Keeper of the Children Read online

  “I don’t know. Ask the shrink.”

  “But what’s the point of it? What’s this monk doing?”

  “All right. He says his name is Kheim. Tran Cao Kheim. He says he’s a Buddhist monk. From Vietnam. A refugee. He bills himself as a bringer of light. Neat? Bringer of light. What he’s selling is not religion and prayers, Benson. Oh, no. Redemption through self-sacrifice. Helping others. Get this: atoning for your greedy parents’ sins. How about that? He’s lured fifteen or twenty teenagers into his temple. They live in a building down by the river in a commune. And they spend all their days out in the streets with prayers and drums and chants, begging money—for guess what? Guess. To buy rice for Asia’s starving children. See? What a package. The bastard is nothing but an Oriental con artist. He lives like the Grand Lama of Greater Philadelphia—brass temple gongs, joss sticks, silk robes, Chinese art objects. Right out of a Fu Manchu movie. How’s that make you feel? I bet most of that money stays right in his pockets.”

  “That ought to be a piece of cake for the tax people.”

  “It’s all cash, Benson. Coins and paper money. There are no records, no invoices, no purchase orders, no receipts. Nothing.”

  Benson considered that. “All those kids are begging?”

  “Every one. Including yours. I have to tell you that twenty kids can bring in a lot of cash every day.”

  Benson nodded, studied Custis for a moment. “How did your son get involved with them?”

  “He came up to town to get a seed catalog. And it was a girl in her orange sheet.” The pencil in his fist shattered. Custis looked at it, then flung it into a wastebasket. “The son of a bitch has turned my kid into a wandering beggar. What I really want to do, Benson—what I really want to do is go down there to his place and grab him by his two Oriental ears and tear him in half.”

  “Maybe that’s what he needs.”

  “That’s not going to get my kid home. But I’ll tell you what, Benson. You need to be convinced. Go see for yourself. Go out and see those kids and make up your own mind.”

  “Okay, okay. But how about getting a lawyer in the meantime?”

  “The law? All right, we’ll talk about the law, Benson. I can tell you everything you want to know. I’ve been the route—the truant officer, the juvenile courts, the children’s shelter, writs of habeas corpus, the social workers climbing all over my home, making a list of everything in the refrigerator … why, I’ve had that Kheim up on every kind of charge, including corrupting the morals of a minor. Corrupting? You wouldn’t believe his place. Spotless as a barracks. Balanced diet. Wash under the wings every day. Clean orange sheet every day. Prayers. No hanging around street corners, no pot, no booze, no drugs. Hell, they’re all in bed by ten. The case workers say those kids are living in heaven compared to the ghetto kids they have in their case loads. So what’s the beef, they say. Overprivileged middle-class runaway kids doing something useful for the first time in their lives, raising rice money for starving Asian children. We have more important problems to worry about, they say.” He waved a hand at Benson’s protesting hand. “Finally, Benson, the authorities get tired of it because once they root a kid out of there, he only goes right back again. So everybody wants to ignore the whole thing. You know how many runaway kids there are? I’ll tell you. Countless. And if you want to make a cop yawn, hand him a runaway child case. He’ll be napping in thirty seconds flat.”

  “I thought you had some kind of a plan. You make it sound pretty hopeless.”

  “Hopeless. Oh, no. No no, Benson. Let me tell you. Yesterday it was hopeless. But today there’s hope. In fact, this time I’ve got him.” He seized a typewritten document from his desk and held it before Benson’s face. “See—I figured out that there’s only one way to get those kids away from him. And that’s to get him away from them. Follow?”

  “Give it to me again.”

  “Deportation. Get the guy shipped back to Vietnam. So I hired this international detective agency in Washington, and what do you know? The bastard’s a fake. He isn’t Tran Cao Kheim from Vietnam at all. He got in here with the crowd when ’Nam fell, but he’s an impostor. In fact, he’s some kind of monk from Tibet, they think. He left Tibet when the Chinese Communists took over and he ended up in Vietnam. They even think he was in the black market there. So he’s a fraud. And that’s grounds for sending him right back.”

