The Truth Itself

by James Rayburn

  No, fuck hungry, make that ravenous.

  A case of the munchies way more intense even than when she and David had smoked weed and binge-watched the hoary old sitcoms (Three’s Company, Family Ties, Cheers) that he’d downloaded from BitTorent, stuffing their faces and choking as they’d rolled on the bed, helpless with laughter.

  But the refrigerator—the massive silver Maytag that David had bought with his first pay check from the Post—was empty, save for leftover mac and cheese that had sprouted a three day beard.

  David, big, gluttonous, tactile David, had been the food buyer. Thumping into the apartment laden with shopping bags each night, in a state of high excitement because he’d discovered a new Korean take-out, or an Afghani food store, or a Cantonese bakery tucked away in Chinatown; foisting stinky kimchi, skewers of seekh kabab and sickly sweet mooncakes upon her, licking his big fingers and making ecstatic grunts of appreciation.

  Janey found a box of Cheerios in the kitchen closet and poured them into a bowl, mixing them with milk powder. She took the bowl through to the bedroom and pulled her shoes off and sat cross-legged on the bed and stared at the dead TV. When she lifted a spoon of the cereal to her lips she lost her appetite and dumped the bowl on the bedside table.

  She’d just killed a man.

  Well, technically, she was the accomplice in the murder of a man.

  That may not be right, either, because Lucien Benway may not be dead yet. He may still be slumped unconscious in the rear of his gross old Mercedes-Benz limo, inhaling the carbon monoxide from its huge engine.

  “No catalytic convertor, darling,” Nadja Benway had said when they’d first discussed the plan in her kitchen. “I googled it.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Janey had said.

  Nadja had waved her cigarette dismissively in that uniquely European way, explaining that new cars had a gadget that eliminated almost all the carbon monoxide from their exhaust emissions. But the Mercedes-Benz had never been modified, obsessive little Lucien keeping it identical to when it had rolled off the production line in Stuttgart in 1968.

  But that was splitting hairs.

  If he wasn’t already dead, he soon would be.

  So, what did Janey feel?

  Nothing.

  Kinda empty.

  Not guilty, no. Fuck that.

  But sad. She felt sad.

  And then she allowed herself, for the first time since she’d seen David lying dead at the morgue, to feel utterly bereft.

  Janey got up from the bed and crossed to the closet and freed all of David’s shirts and jackets from their hangers, tossing the clothes onto the bed. Delving into the drawers and getting armloads of his underwear and socks and sweaters and jeans and adding them to the pile.

  She went through to the bathroom and there she struck the mother lode when she upended the laundry basket and separated his soiled things from hers, taking the dirty sweats and underwear and socks, adding them to the mound on the bed like seasoning to a meal.

  Then she climbed up and submerged herself in her dead husband’s clothes.

  God, there it was: his smell. That indefinable scent that was David. Traces of food, and weed and the cheap roll-on deodorant he insisted on wearing, and the smell of him. Of his sweat. Of his skin. Of his hair and his beard. His big, hairy man-animal muskiness pervaded the fabric.

  She started to weep and then to cry and then to wail, and things reached fucking epic Old Testament proportions when she howled and tore at his clothes until her fingernails bled and she babbled incoherently, snot bungeeing from her mouth and nostrils until she exhausted herself and fell asleep clutching a particularly ripe pair of skivvies to her face, the knowledge that she would never again be loved by him a huge black wave that dragged her into a bottomless ocean of sleep.

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  Hook sat in the speedboat with his back to the hull, his arm around the silent child. Twin Mercury outboards thundered behind them, sending the boat speeding across the black water of the Andaman Sea.

  JP was seated at the wheel in the cockpit, staring through the windshield into the night. Behind him Kate’s body, wrapped in the sheet from the bungalow, lay hidden from the eyes of the girl by a stack of scuba tanks, life jackets and cooler boxes.

