by Jess Walter
It’s a stupid idea. Vince knows it’s stupid and yet it must be occupying all of his idea-producing brain cells, because he can’t think of anything else. He hands Shirley the pipe and points to the metal mail slot at knee level of his door. “Listen, Shirley. I need you to do me a favor. If you do it, I’ll vote for Anderson. I’ll even wear a button.” Even as he asks her, Vince hears his own words: Why help some guy with no chance?
A few seconds later, Vince walks confidently out the front door. Len and Ray are climbing out of the car. They look up and see Vince coming. Len takes off his aviators. “Speak to the devil.”
“Speak of the devil, you dickhead.” Vince strides across the lawn. He meets Len and Ray in the middle of the street. They stop ten feet from one another, in a close triangle.
“How you doin’, chief?”
Vince looks at Ray. “A little tired.”
“That was stupid what your friend pulled last night,” Len says. “No more screwing around. Gimme my money and let’s go get the mailman.”
“No,” Vince says to Ray.
Len makes a show of rolling his eyes. “Damn it, Vince. It’s like you’re trying to make me an asshole.”
But Ray and Vince are staring at each other, ignoring Len. Ray steps toward him.
“I wouldn’t do that.” Vince turns and points.
Ray and Len follow Vince’s eyes to the front door of his house, and what appears to be the barrel of a gun sticking out of the mail slot, pointed right at Ray’s chest. Ray moves in the street to get a better view. The gun barrel follows him.
Nice job, Shirley. She’d looked at Vince as if he were crazy, but it turned out she loved practical jokes as much as dogs; he explained that all she had to do was crouch down on the floor and watch this guy through the pipe. Now Vince allows himself a moment of self-congratulation. See, it’s not the cards so much as the way you play them.
“Is that a pipe?” Ray asks, squinting.
Len is squinting, too. “Was that supposed to look like a gun, Vince?”
Ray grins. “You got us surrounded by plumbers, chief?”
As if on cue, the gun barrel is withdrawn from the mail slot. The door opens and Shirley Stafford comes out, a big smile on her face, waving the section of pipe. “Did we trick your friend, Mr. Camden?”
Okay, so sometimes it is the cards. Still, Vince is surprised how calm he feels. Fifteen minutes or fifteen billion years—what does it matter? Or an hour? What do you do with the last hour of your life? You try to think of the best hour you’ve ever had. Great sex, a run in poker, the time your old man took you to the Natural History Museum? But you can’t really separate just one hour like that. Just like you can’t take one brushstroke from a painting. You remember everything at once; your memories are impressions made upon layers of fabric. What does the whole know of a single hour or a single minute? Fifteen minutes or a lifetime? What does it matter?
Vince finds himself laughing. At first he thinks his laughter is what causes Len and Ray to take a step back in the street. But then Vince sees they are looking past him, down the block, and he turns to see what they see: an unmarked police car tooling down the street toward them. Vince steps back on the curb and the car stops between the men, Vince on one side, Ray and Len on the other.
The thin young cop from Doug’s Passport Photos and Souvenirs—Alan Dupree—steps out of the car, smiling at Vince.
Len and Ray shift their weight and stare at the cop. Vince can see Ray sizing up Dupree—five-foot-seven maybe, 140 pounds—and Vince knows how easily Ray could take care of this wrinkle if it came to that.
“Hey, Hash Browns.” Dupree says. “This is quite a coincidence.”
Vince just nods.
“You cut all your hair off,” the cop says.
“Summer cut.” Vince runs his hand over his buzzed head.
“It’s the end of October,” Dupree says.
“Indian summer.”
“It’s forty degrees.”
“Well, there’s always next year.”
Ray and Lenny look back and forth, off balance.
Vince rocks on the balls of his feet. “So what can I do for you, Detective?”
Lenny takes a short step back. Dupree cocks his head, too, at the way he leaned on the word detective.
