Lights Out

by Peter Abrahams

  While they talked, the old women busied themselves with the cardboard boxes Julio had brought in. The first two emptied them, spilling paper money across the table. Then they sorted it into piles by denomination, banded the bills in stacks, dropped the stacks into a canvas bag. The third woman made entries on a laptop and called to Julio when the bag was full. He got up from the fire and added the bags to a mound of others near the door. The women filled three canvas bags while Eddie watched; their knobby hands never stopped, working together like giant inhabitants of an insect colony.

  Suddenly, the dog’s ears rose. Eddie sank down, listened, heard nothing. He crept along to the next window, looked in.

  A bedroom. The only light came from a TV on a corner desk. On the screen a hideous man with four-inch nails was tiptoeing toward a car parked in a lovers’ lane. The only viewer was a dark-haired boy of about ten or eleven lying on the bed, but he wasn’t paying much attention to the show. He was more interested in the gun in his hand.

  It might have been a toy, but to Eddie it looked just like the nine-millimeters worn by the C.O.s in the towers. The boy spun it around on his index finger like a quick-draw artist, jabbed it at the man with four-inch nails, at a teddy bear against the wall, at the window where Eddie watched.

  Eddie dropped to the ground. He was quick, surely too quick for the boy to have seen him. But the next moment came an explosion, and the window blew out over Eddie’s head. He scrambled away, dove among the nearest trees.

  Voices rose from the house. Shadows made wild gestures in the blue light of the boy’s window. Then Paz poked his head out, peered around. Rain fell steadily and the night was quiet, except for the beating of Eddie’s heart against the earth.

  “It’s just his imagination,” said Paz in Spanish, holding his ice-cream spoon. “All that TV.”

  “That’s not the point,” said one of the old women in the room behind him. “He shouldn’t be playing with guns.”

  Then came the high voice of the boy. “It’s mine,” he said. “And I saw someone out there, whether you believe me or not.”

  “What kind of someone?” asked Paz, turning back to the room.

  “All white. Like a ghost.”

  Paz sighed. “Bedtime,” he said. He glanced outside again, picked a shard of glass out of the frame, withdrew. “Back to work,” Eddie heard him say. “And one of you get this fixed.”

  The shadows moved out of the blue light. Eddie stayed still. The boy’s head appeared in the window. Eddie recognized him from the photograph on the wall of El Rojo’s cell. Simon Cruz, known as “Gaucho”-a fine boy and a dead shot, according to his proud papa.

  Gaucho aimed his gun at the forest and said, “Pow, pow.”

  Julio taped a piece of cardboard over the window. The farmhouse grew quiet, the lights went out. Rain began again, just a drizzle at first, then harder. It dripped down off the leafless branches onto Eddie. He circled the house, crawled under the truck and waited, listening to the rain.

  It was still dark when he heard the door of the farmhouse open. Eddie rolled over, saw the glare of a flashlight, its beam zigzagging over the ground on an unsteady path toward the truck. For a moment it rested on Julio, carrying canvas bags over his shoulder.

  “When is this rain going to stop?” he said in Spanish.

  “All you do is complain,” answered the other man; Eddie recognized the voice of the driver.

  “I hate this country.”

  “So go home.”

  Julio snorted.

  The driver pointed his light at the truck. Eddie stayed still. With a grunt, Julio slung the canvas bags over the side, into the cargo space.

  “I mean it,” he said. “What’s so good about this country?”

  “The women,” replied the driver. They started back toward the house.

  “The women? Are you joking?”

  “They fuck like crazy.”

  “So?” said Julio. “They hate men. At least our women like men. The women here piss me off. Sometimes I feel like just taking one, you know? One of those cool ones.”

  They went into the house, came out with more canvas bags, tossed them into the truck. Then they climbed into the cab. The doors closed, the engine started, the truck vibrated above Eddie. He slid out from under, got a grip on the edge of the platform, and climbed up and over the side just as the truck drove away.

