by Robert White
Up ahead, I saw the lights of the Oldsmobile fishtail once again. This time, as I blew past at ninety, I saw the buggy overturned and an Amish woman sprawled on her back in the road. The man was being dragged in the traces down the side of the road by his horse at full gallop, and I could see a face that looked like red jelly as I passed him.
I hit the gas and gained a little. Lindell suddenly swerved to the center of the road and floored the Oldsmobile. From a quarter-mile I saw cars, pick-ups, buggies drive off the road at the last possible second to avoid collision.
Not much road left, I knew now. Lindell, as if following some internal compass of his own, jerked the car across an open field next to a field of soy beans and cut a diagonal toward the Grand River. There was nothing out there but scrub and clusters of oak and pine standing since the Iroquois roamed this patch of the Western Reserve. I stuck the Cherokee’s nose right after him and gained fast. The Cherokee took Lindell’s makeshift track in a glide that was nothing compared to what he must be feeling ahead; the Oldsmobile sashayed and fought and bounced and seemed unable to keep a direct course.
I was twenty yards behind his offside fender, and I maintained the distance and pace with ease. Lindell must have seen my face in his rearview mirror. I waved the gun so he could see that too.
At the trees, instead of hesitating, Lindell roared full speed ahead into their midst, barely missing head-on collisions. I kept the distance but my lack of vision kept me from gaining on him or anticipating his next move. We drove like this in a figure-eight pattern, smashing the cars against saplings and swerving for the big trees. There was light above getting through this small forest, so I knew the trees were thinning out near the river. The Oldsmobile kept the lead and broke through the trees at seventy miles an hour.
Lindell saw it at the same time I did—a small humpbacked bridge over the narrowest stretch of river. He’d be on it in seconds unless I cut him off. I floored the Cherokee again and aimed it at the bridge.
He beat me to it, and I just caught the Oldsmobile’s rear enough to send him flying over the bridge and land upside-down in the middle of the Grand River. Unable to right the wheels in time, the Cherokee jumped a ditch and plunged down the riverbank into the water.
My right calf was gashed open, but a blinding pain in my left knee pinned me while the water rolled up and over the hood, submerging the vehicle in its muddy waters. My left kneecap was shoved halfway up my thigh. I could feel it with my hand, but I fainted when I tried to push it back down my leg.
The water flooded into my mouth and choked me. That was when I recovered enough to roll down the window and wait until the roof of the car was flooded before sliding into the black water. The current pulled me immediately, but the drought we had probably saved my life; I was too weak to fight a rain-swollen river. I made it to shore and lay gasping on the rocks like a fish.
That’s where they found me, and when I awoke this time, I was handcuffed to the hospital bed, and state troopers were positioned inside the room and in the hallway.
I had a thin tube in my nose that ran down my throat. Something inserted up my cock. Jesus Shit Fuck, not that. I tried to jerk out the hose in my nostril, but something stopped my hand from pulling it free. My first thought was pure terror: Lindell had me tied down again and I was going to get Gallatine’s fate—but it was only the nurse’s hand. The hand around my wrist held me in an iron grip. I wondered why the nurse was squeezing like a man. When my vision cleared and I shook off the narcotic effects of the drugs, I saw that it was a man’s hand.
I felt hot, syrupy breath on my face, and then a voice I knew said, “You’ve got more lives than a cat, Haftmann.”
Fuckola. Special Agent Booth.
I lay my aching head back and slept like that dead man everyone speaks of.
Chapter 14
From my hospital bed I watched the spectacle of yet another country in the Middle East agitate for democratic reform. This time it was Libya and the rebels against Ghaddafi who were getting the worst of it despite NATO’s no-fly zone.