“Still working on the passport thing,” he says. “The victim’s Rolodex was open to this name here—” He looks down at his notebook and flips a page, makes a show of looking up a name. “…Vince Camden. You fellas know this guy Camden? According to the victim’s Rolodex, this is his address.” Dupree shows Vince the notebook as if he needs proof of what he’s saying.
Vince raises his hands like a magician finishing a trick. “That’s me. I’m Vince.”
“Really?” Dupree smiles. “You’re Vince Camden? Now, this is a coincidence.”
Ray and Len stand dumbly on the curb.
“Who are your friends?” Dupree asks.
“Criminals,” Vince says.
There is a split second of tension that Vince breaks with laughter. They laugh like dominoes: Vince, then Dupree, then Ray, and finally Lenny, who giggles frantically like a car that won’t start. “Ha! Ha, ha. Ha! Good one, Vince.” Len says. “We’ll see you later.” He and Ray walk toward Len’s Cadillac.
Vince watches the young cop take note of their license plate. The Cadillac eases out of the neighborhood, comes to a complete stop before turning. Len’s hands are at ten and two.
“Mr. Camden?”
Vince and Dupree both turn to see Shirley Stafford, who has been waiting patiently.
“I figured out my answer.”
Dupree looks from Vince to Shirley.
Vince rubs his temples.
“You caught me off guard when you asked why I’m still out canvassing when John Anderson has no chance of winning.”
“Look, Shirley—”
“No, Mr. Camden,” Shirley says. “I’m glad you asked. I should be able to explain why this is so important to me. I know you’re right; this time we won’t win. But if we can get ten percent, maybe the next outsider will get twenty. And maybe one day, twenty years from now, we’ll have more than these two corporate choices and maybe someone outside this corrupt system will become president. For me—for my kids, that’s worth it. The chance that someday it will improve.” She gives Vince a handful of brochures and a button that reads Anderson for President. As Officer Dupree watches with a look of bemusement, Vince puts the button on his shirt, and the smile on Shirley’s face makes it all feel strangely worthwhile.
“I’M SORRY.” DUPREE shrugs as he drives toward downtown. “I’m trying to understand. I really am. But you have to admit…it doesn’t make much sense.” He looks over at Vince. “I just don’t see how, four days before the election, you can still be thinking of voting for Anderson.”
Vince is in the front seat with him. “So you think I’d be wasting my vote?”
“The only thing he’s running on is the fact that he’s not one of the other two guys. He’s like the guy in high school who wanted to be student body president so he could abolish student politics.”
Dupree turns the car toward the river. “But more than that, I just can’t believe you still don’t know who to vote for. I hear about people like you, undecided, and I just don’t get it. What are you waiting for—one of these guys to walk on water?”
Vince stares out the window as buildings slide past. They roll over the huge Monroe Street Bridge, its arches sided with bleached buffalo skulls. “You’ve known all along who you’re going to vote for?” Vince asks.
“For at least a year.”
“You’re confident one of these guys can run the country?”
“Run the country?” Dupree laughs. “Who told you these guys run the country? That’s not what it’s about. It’s more like an honorary position. Or like a jockey. He’s important, but it’s the horse you put your money on, not the jockey. He’s just the little guy along for the ride.”
Vince is trying to follow the metaphor. “So…what’s the horse? Congress?”
“No. No. We’re the horse.” Dupree turns his car in behind the classic Gothic towers of the Spokane County Courthouse—one of Vince’s favorite buildings in town—and into the parking lot of the Public Safety Building. The cluster of buildings is built on a shelf above the river, across from downtown, surrounded by clapboard homes and empty fields. Behind the cop shop is the county jail—rectangular and dotted with beady little windows, as dull as the courthouse is ornate. Old habit; Vince always scouts the jail in a town.
“I got this theory,” Dupree says. “The presidential election is a big mood ring. Four years ago we were pleased with ourselves. Content. So we elected the sweetest guy we could find, a real outsider, because we were tired of shifty insiders like Nixon and Ford. The only reform president of the twentieth century. But then the lunatics took our people hostage in Iran and the economy went in the toilet, and you know what? We’re in a bad fuckin’ mood now. And we can only blame ourselves. We asked for this. And we don’t want the nice guy anymore. We want Dirty Harry. John Wayne. We want Ronald Reagan, a guy who couldn’t have gotten thirty percent four years ago. Now, hell, he’s just a good Tuesday from being president.
