The Unwilling

by John Hart

  “I’m looking for the bartender.” He flashed the tin, and she pointed at an open door as a man stepped through from a back room. Tall and narrow-shouldered, he seemed familiar to French, a round-faced man with a twelve-pack under one arm, and two vodkas bottlenecked in the other hand.

  “We’re closed,” he said.

  “Sign says Open.”

  “We’re closed to cops.” The bartender put the bottles on the bar, then barked at the girl with the broom. “Eyes on the floor, Janelle. It won’t sweep itself.”

  Janelle twitched into motion, no dance left. French assumed there was a gun behind the bar, so he drew back enough coat to show the revolver on his hip.

  Just to be clear.

  To be sure.

  Crossing the room, he kept his eyes on everyone, but mostly the bartender. He’d seen him somewhere before, ten or twelve years ago. Snapping his fingers, he said, “Hey. Lawnmower man.”

  The bartender scowled, shaking his head.

  But French was right. He couldn’t remember the name, but in the spring of ’61, this guy and some idiot friend robbed a late-night market, and tried to escape on a riding mower. He’d caught them a mile down the road, still holding cash and stolen beer, still drunk, and entirely, hilariously out of gas.

  The booking officers had had a field day at their expense.

  So had the local paper.

  French said, “Ah, good times,” but that’s not what showed on his face. He wanted the man afraid, so he put that in his eyes, instead, the kind of cop who could beat an innocent man into confession, then take a child for ice cream with the blood still wet on his knuckles. “This kid.” French placed a photograph on the bar. “Was he in here tonight?”

  “Never seen him.”

  “Someone beat him half to death, then dropped him in a ditch two hundred yards from your front door.”

  “What happens beyond that door is not my problem.”

  “Thing is, lawnmower man, the kid is my son. I mention that simple fact so you might imagine the kind of fire I’ll rain down on anyone who lies to me about this. It’s a pot you don’t want to stir. Not tonight. Not with me at the bottom of it. Look at the picture again.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “You really do.”

  “It’s like I said. We’re closed to cops.”

  The bartender began to turn away, but French caught his wrist, and jerked him halfway across the bar. He fought back, but fear had always made French strong, and he was afraid for his son. “I have three questions,” he said. “So I suggest you look closely at this photograph.” He held the photo in one hand, and used his other to squeeze so hard that bones ground together in the bartender’s wrist. “Was my son here? What was he doing here? Who was he with?” The questions came fast, but need was the other side of fear. “We’ll start at the beginning. Was this young man here tonight?”

  “No, man. No. Jesus.” The bones ground audibly. “No kid, not tonight. Dude, I swear. Come on, that hurts!”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I lie?” French twisted harder, and felt bones flex. “Oh God! Oh Jesus!”

  The pressure stayed on until tears sprang up in the bartender’s eyes. “What about you?” French swung on the drunks at the bar. One shook his head, terrified. The other fell off the back of his stool, then ran for the exit, stumbling twice before French tripped him from behind, and pinned him with a knee. “Why are you running? What are you so afraid of?”

  The old drunk was thin and frail, but a creature had torn loose in French’s chest. “Look at the picture.” He shoved it at the old man’s face; caught the jaw, twisting it back. “I said, look at it! He was here, yes?” Fingers pressed on whiskers and brittle bone. The old man moaned in pain, but there were answers here, and French would tear them out if he had to. The bartender. The old men. In some dark place, he knew not even the girl was safe. “Was he here? Who was he with?” The old man began to cry. “I’ll ask you one more time…”

  “Stop it, please! You’re hurting him!”

  It was the girl, ashen and afraid. She had both hands on her heart, a slip of a girl.

  “He can’t even speak. Don’t you see? He never has.”

  She touched her mouth, and French looked down at the old man, seeing him for the first time, a frail old drunk, wild-eyed and afraid, moaning wetly as he worked a mouth with no tongue.

  French stumbled back, horrified by the extent of his fear and rage, and by the creature that followed behind. He wanted to apologize, but knew there were no sufficient words. So he showed his palms instead, backing away until he found night air and the quiet and his car. From behind the wheel, he watched people flee the bar, the old men stumbling off together, the bartender leaving next, and then the young woman, who locked the building’s door before shaking out a cigarette and placing it between her lips. She didn’t notice the police car until half the cigarette was gone, then she started his way, and he watched her come. The narrow waist. The shadows for eyes. If she was afraid, it didn’t show. She put a hand on the roof, and looked inside. French was unsure what to say, so he spoke in cop. “You shouldn’t lock up alone in a place like this. It’s dangerous.”

  “Normally, I don’t, but you scared the bartender pretty bad.”

  Up close, the girl was pretty and younger than she’d first seemed, maybe only eighteen. “About what happened in there…”

  “You kind of lost your shit. Yeah, I saw it.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Old Tom? He’s tougher than he looks.”

  “He’s a regular?”

  “Like the rain.”

  She smoked more, and studied him with a contemplative air. French thought something was happening, but couldn’t think clearly. The way he’d behaved, that blind rage. The girl was still watching him, her eyes either gray or dark blue. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eighteen.”

