Hi Five

by Joe Ide

  The next morning, Isaiah, Christiana, and Gia met at Christiana’s shop. The showroom was pretty and charming. Soft lighting, diaphanous curtains, hardwood floors, antique furniture. The window in the door had been reglazed; there was new glass and the doorframe had fresh paint on it.

  “Nice place,” Isaiah said.

  “Yes,” Gia replied. “Christiana has good taste.”

  Christiana stiffened. Apparently, her mother’s assessment wasn’t appreciated. She was dressed in what Isaiah assumed were clothes of her own choosing. Stylish but subdued.

  “Tell me about Tyler,” Isaiah said. Christiana shrugged.

  “He was a good customer,” she said simply.

  “Did he have an appointment?” Isaiah asked.

  “Yes. We were doing the final fitting on a new suit,” Christiana said. She smiled sadly, and tears welled up in her eyes. “It was linen. Very beautiful.” Isaiah wondered what was so meaningful about linen.

  “How was he?” Isaiah said. “What kind of mood was he in?”

  Gia tried to give Christiana a tissue but she brushed it away. “He was…upset,” she said. “Not himself. He was usually very low-key—no, that’s not right. Easy. Comfortable. He was always that way.”

  “What was he upset about?”

  “He wouldn’t say…but it was something about…” She hesitated again, reeling in the memory. “Someone had disappointed him,” she said. “He had to tell Angus something and he didn’t want to do it. He said it would be really bad.”

  “That night,” Isaiah said. “Start from the beginning.”

  “Pearl was doing the final measurement,” Christiana said.

  “How did you know?” Isaiah said. “Weren’t you switched out?”

  “Yes, but sometimes, if she lets me, I can see what she’s doing.”

  “Why would Pearl do the final measurement? Isn’t that important?”

  “Christiana and Pearl are very close,” Gia added helpfully. She was going to say more but Christiana silenced her with a glare.

  “And then?” Isaiah said.

  “I needed my scissors,” Christiana said, “and Pearl went to get them for me.”

  “I’d like to meet her,” Isaiah said.

  “I don’t know if she’ll want to,” Christiana said too quickly. “She’s very shy but I’ll ask.” Christiana went still, blinked a few times. “She doesn’t want to come out,” she said. She shrugged, as if there was nothing she could do. “I doubt if she’ll have anything to say,” she added.

  “Wait a second,” Isaiah said, turning to Gia. “You just said Christiana and Pearl were very close.” Gia froze. Christiana was tight-jawed, caught in a lie. Isaiah passed over it. “She has to know how important this is,” he said. “Please, ask her again. Tell her there’s a possibility that she could go to prison, and I’d give you the same warning.”

  Christiana took a deep, reluctant breath and bowed her head. Pearl appeared. Isaiah would have sworn under oath that she was smaller and younger than Christiana. She was looking at the floor, her head pulled into her neck, shoulders hunched, hands clenched in her lap. That feeling of theatricality was there again. A peasant girl questioned by the gestapo.

  “Hello, Pearl, I’m Isaiah.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. She bit her nails.

  “Do you know why I’m here?” Isaiah said.

  “Yes. You want to know about…that night.”

  “What do you know about Tyler?”

  Pearl hesitated. She looked furtive, as if someone might be eavesdropping. “Christiana can’t hear me now,” she said. “You promise you won’t tell her?”

  “I promise.”

  “Tyler wasn’t a good person,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She thought a moment and shook her head. “He just wasn’t.” She looked resolute so Isaiah moved on.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I was measuring Tyler for the suit and Christiana asked me to get some scissors,” she said.

  “Show me what you did.”

  Pearl led Isaiah to a doorway with a curtain drawn across it. Her walk was different from Christiana’s. More tentative, like she wasn’t sure she should be going where she was going. Isaiah and Gia followed her through the curtain. It was new, the fabric stiff. A throw rug bridged the two rooms. The design didn’t fit with everything else, white angular shapes over a forest-black background. It was chosen in a hurry, Isaiah thought. To cover the bloodstains, difficult to get out of hardwood. The shooting happened here, he realized, between the two rooms.

