by James Grady
“Do you have your car keys?” he’d asked Nora when the truckers left.
“Yes,” she answered. “No.”
“I have to—”
“Do what you have to do,” she’d told him. “But I won’t give you my keys to do it. You want to run your sorry ass into town and drink, fine, your choice. But I’m not letting you drive my car drunk, and I’m not making it easy for you.”
“I don’t need any AA bullshit!”
“That’s right,” she said, still reading the paper, “you’ve got enough bullshit of your own.”
He trembled: in rage, in need, in fear. He could force her to—No. No. Sweating, shaking, gut wrenching, he staggered back into the kitchen. His mind reeled. He held on to the sink until he could finish the dishes, until the sickness passed.
They didn’t need to talk about that incident.
She made him keep practicing his katas, though he knew she hated the thought of fighting. “They make you feel safe,” she’d told him. She had Carmen bring him an expensive pair of running shoes from Vegas and always had coffee waiting for him when he staggered back down the road.
“Maybe I just want to see how far you’ll run,” she told him. “Maybe I just like to watch you come back.”
She shot a rattlesnake on the road one day. With the café owner’s gun, a .25 automatic with a cracked pearl handle.
Using the pay phone by the highway, Jud had reached Dean in Los Angeles.
“Check my tracks,” Jud had asked. Dean eagerly agreed.
When Jud called Dean two days later, he learned that the dead man at the Oasis bar hadn’t even made the L.A. papers.
“I went there like a shadow,” said Dean. “Bartender bragged about the cops doing shit. He probably told them nothing. If you want, he’ll tell me—”
“Leave him alone,” said Jud.
And Dean laughed.
“Old day, old ways, huh?” he asked. “If you want—”
“All I want is for you to be cool—understand, Dean? Nothing more. Nothing less. Cool. And don’t worry.”
“Worry? I don’t worry. Did you forget who I am?”
“I know,” said Jud.
“I’ve been waiting. Waiting. Why were you so long gone?”
“Never mind,” said Jud.
“Your friend called.”
Jud’s hand tightened on the receiver.
“That writer. Nick Kelley.”
“You gave him your number—remember?”
“Remember. Yes, I remember. So did he.” Dean laughed again, high-pitched, intense—then abruptly clipped off. “He wanted to be sure you were fine.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I didn’t know anything. Then.”
“Don’t have any contact with him—any.”
Dean’s voice was soft, chilly. “Is he a problem?”
“No: he’s not a player.”
“Oh.”
At the pay phone in the desert, Jud wiped his brow, closed his eyes.
“My leg is fine,” whispered Dean. “I’m strong.”
“Just stay cool.”
“Where are you?”
Jud opened his eyes.
“If something stirs,” said Dean, “you’ll need to know.”
Through the windows of the café, Jud saw Nora laughing with Carmen.
“I’m out of touch,” he said.
“That’s not smart.”
He was right. He was wrong and he was right. He was Dean, and Jud knew it. His head ached and rolled with alcoholic waves, his heart said no, but crazy Dean made sense, so Jud made the best play he could think of.
“I’ll give you a pay phone number,” said Jud. “I’m not there, but I’ll detour there every other day at six in the morning. If I don’t answer, don’t speak.”
“Relax,” said Dean. “I’ve got your back.”
The pay phone hadn’t rung since. Jud made no other calls—not even to Nick. What could he say? Nick was out of it, clear. Had a real life. Jud wouldn’t pull him in.
Relax, Jud told himself as he lay in Nora’s bed. Your trail is clean, your tracks are gone. They can’t find you, can’t touch you. He glanced toward the curtained window, the night beyond. There was nothing out there. Nothing he could see.
But something bothered him. Something he might have done, some erratic act lost in chemical and battle-battered brain cells, some vibration humming deep in his instincts from a step he couldn’t remember, couldn’t connect.
