radical affiliations or sympathies; 10,000 were arrested, about 550 deported, including Emma Goldman (who, not surprisingly, didn’t like the Soviet Union nearly as much once she had to live there). In order to achieve that kind of targeting precision, Hoover developed an indexing system that made it easy to move through his list quickly and efficiently, and, forty years later, his files were still as clearly—pedantically—demarcated. In a folder in the third drawer clearly marked “ORPHEUS, Project” BC found no fewer than six memoranda. The information itself was fairly banal. “Agent ‘Ted Morganthau’ (real name LOGAN, Edward), provided 5,000 micrograms LSD to HITCHCOCK, William12 for Millbrook colony (‘Castalia’) on 2/4/63;” “ALPERT, Richard, confirmed homosexual, which fact acknowledges openly; unlikely FBI can exploit;” and so on. But on one sheet of paper BC found what he was looking for:
9/3/63. JARRELL reports great activity at/interest in Millbrook; SCHEIDER (See: TSS) believes LEARY might have found Orpheus.
There were no other mentions of the name Jarrell in the Orpheus file, nor in the rest of the CIA section. BC locked that cabinet, then opened the drawer marked “Jackson, MS—KENNEDY, Joseph” and found a single entry under “Jarrell”:
JARRELL, Charles. Ph.D. mathematics and biology (1949), Columbia; M.D. (1954), Johns Hopkins. Assumed identity “Virgil Parker” June 1956. Residence established 117 New York Ave. N.W. July ’56. Applied CIA February ’57. Approved May ’58, placed in Technical Services Section, Medical Engineering Dept., under direct supervision SCHEIDER, Joseph, July ’59. Status: ACTIVE.
There was no further information in the Jarrell file nor, when BC checked, under Parker either. BC went back to the CIA file to check under Virgil Parker just in case, but all he found was a note to “See: JARRELL, Charles.” It was a bread crumb, but it was his only lead out of the forest. Or, rather, back into it.
He was just about to leave when he stopped, went back to the files. “HARDING, Warren G.—HOOVER, Ivery.” But there was nothing on Naz. He checked on Mary Meyer next, but, though there was a folder marked “MEYER, Mary Pinchot,” the only thing in it was a note:
Contents removed for review, 11/5/1963. JEH/hg.
He’d just pushed the drawer closed when he heard a voice outside the door to the Vault. The first was familiar, although he didn’t place it immediately. The second, however, was unmistakable.
“No, Clyde,” J. Edgar Hoover said, “I think the intelligence is genuine.”
San Francisco, CA
November 7, 1963
New Orleans. A hot spring day in 1942.
The Evangelical Lutheran Bethlehem Orphanage.
A twelve-year-old boy, skinny as a fence post save for the mop of dark curls framing his round, dusky face, is shooting marbles with a group of other boys ranging in age from six to sixteen. He wins only one out of three tosses, but Chandler knows he’s faking it. Roping the crowd in, working them up, making them think they have a chance. Deception came early to … to Melchior. So that really was his name.
Suddenly the boy looks up from his game. On his bed in the future, Chandler thinks Melchior is somehow looking at him. But no. He’s watching a pair of men walk up the long narrow sidewalk that leads to the side yard of the orphanage. One is tall, with a soft-cheeked face that belies his fit frame: he isn’t fat yet, but will be one day. The other is shorter, darker, walks with a slight limp. His beard is as sharp as Mephistopheles’. Melchior is sure the man knows this and courts the comparison. He looks like the devil. The devil in a light cashmere jacket and polished wingtips that seem as sharp as his beard.
But Melchior isn’t as interested in the men as he is in their target: a child playing by himself in the grassless dust off to the side of the yard. A small-mouthed boy of three or four, his russet hair flecked with gold from long hours in the sun. He squats in his short pants as though he’s shitting his drawers, but Melchior knows he is in fact drawing in the dirt. The same face over and over again: his father, who died before he was born. In the hierarchy of lost parents at an orphanage, this is a category unto itself, and even though the boy isn’t really an orphan—his mother leaves him here Monday through Friday while she works, picks him up on the weekends she’s not looking for a new husband—the boy still has a kind of totemic status. Like Jesus, he was born without a father.
The name comes to Chandler before he even realizes he is curious. Caspar.
Melchior has adopted Caspar in the way bullies sometimes adopt the helpless: this one and this one only will I protect. A large part of Melchior protects Caspar just for the many chances it gives him to fight—the child is so moony that older boys cannot resist picking on him—but there is some part of him that genuinely loves his charge. Loves him like a farmer loves his only hog, right up until the time he slices its throat.
The two men have reached Caspar. Melchior can tell from the way they approach him that they picked him out ahead of time. The bearded one takes notes in a spiral-bound notebook even as the tall man squats down in a kind of giant-sized replica of Caspar. He points at the picture in the dust. Melchior sees his mouth move, imagines his insipid question.
“Say, are you playing or what?”
One of the boys is impatient. One of the older, bigger boys. None of the smaller ones would dare question him in this way. Melchior turns, glances at the iridescent orbs scattered in front of the brick wall. Nine of them—his is the tenth and final shot. The farthest is a little more than an inch from the wall. He needs to shoot inside it to win.
He turns back to Caspar. The bearded man is talking to him now. Caspar has fallen back on his ass, looks up at the man as if transfixed. The man’s beard cuts the air like a fang.
“I
Melchior shoots without looking. The chorus of groans tells him he has won even before he turns to collect his money and marbles, then starts across the playground.
“I thought I told you not to talk to strangers.”
Caspar looks up, scared at first, then brightening at the sight of Melchior. He points at his drawings.
“They was asking me about my daddy.”
