The Haze

by James Hall

He slept.

  The important thing about missions is to keep them going. They can change, you had to adjust to circumstances, but you keep going forward, keep the goal in mind, otherwise, what’ve you got? You got that Greek guy pushing the boulder up the mountain and it sliding down the other side. You got one hazy day after another, the days stacking up without any progress, any hope.

  Javier came with his sunnysides.

  “You have a nice night sleeping?”

  “I might’ve slept, I don’t know. The state I’m in, how’m I supposed to tell?”

  “You consider my proposal?”

  “I need to hear a price.”

  “I been thinking about that, about money, you know what it’s worth to you, what the risk I’m taking is worth to me, and I’m having a hard time putting a number on it. But okay, since you want a number, okay, five thousand, I get you out of here, take you wherever you want to go, drop you off free and clear.”

  “Five thousand bucks.”

  “American dollars. You get the first class ride out of here.”

  “I don’t trust you, Javi.”

  “You think I take your money, don’t deliver? What am I, crazy? You think I risk that, knowing who you are, what you did in your life, before you came to the home, the way you made your money. You think I’d cross a man like you?”

  “I’m old. Some days I’m confused. Wouldn’t be hard to pull one on me.”

  “I know you’d come for me. I know you’d track me down wherever I hid. Isn’t no running from men like you. Professionals. I know that. So you can trust me, Mr. Connors. I’m not stupid like that, take your money and walk away.”

  “I’ll have the five for you tomorrow.”

  Back to the book by the woman writer. Things heating up. The old lady serial killer, her name is Varla, nice exotic ring to it, Polish or gypsy or something, she’d decided she wanted to kill a young lady who worked in a bookstore, a young lady who’d done harm to her new manfriend, the retired professional killer, Little Mo Connors.

  “That’s my daughter, my own flesh and blood. You can’t kill her.”

  “It’s the only way you’re going to get out of the home. She’s the impediment. Once she’s gone, you’re free.”

  “Am I?”

  “I’m doing you a favor.”

  They staked out the bookstore. It was summer, tables out on the sidewalk at the Italian place across the street. They took a table, the two old killers, and watched the bookstore. It was close to lunch time, the restaurant getting busy, so they had to order. Fettuccini alfredo for her, tortellini for him.

  “Bad for my blood sugar,” he said. “But what the hell. Screw my blood sugar.”

  “There she is, coming out the front door.”

  “Christ, she’s coming this way. She’ll see us. She’ll know what we’re up to. We should move.”

  Varla put a hand on his leg below the table. An electric thrill he hadn’t felt in years.

  “Dad, what’re you doing here?”

  “Reading a book, what does it look like?”

  “The woman novelist, I told you you’d like her. She’s right up your alley.”

  “I want out of here,” he told her. “That’s my goal, to escape this hellhole.”

  “Dad, this is a beautiful place. The food is good, people love you here. I was just talking to Javier and he was going on and on about what a funny guy you were, all the stories you been telling him.”

  “He keeps me doped up.”

  “Those are blood pressure pills, Dad. If you don’t take them, you could have a stroke.”

  “Who do I have to kill to get out of this hellhole?”

  “I brought you some more books. Another one by the woman writer. I’m glad you like her so much. I thought you would.”

  “I met somebody. Her name is Varla.”

  His daughter smiled at him.

  “Javier told me. She sounds wonderful. When can I meet her?”

  “Who?”

  “Varla, your gal pal.”

  He’d said too much, given away a secret. The haze did that, it confused him, kept him loopy. He wasn’t sure who he was talking to or why. He wasn’t sure if he was remembering shit he did or shit he read or some other kind of shit entirely. Shit he made up while he sat at the window and looked out at the snow and the palm trees. He stopped talking. Refused to say another word.

  His daughter left. Good riddance.

