THUGLIT Issue Twelve

by Marks, Leon

  He paused as the door to the compact elevator closed on the ground floor. The elevator rose through the shaft in the center of the circular stairway. Ruben waited and watched as the elevator rose through the fourth floor and stopped on the fifth.

  He reached back under the stairs as he listened to someone emerge from the elevator, unlock a door, and enter an apartment above. From the seventh riser he untaped another baggie holding a full seventeen round magazine.

  The panel eased back into place, held by the putty—bought at Patrice's—he had beaded around the groove five years earlier.

  Carole was out. He found a pair of thin rubber gloves with the cleaning supplies, pushed the package aside, laid a three-day-old copy of Libération on the table and cleaned the pistol with a rag and oil he found in a closet. He took comfort in the ritual and recalled the international irony involved in taking the American pistol from an Iranian in a narrow street behind the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates on the Quai d'Orsay several years earlier. He pondered no further on the outcome of that incident.

  Ruben removed and examined each round from the magazine. The baggies had kept the weapon and ammo dry. He checked the spring on the magazine and wiped each round before he slotted it inside. He wiped the entire pistol clean as he reassembled it, then loaded it and racked a round into the chamber. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and placed it in his coat pocket.

  There was a framed photo of Anne on the computer desk in the foyer. He hadn't noticed it earlier. She wore a t-shirt and the background was a beach. Ruben didn't remember being there when it was taken. The photos killed him. He kept his filed away in a box in the RV and brought them out when he wanted to sear himself.

  He found what he wanted in Carole's grocery bag collection and placed the ski boot in it. He wrote a note saying he would be in touch and left her keys on top of it.

  Ruben skirted Lyon on the A432 and came into Grenoble on the A48, the gray mountains looming above. He tuned to Jazz Radio when he could find a clear signal, Europe 1 the rest of the time. Patrice's Saab was no rocket, but never faltered in the six hours he had it on the road. He drove her gently, like the middle-aged lady she was.

  He filled the Saab with fuel, was appalled at what it would cost to run the RV here, parked it on Rue Monge across from Patrice's uncle's building and pocketed the keys. He would not use it again.

  He walked past the building where he'd stayed at the Agency-owned apartment in the month after the avalanche. The balcony had flowerpots now and looked lived in. They had to sell it when he was photographed coming out of the building after his third trespass arrest on the mountain.

  The man he was meeting was closing in on fifty and looked like someone you'd find parked on a weeknight at the bar of an Irish pub in Queens.

  "Dan Fiddler," he said, extending his hand.

  "Really?" Ruben knew his face, but not from where. An operation.

  "Couldn't make it up, could you? I was on foot patrol in Brooklyn North in the bad crack days before I made the leap to the agency. When we came into the buildings, the crackheads always ran up. Half the time they'd end up stuck on the roof. A few would try to jump across the buildings. The ones that weren't too out of their minds would usually make it. I was the youngest, so I'd usually go up after them."

  Ruben could see the punch line coming a kilometer away.

  "A skell would rabbit up the stairs and the Sergeant would yell: 'Fiddler! On the roof!' Then he'd piss himself laughing while I busted my hump up five flights."

  "You couldn't make that up."

  "I know, I know." Fiddler finished his Amstel with a flourish and signaled for another. "Knox told me to help you out."

  "Can you get me a list of men with American connections living within a reasonable distance of the La Poste on Avenue Jean Perrot?"

  "That's it? I can do that. I can tell you who the assholes are too. Who's up to what. That kind of thing. You've got carte blanche far as Knox is concerned."

  "I don't know if the guy's an asshole."

  "He is if you're looking for him."

  "Okay. I'll take that list too."

  Fiddler looked at him over a fresh Amstel. "Knox speaks highly of your talents."

  "That was a while ago." Ruben sipped his coffee and looked out on the street. "It takes something from you."

  "Is this about your daughter?" Fiddler didn't shy from the hard question. Ruben liked him for it. He nodded.