Years ago, you’d have remembered, Jud told himself. But years ago, you wouldn’t have had a misstep to remember.
“Carmen brought supplies,” said Nora as she walked back into the bedroom. Still naked. She carried a brown paper grocery sack. “Look, everything we could ask for!”
She climbed on the bed, pulled the sheet over her legs.
“The floor’s cold,” she said, lifting a carton of cigarettes out of the sack. She took a pack from the carton, slit a thumbnail along cellophane, handed him a bottle of spring water.
“And,” she said, “we even have”—she pulled a tabloid newspaper out of the bag—“the truth of the world!”
The American Enquirer. The nation’s largest weekly tabloid newspaper, available with equal ease at a Korean green grocer in uptown Manhattan, New York, or at Manhattan, Montana’s, food store-gas station.
“I don’t want to see that thing,” snapped Jud, sitting up in bed and looking the other way.
“Come on!” Nora lit a cigarette. “It’s all just fun.”
“I know what it says.”
“How? What’s the big deal?”
Jud closed his eyes, hung his head. When he looked at her again, she felt a chill in his eyes.
“Turn to page nine,” he said. “The astrology column. It’s been there for twenty years, always on the same page. Same guy, they never change his picture.”
“Okay,” she said, turning the pages, finding the feature. “You want to know your horoscope?”
“Today’s date,” he said. “What’s the sign for today?”
“That’s … Pisces.”
“Count that sign as zero. Go chronologically. What’s the sign for number seven?”
After a moment, she answered, “Libra.”
“Somewhere in Libra it says ‘choppy waters.’”
“‘Libra,’” Nora read aloud. “‘September twenty-third to October twenty-second. Moon cycle high. Romance in the picture. Financial caution wise. Ch …’”
She looked at him. His face was impassive.
“‘Choppy waters,’” she said. “How did you know that was in there?”
His smile was hard. “Just lucky.”
“Because you’re a spy,” she said.
The forgotten cigarette in her hand dropped a long ash onto the paper with the truth of the world.
“I’m not supposed to ask questions, am I?” she said.
“Nobody’s supposed to ask questions,” he whispered.
“What are you supposed to do?”
“Follow orders. Get in touch.”
“What are you going to do?” she whispered before she could stop herself.
He sat on the edge of her bed. And shook his head no.
For a long time, they sat there. In silence. Nora smoked her cigarette, stubbed it out. She put the newspaper on the floor by her side of the bed. Turned out the light.
CRACK PEOPLE
In the gentle light of dawn, Nick Kelley watched his son sleep. The baby lay in his crib, snug in his one-piece yellow pajamas, his beloved blue-and-white-checkered cotton blanket bundled beside him.
The baby stirred. Rubbed his nose with a fist that could just encircle his father’s finger. Blinked his blue eyes open.
“Hi, Saul,” whispered Nick.
The child’s brow wrinkled as the world came into focus.
They heard the dog bark; the front door open and close; Juanita call out “Good morning” and Sylvia answer as she brushed her hair in the
master bedroom. The nursery smelled of dried milk and damp diaper. Warm blankets.
Saul struggled to his feet and padded along the slat walls of his crib toward “Da’y.” Almost there, the baby stopped, his attention transfixed by the sun streaming through the window. His tiny hand let go of the crib and opened to catch the light.
The transient beauty of the moment welled inside Nick. His eyes glistened. In these middle years, he felt in his heart the knowledge that as a young man he’d found with his mind: that the cost of joy lies in the luck we inherit and the loves we embrace; that yesterday’s choices create today’s chances, and that each dawn gives us the terrible freedom to choose again, certain only that we have more to lose. Still, Nick believed in some nameless force akin to gravity that ruled whatever redemption life could offer, a force he felt bound to by common sense and simple honor; a force that required him to be true, to not flinch.
“I’m sorry, Son,” whispered Nick. “I’ll do my best.”
Behind him, Sylvia said, “There are my guys!”
