But today Foster was absent—though Soong still was pleading to wait—and on a day when Gamlin would very much have had it otherwise. Soong was wrestling away to catch loose bills from her bag: a matter of miso and tea. And a waiter and cook shuffled into the aisle—two-hundred pounds of chicken gristle, together—and Gamlin said: “Lover’s quarrel, chaps.” And when he began toward them with Soong in tow, and they remained, Gamlin thrust out his arm as a battering ram—“None today, thanks,” he said, and they scuffled back and out of the way: “Now you lads be good, and go get your own,” he said, and they crossed to the car and Soong fell in with a shove.
“Wasting our time . . .” Gamlin muttered, as he lit the V12 and pulled out.
“What is wrong with—?”
“Wasting our fucking time! Kim Soong. This . . . is wasting our time.”
Gamlin had never settled on a plan—a concerted vision for what might happen had Foster come; certainly he might’ve sat across the street in the car and watched until he’d stumbled onto the curb with his swerve of forelock and his big-n-tall suit clothes, as he’d done before. But Gamlin was working an impulse that he wanted more, that he’d wearied of toeing about in pointe shoes—watching and waiting, for tells and confessions; for mistakes—collecting. He wanted something entirely more decisive, resolving—interactive. Gamlin wanted answers, he wanted results and clarity, and this cocking about seemed a practice in high-speed sitting; seemed fruitless and ineffective—a turn of juiced-up hand-wringing for action, in hopes the various parties would step forward and announce themselves; reveal their intentions, as a matter of courtesy or sympathy or perhaps, boredom. Gamlin wasn’t clear on the method—maybe he would grab him, have a talk, intercede—but he was increasingly sure the solution was something direct: un-sedentary. Something meaningful; and before another ‘painter’ turned up in a panel van, or 5 series; pulled another e-brake turn cross traffic—or some other novel acrobatic shit—and left him curbed wheels and a creased fender to keep; before the remaining players cashed-in or vanished, or bumped their heads. Or whatever the hell was happening, Gamlin had an acute sense of a stopwatch marking it off in the background; metering out the portions. His sense of it was compressive and anonymous, and unwanted.
He tramped left through the light onto Grand and still she was shaking her head—it was on a spring, and in a minute he was going to make it still; clench it to submission beneath his fingers.
“You’re still just pissed about the car,” she said.
“I am,” said Gamlin, “but that’s nothing to do with it.”
She was peering back over the trunk lid down Hartford as they turned—peering back in certainty and optimism—and, Gamlin thought, a wistful resistance.
“Go back! I think I saw him.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did—I think—down the block. His black truck…”
“Suburban.”
“His black Suburban! I saw it down the block.”
Gamlin slowed to a crawl and leaned toward the shoulder of the lane.
“You didn’t.”
“No, I did, I did. I think I did.”
“Well, we’re not going back now, are we.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“I think I saw him!”
“It’s ten after the hour, Soong. He’d be an hour ten minutes late—no call, no text—just now sauntering up . . . It’s a bit much— Keep watching: watch the intersection! If that is him, he’s either full-on hopeless, or he’s pulled one around on us.”
“Watching us?”
“Watching us. You see him?”
“No. Go slow.”
“See him? Is it him?”
“Go slow! Wait. Wait! There! Yes! There—his Suburban. I can see the nose. Just pulled to the light.”
“You sure?”
“Look for yourself.”
“I can’t see.”
“Would he really stake us out? Foster? Maybe he’s just late and didn’t see me: thought I’d left—which I did.”
“Let’s find out.”
“Wait! Slow down—”
“Let’s find out,” said Gamlin. “If that’s him—he’s playing shadow—I’m raising the stakes; and if not, I’ve a notion where to cross paths.”
2.
Kim Soong sat on the front step with an arm wedged between her chin and her knee, and she threw Gamlin a heavy-lidded, disparaging look. With the other she smoked. She mouthed at him as she exhaled, mouthed out silent exaggerated vowels and consonant shapes: This . . . Is . . . Stupid: You . . . Are . . . Stupid. Gamlin shone her a smile in deflecting confidence, but over twenty minutes his doubt now resembled her own general pulse of loathing. They’d left South City, left Mekong, and Soong had lost sight of the Suburban in the sprint to 40. They’d spun the noisy pea-gravel lanes and set up before Foster’s place on Greenway—the old brick and stucco Tudor with the yard wanting trim like a four-day-stubble. “Why are we stopping? Go—keep going,” she’d said.
Gamlin had looked at her silently.
“What? No. What? Why are we stopping?”
“Go see if he’s there.”
“You’re a crazy person—what are you doing?”
“And if he’s not there . . . we’ll just wait a bit.”
“Gamlin.”
“Say: you waited, you didn’t see him; say: you didn’t have a ride—say: you called me to pick you up—that you’d really hoped to see him, and that you want to introduce me—I’m fucking fascinating.”
“Oh, you are. And why didn’t I call him?”
“Why didn’t he call you? You want to see him; you were worried there might have been a mix-up—and you want to introduce your friend,” he’d said.
