Middle Man

by David Rich

  “Great actor. This is Zulu, one of his best roles. When I was a boy, I saw every Stanley Baker film. Mostly on TV by then. Sometimes sneaking into theaters. I wanted to be Stanley Baker. Joined the armed forces. But life isn’t like the movies, is it? No, it is not. In the movies, the hero doesn’t lose his eye. The hero’s wounds always heal quickly on film. But I still enjoy a Stanley Baker film whenever I have the time.”

  I looked at the screen again. The real Stanley Baker looked the opposite of the man on the couch. “I can see the resemblance,” I said.

  He didn’t smile. “Now about you, Mr. Hewitt. The alarm trick is a good one, though a bit unusual for someone with your résumé. Don’t suppose you spent too much of your youth breaking into houses, did you? Not with that résumé. Here’s a test. When you break into a house equipped with an alarm system, do you prefer to find an open or a closed circuit system?”

  “When you kidnap women, do you prefer they struggle or do you prefer they pretend to like it?”

  Maya’s eyes flickered and her mouth tightened.

  Stanley Baker said, “I enjoy a good lie, Mr. Hewitt, as much as the next man. A lie well told is a powerful tool, but like any tool, it must be used at the appropriate time to be most effective. I know who I am. I am comfortable with it. Comfortable enough to accept all the different aspects of my—”

  “Oh, c’mon. It’s a simple answer and no one cares what you say anyway. I was just asking to be polite.”

  He nodded and a fist landed hard in my lower back. Before I finished grunting and trying to straighten up, Stanley Baker resumed his speech about being who he is, virtues and all, like it or not. He droned on, entertaining only himself, holding all of us hostage. The goons must have heard it a thousand times. They were the kind of hostages who pretended to like it. Maybe by now, they convinced themselves they did like it. At last, Stanley Baker finished by saying, “So, of course, I prefer them to be afraid because that’s the honest response. And honesty is essential for knowing who someone is.”

  I thought both responses were honest but decided not to press the point. Maya fell somewhere in between, detached, in the wings, waiting for her moment.

  He went on. “Now, open circuit or closed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Stanley Baker said, “Sure you do. You know the answer. I’ll prove it.” He nodded.

  A goon hit me in the kidney again.

  “That, by the way, is Mr. Clark, with whom you spoke on the phone.”

  I could not see the advantage in stretching this out. “An open circuit. I prefer to find an open circuit. I would, if I broke in anywhere.”

  “And why is that?”

  I heard movement behind me. Two goons entered from the side nearest the front entrance. I figured they were the ones I saw leaving in the SUVs. That put eight of them in the room, plus Stanley Baker. I wasn’t going to fight my way out.

  “When you trip the alarm, the circuit closes, but you just have to snip the wire to reopen it,” I said.

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I knew you knew. I just don’t know how you knew, but I’ll get to that in due time. All in due time. Those were great days, the days of breaking into houses. Responsible only for myself. Free. A free agent in the world of minor crime. Minor crimes and major dreams. I could dream of one day being like Stanley Baker. Ever see him in The Criminal? You must, you really must. I used to ponder this question: Do we define ourselves by those crimes, or by the dreams? Well, we know the answer, don’t we, you and I. I encourage all the boys to ponder that as they proceed with their lives. Don’t let the little crimes define you, I say. I know you agree, or you wouldn’t be head of an investment firm. Oh well, just for future reference, I told the security company to call me directly before turning the system on. Now, I see you didn’t bring the money.”

  “You could have started with that. I forgot the money,” I said.

  “No matter. I thought you might. We went to your car and helped ourselves.”

  He nodded toward one of the goons behind me. I turned. The goon held up my briefcase. But the briefcase is not what held me. The goon’s eyes seemed to be smiling at me, eyes I had seen before. And he fit the description: shorter than me, thicker, dark complexion. The moment passed quickly and I tried to convince myself it was wishful thinking. If it was Mask Man, then my cover was blown. My cover was not blown, so it must not be him.

