She still didn’t turn around, so I couldn’t tell if she was convinced.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ronnie
I had never slept in a car before. It was the first of too many times.
I tried to get some strategy out of Eli but he was drowsy and delirious.
‘Eli, do you have info on Cameron Hopper?’
‘It doesn’t matter, we have to find Trent.’
‘Do you think we should go back to the hotel?’
‘We just have to… find Trent.’
Find Trent. Find Trent.
It was like someone had broken him.
Mark had been calling but I hadn’t been picking up. Was he in Chicago now, waiting for me? Did I give a shit?
I shut my eyes again, slumped in the driver’s seat.
Eli was unconscious now, in the back.
I didn’t have it in me to spend the night like this.
Taking a couple more of the Ormus capsules, I got out of the car and walked along the road for a stretch. We’d parked down a side road, obscured from view in a lay-by. I don’t know what I was expecting to find; a motel maybe, a bar. We couldn’t check in anywhere with most of Eli’s ear missing and bound with a bloodstained tea towel.
The air was so warm, like clammy hands.
My phone started ringing, but it was a Skype call.
Eamonn.
He said, ‘Where are you?’
‘Honestly, no fucking idea. Outskirts of LA, I think.’
‘Dad said you’re going to Chicago.’
I couldn’t remember saying anything to him about Chicago, but I took his word for it.
‘I think so. I mean, I am. I just… maybe. I might be going to Chicago.’
‘You don’t look good, bro.’
I paused. ‘No… No, I guess I don’t.’
Any other time I would’ve smashed him for a comment like that.
‘Dad’s given me a few jobs to do,’ he said, as if I might be proud of this.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah, he said he did the same for you once upon a time, so I should give it a try.’
A mutinous thought – that Dad might be pitting us against each other – sprang into my head, but I ignored it. I’d surpassed all that years ago.
‘That’s great,’ I said, thinking that I might get off the hook if Eamonn could flourish in employment here.
‘And he said it might make you feel better about me going back with you if I kinda proved I could do something here… kinda thing.’
As if he had read my fucking mind.
‘Well why don’t you just stay here and work for Dad?’ I said, starting to walk again.
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because it makes sense.’
‘Because you really don’t fucking want me to come home with you.’
‘My home, Eamonn. Not yours.’
‘And where the fuck you think mine is?’
I looked around me, at a load of stern blank houses and hedgerows and a few lights on but not the lights of anyone we knew. I wasn’t even going to be able to steal someone’s Wi-Fi.
‘Let me come to Chicago with you or something,’ he said.
‘What? No.’
‘It might help.’
‘With what?’
‘Making you think I’m worth shit.’
I don’t know whether it actually hurt me, knowing that he thought I held him in no regard.
If it had been Rachel Skyping me, or one of my kids, I wondered whether I’d have answered.
‘Look, I can text you when I’m getting on a flight,’ I said. ‘I’ll fly from St Louis and let you know. Come if you want.’
His face broke into a smile.
‘Huh, thanks.’ That was all he said; he didn’t push it.
There was a pause. I’d left my cigarettes in the car.
‘Dude,’ Eamonn said, snorting, ‘where are you? Like really.’
I said, ‘I really don’t fucking know.’
*
We couldn’t stay in LA, with Eli in this condition. But I liked order and I like conclusion, so I checked Eli into a motel on the outskirts to sleep it off, and took the car back into the city.
It was too hot for a jacket or smart trousers. I was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with hipster sun-drenched scenery across it. It felt good to be driving alone.
I took the car across the bridge and along the waterfront. Traffic wasn’t bad. The brown water appeared blue. I did a couple of laps and then brought the car in past the gorgeous lake next to a small campus.
Students were rowing across it.
I glanced at the passenger seat and checked I had everything I needed; papers, photos, postcards. And most importantly for this trip, the phone belonging to the men who had been sent after Cathal.
There had been a school shooting in Arkansas, the radio blared. Eleven children dead and the shooter had turned the gun on himself. Someone was saying, ‘Teachers should be armed, able to defend themselves in situations like this. How many lives could be saved if more of us were carrying guns?’
I parked and started walking down the main road. To my right were lines of trees and greenery, on my left a Fine Wine & Liquor, a carwash, people looking at me strangely for walking so far, for looking so much like a foreigner in my own country.
Checking my phone to see if I was heading in the right direction, I almost caught the eyes of a bearded man coming out of Black Fire Tattoo, with his forearm wrapped in cling film and a look on his face like he really wanted to punch a fucker.
I was on the right course. Five more minutes down the road and I was at the door of a place called PhoneDoc, an orange and green building that looked like it had been made out of Lego.
Inside I was told to wait, and I took a seat on a red leather sofa in the corner, watching the staff out of the corner of my eye and wondering if they would believe my bullshit story about my lost brother and his locked mobile phone.
Just imagine Eamonn really is lost, I thought. That’ll make you more convincing.
No, think about Ryan. You care about Ryan.
I clenched the iPhone between my palms until a woman with long black hair almost down to her waist came over to talk to me.
