Hide Your Eyes

by Alison Gaylin

  “Fuck you, Pierce, you fuckin’ Scorpio.”

  “What happened to freakin’?” said Krull.

  “Are you going to fit me with the wire?” I asked him. From what I knew of wires—which came entirely from late-night cop show reruns—the transmitter fit into one’s crotch or cleavage, and the wire part ran across the back and down the arm. I couldn’t imagine any of these guys putting one on me.

  “Not much fitting is needed,” Munro said. He opened the glove compartment, produced a tiny, expensive-looking cell phone and handed it to me.

  “If her boyfriend shows up and tries to kill me, I’m just supposed to call you guys?”

  All of them laughed, which made me angrier.

  “That’s the wire,” Krull said. “It’s got the transmitter inside. Just clip it onto your bag and you’re set.”

  I frowned at the device. “How very James Bond.”

  “It works great,” Boyle said. “We park this boat where we can see you, put the receiver through the roof vent, you’re covered.”

  “Nobody finds out,” Munro added. “Most people still expect you to be wearing them on your body, so if she wants to frisk you, you’re okay.”

  I pictured this terrified little woman frisking me. “You sure?”

  “We’ve been using these almost exclusively for the past couple of years, and I’ve never seen anyone figure it out.” Munro gave me a smile. “You’re going to do great,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I have to.”

  “Showtime,” said Boyle.

  I looked at my watch, and indeed it was. Eleven forty-five, or, as we’d say in the box office, fifteen minutes to curtain. I was going to talk to her, get her to give me as much information as possible about her boyfriend’s whereabouts. The cops in the van would relay that information to another, on-call unit of detectives, which would hopefully have Mirror Eyes’s ass in custody by the time Blondie and I were through with our chat. If by some chance he showed up at the site, there were six sharpshooters positioned around the area. I even had a code word to say. Freezing. If anything freaked me out, all I had to say was “I’m freezing.” Or “It’s freezing out here,” and every heat-packing civil servant within wire range would come running. Presumably.

  I glanced at Krull. How tired he looked, with those purplish half circles pressing against the bridge of his nose.

  “Time to gain five pounds in two minutes,” said Munro, and handed me a bulletproof vest.

  I put it on over my shirt, then pulled on my sweater and that comforting leather jacket. “Does this make me look fat?” I asked Krull.

  “It’s completely unnoticeable.”

  “But what if she frisks me?”

  “Tell her you bought it from a spy store,” said Boyle. “You were concerned for your safety.”

  The vest was weighty and stiff—it reminded me of the lead aprons that dentists give you to wear during X-rays. “This thing is heavy. How come people are always running in them in the movies? I can barely stand up.”

  “You get used to the feeling,” said Munro. “Sort of like wearing a backpack—only the weight is more evenly distributed. Ever go hiking?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Krull said, “Before you go, can I talk to you, alone?”

  I followed him out of the van, ignoring Pierce’s wolf whistle, glad Krull had asked because I wanted to be alone with him, too. I didn’t want to talk to him alone, though. I just wanted to look at him alone, once more for good luck. We headed up half a block, to a closed storefront behind a parked SUV, and I stared up at his face, pale in the flat sunlight.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” he said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Because we can still head right in there ourselves and arrest her—”

  “And give him a chance to get away? No fucking way.”

  Krull looked at me. “You really kick ass, you know that?”

  I ran my eyes down the length of his body. “That is such a bad outfit.”

  “Who wants to get blood on an Armani? Show me a well-dressed detective, I’ll show you a guy with the wrong set of priorities.”

  “So . . . when all this is over and you take me out to dinner, you’re not going to dress like that?”

  “I’ll put on the hand-tailored suit my dad got me for Christmas, if it’ll make you happy.” Krull tilted my face up to his and gave me the softest kiss imaginable. “But I’d rather stay in.”

