“That’s her problem, not mine,” he says. “Leave us alone.”
“Don’t come crying to me if she tries to shoot you again,” I say as I leave.
“I’ll risk it,” he says.
Risk her, he means.
• • •
Nick took me aside—no Edison, now—and spoke of tools, opportunities, and unknowns. And then he explained what he wanted from me now, and what would be involved, what I would have to do. And then I said yes. Simple as that. No codes or anything, thankfully. I wouldn’t have known what to say if he’d asked me if I wanted to be paid in Purple Martins.
Edison was nowhere to be seen after Nick left, but frankly I was glad for a moment of solitude. I stood there on the wharf for a while, even as it started raining, just listening to the gulls scream and watching the waves churn, angry and uneasy. I tried following them out to the horizon, imagining where this was all going. All I could see were clouds, black and ugly and wet.
Why are you doing this? I asked myself. I’ve asked myself that a lot, since. And I suppose there were a lot of answers, all overlapping. Part of it was that I actually did want to be a part of what was going on. It was what I knew, it was my world, and now that I was actually involved I wasn’t content to just take a backseat. Part of me also wanted to prove—to Edison, and myself—how capable I was. Partners were co-equal. I needed to step up and pull my weight.
Really, though, the main reason underneath it all was compensation. Not the monetary sort—the psychological kind. When I’d killed in Buffalo, there’d been a reason for it. But when I’d pulled the trigger on that hill, that was all me. There was no excusing that—I had made a choice. And I’d been punishing myself for it, wondering what sort of monster I’d become.
Doing this thing for Nick, it was different. It was a chance to move on. Not far, really. But maybe far enough. I’d only know when I got there. And if it wasn’t enough, then I could move a bit farther. As far as I needed to go. I couldn’t game myself out of this, or read myself out of it, or sulk myself out of it. Maybe this would do the trick. I had no better idea.
I guess I was also looking for another form of compensation, too. The kind that involved making amends. Whether I hoped to repay the people I’d killed, or myself, I wasn’t sure, but either way, in a sense I was using myself as payment. My version of cutting, maybe. This was my life now, and I wasn’t going to be up on a hill like a coward shooting at cars. I was going to be in harm’s way. And whatever happened at that point was going to be what I deserved.
I stood there in the rain for a while, and then walked off to find Edison. He wasn’t far.
• • •
We are surrounded by seafood, of course—this part of Santa Cruz is wall-to-wall oysters and crab—but I am not in the mood for anything that comes inside a shell, so we head down the boardwalk, past the souvenir shops, past the reek of fish and salt, until I catch a familiar odor.
“Pizza?” I ask. She shrugs. Good enough.
We push inside the building, a gigantic airplane hangar of a place with one entire wall given over to an enormous painted volcano, spewing neon dots of lava over and over, waiting for virgin sacrifices. There are plenty of them, too. The place is filled with shrieking children playing games, the rattle of air hockey, and the clatter of empty water glasses. I immediately have regrets, but the odds of a mass murder will diminish once I get some food in me.
Xtian peers at the menu, seemingly disinterested, or at least distracted by her thoughts.
“I feel we should get something with pig,” she manages, just as our server wanders up.
“We have a great Hawai’ian pizza,” says the waitress, emphasizing the apostrophe. I am not in the mood to argue so I nod and wave her off as if she is a leper, unclean.
“Tell me what he said,” I say to Xtian, once we are alone. “Or don’t. It’s up to you.”
She considers, but not for long, and tells me a tale of something that quite remarkably makes a lot of sense. She needs to get into a house, plant an electronic bug, then get out. No one needs to die. The house will be occupied, but there are dozens of ways to work around that, and the plan they seem to have settled on is perfect for her, almost too perfect. This is like Joe for long work, since he is best with a sniper rifle. Or me for noise and chaos, when bombs and chemicals are called for. This is not a job I would ever have been offered, not something I would ever have even known of, because I am not right for it. Not everything they do is about killing, just everything that I do.
