by Lee Child
“Come back, white boy, don’t you like me?” the big guy called to Hubble.
I took a long silent breath. Swung my feet over the side of the bunk and landed lightly in front of the big man. He stared at me. I stared back, calmly.
“You’re in my house, fat boy,” I said. “But I’m going to give you a choice.”
“Choice of what?” said the big guy. Blankly. Surprised.
“A choice of exit strategies, fat boy,” I said.
“Say what?” he said.
“What I mean is this,” I said. “You’re going to leave. That’s for sure. Your choice is about how you leave. Either you can walk out of here by yourself, or these other fat boys behind you are going to carry you out in a bucket.”
“Oh yeah?” he said.
“For sure,” I said. “I’m going to count to three, OK, so you better choose real quick, right?”
He glared at me.
“One,” I counted. No response.
“Two,” I counted. No response.
Then I cheated. Instead of counting three I headbutted him full in the face. Came off the back foot with a thrust up the legs and whipped my head forward and smashed it into his nose. It was beautifully done. The forehead is a perfect arch in all planes and very strong. The skull at the front is very thick. I have a ridge up there like concrete. The human head is very heavy. All kinds of neck muscles and back muscles balance it. It’s like getting hit in the face with a bowling ball. It’s always a surprise. People expect punching or kicking. A headbutt is always unexpected. It comes out of the blue.
It must have caved his whole face in. I guess I pulped his nose and smashed both his cheekbones. Jarred his little brain around real good. His legs crumpled and he hit the floor like a puppet with the strings cut. Like an ox in the slaughterhouse. His skull cracked on the concrete floor.
I stared around the knot of men. They were busy reassessing my status.
“Who’s next?” I said. “But this is like Vegas now, it’s double or quits. This guy is going to the hospital, maybe six weeks in a metal mask. So the next guy gets twelve weeks in the hospital, you understand that? Couple of smashed elbows, right? So who’s next?”
There was no reply. I pointed at the guy in sunglasses.
“Give me the sweater, fat boy,” I said.
He bent and picked up the sweater. Passed it to me. Leaned over and held it out. Didn’t want to get too close. I took the sweater and tossed it onto Hubble’s bunk.
“Give me the eyeglasses,” I said.
He bent and swept up the twisted gold wreckage. Handed it to me. I tossed it back at him.
“They’re broken, fat boy,” I said. “Give me yours.”
There was a long pause. He looked at me. I looked at him. Without blinking. He took off his sunglasses and handed them to me. I put them in my pocket.
“Now get this carcass out of here,” I said.
The bunch of men in their orange uniforms and their red bandannas straightened out the slack limbs and dragged the big man away. I crawled back up into my bunk. I was shaking with adrenaline rush. My stomach was churning and I was panting. My circulation had just about shut down. I felt terrible. But not as bad as I would have felt if I hadn’t done it. They’d have finished with Hubble by then and started in on me.
I DIDN’T EAT ANY BREAKFAST. NO APPETITE. I JUST LAY ON the bunk until I felt better. Hubble sat on his bed. He was rocking back and forward. He still hadn’t spoken. After a while I slid to the floor. Washed at the sink. People were strolling up to the doorway and gazing in. Strolling away. The word had gotten around fast. The new guy in the cell at the end had sent a Red Boy to the hospital. Check it out. I was a celebrity.
Hubble stopped his rocking and looked at me. Opened his mouth and closed it again. Opened it for a second time.
“I can’t take this,” he said.
They were the first words I had heard him say since his assured banter on Finlay’s speakerphone. His voice was low, but his statement was definite. Not a whine or a complaint, but a statement of fact. He couldn’t take this. I looked over at him. Considered his statement for a long moment.
“So why are you here?” I asked him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not doing anything,” he said. Blankly.
“You confessed to something you didn’t do,” I said. “You asked for this.”
“No,” said Hubble. “I did what I said. I did it and I told the detective.”
