by Dan Newman
As I look at the events that have brought me to this comfortable, opulent room, I wake to the fact that my progress through the ranks has been nothing short of amazing. There has been no end of luck involved, although most of it—hell, all of it—has been manufactured by me.
I cannot—will not—let Trots take it all away from me. With a slow and deeply drawn breath, I settle in to wait for Colin Dysart.
This time, I avoid the books and sit in one of the chairs to wait. As the leather creaks its disapproval, the door swings open and Colin Dysart marches in. I pop up reflexively, but Dysart waves me down with one hand. “Please, sit, sit,” he says.
He settles into the other chair and laces his fingers in front of his chin. “So, David tells me you’ve new information about Chloe’s case?”
“Yeah, I wanted to come and speak to you directly, because it’s sensitive.”
Dysart is trying to remain calm and receptive, but behind his eyes there is an eagerness that has very sharp claws. “Please, go on.”
“Well, the night that it happened, when she was, well, shot, I saw the guy, but I really didn’t want to get mixed up with the police and the investigation, so I just told them what I knew and that was it. I was scared; I didn’t know what to do, so I just clammed up. I hardly even trusted myself. And I’m really sorry for that now—but please, hear me out.
“A couple of weeks ago, I came across this guy, completely by fluke. He was just sitting there on the wall with a bunch of other guys, and I walked past him. As I’m passing, I look him in the eye and as soon as I do I realize it: bang, it’s him. The guy from the alleyway. Anyway, I see the same reaction in him, so I put my head down and keep moving. A couple of minutes later, I look back and this guy is following me. He’s a big guy, so I can see his head above the crowd, and I get the hell outta there.”
“Where was this? Where did you see him?”
“Downtown.” I hurry on. “So the next day, I head down there again, to the place where I saw him—only I was looking from a safe distance—to see if he was there again, to see if that was his spot, his hangout. And sure enough, he’s there again. I didn’t know what to do, and I was scared. This guy knows I can identify him, so if he sees me…”
In one swift motion, Dysart snatches up the phone from its base on the table.
“Hey,” I say, alarm instantly in my voice. “What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Jim Garland; he’s the lead detective on the case.”
I reach for the phone in Dysart’s hand and hold it. There is a strange standoff, both of us holding the phone, and for a moment I think he will physically shove me across the room for my insolence. The moment passes when he registers the fear on my face. “No, Mr. Dysart—please, you can’t. You can’t call the police,” I plead with all finality I can muster.
“Why not?”
I let all of my fears flow through now. “I can’t get in the middle of this. This guy has already killed one person, and I’m sorry, but I’m not putting myself in the position to be the next one.”
“Nonsense,” he says, tugging the phone from my grip. “This is a police matter and we need—”
“No!” I bark. As I do so I stand bolt upright, again purely on reflex, and turn almost imperceptibly toward the door.
Dysart falters: “Wait. Sit down. Let’s talk about this.” He sets the phone back in its cradle and shows me his empty hand, like a croupier after the deal.
“Mr. Dysart, you don’t understand. I looked into this guy. He’s a bad guy, a criminal, and part of some kind of network…an organization. Look, there are others that he’s always with and even if the police pick him up, his guys are still out there, and I’m the one who put him in jail!”
Dysart takes a steadying breath and waves me back into the chair. Adrenaline is coursing through me and I make a conscious decision to ride it. “And I work at your paper—I’m bylined. I’m easy to find. Do you understand what I’m saying? If you go to the police, it’s a death sentence for me.” I am shaking now, and the fear is real—although not born of the source Dysart thinks.
He stands and walks slowly to the bookshelf and pinches the bridge of his nose.
I go on. “I want to help you, I do. I know you need to know who did this to your daughter, but please understand that things are different on the street. It’s not tidy, it’s not all buttoned down. After the police do their thing, people like me get left behind. I’m sorry, Mr. Dysart, but I don’t want to die trying to help you.”
