Katie would bite her tongue for long periods of time, but eventually she could remain quiet no longer. ‘How’s work?’ she would say to Tyler, usually after one of his business trips, or after one of Vernon’s appearances at the house.
‘Work is going good. It’s going OK. We’ve got something big we’re cooking up. It could be a step forward for us.’
‘Really? That’s great. What’s it all about?’
‘Katie, it really doesn’t concern you. You shouldn’t worry about it.’
‘Well, I’m not worried. I know you’ll be successful, whatever you decide to do. I’m just interested.’
‘Well, don’t be. OK? Sometimes it’s better if you just aren’t interested. You know a lot of my work concerns national security issues. I’m not free to talk about it, not even with my wife, who I love.’
National security issues? OK, that was one product she wasn’t buying anymore. It just didn’t feel like Tyler worked for the government. Tyler never seemed to look at any paperwork, and if Katie knew anything about the United States government, she knew that government contracts meant gigantic mounds of paperwork – she knew this from being an assistant at a law firm that dealt with government contracts. The paperwork generated could be astonishing. Breathtaking. And Tyler never had anything like that kind of paperwork lying around. In fact, he didn’t seem to have anything at all in writing. He was much more likely to sit in his study – which he kept locked from her when he wasn’t home – poring over maps than to ever read a contract. He had a telephone wired in there, and she didn’t have its number. Maybe ten minutes ago, yes, in the middle of the night, it had started ringing and then had gone to voicemail.
What was it all about? Anyway, would the government really hire an operation where the second in command was big, dumb Vernon? She thought not, and as she thought that, she realized she had reached a breaking point with Tyler. She would stay married to him, of course. It was hard times outside of this house, and she had no intention of being cast out there. But she didn’t believe in him anymore. And she would, within reason, snoop around to see what it was he was up to. She might even consider finding a way into that locked study – not tonight, but soon. He’d probably be back tomorrow, at least that’s what his most recent note said, but it wouldn’t be long before he was gone again.
‘Tyler Gant,’ she said aloud to the empty bedroom, and was just a little startled by her own voice. ‘What do you do for a living?’
***
Foerster lay awake in bed, in the small room that had been his throughout childhood. His bed was narrow, like a nun would sleep on, and the springs creaked whenever he moved. The mattress was lumpy. It was an uncomfortable goddamned bed. He probably didn’t get a decent night’s sleep the first eighteen years of his life, and it was no wonder why.
His door was open a crack, and down the hall he could hear his mother snoring. Good God, all his life, he had hated it in this house. He had half a mind to march down the hall and stifle those infernal snores for good.
The desklamp next to the bed was on, casting a weak pyramid of yellow light, and Foerster, on his back, held up a business card where he could see it. He’d found the card in the desk – he must have left it behind the last time circumstances forced him to stay in this pit of despair. Foerster had been given this card at least two years ago. Now it was a little crumpled and faded, but you could still make it out fine. On the left side of it was a picture of a chess piece, a white knight. Running down the right side were the words Executive Strategies – Security and Intelligence Solutions. Tyler Gant, President. Then it gave an office address in Charleston, South Carolina, and a phone number. No website or email address listed, but there was another phone number scrawled in ink along the bottom, which Foerster had called only a few minutes ago from the ancient rotary dial phone on the desk.
He wasn’t sure why he had waited until three in the morning to call the number, or why he had hung up without leaving a message, except that he wasn’t sure if he should call it, and at the same time he was curious to see if it still worked. It did work – the same bland ‘leave a message at the tone’ recording that was on the machine two years ago was still on there. Foerster knew that the phone rang in the upstairs den at Gant’s house. Or at least that’s where it used to ring. He also knew he was taking a chance by calling there. Gant had given him that card grudgingly, and had told him to never call the number except in a desperate emergency, and only from a pay phone.
