Dynamite Road

by Andrew Klavan

  Ketchum had not interrupted up to this point. But the wiry little cop had had enough. His scowl twisted into an even deeper scowl. He said, “Are you trying to tell us you had yourself locked away in this hellhole—that you bargained to have yourself locked away in this…this hellhole—because you created this girl’s new identity and now you’re afraid this so-called Shadowman character is going to come after you and make you tell him what the identity is?”

  “Oh, he’ll come,” Pomeroy answered. “You don’t know him. He’ll come. He tortured Crouch. You see what I’m saying? When he realized Julie was gone, when he realized that Crouch had been there in the end, he tortured Crouch and Crouch would’ve told him everything. Crouch would’ve told him about me and the false identity. So he knows. You see what I’m saying? He knows I’m the only one who can help him.”

  “Yeah? So?” said Ketchum in his rasping growl. “So why don’t you? I mean, what the hell, right? You’re a scumbag. Why don’t you just tell him? What the hell do you care what happens to her?”

  Pomeroy lifted his chin a little as if trying to look noble and exalted again. But Weiss said, “Because the Shadowman will kill him anyway.” And Pomeroy dropped the noble act. His chin sank at once to his chest. “The Shadowman has to kill him no matter what,” Weiss went on. “Because he heard him. He heard him beg. He heard him cry to Julile Wyant that he needed her. Isn’t that right, Pomeroy?”

  “No,” said Whip Pomeroy forlornly. “No. Not because I heard him.”

  Weiss closed his eyes a moment. Now he saw. Now he had all of it. “Because you heard her,” he said. “Because you heard her answer him.”

  Pomeroy nodded slowly. “He has to kill me no matter what,” he whispered in a near singsong. “Because I heard her laugh.”

  There was another long quiet in the room after that. Sometimes the mike in the prisoner’s booth picked up the rattle of Pomeroy’s shackles as he twitched and shivered. Other than that, there were just the three men sitting there, sitting there with this bizarre thing in the air between them, this bizarre story. The worst man in the world had fallen in love. The worst man in the world had fallen in love with Julie Angel.

  “You’ve got one chance, Pomeroy,” said Weiss after a while. “Your only chance. You’ve got to tell us now. Tell us where she is. Tell us the name you gave her, the identity, so we can track her down. We’ll protect you. You and her both. Me, the police, we’ll all protect the both of you. I promise.”

  “Protect us?” Even Weiss recoiled a little as Pomeroy’s head came suddenly forward, as the bright eyes in that transparent face found him, as those bloodless, ceaseless lips curled into a painful grin. “You can’t. You can’t protect me. You can’t protect her. You can’t protect anyone. Not from him. Nothing stops him in the end. Nothing. Ever. He can go anywhere. Get to anyone. And he will. For her. He will.” Pomeroy drew back, drew away as if fading into himself. His lips moved a moment more before the words whispered out of him. “He can’t be stopped. Nothing can stop him. Ever.”

  Thirty-Eight

  When the guards had come again, when they’d unshackled Pomeroy and hauled him back to his cell, Weiss sat where he was a while. He sat in the plastic chair, his hands clasped between his thighs. He stared through the Lexan at the empty booth where the prisoner had been. Ketchum watched him without speaking.

  “Damn,” said Weiss finally with a sigh.

  “Well, there’s one thing,” said Ketchum. “He may not tell us the name, but as long as he’s in this place, our friend the Shadowman sure as hell can’t get to him either.”

  Weiss nodded heavily, with no joy. What Ketchum said was true, it made sense, but somehow…somehow that urgency wouldn’t leave him. That fantasy of running upstairs…the locked door…That sense that every second counted.

  Still, there was nothing to do. He pushed off his knees, rose heavily. He went to the door with Ketchum beside him. The video camera watched them. The door buzzed loudly. Weiss pulled it open.

  He paused. He looked back at the empty chair on the other side of the Lexan wall. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I guess he’s safe for now.”

  They left. And, for a while, the room, Visiting Room Three at North Wilderness SHU, remained empty. Empty and silent half an hour, forty-five minutes, no more. Then the door buzzed again. Opened again. A man walked in. He was a slender man in an expensive charcoal gray suit. His hands were clasped in front of him, his elbows pressed tight to his sides. He seemed a fastidious and disdainful character. He moved to one of the plastic chairs.

