The Dream Operator
Page 4
“I think,” Darla said, “he’s looking for a way not to kill you.”
“I understand.” Hector got out of bed and started to get dressed. “He’s using you.”
“Christ, Hector—and you’re not doing the same thing?”
“I can end this,” he said, believing that he could.
She sat on the side of the bed. “Maybe you’re right, but there are other men he answers to.”
He picked up her phone from the night table and gave it to her. “Call him.”
She switched it on and glanced at the phone’s display. “He’s tried calling me,” she said. “Three times in the last couple of hours.”
Hector’s skin tingled. “You were expecting him to?”
The phone rang in her hand. “This is him,” she said.
“Wait—don’t answer.”
She glared at him, but she didn’t answer the call. After twenty seconds the phone fell silent. “I thought you wanted me to speak to him.”
“Yes.” He wondered why Snow had tried to call her, what he had felt each time she hadn’t answered. Could he be reasoned with? Or did he have motives other than those he was paid to have?
“Hector?”
“Let me think. Ask him to meet you at El Camino.” Snow would feel he was on safe ground there. “Tonight at ten. Get there before then and call me, let me know you’re there. When he shows, you tell him I want to meet him. Tell him I just want to talk.”
“Hector,” she repeated.
“What is it?”
“It might not be him.”
*
Alone in an anonymous hotel room in downtown Provenance, Mr Firstnighter stared through the window at life moving along Cockaigne Boulevard. A movement across the street caught his attention. A large bird was watching him from the roof of the Hyacinth building. He stared back at the bird, not recognising what it was but identifying with its isolation and impervious bearing. Yet the comparison merely brought home how exposed he felt, how porous to external influences. It was Snow’s idea to move him here. For his own protection. But Firstnighter didn’t feel any safer. He felt impotent and out of touch. Snow hadn’t contacted him in more than thirty-six hours. If Astorbilt’s man was getting close, then—no, he couldn’t think about that. Not now there was this Thingstable thing demanding attention.
He returned to the desk in the middle of the room. The file on his laptop contained all that Snow had got on Hector Escovedo, including a grainy image of a man whose eyes seemed devoid of emotion. He’d seen that before, in Snow, he realised. A common trait in their line, he figured. Reading through the file again, it seemed too precise, too tailored to expectations. A real threat would be more nebulous, less easily determined. Into this gap between expectation and reality, his anger bloomed, nourished on the dirt of uncertainty. If Escofuckingvedo was this easily read, why was he still breathing?
He called Snow on his cellphone and got through to an answering service. Something unnerving pressed against the edge of his consciousness, a small, bubbling sensation that he supposed was panic. Calm, he told himself, steady. Two possibilities—Snow was busy or Snow was dead. Hector had got to him first. Or, make that three: this Thingstable creature had intervened. Llewellyn, a bent cop on his payroll, had given him the name an hour ago. It wasn’t familiar and yet the sound of it in his head, the shape of the word in his mouth, was full of significance. Llewellyn suggested he might be on Astorbilt’s payroll, but Firstnighter wasn’t so sure. It was possible that Thingstable had his own agenda, one that Astorfuck, like himself, knew nothing about.
He sipped tepid coffee from a mug, trying to focus his thoughts. If Snow had been killed, he would have heard. Except nobody apart from Snow knew where he was, having insisted that he keep himself isolated until the threat was neutralised. He took a handkerchief from his jacket and dabbed the sweat from his forehead. His composure returned as he tapped another number into his cellphone. Hearing Llewellyn’s rasping voice, he asked him if Snow had been in touch.
“Nada.” Llewellyn paused, as he always did, to catch his breath. “Not since he got Hector’s name out of the whore.”
That had been four days ago. “This prostitute, Darla. You have a number for her?”
“No, but I can get it. She frequents a joint called El Camino in the Latin Quarter.”
“Send me an image. Is she connected?”
“To Astorbilt?”
“To anyone.”