Xtian is the right tool for this particular job. The only tool for this job. And that is what concerns me, in all of this. Not that Nick chose her for this, but that he thought it up because she came along. I delivered him a hammer and he found something to nail.
At least this explains why this job came together so quickly. At least, I hope it does.
“Are you over being depressed?” I ask, when the pizza arrives and she perks up. She has no immediate answer, just takes a slice, sniffs at it, and then starts picking the ham off.
“I thought you wanted … you know what, never mind.”
“How do you deal with this stuff?” she asks, once her slice is ham-free.
“Pork? I eat it like a human being,” I say. She throws a piece of it at me. And I eat it.
“You know what I mean,” she says, nibbling her slice. And I do. She means the jobs. The work we do. I am sure I felt like she does now, once, but that does not matter. She needs to find her own way to cope. To not care. To learn that you cannot bury skeletons beneath other skeletons, no matter how small they are. You have to learn to leave them behind. Let them burn.
“Step one,” I say. She looks up. “You feel you have a problem and you are powerless to do anything about it.”
She chews on a piece of pineapple long enough to suck out the juice, then spits yellow thread onto her plate, shoves it around with her fork like a priest reading entrails.
“What’s step two?” she asks.
“Believing a higher power can help you.”
She furrows her brow. “Is this some sort of cult thing?”
“Addiction,” I say. “Twelve steps.” Then, considering, “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“So I’m addicted to what? You?”
“You’re addicted to second-guessing. To doubt. You did something last month, and you regret it. You did something else back in Buffalo, and you wonder if it was the right thing. There were plenty of times where you could have said no, but you said yes. Now you’re questioning what might have been. Why you made those choices. If you can live up to them. Am I close?”
She shrugs.
“This world is like an ocean, Xtian. You can stay on the shore and dream about the horizon, but once you wade out into the surf, get out past the breakers, there is no coming back. Doubt is pointless. You swim or you drown. You got dumped in the middle of the ocean before knowing whether or not you could even float. But it doesn’t matter. You learn to swim by swimming. Not by wondering if you can.”
What I do not add is that if she stops swimming now, she drowns. But I think it goes without saying.
• • •
The ride back somehow seemed longer than it was on the way out. No music, no radio. Just the windshield wipers doing their thing, trying to encourage conversation, back and forth, back and forth. But none was forthcoming. Edison left me to my thoughts. My doubts and regrets.
He looked like a dad, I thought, watching him drive. Dad jeans and a dad shirt and dad shoes and a dad haircut and just a shade of goatee, black bleeding gray around the edges. The perfect dad, if not for the killing thing. What would I have to do for someone like him to ground me? Date girls? Rob a store? Shoot a cop? Shoot him? Was everything okay to him?
“What?” he asked, noticing my stare.
“What do you think about all this?” I asked. “What would you do?”
He thought about that for a few minutes before answering.
“I think it’s st
range this is so soon after the last job. Strange that the last job was planned so far ahead. Very strange that Joe showed up here. And a bit too convenient that you’re so perfect for this job. Something’s not right. Things aren’t adding up. I would have turned it down.”
“Oh,” I said. After a moment, I added “So, should I call Nick back and say I won’t do it?”
Edison chuckled.
“That’s not how it works,” he said. “You missed that chance. You’re committed now.”
“What if I did, though?”
“They need a tool for a job. You are the tool they chose. And when tools stop working, they get replaced. No one keeps a broken hammer. They dispose of it.”
I looked away, watched the past fade in the mirror for a while.
“So what should I do then,” I asked.
“Your job,” he said. Simple as that.
Tag Along
05/04/2014
Of course, she has to do it alone, Nick says. It is stupid of me to even ask. Bad enough I know this much, that I am here, helping prepare. I will not be allowed within a mile of the actual place. A few blocks away from here, she will hop on a Muni bus and from that point she is completely on her own. I am still not comfortable with this, as there are too many questions and unknowns, but I think that this is more a problem with me than with anything else. When I am on a solo job, no one else knows where I am at any given time. It is foolish to think otherwise about this job.