  Fiddler twisted his free palm up, indicating anything he could do.

  They met the next day in a different café. Fiddler had a thin envelope from which he removed two sheets of paper with names and addresses.

  "I whittled it down a little. Eliminated geezers and droolers. We can revisit that if you need to."

  He'd thoughtfully marked the sheets at the top in red ink. One was labeledAssholesand the otherPossible Assholes. "Just to keep things straight," Fiddler said.

  He pointed to a name he'd underlined.

  "This guy's more of a dirtbag than an asshole. From Hoboken, followed a boy over here a few years ago. Writes obscene e-mails to the agency from different supposedly anonymous e-mail addresses. Uses public Wi-Fi's all over town. Harmless stuff. Seems to have no point. No overt threats yet. He thinks they can't get onto him because he varies the Wi-Fi's. The dumbshit uses his own laptop though."

  "How do you know it's coming from him?"

  "Once we suspected him I accidentally spilled coffee on his keyboard in a café. Being a contrite person, I paid for the repair at a shop owned by a friend." Fiddler grinned. "We plugged in some sneaky Trojan software. I can tell you everything the guy does including what time he spanks his squirrel to Aussie lifeguard porn every day. We're just waiting to see how far he goes with the vitriol before we have the French rope him in."

  "What's he doing in Grenoble?"

  "Teaching English."

  "So his main motivation is he hates the agency?"

  "Hates the entire government. Was an interpreter until he lost his clearance on account of stalking a congressman's nephew," Fiddler said. "I know it's thin. I'm working on other leads. Until then this guy lives in a house on Rue Kruger that he painted lemon-lime Haitian colors. The neighbors hate him for it. It's a dead-end. Quiet street."

  That was it. Port-Au-Prince a decade earlier. A sliver of memory came to him of Fiddler in a ratty hotel lobby as part of a support team as Ruben walked through with the principal and his body men. Ruben carrying a duffel containing five million dollars, the magic number at the time for certain types.

  That afternoon Ruben drove a dusty car he had taken from deep in an apartment garage to the parking lot of a different apartment across from the lemon/lime house. Around seven he watched a frumpy middle-aged man with a computer case let himself into the house. Ten minutes later he came out with a small dog on a leash, walked it to the dead end of the street and back. No one else came or went.

  It was after ten when the man emerged again with the dog and strolled toward the end of the street away from the dead end. Ruben exited the car carrying a green Carrefour bag. He came out of the parking lot and crossed the street as the man turned back toward his house. Ruben timed it so he would be in a spot of light when they passed each other. He wanted his face seen. The dog stopped to sniff and Ruben slowed. When he was almost next to the man Ruben stopped and reached into the bag. The man looked at him. The dog gazed up dully.

  "Pardon? What do you think of this?" Ruben said in French.

  The man looked at him like he was crazy. "It's a ski boot," he said in American-accented French.

  "It appears to be," Ruben said. "Where do you suppose it came from?"

  "From your bag." The man appeared amused now. "The question is. Where is the mate?"

  "That's what I'm wondering."

  "Good luck with that." The man dragged the dog away as it was trying to sniff Ruben's shoes. He glanced back over his shoulder once before entering his house. Ruben kept walking and returned to Patrice's uncle's
building by a circuitous route.

  Fiddler had a revised Possible Asshole list. A new addition caught Ruben's eye. Jerome Mynatt. A minor French bureaucrat he met with as liaison once a month in Paris before he retired. Another defective on his way out to pasture. Mynatt's face, hawk-like, weak chin, lank hair, came to Ruben. Quirky. Never poured coffee, even for himself. Had a harried secretary that he called in to pour—to both her and Ruben's embarrassment. He pointed the name out to Fiddler without saying they'd met.

  "You know him?"

  Fiddler took a second. "Mynatt? Ex DGSE dickhead. Got bounced a couple of years ago, after you left."

  "For what?"

