For the Trees

by Brett Baker

  Migsy’s explanation defied logic. I no longer knew who she was, and I mourned the death of my old friend. This new bitter, vengeful, selfish Migsy didn’t resemble the person I’d known and loved for so many years. But at least I understood why she’d decided to kill me. I may not understand how she got to that point, but it was clear that she no longer valued human life.

  “How does that cord feel?” I asked pointing to her left wrist. “Tight enough? Can you still feel your fingers?” I walked over to her and looked at her hand. It had turned a soft shade of red. “It’s not purple yet. I guess that means it’s not tight enough. So if I employ your line of thinking I should make it tighter because that’s what I want to do.”

  “Go ahead. I doubt you have the guts to do it though. You’re soft, Mia. You’ve always been soft. I’m surprised you’re not dead, actually. Usually anyone as soft as you won’t last. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time though.”

  “How do I overcome my softness? Do I have to do something really brave like tell one of my goons to kill a couple of old people who never harmed anyone?” I had a sudden vision of my dad lying on the floor of the porch, and my mom in the kitchen. I thought I smelled burning chocolate chip cookies. I felt a switch flip in my brain and uncontrollable anger. I walked over to Migsy’s chair. “Look at me, Migsy.” She closed her eyes and turned her head, resting against the chair. “I said look at me.” Migsy ignored my command. I smacked her across the face with my right hand, the sound of my hand hitting her cheek created a smack that echoed throughout the room. Her head jerked violently to her right, and she cried out in unintelligible grunts. “You fucking look at me, you old bitch.”

  She opened her eyes and looked up at me. I looked for any sign of compassion, or feeling, or kindness in her eyes, but saw only darkness. I bent over at the waist and leaned in close to her so that our faces were a foot apart. “I used to respect you. I used to hold you up as a model of integrity and devotion. I was so stupid.” I spit in her face, a large ball of saliva impacting her left cheek and then slowly dripping down.

  “The same thing will happen to you someday, Mia. And when it does you’ll wish that you took my advice now. Don’t let too many years pass. It’s all a waste. The Summit, the missions, the secrecy, the toll it takes on your life, the years you’ll never get back. It’s all a waste.”

  “You’re a waste,” I said. “That’s the only wasteful thing in all of this. You.”

  Migsy shook her head in disagreement. I waited for her to say something but she just kept shaking her head.

  “So how did it go down, Migsy? Did Logan have to convince you to have me killed, or did you just go right along with it since it meant more money for you?”

  “Give it up, Mia. Stop this self-righteous bullshit. We’re all alone. You can go on pretending that you’re looking out for the rest of the world, and on the side of the just, and doing what’s right, but really you’re just a goddamn idiot. Nobody gives a fuck about you, so why should you give a fuck about them? Someday you’ll find yourself tossed to the side, just like I was.”

  “I thought you were still involved. That’s what you said. That’s what I’d heard from other people. You were contributing. Analyzing.”

  “Oh fuck that! Contributing. They wanted me out because I was too damn old, but when I refused to go away they tried to pacify me by turning me into a consultant. I’m no fucking desk jockey. I may be old, but I could still beat the shit out of almost anyone I encountered on a mission. Including you. You’re fucking lucky you snuck up on me and have me tied down. If these lines weren’t so tight you’d be begging for your life right now.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Anyone who doubts your toughness does so at their own risk.”

  “You’re Goddamn right they do.”

  “So you’re mad at The Summit. That’s why you’re doing this?”

  “Don’t oversimplify things. Jesus Christ how fucking stupid can one girl be? Didn’t you just listen to a fucking word I said?”

  “It sounds to me like you’re a jaded old hag who can’t accept that she’s not as young as she used to be so you decided to take everything for yourself and kill anyone who stood in your way. Does that about sum it up?”

  “You won’t understand until you’re right here,” Migsy said. “Until you’re old and tossed aside and made to feel as if you’re just in the way. You’ll never understand.”

  “Then make me understand.”

  “I can’t do it. No one can do it. You’re not old. You’ll only understand when you’re old. Just wait.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to betray my protégé and kill her parents just because I’m old. Greed will never get the best of me. That’s just fucked up.”

  “It’s not about the money,” Migsy said. “The money is just icing on the cake. When I met Logan he had problems that needed to be solved. Since he didn’t need me to kill anyone or rescue anyone he didn’t care how old I was. He was oblivious to my age, and my physical condition. He told me what he needed and I delivered. When you’re doing business in the places where Logan does business, having someone who can get things done is the most important part.”

  “There’s a difference between solving a problem and killing someone.”

  “Not if the person is the problem.”

  “So that’s what I turned into? After all of these years I was just another problem to be solved.”

  “That’s it exactly,” Migsy said. “I thought you understood how all of this worked. The Summit, the missions, the people. It’s not personal. It’s all business. We’re in the business of solving problems. If you get attached to the problem, then that’s your problem and you’re worse off for it. I’m not killing you because I don’t like you. I’m killing you because you have to be killed.”

  “And my parents just had to be killed?” I asked.