  When Hook had walked Suzie away from the resort he’d called JP and begged for his help. While they’d waited for the Frenchman, Hook and Suzie had hunkered down in the trees, and he’d held the child, who’d shivered and cried without cease.

  By the time JP had arrived in the gaudily painted truck he used to transport tourists on diving expeditions, Suzie’s shakes had subsided and she’d fallen into a semi-catatonic state. They’d left her sleeping on the front seat of the truck while they’d entered the resort bungalow—JP’s face white beneath his tan when he’d seen Kate lying dead. He’d muttered something in French, whether a fragment of a Catholic death rite or a cursing out of a cruel, interventionist god, Hook would never know.

  In silence they’d wrapped Kate’s body and carried it out and laid it on the flatbed.

  JP had taken Hook up to his wooden house where he’d packed everything that could identify him and then they’d driven the jungle-fringed back roads to the small harbor where JP’s boat was berthed. The pier was deserted at night and, unseen, they’d carried Kate aboard the speedboat and set off for open water.

  The child was asleep again and Hook unthreaded his arm and lifted his laptop from the deck. He carried it to the side and dumped it. Followed by his cell phone.

  He walked to the cockpit and stood beside JP, whose face was lit by the amber glow of the instruments.

  “Are we far enough out?” Hook asked.

  “Almost. Give me maybe two minutes then we’ll reach the tides that will carry her away from shore, out toward India.”

  Hook walked back to the child and stood with the hot wind in his hair, tired deep into his bones. The boat slowed as the outboards throttled back, the silence oppressive when JP cut the engines and the craft drifted on the swell.

  Hook didn’t move, just stood with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the water like it had something to tell him.

  JP rose from behind the wheel.

  “Okay?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  The Frenchman moved aside the diving gear and the sheet was revealed, white in the moonlight.

  He bent and grasped Kate’s feet. Hook joined him and took her head and they carried her to the rear, resting her on the gunwale.

  “Do you want to say something?” JP asked.

  Hook shook his head. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  JP looked at him and shrugged. “On three.”

  They pitched Kate over the side. When her body splashed into the water it stirred up trails of phosphorescence. It wasn’t magical tonight. JP had weighted the body and it sank quickly.

  The Frenchman took his place behind the wheel, fired up the outboards and turned the speedboat in a lazy arc until he was traveling parallel with the mainland, the lanterns of a line of shrimp boats strung like glow worms near the shore.

  JP was taking Hook and the girl two hours up the coast where he would put them ashore and an overnight bus would carry them to Bangkok and their uncertain futures.

  Hook sat beside Suzie and put his arm around her, the rumble of the outboards and the motion of the boat dragged him toward sleep, but when he dozed he saw bodies and blood and he woke and stared out across the ocean to the curve of the horizon, a dark meniscus against the sky, and felt a rush of vertigo so powerful that it had him clutching at his seat, suddenly aware that only gravity and a fragile envelope of air shielded him from the immensity of space.

  EIGHTY-SIX

  It was raining in Bangkok. A deluge, sheets of gray water plunging from the low, heavy clouds that shrouded the supertowers, drains overflowing, streets underwater, the early morning traffic gridlocked.

  Hook and Suzie sat in the back of a crawling taxi,
the driver tapping the wheel and muttering in Thai. Maybe he was praying to the garish Buddhist talismans that littered his dashboard.

  Hook wiped condensation from the rain-blurred window and looked out at a city he’d once known all too well. He hadn’t been back in the years since he’d abandoned his suicide by bargirl and booze but little had changed: squat buildings in need of paint sandwiched between soaring glass high-rises, the golden spires of temples prodding the soggy sky, black electric wires like thick strings of licorice dangling between poles at the roadside, and, even in the rain, the all-pervasive smell of street food wafting in from the sidewalk stalls.

  Suzie sat staring at nothing, her hands in her lap, as immobile as a statue. He put his arm around her shoulder and tried to draw her to him but she was rigid, and when he looked at her he saw that her jaw was clenched.