Dysart lets out a long breath. “What are you asking?”
“I’m asking that you not take this to the police. If you do, I’ll end up like Chloe.”
“But the police…”
Adrenaline lets me slice through his objections. “Mr. Dysart, do you really think the police will give any credence to my testimony two years later? Not to mention that you gave me a job at the Star-Telegraph, and that I’m basically your employee. Christ, the lawyers would shred me.”
I see a small rent in his armor, so I push on with everything I have. “And let’s say you do go to the police and he is convicted—and remember that would be on the back of a memory that miraculously reappeared two years later. He gets sentenced to life, and with the system the way it is right now, he’ll likely have his first parole hearing in a decade, be denied a couple of times, and be back on the street in fifteen. And in the meantime, I’m dead, Chloe’s dead, and he can come up here and press the buzzer on your gate to say hi.”
It is a pitiless finish and I know it. But right now I can’t afford to be gentle.
Dysart closes his eyes briefly.
I reach into the pocket of my windbreaker and remove the envelope of photographs. “There are two facts I know for sure here, Mr. Dysart. One is that the man in these photographs is the one who killed your daughter, and the other is that if you take him through the courts there’s a damn good chance he’ll walk. At best he does fifteen years. Then he’s out. Scot-free.”
I wait for a moment and let the pause stretch out. “Mr. Dysart,” I say finally, calming my voice to as steady a tone as I can make it. “You can’t address this inside the courts.”
He looks at me and I see something steely there, something hard and unrelenting. Something I wanted and needed to see. It’s there for just a moment, then gone.
“Look at these,” I say, placing the manila envelope on the table with four rolls’ worth of prints inside. “I took these just yesterday. He has a spot at Union Station. I think he’s a drug dealer and maybe a bookie, but he’s regular. He’s there two, three days a week. Always around the same place.”
Dysart picks up the envelope and pauses. For a brief moment he’s the man I met two years ago, freshly grieving for his little girl. He’s no media magnate, no one-man economic lightning rod; just a helpless, heartbroken father.
As quickly as it came, the moment is crushed and Dysart upends the envelope and removes the pictures. He moves through them quickly, flipping the front one to the back, until he settles on one that catches Trots clearly among the sea of heads milling around Union Station.
“This is the man?” he asks almost in a whisper.
I nod and watch as the muscles in the corner of his jaw clench and put his teeth under all the collective pressure of two years’ worth of unanswered questions. There’s a shift in his eyes, like a cloud moving in to block the sunlight, and I can see a flood of crimson push up past his collar and into his face.
Dysart never lifts his eyes from the photo. “How sure are you?”
“Mr. Dysart, there is absolutely no doubt. I watched this man kill your daughter.”
I remind myself that there is some degree of atonement to be had here, and providing this information to Colin Dysart is in part doing the right thing.
“His name is Trots,” I add. “I don’t know if it’s his real name or a nickname, but that’s what they call him.”
Dysart looks through the rest of the pictures, shaking his head gentl
y as he does, until the last one is filed back into the wallet. “May I keep these?” he asks.
“Sure, but no police. Or I’ll be dead a week after they pick him up. I’m bringing this to you because I remember how much you needed answers the last time I was here, and I had nothing to give you. At least now you can put a face to the person responsible.”
Dysart is still looking at the picture, and I’m not even sure if he has heard what I’ve said. He’s far away, his mind already five steps into something else. I stand and move toward the door.
“And what about you, Roland? What will you do with this guy out there, this guy who knows your face?” Finally he looks up at me.
“Me?” I say, looking into eyes that now seem hollow, yet fixed with a frightening determination, “I’m just going to go home, and hope that this problem just…goes away, somehow.”