  "Rumors of substance issues. Who knows for sure?"

  "Here to ski away his retirement?"

  Fiddler shrugged. "If he stays sober enough."

  "Did you get anything of his background, education?"

  "Son of a diplomat. Lived in New York as a kid. Moved back to Paris as a teenager. Think he might be your guy?"

  "Probably not."

  Ruben walked into Mynatt's building with the Carrefour bag and took the stairs to the fifth floor. Mynatt opened the door, stood in place for several seconds, and didn't seem surprised to see him. Ruben followed him inside and closed the door with his heel. Mynatt hadn't been doing any skiing. He wore a rumpled tracksuit and looked slumped and defeated.

  Ruben reached into the bag. Mynatt watched his hand. Ruben removed the boot and released it to the tile floor. It landed upright with a dull thud. Mynatt looked at it with no expression, as if Ruben had dropped a shallot on his floor.

  Mynatt had aged a decade in the three years since Ruben had last seen him. He shuffled to a sofa and dropped into a well-worn spot near the end. The view out of the glass doors was of Grenoble rooftops.

  Mynatt gazed outside for a moment, seeing nothing. "I knew you would find me."

  A note in his voice clued Ruben in. "You wanted to be found."

  "Of course."

  "Why?"

  Mynatt flashed surprise at the question, the most emotion he had yet displayed.

  "I want you to kill me. I was hoping you'd do it quickly when I opened the door. I've been waiting."

  Mynatt's substance wasn't only alcohol, as Fiddler had surmised. On a coffee table a syringe rested in an ashtray next to a spoon. Ruben guessed the packets were in the carved wooden box, one that you could find in any market in Marrakech, on the table.

  "You concocted this entire charade to have me kill you?"

  Mynatt crossed one leg over the other and lit a Royale with a silver Zippo by way of an answer.

  "Why me?"

  "Several years ago I saw the news footage of you trying to dig the snow from the entire mountainside with a shovel to get to your daughter, even after they arrested and removed you several times, until your agency was summoned to take you away. I felt your obsession. Then by some twist of fate we had the pleasure to begin our acquaintance."

  The authorities feared another avalanche and forbid the use of tractors to try and uncover Anne's body, and the others. Ruben knew there was little to no hope of finding her alive, but he could not do nothing. Knox had come to bring him back to Paris and temporarily put him in the undemanding liaison position where he had come across Mynatt.

  The news coverage and subsequent minor scandal ensued when someone—he never knew who or what government they worked for—released his profession to the French press. His covert career was dead at that point and he was shipped off to D.C. He retired six months later and returned to Rue Vaneau, a civilian for the first time in almost three decades.

  "At our meetings you seemed hollow, removed from everything. I couldn't reconcile it with the determined passion I knew you were capable of," Mynatt was saying.

  "That's not an answer."

  "Professionally, I knew you as one of the best. I knew what would both enrage you and draw you to me."

  "There are easier ways to get yourself killed."

  "Like skiing under an avalanche?" Mynatt's eyes were bright behind a curl of smoke. He was enjoying himself as much as a broken man could. Ruben could almost objectively admire what Mynatt had tried, was trying, to do. Twisted, Patrice had said. That it was. And effective. Ruben had to suppress the intense urge to release his ageless rage all over the addict.

  Ruben nodded at the syringe. "Why not use that?"

  "I am a coward."

  "And you like other people to do things for you."

  Mynatt shrugged. "I like the best to do their best for me."

  "Why not the best clinic?"

  "I've tried. Twice. It doesn't work for me. The desire is too strong. Not living any longer is the only answer."

  "Where did you get the boot?"

  "A second-hand sporting goods shop. It wasn't easy. I went as far as Paris searching for a pair. I found the ski jacket also, but that made no sense."

  "If you were in Paris you should have stopped and said hi."

  Maynatt moaned a laugh. "You were gone from Rue Vaneau. I was surprised to see your wife remained behind. I did not want to intrude."