  He searched his room for his pistol. Took out each pair of underwear, every T-shirt, scooted the bureau away from the wall, felt the floorboards for a secret shelf, a hidey hole like he’d used back in his day for all his weapons. Killers threw the guns away off bridges into rivers. But that was in books. That was bullshit. Buying new guns was a hassle. So he avoided it, held on to the ones he’d used. So what if some cop came around and took his gun and ran a ballistics test on the slugs. So what? He’d get sent to prison. Big deal. He was in prison already. Everyone told him how great it was, the food was good, like that mattered. Like it wasn’t a box with a single, tiny window.

  He didn’t find the gun. But he knew it was there. He was tired of looking.

  He put on his pajamas and got into bed to read. It was the middle of the afternoon. Big snowflakes coming down, white as the birds standing in the lawn. He opened the book he’d been reading, found his place.

  Varla and Little Mo were still in bed together. They’d been making love all afternoon and now they were smoking cigarettes and blowing the smoke up at the ceiling.

  “How do you feel?” Varla asked him.

  “Got my ashes hauled three times in a row, how’m I supposed to feel? Good, real good.”

  “I mean about killing your little girl, your own flesh and blood.”

  “Kind of shitty. But there was no choice, was there?”

  “There wasn’t.”

  “I feel shitty anyway.”

  “How many is that for you?”

  “How many what?”

  “Notches on your pistola.”

  “I stopped counting years ago. It’s just a number.”

  “I’m at sixteen,” she said. “I’m going to stop soon. It’s lost its thrill.”

  “I never got a thrill. It was just work. A job.”

  “You didn’t enjoy it at all?”

  “That’s sick,” he said.

  “You’re calling me sick?”

  “Thrill killing is sick, yeah. Don’t take it personally.”

  “How else am I going to take it?”

  Varla got out of bed. Her breasts were sagging, her pubes were half gone. But Little Mo thought she was hot anyway.

  “We having another fight?”

  “This is turning into a stormy relationship. I’m not sure I want that.”

  Someone was knocking on the door.

  “It’s the cops,” Little Mo said. “Come to arrest us for all our sex noise.”

  It wasn’t the cops. It was Javier. He kept his eyes down, not looking at Varla’s nakedness.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Connors and Mrs. Hardy. I apologize, but something happened. Something bad happened. I got to tell you some bad news.”

  Varla said, “His daughter’s dead. Little Miss Priss got herself shot. Selling violent books, it came back to bite her in the ass.”

  “How’d you know that?” Javier said. “Somebody call you?”

  “Go on, Little Mo, tell Javier. Confess what you did.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He’d never confessed to anything. His lawyers told him that. Keep your mouth shut, take the fifth, I’ll do the talking.

  Javier picked up the book that was lying on the floor and brought it over to the bed and set it on the bedside table.

  “You were throwing books again, Mr. Connors. Your daughter asked me to tell her if you did that again. And I got to report you to the supervisor.”

  “Why would you report me?”

  “You could be dangerous to yourself or others. These are hardbacks. Som
ebody could get knocked down.”

  “Paperbacks, the print is too small.”

  “Maybe you should find a different kind of book doesn’t stir you up so much.”

  “What? A boring book? That what you’re saying? If I read a bunch of boring books you’ll let me stay in this hellhole?”

  “It’s time for your pills, Mr. Connors.”

  “Of course it is. Keep me stoned, I can’t read, I can’t do anything but look out the window at the palm trees.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Mr. Connors. Always with the joke.”

  He took the pills. Walked around the room. He stopped. He pressed his ear to the door. Nobody in the hallway. He opened the door, looked out. Hallway empty. He slipped out, headed up the hall away from the lobby and the card room and the exercise room and the TV room.

