Trigger City

by Sean Chercover

  I understood. I drank the bourbon in my glass and chased it with a swig of beer, then refilled the glass.

  “So talk. I’ll drink with you.” I watched Gravedigger’s eyes retreat to somewhere far away. We drank in silence for a minute.

  “Had a visit,” said Gravedigger. “Had a visit from Mark Tindall.”

  Mark Tindall was Gravedigger’s original name. It was his name back in the sandbox and it was his name when he dropped out of high school. It was his name when he became a mercenary and went to Africa, when he served time in a Nigerian prison, and when he returned to Chicago badly broken and struggled to put himself back together. But then he found the job at the cemetery and in that job he found a place where he could live with himself. He quickly rose to the rank of head groundskeeper and, in a surprising move, legally changed his name to Gravedigger Peace. He would never again answer to the name Mark Tindall.

  Gravedigger got two fresh bottles of beer from the fridge, sat back down, and said, “You know, I thought I’d killed that guy. Thought I’d gotten rid of him for good.” His voice carried a strong note of futility. “Then you look in the mirror one day, and there the motherfucker is, staring back at you.”

  This was bad. This was worse than bad.

  “What exactly did you do, Gravedigger?”

  Normally Gravedigger only smiled with the left side of his mouth. This smile was even, and it looked cruel. “Look at you,” he said, “Mr. Detective.”

  “Jesus, you know enough of my skeletons to know I’m not judging you, I’m worried. Tell me what happened.”

  He went to the closet and put on a jean jacket lined with fake sheepskin, grabbed a battery-powered lantern. “Come with me,” he said. “Bring the bottle.”

  We left the house and walked to a grave about ten yards from Gravedigger’s front door. We sat on the grass. He put the lantern on the ground, near the new headstone. Not much information on it. The name Walter Jackson and the years of his birth and death. Walter Jackson died at forty-seven.

  I knew the name. Gravedigger told me about him during some of our drunken all-nighters after he came back from Nigeria. Walter Jackson had been Mark Tindall’s commanding officer in the mercenary outfit in Africa. He was a black man from Georgia, had been with Special Forces, left the military and became a soldier for hire. He’d saved Gravedigger’s life.

  “He was killed in Ramadi,” said Gravedigger. “It was on the news.”

  I remembered the story now. Five civilian contractors slaughtered and their bodies burned in the street. I remembered the video of young Iraqi men dancing around the fire, chanting their fury and waving machine guns around.

  I said, “I saw it. The name didn’t hit me at the time. I didn’t make the connection. I would’ve called.”

  “I know you would.” He reached out for the bottle and I gave it to him. He poured a little bourbon on the grave and made a toasting gesture at the headstone, then took a swig from the bottle and handed it to me and I drank some, too. He said, “Sarge put it in his will, to be buried here, by me. And that’s an honor. But it fucked with my head something fierce. And Mark Tindall showed up.”

  I knew I didn’t want to hear the answer but I had to ask again. “What did Mark Tindall do?”

  His eyes welled up. “Something bad. Something really fuckin’ bad.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. I am sorry, too.” His hand shook slightly as he held it out for the bottle.

  “Did the other guy deserve it?”

  “Other guys. There were two of them. No, they didn’t deserve it…not really.”

  “But maybe a little bit,” I said. Grasping at straws.

  “Shit, nobody deserves what happened to those guys. They deserved a good beating. I overreacted. I mean, they attacked me…”

  “So it was self-defense,” I said.

  “Yeah. No. Hell, I could’ve incapacitated these guys with both hands tied behind my back and a cast on one leg. But Mark Tindall wanted blood. And he got it.”

  “Still, they initiated the violence, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you can’t start a fight and then expect it to end on your terms. We’re a long way from the schoolyard where you can start shit and then call Uncle when it doesn’t go your way.” I reached for the bottle, took another swig. “From where I sit, he who initiates violence waives the right to his life, because he didn’t respect his intended victim’s right to live.”

  “That’s very nice in a philosophy classroom,” snapped Gravedigger, “but I’m not talking about their fuckin’ rights, man.”