  "You haven't done her any favors with that package."

  "I regret that," Mynatt said. "But only a little."

  "Am I supposed to strangle you in anger now?"

  "I was hoping you would bring one of those Austrian pistols you Americans adore. Shooting me would be quicker. The walls are thick."

  "So is my skin."

  "That is truly disappointing."

  Ruben picked the boot up of the floor and put it in the bag. A thought he'd been suppressing pushed forward.

  "Was it you that leaked me to the press?"

  Mynatt looked at him bleakly. "I had no reason to do that. I took pleasure in our meaningless liaison meetings."

  Ruben watched Mynatt languidly smoking his cigarette, hopelessness wafting off of him. Now that it had come to less than nothing, the pointless exercise that resulted in his standing in Mynatt's apartment made Ruben feel wearier than he had in months. It wasn't the first time he'd chased a lost cause, knowing it was futile, but he felt it was going to be the last. His daughter was out there on a mountain a few kilometers away and wouldn't be coming back. The decision was his as to whether he would be returning.

  Ruben removed the pistol from his coat pocket. Mynatt waited, then gazed on as Ruben slid it soundlessly from the handkerchief onto the table.

  "Not Austrian. The best I can do."

  Mynatt's eyes pursuing him, Ruben kept the handkerchief in his hand and closed the door quietly behind him without looking back.

  Confessions of a Taco Truck Owner

  by Rob Hart

  MONDAY

  When I went to close up today, the back tire closest to the sidewalk looked like it had melted. Upon closer inspection, I found the handle of a paring knife sticking out of the side.

  Assuming a forward thrust, the angle of the knife indicates the assailant was walking east to west. That narrows down the list of suspects considerably.

  It couldn't be those whale-hugging hippies from the vegan cupcake truck. They don't eat enough protein. No way they've got the upper body strength to get a knife through the thick wall of a tire.

  It couldn't be the soft-serve ice cream guy. If he was intent on sending me a message, that knife would be sticking out of my chest.

  A week in the world of New York City's food trucks, and this is what I've learned: You do not fuck with the soft-serve guys. They drain the blood of their enemies to artificially color the strawberry ice cream.

  Or at least, that's how the stories go.

  So, who does that leave?

  The hot dog vendor around the corner isn't a fan of mine. You'd think tacos and hot dogs would not be adversaries, but both can be served up quickly, and my carnitas tastes way better than the ground-up circus animals he's putting out.

  The kids in the Korean barbecue truck, maybe. They certainly seem like the type.

  That's not racist. I'm not saying Koreans are kni
fe-wielding tire-slashers. It's just that one kid, the one in charge, is always wearing a Scarface t-shirt. And anyone wearing a Scarface t-shirt is probably an asshole.

  The only other food truck in that direction within a few blocks is the waffle truck. But the guy on the waffle truck has been nice to me so far. He came over on my first day, gave me a free waffle, I gave him a free taco, I figured we were best friends now.

  Unless it was a ruse.

  A keep-your-enemies-closer kind of thing.

  TUESDAY

  Someone might be trying to kill me.

  The thing I didn't write about yesterday, because I was real angry about the knife in the tire, is that I had a good run of business. I was working so hard and so fast that I ended the day with a sprig of cilantro in my sock. And I was wearing long pants.

  There was a conference at the college across the street. That's why it was so busy. I don't know what the conference was for. But the line was full of pasty introverts with crippling egos and no fashion sense. I'm guessing they were writers.

  So for once, it seemed like I'd be in the black for the day. And then I got to the storage yard in Queens this morning, ready to spend a little extra time on cleaning and prep. The mechanic who gives my truck the once-over in the mornings says there's a problem with the brake line.

  Says it looked like someone tried to cut it.

  Not all the way, but enough that it would snap if I stopped short.

  The mechanic allows it could be the chewed-up roads shot something up into the chassis. I don't know. After the tire, I'm a little antsy.