  They entered a large workroom. There was a cutting table, a computer nook, a door to a bathroom, an alcove kitchen, numerous shelves with rolls and rolls of fabric and a single sewing machine. There was no way for a lone woman to pay the rent in this neighborhood with suits that took weeks to make. Isaiah suspected Gia did much of the labor and Angus was supporting the shop. Guilt will make you indulgent. Pearl looked like she was standing on a frozen lake and the ice was moving.

  “I came through the curtain,” Pearl said. “And then Tyler came up behind me and put his arms around me.” She squirmed, embarrassed. “He kissed my neck and then he picked me up and whirled me around and that’s when”—she started to cry—“he was shot. He kind of grunted, and then he fell down and pushed me through the curtain back into the showroom.” She shook her head vehemently. “That’s all I saw.”

  “Did you get a look at the killer?” Isaiah said.

  “For a moment, before Tyler turned me around,” she said. “It was just a blur.”

  “Where was the killer? Can you show me?”

  Pearl pointed to a spot on the floor. “About here. I don’t remember anything after that.”

  “Why did Tyler kiss you?” Isaiah asked. “Were you in a relationship?” Pearl shook her head. Isaiah thought about pressing it but moved on. “Do you know who came after you?” he asked. She shook her head. “Do you know if any of the others saw anything?” She was fearful now, as if Isaiah was extracting a terrible secret.

  “I don’t know!” she said. “I have to go now or I’ll get in trouble.” And she was gone. Christiana returned.

  Isaiah suppressed his impatience. “So Pearl went into the cutting room,” he said. “Then Tyler was shot and she switched out. When you came back, where were you?”

  “It was very confusing,” Christiana said. “I was kneeling beside Tyler…he’d been shot in the back of the head.” She started to cry and put her hand over her mouth. “There was blood everywhere.” She turned away. “It was so awful…so horrible.” She wept. Gia offered her a tissue and Christiana pushed it away, preferring the back of her hand, smearing her mascara. Another oddity but Isaiah let that go too.

  Isaiah went to the spot Pearl had indicated and tried to imagine what happened from the killer’s point of view. The guy came in the rear entrance and saw no one at first. Then he started toward the curtain and Pearl came through it, followed by Tyler. Tyler grabbed her, whirled her around exposing his back, and the killer shot him in the head. Tyler fell to the floor, pushing Pearl through the curtain and back into the showroom. That’s why the curtain was replaced. It was splattered with blood or full of bullet holes or both. If Tyler was moving, it was possible the killer had missed a shot or two.

  Isaiah went back into the showroom, Gia trailing. He examined the freshly painted front doorframe. He put his finger on a nearly undetectable hole that was spackled and painted over. It was small, a .22.

  Gia was looking over his shoulder.

  “How did you know it was there?” she said.

  “When did you get here that night?” he asked.

  “About fifteen minutes after Christiana called me. When I arrived, she was sitting next to Tyler’s body, holding him, crying and saying things I didn’t understand. It was so awful. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “When did you call the police?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Ten minutes late
r? I can’t remember.” Isaiah sighed.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

  “No. But the police would think it was suspicious that Christiana didn’t call them immediately. What did she tell them?”

  “Nothing coherent. She was hysterical. The alters were coming and going at random. It was a mess.”

  “Did you tell the police about Christiana’s condition?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but they were very skeptical. I don’t think they believed me.”

  “Do you remember if the police were focused on anything?”

  “They asked a lot of questions,” Gia said, “but they wanted to know about the front door. Christiana always keeps it locked at night, but it was open. She said she hadn’t used it but she was on video. She came out the front door and ran down the block out of camera range. There was blood on her clothes. After a minute, she came back.”

  “And she has no recollection of that?”

  “No.”

  “Any other video?”

