The Preserve

by Patrick Lestewka

“I can’t believe…how long?” Zippo brushed off the woman’s grateful half-embrace and muttered, “No problem, toots,” before making a beeline for his long-lost unit members.

  Oddy pulled him into a rough embrace; Zippo sucked air through his teeth as Oddy’s shoulder pressed against his injured arm. When Tripwire hugged him, Zippo felt the ex-demo-man’s beefy paunch pressing against his own toned abs.

  They relocated to a booth. When asked what he did for a living, Zippo ran a finger across his upper lip and said: “I clean up messes.” Oddy said he didn’t know many janitors who wore thousand-dollar suits. They ordered another round, Zippo taking a double-shot of Dewars.

  “This is some coincidence,” Tripwire said after awhile. The question hung.

  “Anton Grosevoir,” Oddy said.

  “Think I heard that name before,” said Zippo.

  Tripwire nodded. “Fifty G’s to meet in a certain upscale bar got a familiar ring to it?”

  Oddy patted his breast pocket. “Check’s right here.”

  Their drinks arrived. Each man took a long swallow. Their minds were abuzz with questions: Who knew of the connection between them? Why, knowing this connection, would someone seek a reunion? What would they have to do to earn fifty-thousand dollars? And who the hell was Anton Grosevoir?

  Tripwire’s over-stimulated mind concocted a ludicrous revenge-fantasy: a dirt-poor Vietnamese village boy had witnessed an atrocity the unit committed in the heat of battle, killing his father or mother perhaps. Later, the boy flees to North America, becomes fantastically wealthy, and concocts an elaborate scheme to avenge himself on the men who’d ruined his life. Ridiculous, yes. Paranoid, definitely. But beyond the realm of possibility…?

  “So,” Oddy said, “Anyone got the slightest idea of how this might play out?”

  Zippo took a Cuban cigar from his inside pocket. He snipped the tip off between his teeth and said, “Plan A: This Grosevoir cat signs our checks.” He spat the nub into an crystal ashtray. “Plan B: He refuses and I floss my teeth with his guts.” Zippo’s tone suggested Plan A and Plan B possessed equal appeal.

  “Some things never change,” Oddy said.

  “Fair’s fair, Sarge.” Zippo exhaled a quivering smoke ring. “Some guy’s going to drag our asses out here, we better get paid.”

  “He isn’t just going to hand over fifty large for nothing,” Tripwire said. “Cough up that kind of green for a meeting?”

  Oddy said, “A deal’s a deal. Letter doesn’t mention anything beyond a meeting.”

  “And woe betide the fuck who welshes on me,” said the hitman.

  Tripwire slugged back the last of his Stoli and said, “Just us, though?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, our unit. Only us three? What about Crosshairs—”

  “Last time I saw Crosshairs, he wasn’t looking so shit-hot,” Zippo said quietly.

  “But he survived,” Tripwire said. “I got a letter from him, way back. And Answer—”

  “It’s been twenty years,” Oddy said. “People go missing. People die.”

  “I’m not sure Answer will ever die,” Zippo said, “because I’m not positive that fucker was ever alive.”

  Oddy smiled. “I used to say that boy could make Satan himself roll over.”

  “Ice water pumping through those veins,” Tripwire agreed.

  Oddy said, “Or brimstone.”

  Another man entered the bar. Six-feet but a stooped posture made him look shorter, wearing tattered corduroys, Asics tennis shoes, a dirty sweatshirt with a picture of an overflowing slot machine above the caption “Everybody scores in Vegas!” His features were draped by black bangs grown long and combed down. Despite this attempted camouflage, Oddy could tell there was something wrong: the man’s face looked unnatural, like a burn victim’s.

  “The last time I saw Crosshairs—” Tripwire started.

  “He was missing half his face—” Zippo continued.

  “And you don’t have to be Perry Mason to tell—”

  “That guy there—”

  “Is hiding something,” Tripwire finished.

  Zippo dragged deeply on his Cuban, hissed bluish smoke through his teeth, and said, “Hey, Neil. Crosshairs. Over here.”

  The man turned. His eyes—or so it then appeared—stared through the fringe of his hair with dawning awareness. His lips split in a huge grin as he ambled over.

  “Is this a mirage?” He mimed rubbing his eyes, sitting down and shaking hands with the others. Then he frowned and said, “One of you guys didn’t send that letter, did you? This isn’t some kind of surprise reunion—”

  “No, son,” Oddy assured him.