“Lower down the food chain. Nothing you should worry about.” There was another lengthy pause before Llewellyn continued. “You, ah, got concerns about Snow?”
“I’m never without concerns,” Firstnighter said. “I think he’s having motivation problems.”
“Maybe Darla’s giving him more than information.”
That was something he could use. “Any more yet on Thingstable?”
“If he’s working for Astorbilt, I don’t think Hector knows. Could be Astorbilt has some concerns about his own man.”
Firstnighter felt a sudden twitch of anger that he hadn’t already considered the possibility. The same concerns he had about Snow? He broke the connection and opened Snow’s file on his laptop. He’d been dreaming of angels. What did that signify? The man needed prompting, he figured. Needed to get his focus back. Maybe he could use this Thingstable creature to his advantage.
*
Darla seems unfazed when Thingstable slides into the booth beside her, his back to the wall so he can watch the crowded bar, his right hand slipping onto her left thigh in a gesture of insouciant familiarity. She does a pretty good job, he thinks, of disguising her fear behind a glaze of dissolute boredom, an attitude that echoes the languid mood inside El Camino. Her beauty has been abraded by dope and despair, but he sees traces of it lingering in the curve of her cheekbones and the muted sparkle in her brown eyes. Her hand shakes a little as she lights a cigarette and conjures a brittle, hopeless smile.
Thingstable captures the eye of a waitress and orders another schnapps for Darla and a bottle of beer for himself. “You weren’t expecting me,” he says. “You should return your calls.”
“I got nothing to say that you don’t already know,” Darla says, her nervous eyes flitting through the crowd.
Thingstable follows her gaze before saying, “Speak to me about Snow.”
She takes a long pull on her cigarette. “There’s nothing to talk about. He’s leaving town, maybe he’s already gone.”
“You think so?” Thingstable squeezed her thigh beneath the table, a little too hard. “I doubt it. Can’t you smell his unfulfilled purpose in the air?”
“This game you’re playing, I don’t understand it.” She removes Thingstable’s hand from her thigh. “I don’t think you even know what it’s about anymore.”
He can’t help but admire her pluck. Still, he must impress on her the extent of his reach. “So, let’s talk about Hector then. You must be real cut up.”
“About what?”
“You mean you haven’t heard?”
The waitress returns to the table with their drinks. Darla stubs out her cigarette and wraps both hands around her glass. “Tell me,” she says.
“He’s dead,” he says, casually. “Unnatural causes.”
She turns away from him and lets her eyes wander across the bar, as if finding solace in the seraphim that hang from the elaborate wood carvings above the counter. Thingstable notes one camera slung beneath a pyramidal light fitting as it turns slowly to the right. Following its gaze, he sees two scruffy musicians mount the dais at the rear corner of the bar. A large shadow sweeps across the stage as the men launch into an electric number that sounds as if it’s being played on primitive instruments. It appears to be something more than a lighting effect, and its mystery unsettles him.
The sound of Darla’s phone brings him back. She chews her lower lip as she takes it out of her purse, checks the caller’s number, then switches it off. “Business call?” he suggests.
She do
esn’t say anything. A small tremor runs through her body, and a half second before she can throw the contents of her glass in his face, Thingstable grabs her wrist and pins it to the table. “I understand,” he says, as she struggles to pull her hand free. “Hector—you liked him. You think I did it, I can tell. But maybe it was somebody else, you know, someone like Snow. Why not? He’s a bad man, you know? Does irrational things. But then again, maybe he’s working for someone, yes? He talk about someone else? A name?”
He releases his grip, picks up his beer and leans back in the seat. As he tips the bottle to his mouth, he spies small shadows crawling across the ceiling. He shudders involuntarily and glances at Darla to see if she’s noticed his unease. If she has, she isn’t letting on. “I got it from a cop. Dead a few hours. No formal ID yet, but there’s no real doubt.”
Darla stares blankly at her drink. Black shapes appear to move in her eyes. “You lost me,” she says, her voice bleak as her gaze. “Just like you lost yourself.”
