In the distance, a church bell tolled twelve times.
Charlie started walking again. He’d fulfilled the contract, but he knew that his battle was just beginning. Something evil wanted him dead. Which was reason enough to keep going, since he was, after all, a contrary sort.
Chapter Eighteen
On Christmas Day, Charlie wished he could have been a fly on the wall at Varmintville when Susan gave her people the bad news: He’s alive! Or better yet, when Beck and Ben did—that is, if their mother hadn’t destroyed his gifts. But he wasn’t an insect, no matter what Evangeline claimed, so instead, Charlie sat in his motel room and watched TV. Any thought he had of going to the police—(and he didn’t think much of the idea to begin with)—was quashed when news updates linked the Caravan to a meth lab discovered in the fire-damaged warehouse unit next to his. They’d have to figure out who he was on their own.
He received some good news the next day, on the anniversary of his flight from Thornbriar. Jean called him that morning and said, “The guy with the loft to rent wants to meet you. He’s a history professor. Lots of books. You should like that.”
“Sounds nice,” Charlie said, envisioning a stuffy, cramped old place filled with cat hair. Which would be infinitely better than the nothing he had. Maybe he could get the place without a credit check, which he was sure he wouldn’t pass. “Uh, you ever been there?”
“I went with a friend who lives in the building. Très chic.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I told him great things about you. By the way, when you meet him, don’t act so … oh, how do I put it? Homeless. Can you be here at noon?”
“Yeah, if I get my ass in gear.”
“Do so, then.”
When Charlie arrived at Bay Street Coffeehouse in his newly laundered Christmas Eve outfit, Jean introduced him to Dr. Edward Satalin, an Emory University professor, who planned to leave on New Year’s Eve for six months in France. He wanted to sublet his apartment as much as Charlie wanted to get out of the motel, and a good word from Jean was all Satalin required as a reference. The two men hit it off immediately. Charlie tossed his bike in the back of Satalin’s Pathfinder.
They drove downtown, then turned south. “You don’t even need a car,” the bearded professor said, pointing at the Garnett MARTA Station as they passed it. “You can bimodal on MARTA all over town.”
“Cool.”
“I really admire your … greenitude, Charles. It takes commitment to ride a bike in weather like this.”
“Oh, it’s nothing really,” Charlie said, waving his hand nonchalantly. “I’m used to it.”
The loft was located on the third floor of a converted Farm and Home Furniture warehouse on Castlegate, a street crowded with three- to five-story buildings that ranged in style from old brick to aqua-tinted glass and steel. The building’s north brick wall sported a mural—repainted with loving care—of the defunct company’s billboard, featuring a black-and-white Holstein cow.
The professor’s lodgings were amazing. Charlie loved Satalin’s spacious, open-room apartment, with its high ceilings, heavy steel entrance door, polished cement floor and exposed black ductwork. Best of all, it was furnished in an understated, masculine style and had all the electronic amenities, including cable and high-speed Internet. It was filled with stuff Charlie would have chosen, if he’d had money. Eight-foot tall dark cherry bookcases, equipped with a sliding ladder, took up an entire brick wall. Satalin had thousands of books and CDs, most of which were jazz and classical. 1Beyond the balcony/fire escape stood a fence topped with razor wire to thwart hobo invasions from the railroad tracks behind the lofts. It was the best of both worlds—luxury, with a hint of dungeon.
Charlie gladly agreed to hand over half of his advance check up front to stay there until the end of June, utilities included. He knew he was getting a great bargain. And so with a handshake, the beleaguered writer went from squalor to splendor. He hoped that he’d turned the corner and put the ugliness of the past year behind him. Then he could concentrate on enjoying his accomplishments and become the success he’d always daydreamed he’d be.
* * *
On New Year’s Day, Charlie sprawled out on Satalin’s weathered brown leather sofa clad in only a towel and watched a bowl game on the big-screen plasma TV. His new work clothes were in the dryer, and he had no plans to leave the loft, since there was a bounty on his head and he was suspected of running a meth lab. In the kitchen, a sirloin patty sizzled on the Thermador gas range’s grill. Satalin had left a week’s worth of food in the matching stainless steel side-by-side refrigerator-freezer.
