massive stretch, knocked over my desk lamp. Then I sat down again.
It had been an interesting night. So much to learn. So much to write. And if I had started out pretty unwilling, now I was fairly convinced that I had fallen upon a chance to do a series of articles that would show my elders and betters a great deal about who Benjamino Schulberg was and what Benjamino Schulberg could do.
And yet I was not planning on starting writing. Not just yet.
First I was planning, as I now did, to sit back in my chair, drawing on an unlit cigarette, and think about what it was that was so bothering me about this story, not in the past, but in the present.
3.
So, I knew who Billy Cusimano was, to some extent. I knew that Billy had settled down in Tannersville in the eighties to begin screwing up the genome of the marijuana plant—at one time he owned an electron microscope and employed a botany postdoc out of SUNY Albany. As to where he came from before that, well, that Sharon Solarz, founding member of Weatherman, had come to see Billy Cusimano, was pretty good stuff, in my journalistic opinion. You with me? It was a good hintthat Billy, maybe, had roots in that common ground between the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and the Weather Underground. And it suggested that Sharon had been involved in the Timothy Leary escape, too, and even that perhaps Billy had been a source of the money, which for all I knew could still lead to criminal charges. Was there a statute of limitations on jailbreak from a federal prison? “Note to self,” I thought to myself, and laughed heartily. Then I went back to work, which meant, under the circumstances, that I stopped laughing and closed my eyes again.
What else was in this fact? Well, how about that Billy could have been part of the extensive aboveground support network that Weather had: lawyers, doctors, academics, many of whom are prominent members of their professions today. That was also good stuff. But it wasn’t addressing what was bothering me.
So I tried another question. Why had Sharon come east? Well, here was a no-brainer: my new close personal friend from the FBI, Kevin Cornelius, had, the night before, told me that they had traced calls from the pay phones Sharon was using before she was arrested to Gillian Morrealle, the leftist lawyer in Boston. Clearly Solarz was looking to follow what Katherine Power had done a few years before, that is, negotiate a surrender. Katherine Power had spent eight years in jail, which was severe, but a hell of a lot less severe than what would have happened had she been arrested.
So what was bothering me? Years later, and for years later, your father would grill me on this. Why, in all of this story, was I so like a dog with a bone with this question? There was so much to write, so much story, just with what I had there.
But it wasn’t enough for me, and never did I have an explanation why. I was just built that way. Drives Rebeccah crazy. Like when I see a movie and everyone else is sitting around wiping tears from their eyes, I’m totally stuck on the fact that before he died saving the girl’s life, the hero’s dog appeared on either side of a cut with different collars, or during the chase scene that cost five million dollars to produce and had lead articles devoted to it in the
Sunday Times
, a license plate read the wrong state.
And so now, after all the work I’d done, and all I’d learned; now, with the chance to sit down and write a career-making story—I still couldn’t stop myself. What was wrong with this picture? Once again, starting with the first anonymous call, what seemed now like weeks ago, I went through the story step by step, detail by detail. And once again, I kept feeling, like an elusive sneeze, the thing that didn’t make sense.
I’ll never stop wondering at that process.
One minute, I couldn’t for the life of me conjure it up.
The next minute, it was sitting on my tongue like my own name, and I said it, aloud:
It had been an interesting night. So much to learn. So much to write. And if I had started out pretty unwilling, now I was fairly convinced that I had fallen upon a chance to do a series of articles that would show my elders and betters a great deal about who Benjamino Schulberg was and what Benjamino Schulberg could do.
And yet I was not planning on starting writing. Not just yet.
First I was planning, as I now did, to sit back in my chair, drawing on an unlit cigarette, and think about what it was that was so bothering me about this story, not in the past, but in the present.
3.
So, I knew who Billy Cusimano was, to some extent. I knew that Billy had settled down in Tannersville in the eighties to begin screwing up the genome of the marijuana plant—at one time he owned an electron microscope and employed a botany postdoc out of SUNY Albany. As to where he came from before that, well, that Sharon Solarz, founding member of Weatherman, had come to see Billy Cusimano, was pretty good stuff, in my journalistic opinion. You with me? It was a good hintthat Billy, maybe, had roots in that common ground between the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and the Weather Underground. And it suggested that Sharon had been involved in the Timothy Leary escape, too, and even that perhaps Billy had been a source of the money, which for all I knew could still lead to criminal charges. Was there a statute of limitations on jailbreak from a federal prison? “Note to self,” I thought to myself, and laughed heartily. Then I went back to work, which meant, under the circumstances, that I stopped laughing and closed my eyes again.
What else was in this fact? Well, how about that Billy could have been part of the extensive aboveground support network that Weather had: lawyers, doctors, academics, many of whom are prominent members of their professions today. That was also good stuff. But it wasn’t addressing what was bothering me.
So I tried another question. Why had Sharon come east? Well, here was a no-brainer: my new close personal friend from the FBI, Kevin Cornelius, had, the night before, told me that they had traced calls from the pay phones Sharon was using before she was arrested to Gillian Morrealle, the leftist lawyer in Boston. Clearly Solarz was looking to follow what Katherine Power had done a few years before, that is, negotiate a surrender. Katherine Power had spent eight years in jail, which was severe, but a hell of a lot less severe than what would have happened had she been arrested.
So what was bothering me? Years later, and for years later, your father would grill me on this. Why, in all of this story, was I so like a dog with a bone with this question? There was so much to write, so much story, just with what I had there.
But it wasn’t enough for me, and never did I have an explanation why. I was just built that way. Drives Rebeccah crazy. Like when I see a movie and everyone else is sitting around wiping tears from their eyes, I’m totally stuck on the fact that before he died saving the girl’s life, the hero’s dog appeared on either side of a cut with different collars, or during the chase scene that cost five million dollars to produce and had lead articles devoted to it in the
Sunday Times
, a license plate read the wrong state.
And so now, after all the work I’d done, and all I’d learned; now, with the chance to sit down and write a career-making story—I still couldn’t stop myself. What was wrong with this picture? Once again, starting with the first anonymous call, what seemed now like weeks ago, I went through the story step by step, detail by detail. And once again, I kept feeling, like an elusive sneeze, the thing that didn’t make sense.
I’ll never stop wondering at that process.
One minute, I couldn’t for the life of me conjure it up.
The next minute, it was sitting on my tongue like my own name, and I said it, aloud:
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