by Josh Bazell
The moment I crack the cabin door, though, I can tell something’s wrong. I know the smell of this room pretty well, from lying in the dark and trying to smell Violet’s pussy from fifteen feet away. The smell has changed.
It’s cologne. And not just cologne: it’s Canoe, by Dana. Every mob fuck’s favorite aftershave.
Also there’s a trip wire across the doorway. The door’s leaning into it.
I stop short. But Violet, not realizing what’s happening, and not wanting to run into me, turns sideways and slips around me. Pushes the door open a couple more inches.
I don’t remember the explosion.
I remember waking up staring at the sky. Turning to see Violet, unmoving, beside me and being unable to see Albin or his deputy at all. I remember wanting to roll over to Violet and check her for a pulse, but passing out again instead.
The next time I wake up I can’t move. Or imagine how I had the energy and freedom from pain to even turn my head before. I try to talk but can’t.
I also can’t figure out why I’m still alive.
Leaving a bomb in our cabin—and another one in our car, I assume—is strictly Plan B material. If David Locano knows I’m near here, he’ll also have a spotter watching the lodge at all times, and a hit team less than ten minutes away.
They should be here already.
What the hell’s taking them so long?
EXHIBIT J
Ford, Minnesota
One Hour Earlier*
“Cornballkowski!” the Sergeant yells. “Get your shit together!”
Dylan Arntz knows he has a weird way of berating himself. He’s had it ever since he saw Saving Private Ryan at a friend’s house as a kid.
It’s even weirder than you think, though. The hard-bitten sergeant he imagines yelling at him all the time doesn’t look like anyone from the movie. He looks like Dylan’s dad, as far as Dylan can remember him.
“Second Lieutenant Pat Freudianism,” the Sergeant would say about that. “I served with that son of a bitch in Italy.”
Right now the Sergeant’s all in Dylan’s face because Dylan’s leaning against the stinking brick wall of the Highway 53 underpass on his bicycle, smoking a cigarette and thinking about how this spot used to be the crossroads of his life.
Behind him by about a mile is Walden L. Ainsworth High School. Mrs. Peters the English teacher and Mr. Terbin the history teacher and coach of the chess team. Behind him by maybe nine miles is his mother and stepfather’s place. And two miles ahead of him, along Rogers Avenue, is Debbie’s Diner.
The larger map has changed, though. Not because Debbie had the shit kicked out of him, although fuck knows where that would have gone if Caveman Doctor Cop hadn’t showed up. Because she sent him to Winnipeg.
Winnipeg blew Dylan’s mind. A whole city that was like some kind of fancy park, filled with people who had their shit together but weren’t intimidating. Giant old bank buildings but also a river walk.
Dylan tries to picture people in Ford setting up a lake walk. “What’s so funny, Clownarini?” the Sergeant wants to know.
Dylan wants to be there permanently. If not in Winnipeg, then someplace like it, in the United States or anywhere else. Every person he met in Winnipeg was nice to him, even though he was with Matt Wogum. Even fucking Wajid, the guy selling them the pseudoephedrine, was nice enough. He was a bit stuck up, and wouldn’t let them stay overnight in his apartment, but that doesn’t exactly make him Scarface.
Same thing with the girls in the bar. True, they asked for drugs, but what they said was “Do you know where we could get some?” And they were all healthy and smiling, like what they were talking about was sunshine. Dylan has a boner just thinking about them. You could exist in a place like that.
You’d just have to decide how to get there. Whether to go back to Debbie—hope she sends you on the Winnipeg run again rather than kill you, ditch out on her when you get there—or finish up high school and move to Canada as a righteous citizen. Maybe even join the Canadian Army, assuming there is one.
Not the army, though, now that Dylan thinks of it. Last thing he needs is two sergeants.
Two paths, though. Big choice. He should discuss it with Dr. McQuillen.