  “To the Communists? And they’ll take him?”

  “Eagerly, Benson. Eagerly. Maybe they’ll shoot him. Or maybe they’ll send him back to China and they’ll shoot him. All I know is, I’ve been trying all day to reach this key guy in the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization in Washington and I’m finally getting through. He’s going to call me at home tonight at nine. I tell you I can’t wait to put this in his ear.”

  “And that’s the plan? Get him deported?”

  “Can’t miss. You interested in helping?”

  “Sure. How?”

  “Come to my house tonight before nine. You can meet two other parents and listen in on my phone call from Washington. We want a showing of hands. Follow?”

  “No. What’s the showing of hands for?”

  “Because the U.S. authorities are reluctant to send a former Vietnamese back to the Communists. They figure it’s a death sentence. So we need a bunch of hopping-mad parents to get the government moving. See? There are only four or five families that are willing to go to the authorities with me. The rest are afraid. Hell, my own wife is afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “They think Kheim will turn their kids into vegetables. Brainwash them. Let me tell you—” He turned his head toward the office window. “Listen, Benson.”

  Benson listened.

  “You don’t hear it?”

  It was a dull distant thumping, regular, rhythmical. “Drums?”

  “Shhhhh.”

  They listened again. The faint drumbeat down in the street was now mixed with the tap of tambourines and the silver voices of finger cymbals. Then commenced the singing—youthful, exuberant, defiant.

  Benson stood up and walked to the office window. He could see all the way up Market Street to City Hall, its dome capped by the lofty figure of William Penn. To the left he looked at Independence Hall, which held its spire and clock tower high above the broad, sun-filled mall. He searched the figures and the horse-drawn carriages for the sound. He looked north toward the U.S. Mint, overlooking the Mall, and across to the Federal Reserve Bank Building. In the late afternoon sun the streets were crowded, confused. People were thronging down subway steps, bunching at bus stops and flowing around the cars that choked the thoroughfares. A burst of pigeons rose and passed the office window, flying up out of sight.

  His eyes finally found them: a swaying thread of orange gowns, boys and girls, with bowls. Several figures bore long conga drums, thumping as they stepped; others rapped tambourines, and two girls tinkled finger cymbals. They danced and capered as they moved through the crowds, singing, smiling and proffering their metal bowls for coins.

  Benson could see now that they were all teenagers, more than a dozen. Two boys were black; one girl was a slender, graceful Oriental. Bringing up the rear, two girls—they seemed to be about fifteen—carried infants in slings on their backs. Benson wondered who the fathers were.

  It was the turning of the head or the swaying of the golden hair that announced his daughter. She looked strange—shocking, in the orange gown, holding her bowl out and smiling.

  “You’ll do a lot of that before this is over,” said Custis.

  “What?”

  “Make fists.”

  Then Benson saw Pammy: eyes that never looked directly into any face, Miss Chip-on-the-shoulder, thrusting the song into the crowd like a weapon, flinging the words into the faces of the passersby, happily at odds with the world. As they crossed the wide Independence Mall, she defiantly watched the approach of a traffic patrolman, who, with a pantomime of angry hands and strained neck muscles, ordered them to ke
ep moving.

  “I don’t look anymore,” Custis said. He seemed spent, slumped in his chair, feeling every beat of the drum. “Every day, same time, going back to their roost like vampires. See that skinny, tall one with glasses?”

  “Yes. With the conga.”

  “That’s my kid.”

  Benson looked around for his raincoat.

  “Going to have a look-see? Hang on to your temper, Benson.”

  “I’ll see you at nine tonight.”

  “Mad as hell, I’m sure.”

  Independence Hall’s steeple was pointing a long shadow finger across Walnut Street when Benson emerged. Without haste, he walked after the procession, down Market Street toward the river. It was turning colder.

  As he drew near, he could see that they paraded all the trappings of poverty. Their orange gowns were made of cheap muslin, saffron-dyed and overlaid with orange blanketing, tied with twine; their bare legs were set in worn, broken shoes, many of them laced with the same tan twine. Twine also held the congas suspended from the boys’ necks, aided by rag-wrapping across their shoulders, to ease the rubbing; the original flower design painted on the barrels of the drums was faded. But, as Curtis had said, everything was clean.