Nick turned to watch her beautiful smile fade as she absorbed the look on his face.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
An hour later, they sat at the kitchen table, the newspapers still in their plastic wrappers, their coffee cups empty. From upstairs came the sound of Saul and Juanita laughing.
He’d told Sylvia everything—everything he could articulate, details colored in to a previously sketchy perspective of his days since Jud’s farewell phone call. About Dean, meeting his CIA friend. About Jack Berns and the old man in the library.
“All that wasn’t coincidence,” he told her.
“It could be your imagination,” she said. “Our lives aren’t one of your books. I know you want them to be: exciting—”
“Safe,” he said. “I want them to be safe.”
She shook her head. “It’s Jud’s fault—whatever it is.”
“I’ve got my share of blame,” said Nick.
“For what?” she said. “What’s there? Paranoia? Mysterious strangers? Politics? Where’s a bottom line?”
“My guess is somebody’s nervous about what I’m doing—the story, knowing Jud, the link between the two.”
“What story? That bullshit nothing for Peter Murphy?”
“Nobody knows it’s nothing.”
“It’s all air,” she said. “Where’s your liability?”
My wife, the lawyer, he thought. “Skeletons in my closet. Reporter’s privilege should keep me out of a grand jury. Unless they’re desperate and know how far over the line I went.”
“Nobody knows that except Jud,” she said.
“They’d never let him in front of a grand jury.”
“So what do you have to worry about? Being unpopular with bureaucrats or that private eye’s clients? The hell with them. There’s nobody out there who gives a shit about you personally, and professionally, the rules in this town cover you.”
“If everybody follows the rules,” said Nick. He dreaded putting words to his worst fears; doing so would infect the woman he loved with worry and paranoia. And doubt about him, for Nick knew she didn’t believe in the power of shadows over substance.
“Honey …” She shook her head. “It’s the 1990s. Hoover is dead, Watergate is over…. It’s a new era.”
“And the story is the best shield I’ve got,” he said.
His wife sighed. “You don’t need a shield if you stay away from guys like Jud.”
“Sorry to have all that history in my bags.”
She brushed her hand through his silver-laced black hair, smiled.
“Hell,” she said, “you got stuck with my mother.”
Their laughter carried tension out of the kitchen.
“What are you going to do next?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
Sylvia smiled. “I’ve got an idea.”
Nick and the old woman met for lunch in a Mexican restaurant so far out Pennyslvania Avenue it was almost off Capitol Hill. Soon as they sat down, she ordered a beer.
“American,” she said, “one of the real ones, not that light crap. And keep the fruit.”
Nick had the same. They both ordered ground beef and cheese in deep-fat-fried flour tortillas, rice, and beans.
She had white hair and a lean face with tanned wrinkles. Her name was Irene and her eyes were amber and bright.
“Thanks for helping me,” said Nick.
“I haven’t yet,” said Irene. “Your wife’s a sharp lady. She works for Congress, I work for their library, she called.”
“The Congressional Research Service does great work.”
“Save the butter for the bread,” she said. “I’ll give you what I can, which probably won’t be much.”
The waiter put two bottles of beer and wet glasses on the table. A lime wedge was stuck in the mouth of each beer bottle.
“You can’t get what you want these days,” said Irene as she tossed the lime wedge into the ashtray. “So what are you after? Something about what’ll happen now that the Berlin Wall is rubble? A report card on Ralph Denton, the CIA’s new honcho?”
“I’ll take a couple fast answers like that, but I’m after something deeper. Only I’m not sure what it is.”
“At least Gallahad knew he wanted the Holy Grail.”
“I doubt there’s anything holy about this,” said Nick. “Something has gone bump in the night. I need to know what it is.”
“Hey,” she said, “I’m a congressional lackey, and Congress is the last to find out what goes bump in the night.”
“What about the two intelligence oversight committees?”