  They mounted the rise, turned right on the main road, away from the gate. Eddie sat on the canvas bags. After a mile or two they took a narrow track, followed it through the woods. Eddie couldn’t see much but knew they came to a stream because he heard water flowing, knew they crossed a wooden bridge because he heard it creak. Not long after, they came to a clearing, a charcoal-colored opening in the night. The truck slowed. It hadn’t quite stopped when Eddie vaulted over the side, landed on all fours on hard-packed dirt, ran low into the woods. The driver cut the engine; headlights and brake lights flashed out.

  They waited, Julio and the driver warm and dry in the cab, Eddie cold and wet in the trees. Eddie didn’t know what they were waiting for; he was waiting for Floyd K. Messer, although he couldn’t have given a logical reason why.

  The night lost its blackness. Shadows firmed into solid shapes-the trees, the truck, the driver standing beside it, pissing against the wheel, a small car parked nearby. The eastern sky turned silver for a moment, then settled on dark gray. In the growing light, Eddie saw that the truck was parked at one end of a long, narrow dirt strip cut through the woods.

  The driver, on his way back to the cab, went still, his head tilted up. Then Eddie heard it too, a plane coming from the south. Julio climbed from the cab into the cargo space, tossed the canvas bags onto the ground.

  A white plane with green trim burst out of the clouds, very low, buzzed over the truck and landed not far away. It rolled down the strip, slowed, turned, rolled back. Eddie could see no one inside but the pilot, and he looked nothing like Messer. The pilot was wearing sunglasses. Maybe the sun was shining somewhere high above.

  The plane halted beside the truck. The driver ran to it, swung open a compartment near the tail. Julio threw the canvas bags inside. The plane was already moving again by the time the driver closed the compartment. No one said a word.

  The plane sped down the runway, lifted off, rose into the clouds, went silent, vanished.

  “What a prick,” Julio said in English.

  “They’re all like that,” the driver replied.

  “Monday?” said Julio.

  “Monday.”

  The driver got into the truck, Julio into the car. They drove away.

  Outside: Day 6

  24

  “How do you want to play this?” said Max Switzer, picking at his sandy mustache.

  Karen de Vere hated when he did that, hated working with Max at all; he had no touch. Drawing his stupid gun on Eddie Nye, for example. He reminded her of her ex-husband, making his insufferable way up the ladder of Whiteshoe and Silverspoon, or whatever the hell it was. “It’s a no-brainer,” she said, with an edge in her voice; she heard it and sharpened it as she continued. “I say I’ve changed my mind.”

  “And ask for the money back?”

  “Bull’s-eye. It’s called a sting.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “Everyone fucks up in his or her own way, as always.”

  Eddie entered Jack’s suite at the Palazzo. No one was there. Raleigh’s beer cans, the empty glasses, the pinkened towel, the cigar ashes; all gone. Tidy, quiet, peaceful; like the hotel room it was, ready for the next guest. Eddie searched for a note Jack might have left him, found none. He went into the bedroom, checked the fax, read a page about an engineering company in Dubai that wanted investors. “Jack-thar’s gold in them thar sands,” someone had scrawled at the bottom.

  Eddie opened the closet. Jack’s suits still hung there by the dozen; shoes for every occasion lay in formation on the floor. He was out, not gone. Eddie kicked off the tassel loafers, chose a pair
of sneakers. Lacing them up, he remembered that most inmates only tied their shoes tight when there was fighting to be done; it was one of the little things you looked for.

  Eddie walked into the sitting room, looked out the window at a low sky of unbroken cloud. The first drops began to fall as he watched, thin streaks like scratches on gray slate, almost invisible. Down in the park a jogger in blue passed a jogger in red, was passed in turn by a jogger in green. Then a black dog trailing its leash zipped by all of them.

  Eddie left the Palazzo and took a cab to Brainy’s. Brainy’s was closed, as he had expected. He walked the nearby streets in the rain. Everything looked different: because it was day, because he was sober, because he had a purpose. Not to take up where he’d left off; he knew he couldn’t do that. But he also knew he had to go back fifteen years, to revisit his life-as a spectator, perhaps, or an investigator. There were questions that had to be answered, questions raised by Evelyn Andrea Manning Packer Nye; partly by what she’d said, partly by how she’d ended up.