I knew there were powerful and divisive forces burrowing like ants from beneath the soil of every country on earth, some good ants like those in Egypt and Tunisia, some bad like those that wanted to destroy the American democracy and make the oligarchy of the wealthy official. By 2050, the majority would be the minority; my own life had begun at one end of the scale and it was about in the middle with a long slide toward a new America, one of Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, Muslims. No more East and West or Midwest. One country, I thought, and whoever, like the white supremacists or the fanatical Muslims, got their message out there at the right time, could take this nation deep into a labyrinth from which we might not find our way back. Then I remembered that nobody elected me to anything or pretty much cared what I thought, so fuck them too—all but six . . .
I spent two days being prodded and poked and was turned loose as soon as the hospital realized the odds of my paying for their services were about the same as my getting a Brazilian butt lift. I had long, brooding thoughts about Annaliese and her mother but not much else, least of all a future. Good existentialists, I told myself, live in the present. And I intended to do that very thing as soon as the loose ends of my abortive career in private investigation were tied off.
The Get Well card from Booth on the table next to me said that he would be flying in to Cleveland for two days; there was a number to call. I called and got the Sheraton near the airport—not one of the deluxe suites he was used to, and because Booth could pad expense accounts with the best of them I figured he was back in the doghouse with his superiors. When I reached him, he told me that the bodies of Ingrid and John O’Reilly had been released for burial. He said he’d be in town the next day to drive me out to Tree of Heaven for the internment. We could talk then. He ended the conversation the way he had every other one I had with him via the phone: he simply hung up on me.
I was waiting for him in the hospital lobby when he met me for the drive to Tree of Heaven. It was a cloudless, muggy day and a haze hung over everything; the sweat popped out on my skin inside the car. One of Booth’s theories was that air-conditioning shortened your lifespan. Enough to make the cat sob, my grandmother would say.
Booth said little, wasn’t in a mood to answer the questions I had. The two local papers, the Jefferson Gazette and the Star Beacon, had zippo on the case. I checked several days’ worth to be sure. Same with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Not a word about that wild ride down County-line Road, except for three Amish killed, five wounded—and then it was “an unidentified hit-and-run driver being sought by police.” I was never mentioned. The crash in the Grand River never happened, as far as local authorities were concerned. I’d seen the FBI muzzle local law enforcement many times. I’d seen it in Cleveland homicide too, for that matter. But something was wrong. If I were given to paranoia, and I am, I’d be inclined to think somebody was muzzling the FBI on this one. In his own good time, I knew Booth would give me some information; until then, he was as cooperative and reclusive as a badger.
The cemetery was baking under the sun, but all the tenants were stiff and cold underground. Booth made six calls from a cellular phone on route, one of which was to a sexton who was to lead us to the gravesite. I had called O’Reilly’s father in Boston from my hospital bed and told him that I wanted Ingrid to be buried with her husband. He was worried that I was asking for money, so I told him I was good for the money because I was selling my house. My office had sealed up, the windows soaped over to keep the passing crowds on the Strip from staring in at whatever furniture hadn’t been carted off by my creditors before I went to jail. My voice mail was nothing but robocalls asking for money. I was getting out of town as soon as I could. The old man grunted and said he had no objections. I wanted them to reserve a space near the parents for Annaliese. It was pigheaded of me, but I once told both parents I would bring their daughter home.
I remembered the locale from the memorial servic
e earlier. The earth had been dug already and the three men were using a hydraulic rig to lower the casket. When the hole was shoveled in, the sexton asked me if I wanted to say a prayer, and I snarled at him.
Booth looked at me with that look I had come to loathe.
“What is there left to pray for? There’s no excuse for God, no excuse at all.”
The sexton scurried off. Booth shook his head in disgust.
I waited a moment to calm myself and said, “You dragged the fucking river, right?”
Booth interrupted me. “Of course, we did. We had divers from Youngstown and Warren flown in within hours. Nothing. No body. The car was submerged and had moved about a hundred feet in three hours. That’s a heavy car too. The current was very strong.”
I looked at him this time. “So he’s loose.”
“We just haven’t recovered the body yet.”
“Maybe he washed ashore and an animal dragged him into the woods and ate him.”