“Oversight is a joke,” she said. “Congress knows what they tell us. The foxes briefing the chickens on what’s outside the coop.”
“Where would you look today for something gone wrong?” asked Nick. “Small operation, probably. Off the books, high level, and highly compartmentalized.”
“How you do talk!”
They laughed as the waiter put their plates in front of them. She ordered another beer, so Nick did, too.
“Do you have an arena?” she asked.
“Could be anywhere. There may be a black-bag angle to it: my guy—the people are B&E experts. But it could be anything from assassination to drugs, and it’s gone sour.”
“We won’t know how sour our spies can go until we make ’em narcs. You got any names?”
“No,” he said.
“You bullshit me, I bullshit you,” she said.
“The name wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
Irene took a pull from her beer. “Everybody thinks spooks equals CIA. But look at the Pentagon. All those offices, a dozen agencies, thousands of bodies, and a budget in the billions.”
“Makes sense.”
“So”—she smiled—“Panama? Nicaragua—even though our guys won the elections, it’s a brave new world with lots of turmoil. China, Russia, Beirut, El Salvador—pick your place.”
“California,” said Nick.
She didn’t laugh. They pushed rice and beans around their plates. Nick let the silence whisper to her.
“Domestic spy mess?” She frowned. “We’re eating Mexican lunch, and across town, an admiral is on trial for Iran-contra.”
“It could be part of that,” said Nick, “if there’s more still out there than this trial.”
“There’s plenty there,” said Irene. “That was a multimillion-dollar scam. Suppose something’s fallen in the cracks of the investigations. Something or somebody who’s still in big jeopardy. You looking for something that went bump in the night, look for the people in the cracks of Iran-contra.”
* * *
But first Nick had to look where it started for him. He had to look for Jud.
He wouldn’t call Dean again. If one call to him hadn’t helped, a second call could only hurt. The nerves in the back of Nick’s neck tingled when he thought about Dean.
After his lunch with Irene, Nick
sat at his desk in his office, watching the world outside his windows. Green buds dotted the tree limbs. The weather was gorgeous.
There was only one other person who might link him to Jud: Lorri, Jud’s wife.
Ex-wife, thought Nick. For what? Five, six years. He didn’t know. But sometime in the mid-1980s, Jud had shed the young wife he’d found in Los Angeles.
Lorri. Lost, stolen, or strayed.
Or dead.
Jud had said they’d split, she’d left, deserted, flipped out, run away, been banished by him. High drama. Simple fade. Over the phone, Nick had heard a dozen different versions, but only from his friend Jud: when Lorri left Jud’s life, she left Nick’s. The two constants in Jud’s stories were Lorri’s absence and his pain. Who was victim and who was villain didn’t matter to Nick, nor was he sure such roles were consistent or free from an inevitability that rendered such labels moot.
God, she’d been beautiful.
Nick remembered—when was it?—1978 or 1979, before the days of madness—or at least before he recognized them as such. In L.A., sweet soul-sucking city of the angels.
Nick had flown to town for a scriptwriting gig. After the first meeting, he knew no movie would be made, but he played the deal out: for the money, for the ticket-punching that made him a bona fide screenwriter, for the chance to be in L.A. on someone else’s dime. For the chance to see Jud again, and amidst their camaraderie and bullshit, to learn more about the dark world that Jud personified. The glitz of Hollywood tantalized Nick with its allure of creating movies and being loved by beautiful blondes, but he knew he’d get little of either. What excited him was gliding over those same city streets in Jud’s slipstream: electric reality, not celluloid, sliding along the knife edge without being scarred.
Jud brought Lorri to Nick’s hotel to meet his famous writer friend. Lorri, a mane of tawny red hair, heavy breasts, wisp of a waist, and round hips, clear skinned and with a lopsided smile. She listened while Jud told stores for Nick to ratify.
Nick’s meetings were over by three the next day. Jud was taking care of business. Lorri drove Nick to the ocean.