Ahead of him, two black SUVs come off the highway circle and stop at the light on Rogers Avenue, one in front of the other.
Dylan notices them but doesn’t really pay them any attention until the light changes and they don’t go anywhere. At which point, still in the shadow of the underpass, he moves up the incline so he can see them better.
The driver of the first SUV gets out. All in black, shaved head, tattoos. Kind of like a smaller version of Dr. Neanderthal. The guy waits for the driver of the second truck to lower the window. Takes a map from him and studies it. Goes back to his own truck and turns onto Rogers Avenue.
Whatever the fuck they’re up to, Dylan knows it’s bad for Debbie. Which means he’s got a very short time to decide what to do.
“What do you want, douchebag?” the dick who picks up the phone says.
Dylan’s at the payphone outside the Pizza Grinder, the closed-down restaurant next to the highway exit. Came here a couple times when he was a kid.
“Brian, I need to speak to Debbie. Like right fuckin now.”
“What’s the hurry?”
“It’s that if you don’t put me through, when she finds out why I’m calling she’s gonna have you fuckin killed for keeping her waiting.”
“Sure she is.”
But Brian then seems to think better of it, because five seconds later Debbie picks up.
“Dylan,” she says. Softly, like she wants him to come back. To die or go to Winnipeg, there’s no way to tell.
“Debbie, I saw a bunch of guys in SUVs headed your way.”
“When?”
“Just now. Coming off the highway.”
“Feds?”
“I don’t know. One of them had neck tattoos.”
“The Sinaloans?”
“I guess.”
After a pause: “Thanks, Dylan. Please come back.”
“I will.”
As Dylan hangs up, he hears Debbie yell “Wake the fuck up! The Sinaloans are coming!” in the background.
He takes his bike off the wall. Wonders why he just agreed with her that the people he saw were the Sinaloans.
They didn’t look like any Sinaloans Dylan’s seen. The Sinaloans tend to be way smaller, and always look like they’ve been awake for too long.
So why’d he say that’s who they were?
“Eyes forward, Ambivalensky,” the Sergeant warns him.
Biking toward Debbie’s on Rogers Avenue, Dylan sees the two SUVs parked side by side in the parking lot. Then he sees a big web of cracks appear, like magic, in one of the restaurant’s picture windows. As the glass sags and falls out, Dylan can suddenly hear gunfire.
He skews across the asphalt and drops into the cement half-pipe drainage ditch at the far side of the road.
After a while the shots become less frequent. It reminds Dylan of popcorn finishing popping in a microwave: bangbangbangbangbang, then only bangbangbang. Longer and longer periods of silence.
When the silence lasts a full minute, Dylan runs across the road in a crouch. Looks over the sill.
Mayhem. Dead guys all over two of the booths, spilling out onto the floor: the men from the SUV. No Boys, alive or dead, that Dylan can see.
“Hello?” he calls through the window.
Inside, he almost gags from the hot stink of plaster dust, gun smoke, and fresh blood. When he gets control of his breathing, he counts eight bodies. A moment ago he thought there were twice that number. The carnage must be playing tricks on his mind.
Up close, sunglasses hanging off their heads, these guys look even tougher. Some of them have guns in their hands. Dylan goes and kicks open the black Carhartt jacket of the one farthest from the tables: MP5 on a nylon strap. Next to the guy there’s a menu.
What the fuck? Who c
omes to a place for whatever reason these guys just did—to rob or kill Debbie or just to scare her—and orders lunch first? Least that’s going to happen is someone spits in your entrée.
Dylan figures out how to unhook the MP5 from the strap and moves carefully with it to the door to the kitchen. There are blood trails passing under it. Bullet holes in the aluminum.
“Whatchya doin, Dumbshitsky?” the Sergeant asks him.
“Turning off the safety,” Dylan mutters.
“That’s not what I—”
“Hello?” Dylan says out loud.
He opens the door with his hip, pointing the MP5.