“No, I doubt it. There’s nothing big enough around there to drag a man.”
I said, “I was being sarcastic, Booth.”
“Oh,” he replied. “Pardon me, Mister Coffee Nerves.”
“Booth, a manhunt would ascertain his whereabouts, don’t you think? I assume even Washington by now is willing to call him a fugitive escapee.”
“The Hoover Building has its reasons,” he said smugly. “Besides, if he is alive, we’ll catch him. How far do you think a man can go under those circumstances?”
I turned to look him full in the face. “Booth, do you recall us having a similar conversation some years back about a man the whole country was looking for and yet he managed to elude every cop in the state including your own fucking FBI?”
“I’ll thank you not to shout at me, Haftmann. You’re lucky you aren’t being indicted for those dead Amish. Several witnesses identified Gallatine’s car and a few got a good look at your face. This sect of Amish will testify in case you’re thinking—”
This time I got close enough to his face to smell his aftershave.
“Booth, what are you telling me? What kind of shit are you giving me here?”
“Relax, Haftmann. There’s no coverup. I said we’ll get him and we’ll get him. No thanks to you, by the way. We’ve got some evidence to indict for a couple of those girls he murdered in Boston. Some DNA testing matches up.”
“Only a couple? He killed fourteen.”
“Don’t ask me to explain it. Something called band shifting occurred on the other samples. They ran it through the gel. There were problems with the semen” Booth said.
It sounded thin even to him. We said nothing for a while. I thought of the day Annaliese’s father had come into my office and dropped that clipping in front of me and sobbed as I read it.
Lies, all lies. Everybody lies all the time.
Without a word, he had turned and started walking back to the car.
I followed. “I thought your labs were the best in the world,” I said to his back.
“They are, damn it. But this is technology right at its limits. You can’t have everything. It’s enough, believe me. Two or twenty-two. He’ll go down hard and never come up if we put an airtight case together. Too many local agencies can screw things up. You know how that is. You were a cop once.”
I also knew that FBI never hesitated to use its muscle to take over a case. They never cared whose jurisdiction they were in. Booth wasn’t coming clean on this, but I didn’t know the right questions to ask.
We drove back in silence.
I asked him to drop me off at Tico’s. The season was over; the bars would go back to the locals again for. He stopped in front of the bar. I saw one of Tico’s boys, Enrique, washing glasses. I thought of his brother’s car I had abandoned in the weeds and hoped that Tico had forgiven me. He just said OK when I gave him directions to find it from the hospital. He didn’t sound disappointed but he didn’t sound pleased either. It was that tone you take when you deal with somebody you knew all along was going to screw up and then did screw up. It gave me a sick feeling to know that one of the few men I admired on the planet considered me a fuck-up.
Booth waited for me to get out; then he said, “I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing each other again. I got my transfer.”
I wasn’t sorry, but I said I was.
Then he gave me a brief smile and patted his silver hair. “No, not another reservation. New York. I’m heading up counterintelligence.”
No happy coincidence there, I thought.
I held the door open. “You don’t want the locals to bag him because you fucking want him for what he can tell you about white supremacy in the US, right? He’s too valuable. You’re going to let him get away with killing all those people. How could you agree to this, Booth?”
“I don’t know what you mean. They think I’ll do a better job in New York.”
I could have puked. “You didn’t see O’Reilly,” I said, my teeth gritted. “You don’t know what he did to Gallatine. You didn’t sit across from him for hours at a time while he filled up with water like you’d fill a sack with shit and explode it on Halloween. His own wife could-n’t recognize him. What about those Amish he ran down just to put a little debris in my way? Christ, Booth, what about those fourteen women in Boston. I turned green just looking at the police photos of what he did to them. Annaliese, what about Annaliese and her mother—” I broke down, almost sobbing, out of control.
Booth reached across from me and pulled the door handle, but I got a foot in it before he could close it.