  “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry, I was just looking for a way to make it better.”

  “This isn’t something you can make better.” Gravedigger blew out a long breath and went far away again, to a place he wished he’d never been. We were quiet for a while.

  Time to reevaluate. Gravedigger’s a mess—there’s no way he can help with Amy Zhang’s protection. And the last thing he needs is to toss ideas around about how to deal with your little mercenary problem…

  “You smoking these days?” Gravedigger’s voice brought me back.

  I pulled the pack from my pocket and shook out a cigarette for myself and tossed him the pack. Lit mine, tossed him the Zippo. He took a deep drag, held the smoke in his chest for a few seconds, and blew it at the night sky.

  After a minute he said, “Remember when you said that sometimes a good man does bad things?”

  I remembered. It was just after Gravedigger returned from Africa and I was trying to help him find a way to forgive himself.

  “It was ten years ago,” I said. “I was younger then.”

  “Thing is, a good man can do one bad thing. Anybody can fuck up. Once. But just once.”

  “People have been known to make more than one mistake in a lifetime,” I said.

  “This ain’t stealing pencils from the office supply cabinet or putting a dent in someone’s car and not leaving a note. And you don’t take the moral temperature of a man by his intentions. Intentions are bullshit. You are what you do, not what you intend.” He dragged on the cigarette. “Mark Tindall was not a good man, you know? He’d done far too much. He was not redeemable. There was no way to live with that. All I could do was kill the guy.”

  Amy told me that Steven Zhang had killed the man he was—annihilated himself, she said—and become someone else. And then he’d really killed someone. Gravedigger had done the same thing, but then he’d stopped killing. He said, “I just had to start over as someone new.”

  “Some people believe that we start over every day,” I said, “and our actions determine who we are on that day only. That we don’t carry our accomplishments forward. Or our failures. Every new day brings the same opportunity and imposes the same responsibility. You dig?”

  “Yeah, I’ve read all those books. But we both know it’s more complicated than that.” He stubbed his cigarette out in the grass. “I’m working on it.”

  “Let’s head in,” I said, “it’s getting a little cold out here.” I stood and grabbed the lantern. It was time to get some distance from Walter Jackson’s grave.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I made a pot of coffee and a box of macaroni and cheese. There was a package of Vienna hot dogs in the fridge and I cut a couple into the macaroni. I didn’t make a point of the food or the switch to coffee and Gravedigger didn’t say anything, either. But he ate. And he screwed the cap back on the bourbon.

  We talked about the last couple of months. The relapse into Mark Tindall was a onetime thing, sparked by Walter Jackson’s death and two young knuckleheads who thought they could take on a guy in his late thirties who stood five-six. Of course, they didn’t know about Gravedigger’s past. Or about the rage. He didn’t want to talk specifics and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear them, so we didn’t go into the details of what had happened. I knew enough to understand how it was affecting him, and that’s all I wanted to know.

  We
focused instead on the aftermath. The relapse had shaken his belief in the existence of Gravedigger Peace, but it had not broken that belief. Gravedigger was still Gravedigger, but he’d had to kill Mark Tindall a second time and it was painful work. He was self-medicating with booze, but he insisted that he never drank before his work was done for the day and I believed him.

  He’d get through this. He might not ever be quite the same, but he’d get through.

  We put our dishes in the sink and I refilled our mugs and we moved back into the living area.

  Gravedigger smiled—a real smile—and said, “I think we’ve talked this thing to death.” He sipped some coffee. “And it helped. Thanks for being a nosy bastard.”

  “It’s what I do best.”

  “Now let’s talk about your problems.”

  “Who said I had any?”

  “When everything’s fine, you call and say ‘let’s get together for a drink next week.’ When you call and say ‘can I come over now?’ I know there’s trouble.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “But I think we’d better leave it for another time.”

  “That’s a negative,” said Gravedigger.

  “I think it might be bad for you.”