  Bernard Hirschorn’s assistant, Alex Wellman, took a seat and waited. Another minute passed. Then the door on the other side of the transparent wall opened. Two guards came in. They led a shackled prisoner between them.

  It was the man called Ben Fry.

  Thirty-Nine

  But back to my own somewhat less thrilling adventures.

  When we last saw our intrepid hero—namely me—I was on the horns of a moral dilemma. Through my brilliant investigative work, I had uncovered the ugly little secret of Father Reginald O’Mara. To wit, at the time he witnessed our client rob, shoot and paralyze a college student, he happened to be in the process of butt-fucking one of his parishioners. Now I’m not a Catholic—in fact, I’m not a moralist of any kind. I don’t care who butt-fucks whom as long as it’s all friendly and on the level between adults. But I realized right away that not everyone would share my broad-minded view on this subject. Which is to say I realized that Father Reg was now in what I believe the theologians call “deep shit.” Basically, if I handed my report in to Sissy as I was supposed to, I would destroy the career of this good man who helped the poor and so forth in order to free our client who, as I believe I mentioned before, was a scumbag—a scumbag who very much deserved to be in prison, where the priest’s eyewitness testimony would surely put him with no problem if you leave out the butt-fucking part.

  But I couldn’t leave it out and still be said to be doing my job. So here was my moral dilemma. On the one hand, there was that stuff about the justice system and Sissy calling me sweetheart and so on and the fact that, in my fantasy life at least, this was my chance to prove myself as a gumshoe like the heroes in the novels I loved growing up and thus get more assignments with Sissy and thus, ultimately, take her to bed. Which counts for a lot with a fellow. Whereas on the other hand, this ruin-the-good-priest-to-free-the-evil-scumbag scenario was not entirely working for me. So I worried at it and worried at it and after a while I figured: Well, if you have a moral dilemma, who do you call? A priest, right?

  Brad Murphy—the butt-fuckee—arranged for me to meet with Father O’Mara outside the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Right next to the Thinker statue, in fact, which was appropriate enough as I was desperately trying to think my way out of this sucker before I had to get back with my report to Sissy.

  The Palace, for those who’ve never been, is a pretty grand and majestic-looking place. A neoclassical arch flanked by stately colonnades. An elegant temple with a small glass pyramid before it. A reflecting pool beyond the wide courtyard—just then catching the dramatic image of a sky that had grown low and heavy and steel gray as the afternoon wore on. And beyond that there was a stand of towering eucalyptus. And beyond that were the waters of the everlasting Pacific. All of which majesty and grandeur and so forth only served to make me feel like just that much more of a scurvy knave. As if the Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe type I’d set out as a couple of hours before had been magically transformed into the sort of slimy dickhead who peeks through keyholes at other men’s dirty secrets.

  Speaking of which, here came Father O’Mara. Stern face lowering like the sky. The guy was fifty, maybe six feet tall, broad-shouldered, trim-waisted. A chiseled face with a dignified shock of silver hair. He wasn’t wearing the black priest suit or the backward collar or anything. Just a gray turtleneck, slacks. I stuck out my hand as he approached. He sniffed at it: actually looked disdainfully at my hand and went sniff and
glanced away without offering to shake. Which really made me feel like a scurvy knave, a very small scurvy knave, a little scurvy miniknave about two inches high.

  There was a gaggle of Japanese tourists taking pictures of each other in front of the Thinker, so we moved off toward the courtyard archway. We walked side by side, but he never looked at me. He just gazed straight ahead, speaking as if confiding his thoughts to the air.

  “You want money, I assume,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want money. Jesus. I’m trying to help here.”

  He snorted in such a way that I no longer felt two inches high, not even in boots. We were at the arch, under it, our footsteps echoing on the stone.

  “You’re trying to help,” he said.

  “That’s right. I didn’t know I was going to come up with this.” We emerged under the low-hanging clouds. Our voices lost their resonance. “I was just trying to make sure your statement checked out. That was my assignment. Now I’m stuck with this sh—crap,” I amended in light of his priestlitude.