  “Everyone who came into the shop went out again,” Gia said. “After hours, there was only Tyler and Christiana. No one else.” There was a time gap, Isaiah thought, between the killer shooting Tyler and Christiana going out the front door and another gap between her return and kneeling on the floor beside him. He wondered which alters filled those gaps and what they saw.

  The killing looked like a professional job. The spot Pearl indicated on the floor was about twenty-five feet from the curtain. If the killer could hit Tyler in the back of the head from that distance, especially when he was moving, the killer was a very good shot. He’d only missed once. Hit men in the movies used 9mms and .45s but the pros used .22s. They’re lighter and quieter, especially with a silencer. And the bullet bounces around in your skull, shredding your brain. It made it harder to match the bullet with a gun.

  Most people bought larger-caliber weapons for self-protection because they thought they needed stopping power, which made no sense to Isaiah. With a nine or a .45, you stood a far greater chance of shooting through a wall and killing your neighbor. If you’re an intruder, you are, by definition, clandestine. Whether you’re there to grab an iPad or a serial killer about to hack a family into chunks with a meat cleaver, you’re nervous and twitchy. The foremost thing in your mind? Don’t get caught. A gun going off—any gun, will send you sprinting the hell out of there, and no one, no matter how vicious and determined, will hang around for a shootout.

  Isaiah wondered: If the killer wasn’t on video, how did he get in? Isaiah went out the rear entrance. The building was twelve stories tall. All the rear doors to the shops faced the parking lot. There was no camera over Christiana’s door because of the awning. It was dark blue, with CHRISTIANA’S CUSTOM SUITS in fancy script. Two cameras were attached to the building, each with a different view of the lot. The building was hemmed in on both sides by other buildings and there were cameras in the passageways too.

  Isaiah got the key from Gia and went up on the roof. He stood at the parapet directly over Christiana’s awning. The only way to get down was by rope or something similar. Each story was approximately ten feet, times twelve equaled one-hundred twenty feet or forty yards. You’d have to be incredibly strong to descend that far on a rope. Getting back up again would be virtually impossible. Rappelling maybe? Unlikely. In the movies, hit men were cool, smart, athletic and highly trained. They lived in luxury apartments, drove Maseratis and wore designer clothes. They were experts at mountain climbing, skydiving, waterskiing, piloting helicopters and wielding samurai swords. In reality, they were near-psychotic, none-too-bright wretches; lonely and pathetic, too inward to have normal relationships. As far as skills were concerned, pulling a trigger and staying on two feet were all you needed to know.

  If the killer was lowered on a rope, it was raised by someone else. Two people, then. A team. Isaiah walked straight back from the parapet to an HVAC unit. There was a ring of bare metal on a painted stanchion. It could have been made by a rope sliding back and forth. So. The roof guy looped the rope around the stanchion and let it out little by little. But once the shooter reached the awning, he’d have to grab on to a support bar and swing under it. An athlete, then. A small one. To help the shooter get back up, the roof guy would have to pull the rope up a little at a time while the shooter climbed. He was strong. Another athlete.

  The whole thing made no sense. Why did the killers choose to kill Tyler in the shop? Especially with Christiana there as a potential witness? Maybe, as Angus had said, it was because Tyler was an ex-marine and hard to target, or maybe there was a reason. Maybe Tyler was supposed to be killed in the shop.

  It was discouraging. Isaiah wasn’t the police and he didn’t have a lab for testing DNA and microfibers, or a database to search for similar MOs. His resources consisted of himself and sometimes, like now, that wasn’t enough. He thought about Gia and Christiana. Why were they waffling around? Why all the furtiveness? Why did Christiana reprimand Gia with those looks and brush off her attempts at kindness? What bothered Isaiah most was that Christiana had lied about her ability to beckon Pearl. Under the circumstances, Christiana should have been forthright. Her reluctance didn’t make sense. Unless she was hiding something.

  Chapter Five

  Potato Gun?