  “And your parents know you work in a place like this?”

  “So what?” She frowned around the cigarette. “Now you’re the good cop?”

  “I’ve pulled bodies from this place. Before your time, but more than once.”

  She shrugged, quietly amused. “I think I’m safe enough.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “My father is pulling a dime for the club. Central Prison.”

  “So this place?”

  “It’s easy money, and it’s like I said, no one touches me unless they want every Hells Angel in the state gunning for them.”

  “This is a club bar?”

  “Yes and no. A couple nights a week.”

  “And the bartender?”

  “A wannabe.”

  French was feeling better now: slower thoughts, some kind of order. “It’s Janelle, right?”

  “It is.”

  “What can I do for you, Janelle?”

  She looked away, and small teeth appeared as she caught her bottom lip. “That boy is really your son?”

  “He was here, then. Did you see what happened?”

  “I’m no rat. I noticed him, is all.”

  “And…?”

  “And he was my age and cute and kind of sweet-looking.”

  “He almost died, right up there in the ditch, dumped like trash with his head kicked in.” She shook her head, then showed the same twilight eyes. “It’s just us, Janelle. All alone, no one around.” She hesitated, but French was close. “What would your father do if it were you, half-dead in a ditch? What would you want him to do? My son is only eighteen. He’s your age…”

  “Okay, all right. Enough. Jesus.” She lit another cigarette. “Look, it’s like I said. I was working, and I saw him, and I paid attention. Good-looking. Kind of earnest. I couldn’t hear everything he said, but I know he was asking about Tyra Norris…”

  “Tyra Norris. You’re certain about that name?”

  “Hey, I’m no rat, but I’m not stupid, either. He was asking about Tyra Norris—I heard it
plain as day—and before someone killed that bitch dead, she was the original slut-whore from hell. Bikers. Truckers. Even a few cops.” She pointed with the cigarette, one eye half-closed. “Maybe that’s what got your boy beat.”

  * * *

  In the driveway an hour later, French saw a light in Gibby’s room. He wanted desperately to see his son, to know he was okay, but also to push hard about Tyra Norris and the Carriage Room. But time, he decided, was a friend. Let the resentments settle, the angers fade. Going to his office instead, French poured a drink, and squared Jason’s military records on the desk, staring at the envelope until the drink was gone.

  Three in the morning.

  Lots of dark left.

  Taking a breath to steady his resolve, he broke the seal and started reading. It was all there in photographs and plain print: the lost years and the war, the life of his middle son. It took an hour to skim the file, and two more to read it again more slowly. Turning off the light, French tried to understand the things he’d learned of his son and the darkness of this particular war. It was not easy. There was no clear path. He was exhausted and hurting, but when the sun rose, he was still at the desk, still dumbfounded, thunderstruck, blown the absolute fuck away.

  24

  Jason woke on a hard bunk, and knew, even without windows, that it was not yet sunrise. That was the rhythm of war and prison. Too many bloody dawns and dead friends. In the dark, he did push-ups and stretched, then trained for forty minutes, not just the close-quarter combat techniques taught to every marine in Force Recon—the combination of Okinawan karate, judo, tae kwon do, and jujitsu perfected by Bill Miller in 1956—but also a devastating blend of Van An Phai and Vovinam, learned across two years from a colonel in the South Vietnamese army. The movements were fluid, fast, precise. He worked until the sweat poured and the guards came to take him back to death row. One, he knew. Kudravetz. The other was new to X’s detail. They shackled him in silence, and no one spoke on the long walk. No one needed to. At death row, they removed the restraints and sent him down to X.

  “Good morning, Jason.”

  Jason took the final step down, and met X where he stood beneath the stone arch. “It’s a little early.”

  “And yet you’re not my first visitor.”

  Jason frowned because X did nothing without reason; said nothing without reason. He wanted Jason to ask about the visitor, so Jason did not.

  Eventually, X shrugged. “You remember Reece, I’m sure. A blunt instrument, admittedly, but predictable when such things matter.”

  Jason was still trying to gauge the moment. A smile. A frown. In the subbasement, they rarely meant the normal things. “How about you tell me why I’m here.”

  “You’re here because I found yesterday unsatisfactory. Because I went to bed unhappy, and woke thinking we should try again.” X turned for the cells, and Jason followed with the same wariness. At the second cell, X gestured at a table set for breakfast. “Bacon and eggs, grapefruit and pastry. This is honey from the warden’s wife. She’s begun to keep bees, apparently.”

  He offered a chair, and Jason sat stiffly, watching X do the same. He was clean-shaven and finely dressed, but his face was bruised and taped, his knuckles scraped raw. X noticed the studied glance, and shrugged a second time. “One of the Pagans, late last night. I think his name was Patterson.”

  “Was Patterson?”

  “Was. Is.”

  “Why a Pagan?”

  “I may spend my days below ground, but I do hear things, rumbles of displeasure from some of the Pagans. They seem to believe you stole from the club and put a few bullets in one of their shot callers. I made it known that you are under my protection.”

  “Is that why I’m here? So I can thank you?”

  “For now, it’s about breakfast. For later…” X made an expansive gesture. “Discourse. Debate. A few well-fought contests in the days which remain.”

