The Blinds

by Adam Sternbergh

  Cooper walks over to check on Dawes. Fran’s bandaged and swaddled Dawes’s wound as best she can with the first-aid kit on hand. Fran looks up at Cooper.

  “She needs a doctor,” she says. Her face is grave.

  “Well, we don’t have a doctor and our nurse is dead,” Cooper says.

  “But someone’s coming, right?” comes an anxious voice from the crowd behind them. Cooper turns. It’s Doris Agnew. “Someone’s coming to save us, right?” she says. “Like, the police? If we can just wait it out?”

  “Let’s hope so,” Cooper says, but he knows there’s no reason for hope. He’s tempted to be more truthful with her, with them all, but he’s already decided that if they’re going to be stuck in here awhile, with little options and limited supplies, he can’t let hope be the first thing that runs out.

  Rigo hears it in the distance; it’s unmistakable: the spatter of a firefight.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he says. Santayana strides ahead of him, walking in the main street, unperturbed. The streets are quiet now, abandoned. Long shadows yawn across the road as the sun clocks out on its shift and retires for the day.

  Santayana stops and regards the low-slung building from about thirty yards away. “Remind me—we’ve got flashbangs. Smoke. Some tear gas. Assault rifles. Plus, our own sidearms. Anything else? Can’t we just smash those windows and smoke them out?”

  “It’s a safe house,” says Rigo, behind her, exasperated. “Built for tornados. And other contingencies, apparently. Walls are bulletproof, windows shatterproof. And we’d need a tank to take out that door. You really should have read the briefing, Iris.”

  “I’m sorry, but tornados were not the first fucking logistical concern on my mind.”

  She turns to see Burly and Gains approaching at a slow jog, with a third person, a young woman. Burly’s got Dietrich’s semiautomatic rifle slung over his shoulder. Well, that’s something, she thinks.

  “Where’s Dietrich?” asks Rigo.

  “He’s dead,” Burly says.

  “You took him out?” says Santayana. She’s impressed.

  “No, some old guy got his hands on a gun and shot Dietrich right on his front porch,” Burly says. “He’s dead, too. The old man.”

  “And who’s this?” says Rigo, looking over at Bette Burr.

  “She was in the house,” says Burly.

  “I have a voice,” Bette says. Then, to Rigo, “I’m Bette Burr.”

  “Of course you are,” he says. “You’re staying out here with us.” He turns to Santayana. “All right. This is not so bad. This is a workable situation. We’ve got firepower, we’ve got time, and with her”—he gestures to Burr—“we’ve got some leverage. Let’s see how much the townsfolk truly care about each other.”

  Santayana ignores him and says to Burly: “Anyone else in this town with a secret hidden handgun we don’t know about?”

  “Shouldn’t be,” says Burly.

  She signals for the semiautomatic rifle and Burly hands it over. She hefts it to her shoulder, sights it. A Bushmaster; she likes the feel of it. She targets the chapel and fires. Tight bursts. Loosing a loud rattling fusillade. The bullets clip and claw at the building, send concrete chips flying, thump dumbly at the windows but don’t penetrate.

  She stops. Acrid smoke and the ear-ringing echo of the shots persist. She hoists the rifle back over her shoulder by the strap.

  “Just checking,” she says.

  She turns to Burly and Gains: “You two go get the rest of our weapons from the intake trailer and bring them back here.” They jog off, obedient. She says to Burr: “You—sit down in the dirt and don’t talk.” Then Santayana turns to Rigo: “No more fuckups. No more negotiations. No more happy-grab-ass. From now on, it’s just corpses and results.”

  “And what about us?” says Rigo. “We gonna use our powers of persuasion to coax that boy out of that building?”

  “In a way,” she says. “First, we need to find some lawn chairs.”

  “Great. Then what?”

  “You brought those files, right?”

  “Which files?”

  “You know which files.”

  Rigo thinks a moment. Then it hits him. “Oh, fuck. You are so fucking devious.” He wags a finger at her, smiling. “You are one devious bitch.”

  Then he scampers off without another word, and only a hint of a lingering limp.