  He didn’t need his .38. He’d killed before with his hands. He wasn’t as strong as before, but the moves were still there, the sharp hand blade to the throat, the eye gouge, bring them down, knees on the chest, snap the windpipe. He’d taken out Uncle Marvin Shuster that way. He’d turned off the lights on Billy Shapely and Shorty Crump with his bare hands. It was coming back to him through the haze, his history, his triumphs, his fearsome power, the respect he’d once commanded. Not like the killers in the books he read, always neat and organized, no, he’d been down in the slime and spit and bloody snot, flailing with the targets, feeling the life wriggle out of some badass mothers. Little Mo, one scary ass bastard. Coming back to him, his steely nerve.

  “Mr. Connors, how are you this fine evening?”

  It was Varla Hardy. She had on a flannel nightgown printed with flowers. Her hair was in a net. Her glasses were smudged.

  “I’m breaking out of here. Care to join me?”

  “Where would we go?”

  “Anywhere but here.”

  “It’s cold outside this time of night.”

  “I thought you were adventurous. I thought you were strong like bull and my equal in all things.”

  “You’ve been reading again, haven’t you?”

  “So?”

  “It makes you silly. It gives you ideas. It confuses you. TV is better.”

  “TV is in one ear out the other.”

  “That’s the whole point. It’s better that way. Stories from books get caught inside you, they make you different. They’re dangerous.”

  “I’m already dangerous. I was a hired gun. You wanted someone gone, you called Little Mo Connors.”

  “Oh, Mo. I don’t like it when you’re like this. You scare me.”

  She leaned forward and whispered in his ear: “Javier is at the door listening, this is for his benefit.”

  He nodded at her and tiptoed to Varla’s door and yanked it open.

  Javier jumped back.

  “Mr. Connors, the police are out at the front desk. They want to talk to you. I don’t know what it’s about.”

  “It’s okay, Javi. I’m ready to talk to them.” He turned to Varla. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll keep you out of it.”

  Two cops, one man, one woman came into Little Mo’s room.

  “I think you better sit down, Mr. Connors.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I could, but I won’t.”

  The woman cop was built like a racing yacht. Sleek and curvy and with fast eyes. He could look at her for hours and never blink.

  She said, “Mr. Connors, your daughter, Jennifer, was the victim of a brutal assault.”

  He nodded. This is how cops worked. Hit you in the face with a brick then when you were goofy with the pain they move in for the kill. Sneaky bastards.

  “She was killed in a robbery at the store where she works.”

  “A bookstore,” he said. “I know the place. I read those books. She brings me three or four every week. A good daughter. We have books in common. And crime.”

  “Yes, sir.” The man cop was fat and sweaty and had a pencil moustache.

  “A bookstore downtown. Two suspects entered the store and tied up the owner and one other worker, then they assaulted your daughter. She struggled heroically. We can tell that from her wounds. You should be proud of her courage. But she succumbed to her injuries and is no longer with us. We’re deeply sorry, sir.”

  He said he wanted to go to bed now if that was okay. He was tired. A long day. A lot had happened. Some of it not so good.

  They understood and were about to leave when the man cop said, “Hey, I know you.”

  “Is that right?”

  “You’re Little Mo, you worked for Slick Dicky Scarlini, that shitface.”

  “Yes, I did. So?”

  The man cop said to the woman cop, “This old guy, looking at him it’s hard to picture, but he was Scarlini’s top enforcer.”

  “I thought that guy, the enforcer, was in jail.”

  “Yeah, how come you’re not in jail, all the shit you pulled?”

  “Look around you,” he said. “This isn’t jail?”

  “Got a point,” the man cop said.

  “Sorry about your daughter,” the woman cop said. “Though it is kind of poetic justice, you know what I’m saying? Karma kickback for all the nastiness you pulled.”

  When they left he got in bed and took the book off his bedside table and found his place again. It was good to have a book he liked, a way to escape the confusion of the day. The pain of his daughter’s senseless death. He’d liked that girl. He hoped it wasn’t him that killed her. He hoped he didn’t have that on his conscience. Even if he didn’t remember, it would still be there. Like a tiny bright red mole you can barely see, overnight it can turn into a flesh-eating cancer.