  “Discourse and debate.”

  “Honest discourse. Vigorous debate.”

  “You had Tyra killed for the sake of a conversation?”

  “In part, yes.” X frowned for the first time, shaking his head. “But also because she was cruel, selfish, and vain, an utter waste of life.”

  “And what of my life?”

  “You’ll lose a few days of it. A small price.”

  “No, X. Not a few days. I’ll be here long after they kill you. The lights will flicker, and I’ll be here to see it happen. Ten years later, I’ll still be here. You’ve assured as much: the photographs, the murder weapon.”

  “Yes, well…” X poured coffee for them both. “You’ve known for some time that I am not a nice man.”

  He lifted a cup, his attitude so dismissive that Jason found it impossible to keep his anger in check.

  Tyra’s death.

  His freedom.

  X must have seen the conflict in Jason’s face, yet acted oblivious. “Tell me again, Jason. How long since you left this place?”

  “Two months and nine days.”

  “And, in that time, did you think of me? Beyond what I’d chosen to share, were you curious about my life before this place? Did you search out the articles, the documentaries? The public record is quite extensive.”

  “No.” Jason clenched his jaw. “I left here knowing everything I needed to know about your life and the people you killed. If I forgot half of what you told me, I’d still know too much.”

  “Do you know how they caught me?”

  Jason did, in fact, know a lot about X’s life before prison. In spite of what he’d said, he’d watched both documentaries, read the articles and police interviews, the in-depth profiles in the glossy magazines. No journalist had all the facts, of course, and no cop alive knew how many people X had actually killed. But Jason could name them all. He knew what they’d looked like and how they’d died and what small flicker of life had drawn X like a moth from the dark. He knew their last words and how they’d begged and what they’d felt like and smelled like, and how X had placed his tongue, once, on a still-beating heart that tasted of salt, and felt like warm vinyl.

  When the cops finally caught up with X, even the most arrogant admitted it was blind luck or providence.

  But for this …

  If not for that …

  Now Jason had to wonder. X had raised the subject. That meant some part of him wanted to talk about it. Or it was part of some larger game.

  Misdirection.

  Distraction.

  X’s great advantage lay in the fact that his goals were his alone, and unknowable. He could spend six months plotting a single encounter, or envision, in an instant and with absolute clarity, the long weeks of torture that would lead at last to some poor soul’s death. It was no different in the subbasement. Nothing could be taken for granted. Face value did not exist.

  “How did they catch you?”

  “I thought you disliked tales of my youth.”

  “I do. But you did raise the subject.”

  “The story is boring. I’ve already moved on.” He waved his cigarette to underline the point. “To business, then. Reece came for a reason. So did you.”

  “Discourse and debate?”

  X disliked the tone, but didn’t make it an issue. “Honest discourse,” he said. “Vigorous debate. And when we fight, I expect that same vigor and commitment. Yesterday, you gave me reason to doubt.” X slipped one hand into a pocket. “This is to assure your commitment, to know that in these final days, I have the Jason I’ve so long admired.” He placed a photograph facedown on the table. “Reece brought it just for you. We’ll call it a token.”

  Jason reached for the photograph, and X gave him long seconds to take it all in: the young man’s face, the light on his cheek, and the way he stood. “Your parents’ driveway, I believe. He favors you, don’t you think? The intelligent eyes. The generous mouth.” Jason tore his gaze from the photograph of his little brother, and X was waiting with a smile on his face. “So we’re clear,” he said.
“So we understand each other.”

  25

  After the hospital, I stared for a long time at the stranger in my bathroom mirror. He had one good eye, the other swollen shut. A bandage wrapped the crown of his head, and the skin of his face was a camouflage of purples, greens, and iodine browns. The same stains mottled his arms and ribs, and when the stranger took the bandage from his head, I saw cruel black lines where his scalp had been laid bare and stitched back together. I frowned, and the stranger did, too.

  That was about our father.

  There should have been twenty cops at that bar: bright lights and guns and hard men asking hard questions. Instead, there’d been only me.

  I blinked, and the stranger disappeared. I couldn’t remember all of the fight, but the ditch stayed with me: the taste of water, and of his boot, the smell of his skin when, at last, he’d let me breathe. Listen to me, kid. Die or not, I don’t give a shit. But if you talk to the cops or anyone else or come out of this ditch before we’re good and gone, I’ll stomp a mudhole in your face so dark and forever you’ll never see daylight again …

  He’d told me to stay, and like a dog at his feet, I’d done it. I’d waited as footsteps faded, and engines fired, and silence came behind. Even then, I’d stayed in the water, deep down in the grass and mud. I’d stayed until the crying ceased, then crawled up and out, into the headlights and the anger and the shame.

  * * *

  When the new day came, my father did, too. I was on the bed, and down to one emotion, but anger could wear a lot of faces: hostility, bitterness, the cold, quiet fury I’d come to know best.

  “Come in.”

  I kept my voice flat, and stood because him looking down was not going to be okay with me. He came in, closed the door, and we met in that eye-to-eye place.

  “Can we talk about it?” he asked.