  “Good.” The look of relief was unmistakable. “Not that it’s not great to see you guys, but…I need that fucking money.”

  Nobody needed to be told this: it looked as if Crosshairs had recently crawled out of a dumpster, ditched the bottle of T-bird, waved goodbye to his fellow winos, and hopped a plane to Toronto.

  “You look…good,” Tripwire managed.

  “And you were always a piss-poor liar,” Crosshairs said. “Zippo, how do I look?”

  “Like twice-pounded shit, my friend.”

  “Same old Zippo.” Crosshairs laughed. It felt so good to laugh. “What about you, Sarge—ever seen such a specimen?”

  “You’re looking better than last time I saw you,” Oddy said. “But barely, son.”

  They were peering at his face with curiosity normally reserved for a Rubik’s Cube. Crosshairs said, “Might as well get this over with,” and lifted his bangs.

  Nobody turned away, or grimaced, or stared with leering intensity. Oddy furrowed his brow and said, “Not a bad job.” Zippo agreed while noting the color was slightly off. Then Crosshairs sprung the clips that secured the prosthesis to his skull, detaching a portion of his face. Tripwire slitted his eyes and looked at the dark hairs dappling the divot. Crosshairs told him about the transplanted ass-skin. Tripwire asked to see his ass. Crosshairs shot him the bird. Zippo sniffed the prosthesis, declared it “rank,” and told Crosshairs he ought to wash it once in a goddamn while. Oddy asked him how the injury had affected him, and they all agreed it sucked to have everything taste like burnt toast.

  “Even pussy?” Zippo asked.

  “Even pussy.”

  “That fucking war,” Zippo said.

  Another round arrived, then another. Oddy regarded his old unit members. Perhaps it was the potent Canadian beer, or simply the dimness of the bar, but for the briefest moment Oddy saw them as they had been in 1967: Crosshairs was leaning back in his seat, arm thrown over the seatback above Tripwire’s head; he’d swept his bangs back, not caring who saw his face, comfortable, laughing at something Zippo had said. Tripwire was sitting to Crosshairs’ right, and the creases of his face, creases that had prevented Oddy from recognizing him, seemed to be melting away like ice during a spring thaw. Sitting next to him, steepled fingers pressed to his lips, Zippo waited for the other two to quit talking nonsense so he could tell them the way it was.

  It was as if the twenty-year interval was nothing, as if it had only been a week, a day, since they’d last met, drank, laughed. Oddy watched this almost unconscious knitting-together, this sort of easy falling-back into old roles, with intermixed fascination and unease. It was like watching puzzle pieces being slotted together by invisible hands. This was not an overly comforting image. It made him feel like a man strapped to the nose cone of a heat-seeking missile.

  “And then there were four,” Oddy said during a lull in conversation.

  “Yeah,” Crosshairs said. “Just missing—”

  “Afternoon, fellows.”

  Answer appeared in the manner he always did: as if from thin air. One moment he was nonexistent and the next he was standing at the booth’s mouth, lips curled at the edges like charring paper. His hair was long, the fiery red had faded to strawberry-blonde and receding into a widow’s peak. He didn’t appear to have matured physically at a
ll: his shoulders were still jagged peaks, his reedy arms and legs free-floating within flared jeans and chambray shirt. Oddy noticed the Blue Jays cap in his hand and realized Answer had been in the bar all along, sitting alone on the far side. Oddy knew then he’d observed everything—his and Tripwire’s meeting, Zippo punching Mr. Toe-sucker, Crosshairs’s appearance—waiting and appraising until he’d decided to make his presence known. Oddy wasn’t angry at Answer, exactly. He might as well be angry at a wolf for slaughtering sheep, a preying mantis for consuming its mate, or any other creature of instinct for doing what came naturally.

  “Well, well,” Zippo said as Answer sat down with the unnerving sinuosity that characterized all his movements. “If it isn’t the wraith hisowndamnself.”

  Answer shook hands with everyone. His grip was loose and cold, his skin dry. He looked at Crosshairs’s new face and cocked his head to one side, a gesture they were all familiar with. “So,” he said. “Who’d’ve figured Crosshairs would turn out to be the handsomest one of the bunch?”

  Every once in a while Answer could fire off a zinger. The other four cracked up.