“I’m not lost,” Thingstable insists. “I know what I’m about.”
She raises her glass, drains it, then says, “That’s exactly what he said.”
“Snow?”
“It’s not Snow.”
“No? Then who?”
She opens her mouth to say something, but the words are like scraps of shadow that hover in the space between them. Thingstable flinches, feels his skin crawl. “What is that?” he snarls.
But Darla is sitting there, her gaze once more searching through the crowded bar. “You should leave now,” she tells him.
“Why?” he responds, trying desperately to see who it is she’s looking for. He feels that he’s missed something. He hears Darla telling him something about last night, but he’s finding it hard to focus, to remember what happened back then. A fluttering sound fills his head. “Who is it?” he cries. “Who should I be looking for?”
She looks as haunted as he feels. “You’re too late,” she says, rising from her seat. She starts to move around the far side of the table. He tries to stop her, but the noise and confusion, the shreds of darkness, get in the way.
He slumps back in his seat, wondering what she meant. Confused, he catches one more glimpse of Darla, moving unsteadily through the crowd. From the look on her face he sees that it isn’t him she’s afraid of. It’s someone else, someone he still doesn’t see.
*
The sun was low over Amity Park. Llewellyn was leaning against the side of his blue Ford, eating a burger. He chewed each mouthful methodically, for thirty seconds before swallowing. Snow had counted. He wondered if such precision was connected to Llewellyn’s unnatural thinness. He didn’t like to ask. Maybe it was just some terrible wasting disease. When Llewellyn had finished eating, Snow gestured towards the taped off crime scene two hundred metres off the road by a cluster of pine trees. “So, what have they got up there?” he said.
Llewellyn glanced up the hill. “What we have, ah, is a dead John Doe in the trunk of a Nissan. Been plugged pretty good, five or six times, I’d guess. Autopsy will confirm.”
“You got an idea who it is.”
“Matches the description of the guy you’re looking for.”
Snow was silent for a moment, thinking. “I need something more positive than that. Any papers on him? What about the plates?”
“Nada,” Llewellyn said, smiling, as if not sorry to disappoint. He was an asshole, Snow thought. But a necessary asshole. “But we found something. There was a name on it. Not his, I reckon.”
“What name?”
“Thingstable. Before you ask, I hear there’s a geezer answering to that name been crawling under the same rocks you been turning over.”
“Who’s he working for?”
Llewellyn shrugged. “What I hear is, this Thingstable has been asking about you. That, ah, kind of tells you something, don’t it? Maybe you should call your boss—he’s kinda anxious about you—put him in the picture.”
Snow was hardly listening by the time Llewellyn stopped talking. He watched an ambulance drive down the hill towards the park exit. There was an emptiness inside him, a sense of desolation. He felt weak and suddenly afraid. He wanted to be somewhere else, not just away from Llewellyn and his smug sense of competence, but away altogether from Provenance.
“So look,” Llewellyn was saying. “I gave you what I know. Thingstable, right?” He got in his car and drove away.
After a few moments, Snow left the park and headed towards the Archon subway. He tried calling Darla on his cellphone. Her phone was switched off. He hailed a cab before he reached the subway station and told the driver where he wanted to go. In the back he made another call. “It’s Snow,” he said, when Firstnighter answered.
“The ghost,” Firstnighter said. “My guardian fucking angel. Where are you?”
“Archon. I just met with Llewellyn. Cops found a body in the trunk of a car.”
“Whose?”
“No firm ID yet, but Llewellyn said the stiff matches Escovedo’s description.”
“Not your work, then. Tell me again why I hired you.”
“I got a name. Found on something the stiff had. Thingstable.”
“Oh well, you really are up to speed. I already had the fucking name. Llewellyn called this morning while you were off drifting in the spirit world. What’s wrong with you Snow? You still up to this?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Snow said. “I can still function.” He broke the connection and thought about Thingstable, wondering if he’d killed Hector? There were all kinds of possibilities, none of them good. He thought of Darla. She wouldn’t know yet about Hector. When she found out, she’d assume it was his work. He had to find her. Let her know the truth.
