to headlamps and flashlights and freeze-dried coffee. A year’s worth of Fugazy Food could be had starting at $299 (“284 servings of storable food, drinks and snacks for 30 days at 2,000+ calories a day. Easy, affordable, healthy and delicious storable food to help you prepare for whatever comes next.”) His Emergency Rations gave survivors enough calories to make it through 72 hours in the wilderness—and he also supplied tents and sleeping bags and blankets to go with the food. Fugazy’s followers knew it was bound to get cold post-Armageddon, so thermal underwear, puffer jackets, and wool socks were also stacked up on the tables. Satellite messengers and solar chargers—with the Alexx Fugazy Privacy Pouch to keep cell phones safe from being tracked—rounded out the product line.
“What do conspiracies have to do with freeze-dried coffee?” Jane said.
“Nothing tastes better than coffee when the world is ending.”
“I’d rather die than eat this crap,” Jane said.
The hall itself was jammed with people in costumes self-made. A man and his wife dressed as the Twin Towers with tin foil at the top. A guy in his 20s wore a “JFK Jr. Lives” button with the famous black and white photo of baby John John saluting his dead father as the casket passed in November 1963.
“Everything’s made up here,” Toby said. “It’s like playing pretend.”
“Except your pictures,” Jane said.
The Kinds weaved down a gauntlet with more buttons, hats, T-shirts, and other manifestations of patriotism in your face. Toby and Jane finally made it to the stage at the front of the ballroom with a huge projector screen behind the host. The cameras and microphones and technicians were evidence their little chat was going out live to millions of Fugazy’s followers.
“Don’t forget Fugazy’s Gold Coins of the Realm,” Fugazy read into a golden microphone. “The best investment in the history of the world—and worth their weight in gold. Now don’t go away. We’ll be right back live and in color at CONSPIRATORIUM, the one conference where the truth can be told!”
Jane sat to Fugazy’s left and Toby to his right. Fugazy was dressed in all-camo gear like he was already part of a well-established militia. He had not shaved in days, and his stench and the darkening stains under his camo T-shirt were rank evidence of personal hygiene found wanting. The Kinds moved their chairs as far away from the host as they could and still be within reach of their microphones.
“And we’re back. I am Alexx Fugazy and today we’re inside the Beltway at CONSPIRATORIUM with two special guests with direct connections to 9/11. Jane Kind’s father and a New York City Police Captain were the only two killed when Building Seven collapsed at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and Toby Kind is The Washington Post staff photographer famous for the photographs of the Pentagon bombing that won the Pulitzer Prize. They are married and live in New York City. Welcome to you both.”
“Thank you,” Jane said.
“Good to be here, Alexx,” Toby said.
“Building Seven first,” Fugazy said. “Mrs. Kind, you have condolences from the entire Fugazy family for what they did to Ishiro Suzuki on 9-11. Do you have any idea why your father died?”
“The building collapsed,” Jane said. “They said it was fire. The water main broke.”
Fugazy motioned over his head to the gigantic screen looming behind them. A series of videos showed firefighters pouring gallons of water into buildings.
“That’s what the government wants you to think, Mrs. Kind. But you’re a professor of criminal justice. What do you think of these videos showing firefighters at Building Seven fighting fire with no shortage of water?”
“I haven’t seen those pictures before,” Jane said. “I don’t even know if they’re from 9-11.”
“They are not only from September 11, 2001, Mrs. Kind, but that building being doused is 7 World Trade Center, where your father worked for New York City in Emergency Management!”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know what happened. Or why.”
“There’s a professor at the University of Alaska who claims the building could not have fallen without explosives. Without bombs, Mrs. Kind.”
“He just started his study,” Toby said. “There’s nothing conclusive and there won’t be for years. Right now it’s just a theory like all the others.”
“It’s just common sense to believe what the eye can see,” Fugazy said, “and I see firefighters pouring water into Building Seven after the water main supposedly broke. It’s right up there on the wall behind me plain as day. You can find the videos on our website.”
Fugazy waved again and one of his producers replaced the photograph of firefighters on 9/11 with Toby Kind’s first photograph at the Pentagon.
“Mr. Kind, can you tell us where you were the morning of September 11, 2001.”
