by James Sallis
“I read. I listen to people.”
“Sure you do. So why us? The thought that we’re getting set up for something cross your mind?”
“More than once … Maybe we’re all he has.”
“All he has for what? We don’t know who he is, what he wants, how he fits in.”
“Maybe we’re about to find out.”
They were out of the car, walking to the door. “You’re full to the top with maybes today.”
“Think positive.”
Despite the span of windows, what with the posters and three-inch-high letters of painted-on specials obscuring them, not to mention the dinginess of those windows or the lack of internal lighting, walking in was like entering a bar, some zone of perpetual evening. A young man in overalls sat at the counter forking in eggs with one hand, texting with the other. Four other singles sat around the room. The waitress was leaning into the order window talking with the cook.
Graves and Sayles took a table near, but not too near, the door. The waitress brought water, not something you saw a lot anymore, and menus. Sayles opened a menu. Its once glossy surface was thick with ancient smears and spillings.
“Samples,” Graves said. “You want breakfast?”
“I’m going to check out the bathroom and the back. Order for me.”
“What do you want?”
“Doesn’t matter, it all tastes pretty much the same.”
“Good point.”
Graves watched the waitress make a swing through the front, refilling everyone’s coffee, on her way to their table. She set the carafe down at the edge, took out her pad, and told him the specials. He ordered two.
“Large juice is only twenty cents extra.”
“Why not? Two tall oranges. Thanks.”
She smiled, then ducked her head. Sensitive about the crooked teeth, he figured. Been doing that her whole life.
Two new diners came in while Sayles was away, a twentyish couple in what looked to be self-consciously thrift-store clothes. Another left, climbing into a Pinto with cardboard taped over a rear window and red plastic film over both tail lights. The food arrived shortly after Sayles. Minutes later a new patron entered.
“Hunter’s vest,” Graves said.
“Got it.”
One of those guys who looked young till you took a closer look, wearing what Graves’s father to his dying day had called dungarees—jeans to the rest of us—and, under the vest, a blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Unlined face, save around the mouth and eyes. Light brown hair still full, not thinning, but dry-looking, dull.
He walked by the counter, glancing this way and that, then around the corner into the back area.
“What do you think?” Graves said.
The man came out from the back and sat at the counter. The waitress stepped in, brought him a coffee, asked if there was anything else.
“I think he knows who he’s looking for, by sight.”
“Our man, you think?”
“Could be. And maybe you could stop jamming those eggs in your mouth long enough to go check the parking lot.”
Graves went out, circled the building, returned.
“It’s around back, almost out of sight.”
“Tan Honda?”
“You got it.”
Together they stood, leaving the food half eaten, and stepped toward the counter. The waitress’s head turned. She said something, and the cook came out a side door, leaned against the wall watching.
The man didn’t look around, but he knew they were there. You could see it in his shoulders.
“You have a doll for sale, I believe,” Sayles said.
They’d stopped a yard away. Now the guy turned. His eyes went from Sayles to Graves back to Sayles.
“You’re not Christian.”
“Your friend couldn’t make it.”
“My friend … right. So he sent you.”
“That’s about it.”
“And who would you be?”
Graves took out his case, held up the badge. The cook nodded and went back into the kitchen.
“Cops,” the man said. “He sent cops. That’s pretty funny.”
Graves and Sayles took the stools on either side.
“Guess that means you don’t want to buy the doll, huh?”
“Tell you the truth,” Sayles said, “we’re not even sure what a doll has to do with it.”
“Interesting,” the man said.
Sayles smiled. That was one of Graves’s favorite expressions.
“That you’re looking for me, I mean, and don’t know why.”
“We suspect that it has something to do with a shooting that occurred some time back. At the Brell building?”
“Right now,” Graves added, “we need to see some ID.”
The man took out his wallet and set it on the counter.
“Thank you, Mr.”—Graves flipped it open—“Barnes.” Then, to Sayles: “Carroll Barnes. Local. No credit cards, couple thousand cash, give or take.”
“You’re not going to tell us we need a warrant for that?” Sayles asked.
“Figure you learned that in cop school.”
“Are you armed, Mr. Barnes?”
He shook his head, then asked, “How is Christian? But wait, you came in here not knowing who you were looking for. Do you at least know him? And how he’s doing?”
“Something else we don’t know, I’m afraid,” Sayles said.
Graves added, “We haven’t met him.”
“Makes this quite the reunion, doesn’t it?”
“Let’s get back to the shooting,” Sayles said. “Tell me about John Rankin.”
The waitress advanced apologetically behind the counter. “Are you going to finish your breakfasts, or should I clear the table?”
Make room for all the waiting customers, Graves thought. “Go ahead. We could use some fresh coffee, though.”
She nodded, brought prefilled cups for both of them, then went about seeing to the remains. The cook was keeping an eye on them while doing his best to appear not to.
“I don’t know John Rankin,” Carroll Barnes said.
“Christian, then.”