  As I turned and left him there, I kept it all in my mind: his bad clothes, his wide, strong back, his soft lips and, most important, the way he’d just looked at me, dry eyed and smiling, as if we’d both be safe forever.

  “Out of curiosity,” Munro had asked in the van, “did you ever go to that construction site before Valentine’s Day?”

  “No.”

  “What made you decide to stop there, then?”

  “Sometimes I just do things like that.”

  As I made my way to the construction site, I tried again to figure out the answer to his question. Then I recalled how, twenty years earlier, I’d left my friends from Brownies to take a shortcut down that deserted street.

  “Samantha, where you going?”

  “I want to go home a different way.”

  “We’re supposed to stay on the busy streets, remember?”

  “And we’re supposed to look in both directions before we cross.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “You would, Tracy. You’re a scaredy-cat. All you guys are big chickens.”

  “Am not!”

  “Am not!”

  “Am not!”

  “Are so. And I should know ’cause I’m a brave girl.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says my daddy.”

  “You don’t have a daddy.”

  “Samantha thinks she has a daddy!”

  “Samantha’s crazy!”

  I’m not crazy. Sometimes we just do things like that. We listen to the wrong voices in our heads, we take the wrong turns, walk down the wrong streets and meet men in Pintos. We borrow big, hooded coats from the wrong people to keep warm in a cold car, we go to the wrong apartment to complain about noise, we turn our backs on our children just for a minute, just to get a camera out of a bag . . .

  “Testing, one two three,” I said, not really to test the wire but to interrupt my thoughts.

  Up ahead by no more than a few car lengths loomed the tops of the three piles of cement blocks, and I hoped the men in the van had heard me. I crossed fingers on both hands, held my breath and counted to eleven for good luck. Okay, that’s enough compulsive behavior for one day.

  Before I slid under the fence, I told myself to calm the fuck down and act like someone else, someone without such an imagination, without so many nightmares. After all, nightmares are a luxury when you’re wide-awake and sliding under a fence, carrying a wire that may or may not work. And crossing your fingers is pointless when you’re about to meet a woman who dropped a dead little girl in the river.

  On the other side of the fence, the first thing I noticed was the white, rusted trailer with the broken sign in front: “RK AND RIDE.” I’d assumed she’d be waiting in the trailer, but I saw nothing through the windows. “Hello?” I said.

  No answer.

  I spun around, eyes scanning the site. I didn’t see any sharpshooters. You’re not supposed to see sharpshooters. That’s the whole point.

  I looked at the piles of cement blocks, and realized I had no idea what lurked behind them. I had assumed that they marked the end of the construction site, but that wasn’t necessarily true. There could be another entrance on the other side. If the trailer had two doors, the man and woman could have gone through that entrance and into the trailer, hidden by the stacks, and exiting—ice chest in tow—through the southern door, where I’d seen them. Or they could have left the ice chest in the trailer days earlier, then returned on Valentine’s Day to dispose of
it.

  Either way, it could explain how they seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

  I got my face up between the nearest two and peered into the tiny space. Around twenty additional feet of empty asphalt stretched out to meet a tall, wooden fence on the other side. I had to change positions a couple of times before I could see the far corner of the metal bordering fence. But sure enough, it had been folded back. Another entrance.

  Beneath the vest, my shoulders started to relax. The place seemed so empty, and I didn’t hear any footsteps. I couldn’t imagine hearing any in the future either, and it gave me an odd sense of relief.

  I backed up, inhaling the sweet, pasty smell of damp concrete, the residue of some quick rain I’d never noticed, pulling the leather jacket closer to my chest. She’s not going to show.

  “Hello?”

  The voice sounded so much like my own that, at first, I thought maybe it was some sort of delayed echo.

  But then she said, “Samantha?” and I knew she was in the trailer.

  I stood in the doorway and saw her sitting on the floor, wearing a long green coat. Dressed for the weather this time.

  She had clean, gold hair and a face I’d seen somewhere before. Why is she sitting on the floor? Is she afraid if she stands she’ll be seen through the windows?