“I was stuck in traffic in front of the Pentagon,” Toby said.
“And you took the first pictures of the Pentagon bombing. Including this one right behind us.”
“I was the first one there,” Toby said.
“So where’s the plane?”
“It made that hole in the Pentagon. Like a bomb hit it.”
“Exactly my point,” Fugazy said.
Fugazy waved again and Toby’s photograph was replaced by a close-up of the smoking crater where the jet hit the Pentagon.
“Where’s the plane, Mr. Kind?”
“It disintegrated in a fireball.”
“Are you sure, Mr. Kind? Because there’s no evidence of a jet crashing anywhere in the frame. It looks more like a missile hit the building.”
“I saw the jet myself,” Toby said. “It went right over my head while I was sitting in traffic. I could see faces in the window. And they found debris from the plane. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes on 9/11.”
“Things were happening awfully fast that day,” Fugazy said. “As a member of the mainstream media can you really be sure what you saw?”
“I know what I saw,” Toby said.
“Toby and Jane Kind prove the family that conspires together stays together,” Fugazy said. “We’ll be right back with more after this.”
***
Frankie and Joe were gone. Their oldest and their youngest.
Martha Malone knew rules and rituals still applied, especially after her second son, her youngest, died. Martha cleaned Frankie’s last apartment in New York City top to bottom until her fingers bled, but she was never going to go through that again. Instead Martha asked Maria Quito, her Ecuadorian house cleaner, to clean Joe’s apartment in the Springs, to give his clothes to the thrift shop at the Ladies Village Improvement Society, and to bring her any keepsakes she might find.
Joe’s mother knew nothing of the wedding at the Foxwoods Resort Casino or the subsequent revelations within the bridal suite. She did know Joe was tongue-tied with girls going back to high school; she hoped he might find Mrs. Right before it was too late despite the odds against. Marriage for Joe and Seamus, her two youngest, seemed an abstract proposition at best.
Mrs. Malone had no idea Joe ever dated anyone more than once until Maria Quito dropped a pile of her son’s mail on the kitchen table with a set of photographs taken in quick succession in one of those photo booths you see at carnivals and fairs.
Joe and Rosa pointing at each other on cue.
Rosa sticking her tongue out at Joe.
Joe tickling Rosa and Rosa tickling back.
Joe and Rosa caught in a kiss on camera.
The photographs were the first time Mrs. Malone ever saw Joe with Maria’s niece, this beautiful young Ecuadorian girl.
Martha Malone and Maria Quito sat facing each other across the kitchen table with the pictures in the middle.
Maria handed Martha a bill from the Foxwoods Resort Casino for “Malone-Quito Wedding Photography,” the only physical evidence Joe eloped with an unknown woman just days before their death. Martha Malone saw only one possibility: her soft-hearted son married an illegal immigrant to dodge the risk of deportation. Otherwise why would they elope?
This was not the ending she had in mind for her son.
“You knew,” Martha said. “And you never told me.”
Martha slid the pictures of Joe and Rosa back across the table.
“I tell her not to, Mrs. Martha. I tell her marrying an American man to become American citizen is sin. But they fall in love so they don’t listen.”
“They were in love?”
“That’s what she told me.”
That changes everything.”
“I know,” Maria said.
Martha picked up the pictures of Joe and Rosa from the photo booth.
“Your niece and my son. I am so sorry, Maria.”
“I am sorry for all of us, Mrs. Martha.”
Martha stood up to pour them coffee, extra sweet for Maria the way she liked it with real sugar. Then Martha raised her mug.
“To Joe and Rosa,” she said. “May they rest.”
“With God now thank God,” Maria Quito said.
***
Being a Malone and a cop meant you ran to the fire—not away from it.
After Joe died, Chief Frank Malone called his two remaining sons just like he did after Frankie got buried in Building Seven, and they were on their way to East Hampton before they hung up their cells.
No one knew why Joe never showed up for his shift. None of the Malones knew what happened to him for days until the Chief got his hands on cell phone records putting him on Lilly Pond Lane in the moments before J.J. Patrick’s East Hampton mansion was blown to kingdom come.
