The Fugitives

by Christopher Sorrentino

  “Jesus,” he said. “I knew I heard someone.” He peered past him. “Are you alone?”

  “No,” Mulligan said, his eyes on the gun. The man was holding it at his side, almost casually, as if he just happened to have it.

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Just two of us.”

  “Where?”

  “On the porch.”

  “Did you go inside?” Now he raised the gun and aimed it at Mulligan. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Of course you did. Now why’d you have to go and do that?” The man threw up his hands as if in disbelief. “Terrific,” he said. “More thinking for me to do. Just what I needed.” He gestured with the gun for Mulligan to turn around. They walked down the driveway, the man grumbling behind him. Before they rounded the front of the house, Kat appeared. She stopped dead and stared past Mulligan’s shoulder.

  “You.”

  “Well, well. The crusading scribe. And Jimmy Olsen,” said Argenziano.

  Mulligan started to turn his head to look back at Argenziano, but received a shove.

  “You’re working with him?” asked Kat.

  “Who? Who am I working with?”

  “Saltino.”

  “Enough already with Jackie Saltino. Keep going,” Argenziano said. “Stand together against the side of the house. Both of you. I have to think for a minute.”

  “You fucking bastard.”

  “Language, Kat. I haven’t heard you talk like that. It doesn’t suit you. Now, who’s this?” Argenziano looked at Mulligan. “I’m asking you, pussyface.”

  “Sandy.”

  “And you and Kat came out here for what, Sandy?”

  “To look at Becky. I mean, to see Becky.”

  “Same difference, right? You stumbled upon the scene of the crime. Just like the proverbial jogger. ‘The badly decomposed body was discovered by an early-morning jogger utilizing the park’s secluded paths.’ Not bad, huh, Kat? Think I missed my calling?” He laughed. “You a colleague, Sandy? Kat con you into sticking your nose in all this?”

  “He writes books,” said Kat. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “Oh, sure he does. Maybe he didn’t, but he does now. What are you going to do, unsee it? Come on.” He turned to Mulligan. His voice was cheery: “So you’re an author, huh? Impressive. I could write a very interesting book myself if there weren’t so many other things I needed to do. You must have a lot of free time on your hands.”

  Even under these circumstances Mulligan was almost amused to find himself the recipient of the usual backhanded compliment. It emboldened him to ignore the gun for a moment and ask, “Who is this guy?”

  “His name’s Robert Argenziano. He runs the casino at Manitou Sands.”

  “I’m a consultant, actually.”

  “Jackie Saltino worked for him.”

  “Again with Saltino? Come on, Kat. Take the facts and apply them to the reality all around you.”

  “The reality?”

  “I’m getting tired of this game, Kat. We’ve been playing it since the first time you walked into my place. Aren’t you tired of it yet?”

  “Why did you kill them?”

  “Kill who, Kat?”

  “Did you know about the whole thing from the beginning? Were you part of it?”

  “What whole thing, Kat? Part of what?”

  “Asshole!”

  “For Christ’s sake. Do you really have to resort to name-calling?” He raised the gun. “Don’t make me lose my temper. All I need are these fucking drunk Indians around here to start swarming out of these shacks.”

  “How did you even find her? Did Saltino help you? Is he here?”

  “Jesus,” said Argenziano. “I said enough already with that. It was a good bluff, but you couldn’t have picked a wronger person to try it on.”

  “Well, where is he?” Kat said.

  Everyone was quiet for a long moment.

  “He’s been buried in a hole behind the nuthouse in Cherry City since last Spring,” Argenziano said finally. “Jackie’s dead.”

  EARLIER TODAY

  Jeramy steered the truck to the side of the road and turned off the lights.

  “The ignition,” said Hanshaw.

  “It be cold, yo.”

  “So? Stick your hands in your armpits.”

  The boy didn’t say anything but shifted heavily, causing the truck to bounce on its busted struts, and Hanshaw sighed. He didn’t want the kid to go into a funk.