  The book was good, told a decent story. He followed along and watched it unfold and all the bullshit that had happened that day and in the days and months before that, they didn’t bother him while he was reading, while he was off in another place that made more sense, the haze lifted, the hours filled.

  Javi was there with the sunnysides. Two of them and toast and another grapefruit with the slices already sliced, all you had to do was spoon them out. So okay, maybe the food was pretty good here, but he still wanted to escape and now that his daughter was gone, there was nothing stopping him.

  Javi put the paper cup with his pills on the tray and said, “Time to swallow them all down.”

  “I got your five thousand,” he said. “Today’s the day.”

  “Let me see the cash and we’ll talk about it.”

  “Half up front, half when I’m out of this hellhole.”

  “Okay, that’s fair.”

  He pulled the money from his bottom drawer. He spotted a gun in there too under his socks where he’d forgotten to look. His old .38 snubbie wrapped in an oily rag. He gave Javi the two thousand five and Javi counted it. All in fifties, didn’t take long. Fifties is how he’d done business all his life. Easy to deal them off a wad. Easy to count when Scarlini called him in for a pay day. Hundreds were ostentatious, twenties made too fat a wad.

  “Okay, it’s all there,” Javi said. “So when you want to leave?”

  “After dark tonight. And I’m taking Varla with me.”

  Javi shook his shaved head.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Connors. Varla Hardy will set you back another five K. You think I’m giving it away free? No, sir. I’m not some stupid spic. You shouldn’t treat me that way. It’s insulting to my heritage and my mama. I may have to rethink helping you at all the way you’re acting now.”

  “Varla’s coming or the deal’s off.”

  “Ten K for the two of you. That’s the going rate, I won’t take a peso less.”

  “Gimme back the two five then. We’re done. I’ll find another way.”

  “I’m keeping the cash.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “You try to get it back I tell the super you’re trying to escape. They’ll double guard you then on.”

  Javi left with the money.

  Little Mo got dressed in slacks and a shirt. Pl
aid shirt, brown baggy slacks. Like that mattered, but there you go. He kept the shirttail out to hide the snubbie wedged into the waistband at the small of his back. He walked back to Varla’s room.

  “I’m shooting my way out of here. Ready to go?”

  Varla purred.

  “Let me get my gun.”

  “I never saw your gun.”

  “I don’t show it to just anybody.”

  “Hurry up before I change my mind. There’s a break in the haze. I’m remembering things. Not all of them pleasant.”

  “Sorry about your little girl. She was cute but she had to go.”

  “Everybody does eventually. It’s how it works. You climb the mountain, the guru up there, he tells you the secret, but it’s a different secret every day. Depends on whether it’s Monday or whatever. He’s got a ton of secrets. Fill up your hours, that’s on Monday. You go on a Thursday, it’s find someone to love. Sunday, it’s breathe, breathe, take it deep. Always something different. You’re looking for what it’s all about, the guy up there, he doesn’t know any more than Javier. It’s all bullshit. It’s haze. Everybody is inside it, not just me. Everybody’s got their own haze.”

  “This is stimulating. Big ideas turn me on.”

  Varla unbuttoned herself. She let him see her naked flesh. No underwear today. They don’t make underwear can fix what’s happened to her body, or his either. But she’s hot anyway. They crawled into bed. Crawled over each other. He crawls on her, she on him. They crawled together. It’s good, not great. Not much is great anymore. This age, good is about as great as it gets.

  They stayed in bed all morning, all afternoon.

  “You want me to read to you? I read good.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “No one’s ever read to me before.”

  “Not even your mommy?”

  “Not her, no. Nobody.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  He went back to his room, got the book by the woman writer, brought it back, found his place and showed her the page.

  “My daughter gave me this book.”

  “The poor girl.”

  The serial killer and the retired hitman were in a cheap hotel room. Bullet holes in the mattress, blood on the sheets, that kind of place. She was lying in the bed in her mink coat smoking and he was looking out the edge of a curtain at the parking lot.