(2004) Citizen Vince

by Jess Walter

  “Cheer up, Donuts. You done the right thing. From here on out, it’s the easy part.” Ange starts the car. “You ready?”

  Vince leans back in his seat and closes his eyes.

  MARTIN HAGEN’S POLICE file is thick but shockingly light: nine arrests, at least four convictions, but not one violent crime. No assaults or armed robberies—nothing more serious than theft and fraud. It’s certainly not the file of a killer. Dupree jots down the name of Hagen’s probation officer and a couple of addresses to check out, but there is precious little in this file of the person Martin Hagen that might lead Dupree to finding Vince Camden. Dupree reads about stolen credit cards and stolen cars and stolen property and stolen checkbooks, but there’s something missing.

  The last entry in the file is a brief investigator’s report (…based on his environment and his seeming lack of remorse, Hagen is a likely threat to re-offend…) prepared for the prosecutor in the case. Clipped to it is a four-page excerpt from an FBI wiretap in which two unidentified suspects were overheard saying they had to find someone to “take care” of that “Irish rat Hagen” and that he should “dig himself a hole” somewhere. The page is notarized and signed by two FBI agents.

  Also written on the report is a phone number for the DA investigator who worked the case—a woman named Janet Kelly.

  Even though it’s Saturday, he calls, and apologizes when it turns out to be her home number. She’s pissed, at first, to be called so early on a Saturday. She’s no longer even with the DA’s office. She quit a year ago to take a management job in the corrections department. Dupree apologizes again, this time for calling so early, and asks if she remembers the Martin Hagen case.

  At first it doesn’t register, but Dupree reads her report back to her. “Oh yeah,” she says. “A credit-card guy. Charming son of a bitch, if I remember. He’d steal bank cards and buy TVs, washing machines, stereos—then sell the stuff to these two guys who worked for some old Mafia captain. He was into them for some money, so they were milking him a little. It looked like a big case at first, but it crapped out on us.”

  “How?” Dupree asks.

  “He had this slick lawyer, went to law school with the deputy prosecutor on the case. Convinced the guy that this Hagen was sitting on a goddamn gold mine of information, that this credit-card case was just the goddamn tip of the iceberg.”

  “And?”

  “More like the tip of an ice cube.”

  “Do you think he was holding back on you?”

  “No,” she says. “I honestly don’t think he knew anything except his own credit-card deal. I don’t think he was connected at all, just your garden-variety thief. But by the time we realized it, we’d already given the guy full immunity.”

  “And put him in witness protection for a credit-card scam?”

  “Well, there was also the FBI wiretap. It looked like the guy was gonna get clipped if we didn’t get him in the program.”

  Dupree pulls it from the file. “Yeah, I saw that report. But if you’re right and the guy didn’t know anything, why would there be a contract out on him?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person. You gotta talk to the FBI about that.”

  Dupree stares at the FBI report. Something is off. “You said you remember Marty Hagen. Do you remember what he looked like then?”

  “Yeah, sure. Good-looking guy. Looked like trouble.”

  “Did he look Irish to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hagen’s a German name.”

  “I don’t see what—”

  “On the wiretap, these guys say they’re gonna take care of ‘that Irish rat Hagen.’” Dupree holds the sheet close to his face and turns it sideways to look down the line of type.

  On the other end of the phone, Janet Kelly laughs. “I don’t know what to tell you. These aren’t the kind of guys to lose sleep over some guy’s ethnicity. Now, if there’s nothing else…”

  Dupree just keeps staring at the page. “Yeah, no. That’s it. I’m sorry.” He hangs up the phone and stares at the file. He won’t be able to talk to the FBI until Monday morning. Which means he’s got two days to watch the door and wonder when Detective Charles is going to climb out of his hospital bed, walk to his car, and—

  Dupree looks around his hotel room: notes spread on one of the beds, the other disheveled from a few hours of rough sleep. Suddenly he feels so small. Who is he to find this guy in New York, to figure out mob politics and the intricacies of New York law enforcement, to make an enemy like Donnie Charles? Amazing that a person could be so alone in a city of seven million people. He stands. There is barely space between the two beds for his legs; he has to turn sideways to wedge his way around the furniture in the room. He can hear sirens outside, and the first morning traffic. He opens his curtains and looks down Seventh Avenue toward Times Square. It’s overcast. He watches the traffic, and wonders what the density and speed of a place like this does to the people over time, wonders if he’d be any different from Charles if he lived here; or maybe place doesn’t have anything to do with it. Eighteen years Charles has been a cop. Maybe eighteen would do that to anyone. Dupree is struck for a moment with something like panic and he wishes he could write a letter to himself and mail it, to be opened in the year 1998. Dear Alan, Be careful. Don’t be a prick. He picks up the phone and dials. The ring is harsh.