What was Joe doing on Lily Pond? Why did he go to the Patrick house in the first place? What was he looking for?
That was before Martha Malone told her husband and two remaining sons about Rosa Quito’s niece Maria and her marriage to Joe at Foxwoods. The newlyweds were killed in the same explosion for no apparent reason beyond bad timing and bad luck.
Of course Chief Malone knew what happened at the Patrick homes in London and Mallorca and New York and Paris and Palm Beach to go with the one in East Hampton. They had all blown up at exactly the same moment—just like the bombs that turned Building Seven into a bad memory.
Chief Malone was going find this Patrick hedge fund guy whoever he was, wherever he might be, and he would find out who had access to the house. Maybe somebody had seen something. No one seemed to know anything until he went to Maria Quito’s house to pay his respects— and to ask a few questions.
“How long had Rosa been cleaning the Patrick house?” the Chief asked.
“For at least two years,” Maria said. “Maybe three.”
“Did she ever talk about it?”
“Not until the end.”
“And?”
“Rosa said there was a strange man there.”
“Strange how?” the Chief said.
“He gave her money not to clean the house.”
“Did you say to not clean it?” the Chief said.
“He gave her a thousand dollars Rosa used to get married to your Joe at the Foxwoods.”
“Who was this guy?”
“Rosa said she had never seen him before but he was very handsome. A Latino with dark skin named Orlando. He drove a Jaguar car. He was working on a computer the whole time.”
“Did she get a last name?”
“She never told me,” Maria said.
“Orlando?” the Chief said. “I’m going to find that son of a bitch.”
Two of his boys were gone now and their father and his two surviving sons would die before they gave up. Answers would not bring either of his boys back but answers could stop the questions keeping the Malones—mother, father, brothers—awake at all hours of the night.
The Chief wanted to think 7 World Trade Center was a random act of God. The same went for what happened to J.J. Patrick’s houses. But losing two sons like that made for at least one too many coincidences. After he spoke to Rosa Quito, the Chief called Braxton for the first time in years and put him on the speakerphone in his office so Seamus and Bobby could hear him.
“I’m sorry about Frankie and Joe,” Braxton said.
“Thank you, Matthew,” the Chief said.
“About your brothers,” Braxton said to Seamus and Bobby. “That’s too much for one family.”
“You even hear of anyone named Orlando?” the Chief said. “He was in the Patrick house the week it blew up.”
“No.”
“He had a car,” Seamus said. “A Jaguar. We’re getting our hands on the security feed. Then we’ll run the plates.”
“How come this Patrick is still breathing?” Bobby said.
“Maybe somebody wanted him to suffer,” Braxton said.
“Mission accomplished,” Bobby said.
“Matthew? Can you help us find out why Joe died?” Chief Malone asked Braxton.
“I’m a conspiracy debunker, Frank,” Braxton said. “I’m supposed to prove why things don’t happen the way people think they did.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Chief Malone said.
***
The Navy destroyer U.S.S. Briscoe idled in choppy waters three miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.
Twenty family members—including U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, JFK Jr.’s sister and only sibling—watched and waited for the worst to come.
Navy Chaplains lay blue Tiffany boxes with the remains of the deceased in three caskets. Naval Officers sealed all three and arranged American flags on each one with military precision. Lauren Bessette’s casket was eased into the ocean first, followed by her sister Carolyn Bessette, John F. Kennedy Jr.’s wife, then the remains of Camelot’s designated heir—with all three were committed to the sea for eternity.
Spectators jammed an impromptu flotilla less than a mile away. Toby Kind was there in a rented fishing boat to take pictures for Getty Images. He captured three caskets sliding into the ocean before he turned to the flotilla to take a picture of a man in a cowboy hat with a shock of white hair and a gut bulging his belt.
Toby Kind took his picture just as Jon Joe Calhoun lowered his binoculars on his yacht Progressive, slammed his hand on the bow, and laughed at the bereaved Kennedy family on the Navy ship across the water.
Calhoun put down the binoculars and picked up the ship-to-shore radio—though Toby Kind was too far away to hear what he was saying.
“Mr. Stitt?” Jon Joe Calhoun said. “Those funds have been transferred to your account.”