• • •
On the cab ride back home I understand, for the first time, the concept of delayed gravity. It’s that sensation that Wile E. Coyote is so familiar with: a wild run at full tilt taken with absolute commitment to the cause that takes you unknowingly over a precipice and for a moment—about four heartbeats—you hover. Nothing but yawning canyon below. A moment later you intellectually grasp the peril, and then—and only then—delayed gravity kicks in. Down you go.
In the back of the cab, something in my gut is plummeting south to the canyon floor. I catch myself muttering a mantra of “Holy fuck, holy fuck,” and only after the cabbie says, “Pardon, I didn’t catch what you said” do I realize what I’m saying and zip it. The handhold I go for helps calm me: if it’s in the notebook, don’t question it.
The day is still in its prime—a little after two in the afternoon—and what a day it has been. Ahead of me is the weekend, and, after I hand in my notice at the Star-Telegraph on Monday, two weeks of pure throwaway. I’ll get no real assignments, I won’t be asked to cover anything. For the most part it’ll be two weeks of marking time.
And time, I note, is all that needs adding to the mix. For now, the most important thing is staying alive. I remember that what I’m doing is simply forcing a favorable shape on an unfavorable situation. I’m designing an outcome, taking charge of my future, making my own breaks. I’m joining the ranks of the Makers, not the Takers.
33
If ever there was a time to have a weekend out of town, this would be it. My main concern is Trots, of course, and the fact that the deadline he’s given me is here. I flip through the spiral-bound notebook, past pages of hieroglyphs and something akin to spirit writing, and on to the blank page at the end where the plan ceases and all eyes turn to me. What next, boss?
The security of autopilot is simply not there. For a moment I think of Dr. Coyle, of the surety of those conversations, of the strange and temporary sense of refuge that her office provided—that crappy, smoky little dive above the laundromat. But I can’t go back there—not in any sense.
I place the notebook on the table carefully and then, in an act of singular bravery, I pick it up and pitch it into the trash. It has served its purpose and there’s no more to be squeezed from it. Over the course of the next two hours, I decide that whatever I do to stay clear of Trots need not be grand and dramatic to be effective. The city is large and filled with nooks and crannies ideal for the business of hiding. In the end, I decide on simply switching to the West Side, and with a small backpack stuffed with a few clothes and toiletries, I slip out of the building and into the safety of a cab.
I check into the trendy Metropolitan Hotel and order a bottle of wine and a burger, enjoying the fact that my career is on the upswing. I gulp at the overpriced wine; I insist in reveling in my good fortune, celebrating the way anybody would who was just offered a high-profile gig with USBN.
It’s only a matter of minutes—about twelve of them—before I’m sitting in front of the TV twitching my thumb through channel after channel of mindless drivel. I’ll spend Saturday and Sunday here, check out Monday morning, drop off my acceptance letter at USBN, and head to the Star-Telegraph to tender my resignation.
In the middle of the fifteenth or sixteenth loop through the channels, I come across a scene that holds my attention just long enough to temporarily paralyze my thumb. It’s a Bible-thumper station and for some reason that escapes me, I watch and listen just long enough to hear a man’s voice speaking. The words he is saying scroll across the screen on a background of what I’m guessing is a desert scene from the holy land. “Do something good,” he says. “Not by chance, but on purpose. Even if it’s just once. Go on, do something good.”
The scene changes and I lose interest. My thumb resumes twitching and the channels flick by in a comforting, predictable way. An hour later, I give up on celebrating and accept my act of hiding for what it is. I climb into a gloriously soft bed and wonder if the service people here at the Met, the ones who selected this bed for this room, can count my sense of wonder at just how goddamn soft this bed is as their “something good.”
As I mentally wrestle with yet another small and insignificant debate, I become slowly aware of a creeping sense of dread tied directly, but somehow indefinably, to doing my own “something good.” The voice/writing said it had to be on purpose, so I rifle my thoughts and try to come up with something that qualifies. I strike out almost immediately. Nothing. So I move on to the unconscious—things that I’ve done that may have inadvertently been something good, but a quick rummage reveals another big fat nothing. Dr. Coyle’s voice echoes hollowly in the back of my head: …and I don’t even want to know what it is, to be honest, but it doesn’t sound like something good.