*
One by one, all of Hector’s certainties were slipping away as he drove aimlessly through the windless night. Something had been accomplished, he thought, but now that it was done, it was no longer important. His nostrils were full of the bitter smell of salt marsh, and the only traffic on the streets was the odd cab chasing down a fare, or a lone truck rolling along the elevated freeway, unaware of the city’s slow retreat from the world. He had no idea where he was headed, or what he was still searching for.
Birds were silhouetted against the moon, a dozen or more stretched along the telephone line that ran above the sidewalk. Hector wondered how it was he could hear their cries inside the car, then turned up the CD player to drown them out. Been seeing them for days, the same damn birds. He thought he was going deaf in his left ear, because the sounds were muffled. It felt as if there was something solid between his eardrum and his brain. Even the music didn’t sound right. He waited at a junction for the lights to change, his head thumping. He touched a spot behind his left ear and felt the crust of dried blood which signified his failure. Darla was dead, he remembered. He’d found her body at El Camino. She was supposed to call him, set up a meeting with Snow. But the call had never come. His body shook as he pictured her swollen face and those lifeless eyes staring up at him, accusingly. He tried to think, to piece things together, but the details were like smoke, drifting, ungraspable.
The lights changed and Hector pulled away from the junction, mouthing the words to a song about babies on the sun. He saw the briefcase on the passenger seat and felt a glimmer of recognition. Payment for a job done. He wondered how much money was in the case, figured it could never be enough to make up for Darla. How had she gotten involved, he asked himself, not knowing the answer.
There was a banging noise coming from the trunk. He heard it this time with his good ear, and so figured it was real. Not birds at all, but a muffled voice, someone pleading. Words that sounded like, I’m still alive. He listened intently, still not sure the voice existed outside his head. He glanced down at the briefcase again and something clicked. Astorbilt had paid him to kill someone. It was the dead guy in the trunk. He heard the banging again, more insistent now, the voice in his head a little more frantic. I’m still alive. How was that possi
ble, he asked himself, feeling weirded out.
He pulled off the main road and turned into a dimly lit sidestreet. In a place where the shadows lay thickest, he switched off the ignition. The voice had fallen silent. All he could hear was the harsh cawing of crows somewhere overhead. He imagined himself in the trunk, curled up in darkness, not having to worry anymore about who he was and what he’d done. Darla was supposed to call him but it had been someone else. Not Astorbilt, whose face he could hardly recall. Somebody else with a similar agenda. Told him go to a motel and he’d find what he was looking for. The killer, he’d thought, or a name. Despite the fog in his brain, he remembered that someone had tried to kill him at the bar. The same man who had killed Darla, he figured. Snow. She’d said that he wanted her too, wanted to take her away. Hector remembered the sense of betrayal he’d felt when she’d told him that. What right did Snow have to think he could be saved? Was his life any more real, his dreams any less washed-up than Hector’s own?
It was, he realised, the question that had been haunting him all through dry, dusty night. It was why the man was still alive back there in the trunk. Both of us, Hector thought, are culpable. We both let ourselves be used and that’s why she’s dead, not us. She’d said it might not be him. It might as well have been him back there rather than Snow or Firstnighter. He was no more real than they were. He could have been silenced just as much as they were. It was pleading again. He tried to shut it out, but it bores into his head. I’m not the one, it says. I’m still alive.
He gets out of the car, takes the semi-automatic from his shoulder-holster. A cat mewls in somebody’s backyard and the birds are still at last. He aims the gun at the trunk and pumps six rounds through the hood. His hand shakes as he watches smoke drift up from the bulletholes. He walks unsteadily back to the front of the car and slides in behind the wheel. He has things to do. Important things. Not sure yet what they are, but that’s okay. He touches the briefcase beside him but can’t open it yet. Dawn is close. He switches on the headlights and smiles at the host of moths that swarm in his beams.