  Eddie found the used bookstore. This time he noted its name: Gold’s Books-Fine, Used, and Rare. The paperback bin was empty because of the rain. Eddie went in. The bell tinkled. The boy in the skullcap was reading at the desk. He looked up. There was a pimple on his forehead, making Eddie think of those high-caste Indians.

  “Another holiday?” Eddie said.

  “It’s Sunday.”

  He would have to learn to keep track of the days again.

  “We’re not really open,” the boy went on. “I just come here because it’s … quieter.”

  Eddie listened. The sounds of the city were barely audible, as if all the books could somehow muffle them.

  “What’s your name?” Eddie said.

  The boy hesitated.

  “Mine’s Ed. Ed Nye.”

  “Pinchas,” said the boy, and again Eddie imagined what would happen to him in prison, again felt his stomach turn.

  “I need some help,” Eddie said. “I’ll pay you for it.”

  The boy closed his book: The Comedians. “I’m not really an expert when it comes to poetry,” he said.

  “This isn’t about poetry.”

  “Is it legal?”

  Eddie laughed. “Why do you ask that?”

  The boy bit his lip.

  How to put him at ease? Eddie didn’t know. He smiled. “Go on,” he said.

  “Don’t take this personally.”

  “I won’t.”

  “But you do look like someone who might do something illegal.”

  “Like a hit man, you said.”

  “Maybe not so much like a hit man, the way your hair’s growing in.”

  Gray. “I’ll tell you something,” Eddie said, perhaps more forcefully than he’d intended, because the boy shrank in his chair: “I’ve never done anything illegal in my life.” In his mind it was true: the three men he’d killed had been in self-defense, and he hadn’t known what had been hidden away on Fearless. He’d done nothing illegal, but the look had rubbed off on him anyway.

  “Nothing?” said Pinchas. His Adam’s apple bobbed, as though a bubble that couldn’t be suppressed was on its way up. “I’ve broken the law myself.”

  “You have?”

  Pinchas looked down, nodded.

  “What did you do?”

  “I shoplifted … an object.”

  “What was it?”

  The boy was silent. From outside came the strangely muted noise of the city. Pinchas spoke. “You won’t tell anybody?”

  “Except the FBI.”

  Pinchas didn’t laugh, but he got up, moved into the shadows at the back of the store, climbed the stepladder, and reached up to the top of the highest shelf. He returned with something wrapped in tissue paper.

  What? Surely not a watch, or jewelry, or an electronic gadget. A rare book, maybe? Or something Jewish that Eddie knew nothing about. That would be it.

  Pinchas unwrapped the tissue paper. Inside was a brand-new Minnesota Twins baseball cap. Pinchas didn’t touch it. Slowly his gaze came up, met Eddie’s.

  “You stole it?”

  “From Herman’s. I walked in, stuck it under my jacket, and walked out. Like I was an automaton or something. I couldn’t help it.”

  “But why?”

  Pinchas stared down at the cap.

  “Couldn’t you have asked your parents to buy it for you?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  Was the boy poor? Eddie saw nothing to indicate that. “What about saving your own money?”

  “It wasn’t the money,” Pinchas said. “It was the act of buying I couldn’t do. That would make it official. Like I consciously made a decision to … possess it. This way it’s just something that happened. The will of …” His voice trailed off.

  Eddie picked up the cap. It was made of wool, just like the real ones, but smaller. “Let’s see it on you.”

  The boy’s eyes widened. “I can’t.”

  “You mean you haven’t tried it on yet?”

  Pinchas shook his head quickly from side to side.

  Eddie held it out. “Just slide into your automaton mode.”

  This time a smile appeared on Pinchas’s face; but quickly vanished. He didn’t move for a few moments. Then, slowly, he took off his skullcap, laid it gently on the desk; it left a circular imprint on his hair. He accepted the Minnesota Twins cap from Eddie in both hands and put it on. It was too big for him, made him appear even younger, nothing like a ball player.