34
Things happen quickly for the rich.
It’s Sunday, my second day at the Met, and I cross the street—still cautious, but fairly confident that an encounter with Trots on the West Side is unlikely—to have breakfast at Sunshine’s, one of the city’s best breakfast spots. I get a booth in the corner and help myself to a copy of the Sun as I wait for my eggs.
The front page cries out DOUBLE MURDER, and, sadly, it’s the kind of headline that’s become less and less surprising over the last few years. The Sun tells me that murders numbers eighty-one and eighty-two of the year were discovered floating in an inner lagoon in Waterview Park, a small, lonely spit of land jutting out into the harbor.
After toast, eggs, and coffee, I return to my room and hover about while housekeeping straightens things up. Once she’s gone, I sit down and craft my letter for the Star-Telegraph, and wonder if it should be short and sweet or appreciative and slightly forlorn about my leaving. It takes me an hour to finish, all of it longhand, and after a quick visit to the business office downstairs I have in my hands my first ever resignation letter.
Satisfied, I flop in front of the television once more, and turn it on just in time to learn that the dead men in Waterview Park, one black and one white, were apparently beaten to death, and then tossed into the lagoon where they were discovered by a jogger sometime late on Saturday. Both, the pretty woman at the anchor desk says, were known to police and their names were Matt Cassidy—a local hood—and Terrance Richard Ottley, a native of the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia.
At first it doesn’t register; the name Matt Cassidy means nothing to me. But then the penny drops and it all comes into crisp, clear focus. Terrance Richard Ottley. T. R. Ottley. Trots.
I hold my breath involuntarily. He did it. He really did it.
• • •
After stuffing my belongings into my bag, I check out one night early from the Met, and smile acidly as I get screwed on the late cancellation fee. I don’t care, not really, because as of late Saturday night, I’ve shed one very large monkey from my back. The cab ride home takes me along First Street, right past Union Station, and I see that Trots’s spot is conspicuously empty.
Once home, I sit down and continue mechanical tasks—tasks that occupy my mind and provide evidence that the world is rolling along just as it always has. I unpack, toss in a load
of laundry, tidy my apartment, and stack the magazines that litter the coffee table—two of them with Colin Dysart peering up at me. Finally, I reread my resignation letter and immediately throw it away. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but the act of sitting and pounding away on my laptop is therapeutic.
Once I have it written, rewritten, and then rewritten again, I’m satisfied and I save it for printing at the office tomorrow. The phone rings and I’m saved from dark pondering. For now. I reach out and snatch it up. “Hello?”
“Roland? Roland Keene?” The voice is vaguely familiar: strong, authoritarian, but strangely soft at the edges. I can’t place it.
“Yes, this is Roland.”
“Good, good. Roland. Thasgood.”
I can sense what it is now, that soft edge, as if the voice is being spoken through numb lips: he’s drunk, or at least drinking. “Mr. Dysart?” I ask cautiously. “Is that you?”
“Of course, yes.” His tone changes now and becomes quiet, but I can feel the tension at his end, humming like a taut wire in the few words he has spoken.
He says nothing, and predictably I fill the void. “Is everything okay?”
“Roland,” he says quietly, almost reverently. “I wanted to call and speak to you.”
“Yes?”
“I wanted to ask you again—about that night. About Chloe.”
“Sure, sure,” I say, as if talking to a child. “What do you want to know?”
“Look, I apologize for calling, but—”
“No, no—”
“She was so young and, so…” He takes a steadying breath or perhaps a drink, and then, “In the street, that night. Was she frightened?”
It’s a question I remember him asking before, and one I’ve answered. But something inside me immediately understands his need to hear it answered again and again. “Mr. Dysart, she was—”