Nick goes so far as to suggest we try to remove any distinguishing birthmarks but I quash that idea. We have no scalpel.
“Fine,” he says. “Let’s get her dressed.”
This is met with some fuss, but ultimately she comes out of the motel bathroom wearing the outfit Nick has procured, handing me her old clothes, backpack, and iPad. Not her gun, though. She is keeping that, just in case. Nick does not need to know.
“Where did you get a Girl Scout uniform?” Xtian asks.
“Same place I got the cookies,” he says.
She does a little spin, skirt flaring, newly-dyed brown ponytail fluttering in the air. Her saddle-shoed foot catches the ominous green box, and no doubt several of the cookies inside are now crumbled, but hopefully not whatever listening device is in there. For it to remain unnoticed, it will have to be something very thin and flat, adhered to the inside of the box itself. At first I imagined it might be one of the cookies, but that would be rather stupid since it would get eaten.
Nick picks up the box and stuffs it into her arms before she can kick it again. There are several other boxes in a satchel she will carry, but the green box is the one that matters.
“You knock, or ring the bell,” he says. “Whichever. And when he comes to the door …”
“I try to sell him cookies and make up a reason to get inside.”
Nick nods. “Then once you’re inside you leave the box. Try to conceal it somewhere but if you can’t, just leave it wherever. Then get out. Get to the bus stop and get on a 71, or anything going downtown. Ride for twenty minutes, then get off and call for a pickup.”
“Get off anywhere?”
“Anywhere,” says Nick, patience evaporating, hand on the door knob. “You decide.”
“You mean improvise.”
“Yes,” says Nick. “Improvise.”
And off they go, not so much as a goodbye.
All grown up.
• • •
Several hours pass, and I find myself under a bridge near 380 with Joe and Josh, inside Joe’s Taurus, all of us dressed in matching Giants sweatshirts, different shades of denim jeans, sneakers, light coats just heavy enough to hide a gun apiece. Just some ordinary guys thinking about baseball who do not consent to a search, officer.
I do not know why we are here specifically, other than that it is far enough away from where Xtian is to make sure I was not going to follow her and ruin things. As if I needed to be watched, babysat. As if I would have been seen, even if I had a mind to counter orders.
That said, I am curious, so I find myself fiddling around with Xtian’s iPad in the back seat as we wait. She is not very good with passwords and has failed to use Private mode on her browser too—very sloppy—so it is easy enough to check her Google history. She was checking out the Street View of a particular house in the Sunset District. Not nearly as deep a search as I like to, though, so I hit a few real estate sale sites, still convinced that something is not right about this arrangement. Even if it is already too late to do anything about it.
The car is heavy with the odor of breakfast sandwich egg. I feel as if I might be sick.
“Bullshit,” says Joe from the passenger seat. Josh is driving, since he is a native and knows the area better. “Utter bullshit. Bush knew. Lots of people knew. 9/11 was allowed to happen, regardless of who it was that did it.”
“The Saudis?” asks Josh.
“Or whoever,” says Joe. “Who knows? They got Trapwire, they know. Something that big happens, someone has to let it happen. Like Pearl Harbor. They got an ulterior motive.”
“Which they? Our they or their they?”
The others in my line of work bullshit like this all the time, but none of us have any idea who pulls our strings. I am the only one who does not care. At least, not about 9/11. I am finding it really interesting, however, that the house Xtian has been sent to was sold very recently.
“Waste of a plane,” I say, pretending to contribute as I try to look up property records. “Planes. Could have been put to much better use.”
“Oh, like you’d know what the fuck to do with a plane when you had it,” says Joe. “‘Uh, okay, this is my plane now and, uh, I say … smoking’s allowed. Extra peanuts for economy.’”
