1:31 a.m.
Keenan lurches to a halt in front of his parents’ mid-sized bungalow. He leaps out of his car, bounds up the tiled path to the front door, and unlocks it with his key. It’s pitch-black inside; he shuts and locks the door behind him. He debates turning on the front hall lights and decides to —
A dazzling beam of light strikes him in the eyes. He holds his hands up as he turns his face away.
“Jesus, Keenan, I almost shot you! What the fuck are you doing?”
Sparks flash behind his closed lids. “Can you turn the light off, Dad?”
“I almost shot you, boy. Christ almighty in heaven, what the fuck are you doing creeping in here like a criminal in the middle of the night?”
“Dad, turn off the flashlight.”
Keenan fumbles for the light switch and flips it on. His father at last lowers the flashlight; Keenan, however, still sees stars bursting across his vision, the bright beam and concussion not mixing well.
“Dammit, Keenan, answer me.”
Rubbing at his eyes with his thumb and index finger, Keenan says, “I tried calling the house.”
“We turn the ringer off at night, you know that.”
Keenan cannot remember if he did know that or not. He does know that never before had he needed to get a hold of his parents at this hour.
“Is it Keenan?” his mother calls from deeper in the house.
“Yup. Just our boy trying to give us a heart attack. Fine lad we’ve raised. Why didn’t you ring the bell for Chrissake?”
Keenan’s vision is coming back to him, fuzzy shapes emerging out of the stars. “I didn’t want to wake Mom. It’s you I need to talk to.”
“Ha! Didn’t want to wake your mother. Nice going, you just gave her a heart attack instead. She thought someone had broken into the house to murder us.”
If Antoine is after my father, at least they seem prepared, Keenan thinks. Finally, outlines to the shapes come into focus, and he can see that his father is pointing a pistol at him.
“Dad, fuck, lower your weapon!”
“Oops . . . sorry, boy. Got caught up in the moment.”
Rosie Quinn emerges from down the hall, a thin, dark-haired woman with black eyebrows and a sweet smile. She squeezes by her much larger husband, looking wild with his faded pajamas, grizzled stubble, dishevelled hair, and long arms hanging limply, holding a pistol and a flashlight. She embraces Keenan and kisses each of his cheeks.
“How’re you doing?” she asks.
“I’m okay.”
“Really?”
“What difference does it make, Ma?” Before she can fret, Keenan says, “Dad, I have to tell you something. It’s important.”
Craig rolls his eyes: What of importance could you possibly have to tell me? Keenan has seen that look on his father’s face a thousand times. But he doesn’t back down. Not this time. He holds his father’s stare.
“Well, come on, then,” his father says, motioning with the gun for him to follow.
He turns on the light in the living room, and the three of them crowd inside. Craig puts the pistol and flashlight down on the glass coffee table, then grins at Keenan like a kid who just got his way. “I won twenty grand on your friend. I told you he was a sure thing. Though I had my doubts during the match. My God, what a battle. That little Mexican’s got some fight in him, that’s for fucking sure. Twenty grand, boy! Your mother and I are thinking of taking a cruise.”
“It’s all he’s been talking about, he could hardly fall asleep,” Rosie says. “He was so happy when that Russian man didn’t get up. Just ecstatic.”
“Want to come with us on the cruise? Not like you’re actually working right now. Twenty grand, we got money to spare. You can bring Naomi. God, I love that woman. How she ever married your sorry ass is beyond me.”
“Craig!”
“He knows I’m joking. But it’s true, to think of the decent, hard-working, impressive men she could’ve ended up with. I give you credit, boy. You always knew how to charm a pretty woman.”
“Dad, it’s Antoine I came here to talk to you about.”
“What about him?”
“Prepare yourself, okay?”
“Prepare myself? We about to have a duel? What do you mean, prepare myself?”
Keenan’s stomach twists now that he has to deliver the news. “It’s bad, Dad. It’s really, really bad.”
Craig looks at him suspiciously, then says to his wife, “Rosie, why don’t you go into the kitchen. Get Keenan some food.”
“I want to hear this,” Rosie says.
“You hungry, boy?”
Keenan looks between his parents. Now that he thinks about it, he is famished. But he is reticent to be the excuse for his father to kick his mother out.
“You hungry?” his father asks again, louder now.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m hungry.”
“Get in the kitchen. Get Keenan some food.”
“What’s the news, Key?” Rosie asks.
“Get in the kitchen!”
“All right!”
She storms out of the room. The sight is so familiar, his parents fighting, his mother storming out, that Keenan hardly registers it.
“Spit it out, Keenan,” his father snaps.
“After Antoine won his fight, he went back to his dressing room and . . .”
“And what?”
“He murdered Raymond Monk and Norman Bashinsky.”
His father bursts out laughing, as if Keenan has made the funniest joke, though there is a twang of hysteria in the throaty chuckles, some part of him seeming to recognize the truth.
“I’m not joking, Dad.”
“Fuck you, you are joking.”
“I’m serious. He strangled them.”
Craig nearly trips lurching at Keenan, grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt. “Tell me you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
His father’s ashen face contorts. Both hands now on Keenan’s shirt, shaking him. “Tell me you’re lying!”