  “You come here with trouble, and we don’t talk about it because you decide I can’t handle it, and then you get killed. Now that would be bad for me. I appreciate the concern but I’m okay. You can stop treating me like a mental patient.”

  “It has to do with your previous occupation. You’re sure you want to hear it?”

  Gravedigger let out a big laugh. “Perfect! Just perfect. You gotta love the absurdity. I mean, the timing! It’s like the universe is poking us both in the eye with a stick.” He unscrewed the cap from the bourbon and poured a little into our coffee, still chuckling. “Ah, what the hell? Why not? What do you want to know about the mercenary business?”

  So I told Gravedigger about Steven Zhang and Joan Richmond and their history at Hawk River. I told him about closed-door congressional hearings and scrubbed police files and the malignant threats coming my way, about DHS bullies and Amy Zhang’s fear and the guy in the Malibu. He listened intently as I talked, elbows on his knees, leaning forward.

  Then I told him about the attack in the parking garage.

  “Jesus, Ray. You could’ve mentioned that a little sooner. Isn’t that what you reporter types call burying the lead?” I hadn’t been a reporter in over nine years, but I let that slide.

  “I’m trying to keep it in context of the overall problem.”

  “The overall problem? They tried to kill you today.” Gravedigger lit a new cigarette. “You ignore that problem, you won’t be around to worry about the overall problem.”

  “If I let myself obsess about that,” I said, “it’ll paralyze me. Compartmentalize to survive, that’s my motto.” But there was a sick feeling in my gut and compartmentalizing was a struggle and I wished he hadn’t focused on that particular part of the story. “Anyway, I have a reluctant ally at the FBI. After what happened today I think I can convince him to get involved.”

  Gravedigger rolled his eyes. “The FBI doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Let’s not go overboard here,” I said. “I know these guys are powerful, but—”

  “Powerful? You ever see Eisenhower’s military industrial complex speech? Ike wasn’t messing around. He tried to warn us but we were too stupid to pay attention. And now it’s too late. There’s just too much money at stake. How’d you like Hawk River’s head office?”

  “It was very nice,” I said.

  “Bet it was. Check out the board of directors at any of the defense companies, and their lobbyists, too. What do you see? Retired pentagon brass, senators, congressmen. It’s a revolving door between the federal government and the gravy train. Powerful? They run the fucking country.”

  “I don’t buy into those shadow government conspiracies,” I said. “Too paranoid.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” said Gravedigger. “There’s nothing shadow about it, it’s right there in front of us, just like Eisenhower said. All you gotta do is follow the money. The defense establishment, the oil companies. They run the joint. I know. I used to work for them.”

  “Okay, if they run the joint and the politicians are just hired hands, then why is Congress investigating? Just putting on a good show for the voters? I don’t buy that. Nothing personal, but you’re not the least paranoid guy I’ve ever met.”

  Gravedigger sipped his coffee and his voice was a bit calmer. “Look, I’m not saying they own every politician. I’m saying they own enough of them. And if a handful of do-gooder congressmen start investigating, look what happens. Some crazy-acting guy kills this Richmond woman, then conveniently offs himself. Hell, if she’d been famous, the papers would’ve called him a lone nut assassin. Since she was a nobody, they just called him crazy. Mark my words, the congressional hearings will amount to nothing. And you can take that—”

  “Okay, whatever.” The sharpness of my tone surprised me. “They run the world, they don’t run the world…that’s a distraction I really don’t need right now.” I felt a little queasy. Keep a lid on the fear. I took a deep breath, reached for the pack and lit a cigarette.

  Gravedigger nodded an apology my way. “The guy who came after you today, you said you didn’t think he was a Hawk River guy.”

  “He didn’t seem military enough to me, for what that’s worth. Not much more than a hunch really.”

  “But I think you could be right. That detail about the sterile watch—”

  “And knife. And clothing. Not a label on the guy.”

  “Right. See, most of the mercs I’ve known are label obsessed. Rolex, Strider, Larry Vickers, SureFire…these guys are constantly showing off their brand names.”

  “Still not much to go on,” I said.