  Angus was in his favorite booth at Geller’s Deli. He was hungry and impatient. He wondered how Isaiah had gotten on with Christiana and what new kind of bullshit would happen next. Hugo was near the front of the restaurant, covering the front door. Dwight was across the aisle, wearing another ridiculous suit. It was green and shimmered gold when the sun hit it at an angle. It reminded Angus of a chameleon except the lizard was probably smarter. As usual, the moron was antsy. He was reading the paper—why, Angus had no idea. Who gives a shit about the news? Dwight put down the paper, crossed his arms across his chest and sighed for the hundredth time. He picked up the paper, read something and put it down again. He ran his hands through his shiny hair while his foot tapped aimlessly on the floor. The guy was always on simmer, Angus thought. Useful at times but mostly it was annoying.

  “Hey,” Angus said. “Could you cut it out?”

  “Cut what out?” Dwight said.

  “Everything,” Angus replied. “Just sit there. You’re fidgeting like a four-year-old.”

  Sidero was sitting at Angus’s table looking sheepish and stepped on, his nose mottled green and black.

  “Where’s my fucking sandwich?” Angus said.

  “How would I know?” Sidero said.

  “Well, find out, goddammit.”

  Angus grew up in Welch, a bleak coal town in McDowell County, West Virginia. The town slogan was “The heart of the nation’s coal bin.” Angus’s father was a miner, coughing and exhausted every moment of his life. His mother was busy having eight children and drinking to forget her responsibilities. She whipped whatever child wasn’t doing a chore. The kids at school were unmercifully cruel about Angus’s looks, calling him ugly and shitface and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. They bullied him, beat him up, pushed him into ditches full of filthy water and mashed coal dust into his face. They chased him home. A date with a girl was as unlikely as wealth.

  Angus went to work in the mines when he was fifteen, the HR guy mistaking ugliness for age. Angus knew it was a shit job but once you’re down there it was a hundred times dirtier, more dangerous, backbreaking and soul crushing than anyone could imagine. “Mine shaft” was a fancy way of saying a hole in the ground, a hole darker than the coal itself, built room and pillar, wooden supports, no roof bolting, the air stifling and poisonous, no safety equipment but a stupid helmet with a flashlight on it.

  Kids these days didn’t know shit about hard work and neither did their parents. You had no idea what hard work meant until you were hacking away at a wall of coal with a goddamn pick and then shoveling blank chunks into an endless succession of carts or using an air drill, big as a 50mm machine gun, burrowing holes in the walls that held the min
e together—all fucking day long. If you want to grow up to be a tough motherfucker, work in a coal mine. If you want to grow up to be angry and fearless, work in a coal mine.

  Angus left the mines when he was twenty-one. His ugliness was like a criminal record. His job interviews averaged three minutes long. He could tell right away how his appearance affected the interviewer, even if the guy was a chinless warehouse supervisor with a lazy eye and boils on his forehead. Angus had hated his looks when he was a kid but he hated them more now, where the consequences were food and rent and dignity. And loneliness. People were afraid of you, as if ugliness was a parasite that bored into your skin and laid eggs in your bloodstream.

  Angus learned to love guns in the National Guard, where he was assigned to the Detroit Naval Armory. His unit watched over row upon row of cases, shelves, lockers and wall racks of M14s, M16s, M40s, Winchester 1200s, Colt Commanders, M40 sniper rifles and a variety of machine guns as well as land mines, grenades, mortars and rocket launchers. Angus didn’t get to fire the weapons but he appreciated their engineering and artfulness. How they slid, snapped, clicked and cocked. How the parts moved with oily smoothness and how satisfying it was to snap a clip into a sidearm or work the bolt action on a sniper rifle or rack the slide on a riot gun. Clack-clack!

  But what made Angus smile when he arrived for work each morning was how the guns held imaginable power. The power he saw in the movies and on TV; how guns controlled, persuaded, coerced, terrified, overwhelmed and saved the day. And the very best thing about them? The thing that gave you goose bumps and filled the empty chamber in your psyche? You didn’t have to be powerful to use them. You could be a skinny, awkward, hideously ugly, prematurely balding goober like him and still make the baddest motherfucker in the UFC say “excuse me, sir” and get the fuck out of your way.