  She had spoken only in monosyllables since Hook had brought her back to life on the beach the night before and he wondered if her child’s mind was capable of hating him for returning her to a world of immeasurable pain and grief.

  On impulse he freed a banknote from his pocket and shoved it at the driver.

  Ignoring the man's protests he opened the door and stood up into the flood, instantly soaked by water as warm as a tepid shower. He reached into the car—his bruised ribs bitching—slung their one backpack over his shoulder and grabbed the child, lifting her out into the torrent, holding her to him as he weaved through the cars, their wipers mewling and ticking as they flailed at the rain, avoiding the bikes that zipped like wasps between the stalled vehicles, their riders swaddled in pink plastic ponchos, and found the covered sidewalk.

  Suzie was spitting water, her hair plastered to her forehead, her eyes wide. He set the girl down on the sidewalk and crouched beside her.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  He stood and took her hand and led her into an alley crammed with tiny stores, most of them selling dirt cheap knock-offs of Western designer brands.

  “Why don’t you find some clothes you like?” he said.

  “Girl stuff?”

  “Yeah, girl stuff.”

  She didn’t crack a smile but she nodded and he followed her through the maze of stores, where she selected or spurned garments with the practiced eye of a Bloomingdale’s fashion buyer.

  Watching her while she was being fawned over by two very made-up Thai shopgirls who chirped like caged birds, Hook bought a cheap cell phone and a pre-paid SIM card.

  When she’d filled two bags with clothes Suzie looked across at him and nodded. “I’m done,” she said.

  On their way back to the street they passed a noodle bar and Hook pushed the door open, ushering the child into the frigid interior.

  He waved a hand at the waiter and ordered steamy noodle broth for them both. When the man left, Hook pointed toward the restrooms.

  “You want to go and change into some new clothes?” Suzie nodded. “Need me to come along?”

  She shook her head and slid from the booth, carrying one of the bags of clothes.

  Hook opened the phone and installed the SIM card, waited for the face to blink and glow, and went into the settings menu, instructing the device to hide its number from caller ID.

  Suzie returned wearing jeans embroidered with butterflies and flowers, a brightly patterned shirt and pink high-top sneakers. With her short hair and huge eyes she looked beautiful and vulnerable and he had to resist the impulse to hug her.

  She sat facing him. “I put the boy clothes in the bag. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’ll dump them.”

  “So I’m not going to be a boy again?”

  “No, never.”

  “Where are we going, Grandpa?”

  “We’ll stay here in Bangkok while I fix things, then we’ll see.”

  The steaming noodles arrived and Suzie took a sip, set down her spoon and didn’t lift it again, her eyes on the teeming sidewalk. Hook was hungry and, feeling somehow ashamed, emptied his bowl.

  “Eat some more,” he said.

  She shook her head and looked up at him. “Grandpa?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe in heaven?”

  “Yes, I believe in heaven,” he said, even though he did not. He was more of a hell man.

  “Do you think Mommy’s there?”

  He found a smile and said, “Yes, she’s there. She’s in heaven.”

  Suzie stared at him and then subsided into silence again, looking out at the street.

  Hook, a man who had traded in lies for most of his life, was having his first brush with real innocence and he found it disquieting.

  The rain stopped with the suddenness of the tropics, the sun already blasting through clouds that evaporated like cotton candy.

  Hook left money on the table and stood. The child followed and they went out onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians were shedding raincoats and furling their umbrellas and stall holders were removing plastic covers from their tables of clothes and trinkets.

  The traffic was moving again, in the sluggish way of Bangkok.

  Hook flagged down a cab and gave the driver the address of a hotel, a huge, impersonal monolith in Pratunam, a favorite destination of package tourists, fleets of giant buses seething and hissing as they disgorged rumpled travelers outside the lobby. A middle-aged farang man and a child raised no eyebrows.