  “That wasn’t the initial plan. I tried to leave it up to Logan. He told me he could take care of you if I told him where you were. But then you killed a few of his guys and he got frustrated. He’s a whiny little bitch when he gets frustrated. It’s his voice. He gets angry and he tries to yell, but his voice won’t let him, so he just sounds like a whiny, petulant child. It’s hard to take someone like that seriously. But when he couldn’t get the job done, I told him I’d just do it myself. He wasn’t happy about it, but how many fucking chances can one guy have?”

  “But you’re too damn old to come get me, so you had to figure out a way to get me to come to you. Right?”

  “I see Logan spilled his guts,” Migsy said. “The asshole told you everything.”

  “Not everything,” I said. “But to be fair, he was in no position to negotiate. In fact, he had less leverage than you have right now.”

  “If you tied me up so I’d tell you the truth you can untie me right now. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But if you tied me up so I don’t kick your ass and kill you, then you better keep me tied up. I may be old, but I can still send you to the grave before me.”

  I ignored Migsy’s posturing. Despite being broken down and worn out by The Summit, she seemed not to have lost any confidence in herself.

  “Why kill them?”

  “What the fuck do you mean? I just fucking told you. To get you down here.”

  “I know, but did you have to kill them? You don’t think I’d come down here if I got a call that they were in the hospital because someone had just beat the shit out of them? Bust a skull, collapse a long, cut off a finger, whatever. But isn’t killing them a little over the top?”

  “Why leave a witness?” Migsy asked.

  “Who did it?”

  “None of your concern,” she said.

  “The hell it isn’t! Those were my parents. It’s entirely my concern. Tell me who did it.”

  “You don’t need to know. The name won’t mean a thing to you and it was just a job for them. Whether I plunged the knife into their chest or not, I killed your parents.”r />
  Migsy’s bluntness caught me off guard. She always spoke her mind, but it never felt as personal as listening to her talk about murdering my parents.

  “Who did it?” I asked again.

  “None of your fucking business,” Migsy yelled. “Give it the fuck up. You don’t care who did it. I did it. I killed your fucking parents. I gave the word and it was done. It doesn’t matter who plunged the knife.”

  “Why are you protecting them?” I asked. “There’s a price that has to be paid for this, and I can charge you alone, or I can charge you and the people who did this.”

  “I killed your parents,” Migsy said.

  “Tell me who did it.”

  “I killed your parents. I wanted it done and it got done. That’s all you need to know.”

  I punched Migsy in the stomach, and when she leaned forward slightly I landed a palm-first uppercut to the tip of her nose. A splatter of blood exploded from her face and covered the surrounding chair in red. She made a horrific gasping sound and I thought she might have inhaled blood into her lungs and begun to suffocate. But she quickly coughed, which sent a plume of blood toward me, landing on my shoes.

  “So you thought I’d come down here and you’d have them kill me, too?”

  Migsy didn’t say anything. She reclined her head so it rested on the back of the chair, and she closed her eyes and let her mouth fall open. Anyone looking from the outside would think she was dead. I grabbed her chin and pulled her head down. Her eyes remained closed, but I stared at her.

  “Were you going to kill me, or were you going to have them do it? You betrayed me, you killed my parents, you sold out The Summit and sold your own soul. The least you could have done was kill me yourself. Was that the plan?”

  “He was going to kill you,” Migsy mumbled, her chin resting on her chest. “He planned to wait for you in the house and kill you when you came in. But then you went to Whit’s house, so it didn’t happen.”

  “The guys who broke into the house after the murder, the dude I chased before his friend leveled me, they were yours weren’t they?” Migsy nodded. “Who were they?”

  “Just guys,” she said. “Not important.”

  “Who were they?” I asked, grabbing a fistful of hair.

  “They did the job.”

  “What?”

  “They did the job. They’re the ones who killed your folks. They planned to do you, too. I’ll never understand why they didn’t just take you out on the lawn. They had you right there, they could have killed you. But they panicked. They weren’t expecting you and they panicked. That’s when I knew I’d have to do it myself.”

  “Do it yourself?” Migsy nodded. “Kill me?” Another nod.

  “You gave me no choice, Mia. You were a threat and you wouldn’t go away and no one else could do it, so I had to take care of it.”

  “But you didn’t take care of it,” I said. “If you took care of it you wouldn’t be bleeding from your mouth, tied to a chair. I’m still here.”

  “You left too soon. I thought you’d be in town another day. I was going to call you later that night, after the funeral. Tell you to come see me. I knew you’d come. And when you did I’d be waiting for you, and it would be over before you knew what happened. A couple bullets. The end. Nice and easy.”

  “Just like Toilet Brush,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Toilet Brush. That’s the name I gave your girl in my apartment. I killed her by shoving a toilet brush down her throat.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Migsy said. I sensed a wisp of admiration.

  “Effective.”