  “Oh, go ahead and leave it on.” He eased open the passenger door.

  “Where you going?”

  “Where do you think?” Hanshaw shut the door softly and leaned against it to latch it. The cold of the metal was harsh on his palms, and he reached into the pocket of his field jacket for his gloves. He began trudging toward the house, moving to the middle of the road because his footsteps through the frozen unshoveled snow on the roadside crunched loud in the stillness. The house was the only one without the shifting light of the TV showing through its windows; without any light at all, in fact. But there was a big F-150 parked in the driveway. No sign of Argenziano’s Mercedes, though.

  He heard a rustling to one side and turned to encounter a crow, standing on a fencepost. He and the animal regarded each other.

  “Hello, Crow,” said Hanshaw. “Owl’s going to get you. Get back to your roost.”

  The crow leaned forward, huffed its feathers, and cawed at him. It took off and flew into the darkness.

  Hanshaw came up the driveway alongside the house. At its end was a detached garage, the door closed. That was where the Mercedes had to be. He felt the hairs on his body stand on end, rising in a wave, like when the barber ran clippers over the back of his neck. He had an uneasy feeling. Crows were messengers from the other world. He stopped short of the garage and listened intently, pressed close against the house. He could sense occupancy inside, but there was something wrong. He took two steps forward, bringing the backyard into view, and tripped a motion sensor light attached to the side of the house. Something thudded on the other side of the wall to his right and the structure shuddered slightly. He double-timed it heavily toward the backyard, coming around the rear of the house, where more light trickled thinly onto the ground to illuminate a rectangular pad of concrete containing two plastic chairs and a plastic table, all heaped with old snow. The light came from the other side of the sliding glass door that opened onto the patio. The view into the room inside was hidden behind the pale blue curtain pulled across the length of the glass, but Hanshaw could see the blood splattered across the fabric, soaking through it. A shadow entered the lit space inside; Hanshaw’s hairs rose again, and he held his breath. The shadow moved first to his left, and then to his right. It paused and Hanshaw could feel it, on the other side of the glass. He stared at it, and it seemed as if it stared back. He knew it was only Bobby Argenziano in there, standing over and maybe even admiring his handiwork. But he also could feel that the shadow existed quite apart from Bobby; that the shadow had passed into, inhabited, Bobby as he did whatever had painted the curtain with those kinetic splashes, and now the shadow was taking his, Hanshaw’s, measure.

  “Go away,” he whispered. “Get the fuck away from me.”

  The shadow drew near to the curtain, growing bigger and more diffuse, and then abruptly resolved itself into Bobby’s sharp little silhouette. Then the light disappeared and, letting out his breath, Hanshaw could feel the room empty of life. The curtain hung gray, streaked with its darker gray splashes. He shook his head, disgusted with himself: and now the cops would have his own size fifteens imprinted in the snow to look at.

  He heard the door slam at the front of the house, and moved deeper into the shadows to watch Argenziano come up the driveway. He took mincing little steps. When the motion sensor light clicked on he turned and looked sharply at it, as if it were someone who’d spoken out of turn. He carried a stained towel, and his shirt and slacks were splattered with blood. He also carried his shoes,
which explained the funny walk. As he reached the garage he stuffed the towel under his arm and reached down to grasp the garage door, lifting it with an audible grunt. The door moved up and back noisily on its tracks. He disappeared inside and lowered the door about halfway. Hanshaw thought about following him inside and shooting him right there, but he knew that would lead to complications. Deviating from the plan always did. He sternly reminded himself that the unfortunate people in that house, whoever they were, had nothing to do with his business. He’d caught a glimpse of a boy’s bicycle inside the garage: still nothing to do with him. And plus there were the size fifteens, plain as day in the snow. He didn’t think there was any purpose in bringing unnecessary trouble down on himself. He would answer the questions he needed to answer when the time came. He edged closer to the garage and got on his hands and knees to look inside. The cold, wet snow instantly soaked through the knees of his jeans. Argenziano stood before the open trunk of the Mercedes in his underwear, stuffing his clothes and the towel into a plastic garbage bag. He was shaking with the cold, and the loose flesh on his torso quivered. He carried his shoes to a utility sink in the rear and rinsed them off. Then he washed his hands. As he watched, Hanshaw was reminded of the meticulous cleansing motions performed by flies.

