Not that home, a spacious apartment on the East Side, was bad. Jane Sibley had married Lawrence, the son and grandson of men of the cloth, with the proviso that he find a calling on her own turf in Manhattan.
God knew, there were as many lost souls on the island as anywhere else. She had hoped to maintain a mod- icum of privacy this way—privacy unavailable in the village-type parsonage of Lawrence’s youthful dreams. Watching her struggle to keep the blinds drawn, as well as their father’s only occasionally rea-sonable hours, had convinced both Faith and Hope to avoid men without button-down collars and Windsor knots.
Nesting into her studio, Faith didn’t miss the larger baths and reliable heat across town. She was on her own at last. She had also recently signed a lease for a new, expanded location for the business. Grown-up papers to sign. Grown-up fees to a lawyer.
Yes, it had definitely been the right decision and she had never been so happy, she reflected. There had been
plenty of glitches and near catastrophes, but tonight’s catering job had been a piece of gateau. They were almost finished packing up. This had been one of the better kitchens to work in, recently remodeled and, from the sparkling appearance of the appliances, plus the absence of anything save champagne, orange juice, caviar, and DoveBars in the refrigerator/freezer, one seldom used.
Josie had gone down to the van with the first load.
Faith gave a last look around to make sure they weren’t leaving anything. The table was bare again, except for today’s paper. Idly, she pulled it over. She hadn’t had time to read it yet. Hadn’t, in fact, read the paper for days. There was no escaping today’s lead. The headline was unusually sensational—and large—for the
Underground Radical Leader Nathan Fox Dead Apparent Homicide, Say Police
She sat down and began to read the article, wondering at the same time why she felt so shocked, so stunned. According to the paper, he’d gone underground in 1970. She’d only been three years old. He’d had a tremendous effect on another generation, but not much on hers. Still, she felt shaken. She looked up as Josie came back.
“Did you hear about Nathan Fox?”
“Where have you been? It’s been the only thing on the news all day. Never mind. I know where you’ve been.” Josie laughed. “It is pretty amazing. All these years they haven’t been able to find him, and now he turns up dead in an apartment on the Lower East Side.”
Faith read out loud, “ ‘Police say there were no signs of forced entry at the apartment off Grand Street that Fox rented under the name Norman Fuchs two years ago. They speculate his assailant or assailants might have been known to him, but burglary has not been ruled out as a motive. A source, requesting anonymity, close to the investigation revealed that the book-filled apartment had been completely ran-sacked.’ ” She paused. “They must have thought he had something valuable. I wonder what they were looking for?”
“Not the money from Chase Manhattan Bank. He was a much better talker than doer. Remember? He and two others were going to rob the bank and distribute the money to the truly needy or whatever, but as soon as they passed the note to the teller, they were caught.
Didn’t get so much as a roll of pennies. I didn’t hear how he got away exactly.”
Faith, who had been scanning the newsprint, answered, “The article says there was a fourth accomplice waiting in a car. Fox managed to get away from the bank’s security guards before the police arrived. He knocked one of them out, which added assault and bat-tery to his charge.”
“He was armed, but he didn’t shoot. They should have given him credit for that.”
“How do you know so much about all this?” Faith asked. Heretofore, any conversations about politics with Josie had consisted in wondering what Mayor-Elect David Dinkins would serve at his inaugural at Gracie Mansion compared to his flamboyant predeces-sor, Ed Koch. Josie was even more dedicated to food than Faith. She’d grown up in Virginia, raised by a grandmother who was apparently famous over several
counties for her fried chicken. Josie had come to New York several years ago and started working at any food-related job she could get, taking as many courses—and covering as many cuisines—as she could squeeze in. She was all set to open Josie’s as soon as she had the money—and the perfect location.
Dream, nothing, she’d told Faith. Josie’s was fact. Future fact, but fact.
“I told you. There’s been nothing else on the news all day. Every time I turned on the radio, there was some piece of the story—or some guy talking in one of those serious ‘This is nothing but a test’ voices about how it’s the end of an era.”
Faith knew what Josie meant about the voice, which was intended to be reassuring, yet managed instead to imply the button had just been pushed and everyone was doomed.
She had turned to a profile of Fox on an inside page and was studying his photograph, taken shortly before he disappeared.
“Not bad-looking,” she commented. “No, make that definitely acceptable, and this looks like a lousy picture.” He had the regulation long, flowing locks of the sixties and wire-rimmed granny glasses, but behind the frames, his eyes were bright and intelligent. He had a full, sensual mouth curved in a slightly mocking smile.
She could almost see him shrugging. Like, What’s the big deal? She wondered where the picture had been taken, what the context had been. Suddenly she felt sorry for the man. All those years on the run. Granted, he had tried to rob a bank, a big bank, but he hadn’t killed anybody, and now he’d been killed. An “apparent homicide.” Why did they always say that? He’d been shot and the weapon was missing. There was
nothing apparent about it at all. Murder. He’d been murdered. In broad daylight. The medical examiner es- timated the time of death as 4:00 P.M. She gave a slight shudder. She liked the Lower East Side, and the blintzes at the Grand Dairy restaurant were the best in the city. Grand Street would mean something else for a while now. Something other than long-ago pushcarts and present-day discounts—and the blintzes.
“ ‘The end of the sixties at the end of the eighties’—
that’s what the commentators having been saying all day. His death is supposed to be some kind of significant event, like it was planned as a big period for the decade. John Lennon in 1980; Nate Fox in ’89. I don’t think junkies are into this kind of political, philosoph-ical shit—and you know that’s what it’s going to turn out to be. Junkies looking for something to hock.” Faith laughed and agreed. Nobody she knew could puncture a balloon like Josie. “Every obit this year has had ‘Swan Song for the Eighties’—first it was Lucy, then Olivier, then Irving Berlin. I thought when Diana Vreeland died in August, that would be it. But they trotted it out again for Bette Davis.” Josie was putting on her coat, but Faith was still lost in the article. She’d have to pick up a paper on her way home. How had he stayed hidden all these years? Obviously, he must have had a network of friends, people sympathetic to his ideas. Family? But the FBI would have been keeping a close eye on any relatives.
She skipped to the end, where they always listed survivors. “No survivors.” Nobody? It was an amazing thought. No siblings, parents dead. Never married, or if so, divorced. She began to construct his life rapidly.
Where had he grown up? Born in Newark, New Jersey, the article said. Newark before the ’68 riots.
Newark, home of Jewish intellectuals and an up-wardly mobile middle class. Weequahic High School.
Philip Roth country.
There were many facets to Faith Sibley’s personality, some in direct contradiction to others. She was both open-minded and given to snap judgments; label-conscious and down-to-earth; somewhat self-centered and overly generous. The one dominant trait for which there was no antiphony was her curiosity. There had never been a time when she hadn’t wanted to know everything about everybody. Curiosity and an exceed-ingly active imagination. She was the original “Why?” child, and Jane had almost been driven mad by her daughter’s questions. Faith’s father, Lawrence, had greeted her inquisitiveness with joy. An infant episte-mologist. He’d answered at great length, in excruciat-ing detail. Faith had soon learned to engage in interior monologues, and she was doing this now. What if Fox’s death was tied to the movement and not a random act of urban violence? Why not the FBI itself? A bust gone