He’d figured out why he’d gotten such a great deal on rent. While surfing the Net on Satalin’s desktop computer, Charlie learned that his landlord was heir to an investment-banking fortune. The professor didn’t need the money; he just wanted someone to babysit the place.
Charlie got up and sliced a red onion with a hundred-dollar knife. After eating and clanking dishes in the sink, he settled back with the game. After a while, he grew bored with the lopsided contest and turned off the TV. A freight train rumbled by. Across the hall, a door slammed with a resounding thump. He listened to the sounds of the building: Indian music next door, pots and pans clanging upstairs. He wondered what his new neighbors were like. Good-looking? Cool? Female? Alone, as he was?
Charlie pulled his clothes from the dryer and dressed, then played a jazz CD, pianist Kenny Barron’s Things Unseen. He searched Satalin’s shelves for a book to read and picked one on ancient Greece, figuring that since he had this history gig going, he’d start at the beginning, more or less.
After reading a chapter, Charlie again grew restless. He needed to work. Yes, writing. That which had driven him crazy would now keep him sane. The lumps and bumps in his hands had disappeared, and with access to a computer again, he could crank out some magazine articles. Or put together a new final chapter for Monster, one with a furtive, bombed-out fugitive feel.
Charlie sat down at Satalin’s glass-topped computer table and turned on the desktop PC. An instant later, a knock on the door caused his heart to skip a beat. How had the varmints found him so quickly? He tiptoed in his white crew socks to the door and peered out the peephole. It wasn’t a hillbilly with a shotgun. It was her—the unforgettably upscale woman he’d seen at Bay Street Coffeehouse back in September. Danger Girl. He swung the door open, a look of wide-eyed amazement on his face.
The woman’s expression matched his. “I came by to see if you vur here,” she said. “You’re here, but you’re not you.” She strung out the last word, puckering her lips and almost purring it in an intriguing accent Charlie couldn’t place. Russian? Transylvanian?
She was in her early thirties, he guessed, with silky raven hair, and dressed entirely in black—jeans, thermal Henley, and high-heeled boots adorned with silver chains. Damn, she was fine.
“I’m not myself today,” he said in an attempt to recover.
“I’ve seen you.” She wrinkled her nose in puzzlement, then snapped her fingers. “Bay Street Coffeehouse. Jean’s place. I’m Dana. Dana Colescu,” she said, extending a hand, which he gladly took. “You’re the writer.”
The writer? Cool. She retrieved her hand and peered around his shoulder. “Is Eddie—”
He stepped aside, hoping she’d come in. No such luck. She gazed at him with questioning eyes. “Gone to France,” Charlie said. “Without seeing England, as far as I know.”
“So soon? I vas going to give him a bon voyage—Oh, vell.”
He was sure that whatever she was going to give him would have been worth sticking around for, the overeducated fool. Charlie hoped that perhaps he could get the “velcome” version.
“How did you end up here?” she asked.
“I’m subletting. Thanks to Jean, who introduced me to … Eddie.”
“Ah … I’ll have to call her and find out all about my new neighbor.” She flashed a seductive smile and put a finely manicured hand on Charlie
’s elbow for a moment before withdrawing it. He decided she sounded like a vampire. Vlad the Impaler’s hot girlfriend.
“She’ll tell you I’m a starving writer,” he volunteered. “Quite crazy. Even daft.”
She stepped back to appraise him. “Too well-built to be starving.” In truth, his bout of homelessness had left him leaner, and riding his bike for the past week had toned his muscles. “But, daft, yesss. Like a daft horse, big and strong? I call you Budviser.” She laughed. “How tall are you?”
“Six-four.”
“Nice.” She nodded appreciatively. “Only your clothes hint at hunger.” She pinched the fabric of his new warehouseman’s shirt. He gazed at her hand in amazement.