  I turned back to Stanley Baker and said, “Does that mean you’ll let Maya go now?”

  He was waiting for that. He slid his arm down around Maya’s shoulder. He didn’t draw her close and she didn’t move. “I have a lot of questions to ask you, Mr. Hewitt,” he said. “And it will take some time. So I’m going to allow you one question, any question, which I will answer as truthfully as I can. You have my word.”

  His fat baby face wobbled a bit. His lips reminded me of Play-Doh after it rolled in your palms. Even the color looked like Play-Doh. Maya gazed right at me. Did she want me to rescue her? Should I have been looking for mockery, victory, contempt? She had not turned to Stanley Baker once. I looked around the room, pretending to need time to decide on a question. I just wanted another look at the goon who might be Mask Man. I could not read him, either.

  “Don’t be shy now. Anything you want.”

  I looked once more at the real Stanley Baker, frozen in his heroic, painless pose on-screen. I understood him. He was precise and specific. I don’t want to kill them; I will kill as many as I can: I am tired of this; I need more of this: I want to run away; I will never leave.

  “All right. One question. When you read my résumé, did you use a monocle?”

  “No.” He said it flatly as if he were disappointed at missing the opportunity to tell the truth. “Now,” he said. Goons held my arms. Another stepped in and rolled up my sleeve. I stared at Maya. Did she flinch or did she shrug as the needle went into my arm?

  Questions flew at me, buzzed around, circled back, changed colors, held hands with each other, and squeezed. I answered each one willingly, for the first time in my life. The drug closed the circuit in me, pushing out more words than ever before. I was hungry for questions, more questions, because I wanted to talk and they gave me direction. Otherwise I might have talked about the taste of dust in Afghanistan, or killing people in caves, or the way Amy Petersen could go cross-eyed in fifth grade.

  “Who backs your fund? Who pays you? Who is your boss? Who do you work with? Are you a Chinese agent? A Russian agent? How did you meet Maya?” Maya was there. Her tears were so close to me, I could feel them dripping into my eyes and taste them sliding off my lip. Stanley Baker pumped and the well gushed. All of it about Robert Hewitt’s life. None of it felt like lies. It was a story, the true story of a fake character. I didn’t know any lies about Robert Hewitt. If they asked me about Rollie Waters, I would have had to lie and might have said too much and might have been caught. But they stuck to the résumé built by Major Hensel, who knew how to build one. I forced myself never to turn away and look at the Goon Who Might Be Mask Man. The thoughts that went with him had to be kept inside. I spewed out stories I had never imagined: the professor at Columbia who introduced me to the Chinese deputy U.N. ambassador at a private dinner in Harlem; camping in northern Syria while searching for Kongra-Gel leaders; turning away an investor I didn’t trust in spite of his deep pockets. And then came the stories I had lived as Robert Hewitt: seeing Maya across the club, a dark beauty turning the corner of the room into the center of the room, riding in silence to the roadhouse beside her. I stopped there, worried that Stanley Baker would notice that I preferred silence. The King, Zoran, the money.

  Stanley Baker was disgusted. He rose and shouted at the goons. I was still talking when the blow fell on the back of my head. Still conscious, I rolled onto my back.

  The Goon Who Might Be Mask Man stared down at me, and there could be no doubt
. I recognized him even without the mask.

  16

  The anvil attached to my neck could not be moved. Light darted at my eyes, so I closed them. My ears woke up sometime later. I’m sure it took only a few minutes for me to understand that the sound of a drill boring through the anvil was an alarm. A burglar alarm. An imaginary crane attached to my head helped me get up. The real Stanley Baker was still staring out at the enemy on the TV, rifle in hand, hair messed up. I found the remote and turned him off.

  Voices shouted over the alarm, coming from the front door area. I went the other direction and up the stairs. The alarm stopped while I was searching the second bedroom. Outside, beside a police car, a security company car, and a Lexus sedan, a cop was speaking with two women in business suits. The security company man came out of the house and started talking. The cop seemed to be bored. He drove away. The security company man got one of the women to sign something and he left.