‘What can we help you with, Mr…?’
‘O’Connell. It’s a bit of a weird one, I’ll be honest. My little brother, he’s just got out of prison and… well, you don’t care about that, but he’s been missing for a couple of days and he’s left his phone.’ I indicated the mobile. ‘We don’t really know who his friends are any more and we were hoping you could unlock his phone so we’d have some people to call.’
She sat down and took the phone off me. ‘This is your brother’s phone?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And his name is?’
‘Ryan. O’Connell.’
She had artificially full lips, but they suited her. ‘You have any documentation to prove this phone is your brother’s?’
‘He… barely has any documentation. Our dad bought it for him.’
I didn’t look like the sort of man who would steal a phone. No matter how long she spent eyeing me up, there was nothing about my demeanour that would place me in the lower classes.
‘Can I see some ID?’ she eventually asked. ‘It’ll cost you thirty-five dollars.’
It was a rip-off.
I smiled. ‘Sure, anything. We just want to find him.’
I gave her my passport. She scanned me a couple of times, and then took the phone away.
The iPhone was back in my hands within three minutes and I was back on the street, looking over my shoulder once at the girl behind the desk.
There was nowhere to eat on the main road so I went back to the car and started rinsing the phone for information. But there was only the one number saved, and there was no name attached. No photos. The only number populating the call history was the number saved into the Contacts folder.
‘Fuck me,’ I muttered, takin
g some deep breaths.
Checking my watch and finding I was doing OK for time, I called the only number.
The line clicked open on the second ring and I said, ‘We need to talk.’
Someone – a man – said, ‘Who is this?’
‘This is a guy who knows you’re after Cathal Sheedy and your men did a piss-poor job of taking him out due to a case of mistaken identity.’
A pause.
‘So you’re the reason they didn’t come back?’
‘Feedback for next time: make sure they actually know who to pull weapons on. But that’s beside the point, I want to give you Cathal. And to avoid you sending anyone after me on some ill-advised vendetta – and I promise, it will be ill-advised – I’m going to tell you where he is and who’s hiding him. But only if you leave me alone.’
Rustling.
I strained for a hint of background noise, but it was like he was sat in an empty room.
‘Do you know who we are?’ he asked.
‘I’m guessing government or similar, but I don’t want to be a part of this. We were stopping over at Cathal’s for a few nights on a friend’s recommendation. ‘We didn’t know him. We’ve got other stuff to do. If I give you this information, go find Cathal and leave us be.’
‘You killed the men we sent before.’
‘You obviously weren’t that invested in them if they were carrying cyanide pills.’
‘True.’
My heart was beating as if I was on a run. I could hear it.
‘So you are government?’ I asked, to fill air.
‘Something like that. So where is Cathal hiding?’
‘According to a friend of his who went with him, he’s hiding with some of his more… prominent friends. Cameron Hopper, you heard of him? Works in TV. Anyway, he’s keeping Cathal on the down-low. He can do that apparently. He has money.’
‘And how do you know this?’
‘We were offered the same protection if we wanted it.’
‘… Cameron Hopper.’
‘Yes, that’s the name. Find him and you find Cathal. Now do I have your word that I’ll never hear from you again?’
A pause.
The line died.
Some kids started screaming from across the lot, as their car went through the wash.
It was too hot. I got out of the car and went for a walk around a small lake next to a prep school, unable to relax despite the cooler breeze.
I hadn’t been given any reassurance that we weren’t going to be followed.
The phone in my pocket buzzed and I jumped, causing some passers-by to look at me with alarm, but I realized it was my own phone and the incoming Skype call was from my mum.
Seizing the moment, I answered it.
She said, ‘Son, we’re so worried about you. I just wanted to check you were OK.’
Having cancer hadn’t done anything to increase her fear of death, but her fears around her children had skyrocketed, I’d noticed.
‘Mum, I’m fine,’ I said, flashing a smile before turning the camera out towards the lake. ‘Seriously, take a look at where I am.’
And the lying utopian scene had the desired effect.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It was a thirty-nine-hour drive back, for Eli. I didn’t tell him I was only going half the distance. I also didn’t tell him about the unlocked phone. Whatever came of that, we’d know the outcome in due course.
If his ear was still hurting, he wasn’t mentioning it any more. He just insisted on driving – I suspected to keep his mind off it. If we hit a pothole or a sharp bend in the road I caught sight of him grimacing, tilting his head this way and that.
He pulled us over onto the side of the road in a place called Victorville, which seemed to be comprised of nothing but beige rock and rubble, scrubland. We both got out of the car, squinting behind our sunglasses and grumbling about the heat, and spread Trent’s letters and papers across the bonnet.
There was no wind save for what was created by the occasional vehicles speeding past. It felt good to be in open space. Just being able to look down a road and see a view – unblocked – was comforting.
‘How much of this is biblical shite?’ Eli asked, frowning. ‘Sorry, biblical stuff?’
I didn’t want to return to it all right away. Instead I took a short stroll alongside Interstate 15 and then turned left into the scrubland between the leafless trees, not caring that the dust was clinging to my shoes.