  “Yeah, but let’s just play that out. If he wasn’t working for Hawk River, then logic says he’s with the DHS guys who fucked with you in the bar.”

  “If they are DHS, which I doubt.”

  “Right. But they gotta be government. Like you said, the G is the only other party who stands to benefit.” He finished his coffee, put the mug down hard, went to the fridge, and brought back a couple bottles of beer. He looked across the room at nothing for a minute before speaking again.

  “Once upon a time, I had a gig in Somalia. The outfit I worked for was a British company. But our client on this gig was CIA. They couldn’t send their own paramilitary guys—it was too politically sensitive and they needed to maintain total deniability, not just plausible deniability. We were supposed to take out some asshole warlord posing as a man-of-the-people politician.” Gravedigger shrugged, “We took him out, all right. And his family.”

  “And what does this tell us?”

  Gravedigger shook off the memory. “My point is, these operations happen all the time. CIA, DIA, DEA, you name it; if it’s got three letters, it probably hires contractors to do shit it needs to be able to deny. I’m telling you, there are a lot of black ops that get contracted out whenever and wherever the government needs deniability. You can bet Hawk River gets its share of these gigs, no matter what bullshit Joseph Grant fed you. And let’s say your Joan Richmond was gonna talk about it. It’s Hawk River’s mess, so it’s their job to clean it up. But the government guys get nervous, maybe they think your Blake Sten is fucking up. So they send a guy to take you out.”

  It actually made sense, despite Gravedigger’s paranoia. But I still didn’t want to believe it. “I don’t know…”

  “Then paint me a more logical scenario.”

  I couldn’t.

  “Fine,” I said, “let’s run with that, see where it leads: Amy said that she thought Steven Zhang learned something bad while working on Hawk River’s computers. Blake Sten fires Zhang, ostensibly for trying to sell company records to China. Joan Richmond quits less than a month later. Zhang and Joan maintain regular contact for over six months before she has a job to offer
him. Congress starts holding hearings to investigate billing practices of various defense contractors, including Hawk River. And Joan is scheduled to testify. If Zhang shared what he learned with Joan, it may have been the motivation for her to quit, for them to stay in contact, and for her to testify. With me?”

  “Sure.”

  “But. They’re both dead. So what would make Joseph Grant’s government friends nervous enough to take me out? Amy could talk, but she doesn’t really know anything of substance. She can’t even admit to herself that Steven was faking his mental illness. And Blake Sten showed me a photograph of Steven Zhang meeting with a Chinese MSS agent. Even if it was a frame-up, Sten has the photo to back up his version. So if Amy did kick up a fuss, they could just spin it as a delusional grieving widow. Killing me does nothing but invite unwanted attention. Unless…”

  “Unless Joan Richmond or Steven Zhang had some physical evidence that Sten was unable to recover,” said Gravedigger, “and everybody’s afraid you’ll find it.”

  So I would be searching Joan Richmond’s place tonight, after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I sat on the floor of Joan Richmond’s living room, surrounded by books. A pot of coffee in my gut and angry music on the stereo to keep me awake. I’d started searching at 2:30. It was now coming up on 5:00 A.M. I was exhausted.

  The soundtrack for my search included The Stranglers, The Who, The Stooges, and now The Clash. All bands starting with The, and all rebelling against authority. It wasn’t a conscious choice—I’d just reached for the next disc at hand, so long as the music was energetic enough to keep me from drifting.

  It had been twelve hours since I’d taken any Percocet and my shoulder was screaming but I couldn’t risk falling asleep. There were plenty more rebellious bands in Joan’s collection that started with The, but I was running out of places to search.

  And running out of time.

  The CD-ROM backups of her computer system were exactly what they seemed and held no secrets. I’d unzipped the cushions on her couch, kneaded all her throw pillows, examined the seams of her mattress and box spring, detached the headboard from the wall, felt through the lining of her clothes, pulled all the pictures off the walls and looked behind the frames, peeled back her rugs, looked under lamps and shelves and drawers and anything else that could be looked under. And now I’d flipped through all her books.