“Interesting. I don’t know John Rankin, but you don’t seem to know much at all.”
Sayles was silent, signaling with his eyes for Graves to stay quiet too. It was all about negative space—something a lot of interviewers never learned. Space has to be there, to get filled.
“Do you even know what he does for a living?”
Sayles shook his head, waited.
“He’s a hit man, a contract killer. Has been for forty years. Probably longer.”
“Interesting,” Graves said, and the three of them exchanged glances.
“Can I assume that I’m under arrest?”
Again Sayles said nothing.
“Or,” Barnes went on, “is that something else you don’t know?” What might have been a laugh, or just the man clearing his throat, sounded. “I suppose it was only a matter of time.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
BY MORNING, sight had partially returned. The day was out there, just beyond reach, shot with shadows and restless, ever-moving bright spots like silver buttons, everything blurred at center and edges, as though the world were gradually excusing itself from existence.
Which, he supposed, was exactly what it was doing.
He had managed to feel and fumble his way to the back door of the house to ask Mrs. Guinner if it would be possible for Chris to come out for a minute or two, he could use a little help.
“Are you okay?”
“Slightly under the weather, I think,” he said. “Nothing contagious.”
“Christopher is upstairs getting ready for school. I’ll send him right out.”
He thanked her and did his level best to walk back across the patio as though nothing were amiss. He could feel her eyes on him, sense the questions behind them.
He’d scarcely got back inside and into his chair wh
en Chris showed up. Heard the boy’s feet dragging across the cement, through the grass. Then the boy was at the door and, suddenly, right in front of him.
“I brought you something,” and an elongated shape moved toward him. He reached out.
A book. Slim, paperback. Cover heavily creased, page corners so ruffled and burred that they must look like tiny carnations.
“It’s one of my favorites. Kinda goofy in parts, but pretty cool.”
He felt the boy’s eyes on him, like the mother’s, but he didn’t sense unspoken questions behind them, only a waiting, an eagerness to take in as much of the world as would offer itself.
“Thank you.”
“Mom told me you wanted something?”
So together they had rearranged the room, dragging table and chair over to the window where the extra light helped a little, moving the lamp in close. He had the boy boot up the computer for him, figured he might be able to take it from there. When they were done and Chris said he had to get to school, nevertheless he hung back. Not wanting to presume or intrude, Christian thought, but seeming to understand more than made sense given Christian’s beggarly explanation. Where did someone his age get that kind of intuition, that kind of sensitivity?
“I could come back after school, if you want. If that’s all right.”
“That would be great. Thank you. For the help, and for the book.”
Shortly thereafter he was sitting with his face three inches from the computer screen, shutting his eyes and opening them again and again, trying to resolve ramshackle lines and shapes into words, into meaning.
Special doll for sale.
The one you’ve been looking for.
He’d answered that posting last night. And now there was a response. Leaning still closer, he was able to make out the letters—reconstruct them really, piece by piece. Like a child learning to read. And fumbling his fingers around the keys with the font kicked ridiculously high, he was able to cobble together his own response.
The timing sucked, for sure. But this was it, the hole, the rabbit, and it wasn’t likely to turn up again. No way he could make it to the meet he’d just set up, of course. Only one thing to do.
So this is what it’s come to, he thought, more than half amused. This of all things. Going to the police for help.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
EVERYTHING WAS DARK. He lifted his hand, knew it was in front of his face but couldn’t see it, however close it came. A blur, nothing more—and even that, he could be imagining. Imagination clicked in hard as you lay unseeing. Sounds came, and you worked to affix substance to them: the refrigerator cycling on, the front door settling in its frame with the change in temperature, a tree limb scratching at the roof. And as you listened, more and more sounds made their way to you, an unsuspected world of them, another, alternate world.
Somewhere (the fire station?) a chain rang against its flagpole.
A helicopter hovered, swung away and was back, out over I-17.
Getting to his feet, he took three steps and stumbled against, what? A chair, a table edge? The thought came that he’d have to move the furniture, put it back against the walls. As though this was the way it was going to be forever now.
But it was not his thought. And not him (he thought, waking) moving through that place where everything was dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SURPRISED? Not at all. How could I be? As I said, the way things went down, I knew it was just a matter of time. Funny how things never go the way you think they will, how they always get so tangled up. Our lives aren’t a hell of a lot more than that, are they? A bunch of tangles.
I didn’t shoot anyone, though. Hell, turns out I didn’t really do much of anything. Ran around a lot, tripped over my own feet and everybody else’s. When here I thought I had it all worked out. My old man used to say I was dumb as a rock, far back as I can remember. Maybe he was right after all, that ass-wipe.
Guy you’re chasing, he’s a ghost, a shadow. No one knows who he is, no one’s ever seen him. That lived to tell about it, anyways. You go looking, and look hard enough in the right direction, a bunch of names pop up. Doc Watkins, Stu Carter, John Brown, Bill Gaunt. And that’s about the whole of it. Names, smoke. Fumes.