“I’m not lying!”
Keenan slaps his father’s hands down and shoves him in the chest. Craig stumbles back. He stares at Keenan in disbelief. Keenan stares back. Not this time, old man. His father’s eyes are wild. Hateful. He charges at Keenan.
Like a pair of buffalo, snorting and grunting as they battle for supremacy of the herd, the two tall men grapple between sofas and chairs. Rosie comes running to the edge of the room.
“Stop it!” she cries.
Craig twists and yanks with his arms. Keenan’s heels lift off the ground. He strains. Keeps his toes down. He is not thrown. Unbalanced, though, his father bull-rushes him into the wall. Keenan’s shoulders collide with a picture frame. Glass breaks. Pain shoots up his back into his neck.
“Enough! Both of you, enough!”
Not this time, you old bastard. Keenan tightens his grip. Heaves his father backward. He digs deep, pivots, then wrenches with his arms.
The old man is thrown. He lands on the glass coffee table.
A shriek of glass. A shriek from his mother. “Keenan!”
His father squirms in the shattered glass. Rosie hurries to his aid, but Craig is already on his knees, hands scrabbling in the broken glass. “I’m fine,” he barks at her.
“Oh God, Craig, your back is bleeding.”
“I’m fucking fine, I said!”
His hand finds the pistol, and he shakily rises to his feet.
Keenan doesn’t retreat. Do it, he thinks.
Craig spits at him, “I’m not going to shoot you, you fucking idiot.”
He hobbles past Keenan out of the room, without another look at his wife or son.
“How could you do that to your father?” Rosie asks, her face drained of its normal olive hue. “He’s yo
ur father.”
She follows after Craig, stops, and turns around. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
A door slams at the back of the house. His mother rushes away.
* * *
Keenan’s face is red. His breaths come in short, shallow gasps, rage and humiliation constricting his chest. He looks at the shattered glass scattered across the living room rug. At the broken picture frame on the wall with a photo of the Quinns taken when he was still in high school, the whole family dressed up and smiling as one. The American dream.
Keenan rotates his shoulder. Feels the lump at the back of his head. He goes to the door and swings it open. Looking out at the poorly lit street, he wonders if Antoine or one of his crew is already lurking in the shadows. He studies the parked cars and alleys between the houses. A man could hide almost anywhere, with the streetlamps so intermittent and the houselights almost all turned off.
Keenan cannot leave and he cannot shut the door. All he wants in this moment is to get away from his parents, and yet he cannot abandon them to Antoine. And that’s if Antoine even thinks his father is the third man. If not, there’s nothing to worry about. No ghosts in those shadows. It all depends on whether or not Keenan’s father was involved in the murder of Raul Deco. And if he wasn’t, then who was?
He looks back down the darkened hall, the shadows haunted by his parents’ muffled arguing. He had wanted to take them to a hotel or the airport to ensure their safety. But he cannot face them again. He’d almost rather face Antoine than them. He looks out at his car on the street and realizes he can get out of the house and still keep watch.
Three steps down the path a thought strikes him: Why would Antoine tell you about this third man if he was after your father? Antoine had kept his plans secretive for so long, why would he reveal the final phase now unless he thought it held no effect on the outcome? Maybe he’s not after Craig, after all. But if not him, then who?
In his car, Keenan reverses a few houses down the block and turns off the engine. Nothing stirs. Not so much as a breeze.
His head aches and he still hasn’t eaten.
His mind begins to wander, and he finds himself thinking about the protest scheduled for the morning, now only hours away. He had forgotten all about it.
I’m a curse on this city, he thinks.
He leans his head back. His eyelids droop.
He punches his thigh, shakes his head, pops open his eyes. Scans the street and the yard outside his parents’ home.
I can’t do this alone.
He takes out his phone and calls the number Fischer gave him. Holds it to his ear, listening to the ring.
“Thompkins here, who may I ask is calling?”
“Thompkins? It’s Quinn, where’s Fischer? He gave me this number.”
“That’s correct, it is his number. However, all Fischer’s calls go through me. If I deem the call pertinent enough, I forward it to the undersheriff.”
Keenan winces. “Fischer must have his own phone, Thompkins. Just give me his actual number.”
“That would be a negative, Quinn. If he wanted you to have his personal number, he would’ve given it to you. Now, how can I help you?”
Fuck, Keenan thinks. “I want you to send a car to my dad’s house. Marked or unmarked, it’s up to you. But he needs protection.”
“From Deco?”
“Yeah, from Deco. Don’t you want to catch him? I got the bait right here. If he’s after my dad, this is where he’ll be. He’ll fall right into your lap, so get some men out here for both our sakes.”
“Duly noted, Quinn. I’ll alert the undersheriff to your concerns. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Keenan snorts in exasperation. The man sounds like a customer service rep. “Just make sure you get someone over here, all right?”
“It’s a busy night, Quinn. I can’t promise anything. But I will alert the undersheriff to your concerns, and I’ll send a patrol car to scout the area.”