  He got to his feet. His knees were stinging. He looked down at the dark circles of moisture and involuntarily recalled the appearance of the blood-saturated curtain. He moved down the driveway, leaving Bobby to his ritual cleansing. He could wait, and think, in the truck.

  TODAY

  “I don’t appreciate this,” Argenziano said. He sat in the backseat of the Mercedes beside Kat, his gun hand resting on his knee. “At our age, we really shouldn’t play these sorts of games. If we feel that we’re in possession of information that has a certain value, we present a proposal. Or we hang on to the information, for whatever reason. Discretion, strategy, what have you. We don’t play games. And this is a game for children. An imaginary friend. Come on. That’s the idea you come up with? Which one? Which one of you hatched the brilliant plan to intimidate me with the notion that Jackie Crackers was walking and, more pertinently, talking?” They were entering the outskirts of Cherry City, and Argenziano studied the landscape morosely for a moment. “Was it you? The noted author?” He smiled. “I knew an author once, a long time ago. He said he wanted to write a book about people like me as he put it. He wanted to know things. What he said was he wanted to learn things, he knew enough to say that, but what he really wanted was to know things. There’s a difference, you know. People know all sorts of things but that doesn’t mean that they learn. If it did, they wouldn’t write stupid, lying books that embarrass people, that lie about people. Would they?”

  He pounded on the back of Mulligan’s seat.

  “With learning comes understanding, with understanding comes empathy, identification, other highly civilized things. But knowing things just makes you want to tell people. That’s what authors do. You fucking parasite. Now, me, for example, I learned something from that experience. I learned that you never, ever trust a fucking author as far as you can throw him.”

  He pounded on the back of Mulligan’s seat.

  “Now, you, Kat. Maybe you’re not writing a book, like your friend here, but I know you’re not planning on spending your life at the Chicago Banana. We already discussed this. There’s something bigger out there for you. Who knows? Sky’s the limit.” He shook his head. “Turn here,” he told Mulligan. “You know where the old loony bin is? Go through the main entrance when we get to it.”

  He went on. “It feels terrible to know you’re just a stepping stone. You try to deal with people fair and square, and what do they do? They try to manipulate you. They tell you fairy tales about imaginary friends. What did you want from me, Kat?” He sounded genuinely anguished. “Had you come to me candidly, honestly, I would have responded in kind. In fact, I did respond to you in that way. As you anticipated. And you took advantage. You and your friend the author.”

  Mulligan had turned into the driveway that wound through the grounds of the state hospital and was driving slowly toward the complex.

  “Veer off here,” said Argenziano. The pavement ended and the Mercedes was bumping over the snow-covered earth. “You can stop now. Turn it off.” He opened his door. “Get out.”

  Argenziano waved his gun toward the cherry orchard and the dark corridors running between the rows of trees.

  “Lead on,” he said. “Right up here.”

  Kat and Mulligan walked in silence, not quite side by side. Argenziano huffed and grumbled and cleared his throat behind them. As they proceeded deeper into the grove, the darkness surrounding them nearly completely under the jagged shadows of the bare and untended trees, Mulligan gazed at the great wash of the galaxy spanning the sky.

  “What’re you looking at?” demanded Argenziano. “I didn’t tell you to look at anything.”

  Finally, they arrived at a broad avenue of open ground where the orchard ended. Across it were the haggard outlines of dead cornstalks standing in an adjacent field. Kat could see two dark forms that stood out amid all the snow there. One was a fresh pile of dirt. The other was an open pit.

  “Get over there,” said Argenziano. “That who you’re looking for?” He shoved Mulligan at the pit. “That your star source?” Mulligan looked down. At the bottom was a skeleton, somberly dressed in dark rags.