  All the bedrooms were pristine, made up, including the master, which I assumed Stanley Baker had occupied. I couldn’t find anything personal. Even the wastebaskets were empty.

  The women in business suits were looking through the kitchen cupboards when I walked in.

  “Good morning. You must be the realtors.”

  The taller one jumped. The shorter one, holding a clipboard and a pencil, shrieked. “What are you? Who are you?” the taller one said.

  “Sorry. I guess I overslept.”

  “The house was supposed to be empty.”

  “Did Darrell tell you that?” I smiled and shook my head to indicate I thought ol’ Darrell was a rascal. I went on and told them I stayed behind to make sure everything was left in order and they could find me in the guesthouses if they needed me. They promised to give my best to Darrell.

  The first guesthouse I entered had a living room with another huge TV, a small kitchen, and a bathroom on the ground floor. Everything was neat and clean. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms, each with two twin beds. You could bounce a coin off them. The drawers were empty. There was nothing under either bed.

  I didn’t have to search the second bedroom. On the pillow on the bed closest to the door, spread out so I could not miss it, lay a knit hat that unfolded to become a mask. I had seen one before. I had one.

  ______

  My head hurt for another reason: I couldn’t understand Stanley Baker. He should have been wining and dining me, begging for a small part of what I had to give, instead of staging a fake kidnapping to grab the short money. I was an oil investor and he was in the business of scaring money out of oil investors. Maybe the coup was imminent and he felt he didn’t have the time to squeeze me for more money. He would just settle for the quick pocket change.

  Did Stanley Baker regard Maya as an honest hostage or not a hostage at all? Deciding Maya was complicit felt like an extension of jealousy. She didn’t seem to be afraid: She should have been afraid. I had to allow the possibility that she held her expression so tight and veiled to hide her emotions from Stanley Baker, not just me.

  Daisy didn’t answer her phone. Major Hensel had not heard from her either. I entered my hotel room and realized that I hoped to find her there. She wasn’t there, though, and she still didn’t answer the phone. I called Darrell White’s office and told them I was waiting for him at our breakfast meeting. They said he hadn’t come in yet but they would leave a message on his cell phone. I took that to mean he wasn’t picking up his phone either.

  I took the elevator to the seventh floor of Daisy’s building and walked down to the fifth. I didn’t see anyone. I don’t know if anyone saw me. I knocked on Daisy’s door. No answer. Music played, too softly to make out what it was. I turned the knob and entered.

  The music was coming from the bedroom: Barry White singing one of those late-night lovers’ ballads. Two wineglasses and an empty bottle and another half-full bottle sat on the coffee table. Darrell’s jacket hung neatly from the back of a dining chair. Daisy’s sandals were next to the couch. The door to the bedroom was closed. Maybe they had a great night and were sleeping it off. I was going in anyway.

  Darrel was a naked whale facedown. The bullet hole in the back of his head was caked with black coagulated blood, making it look more like a recently active volcano than a blow spout. Another bullet hole opened through his spine. Daisy was underneath him, also naked. Her arms were bent at the wrong angles and her legs were spread out wide as they would go. I went close. Her wig was askew. I bent close and saw that she was breathing.

  Daisy gasped and her body jerked as I rolled Darrell off her. His chest was black and blue. Daisy was lucky the bullet had not gone all the way through him.

  “My arm.”

  I lifted him off her arm but kept him on the edge of the bed. Daisy closed her eyes to deal with the pain. I pulled the sheet up to cover her. She gasped again. “Daisy, do you think you can walk?”

  She shook her head, eyes still closed. “Leg feels broken. Arms broken.” She sobbed briefly and caught it. I went into the bathroom. Daisy had a good collection of pills. The Percocet was expired, but it would have to do. I got a glass of water and helped her take three of the pills.

  “I never took more than two before,” she said. “Can you turn that off?” I turned off the music, then I made her take two more pills. I found a robe and managed to get her into it. She looked at Darrell’s body, listing now at the edge of the bed, the whole time. “He was an all right guy. Kinda nice.”