  Benson watched them moving through the indifferent crowds, around buses and cars, and the old nursery rhyme scurried across his mind:

  Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark,

  The beggars are coming to town …

  At Market and Fourth they passed a toy store. Only Renni seemed to notice it: her eyes studied the display of hand puppets, slowing her walk until Pammy seized her hand and pulled her along.

  Then Renni turned her attention to Ben Franklin’s reconstructed courtyard across the street. Watching her, Benson felt regret: She was discovering the city—his city—and he would have liked to stroll the streets with her, introducing her to it. He could have revealed it almost brick by brick. Streets he’d roamed since childhood, seeing them all through the lens of an old Leica he’d always carried, a disciple of Steichen.

  Seeing her in her orange gown made him feel cheated. Which made him feel angry.

  The group paused at Third Street and began a thumping, scuffling chant, sidestepping to the left and to the right, stiffly, mechanically, clinking loose coins in their bowls toward the pedestrians as they chanted. Most people passed them with barely a glance.

  Benson watched his daughter, looking for an unnatural gesture or pose that would reveal mind control, hypnosis—something. A born mime, she was being tempted by the large rush-hour audience. She stepped from side to side, smiling and chanting, then a slight lift of her left foot and a twitch of her upper lip and nose and, in an instant, she’d turned herself into the world’s largest marionette. The uncanny mimicry suggested even the guide strings. She seemed mirthful, spontaneous as usual.

  The approach of the traffic policeman ended the dance, and the group resumed their ragtag move toward the river. But in Benson’s mind, the impression had been made: It was Renni’s usual irrepressible gaff, like a giggle in church. It seemed normal—but what was normal?

  As they walked toward the waterfront, the sundown breeze off the river rose to meet them, fluttering and billowing their saffron gowns. Their breath was turned to vapor. In the last rays of sunlight, the flag on the three-masted schooner restaurant at the foot of Market Street snapped steadily in the wind. Lights were on in the stores and in the offices above; street lamps were lit. Benson buttoned his raincoat at the throat and longed for his overcoat in Milan.

  At Second Street they turned out of the wind and walked past Old Christ Church. They wandered into the warehouse district near the river, past darkened wholesale furniture stores and shoe findings outlets, an area of worn brick and weathered boards. The two adolescent mothers took their babies off their backs and carried them in their arms. Silent now in the strangely empty streets, they all straggled along until they finally came to a cobbled alley. They turned into it.

  Benson saw them cluster at a doorway and enter two at a time a building that had once been an office workshop with workrooms on the first floor. Now it was, according to the sign: “HOUSE OF PEACE. Tran Cao Kheim, Buddhist Monk.”

  Every window was crowded with hanging plants behind carefully washed, shining panes of glass. The sidewalk had been scrupulously swept, the white marble step at the entrance had been scrubbed. In the corridor and just inside the window, several kerosene lamps shed a soft golden light. The delicious odor of curry and chicken was carried by the breeze. It all created an aura of orderliness, homeliness, comfort, warmth. Yet as the children stood waiting to enter, there was no sound, no chatter or. laughter.

  Soon Benson heard one of the babies cry.

  A slight movement caused him to look up at a large second-floor window. There, staring sternly down at him, dressed in a black robe, stood a man with a tan Oriental face and a shaven pate. Cats surrounded him, huge cats, Siamese cats, larger than any Benson had ever seen before. They too stared down at him, moving among the standing plants, slowly twitching their upraised tails without taking their eyes from Benson. The man picked up one, chocolate-colored, with pale eyes. It softly nipped at his throat, under the ear, millimeters from the jugular vein.

  The man’s eyes were relentless. In the ruddy glow of a kerosene lamp the pupils were black and lustrous as wet buttons, with no hint of humor or warmth. There was, in fact, no softening or compromising element about the man—not in the stark, lean skull, not in the severely cut black gown, not in the masklike expression.