  We drew up at the edge of the reflecting pool, both of us staring determinedly across the water, out through the trees at the low sky over the roiling sea. Finally, he relented; glanced over at me. I only caught it from the corner of my eye but I got the sense he was trying to take my measure.

  “What a surprise,” he said mildly after a moment. “A private investigator with a conscience.”

  “Yeah, well…I’m new,” I said.

  “Ah, right.” He looked out at the ocean again and nodded. “I see the difficulty. It’s a pretty little problem.”

  “Look, you seem like a really good guy, Father. I don’t want to bring the roof down on you. But I can’t let my client take the fall, go to prison.”

  “Why not? He shot someone.”

  “I know but…he’s my client,” I finished lamely.

  “Ah, right,” he said again—and that was all.

  A cold wind came in off the Pacific. I slipped my hands in my pockets, hunched my shoulders against it. Faced him. He was frowning out into the middle distance. Staring down the coming catastrophe, as I imagined. He looked kind of noble doing it, in fact. Noble and sad.

  “I don’t suppose you would consider standing down,” I said finally.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. Maybe you didn’t see what you thought you saw. Maybe you’re not sure. No witness, no need for witness background.”

  He got it. Lifted his chin. Smiled a little at nobody in particular. “You want me to lie to save myself. Let this man go free.”

  “No offense, Father. But you already did lie.”

  He looked at me, still smiling. I think, to be honest, if I read him right, he pitied me: a young man caught up in more than he could handle. “I saw it as a harmless fib at the time. My mistake and I’ll correct it. In any case, it wasn’t to save myself, though I don’t expect you to believe that. There are a lot of people who depend on me, on the work I do. And a lot of people who…who would be hurt by the scandal, even though they’d done nothing wrong themselves.”

  “Right,” I said. “Right.” I could see all that: the kids he helped off the streets, his brother the governor. They’d all go down with him one way or another. It was official: This sucked.

  He caught the expression that must’ve been on my face about then. He actually laughed. “What can I tell you? I guess you’re on your own.”

  “Oh wonderful. What the hell kind of priesting is that?”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, then you’re really screwed.”

  I laughed too. Feebly though—I didn’t feel much like laughing. I dug my way even deeper into my pockets. Brooded into the clouds on the surface of the pool.

  “How old are you anyway?” the priest asked me.

  “Twenty-two,” I said morosely.

  “Janey Mack! A baby.” I didn’t even have the heart to protest. I was just glad neither Weiss nor Bishop could see me now. “Well…” The priest reached out and clasped my shoulder. “Here’s a news flash for you: You’re a better man than you know. You’ll figure this out.”

  I watched him stride off toward the parking lot under the darkening sky.

  Great, I thought. “Shit,” I said.

  Forty

  By now, it was—I don’t know—five o’clock, let’s say. And Jim Bishop—or, that is, the man Chris and Kathleen knew as Frank Kennedy—still hadn’t left his house. Chris felt sick and weak with the suspense of waiting.

  “Damn it,” he said. He was peeking out the bedroom window again, watching for any sign of the man. “We gotta get him out of there. If he’s a cop, I gotta find out.”

  Kathleen, brooding on the bed behind him, answered nothing. She thought about it a moment, then just picked up the phone and dialed. Chris could hear Kennedy’s phone ringing faintly in the house across the way.

  “It’s Kathleen,” he heard his wife say then. “I have to talk to you.”

  Chris drew back from the window quickly. There was Kennedy now, a dim figure at his own window, holding the phone to his ear, gazing over at them as he answered her.

  “No,” Kathleen said. “It’s about Hirschorn, Chris and Hirschorn. It’s important. I can’t tell you on the phone. Meet me in front of the Kmart in the River Mall in ten minutes. Hurry.”

  She hung up without another word. She made a move to join Chris at the window but he waved at her behind his back. “Stay down, he’s looking this way,” he said.

  Kennedy had put the phone down but he was still standing there, still watching their house. “He’ll see the truck,” Chris whispered—whispered harshly, as if Kennedy were close enough to hear him. “He’ll see the truck, he’ll know you’re here.”