Well, this probably qualified as an emergency – he was hiding out from bounty hunters at his mom’s house! Gant would probably pop a blood vessel if he knew where Foerster was calling from, but hey, pay phones could be hard to come by in this day and age. Anyway, Foerster needed to get a message to Gant that he was no longer where he said he’d be, and that he needed to be picked up quick before he got put away again. The fastest way to do that seemed to be by telephone.
But it was a risk. Phone calls were easy to trace, and Gant had said in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want the cops to have any way to connect them. Well, fuck it. If Gant wanted him to do the job, then he needed to know where Foerster was. If he sent one of his men over to Foerster’s apartment, Foerster wasn’t going to be there. And Foerster couldn’t wait around here forever, wondering when Gant would send somebody – he had fucking people on his trail, man.
Shit. Foerster could not understand why everything always got so fucked up. It seemed like the simplest thing would suddenly take a turn and head off down some trail toward disaster. It was the story of his life. By all accounts, he was a genius. From his earliest days, he had a tested IQ in the 150s. It was at the far right end of the bell curve, where fewer than one percent of the population could be found. He could sleepwalk through school – without even trying, he was done with the sixth grade curriculum before the end of fourth grade.
This wasn’t good enough. His father had wanted an athlete, a football player, not some scrawny kid with a big brain. Foerster’s drunken bum of a father had taken to calling him Nancy Boy, and beating him with a leather strap. When had this started? He wasn’t even sure. It seemed like his first memory was of a huge, red-faced beast standing over him, the smell of mingled beer and whiskey in Foerster’s face, the smack of the leather loud in his ears, the sting of the whip on his skin, and his father saying, ‘I’ll make a fucking man out of you yet.’ If there was a hell, Foerster hoped the old man was roasting there right this minute.
But his father had only been the start of his problems. It seemed that nobody in this entire world wanted a smart kid. Having intelligence made you some kind of a freak. Nobody ever liked Foerster. His school teachers hated him – probably, they knew he was smarter than they were, and were envious of him. The other kids? Forget about it. If they noticed him at all, it was to throw rocks at him, or chase him home, or hold him down and punch his legs until he got painful Charley Horses. He’d show up at the house bruised and battered, and his father would laugh and say, ‘Serves you right for not fighting back.’
If Foerster had been dumb enough to believe in God, he’d say that God was testing him like He’d tested Job. Almost nothing had turned out right as far back as Foerster could remember. That is, until he met Tyler Gant. Although Gant’s personality left something to be desired, and Gant’s tough-guy authority act chafed on Foerster, the time he had worked for Gant had probably been the one thing that had gone well in more than twenty-five wasted years.
Gant had used Foerster’s brains the way they were meant to be used, working him to his highest level. He had shown Foerster at least a dollop of respect, and had paid him what he was worth. Their project had come off without a hitch, and they had made history together. Foerster had watched the news coverage for days, silently bursting with pride, almost unable to contain himself. At the Illinois state house, politicians and their staff members – blood ticks sucking on the near-dead carcass of this diseased country – were dying of anthrax.
Foerster wanted
to go a bar and have a few drinks and say to someone, some stranger, ‘See that? See what they did? That was me. I was on that team. I grew that stuff.’ He wanted to call his mother and tell her all about it. He wanted to dig up his old man and rub it in his face. But of course, he could never talk about it with anyone, ever, the rest of his days. About the only person he could possibly talk about it with was Gant himself, but Gant had told him to stay out of communication. One day, Gant said, he would be the one to reinitiate contact.
Foerster never imagined two cruel years would pass before he heard from Gant again. The world had slid further into the abyss during that time, and Foerster had slid with it. He had nearly forgotten about Gant, about the feelings of achievement, of being a winner that had come with working for him. Then a brief note, no return address, had appeared in Foerster’s mailbox. Although Foerster had moved three times since last they spoke, Gant had found him. Got some work for you (maybe). Same terms as before, times 2. Will send someone. Burn this letter. TG.