  Once he’s gone, Santayana hooks a thumb in the rifle strap that’s hung over her shoulder and turns back to further study the bullet-pocked chapel. In her gravel-dusted patent heels she walks slowly toward the dented red door. She steps to one side and puts two hands up, cupped, on the milky glass of the adjacent window. The glass is thick and cloudy. Inside the lights are out. But as she peers into the building she can make out a huddle of people, clustered together. They seem to see her, too, her small silhouette on the glass, backlit by the last of the setting sun.

  She waves.

  The sky darkens.

  People sleep. They curl up on the carpeted floor, find corners, hunker down. Cooper sits in the gloom of the chapel, amazed at how people can get rest under such conditions. He’s never been that way. Give him a minor worry and he’s up for the rest of the week. So, naturally, he’s given up on sleep in this situation. These are his people. He brought this on them. He brought this to the gates of their town. He sits in a chair in the dark and thinks about that and keeps watch.

  Dawes is sleeping. Isaac, too. Fran’s lying on the floor with her arms around Isaac, but she’s awake. When she notices Cooper watching her, she rouses herself, untangles herself from her son, and walks over and sits next to him.

  “So what’s the plan?” she says, as quietly as she can.

  “This is the plan. Getting us inside of here.”

  “So what’s the plan to get us out of here?”

  “See, now that requires another plan. No one told me I had to have two plans.”

  Fran smiles, a grave smile, defiant, given the circumstance. “I can’t wait to get out of here so I can be done with you forever, Calvin Cooper.”

  “I can’t wait to get out of here and be done with me, either,” he says.

  He raises his fingers and strokes her cheek softly. It’s the kind of gesture they never would have allowed themselves before, not in full view of the other residents, but, fuck it, who cares now. If they get out of this alive, no one will care if he stroked her cheek. And if they don’t get out alive, he’ll be glad at least that he did it.

  “Why did you leave me?” she asks him.

  “I never left you. I stopped sleeping with you. There’s a difference.”

  “So why did you stop sleeping with me?”

  “Because I knew you had to leave eventually. And I didn’t want there to be any part of me that didn’t want that to happen.”

  “Did that work for you?”

  “Not in the least,” he says.

  She waits a moment, watching people sleep, then asks: “Will they send help?”

  “That depends. Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Anyone.”

  Now he tells the truth. “I don’t think so, no.”

  Her face, usually so stoic, falls. He can see it, even in the dark. She says simply, to no one, “But Isaac.”

  “I know.”

  “He doesn’t deserve this. Maybe I do, maybe we do, but he doesn’t.”

  “I know,” says Cooper again. He has nothing else to say. He could try to reassure her—he can promise to keep them safe—but at this point, what’s the worth of that promise?

  All he can do is do it.

  Fran does her best to smile again because she knows that’s what she’s expected to do in this moment but she fails, even at that, and she can feel herself bodily falling. She feels like the whole abyss of her life, all those empty, erased years, are opening now to swallow her whole. And there’s a comfort in that welcoming darkness. She doesn’t even mind it so much. If it was just her, she’d just let go, and fall
.

  Just don’t take my son, she thinks.

  So they sit side by side, and he takes her hand in his, and she finishes her crying in silence, and they watch the room together, as people sleep the final hours before the coming day.

  FRIDAY

  38.

  COOPER WAKES WITH A START. He must have dozed off. The windows in the chapel are blindingly bright. He’s still holding Fran’s hand. She’s still sleeping. Isaac is standing over them both, awake. Watching and saying nothing. Cooper drops Fran’s hand, embarrassed. Then he stands, and is about to push past Isaac, but he stops. He stops and hugs the boy. Isaac stands stiff as Cooper pulls him in. Then Cooper lets him go, turns, and shakes Fran awake.

  In the room, a few people are already up, milling around, looking out the murky windows. Spiro Mitchum’s in the corner having a hushed but angry argument with Greta over a jar of instant coffee. He says to Greta: “Look, it’s not my fault. I didn’t know there wasn’t a kettle.”

  Cooper walks over, and Greta turns to him, angrily, pointing a bejeweled, bent finger at Spiro: “This dipshit—” Cooper holds up a hand to calm her. “This is only day one, Greta. Let’s not turn on each other yet.”