“See.” Dupree puts the car in park, turns and faces Vince. “This isn’t really about them. This is about us. The government doesn’t change. It’s the same buildings, same ideas, same pieces of paper. What happens is, every eight years or so, we change.”
Vince stares at the young cop, and the thought flashes that they could be friends if things were different. “So…who are you voting for?” he asks quietly.
A smile. Dupree nods at the dark Public Safety Building. “I’m sorry, Vince,” he says. “But now it’s my turn to ask the questions.”
FOUR CIGARETTES, TWO Frescas, a donut, and some Corn Nuts later, Vince shrugs his shoulders. “You know, that’s really all I can tell you.”
The walrus detective, Paul Phelps, is sitting across the small table from him, rubbing his jaw, unable to shake Vince off what is really a simple story: Yes, he did know Doug. They met at the donut shop. Vince was hoping to sell Mount St. Helens volcanic ash out of Doug’s store but they hadn’t actually gotten around to it.
Sitting against the wall, Dupree listens with a half smirk on his face, appreciating Vince’s cool under questioning.
So why did Vince lie and say that he didn’t know Doug? Because Doug’s death shook him, and the young cop surprised him. He felt under suspicion. He got nervous. He really didn’t know Doug well and he didn’t want to answer a bunch of questions because he wanted to get to breakfast. He was hungry. As proof, he offers the receipt from Chet’s.
Just then, another detective, gray-haired with glasses, comes into the room, bends down, and whispers in Phelps’s ear. Then he hands Phelps a sheet of paper. The big detective reads the page, nods, and the old cop shuffles out of the room. Phelps turns to Dupree and shrugs.
“Sorry, Alan. Mr. Camden’s alibi checks out.” He looks down at the page. “This…Beth Sherman says he did go to hear Reagan’s son just like he said and that he was with her until after three A.M.” Phelps smiles, like someone working a tough puzzle. He waves the sheet of paper and looks up at Vince. “And, since your story checks out and you don’t have a criminal record, I don’t think there’s anything else we need from you. I appreciate you coming down and clearing this up. Next time, don’t lie to a cop.”
“I won’t,” Vince says.
Dupree is still smiling at Vince, as if admiring the expertise with which he handled the interrogation, and even managed to get a small meal out of it.
Phelps stands and hands Dupree the sheet of paper, then pats the young cop on the shoulder on his way out. “It was good work, rook. Don’t let it get you down.” Dupree never stops staring at Vince, even when the big detective walks out of the room.
Vince looks at the clock above Dupree’s head. Quarter after three. His flight is at 4:30. He might just make it after all.
Finally Dupree looks down at the page that Phelps handed him. He stares at it for a long time and then cocks his head and smiles.
Vince is already standing to leave. “What?”
Dupree holds up a nearly blank page. “When Paul said you don’t have a criminal record he wasn’t kidding. Hell, you don’t have any kind of record at all. Not a speeding ticket, nothing. Not a parking ticket. Not even a driver’s license. Nothing but a social-security number. How is that possible, Vince? How does a person go through life without a divorce? Or a civil lawsuit? No inheritance. Probate. It’s like you were born yesterday. Like you’re a shadow.” But the young cop doesn’t like the image. His eyes are steady, less mirthful. He doesn’t look away. “Or a ghost.”
Standing across the table, Vince finishes his last Fresca. Maybe those other sixty-two think they’re alive, too. “You know what? Sometimes, that’s exactly what I feel like.”
VINCE OFFERS TO take a cab home, but Dupree insists on driving him, and Vince knows better than to protest. His flight leaves in a little more than an hour. Vince goes to the bathroom and steps into a pay phone to call the taxi company. He gives the dispatcher an address exactly one block south of his house and says he wants the driver to start the meter and wait there, not to knock on the door.