  I went to the kitchen and looked under the sink and found a can of upholstery and carpet cleaner. Toward the back of the cupboard I found a scrub brush that looked like it had never been used. I returned to Migsy’s chair, sprayed the cleaner on the blood splatters, and told her to lean to one side as I scrubbed next to her head to get the tiny remnants of her DNA off the furniture.

  “You helped us out in the yard that night,” Migsy said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “After their encounter with you my two guys left town. They thought you’d gotten a good look at them and would know them right away if you ran into them at the supermarket or something. If you never ran into them they would have stuck around and who knows, maybe an officer asks just the right question and someone fingers them. They go to jail and squeal and take me down with them. And you better believe that if I’m going down I’m going to take down The Summit, too. The whole damn thing. So you saved it all. You drove them away, assured that the crime wouldn’t be solved and I wouldn’t have to sing about The Summit.”

  “What a hero,” I said. I scrubbed at the chair and had a sudden revelation. “You’ve got a contact in The Summit.”

  “We’ve all got contacts in The Summit. None of us can do the job alone.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You’ve got someone who’s sympathetic to you. Know who you are, knows what you do. Probably gets some of the action you get.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Am I right?” I asked.

  “Why do you say that?” Migsy asked, avoiding an answer.

  “You encouraged me to pursue answers about my parents’ murder through The Summit. You wouldn’t advise me to do that unless you knew how it would turn out. You had someone inside plant some false information, or relay false information, which I’d have to accept. They’d claim not enough evidence. Not enough intelligence. Suspects unknown. But if the police investigated, they might stumble upon something. They might put some clues together and figure it all out. So you had to keep me away from them. So you redirected me to The Summit.”

  “Very good,” Migsy said. “That’s it exactly. I was worried when Hertz came from Tulare county to talk to you. I thought maybe they’d piece together Chamberlain and your parents. I didn’t know how they could do it, but I was worried. And after the altercation on the lawn I thought you might go to the police. I knew they didn’t have anyone monitoring the house, but you’re so fucking perceptive that I thought you’d identify the men who attacked you, and the cops would arrest them and the whole thing would unravel. But you kept your mouth shut.”

  “I didn’t think the men on the lawn could have been connected to the murders.”

  “Why the hell not?” Migsy asked. “It makes perfect sense. Hasn’t The Summit taught you anything?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Why would someone return to the scene of a double murder so soon after committing the crime? They’re just asking to get caught. Why wouldn’t they assume that the police were monitoring the house?”

  “They were there the whole time. That’s why I’m so surprised they didn’t get the job done. They were real professionals. By the time you sat on Whit’s porch and watched my guy go into your parents’ house, he’d already been scoping out the scene for more than 24 hours. He killed your parents, left town for a few hours, and came back during the commotion right after they found the bodies. Before he did your parents he’d found the perfect hiding spot. A line of bushes a few hundred yards down from Whit’s. He crawled in those bushes, so thick you can’t even see through them, and he huddled down and waited. Found a good sightline and watched everything unfold. He knew how many cops were there. Saw when they all left. Saw that you weren’t staying there. He knew the house was empty. Only thing he didn’t know was that you’re a light sleeper and like fresh air. So you saw him. And when you confronted him, he freaked out. And his partner couldn’t handle it. Just wasn’t as well trained as him, or as you for that matter. He just wanted to get the fuck out of there. So when he knocked you out he picked up his friend and left instead of kicking your skull in. Missed opportunity.”

  Our experience in The Summit had callused us to the worst that life had to offer, but to hear Migsy talk so flippantly about my parents’ murder and about wanting to kill me shook me to the core. I could feel my emotions shifting by the minute. Twenty-four hou
rs before I’d thought of Migsy as one of the most-trusted people in my life, and despite what Logan told me I held out hope that he’d been mistaken, but in talking to her at that moment she seemed to have changed into a completely different person. The last vestiges of respect for and faith in Migsy began to dry up in my soul. I’d always looked upon her with an elevated degree of fondness, but now just hearing the inhale and exhale of her breath released an ocean of scorn within me.

  “How much did you stand to make from all of this?”

  “We’ll never know, I suppose. Logan promised to give me a percentage of what he found. He didn’t know for sure how much uranium he’d find, but he suspected it’d be enough to make me a millionaire many times over.”

  “And all you had to do was kill me and turn your head the other way while he did something that would kill countless more people.”

  Migsy lifted her head toward me, and looked me in the eye. A small smile came across her face and she winked as she said, “We’ve all got to go sometime.”

  “Yes we do,” I said. We stared at each other for a few seconds, our eyes locked. Moments from a two-decade friendship passed back and forth without a word. For the first time in many years I felt the uncomfortable nervousness in the pit of my stomach that I’d first experienced with Migsy on the day she began recruiting me for The Summit. I remembered a picture from seventy years ago that she once showed me in a photo album hidden in a table just a few feet from where I stood. In the picture a young woman looked nervously at the camera as she stood with her arm around the waist of a German soldier. She smirked and I wondered if she thought about the time she spent an afternoon in my parents’ living room, showing them photos we’d taken together on the Princeton campus, to help support her made-up story about stopping to see me on the way to visit her sister in New York.