  The goombah, Hannibal Cagney, stands at the window, watching the street. He waves to get Cooper’s attention, then motions him over. “Something’s happening outside. Thought you’d want to know.”

  Cooper peers out the window. The bulletproof Plexiglas leaves the street cloudy and distorted, but he can see that someone in a black suit, must be Rigo, is standing in the middle of the street. Someone else, also in a suit—looks like Santayana—is sitting behind him, in the street, in a folding lawn chair. There’s an empty chair next to her.

  They must have slept out there all night, Cooper thinks.

  Rigo’s holding something in his hands, waving something. He yells out, “Rise and shine!”

  Whatever’s in his hand looks to Cooper like a tablet or a book. Cooper squints. Or a file folder. That’s what it is, Cooper sees now. A manila folder, held open in Rigo’s hand, like he’s a street-corner preacher balancing a Bible. Rigo is shouting something else, too, but it’s hard to understand inside the fortified chapel, behind the thick bulletproof window.

  Cooper strains to make it out.

  “Cooper! Cock-a-doodle-doo!” is what Rigo’s shouting, over and over again.

  Cooper turns back to Dawes and Fran, and to the room. “I’m going outside. To see what this is. Lock this door behind me.”

  “You can’t—” says Fran.

  “They don’t care about me,” says Cooper. “And they know that whatever they do to me, you’re not going to open this door. Right?”

  Fran doesn’t speak, so Dawes, from her seat, still swaddled in that bloodstained puffy jacket, says, “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Good.” Then Cooper turns, unlocks the door, opens it, and steps out into the sunshine.

  “Sheriff Cooper!” Rigo shouts, as Cooper slips out from behind the red door. “Good morning.”

  “Morning, Rigo. How are your balls feeling today?”

  “Ask your mother,” says Rigo. Then he points to the folder in his hand. “I’ve just been reading up on some of your citizens. Quite a motley crew of pervs and killers you’ve got living here. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  Cooper squints and sees that two more agents, Burly and Gains, are standing guard behind Santayana’s lawn chair. Between them, as though the agents are her chaperones, stands Bette Burr. Beyond them, at the edges of the street, a few of the other surviving residents are gathering to watch. People who must have been holed up in their houses all night. They look shell-shocked and terrified. There’s maybe twelve, maybe fifteen of them, by Cooper’s quick count. With the eleven inside, that means it’s likely that about half the town is dead.

  Rigo motions toward the crowd. “I asked my agents to round up everyone this morning for a demonstration. I assured them that the danger had passed and they’ll be fine and we’ll be leaving soon, just as soon as we get what we came for.”

  “Rigo, go home.” Cooper understands he’s performing for the whole town now, those both inside and outside the chapel. “Tell your boss that you failed. Move on to whatever comes next. These people can’t help you, and they don’t want you here.”

  “To the contrary,” Rigo says, hoisting the folder in his open hand. “I think they’ll find this really enlightening.” He glances down at the file. “Errol Colfax,” he reads loudly. “Remember him? Who wants to know a little bit about his background? Born Kostya Slivko. Nickname: ‘Costco.’” Rigo flashes a showman’s look to the crowd, as if to say, Curious! then keeps reading: “Sixty-four murders and suspected murders.” Rigo makes a face like he’s impressed. He looks around, playing to the crowd, his face an exaggerated mask of mock surprise, shielded by his surfer’s sunglasses and topped with those white-blond spikes. “I guess it’s true that you never do know your neighbors, huh?” He looks back down at the folder. “So what happened to old Kostya, I wonder?”

  The street is silent. Cooper wonders how much of this the people inside the chapel can hear.

  “Colfax committed suicide,” Cooper says flatly. He doesn’t like this. He knows Rigo’s playing him.

  Rigo adopts a face of dramatic disappointment. “Here we are, in the sun, and it’s a new day, and we’re still going to tell the same old stories? How about a little truth-telling instead?” He looks back at his folder. Flips through some pages. “Here we go,” he says. He looks up at the crowd. “Is there a Laurence Barkley here?” He looks around. “Laurence? Barkley?” No one stirs. No one answers. Rigo sighs to himself and returns to his list. “Hmmm. Must be dead. Okeydokey. How about a Lyndon Lancaster? Is there a Lyndon Lancaster living here?”