“Things are looking up. My book is coming out this month.”
“Vonderful! Vot’s it about?”
“History. Ethnic cleansing.”
Her eyes narrowed and her expression clouded. Had he said something wrong? What if her family had been murdered? How horrible! If he only knew more, he could console her properly. Repeatedly. “Right here in Georgia,” he added. “Believe it or not.”
Her face brightened as she pointed at the floor. “This Georgia? Ah. I love to read it.”
“So how do you know Jean?”
“She’s one of my new artists. I’m putting together an exhibition of her vork.”
Charlie did a double-take. He’d seen some of Jean’s paintings on the coffeehouse wall but had no idea she’d advanced to the gallery stage. “Wow. That’s great. … So, you live here, too?”
She pointed up, toward the building’s corner. “Overlooking Castlegate.” She sighed. “Vell, I’m off to a party. Futbol, you bet.” She rolled her eyes. “I was going to see if Eddie vanted to come along, but he’s gone to Burgundy for his Burgundy. Vot are you doing—” she raised her eyebrows “—for this holiday?”
“Hiding out.”
She laughed. “Ve all do that. Vot besides?”
“Writing.”
“Vell, I von’t disturb you any longer.”
“It’s quite all right. I’m disturbed by nature.”
She gave him a wonderful laugh, rich and throaty.
“Come back any time,” he added, hoping she wouldn’t go.
She left, closing the door behind her. He banged his head against it in frustration. Who was he kidding? He had no money, no car, and no chance. And when she talked to Jean, well … that would be the end of whatever dream he had of getting something started with her.
“Shit,” he said as he threw the deadbolt. “You homeless motherfucker.”
Enough of that. He put on another jazz CD, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, and went back to work, bending over the keyboard as the light in the eastern windows faded. By the time he’d finished his session, he’d written a 2,000-word update to Monster. A good day’s work on the best day he’d had in a long time. On the psychological and social front, he hadn’t ranted to himself—well, maybe once—and he’d chatted with a real woman who had not run screaming from the encounter. Who knew? Maybe he did have a chance with Dana, after all. They had hit it off well, hadn’t they? Now, if he could just get on the bestseller list … and get some decent threads. Just erase everything and start over. That would be cool.
Seeking a diversion, he clicked on the DVD player. Something was already in the machine, so he played it, figuring Satalin’s taste in movies would be as erudite as it was in books and music. Not quite. Before Charlie knew it, he was watching Anus and Andy—No Holes Barred from The Bros and Hos Collection. He was about to stop the porn video, but his hand became … confused. He found it difficult to tear his eyes away from the TV as the strangely attractive woman entertained a basketball team in a locker room. Ah, the agony of ecstasy, the method of acting, the pain of unnatural acts. Her face did its own stunts, that was for sure.
Hold it. Charlie knew that face. He shuddered and every hair on his body stood up. Meanwhile, something else of his collapsed. A chill ran up his spine. The picture that had been on his computer, the one that got him kicked out of Thornbriar—was a still from this movie. Not only that. This was the woman with the kids he’d helped on Thanksgiving Day at Redeemer’s soup kitchen. The one Trouble ranted about. Shaved, thrusting, and threatening to become 3-D and pop out from the plasma screen.
In the interest of research he played on, but the movie grew more foul. Amid shouts of “Eat it, bitch,” the guy who would have been the team’s center grabbed … what was her name? Tammy? Terry? … by the hair and roughly forced her to go down on him. It was abusive. They weren’t using protection. He wondered if she’d gotten pregnant from this shoot.
Enough. He felt weak, overwhelmed. Exhaling loudly, he ejected the disc and picked it up like he was handling a used condom. Even though it wasn’t his to destroy, he couldn’t let it sit on the shelf, a reminder of his failure, mocking him. He couldn’t allow it to sap his soul and rot his brain. He took the DVD out on the balcony. Grasping the disc between thumb and forefinger, he whirled it away and watched it sail over the razor wire, flashing in a patch of fading sunlight as it flew toward a southbound MARTA train in the distance. He went back inside and switched the TV to football.