“All right,” he said, “get a grip.” He tossed me his own linen handkerchief. “You must have a Christ complex or something. You think you can save the world, but all you’ve ever done is get obsessed and then fall on your ass. Come down off your cross, idiot, and live in the real world for once!”
“I hope not,” I managed to say, recovered. “Well, it comes down to this, Haftmann. Washington wants him. Not just us. Those studies I told you about? That wasn’t just academic pinhead stuff. That was the NSA. The world’s changing faster than you can imagine. Things are volatile in this country. We can move forward or we can fall behind very rapidly. Genetic cloning, artificial intelligence. Do you realize that whoever owns that technology has just discovered Eldorado and the Fountain of Youth at the same time? Nothing is inconceivable now. The technology is already in place. But no society at war with itself is going to get there first. This country is going to solve its problems in the next decade or we’re going to wind up in second place. And, Haftmann, that’s not acceptable.”
“You know who you sound like, Booth? Like Lindell. Your dream, his dream. Nobody gives a fuck. Nothing means anything to you people. Human beings are scrap.”
“You have to see the big picture. He can expose the whole network of white supremacists. Names, places, addresses, phone numbers, plans. Isn’t that significant enough to justify—”
“—a few lousy murders?”
“Grow up, Haftmann.”
“And you say I’ve got the Messiah complex?”
“I can’t waste any more time with you.”
“You just came here to pick my brains, see if I knew where Lindell might go next.”
“I’ve done a lot for you. I’ve kept you out of serious jail time. I’ve watched your back in more ways than you’ll ever know.”
“I don’t owe you shit, Booth. I figured something else out too. You knew all along Cooney was a dirty cop. That’s why, every time I turn around, you’re trying to stick him up my ass. That day in the park, you weren’t watching me. You were tailing Cooney so he would lead you to Lindell. Lindell was your target all the time. You watched Cooney killed Marcus Gordon, and you figured that would put him in your pocket. He was greedy and wanted to play both ends against the middle—”
The tires squealed and he was gone.
I stood looking at Tico’s sign, wondering if going inside was the right thing to do.
What the hell, I tho
ught. You fall off the wagon, it gives a person something to strive for. Failure, after all, was my familiar demon.
“Keep setting them up, laddie buck, and I’ll keep knocking them over.”
“Sure, Tómas.”
“One for that lovely woman at the end of the bar too, whatever she’s drinking.”
He set another Jack Daniels and water in front of me and moved off to make a Sidecar for the blonde who had come in an hour ago. She was voluptuous in that way slender women are. She stretched on the bar stool with feline grace, and I noticed her can and her cheekbones were both high. She looked at me and raised the drink I bought her in my direction. Elegant dress, blue eyes, hair in a French braid.
Those spendthrift Vikings, I thought; they could make a mutt like Millimaki but a beauty like her too.
I must have overdone it and missed my chance because the next thing I knew, Enrique was nudging me on my elbow. I had fallen asleep at the bar.
Christ, pissing my pants next. I got up to leave.
“My bill, barkeep.”
“That’s OK, Mister Haftmann. My dad says you got a tab anytime you want it.”
“Listen, about the car, Enrique, I’m sorry.”
“De nada. Just a little mud. No problem. We got it out back all cleaned up.”
“Good, that’s good. I’ll be coming into some cash real soon. Tell your father thanks for me and I’ll catch him tomorrow. I think I left something under the seat—”
“Got it right here, Mister Haftmann. Don’t go smoking any bad guys tonight, OK?” He handed me the gun in a folded newspaper.
“Thanks, I won’t.”
I stumbled out the door, the gun tucked into my belt in back. My vision was all cocked up. My lust dissipated by the onset of a migraine about to move in as soon as the alcohol cleared off. There was a full moon like my birth moon. A full moon in Cancer. The night air had the chill of a season in change. I was the only thing in the entire landscape that didn’t change. I put one foot in front of the other and began hoofing it the quarter mile to my house.