The drive home is quiet. Maybe you are a ghost. Maybe those sixty-two are running around, scrambling and scurrying, and no one notices. No one cares. Two days without sleep.
“Got any suspects besides me?” Vince asks Dupree finally, to break the silence.
A traffic light turns yellow as Dupree rolls through the intersection. “Nope. You’re it.”
“But I didn’t kill him.”
He looks over at Vince. “That certainly complicates my theory.”
Dupree tools through the rough edge of Vince’s neighborhood—the flats at the base of the South Hill—and slows when he sees three men lurking on a street corner. Two of the men stare at the ground, their backs to the car, as the third tracks the cop without moving his head. After they pass, Dupree watches them in his rearview mirror. Vince turns to see that once the car is past, all three men look up.
“Drugs?” Vince watches the men fade in the back window.
“Be my guess,” Dupree says. “I popped the short guy eight months ago selling speed. Guy’s got the worst breath. Like onions and cat shit. Make you think twice about arresting him, that’s for sure.”
Vince turns back to face forward. “You think a guy like that can change?”
“A guy like that? No.”
“Why not?”
Dupree thinks for a moment. “I went two years at the community college. For criminal justice. We were supposed to take a psych class, but it was full so they put me in philosophy instead. Turned out to be one of those great mistakes.
“There’s this parable I remember”—Dupree turns down Vince’s street—“about a flock of crows—real tough birds flying around all day, stealing corn and crops, always on the lookout for shiny things, you know…just living the crow life. One day, the crows are flying around, really happy with themselves, when they happen to fly over a lake and see their reflections in the still water. They spend all day diving and soaring, watching themselves in the water, admiring their own power and grace. But after a while they get bored and start making fun of the lake for having no qualities of its own, for only reflecting the world. The lake says that it can do far more than crows can do: it can freeze solid; it can rise up in great waves and wash away the shore; it can evaporate and fall on the hillsides as rain. ‘So do it,’ say the crows. But it’s a warm, clear day and the lake just sits there, still, until finally the crows move on.”
Vince stares at the young cop. “What does that mean?”
“I’ll tell you what.” Dupree pulls out a business card and writes on it. “When you’re ready to tell me what happened to Doug, I’ll explain the parable.”
Vince takes the card.
�
��Front is my office number. On the back is my home number.”
Vince opens his car door.
“On TV shows, this is the part where the cop asks the bad guy not to leave town without notifying him.”
“Yeah,” Vince says, “I always liked that part.” He climbs out of the car, lost in thought. He walks toward his house and fishes in his pocket for his keys, aware of the cop’s eyes on his back.
Vince unlocks the front door, steps inside, closes the door, and dead-bolts it. He walks through the trashed house, flips on some lights, opens his packed bag, runs his finger along the ten grand in the manila envelope, then seals it and zips up the bag. He continues through the house, into the kitchen, and straight out the back door.
From his backyard, Vince can hear the car idling in front of his house; he imagines Dupree watching the front window. He’s never met a cop like this, with his ghosts and his shadows and his crows. It makes Vince feel uneasy. He walks through the backyard, hops the chain-link fence, sprints alongside the neighbor’s house, and comes out on the block behind his own. He slides into the backseat of the waiting cab. As he settles in, he sees Len’s Cadillac glide past on the cross street.
The cabbie starts driving. “Airport?”
“Please.”
“So where you headed?”
What happens to the crows after they leave the lake? Where do they go?
Driver won’t drop it. “Hey, where you flyin’ today, buddy?”
Vince falls back in the seat. “Home.”
New York, New York
1980 / October 31 / Friday / 10:43 A.M.
IV
Chapter IV
And then you’re back here, of all places, at another airport, staring into the dreadlocks and hack license of another cabbie in the scratched glass that separates you, while outside the car horns play and voices sing in that unending New York chorus of praise: Hey, move ya fockin’ cah arready!
And that’s when it hits you: maybe you’re not the crow, flying above all the shit—the people and the traffic and the straight life below—full of self-admiration, occasionally drawn by shiny, worthless things on the ground.