But you know what this guy does for a living, so you go at it backward.
I was twelve years old. Came home from school one day, least I was supposed to have been in school, and there’s a police car in the driveway. Not the first time, mind you, but this time it was different. Chief Winfrey was waiting to tell me my old man was dead. He’d had his throat cut a few hours back, when he was in the bath with a bottle and the radio tuned to the country station.
You know, I’ve always wondered what miserable cheatin’-and-drinkin’ song he was listening to when he died.
I’d never seen Chief Winfrey look uncomfortable before, but he did. Kept turning his hat in his hand, round and round, and glancing at the window. “I had the boys take your mother over to the hospital,” he told me. “She’s okay, just real upset.”
He always said, right there at the first and any time it came up later, that something wasn’t right about the whole thing. Killings back there and then, they happened in the street, or in backyards when kinfolk got into it, or up in the woods. No one walked into a man’s house in broad daylight and slit his throat while he was in his bathtub and then just walked out and vanished.
Like I say, I was twelve, what the fuck did I know, I could barely get my pants on straight. I knew my life had changed, I wasn’t that dumb, but it took a long time before I realized how much it had changed.
Then one day—I’m out of college by then, earning my keep, as my mom would say—I’m in a bar after work and the guy next to me’s a retired cop. He gets to talking about this one case he could never get over, never forget. Wife came home and found her husband sitting in his favorite armchair—thing was all butt-sprung and worn through, the cop said, but every time she’d try to throw it out, he’d throw a fit. Anyway, he was sitting there with his head back like he was catching a nap, but when she walked up close she saw his eyes. That was what she saw first, the cop said. His eyes. Then, a little farther along, she saw how his neck was all swollen and bruised where he’d been choked to death, with a braided wire of some kind.
Thing was, he, this cop, could never find any reason for it. Man had no one set against him, far as could be found. His trucking business was in trouble, but with the economy back then, so were better than half the businesses in town. And no way was it a crime of passion. It was cold, calculated, done by someone with a lot of strength who knew exactly what he was doing.
Someone brought in for the job, the cop said, that’s what I always thought. Never found hide or hair of him.
How would you even go about looking for someone like that, I asked him. And over the next few beers he lays it out for me, how you look for cognates. That’s what he called them, cognates. Carryovers, derivatives. How people so often use names like those they’ve used before, same initials, same number of syllables. How the way they eat, the way they dress, doesn’t change that much. How people tend to stay with the same kind of work, whatever name and background they’ve shifted into place.
Find the work, he said, you can find the money. And once you have that …
I paid the tab for both of us, which by that time was big enough that I knew I’d be hurting till the next payday, and I carried what he’d said out of there and back to my apartment, one of those godawful places with mirrors and shiny metal everywhere you look.
Not long after that, and early in the game, I got into computers. Tech stuff at first, then designing them, software finally. The future came to me one day in a chat room as I watched some guys grousing about the census, that they’d only answered how many people were living at the residence and mailed it back in, because that’s all the government needed to know—or saying they’d just thrown the damn thing away. And I’m sitting there thinking, You fuckers slide yo
ur MasterCard at Kmart or run your Exxon card, you’re giving away a hell of a lot more than that. Nowadays, I’m thinking, damn near anything you get involved in is floating around somewhere out there. You buy something, there’s a record. You borrow a book from the library, there’s a record. Your kid’s baseball team loses, that’s out there too. Cyberspace. It’s like this huge field that goes on forever, and there’s footprints everywhere, going every which way.
Getting involved—that was the key. No one just sits alone in a room. However much off the grid you stay, sooner or later you have to get involved with something.
The site I was browsing that day belonged to a bunch of libertarian types, people who spent their time discussing inexhaustibly their privacy and rights and God-given freedom.
Like their right to bear arms. Pry it from my cold dead hands, etc. So okay, I figured, guns is one place this’ll take me. Lots of options, a man could spend his life bouncing like a pinball from one site to another. And once you’re there, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to homeschooling, spyware in our telephones, killer vaccinations, survivalists, secret societies, war enacters, and mercenaries. So for the next few months I had a guided tour, with myself as guide, of every organization, every ragtag club, every cockeyed assembly and midnight gathering that stood three steps to one side or another of the mainstream culture.
Took a long time, but I found my way. I went on the notion that Chief Winfrey was right, and whatever the reason for it—I never did know that, and never will—someone had been brought in. And that ex-cop back at the bar, the one who got me started on this—same thing. I still didn’t know who I was looking for, or where to look, really.
Just like you.
But I knew what the man did. And to do that, he had to be hooked in somewhere, somehow, to this social underbelly I’d been getting to know. Lot of these sites had sections with people trying to maybe sell a gun or trade it for a hunting bow, or areas where they’d offer to barter services for goods, or sell collectibles. Good places to start, I thought. So I started running ads and responding to them. Spent hours getting them worded right, vague but not too vague, you know? Not like you can come right out and put I need someone killed, right?