Same terms, times two – that was awesome. Foerster had made $25,000 on that job, for two weeks of work. He had received ten percent in cash before he ever did anything. That meant he would get $50,000 from this job, and $5,000 as an advance. Foerster had been in and out of jail in the months since that first note had arrived, but other notes had come since then. The time was getting close – Foerster could expect someone to pick him up any day.
Until yesterday, when those two clowns had crashed into the middle of Foerster’s plans like a bulldozer, he hadn’t realized how much he was looking forward to working for Gant again. As he slid the business card onto the table and closed his eyes, Foerster committed himself – he would do whatever was necessary to keep out of jail and get back to working with Gant.
***
Jonah felt exposed.
It was early the next morning. He and Gordo were parked in St. George, a few blocks from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. They sat at the corner of Richmond Terrace and a quiet side street of shabby homes. Traffic was busy on Richmond Terrace, a weird parade of bicycles, motor scooters belching exhaust, a few cars and many people, some pushing along carts of various kinds. Diagonally across from Jonah and Gordo was a convenience store. A hand-lettered sign in the window read ‘CASHIER LEGALLY ARMED.’ Jonah wasn’t sure if that sign made life safer or more dangerous for the cashier.
From the passenger seat, Jonah pointed a big parabolic microphone at a house maybe fifty yards down the side street. The house was a ramshackle place, with light-blue aluminum siding that had seen too many winters. The microphone protruded from its base like a long black phallus, and was surrounded by a clear plastic half-dome. Jonah gripped it by its handle, which was rather like that of a gun. The mike was plugged into a tape cassette player sitting between them, which in turn was powered by the car’s cigarette lighter. The whole rig looked somewhat like a satellite dish, or perhaps like a death ray weapon from outer space. Gordo had picked it up at a second-hand sale.
For years, Jonah had noticed men on the sidelines at professional sporting events, holding the ultra-powerful mikes so that the television audience could get the benefit of every grunt, every scream, every high-speed collision between the finely-tuned war machines out on the field. Later, he learned they were also used by nature lovers for listening to songbirds. The mikes were even sensitive enough to listen to those birds through walls, or while the birds carried on boring phone conversations near open windows half a block away. Yeah. Jonah was familiar with parabolic microphones.
Unfortunately, nobody else seemed to be. He was attracting a lot of hostile glances.
‘Man, everybody’s gawking at us.’
In the driver’s seat, Gordo was reading the science pages of the New York Times. For once, he was dressed neatly, in a pressed shirt and slacks. He was clean-shaven. If things went their way, today he would be a man of God.
He glanced up from his newspaper. He gazed up and down the street.
‘I say fuck ‘em. Let them gawk.’
He snatched the binoculars off his lap and scanned the street.
Jonah watched the spy glasses move back and forth. The big man had brains – Jonah had to admit that. Among Foerster’s mail had been a bill from North Bronx Central Hospital. It seemed Foerster had been admitted for a bleeding ulcer some months before and still hadn’t paid. The dunning letter came with a copy of Foerster’s admission form. The form contained the name, address and phone number of an emergency contact.
Foerster’s mother.
‘Nothing yet, huh?’ Gordo said.
‘No.’
‘Don’t worry, he’ll come.’
‘Oh, I won’t worry,’ Jonah said. ‘Why should I worry? Here’s a black man, probably from Mars, pointing a laser gun at somebody’s house during broad daylight. Nothing unusual about that, right? We’re lucky they haven’t called out the National Guard.
And meanwhile, Foerster would have to be an idiot to show up here.’
Gordo raised an eyebrow.
‘Patience, my brother,’ he said, scanning the paper again. ‘He’ll show up. I feel him in my bones, like some people feel the rain. A friendless bastard like that, he’s got to come back to his mother eventually.’
And as if by magic, Foerster appeared.