  “You’re here,” she said. “I’m glad.”

  The trailer was nearly empty, with a thick coat of gray clinging to what little was in it—a broken office chair in the corner, a metal-edged counter that may have once been used as a desk, the shell of a filing cabinet, linoleum—so you couldn’t tell anything’s real color. Grime from the city air: car exhaust, stirred-up dust, remnants of dead, decomposing things. Amazing how it could conquer a whole place like this, with no one around to intervene.

  I crouched down and put myself on the woman’s level, the way you would with a shy child. “You look familiar. Have we met before?”

  “People tell me that.” Her eyes were very, very blue, and her skin was pale and smooth. “Help me, Samantha.”

  “Nobody helped Sarah Flannigan.” No, you’re not supposed to say that. Be nice and get her to talk.

  A tear began to leak down her cheek.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yes, you did, but it’s okay because you don’t understand. Not yet.” The woman stood up, and she was taller than I remembered. We stared at each other across the dark stretch of trailer, with the winter sun streaming in behind her like a dying spotlight. You look so familiar.

  I remembered her in her sleeveless dress, remembered her shaking back. “You were scared. When I saw you, with the ice chest, your arms . . . you were crying then too.”

  She nodded.

  “Why were you dressed like that?”

  She wiped away the tear, watched me for several seconds without speaking, as if she were having difficulty discerning me from the rest of the dark, grimy trailer. “I wanted,” she said, “to be as cold as Sarah.”

  What could I do, but let her take my hand, let her draw me out the northern door of the trailer and into the cold air on the hidden side? It was the same here—a little cleaner, without all those broken cement chunks. It seemed quieter, if that was possible.

  What if the sharpshooters couldn’t see me? I started to suggest we leave, go somewhere, get a cup of coffee, but the woman put a finger to her lips.

  I glanced over her shoulder for just a second, so as not to draw attention, looked fast and hard at the wooden fence and thought see me, see me, see me. Then back into her blue, blue eyes. Are those colored contacts?

  “I wanted to die that day. Like her.”

  “I understand.”

  “I know you do,” she said.

  “Who is he? Why little kids?”

  “They’re the right size.”

  “For what?”

  The woman moved closer to me, placed both hands on my shoulders. In the course of conversation, we’d switched places, and now the trailer was behind her like a backdrop from some cheap slasher film. Her delicate face was in the foreground; the face of the film’s doomed heroine. They are colored contacts.

  “Did you ever want to get rid of your stale, old, rotting body?” she said. “They make you so pretty for your funeral.”

  Suddenly, I remembered where I’d seen her before.

  “You and I, we’re standing here rotting. We die more and more every day. That’s what he says.”

  She was the woman in the camel coat, who had exited Ruby’s when I was on my way into the Sixth Precinct to tell Krull about Peter Steele. The woman who had asked me for a light, who had screamed at me when I’d ignored her. Hey, Patchwork Bag, I’m talking to you!

  “The eyes rot first,” she said.

  “You’ve been following me.”

  She opened her mouth as if to say, “No, I haven’t,” or “You must have me confused with someone.” No words came out, though. Just a scream. She turned and ran from me, disappearing back through the trailer. What the . . .

  Behind me, I heard heavy footsteps, Boyle’s voice shouting, “Stop!”

  She must have seen the surveillance van, or maybe she figured out the cell phone was a wire.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  He’ll never catch up with her. He’s too damn heavy. I started after the woman myself when I heard a fire-cracker exploding, and something that felt like an invisible car knocked me off my feet and onto the pavement.

  When I could breathe again, I realized I’d been shot. Bullets bounce off vests in movies, on cop shows, but not in real life. The bullet socks the air out of your lungs and throws you to the ground. If it’s this bad with a vest, could you imagine it without one? No, you couldn’t because you’d be dead, but you’re not dead now. You just. Can’t. Move . . .

  I figured one of the cops had accidentally shot me. Friendly fire. What a joke.