  “What about you,” Crosshairs said. “Looking like a strung-out Opie.”

  Zippo whistled the opening bars of The Andy Griffith Show.

  “You weren’t the one who sent the letter, were you?” Oddy asked. “Seeing as it’s the type of thing you’d find amusing.”

  Answer shook his head. “Just looked like a way to score some easy dough.”

  “Too easy,” Tripwire said.

  “You sound like a character in a bad slasher movie,” Zippo said. “It may surprise you, but there are many wealthy, harmless, and utterly batshit people in this world. We just hit the motherlode.”

  Nobody heard the approaching footsteps. Nobody saw a shadow cast across the table’s surface, perhaps because the bar was too dark.

  Or perhaps no shadow was cast.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” The voice was buttery and fluid. “So nice to see you’ve been reacquainted.”

  ««—»»

  The speaker looked as though he’d stepped off the stage of a freakshow: roughly the height of an eight-year-old boy, stubby digits, arms projecting like flippers. Thin wormish lips, like a pair of parallel nightcrawlers. He was radish-eyed with one red iris, but whether he was a true albino or if this was an affectation, a tinted contact lens, was uncertain. Only one eye was visible, the other covered by an embroidered eyepatch. A pungent odor wafted off him, an unsavory blend of tannic and Old World spices. His sharply-tailored suit, gleaming gold cufflinks, and crocodile loafers couldn’t disguise the stone-cold fact the man seemed preternaturally suited to carnival geekdom, biting the heads off chickens or pounding a railroad spike up his nostril.

  He advanced to the head of the table, which reached his nipples, placing his hands on the transparent Plexiglas. They did not jibe with the rest of his appearance: mechanics’ hands, creases rimed with dark filth, grease or crankcase oil.

  “It’s wonderful you all came,” he said. “I thought some of you might’ve viewed my letter as a hoax.” He tipped Tripwire a wink. “Or thought someone had a mind to set you up.”

  Oddy shot a hard look at the midget. “Anton Grosevoir, I’m figuring?”

  The dwarf beamed. “Excellent pronunciation, Mr. Grant! Most people mangle my name so horribly it makes me wince to hear it.”

  Oddy was confident that wincing would only improve Grosevoir’s appearance. That, he thought, or a total body transplant.

  “Yes, I’m Grosevoir,” the man continued. “And I’m just overjoyed, I mean positively elated, you all came.” He clapped his hands together, producing a sound like gutted trout colliding. “Now, if you’d all be so kind as to follow me—”

  “Hold the phone, stumpy.” Zippo produced the unsigned check and slapped it on the table. “I’ll be needing your John Hancock before I go any further.”

  Grosevoir appeared miffed. Zippo inspired this basic reaction in all carbon-based life forms. “If you’d rather,” Grosevoir said, uncapping a platinum Mont Blanc. “But, as I said in the letter, the fifty thousand is only a, what do you call it, appearance fee?” He pulled the check to him, fingertips leaving gelid snail-trails on the Plexiglas. “My proposal—which, I take it, you have no desire to entertain—is much more lucrative.”

  Grosevoir’s pen hovered above the check. Zippo drew it back, folded it neatly into his pocket, and said, “What the hell. I came all this way.”

  “Splendid!” Grosevoir’s tongue, pink as a baby’s ass, darted out to slick his lips. “Please follow me. I have a room where we can discuss my proposition in privacy.”

  “Just a minute, Mr. Grosevoir.” Oddy appraised the diminutive man in the way one might appraise a small but possibly vicious dog. “How do you know about our connection?”

  “Your…connection?”

  Oddy stared at him, fingers drumming the tabletop.

  “Okay, okay,” Grosevoir buckled. “What can I say? All information is available for a price.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “The American military maintains records of its soldiery, the elite units and so on. I was able to access the information on yours. I liked what I saw.”

  “But why us?” Crosshairs said. “Whatever the job is, why choose—?”

  “I can answer all your questions.” Grosevoir spread his arms, palms open. “But please, let us conduct ourselves in private.”

  He stood aside as the men filed out of the booth. He led them across the lobby, walking with an awkward capering gait that struck the men as undignified and schoolgirlish. Tripwire whispered to Crosshairs, “Guy looks like he should be standing next to Ricardo Montalban on Fantasy Island.” Crosshairs whispered back: “Yeah, or leaping out of a box of Lucky Charms.”