Half a dozen Boys are on the floor around Debbie. Most of them alive, propping her up. Debbie herself unconscious or dead, with blood down one entire side of her.
The Boys all have guns out and pointed at him.
“It’s me! I’m back! Don’t shoot!” he thinks to say.
But his chest is suddenly jammed with static, and the room is spinning, and the floor hits him hard in one cheek.
So maybe they already have.
36
Portland, Oregon
Tuesday, 25 September
“You could have told me you were a hitman,” Rec Bill says.
“No I couldn’t.”
“Not to mention a fugitive.”
“I’m not a fugitive. I just have some assholes trying to kill me.”
“I’ve noticed. The person they blew up instead was my paleontologist, who I hired you to protect.”
What to say to that?
We’re back in his all-glass office.
“I heard you saw her this morning,” he says.
“That’s true.”
“How is she?”
“Better.”
“She say anything?”
“Not much.”*
“Anything about me?” Rec Bill says.
“No, but it’s funny you should ask me that. Violet told me you and she had some kind of relationship, but that she didn’t understand what it was.”
He stares at me. “She told you that?”
“She did. I thought it was weird. I mean, I’ve gotten to know her pretty well, and I can’t see anything that would hold me back.”
His look turns dismissive. “Thanks for the relationship advice. Is that all you wanted to see me about?”
“No, there’s one other thing. Do you smoke, Rec Bill?”
“No. Of course not.”
“I didn’t think so. Do you mind if other people smoke in here?”
“Yes. There’s no smoking on this whole campus. Sorry.”
I give it a moment. “Last time I was here you had a small ashtray on your desk.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“It was small. Pink and gold. Tacky, like a souvenir from somewhere. It had a business card in it, facedown.”
“Then someone must have given it to me. Where are you going with this? Are you asking me for an ashtray?”
“No. I don’t need one. I don’t know anybody whose business card catches fire.”
It startles him.
He says “This might be a good time for you to leave.”
“You’ll want to hear this.”
“I doubt it.”
“Okay.” I start to rise.
“Hold on,” he says. “Are you accusing me of something?”
I sit back down.
“I’m accusing you of hiring Tom Marvell to go to White Lake with the Palin party.”
“What?” he says. “Why?”
“Probably not to rat me out to the Mob, if Marvell’s the one who did that—which he probably is, intentionally or otherwise. Someone found out I was there, and almost killed me and Violet because of it, and Marvell’s the most likely suspect.”
“And you think I’m the reason Marvell went to Minnesota?”
“He was here before he was there. With his souvenir Vegas ashtray—I mean, what other place still has souvenir ashtrays? And his flaming business card.”
“That’s a leap.”
“You can waste as much of my time as you want to.”
Rec Bill studies me. Eventually says “I interviewed Marvell to go check out the lake monster before I interviewed you. We didn’t see eye to eye, so I went with you instead. I was as surprised as anyone else when he turned up in Ford. I’d shown him the letter and video in complete confidence.”
“You’re saying he went on the White Lake trip on his own?”
“As far as I know. If he’d been working for me, why wouldn’t I have told you about it?”
“Why wouldn’t you have told me you’d interviewed him after I sent you an e-mail saying he was there? Why wouldn’t you have told Violet? For that matter, why wouldn’t you have had Violet pick him up at the airport?”
“I have a lot employees. And a lot of things on my mind.”
“With Violet falling into both of those categories.”
Rec Bill’s mouth tightens. “Finish your insinuating and get out.”