“It’s like you’re lurching from one attempt at calamity to the next.”
“When he answers—if he answers, say what I’ve told you and then summon me over,” he’d said, removed the Browning Hi Power from his coat and inspected the breech. “Who dares, wins—little Soong. Be a dear and hand me the spare magazine from the glove box, would you.”
She’d gone to the door and knocked, and waited, and rung the bell, and waited. Check for his car—he’d said through the window, and she’d shaken her head uncomprehendingly. He’d pointed at her and made a half-circle gesture with his finger, and she’d lit a cigarette and left her tote on the step to go around back. She’d returned with another shake of her head and a redundant shrug, and set herself beside the bag—collapsed beside it in ropey despondence. And again they waited. Soong had lit another cigarette after the first and ashed from an outstretched arm; tapped them off with exaggerated theatricality—stage taps—and watched them sail into the grass or onto the step or onto her pant legs and sneakers—watched them in hopeless indifference, while Gamlin sat in the car thumbing-over the first round in the high capacity magazine, depressing it against the spring and turning it, while his gaze lighted on the dash and the wheel and the shifter the vents house numbers the road the curb the tree the yard—restless and birdlike: in thoughtless concentration.
“Call him,” said Gamlin.
Soong stared.
“Call him,” he said, and lifted an illustrative hand to his ear. “Call him, now.”
She rooted through her bag for the phone and called him. She dialed Foster, and it rang, and Gamlin watched her listen. They watched each other, and again she shook her head, and closed the phone and crossed to the car and sat heavily in the passenger seat. “This going to plan?” she said.
Gamlin watched his lap where he rolled the cartridge and they sat to this sound of the cartridge being depressed and released, the faint click and grind, and the bloom of full-day quiet—of the whisper-rattle of things in small capitulating motions, of the outdoors reciting in illuminated verses—mumbling to itself.
/> “You have a piece, little Soong?” he said, and roused the engine against the self-genuflecting day. He pulled off and they moved swiftly down the gritted lanes.
“I do,” she said.
“You have it on your person, little Soong?”
“I do,” she said, and folded herself into the bolster as though she might be turning over in bed.
Gamlin hustled the Mercedes out onto Delmar and round the corner to Big Bend, and down along its troughs and swells. “I’ve a thought,” he said.
“Why not? The last was a success.”
“Look for Zephyr on the left,” he said, and they saw Zephyr and turned across traffic and parked-up. “Third on the right. Dart gun, I suppose.”
“That’s right, Gamlin: bull moose tranquilizer.”
He gestured to the white dually in the driveway.
“August Reams?” she said.
He shook his head—“Here we are making house calls; I figured we had another call to make—our good man, Edmund LeFrance.”
“Team August?”
“Last and precious remnant, it seems.”
“We still daring?” she asked.
“I’m in a visiting mood. I feature it,” he said. “You’ll go; you’ll knock; say what you like when he answers; and you’ll put your ass back in the car and leave it.” He handed her the car key. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
“I’m waiting.”
“In the car: you see moose, you give ‘em the dart.”
On the stoop Gamlin stood from view and waived Soong to the side; waived her again. And she knocked. When the door opened it snagged on a leash of chain, and Soong said, “I’m supposed to wait in the car.”
“What?” was the utterance from the door. It was a single syllable wet-honed of enervation and discontent, and Gamlin marked it with a running leap at the door—feet up.
The door burst open, smashed off the wall, and the man skid backward shoulders against the floor and Gamlin climbed up from the threshold with the Browning and reset the door in the frame. “Knees up Mother Brown! Let’s chat,” said Gamlin. “Have a seat.”
Gamlin motioned to the small dining table and chairs. “Come. Sit. If you prefer we can put you back on the floor after a bit. Come, Edmund LeFrance, come tell me about your August Reams; about his Mexican holiday; about the flat on Nebraska—that seemed to go well.”
Edmund LeFrance collected himself from the floor and sat at the table. Gamlin turned out a chair and joined him. “We in private?—anyone in the cupboard?”
LeFrance was silent, tipped his head, and stretched his fingers on the table.
“Any denials to peddle?—wrong man, wrong house, just visiting—all that? No? Ever hear of Pavel Kashkin? Your mate August capped him in Mexico City; left him in a bathtub to dry. You help with that? Huh? Why’d he do that?”
LeFrance was silent.
“Who’d he do that for, huh?”
LeFrance was silent.
“His idea to slip the city and put him down? Little recreation?
“Howard Charles Foster—hear of him? Was it his ask? Kashkin find out he was cheating on his taxes? Huh? His wife?
“Something else? Somebody else?
“Here I am, top of my courtesy, Mr. LeFrance. But, your lack of cooperation, I find, highly unprofessional.
“That’s right.
“Discourteous—mm-hmm.
“Anyone else make it from the flat? August—anybody?
“Didn’t look it.
“August impart anything to you—before his untimely passing—words of wisdom?—little granule of information? Did he take something from Kashkin in Mexico, hmm—something he might’ve mentioned to you, something he might’ve given to you—passed along for safe keeping, right?—a note, a document, schematic . . . a drive; little computer drive, like—the clap?—anything?”