“They could have at least hit a target that mattered,” says Josh. “What did they accomplish? Nothing. Got some new real estate and a nice insurance payout.”
“Started a pretty good war,” says Joe, tapping the back of his head. He smiles. “Court of public opinion.”
“Wait,” says Josh. “Which war are we talking about?”
“Exactly,” says Joe. “Exactly.”
No one speaks for a bit. They listen to the radio, Morning Edition talking about Sudanese unrest. I browse the Internet, running semi-random searches for things that might connect these dots I am seeing. News articles. Traffic accidents. Then Joe’s phone buzzes. Text message.
“One of my kids …” says Joe, perhaps a bit too quickly, fiddling with his phone for a second. Something lights up in the back of my head but I am not sure what it is yet. Before I can even think to ask, Joe pulls out his wallet and starts to flip through photographs, showing Josh, nominally by way of killing time. No way of knowing if they are his real kids or came with the wallet. You can buy some attractive families at Target.
“Joe junior is eleven,” says Joe. “And Casey is fourteen now.”
“Is she still in Scouts?”
“Yeah,” says Joe. Slight hesitation.
“I missed my window for the cookies, didn’t I?” asks Josh.
And then my 27 is at the back of Joe’s head, barrel right next to where he keeps the bullet he got in Afghanistan. Josh’s eyes go wide, but Joe is remarkably calm. And no doubt starting to realize it was a bad idea to keep me in the back seat.
“Thought you said you didn’t usually carry, Edward,” he says.
“I did say that,” I say.
I swear I can feel the bullet shift beside his spine as I press the barrel in. I know I am right. I am just not sure yet exactly what I am right about. You get to be my age you have to trust your gut instincts more and more. Neurons take their sweet time. Driving like old people.
“Something on your mind?” asks Joe, calmly. He tries to catch my eye in the mirror but misses the angle, only sees himself.
“Yeah. I’m wondering why you and Nick just sent Xt— Nichole … to a house that used to be owned by the guy she shot back in March.”
“What?” asks Josh.
“Wasn
’t hard to pick his name out of the news article,” I say. “He was the only one older than twelve that died.”
“And … it’s … his house?” As confused as he is right now, Josh wisely keeps his hands on the steering wheel. He is not supposed to know anything, but then technically neither am I. And we are already past “fuck it.”
“Yeah. But he sold it two weeks after he died. Or maybe … Doesn’t matter.” My head is throbbing. This sounds insane. And that’s why I know something is wrong. “That’s where … she is now, selling cookies door-to-door. The only girl in the country doing that today.”
Josh turns his head towards Joe and raises an eyebrow. Joe just stares straight ahead.
“Your daughter know you borrowed one of her uniforms?” I ask Joe.
“I don’t understand,” says Josh.
Neither do I, yet. But I’m going to, before this day is through. One way or another.
“Out, now,” I say, prodding Joe with the barrel of the gun. I want to just do it right there, but we will need the car and I do not want to drive with the stink. I keep the handgun framed by his back the entire time, hidden from any traffic that might pass by, unlikely as that seems. He kneels without my asking, does not struggle as I take his gun and throw it in the back of the car. I also collect his phone, look back through recent messages, but he has already deleted the logs. I hurl it at the ground. It bounces, rather than shatters. That used to be so much more impressive.
“Ed—” Josh tries, but I wave him off, moving to get a better angle, where I can keep both of them in sight at once, just in case. This brings me around in front of Joe. He shakes his head.
“You should be thanking me,” Joe says. I want to laugh and cry.
“Should I?”
“Nick wanted to use you,” he says. “I was the one who suggested her instead. Someone unknown, from outside the area. Expendable.”
“For what?”
“I have no idea,” he says. “Honestly, I don’t. Something big. Sowing chaos. Infiltrating other groups. Cell leaders, fixers maybe. I think he’s just getting started.”
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