  She was tiny, perfectly formed, and tough as she acted. I picked her up like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold. Her arms hung limp. I hoped the drug was kicking in but did not ask. As we left the bedroom, Daisy opened her eyes and looked back at Darrell’s body. Her usually wide eyes squinted; I saw more fear than pain. “What about him?”

  “I’ll come back and take care of it.”

  “No.”

  I closed the bedroom door behind us. “I need your key.”

  “No.” Louder this time.

  I didn’t understand it. I didn’t think the pain was making her delirious. I spoke as calmly as I could. “I have to take you to the hospital. And I have to lock the door behind us.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want an ambulance, do you?”

  She shook her head. “My keys are in my purse.”

  In the car, I said, “What’s your real name? We’ll use that at the hospital. There’s going to be a police report on this. We don’t want them going over to the apartment to investigate. At least not until I get the body out of there.”

  Daisy started to cry. We were near the hospital, but I slowed down and took a wrong turn and pulled over. I couldn’t find a tissue, so I used my sleeve to wipe her eyes. She swallowed hard and faked a smile, an attempt to be Upbeat Daisy. It failed and she started talking in a flat, low voice.

  “I can’t use my real name. And if they go into that apartment, they’ll find my fingerprints and they’ll be sure I killed Darrell no matter what I say or how broken my bones are.”

  I was willing to let her stop there. Maybe someday I would hear the whole story over a drink. “Okay,” I said. “You’ll go in as Daisy. I’ll make them think I did this. They’ll be looking for me instead of going to the apartment.” I started the car.

  Daisy said, “No. Wait.” I waited. “I killed a man, a colonel. We were having an affair. I was in the brig. I did it. No one will believe I didn’t kill Darrell. Major Hensel saved me. I was on trial. He can’t save me this time.”

  “That’s why you didn’t yell for help.” It wasn’t a question and she didn’t answer. The Major got her off because he was able to explain to the Army that they didn’t want to tell all the female troops that officers could beat and rape them and they had to take it. Maybe the Major explained to the Army that it did not want officers to think they could get away with it either. In that moment, watching Daisy embracing the pain an
d fighting her future, a familiar shiver of doubt shook me: Would I be as tough as she was? Major Hensel had a good eye. Daisy drifted off. I started the car and pulled out.

  Before we went into the hospital, I asked, “Did you see the shooter?”

  “He wore a mask.”

  I straightened her wig for her. She kissed me on the cheek. “You’re okay when you’re not a grump,” she said.

  “Tell them you just met me. It all happened at my apartment, somewhere across town.”

  The triage nurse was as suspicious of me as she should have been and I let that brew. I told her I was a neighbor and heard Daisy yelling and how many Percocet were in her. After a minute of acting like I was going to wait, I went toward the men’s room and kept on through the hospital corridor and out a service door.

  When I was sixteen, a sporting goods store in Big Bear hired me to stock shelves and clean up when I was living at Loretta’s shelter for runaways. I had stayed with Loretta longer than anyone and we had grown close, closer than I had ever been with anyone. She wasn’t like a mother to me, and not just a friend. I don’t know what Loretta is to me; she’s my safe zone. The store was a big place that carried everything from bicycles to bocce balls. I was grateful for the easy work and clear rules. Of course, I was interested in the system and how they caught the employees when they stole. Everything was tagged and would trip an alarm if it went through the sensors without being scanned. My supervisor, Rhys, was about ten years older than me, a skinny guy with zits. At closing time during my second week, Rhys offered me a ride back to Loretta’s place. He walked out holding two boxes of shoes, basketball shoes. I was pretty sure he didn’t pay for them, but I didn’t say anything. He gave me a lift a couple of days a week, and every time, he took something from the store: clothes, fishing tackle, a tent. He never tried to hide it. Twice we saw the owner in the parking lot. Rhys waved.

  One day I gave in. “How come you’re not afraid of getting caught?”