  “Hello?” She sounds worried.

  “Debbie.”

  “Hey there.” Her relief washes over him.

  “I’m sorry to be calling so early. It’s just…”

  “I’m glad you called. I miss you, too. When are you coming home?”

  “I don’t know. Monday maybe.”

  “How’s New York? Is it beautiful?”

  “Yeah,” he says. He could touch all four walls of this hotel room without taking more than a couple of steps. “It’s…something.” He wishes he could just curl up next to her on the couch, on their couch, in that place he knows so well. Mostly, he wishes this case were over, and that he’d never seen Donnie Charles at the airport yesterday. He can picture the big detective—jaw wired shut—driving across the city, bottle by his side, his black eyes staring ahead.

  “Maybe we could go there together someday, Alan? No work. Just do the tourist stuff. See the Empire State Building. Take a carriage ride in Central Park.”

  He leans back on the bed and closes his eyes. “Sure.”

  LAST THOUGHTS: THERE hasn’t been a really funny television show since Get Smart; patty sausage is better than links; how long does the phone company keep sending bills after you’re gone; the passing game is killing professional football; Italian food is vastly over-rated; it would’ve been cool to own a dog.

  Vince stares out the window, watching the buildings pass. He can’t keep up with his own brain, and he tries to concentrate on the things he’s seeing—to limit himself to visual stimuli. He wonders how long you get to carry memories—wonders if they go out with the lights. What about all these things you’ve seen: the sunrises and straight flushes. What happens to all of that when you’re gone? Greedily, he wants a few more images…nothing profound, just some beauty to look at. He wishes he could ask Ange to drive south—most of his favorite buildings are in lower Manhattan: City Hall and the old Standard Oil Building, the marble and cast iron faces of Chambers Street—but they’re heading north. Vince racks his brain to come up with the buildings he’d like to see north. The Met…The old Carnegie Mansion. The Ansonia and the Arthorp on Broadway.

  Twice Vince puts his hand on the door to jump out in traffic, but both times he loses his nerve. They take the exit toward LaGuardia, and Vince wonders why Ange is keeping up the illusion that he’s going to get on a plane. Maybe the airport is where Ange does this kind of business. Maybe Vince’s corpse will be packed into a crate and shipped to Sicily.

  There’s a kid on a bike staring from an overpass and Vince makes eye contact with him and wants to cry for the flash of future he feels from that kid’s eyes.
He wishes he could just follow that kid and spend the rest of his life on a bike, zipping in and out of traffic, the freedom of it, closing your eyes and taking your hands off the handlebars…the only thing moving in a static world—a kid is invincible from the seat of his bike, or so he thinks. Invincibility: that’s what Vince misses. He closes his eyes and can see the parked cars bleeding past, the people on their stoops, can almost feel the wind on his face and in his hair.

  Jesus, it’d be nice if there were someplace to dump all those things that you’ve felt and seen, like taking the film out of a camera. That’s why people write books and stories, no doubt, to leave some impression behind, to share a sense of the beauty and pain. This is what I saw! Or graffiti: I was here! Goddamn it, I was here! Why the fuck didn’t you ever write anything down; why didn’t you record your time here? How hard could that be?

  And then, strangely, the car turns into the airport and Ange lays on the horn and serpentines through the cabs and pulls into the turnaround in front of ticketing—men hauling hard Samsonite to the curb, women smoking with one hand, carrying travel bags with the other, the taxis swarming like summer mosquitoes. Ange puts the car in park and turns to Vince. “Here we are, Donuts.”

  Vince doesn’t know what to say. “You’re…you’re just gonna let me go home?”