  “That’s twice I’ve dug that fucking hole,” Argenziano said. “When I fill it in again, it’ll be for the last time.”

  “Can I see?” said Kat.

  “Well, Jesus Christ,” said Argenziano. “You really are a regular Lois Lane, aren’t you? Go ahead, take a look.”

  Kat stepped up to the edge and looked in.

  “Now tell me who that is. You know, don’t you, author?”

  “Saltino?”

  “Louder.”

  “Saltino,” Mulligan said clearly.

  “Good. Jackie Saltino. Very dead, in a hole. Not running around. Not talking.”

  “But we saw him,” said Kat. “It was him.”

  “Aside from the fact that it doesn’t make any difference who you thought you saw because I happen to know who’s lying there in an advanced state of decomposition, I also know when someone’s trying to shake me down. OK? Jesus Christ. I offered you a story, Kat. A good story, an exclusive story. But no. I don’t know how you found out about all this, but you did. One way or the other, you knew that in the end you were going to be standing at the edge of this hole.”

  Unexpectedly, he took two steps forward and slapped Mulligan across the face. “I hope she was good, sfacheem.” He raised his hand again, and Mulligan cringed, but this time he tapped his cheek lightly, almost affectionately, with his fingertips. “I hope she was worth it, you dumb fuck.”

  Argenziano took a step back and stumbled over some of the loose earth piled around the hole. Throwing out his hands to keep his balance, he lost his grip on his gun, which sailed into the grave.

  “Run,” Mulligan said. Without waiting he vaulted across the grave and took off toward the cornfield. Argenziano threw his arms around Kat and started wrestling her to the ground.

  “Help!” she yelled. “Help me!”

  Argenziano clouted Kat in the side of the head with an elbow and jumped into the grave as she dropped to her hands and knees, stunned. She struggled to her feet and began to move unsteadily across the open ground toward the corn where Mulligan watched from the safety of cover. Argenziano’s head appeared, followed by his arms as he struggled to hoist himself out of the hole. Mulligan watched him straining. He’d dug the grave good and deep. Kat was wobbling, not fast, not putting much distance between herself and Argenziano. Mulligan wanted to shout, urge her to run, but was afraid to reveal his hiding place.

  “Don’t run,” said a voice. “Stay.”

  Mulligan saw a giant in an army field jacket and a pair of jeans. Another man, much younger and smaller, emerged from the row behind him. H
e had on baggy jeans and an oversized hooded sweatshirt under a down jacket. A Cleveland Indians cap with the brim turned to the left was on his head.

  “Jeramy, get that guy over there and bring him back,” said Hanshaw. Jeramy trotted toward Mulligan, raising the hem of his sweatshirt as he drew near to display the gun tucked in his waistband as he glanced casually off to one side. It looked to Mulligan like a practiced move. Still, he emerged without protest. Hanshaw bent and, with a slight grunt, lifted Argenziano out of the hole with one hand.

  “What the fuck is going on, Hanshaw?” said Argenziano. Hanshaw ignored him, and shoved him against the trunk of a tree, kicked his legs apart, and swiftly frisked him, coming up with the gun.

  “Are you the police?” Mulligan asked.

  “Ex,” said Hanshaw. “Tribal cop. This is private business now.”

  “Yo, should I frisk him?” said Jeramy, gesturing at Mulligan.

  “He’s all right,” said Hanshaw. “Go get little sister and bring her over here.” Jeramy trotted over to where Kat was wobbling. Hanshaw stepped to the edge of the grave and peered in. “Alas, poor Jackie,” he said. “Am I right? Is that the famous absconder?” He laughed. “We called him Argenziano’s puppy, did you know that, Bobby? Followed you around, waited for you outside. And then, suddenly: poof. What a surprise, who would have suspected, who knows what really lies beneath the mask.” Jeramy was leading Kat back. He had a hand lightly on her elbow, as if he were formally escorting her.