  Kathleen spoke clearly. “He knows I take the bus when you’re not around. Hell, I walk to River Mall sometimes.”

  “He’s doing something.”

  As he watched, Kennedy faded back from the window, faded into the shadows of his room. A long minute passed. Then Chris, excited, said, “Look! It’s working! There he goes.”

  Kathleen sat on the bed. She stared at the floor. The Kleenexes still lay there from when she was crying. But she wasn’t crying anymore. Now she was just dark and hard inside. Kennedy had humiliated her and it had made her dark and hard. She wanted Kennedy to get hurt the way she was hurt.

  “There he goes, there he goes,” whispered Chris, triumphant.

  Kathleen heard Kennedy’s motorcycle, heard its engine sputter and roar. The bike went into gear. The noise of the engine quickly grew fainter and fainter. Then it was gone.

  “Go on,” she said aloud. “He’ll be back any minute when he sees I’m not there. Go on and search the house. The key’s in my bag on the kitchen table.”

  Chris obeyed her in a big hurry. Kathleen could hear his footsteps stampeding down the stairs. She just sat there—just sat there, dark and hard, staring down, frowning down at the Kleenexes on the floor.

  Fuck you, Frank, she thought.

  Forty-One

  Outside, the sun was in its long summer descent, but the heat of the day was full. By the time Chris crossed the lawn to reach the house next door, he was sweating hard. His gray cut-off T-shirt had gone wet and dark at his chest and between his shoulder blades. His smooth face was glistening.

  He let himself into the house with Kathleen’s key. Took the stairs fast, his long legs stretching over two and then three steps at a time. He was panting, pouring sweat as he stepped into the bedroom.

  The air-conditioning was still on in here. Which meant Kennedy was planning to come back soon. The hollow sough of the machine made Chris nervous, made his throat tight. He would never admit it—not even to himself—but the idea of confronting Kennedy again scared him to his toes. He knew he had to act fast, before Kennedy’s return.

  He let his eyes travel once around the place. The room was shadowy but sunshine was falling through the window, through the tree
s. It lay in patterns on the floor. By its light, Chris saw Kennedy’s traveling bag on the bed. It was packed full of clothing. Kennedy was getting ready to go. For good, by the looks of it.

  Chris stepped to the bag. It was unzipped. He pulled it open. Even with the air-conditioning on, the place felt airless to him, stifling. Maybe it was just fear. Anyway, sweat dripped off his temples as he bent over, dug through Bishop’s clothes. He felt down deep, along the bag’s lining. It didn’t take him long to find Bishop’s handheld computer.

  He’d never worked one of these little gizmos before but it wasn’t hard. He was a pilot. He knew machines, computers. He had it open on the desk, had it booted in a minute. Wiping the dripping sweat off his face with one hand. Glancing up at the pale day through the window now and then, watching for Bishop’s motorcycle, listening for its engine. He poked the handheld’s buttons. He worked quickly through Bishop’s files. Notes, Names, Mail…

  Chris panted through his open mouth as he read the tiny screen. He couldn’t breathe in this damn place. He felt as if a hand were on his throat, choking him. But his mind was working as he read. If this Kennedy was a cop, he thought, if he had used Kathleen to get the goods on Hirschorn…well, there would be hell to pay. Hirschorn’s vengeance would be swift and sure. On Kennedy, yes, but on him and Kathleen too, unless…Unless he could warn Hirschorn first, if he could tell him about Kennedy, if he could save the day in the nick of time. Then maybe Hirschorn would be grateful. Then maybe he would be forgiving. He would still be angry but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he would be indulgent about it. Maybe he would just say something like, “You ought to keep a closer watch on your wife….”

  Chris felt his cheeks burn. Your wife. He felt an acid anger eating at his groin. Sometime in the last hour or so, it had occurred to him that Kathleen was not telling him the whole truth. He had been so worried at first about Kennedy being a cop, so frightened about what would happen when Hirschorn found out, that he hadn’t really thought about anything else. But slowly, all the same, it had begun to occur to him that Kathleen was lying about Kennedy. She had fucked him. That was the true story. She had eavesdropped on Chris’s conversations with Hirschorn and then told them to Kennedy. They had talked about him while they were lying in bed together.