  Ange tilts his head. “Yeah. John told you that you could go home. Why? What’d you think we were doing?”

  “I thought…but…you said it wasn’t that easy.”

  “Yeah, John wants a favor from you. You didn’t get that?”

  “No,” Vince says. “I thought you were going to—”

  “Going to what?”

  “You know…”

  Ange grins. “You thought I—”

  “Yeah.” He frowns and mocks the big man’s voice. “This thing is bigger than us, Donuts.”

  Ange stares at him and then explodes in laughter. His hands go to his big gut, and his dark eyes squeeze into slits. “You thought…Oh, Jesus! I never said I was gonna…I just said John had plans for you. That’s all.”

  “Well, of course you didn’t say you were gonna do that. Who tells someone they’re going to shoot him?”

  Ange can barely talk through the laughter. “That’s fuckin’ hilarious, Donuts. You thought I was going to—and you just sat there! Oh, fuck! You cool son of a bitch!”

  Ange laughs so loudly that a couple walking by with matching suitcases stops and looks into the car. “I…I can’t believe you just sat there, thinking I was going to—”

  “Well, you could’ve been a little more explicit. What’d you say—I couldn’t go without…compensation?”

  Ange is crying. He hisses laughter, reaches over, and puts his hand on Vince’s shoulder. “You thought…Oh Jesus…Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That’s fuckin’ hilarious!”

  Now Vince is laughing, too, and the two of them are doubled over, struggling to catch their breath, slapping the dashboard.

  Finally, Ange wipes his eyes and shakes his head. “God, I like you, Donuts. I wish you could stay around. You’d really liven things up. And just so you know, if I was gonna do that, we always send two guys for that.” He wrinkles his face as if he’s eaten something sour. “It’s really hard to do by yourself.”

  Vince wipes his own eyes with the back of his sleeve. “Then what’s the favor? what’s the…compensation?”

  That word breaks Ange up again and he looks like he’s going to have a heart attack, slaps at his chest and makes a gun with his finger, points it at Vince, who falls—head to his knees, crying with laughter.

  “Oh-my-God,” Ange says when he can talk again. He hums a last laugh and reaches into his pocket, produces a roll of bills, and presses them into Vince’s hand. “Okay.” Catches his breath. “Here’s what John wants you to do: take this money, fly back to that little pissant town where the FBI apparently sends all the rats, buy a gun, and shoot that snitch Ray Sticks between his lyin’ fuckin’ eyes.”

  Chicago, Illinois / Columbus, Ohio

  1980 / November 2 / Sunday / 4:13 A.M.

  VI

  Chapter VI

  He sneaks off to the bathroom to be alone, as he often does now, slips out of his shoes, and just stands in front of the mirror, staring at the strange, wan face that opposes him: sandy hair gone gray and an overall quality of melting—the ’76 smile long since faded, eyes drifting at the corners. He turns on the hot water. Out there, the room will have dissolved into pacing and hushed voices…the meeting of worried eyes. He knows that when he leaves the room there is only one topic of discussion: how to handle him, how to direct him away from his flawed instincts. Their deference aside, he knows how they feel. Shoot, he feels the same way. Long ago, they convinced him that he was not tough enough, not decisive enough, too religious. Long ago, they convinced him that they couldn’t afford his genial naïveté—this stubborn belief that if he does his best, the best will happen. Long ago, they convinced him that the opposite is in fact true. He is his own worst enemy.

  Now he believes what they believe—that it is their job to protect him from himself. Their common enemy stares back in the mirror. Steam rises from the hot water. He sets down his briefing papers and puts his hands beneath the tap, holds them there as long as he possibly can, happy for any physical sensation that gets him out of his own head.

  “Ow!” He shakes his red hands and waits to see if anyone heard. But it’s quiet. It gives him a perverse thrill, to be so by himself like this. He is never by himself anymore. And yet he is always alone…and the more people in a room, the more alone he is. He runs his warm, wet hands over his face. Afterward…if it goes badly…what then? Golf? Go on TV? Go back home? What does a person do when this is over? When you’ve reached this place and been sent back down—wanting. He forgets sometimes that this is also about him…about his life, that there is a person at the core of this enterprise. Caddell will get a new batch of numbers and say, matter-of-factly, that they’re still facing the basic problem: people simply don’t like him. Not his administration or his policies; him. And the others in the room will nod and take notes, as if they’re talking about a dish soap or a TV show, and he will try to do the same, but inside is a voice, weakened, but still: Wait! This is me! They don’t like me! It’s really an amazing thing—the polls show that they believe he is a better man than his opponent, that he is more intelligent, more compassionate, and less likely to lead them into a catastrophic war…and still they want the other guy.