“Bullshit, Hubble,” I said. “You weren’t even there. You were at a party. The guy who drove you home is a policeman, for God’s sake. You didn’t do it, you know that, everybody knows that. Don’t give me that shit.”
Hubble looked down at the floor. Thought for a moment.
“I can’t explain it,” he said. “I can’t say anything about it. I just need to know what happens next.”
I looked at him again.
“What happens next?” I said. “You stay here until Monday morning, and then you go back to Margrave. Then I guess they’ll let you go.”
“Will they?” he said. Like he was debating with himself.
“You weren’t even there,” I said again. “They know that. They might want to know why you confessed, when you didn’t do anything. And they’ll want to know why the guy had your phone number.”
“What if I can’t tell them?” he said.
“Can’t or won’t?” I asked him.
“I can’t tell them,” he said. “I can’t tell anybody anything.”
He looked away and shuddered. Very frightened.
“But I can’t stay in here,” he said. “I can’t stand it.”
Hubble was a financial guy. They give out their phone numbers like confetti. Talking to anybody they meet about hedge funds or tax havens. Anything to transfer some guy’s hard-earned dollars their way. But this phone number was printed on a scrap of torn computer paper. Not engraved on a business card. And hidden in a shoe, not stuffed in a wallet. And playing in the background like a rhythm section was the fear coming out of the guy.
“Why can’t you tell anybody?” I asked him.
“Because I can’t,” he said. Wouldn’t say anything more.
I was suddenly weary. Twenty-four hours ago I had jumped off a Greyhound at a cloverleaf and walked down a new road. Striding out happily through the warm morning rain. Avoiding people, avoiding involvement. No baggage, no hassle. Freedom. I didn’t want it interrupted by Hubble, or by Finlay, or by some tall guy who got himself shot in his shaved head. I didn’t want any part of it. I just wanted some peace and quiet and to go looking for Blind Blake. I wanted to find some eighty-year-old who might remember him from some bar. I should be talking to that old guy who swept up around the prison, not Hubble. Yuppie asshole.
He was thinking hard. I could see what Finlay had meant. I had never seen anybody think so visibly. His mouth was working soundlessly and he was fiddling with his fingers. Like he was checking off positives and negatives. Weighing things up. I watched him. I saw him make his decision. He turned and looked over at me.
“I need some advice,” he said. “I’ve got a problem.”
I laughed at him.
“Well, what a surprise,” I said. “I’d never have guessed. I thought you were here because you were bored with playing golf on the weekend.”
“I need help,” he said.
“You’ve had all the help you’re going to get,” I said. “Without me, you’d be bent forward over your bed right now, with a line of big horny guys forming at the door. And so far you haven’t exactly overwhelmed me with gratitude for that.”
He looked down for a moment. Nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very grateful. Believe me, I am. You saved my life. You took care of it. That’s why you’ve got to tell me what to do. I’m being threatened.”
I let the revelation hang in the air for a moment.
“I know that,” I said. “That’s pretty obvious.”
“Well, not just me,” he
said. “My family as well.”
He was getting me involved. I looked at him. He started thinking again. His mouth was working. He was pulling on his fingers. Eyes flicking left and right. Like over here was a big pile of reasons, and over there was another big pile of reasons. Which pile was bigger?
“Have you got family?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. What else could I say? My parents were both dead. I had a brother whom I never saw. So I had no family. No idea whether I wanted one, either. Maybe, maybe not.
“I’ve been married ten years,” Hubble said. “Ten years last month. Had a big party. I’ve got two children. Boy, age nine, girl, age seven. Great wife, great kids. I love them like crazy.”
He meant it. I could see that. He lapsed into silence. Misting over as he thought about his family. Wondering how the hell he came to be in here without them. He wasn’t the first guy to sit in this cell wondering that. And he wouldn’t be the last.
“We’ve got a nice place,” he said. “Out on Beckman Drive. Bought there five years ago. A lot of money, but it was worth it. You know Beckman?”