  Cooper knows Lyndon Lancaster by sight, and knows he’s standing a few yards away at the edge of the street, in a bathrobe. Cooper’s eyes flick involuntarily in Lancaster’s direction. Don’t move, he thinks. Don’t answer. Don’t do it. Cooper sees now what Rigo intends. He’ll call out and expose the whole town, what’s left of it, every resident, every secret, one by one. Destroy all of them. All of us, Cooper thinks.

  “I’d call you by your real name, but I know that you don’t know it,” Rigo says. “But if you’d like to know, show yourself.”

  There’s a long, tremulous moment as Rigo waits, and then Lyndon Lancaster steps forward.

  He’s tall, thin, mid-fifties, unshaven, graying hair hanging loose over his eyes, with a terry-cloth robe wrapped around him, even in the heat. He looks like someone’s once-dashing dad who’s let himself go since the divorce.

  “That’s me. I’m Lyndon Lancaster,” he says.

  “Are you sure?” says Rigo. “Just kidding. Nice to meet you. Why don’t you come on over here? There’s a lot you can learn about yourself in this file.” Rigo waves him over. Lancaster approaches, reluctantly. Soon he’s standing in the middle of the street, next to Rigo, like an awkward volunteer at a magic show.

  “Lyndon Lancaster,” says Rigo. “Sounds like a soap star, to be honest.” Then he reads from the file. “But your real name is Sam ‘The Wolverine’ Lemme. Am I pronouncing that right? L-E-M-M-E—rhymes with ‘phlegmy’? Look at me—why am I asking you? Like you’d know.”

  Lancaster says nothing. He just stands nervously. Cooper watches Santayana, a few yards behind the two men, reclining in her lawn chair, regarding the proceedings calmly, an AR Bushmaster rifle held flat across her knees. At her feet, Cooper notices, is a large black rectangular legal-file box. Stuffed with files, from the looks of it. All their files, Cooper imagines. The blind files.

  Rigo reads from the file: “Twelve confirmed murders. Most of it routine button-man stuff, for the most part. Rhode Island mafia, lower rung, actually. Some real boring penny ante midlevel shit, to be honest. Cool nickname, though. The Wolverine!” Rigo says this like a ringmaster hyping the big top’s most remarkable freak. “I wonder how you got that name?” He contin
ues to read the file. “You did kill this one woman, named Sandra Antonia Francesca, because she happened to be married to a guy who owed you money. That guy, they found later in twelve different garbage bags. Never linked that one to you, though. As for the woman, they had you dead to rights on her, due to the fact that you pissed on her dead body after you raped her.” Rigo mock scrutinizes the page before his eyes, as though in disbelief. “See, now, that’s just dumb, Sammy. Piss has DNA in it, you know. Then again, it says here it was a pretty messy rape, so DNA was likely not an issue.” Rigo closes the file, then looks up straight at Lancaster. “Apparently, that was your thing. The pissing part? That’s why they called you the Wolverine. You used to piss on the people you killed. As a kind of—what would you call it? Sadistic flourish.” Rigo wiggles his groin comically in a pantomime of pissing. “See, wolverines piss on their food so no one else will eat it. True story!” Rigo looks around at the crowd, then back at Lancaster. “One of your thug playmates must have been an amateur naturalist. Either way, that’s how you got the nickname. Wear it proudly.”

  Cooper watches Lancaster, whose face is drained and pale now and who looks perilously close to vomiting. Lancaster tugs the robe around himself despite the relentless morning sun. Then Lancaster looks around at the assembled crowd, which has fallen deadly quiet, and his eyes search each person in the crowd as though one of them might break ranks and step out and save him. As if to say, You know me. I’m Lyndon Lancaster. But no one knows him, not really, he realizes, not even himself. Not until now. And as he scans the crowd, it seems to be recoiling, receding in disgust, or at least that’s how it looks to him. He has no recollection of these crimes. Yet he doesn’t blame these people. Because there’s no part of him that doesn’t believe what Rigo is saying is true.