Edmund LeFrance looked at his hands then, and past Gamlin through the narrow angle of doorway into the bedroom, and at the corner of the television which shone there. Gamlin saw this look, this flicker of tell, and the sighting over his shoulder and he heard the television and turned to see it, turned to see a bisection of screen through the doorway, and the oblique angle of rally playing out, the two dancers with rackets performing a ballet of service and volley—“Queer game,” said Gamlin—and Edmund LeFrance snatched right-handed into his coat for the Redhawk and cleared the holster and Gamlin turned to the sigh of clothes and sense of motion and loosed the Browning unsighted into LeFrance’s chest and the Redhawk discharged beside LeFrance’s shoe and the room sang with the diatonic overpressure of the two cartridges.
“Fucking hobbyist.”
The toll of the Magnum played dim nausea in his ears; choked Gamlin’s hearing with its convulsion, and he worked his jaw to dispel it. And then he shot LeFrance again.
“You people are really starting to piss me off.
“Now, why would you do that, ya sodding heathen? Look,” said Gamlin, pointing emphatically with the Browning, “you nearly spoilt your goddamn shoe!”
Gamlin rose and fetched his casings from the baseboard. He considered the weeping puncture in LeFrance’s sternum and the one beside and he considered the Redhawk still looped in the fingers of his hand. “Shall I leave Thunderclap with you?” he said. LeFrance set tipped ponderously over the chair back. “As you wish,” said Gamlin, and moved to check his pockets: his speed loaders, pouch of Drum, wallet and keys, his chapbook, and the padded envelope with the slender thumb drive; which Gamlin held out between them.
“You were about to mention this?
“I see.
“Cut you off in mid-sentence, did I?
“Well, my apologies.
“Perhaps, I’ll just keep it till you’re feeling better,” he said.
Behind Gamlin sports commentators were muttering between themselves and tennis shoes chirped with odd, irregular punctuation; and the players danced and leaped and swatted and called out in occasions of deep guttural exclamation—as though it might be a children’s game, with vocalizations imparted by rule. Gamlin turned and rest his mind and senses upon this momentarily, upon the television’s quavering noise and light; until, from outside there came a sound of struck flare—its snap and bristle and rush—and he went to the window, and saw the Mercedes was filled with smoke, saw that it vented through the driver’s window, that a fountain of sparks showered the interior—ricochet off the glass, and that against the opposite curb was a black Suburban.
XIV.
He’d sat on the rug on the floor and leant upon the Eames and play Satie Gnossiennes on the stereo, advanced the volume till he set between hammer and string, and stripped and cleaned the Barrett and drank coffee from the simple white cups that pleased him. The Atlantic lay to his side and he’d lifted and folded and turned it through in late-morning leisure: Saddam Hussein was on trial; Vladimir Putin was inscrutable; and Chistopher Hitchens, heart-burnt for some erstwhile issuance of praise, had leapt on a dyspeptic scattershot of contrarian screed—and together, they appeared on the company of pages in collective agitation.
Marek Hussar had read and listened and pulled at the stubble of his beard, and refit the rifle. He’d sat in deliberation, and when he’d settled into the product of his thought he’d replaced the rifle and drawn the car from the garage into the driveway and closed the overhead door. He’d lain down heavy plastic sheet where the car had been and prepared a bucket of warm soapy water. He turned through the flight cases for the articles of his intention. He produced a Tyvec coverall and wore it, prepared a final Americano in the kitchen and then filled the double sinks—one soaped, one flat—and adjusted the stereo volume again so that the garage too, was live with it. There were nitrile gloves and outer gloves beside, a filter mask and cinched hood, a high capacity autoinjector pen which he’d disassembled to parts; there were three more he�
��d carefully placed to hand—atropine sulfate, pralidoxime chloride, diazepam—and there was a chest with six latches and three unbroken seals and two locks, and Hussar set it cautiously upon the plastic over the floor, and he sat down before it and reviewed his preparations.
He unlocked the chest and broke the seals and there was a vacuum canister like a large thermos, and a small manual pump. Hussar broke vacuum on this canister and removed a threaded lid, and from this removed another smaller version of the same. He broke vacuum on this second canister and removed another threaded lid, and two thick glass vessels separated by pad insert and stacked one upon the next. He inspected these both carefully and replaced one, and from the other he removed a further lid and revealed a rubber diaphragm which he pierced with a syringe. It was odorless and colorless Ethyl N-2-diisopropylaminoethyl methylphosphonothiolate, and he filled the syringe with it. He transferred this to the disassembled autoinjector pen—rebuilt it, refit the chamber reservoir and needle, the drive assembly, the load spring and trigger; he replaced the canisters and pulled vacuum on them once again, fit them in the padded chest, and doused the completed pen and forearms first in the bucket and then the water of both sinks, before stowing the chest and the antidote kit and removing the suit and gloves into the plastic—and disposing of it. And then he’d bathed.
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