“No,” I said again. He was afraid to get to the point. Pretty soon he’d be telling me about the wallpaper in the downstairs half bath. And how he planned to pay for his daughter’s orthodonture. I let him talk. Prison conversation.
“Anyway,” he said eventually. “It’s all falling apart now.”
He sat there in his chinos and his polo shirt. He had picked up his white sweater and wrapped it around his shoulders again. Without his glasses he looked older, more vacant. People who wear glasses, without them they always look defocused, vulnerable. Out in the open. A layer removed. He looked like a tired old man. One leg was thrust forward. I could see the patterned sole of his shoe.
What did he call a threat? Some kind of exposure or embarrassment? Something that might blow away the perfect life he’d described on Beckman Drive? Maybe it was his wife who was involved in something. Maybe he was covering for her. Maybe she’d been having an affair with the tall dead guy. Maybe lots of things. Maybe anything. Maybe his family was threatened by disgrace, bankruptcy, stigma, cancellation of country club membership. I went around in circles. I didn’t live in Hubble’s world. I didn’t share his frame of reference. I had seen him trembling and shaking with fear. But I had no idea how much it took to make a guy like that afraid. Or how little. When I first saw him at the station house yesterday he had looked upset and agitated. Since then he had been from time to time trembling, paralyzed, staring with fear. Sometimes resigned and apathetic. Clearly very afraid of something. I leaned on the cell wall and waited for him to tell me what.
“They’re threatening us,” he said again. “If I ever tell anybody what’s going on, they said they’ll break into our house. Round us all up. In my bedroom. They said they’ll nail me to the wall and cut my balls off. Then they’ll make my wife eat them. Then they’ll cut our throats. They said they’ll make our children watch and then they’ll do things to them after we’re dead that we’ll never know about.”
7
“SO WHAT SHOULD I DO?” HUBBLE ASKED ME. “WHAT would you do?”
He was staring over at me. Waiting for a reply. What would I do? If somebody threatened me like that, they would die. I’d rip them apart. Either as they spoke, or days or months or years later. I would hunt them down and rip them apart. But Hubble couldn’t do that. He had a family. Three hostages waiting to be taken. Three hostages already taken. Taken as soon as the threat was made.
“What should I do?” he asked me again.
I felt pressure. I had to say something. And my forehead hurt. It was bruising up after the massive impact with the Red Boy’s face. I stepped to the bars and glanced down the row of cells. Leaned against the end of the bunk. Thought for a moment. Came up with the only possible answer. But not the answer Hubble wanted to hear.
“Nothing you can do,” I said. “You’ve been told to keep your mouth shut, so you keep it shut. Don’t tell anybody what’s going on. Ever.”
He looked down at his feet. Dropped his head into his hands. Gave a moan of abject misery. Like he was crushed with disappointment.
“I’ve got to talk to somebody,” he said. “I’ve got to get out of this. I mean it, I’ve got to get out. I’ve got to talk to somebody.”
I shook my head at him.
“You can’t do that,” I said. “They’ve told you to say nothing, so you say nothing. That way you stay alive. You and your family.”
He looked up. Shuddered.
“Something very big is going on,” he said. “I’ve got to stop it if I can.”
I shook my head again. If something very big was going on around people who used threats like that, then he was never going to stop it. He was on board, and he was going to stay on board. I smiled a bleak smile at him and shook my head for the third time. He nodded like he understood. Like he finally accepted the situation. He went back to rocking and staring at the wall. His eyes were open. Red and naked without the gold rims. He sat silently for a long time.
I COULDN’T UNDERSTAND THE CONFESSION. HE SHOULD have kept his mouth shut. He should have denied any involvement with the dead guy. Should have said he had no idea why his phone number was written down in the guy’s shoe. Should have said he had no idea what Pluribus was. Then he could have just gone home.
“Hubble?” I said. “Why did you confess?”
He looked up. Waited a long moment before replying.
“I can’t answer that,” he said. “I’d be telling you more than I should.”