  Hook checked in using a fake passport that he’d held onto from his operational days. It was good enough to fool desk clerks, but he’d need something better to travel on.

  They took the elevator up to their tenth floor room. Two double beds side by side. A giant TV. A view over the sprawling city.

  Suzie lay down on the bed farthest from the window, curled into a ball and fell asleep.

  Hook showered away the last few nightmare days, inspected his ribs—a mottled yellow-blue—and dressed in fresh clothes. He sat a while on the bed by the window and watched the child sleep, her face almost peaceful in repose, only the spasming of her fingers hinting at her distress.

  Hook left the room and went up to the business center on the top floor of the hotel. It sported a couple of elderly desktop computers and a printer. The place was deserted in this age of tablets and smartphones.

  He took a seat and googled Suzie’s grandparents, the parents of her dead father. The only family Suzie had left, other than Hook, and he didn’t count. A dubiously dry alcoholic. A man on the run from himself. He was not parent material.

  Hook would get Suzie to the Houranis. That would be his mission. He would leave her where she would be safe and loved.

  That’s what he told himself, anyway, as he tapped at the keyboard.

  It didn’t take him long to find them.

  Omar Hourani had died of heart attack weeks after his son was blown to pieces in Pakistan and Fatima Hourani had lost a lengthy battle with cancer three months ago.

  Hook closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair.

  Jesus.

  He erased Google’s search history and left the business center. As he walked back toward the bank of elevators he passed a cocktail bar, dim and inviting, the only direct light falling on the bottles behind the bar, like a shrine.

  A woman with long black hair, sitting alone on a stool, drinking a cocktail, looked up at Hook and smiled. That smile breathed life into something he’d though long-dead and Hook hesitated for only a moment before he walked into the bar.

  He returned the woman’s smile and got as far as ordering a Cutty Sark when he glimpsed his reflection behind the booze bottles and he fled for the elevators, jabbing at the button like a Vegas slots junkie. The car arrived and he stepped inside, confronted by a tribe of Harry Hooks in the mirrored interior. Turning his back, he stood watching the green lights that charted his descent.

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Congressman Antoine Mosley, a gym bag slung over one massive shoulder, entered his office in the Longworth Building and found his chief of staff, Tommy Poster,
pacing the carpet, muttering into his cell phone, scratching at a bald head so cratered and grooved it looked like he wore his brain on the outside.

  Moseley had showered at the Capitol gym after his morning weight workout—he could benchpress 300 pounds—and came in feeling like a fuckin warrior god, ready to drop-kick ass over the Potomac.

  He famously lived in his office—The New York Times had photographed him inflating an air mattress beside his desk—and had built a makeshift kitchen in a small windowless room on the opposite side of the corridor, outfitted with a plug-in cooker and crammed with a supply of peanut butter, creatine shakes and whey protein energy drinks.

  “I’m not a creature of D.C.,” he’d told the reporter from the Times, “and every morning when I wake up on the floor of my office I am reminded that my home is not here, it’s back in my district with my people. The people who sent me to Washington to do their work.”

  And it was nobody’s damn business how many nights a week he spent in the Chevy Chase apartment of a pneumatic lobbyist his grandmother would’ve described as “high yellow.”

  Poster ended the call and leaned against a tufted leather club chair and stared at Mosley. He raised his left hand, fingers clawed and said, “Fan,” simultaneously raising his right hand and holding it in opposition to his left as he said, “Shit.”

  Then he mashed his hands together.

  Mosley lowered his backside onto the corner of his wooden desk and said, “You gonna stand there and be all fuckin mysterious and performance arty or are you gonna tell me wassup?”

  Poster lifted his iPad from the chair and swiped at the face.

  Mosley held up a paw like a peckerwood cop at a roadblock. “Now don’t you go all fuckin YouTubey on me. Brief me, motherfucker. Brief me.”

  Poster crossed his arms and said, “Lucien Benway was found dead at his Georgetown townhouse this morning. He’d gassed himself in his car.”