Jonah stared at him for close to a full minute before he realized who it was. Skinny, unkempt Foerster stood at the bottom of the concrete steps of his mother’s house, talking to a heavyset older guy. Foerster wore a gray wool cap like a sailor, probably to hide the scars on his head. It wasn’t remotely cold enough out for wool. Jonah could hardly believe the state of the man. He looked… dingy, like a ring of soap scum left around the sink after washing the dishes. He appeared to weigh about twenty-seven pounds. It was hard to imagine that this specimen had fought Jonah off yesterday, then had outrun him and given him the slip. He must be highly motivated.
‘Would you look at that,’ Jonah said. ‘He’s right out on the street.’
Gordo held the binoculars to his eyes. ‘Put the mike on them.’
Jonah turned the volume up and aimed the mike at the two men.
‘Yeah, yeah, I may stick around awhile,’ Foerster said. ‘My project in Cleveland just ended. It looks like I have something lined up down south, but after that job ends, I might just settle here in the old neighborhood for a while.’
‘What the hell is he talking about?’ Jonah said. ‘What job? Cleveland? I mean, come on already.’
Gordo shrugged. ‘He lies like other people breathe.’
‘Well, we’re glad to have you back, Davey,’ the oldster said. He clapped Foerster on his scrawny back and the mike picked up the slap. ‘I’m sure your mother will be happy to have a man around the house again.’
‘Sure, sure. I guess she gets lonely sometimes. It’ll be good for her.’
‘It’ll be good for both of you. Nothing like Mom’s home cooking to fatten a man up.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Gordo said. ‘They’re gonna need a lot more than Mom to fatten Foerster up. The guy’s a walking hunger crisis.’
They watched as Foerster went in the house.
The oldster crossed the street and walked off down the block.
‘All right,’ Gordo said. He took a deep breath. ‘I guess it’s time to go for it.’
He climbed out of the car and dropped the binoculars on the seat. In his hand he held a pile of religious tracts he hoped to discuss with Mrs. Foerster. The top one, the one Jonah could see, was called THE COMING FIRE.
‘Let’s go over this one more time, OK? Just so we don’t get crossed up out there. When I see an opening and decide I’m going in, what am I gonna say?’
‘God is love,’ Jonah said. ‘I hear that, then I come running to back you up. Fifty yard dash. I’ll be there in about six or seven seconds. When I come through the front door, you’ll be shouting out instructions – upstairs, or back door, or cellar, depending on where he’s going. He’s only been here one night, s
o he probably hasn’t had a chance to come up with much of an escape route.’
‘Sounds good, right? Workable?’
‘Actually, it sounds about twice as half-assed as yesterday’s plan,’ Jonah said. ‘But given the circumstances, I feel pretty confident about it. At least you’re the one going in first.’
Gordo smiled. ‘OK. As long as you feel good, I’m happy.’
Jonah watched Gordo amble up the block toward the house, tracts in hand. He trained the microphone on Gordo’s wide back. Gordo started muttering under his breath as he walked along.
‘Are you listening, Jonah? Lovely neighborhood they got here. Looks like the tide went out on this place about twenty years ago.’
He arrived at the house. His breathing came a little heavier, a little more labored. He seemed like maybe he was talking to himself now. It was hard to tell. ‘Are you ready kid? This is the test. This is the big test. This is for all the marbles right here.’
He climbed the short steps to the front door.
***
Inside, Davis Foerster went around in circles with his mother yet again.
She wasn’t happy to see him. Hey, he wasn’t happy to see her either. But when she opened that front door last night and saw him standing there, she might have been auditioning as an extra in a low-grade horror movie. Her jaw dropped, her eyes widened, and overall her face looked as if a creature from the swamp, trailing gore and slime, had appeared at her home. But she had let him in. That she had. What else was she going to do? He was her only son, after all.
She wanted him out as soon as possible, and he wanted to go – more than anything. If it were up to him, he would walk out that door right now and make a beeline for Charleston. Hanging around here gave him the creeps in more ways than one. He kept expecting the angry ghost of his shit-for-brains father to pop out of a closet or from behind the moldy shower curtain in the bathroom. Foerster wanted out before that or something worse happened. But he needed a grubstake to get him going, and she wouldn’t part with the cash.
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