  “Hold your fucking fire!” Krull’s voice. Fucking fire. Fucking friendly fire . . .

  Firecrackers. Why were they still shooting?

  John, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t talk. I managed to half open my eyes, turn my head slightly. And for one moment, just before Krull got in front of me, I saw that the shooter wasn’t a cop.

  Mirror Eyes, standing by the wooden fence, with his black scarf and his long black coat and in his black-gloved hand, a black gun. That’s why she screamed. That’s why she ran . . .

  He stopped shooting, began to raise his arms.

  Krull leaned over me, put a hand on my neck. “Play dead,” he said into my ear. As he stood and turned away, I closed my eyes.

  “Drop your gun!” Krull said.

  A long, heavy silence followed, in which the tiniest noises echoed, as if someone had turned up the volume on this whole strange scene. A hard-soled shoe, scraping against concrete. A seagull’s cry. An ambulance siren, miles away.

  Another gunshot.

  I opened my eyes, saw Krull open fire, saw spent shells spilling onto the pavement. The man clutched his arm, but kept the gun out in front of him, kept shooting at Krull.

  Where are the fucking sharpshooters? It’s freezing, freezing, freezing.

  I hadn’t moved at all since I’d been shot. Not because of what Krull had said, but because I hadn’t been able to. I was paralyzed, the way you are in a dream. The way I’d been in the Pinto.

  Stock-still on the cold ground with wet concrete pushing into the side of my face, I saw Krull fall. Saw him clutch his neck and topple backwards, dropping his gun. I saw the blood, Krull’s blood, pouring over his fingers and all I could think was, Shot in the neck, shot in the neck.

  Krull’s black eyes went wide, then closed as he lay there, still holding his throat, blood still pulsing over his long, gentle fingers.

  Shot in the neck. I didn’t care about playing dead, didn’t care about anything but the fact of his bleeding.

  A thick, tingling heat flooded into my arms and legs. I could move now, but in a weird, pitchin
g way, like my legs were full of Novocain. I felt as if someone was hugging me and realized it was the vest.

  I threw my body forward, on top of Krull’s, put my hand over his face, over the razor stubble, over the broken nose. I felt his soft lips move under my hand, air pushing through them, mouthing a word with a t at the end. Maybe it was Don’t.

  In the distance, I saw Munro, Pierce and about six other cops running, but they were too far away to do anything, and he was starting back under the fence. I heard a few shots—sharpshooters, probably.

  Krull was down, and here he was, Mirror Eyes, scurrying under the fence like a rat on a subway rail. My voice came back: “You sick fuck!”

  He stopped and stared at me, aimed the gun. I stared back at that half face, at those lifeless eyes over the black scarf. What was behind that scarf? What kind of nose, what kind of mouth? What if there was nothing there at all—no features, just flat skin? And what a strange image that was, what a strange image to be the last image ever to enter my mind . . .

  Click.

  Again. Click. Out of bullets. I felt Krull’s breath faltering, felt his eyelids flutter.

  I leaned back a little, grabbed Krull’s gun off the ground and pointed it up, between those eyes.

  “Wait!” The word was surprisingly clear behind the black scarf. Was it fear that made his voice pitch up like that, like the voice of a child?

  Under my hand, Krull’s face went still, and silence spread all around me, rushed into my ears, clouded my vision until all I could see were mirrored eyes in front of the barrel.

  “You wait,” I said. I pulled the trigger.

  14

  Souvenir Bruise

  I couldn’t stop staring at the nurse’s name: Debbie Reynolds, RN. It was printed in red letters across the white plastic name tag she wore on her sky blue pantsuit, giving her broad chest a sort of patriotic look. We were in a tiny, single-bedded room at St. Vincent’s, and she was trying to get me to relax enough to speak—probably using the hospital personnel equivalent of verbal judo, though I didn’t know for sure, didn’t care. I hadn’t been able to say a word since I’d fired the gun.