  Renni, waiting to enter the building, had looked up at him and, following his gaze, turned and for the first time saw her father. She started violently. Then she quickly turned again and looked up at Kheim. Once more, she looked back at her father. She took a step toward him, paused, looked up at the window.

  All the other children had entered the building now, and Renni stood alone, between the doorway and her father, not twenty feet away.

  As she looked up at the window, Kheim signaled her: he swung a hand that commanded her to enter. Renni looked at her father, then turned and ran into the building. She shut a wrought-iron vestibule gate behind her.

  Benson walked up to the gate. Gripping it, he peered into the vestibule. A soft kerosene lamp hung from a chain in the dusk. Renni was gone.

  Stepping back, Benson looked up at Kheim, at the stern Oriental figure and the relentless eyes. By lamplight, Tran Cao Kheim seemed like an oil portrait in which the artist had arranged all the elements for one purpose: to present an urgent warning.

  Benson nodded solemnly once at Kheim and turned to walk away in the dusk. The only sound was the crying of the baby.

  As he turned, he saw Renni’s shadowed face staring at him from a high window. She waved once and was gone.

  CHAPTER 2

  They sat in the restaurant at a table by the window, Benson, his wife and his son, eating hamburgers while they stared out at the nighttime traffic.

  Benson said: “They looked normal enough to me. Renni seems perfectly okay, and in the street she acted as though the whole thing was a lark. And that Pammy doesn’t need mind control as long as you let her shake her fist at the world. As for the others, they looked like a bunch of adolescent idealists.”

  “Then what’s keeping her there?”

  Benson shook his head. “Custis says they’re under some kind of mind control. He’s really got his hopes pinned on this deportation proceeding.”

  Sue Benson sat before her unfinished food, her listless eyes watching the passing traffic.

  “It could work, Sue. Deportation.”

  She nodded at him. “When would we get Renni home then?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Weeks? Months?”

  “Sue, you make it sound forever. Let’s take it a step at a time.” He looked at his watch. “I have a meeting in half an hour. Then I have to be at Custis’s house at nine for that phone call to Washington. Then bed. Bed.”

  “I’m sorry yo
u had to come home to this, Eddie. You should have been in bed hours ago. You must be asleep on your feet.”

  He touched her hand. “It’s okay. We’ll get this straightened out somehow. I’ll tell you one thing—when it’s over we’re all going on a long vacation somewhere.”

  “I don’t want a vacation, Eddie. I want my family back. I want Renni back home. That’s all-in her room with her marionettes and her friends. I want her to have her childhood back.”

  “So do I.” He pictured Kheim’s waving hand and Renni obediently entering the building. He hadn’t told Sue about that. Anger made his face flush.

  They all watched silently as the waitress put an ice cream sundae in front of Top.

  “I wish I could talk to her,” said Sue.

  “Sue, we’re not in competition. It’s not as though we’re trying to top Kheim’s best offer.”

  “The way to get Renni home,” said Top, “is get Pammy home.” He licked a drop of whipped cream off his fingers.

  Benson smiled, surprised. “Not bad, Top. Now, how do we get Pammy home?”

  “Throw a party for her,” said Top. “That jerk loves parties.”

  “I don’t think I could bring myself to do that,” said Sue.

  Benson watched her face. “Come on, Sue. For the time being, Renni can’t get into much trouble out every day on the streets in full public view.”

  “It’s not the days I’m worried about.” She groped in her handbag for a tissue. “Two of those girls have babies.”

  From the twenty-third floor of the Medicine and Science Building, the research center looked out over the nightscape of the city. Benson stared down at the city lights as he walked the long corridor from the elevator.

  “Sorry I can’t give you much time.” Dr. Keller held forth his hand to Benson.

  “Working the night shift?”

  “Well, in a way. Right now we’re the night shift and the day shift and every other shift. That’s the life of a scientist—never go home. We’re in the middle of a research project for the National Mental Health Foundation. These things in the tanks—they’re sea snails. They’re relatives of the aplysia, and we’re trying to give them an anxiety neurosis.” He looked at Benson’s expression and smiled. “Trying to drive them around the bend. Don’t ask why.”