“I already know more than I should,” I said. “Finlay asked about the dead guy and Pluribus and you flipped. So I know there’s a link between you and the dead guy and whatever Pluribus is.”
He gazed at me. Looking vague.
“Is Finlay that black detective?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Finlay. Chief of detectives.”
“He’s new,” Hubble said. “Never seen him before. It was always Gray. He was there years, since I was a kid. There’s only one detective, you know, don’t know why they say chief of detectives when there’s only one. There’s only eight people in the whole police department. Chief Morrison, he’s been there years, then the desk man, four uniformed men, a woman, and the detective, Gray. Only now it’s Finlay. The new man. Black guy, the first we’ve ever had. Gray killed himself, you know. Hung himself from a rafter in his garage. February, I think.”
I let him ramble on. Prison conversation. It passes the time. That’s what it’s for. Hubble was good at it. But I still wanted him to answer my question. My forehead hurt and I wanted to bathe it with cold water. I wanted to walk around for a while. I wanted to eat. I wanted coffee. I waited without listening as Hubble rambled through the municipal history of Margrave. Suddenly he stopped.
“What were you asking me?” he said.
“Why did you confess to killing the guy?” I repeated.
He looked around. Then he looked straight at me.
“There’s a link,” he said. “That’s all it’s safe to say right now. The detective mentioned the guy, and used the word ‘Pluribus,’ which made me jump. I was startled. I couldn’t believe he knew the connection. Then I realized he hadn’t known there was a connection, but I’d just told him by being startled. You see? I’d given it away. I felt I’d blown it. Given away the secret. And I mustn’t do that, because of the threat.”
He tailed off and went quiet. An echo of the fright and panic he had felt in Finlay’s office was back. He looked up again. Took a deep breath.
“I was terrified,” he said. “But then the detective told me the guy was dead. He’d been shot. I got scared because if they had killed him, they might kill me, too. I can’t really tell you why. But there’s a link, like you worked out. If they got that particular guy, does that mean they are going to get me too? Or doesn’t it? I had to think it out. I didn’t even know for sure who had killed the guy. But then the detective told me about the viol
ence. Did he tell you about that?”
I nodded.
“The injuries?” I said. “Sounded pretty unpleasant.”
“Right,” Hubble said. “And it proves it was who I thought it was. So I was really scared. I was thinking, are they looking for me too? Or aren’t they? I just didn’t know.
I was terrified. I thought for ages. It was going around and around in my head. The detective was going crazy. I didn’t say anything because I was thinking. Seemed like hours. I was terrified, you know?”
He fell back into silence. He was running it through his head again. Probably for the thousandth time. Trying to figure out if his decision had been the right one.
“I suddenly figured out what to do,” he said. “I had three problems. If they were after me too, I had to avoid them. Hide, you know? To protect myself. But if they weren’t after me, then I had to stay silent, right? To protect my wife and kids. And from their point of view that particular guy needed shooting. Three problems. So I confessed.”
I didn’t follow his reasoning. Didn’t make much sense, the way he was explaining it to me. I looked blankly at him.
“Three separate problems, right?” he said. “I decided to get arrested. Then I was safe if they were after me. Because they can’t get at me in here, right? They’re out there and I’m in here. That’s problem number one solved. But I also figured, this is the complicated bit, if they actually were not after me at all, then why don’t I get arrested but don’t say anything about them? They would think I had got arrested by mistake or whatever, and they see that I’m not talking. They see, OK? It proves I’m safe. It’s like a demonstration that I’m dependable. A sort of proof. Trial by ordeal sort of a thing. That’s problem number two solved. And by saying it was me actually killed the guy, it sort of definitely puts me on their side. It’s like a statement of loyalty, right? And I thought they might be grateful I’d pointed the heat in the wrong direction for a while. So that was problem number three solved.”
I stared at him. No wonder he had clammed up and thought like crazy for forty minutes when he was in with Finlay. Three birds with one stone. That’s what he had been aiming for.