  He wonders sometimes, Who are these people? Who are these people who can believe that a man is good and smart and honest and charitable…and still not like him? What kind of a people are these? He still hears the pollster speaking directly at him for one of the few times: Look, the problem is this: You remind them of their weaknesses.

  Sometimes, he feels as though he’s sitting on the other side, with the men in the room, looking at the buffoon behind that desk like a puzzle that can be solved, like a product that can be sold better, and that’s usually when he excuses himself to go to the bathroom…to look for his own face in the mirror, to see if he’s still there.

  He turns off the water and takes the briefing file off the counter. Opens it again, as if there might be something he’s missed in State’s report on the conditions for release: noninterference; return of the Shah’s wealth; the unfreezing of assets; and the cancellation of lawsuits. And even then, the hostages will be released a few at a time, trickled out over months.

  Three months ago, this would have been good news. Three months ago, just having a coherent adult negotiating on the other side would have been a tremendous development. But now, two days before the election…this is simply what it is. It is not progress and it is not news and it is nothing but what it is. Bad weather. For weeks, he has listened to coercive voices suggesting that Iran’s war with Iraq is the only answer: trade arms for people. He resisted this, but now he sees why it kept coming back. It was his only chance of winning.

  Instead, he clung to the g
enuine hope that an agreement could be reached, that the Iranian parliament would come back with reasonable conditions. And now…What’s the quote Jody is always repeating, from a masked student on the embassy steps in those first days: We have brought America to her knees.

  His knees.

  Who are these people who believe he is to blame, who mistake bluster for bravery? What sane man would want to lead these people?

  He looks at his watch. Too early to call Ros. Sunday. Chicago. Sunday in Chicago. He pictures his schedule—meeting with black ministers. This was to be a key day of campaigning, last big push, shoring up the base for the stretch. He was going to turn the tide today and he’s been moving to this point for weeks: twenty hours a day, dawn on the East Coast, night on the West: rallying labor unions and teachers and ethnic ministers.

  They don’t like him.

  Sunday. Chicago. Sometimes at home, when he couldn’t sleep on Sunday mornings, he’d rise early, careful not to disrupt Ros, reach to the nightstand for his Bible, and run his fingers along the gilt-edged pages, thinking about that day’s Sunday-school lesson. He’d lay the ribbon aside and simply allow the book to fall open. That’s what he’d like to do now, but he knows what the guys in the room would do: stare at their shoes, roll their eyes. There’s a Bible back on Air Force One. There has to be one in this hotel room; no doubt there’s a bed somewhere and, next to the bed, a Bible. Or have they stopped doing that, putting Bibles in hotel rooms?

  Sunday. Chicago.

  He closes his eyes and tries to picture the ribbon and the soft gold-edged pages cracking and the book falling open, and he sees, in his mind, the Psalms of David, both willful and desperate, the plea of a strong man, the cry of a king: Judge me, O Lord; for I have walked in mine integrity.

  He opens his eyes, reaches out and touches the face in the mirror, the cool glass.

  We can go a couple of ways on this, Jody was saying just before he left the room, and then the two sides made their cases, the two ways they could use these conditions to political advantage. The hawks said that he needed to shake a fist and say, No! These terms are not acceptable! Flags and fists; look presidential. After a year, we refuse to bend to Iran’s terms. We will not be held hostage. He thinks of this way as the sword. Out-Reagan Reagan, one of them said. The second way is to claim victory. Imply that the terms are close and that the actual release of the hostages is a mere formality: Only a matter of time. We have been delivered. Contrast his statesmanship with the belligerence of his opponent. He thinks of this path as the shepherd. The sword and the shepherd. These are his choices. And the implication: There is still time to make good of this.