“Okay. You tried to hire Marvell when he was here in this office, but it didn’t work out. Either he said no or he asked for too much money and you said no. So you hired Michael Bennett of Desert Eagle Investigations to do the job you had asked Marvell to do—which was in fact not the job of checking out the lake monster. And when Violet and I busted Mr. Bennett trying to take pictures of us in what he thought was the same bed, you went crawling back to Marvell and paid him whatever he wanted. You even paid Sarah Palin to give Marvell a ride and a cover story—something that must have cost a fortune, and implies that you already knew that Palin was going to be the ref but had chosen not to share that information with me or Violet. Because if you had, we’d have known you didn’t give a shit who the ref was, and therefore that you didn’t give a shit whether there was a monster in White Lake or not. You were afraid of your two million dollars going to Reggie Trager, but other than that the hoax meant nothing to you. You just wanted someone to spy on Violet Hurst. While you sent her into the woods with someone so completely different from you that if she fucked me it would prove to you that she couldn’t possibly be in love with you.”
Rec Bill’s poker face isn’t bad. It’s not great, though, either.
“That’s insane,” he says.
“It’s not exactly mature, in any case. In fact it’s more like the behavior of a twelve-year-old.”
“Get the hell out of my office. Then get the hell off my campus.”
“Stop calling it a campus. It’s a fucking office park. Are you teaching French lit here somewhere?”
“Get out. And another thing. If you say a word of any of this to Violet, I will destroy you.”
“Violet’s my friend. I’ll tell her the truth.”
“So you’re blackmailing me?”
“No. I said I’ll tell her the truth. Which I will, no matter what you do or say.”
He looks at me with cold eyes that gradually soften and fill with tears. If it’s a performance, it’s passable.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he finally says. “How hard it is for me to trust people.”
“I’d cry you a river, but it’s probably faster for you to just buy one.”
“I need you to help me with her.”
“No thanks. I won’t try to turn her against you, but I sure as hell won’t help you win her over.”
“That’s… fair enough.” He starts to say something, then stops.
“What?”
“Did you and she…? When you went back to White Lake?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I say. “Ask her! Ask her whatever you want. She might not answer, but at least you’ll be behaving like a grown-up.”
“You’re right. I know. I’m sorry.”
He slumps, staring down at his desk. Or at his feet. With all that glass it’s hard to tell.
“Do you… want more money?” he finally says.
“No. What you owe me should be enough. What I want is help spending it.
”
EPILOGUE
37
Gelin, North Dakota
Eight Months Later
I’m in the armchair by the window, trying to figure out the Image Challenge in the New England Journal, when the first bullet hits the glass. The image is of two hands with actual horns growing out of them.* Thanks to the pressure switch under the chair, the lights are off by the time I reach the floor.
The second shot sprays a small amount of glass into the room, which means the sniper’s using something heavier than I expected—a Steyr .50, maybe, like Austria sells to Iran. Since by “glass,” obviously, I mean sixty-six-millimeter Kevenex laminate mounted on shock absorbers.
The window’s doomed. Fine with me. I’m already crawling fast along the line of luminescent iron oxide tape that runs across the floor from the chair to the trapdoor. And the bullets can only come in straight-on, since what look like venetian blinds are actually steel slats anchored into the floor and the ceiling. They’re meant to force snipers to use the cover spots I set up for them on the bluffs facing the house. They appear to be doing that.
I slide down through the trap and close the door, which is from a safe by Nationwide that’s rated for light-aircraft impact and ten hours of chemical-fueled fire. Then I get on the sled.
The cement tunnel that Rec Bill’s allegedly untraceable construction company backhoed for me is two hundred yards long: about thirty seconds of sled time. The bunker at the far end is so cramped that my poster of Geronimo stretches from the ceiling to the floor.
I close the second hatch and turn on the strip to the monitors.
Both snipers are where they should be. Six other paramilitary geeks are coming toward the house from the “shoulder” directions, to stay out of the line of their own sniper fire as long as possible. There may be more, but the companies that train these losers favor groups of eight, because that’s the size of a typical Navy SEAL “boat team” and because any more than that tend to get in each other’s way. And to get into fights with each other. People become hitmen for a variety of reasons—true sociopathy, military training paired with a willingness to do anything for money, a pathological need to feel like James Bond—but social skills aren’t high on the list.