Keenan grits his teeth and shakes the steering wheel with his free hand. The car rocks. “Just do as much as you can. Please.”
“Understood. We’ll be in touch.”
The call beeps off.
Fucking Thompkins. I can’t trust any of them.
I need a friend, Keenan thinks, which is when he realizes he hasn’t told Tyron yet what Antoine said about the death of his parents.
3
2:49 a.m.
Captain Tyron Shaw lurches awake to a dry desert night. A thunderclap and the walls of Combat Outpost Mic Check quiver. Dust falls onto his chest and light shines through new cracks in the walls.
“There’s a lot of them this time, Captain Shaw,” says a breathless sergeant appearing out of the gloom.
Tyron can hear it all now: small-arms fire, mortars, rockets. Fully clothed in body armour and desert cammies, his earplugs already in, his gloves already on, his elbow and knee pads already strapped, he rises from his cot, pulls on his Kevlar helmet, lowers his night-vision goggles, and takes hold of his M4 assault rifle.
He moves swiftly through what was once a packaging factory on the outskirts of Baghdad. Passes Marines hunkering down, trying to keep themselves small, so that the shells that manage to break through the walls and ceiling don’t find them with their shrapnel.
Observing his men, Tyron finds, once again, that he is not afraid. The worst fear comes during downtime, the anticipatory moments of danger and death. But when actual danger and death come hunting for him, when the gates of hell seem to drop open beneath him and he balances on the precipice, he does not fear. There is only the battle. There is only the fight. No life behind it, no life before it, nothing to lose until the storm settles once more.
He marches to a corner of the building into what was once the factory’s office, demarcated by flimsy plywood walls, but is now COP Mic Check’s surveillance centre, the remnants of the walls torn down after rocket attacks blew them to pieces.
“What do we got?” he asks his surveillance team.
They show him green-tinged camera feeds on various monitors, all obscured by smoke and swirling dust. “Looks like they’re hitting us with everything they have,” says Staff Sergeant Higgins. “The blast walls are soaking up a lot of the shit, but plenty is getting through.”
To echo his point, a mortar explodes outside and the walls shake.
Goggles raised, Tyron examines the images. North of them, insurgents are firing from rooftops with rockets, RPGs, and small arms. East of them, in a dirt field, men hiding in a ditch are setting up what look to be EFPs. The snipers have already taken out two of them, but the remaining insurgents are more careful with their cover. And the feeds from the west show nothing but burning tires, black smoke, and explosions.
“Get air support,” Tyron says.
Higgins gets on it.
Tyron continues to watch the footage. The only side they’re not getting hit from is the south. This is an aggressive attack. The most aggressive by far since they relieved an Army unit at this position six weeks ago.
“No air support, captain. Too much dust in the air. And the whole AO is a shit show. Battalion’s getting hit everywhere.”
Tyron stares unblinking at his company sergeant. No help on the way means this place will be rubble by morning.
“Did Intelligence report anything about an attack like this coming?”
“Not that I heard, captain. But gut feeling, I’d say they mean business. Come full strength and cancel Christmas for the lot of us.”
“I get the same feeling.” Tyron looks at the monitors, then at his men. “I like Christmas. How ’bout the rest of you?”
One voice: “Hell yeah, captain!”
“So let’s light these fuckers up.”
* * *
Tyron lurches awake to a dry desert night. His head is spinning. Where is he? On
a couch. In someone’s living room, not his own. His mouth is dry and his bladder full. He stands shakily and it comes back to him: this is Tara’s apartment.
He presses a hand to his forehead. He’d been dreaming of that night in Baghdad again. The one that earned him those medals. It had been so real, so visceral, like he was reliving it again.
He’d thought — and hoped — the dreams would stop once he was back stateside.
He stumbles his way to the bathroom, guided by the glowing lights of kitchen appliances. After he has relieved himself, he splashes water on his face and looks in the mirror. It surprises him how little his face has changed over the years. There are thin scars here and there, narrow misses from the endless roadside bombs, but it’s only in the eyes that he sees a real difference from his younger self: their steeliness, the heavier shading beneath them. He half wishes that it were a different face, so that people would realize it is a different person inside.
Tyron switches off the bathroom light and returns to the couch. The clock on the stove tells him it’s almost 3 a.m. He has barely closed his eyes. What does it matter? No operations to prepare for. No responsibilities. If he has to sleep more after he sees Marlon, he will sleep more.
He lies back down on the couch, and wonders if he will again be transported back to Baghdad. The thought pushes him away from sleep. So too does the anger inside that he cannot explain. If he looks at his life practically, his position couldn’t be better: he has made it home from two wars healthy and intact; he has money saved from his years in the Corps; he has no dependants, a degree, and a stellar military record; he can live anywhere, do anything; he has been welcomed home and showered with affection by his community; he has had a great night with an old friend; and he has kissed two women. He should be content, happy even. And yet he feels angry.
It is deep inside him, this anger, like a bruised bone. What therapy could reach it, clean out inflammation buried beneath so much flesh? He often forgets its existence, and then come moments of stillness, when there is nothing to mask it, when there is nothing to quench that simmering burn.
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