That night, he dreamed of the soup-kitchen whore, waking at 4:00 a.m. in ecstasy and relief.
In the morning, he stepped out on the balcony with a cup of coffee. As he scanned the train tracks, the DVD flashed in the sunlight, winking as if to say I know what you want—just as it would for the next six months, whenever he dared to look its way.
* * *
Another great thing about Satalin’s place was its proximity to Le Patisserie, a cinnamon-scented bakery on the loft building’s ground floor. It quickly became Charlie’s favorite hangout, and he developed a bit of a crush on its owner, Amy Weller, who wore her brown ponytail sticking out the back of an Atlanta Braves cap. That’s where he was one morning less than a week after moving into his apartment, sitting at a small table near the door, drinking Mocha Java, eating a pastry, and comparing Dana Colescu to the bright-eyed woman behind the counter. A hard rain during the night had left the street slick, and a MARTA bus sloshed by as a customer entered, leaving a whiff of diesel to mingle with the spices. Charlie’s cellphone buzzed. He pulled it out of his duster pocket and regarded the New York area code suspiciously. “Hello.”
“Charles Sherman?”
“That’s me.”
“Barbara Asher. I got your manuscript, and I’ve got to tell you I love American Monster!” she gushed. “Mother of God, it’s Bob Woodward, Hunter Thompson, and Erskine Caldwell rolled into one. And, as you put it, ‘a healthy measure of I am a Fugitive from the Georgia Chain Gang!’ But is it true?”
The agent! He launched into his spiel: “All that and more! Backed up by photographs, recorded eyewitness accounts, primary sources, genealogical research, and the kicker: DNA test results. I’ve got documents and recordings to back the footnotes.” On this book, anyway. He left out the part about nearly being killed—but he was still working on that section, anyway.
“Excellent. Fortress is publishing your other book, right?”
“Yes ma’am. It should be out soon.”
“This is great! And you don’t have an agent?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Does Fortress have rights on this book?”
“They passed. New publisher.”
“I heard. Did you have trouble getting paid?”
“I got the money eventually. Right when I absolutely had to have it.” Thinking about that day made him shudder. His knee rocked the table, almost spilling his coffee.
“I’ve dealt with them,” she said. “They’re problematic. Best to move on to another publisher with your next work. This … has potential. I’d love to represent it. I’ve got a good feeling. I think it’s going to be a great success. So, are you still interested in having me as an agent?”
“Definitely. And there’ll be an update. Things keep happening. Arrests, hopefully.”
&
nbsp; “Arrests would be good publicity. A happy ending. Closure, anyway. Uh … you’re talking about them, not you, right?”
“Actually, it’s a donnybrook. We may all be in jail before this is over.”
“Even better! Devil Went Down to Georgia and all that.”
“You’re getting warmer, actually.”
“Are you doing a publicity tour for the Forsyth book?”
“They haven’t set up anything.”
“They won’t. Bear in mind, you’ll have to do all the marketing yourself. Call the media. Get something started. It will help sell the next book, too.”
“I’m working on a couple of articles right now.”
“Excellent! Charles, your book is going to be great. I just know it. But we’ve both got work to do. I’ll send you a contract. We’ll send everything by e-mail now and be modern about it.”
He gave her his e-mail address and said goodbye. In wide-eyed disbelief, he stared out the bakery window at traffic on Castlegate. He’d just done a deal! With an agent! For the next few minutes, he imagined his coming prosperity: new loft, new clothes, new car, and Dana, the new woman for his new life. Or maybe Amy. Who could say these things?
While he was daydreaming, his coffee grew cold.
* * *
Since the police linked him to a meth lab, Charlie would remain most unhelpful to authorities, who reported little progress in the Store-All bombing investigation. However, there were news leaks—or, as Charlie called them, tidings of comfort and joy. The mini-warehouse’s office had burned to the ground, company records had not been properly backed up, and the bombing victim’s identity remained unknown.
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