  Grosevoir instructed the elevator attendant to direct them to the penthouse. Oddy was apprehensive: the suite could be jam-packed with assassins, black market organ farmers, a snuff film-making crew. He felt utterly unprepared and exposed, lashed to the train tracks with the 5:05 Amtrak bearing down.

  Zippo, on the other hand, adhered to the Boy Scout credo of “Always Be Prepared.” He’d stopped at a local hardware store and purchased a twist-lock box-cutter, two screwdrivers—one Phillips, one Slot—and a 16-oz. Hammertooth antivibe hammer, the tools currently strapped to various parts of his body. Answer cashed in his plane ticket in favor of a Greyhound pass; this allowed him to smuggle his Kirikkale pistols across the border, one of which was now secured under each armpit.

  The elevator ascended rapidly. This was a blessing, as in close quarters Grosevoir’s repellant aroma burned in their nostrils and behind their eyeballs like battery acid. The polished brass doors slid open with a merciful in-rush of fresh air.

  Grosevoir led them down a hallway lit by frosted-glass coach lamps, stopping in front of a pair of mahogany double doors. He fumbled with the oversize key.

  Oddy placed a hand the size of a shovel blade over the smaller man’s, enveloping it like a pitcher plant swallowing a gnat. “If it’s all the same, I’ll go first.”

  Oddy shot a quick look at Zippo, who grabbed Grosevoir by the collar and yanked him back. Grosevoir issued an indignant squawk as the tip of a Phillips-head screwdriver feathered his ear canal.

  Oddy inserted key into lock. “Now if anyone’s waiting on the other side of this door packing heat and bad intentions, my man Zippo’s going to be performing some impromptu neurosurgery.”

  Grosevoir gulped like a boated mackerel. “This is foolish. I mean you no harm.”

  Tripwire was skeptical of Grosevoir’s lame-duck performance: this was a man who felt no fear doing his best to impersonate someone who did. Tripwire got the impression Grosevoir was conversant with the mannerisms of fear in a role of one who inspired terror in others, rather than one who’d experienced the emotion first-hand.

  Lock tumblers engaged with a soft click. Oddy threw the doors open and stepped into the lip of darkness. He searched the ne
ar wall for a light switch, keenly aware of his exposure, his only comfort the knowledge that Zippo’d plunge the screwdriver hilt-deep into the midget’s melon at the first hint of trouble. His fingers brushed a dimmer switch. Stark white light flooded the room, revealing…

  A regally-appointed hotel suite. Plush cream carpet gave way to a flight of marble stairs terminating in a circular salon. A massive bay window offered a sweeping view of the Toronto skyline. To the left: an executive bathroom complete with jet tub. To the right: a bedroom with king size bed and satin sheets.

  Oddy felt more than slightly foolish.

  No pajama-clad ninjas. No swarthy organ farmers.

  Nobody except one offended little man requesting a screwdriver be removed from his ear. Zippo shrugged, indifferent, but did as asked.

  “Come, come,” Grosevoir said, high spirits returning. Either the man possessed the short-term memory of a fruitfly or the preceding hostilities had caused no real discomfort. He gestured to a stocked minibar. “Help yourselves and take a seat.”

  The men selected bottles of Moosehead beer and ranged themselves on plush leather chairs while Grosevoir busied himself in the bedroom. An overhead projector was set up on a cut-glass coffee table.

  “What do you think that’s for?” Crosshairs whispered to Zippo.

  Zippo jabbed him in the ribs and said, “Who am I, Uri Geller?”

  Grosevoir exited the bedroom with a roll of transparencies.

  “May I dim the lights?” A deferential bow to Oddy. “I promise there are no guerilla troops hidden in the closets.”

  Grosevoir smiled. Every tooth was a dead, nerveless gray. Oddy’s hackles rose, short hairs on the nape of his neck stiffening like hog bristles.

  Grosevoir switched on the projector and centered a transparency on the glass plate. A topographical map of the Northwest Territories was projected onto the wall.

  “This,” he pointed to a spot near Great Bear Lake, “is the location of the Saugeen Valley Penitentiary. Of course, I’m sure none of you have ever experienced incarceration.” Another smile touched his mulberry-colored lips, exposing a cobalt slit of teeth. “But this institution is the first Canadian ‘Super-Max’ facility, an idea conceived by and borrowed from their neighbors to the south.”