I still hadn’t spoken to my kids and I hadn’t been able to find the will to give Rachel an excuse, or even a reply. The weeks had been lost.
About twenty yards from the road I found a jagged chalky rock and sat down. If I shut my eyes I could almost pretend the sounds of cars were the sea, the wind whistling through the trees, or something else natural that came in waves.
There were faint footsteps, scuffs, a voice saying, ‘Fuck.’
I opened my eyes, looked right and Eli was hopping about on one leg, trying to tip some stones out of his shoe. His left foot hung and swung in mid-air, flailing in a faded blue sock, trying to find balance. After a while he gave up, put the shoe back on and came and stood above me, taking care not to block the sun. I noticed he hadn’t brought any of the papers with him.
Neither of us said anything.
He looked about him for a suitable place to sit, sighed and sat down on the ground.
I managed a small laugh, a barely audible exhale through my nose.
His lips twitched.
We both looked in separate directions and sat there for I’m not sure how long, until Eli started to catch the sun on the bridge of his nose. Just two guys in suits, three and a half ears, sat in the wasteland between civilizations, just off the interstate.
I thought about how people did it in this day and age – left society and all its invisible structures. You couldn’t. Not in the age of satellites and smartphones, when everyone wanted to know where you were, where you had been, what you had bought, what your net worth was, what you were contributing with your failures and your dubious successes.
Not so long ago it would have been possible to walk off into the wilderness and never come back, elevate your existence to the singular everyday concern and comfort of survival, with nothing to worry about except what to eat and where to sleep. Food, warmth, shelter, hunting. No job, no money, no expectations, no hierarchies, no banks, no wealth, no ideals, no politics, no concept of the globe, of a market or economy, because there would be nothing to sell, nothing to buy, nothing to decipher, or boast about. Just back in the food chain, where we belonged.
Wouldn’t that be lovely? I thought.
The sun beat down.
I took my sunglasses off, rubbed my eyes and swallowed.
Eli stared at the summit of a hill, like he was about to take off his jacket, run towards it and never be seen again.
This was the best we had, without the ability to disappear, so we made do with moments like this.
Finally, I thought, one moment of fucking peace.
*
I drove for the next nine hours – until my vision blurred and I started to lose my depth perception – before I felt able to pull over again, this time into a motel car park on the outskirts of Albuquerque. It was forty-five dollars a night, for two rooms that weren’t next to each other. No bloody Wi-Fi in sight.
The landscape here was impossibly flat, with bursts of brown shrubbery that looked strangely ordered, as if someone had planted them in rows.
After a quick change of clothes we convened, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Eli’s room, to look at what Edward Saxon had given us. The light had almost died. The curtains, specks of mould creeping upwards from the hems, were shut.
We split the small pile and I flicked through half-heartedly.
‘Do you think anyone would deliver pizza out here?’ I asked, leaning against the foot of the bed with my legs out in front of me. ‘Otherwise I think we’re eating out of the vending machine. If th
ere is one.’
Eli got up before even starting to look at his papers. ‘I’ll go ask at the front desk.’
Forty minutes later, during which we had talked only about the premiership and why all bands from the nineties were reforming, a spotty guy arrived at our door in uniform holding two double pepperoni pizzas. He looked deeply unimpressed with us. We were well out of the catchment area for delivery, but Eli had offered him a seventy-five dollar tip in cash.
I considered suggesting beer, but Eli was reading now and I felt pressured into finally doing the same.
Trent’s handwriting had worsened between the postcard he had written to Thomas Love and this haphazard collection of notes. Before it had been in elegant loops, like that of a teenage girl. Now it was slanted and erratic, dipping and swerving, barely able to maintain a straight line. Not every word was legible.
‘Can we sort them into biblical and non-biblical?’ he said.
His hair was devoid of product, his shirt was mostly undone and slanted across his torso, the skin underneath beginning to tan and his shoes greying with dust. The punctured ear was still being held in place, with a bandage now. If I asked him about the pain he never replied.
I wondered what the hell I looked like.
They do not crowd each other, They march everyone in his path; When they burst through the defenses, They do not break ranks.
They rush on the city. They run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They enter through the windows like a thief.
Before them the earth quakes, The heavens tremble, The sun and the moon grow dark And the stars lose their brightness.
‘Locusts,’ I said, handing out the piece of paper. ‘Or demons, it could be a metaphor. It’s from… I can’t remember what part.’
‘Weeping and gnashing of teeth?’ He had a Post-it stuck to the end of his finger.
‘Yep, standard. Bible pile.’
‘He wasn’t even a Christian when I knew him.’
‘Well, he doesn’t seem like a Christian now.’ I ate some pizza and grimaced at the thought of the Cecil. ‘Why would he go and stay somewhere he thought was the gateway to hell if he was a Christian? I think he’s a nutcase who got obsessed with the occult.’
‘But Trent wasn’t into all that! He’s not evil. You can see a budding nutcase a mile off and that just wasn’t him, it wasn’t. Maybe there is something wrong here…’
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