  “How do I look?” Pinchas asked.

  “Just like Canseco,” Eddie said. He’d watched a thousand games in the rec room.

  “I don’t like Canseco,” Pinchas said. “Kirby Puckett’s my favorite.” He went to the dusty window, bent forward, peered at his reflection. He tilted the cap at an angle and came back. He was walking differently, perhaps in imitation of Kirby Puckett or some other slugger.

  “What position do you play?” Eddie asked.

  “Play?”

  “In baseball.”

  “Oh,” said the boy, “I’ve never actually played. There’s no time, with the store, and Yeshiva, and Talmud-Torah at night. And even if there was, my parents … they want the best for me. That’s the beauty of this country for them. They’re free to live a life that has nothing to do with it.”

  Eddie wasn’t following this too well. “You look like a second baseman,” he said.

  “I do?” Pinchas smiled. This time it stayed on his face a little longer. He tugged at the bill of his cap, making a small adjustment. Then he shot Eddie a glance. “I’m sorry for saying you looked like a criminal.”

  “A natural mistake,” Eddie said. “I did the penance first, that’s all.”

  Pinchas frowned. “Before the crime?”

  “The crime that happened had nothing to do with me,” Eddie said. “That’s where I need your help.”

  “Help you do what?”

  “Find a hospice,” Eddie said.

  “Where people go to die?”

  “Is there another kind? The problem is I don’t know which one this person is in.”

  “Are you going to do something to him?”

  “Would that make sense?”

  Pause. Then Pinchas started laughing. Eddie laughed too. Pinchas turned to the computer, switched it on. “What kind of hospice?” he said, tapping the keys. “AIDS, cancer, normal dying?”

  “We’ll have to try them all.”

  Ten minutes later, Pinchas tore off a two-page printout and handed it to Eddie. He picked up the phone and dialed St. Sebastian’s Home, the first one on the list.

  Eddie: “I’m trying to find an old friend of mine who’s not well. I thought he might be with you.”

  Woman: “What’s his name?”

  Eddie: “JFK. That’s what he called himself.”

  Woman: “I’ll need his real name.”

  Eddie: “I don’t know it.”

  Woman: “Sorry.”

  Eddie went through similar con
versations eight times. The ninth time, a man answered. “The Caring Place,” he said.

  Eddie went through his spiel.

  “Do you mean Mr. Kidd, by any chance?” asked the man.

  “Possibly.”

  “We had a Junior Fairbanks Kidd,” said the man. “At least that’s what it said on his passport.”

  “A Bahamian passport?” asked Eddie.

  “That’s right.”

  “You said had.”

  “Mr. Kidd left last week.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He said he was going home.”

  “Does that mean he was better?”

  “Better? More reconciled, perhaps. More in tune with the end rhythms of his life.”

  Eddie hung up.

  Pinchas was watching him from under the bill of his Twins cap. “You’ve seen the world, haven’t you?” he said.

  “Parts.”

  “That’s why you’re interested in ‘The Mariner.’ All that sailing.”

  Eddie shook his head. “I’m interested in it …” He paused. Why? An answer came: “because it’s a beautiful thing that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Doesn’t make sense?”

  “Because the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. How can it when the nature of the crime’s a mystery?”

  The boy looked puzzled. “Have you read the Bible?” he asked. “I’m talking about the Old Testament.”

  “No.”

  “That’s why you can ask a question like that.”

  They looked at each other for a few moments. Eddie laid the printout on the desk. “What do I owe you?”

  “For what?”

  “The computer time.”

  “Not a thing.”

  Pinchas took off the Twins cap, put on the skullcap. He was rewrapping the Twins cap in tissue paper when Eddie left.

  25

  Now when Eddie walked into the suite, Jack was there, pacing by the window, smoking a cigarette. He wore a double-breasted suit, a white shirt, and a silk tie, but his feet were bare.

  “It’s you,” he said. “Where’d you fuck off to?”