Boom, boom, boom, boom.
I don't remember much that came next.
This is what I heard happened afterward:
• The state police brought in Teller, who told them he didn't know anything. They grilled him for hours and got nothing for the effort and had to let him go.
• The state police and the sheriff's department found the cook house, an old double-wide on a hillside with its own generator and four cooks working twelve-hour shifts. The cooks stated they were working independently, and had been robbing local businesses for supplies. No one said anything about the Brotherhood.
• Browne's body was found in his house three days later. The medical examiner determined he had fallen down his stairs and broken his neck.
• The police questioned Walters in Bobbi Fisher's disappearance, then released.
Christmas came and left. I don't remember much of it. Any of it, if I'm truthful here. I don't remember Doria calling me. I don't remember her leaving voice mails. I don't remember Billy coming by to make sure I was alive. I don't remember the times I must have driven to the convenience store, blasted out of my mind, to buy more beer. I don't remember Woody pounding on my door. I didn't have to hear that Dan Fogelberg song again.
I don't remember it becoming the new year. That's three weeks of my life. Completely gone. Three weeks I'll never get back.
I start remembering things around the time Bobbi Fisher showed up at my front door.
22
It was a little after 10 on a Tuesday morning and Pabst Blue Ribbon sounded good for breakfast when someone knocked at my door.
"Fuck off!" I yelled. It was likely Billy since I'd run off any other soul who might give a good goddamn about whether I drowned in a pool of my own vomit. If it was Billy, about now would be when he'd yell something parental—in the school of "Suck my cock, you ungrateful pile of shit!"—and storm back to his house. By knowing I could speak, and therefore was alive at least in the biological sense, if not the philosophical meaning, he could feel he'd done his fatherly duty, and I didn't want to deny the old man that.
The knocking continued, though. "I said, 'fuck off!'" I threw extra emphasis into my voice. There was more pounding at the door. I cursed and pushed myself up off the couch, tried to steady myself and failed, and tumbled forward, landing flat on my face.
Izzy gave me the hairy eyeball from her post next to the couch. She spent her days watching me—loads of intense dog staring. Her head moved in the arc of my collapsing body as I hit the floor. She walked over and sniffed me a few times and licked my face.
I didn't put up much resistance. Normally I would have, considering the places where her tongue often went. But if we're being truthful here, anywhere on Izzy was cleaner than anywhere on me right then, so I gave it a good “Oh, what the hell?” and let her keep going.
This asshole at my door, however, didn't give up. It took on a ferocity you expect when you owe money to people with "the" as a middle name.
"If I give you money, will you go away?" I said, and held my breath. Partially because a wave of nausea hit me and I wanted to vomit, and partially because if they took me up on the offer, I was fucked. Maintaining a constant bender isn’t cheap, even when you buy from the bottom of the shelf.
A female voice said, "I'm looking for Henry Malone."
I didn't recognize the voice. It couldn't be Doria. I accessed a vague memory of talking to her, and of her asking me what was going on, but there wasn't much besides that. I didn't count on her making a return appearance to Chez Malone anytime soon.
"He's dead," I said, timing my words between slurps from Izzy's surfboard-sized tongue.
"Really?"
"Yep." I swatted at Izzy to stop. She got a few more licks in, then hauled herself back to her spot. I pushed myself onto my knees. It hurt like the proverbial motherfucker. "Leave a message, and I'll pass it on to him."
A pause, and then, "How you gonna do that if he's dead?" She sounded confused.
I scooted over to the couch, took a firm hold on the arm, and worked my way to my feet.
"Ouija Board." I pressed hard on the couch arm. My legs wobbled. I wasn't sober, but I was somewhere close enough to be casing the neighborhood. I needed a drink. "If you've got anything you wanna say to Elvis, I'll give that a run, too."
The pause that followed was long enough to fool me into believing she had left.
"Mr. Malone?"
Like most things in life, I was wrong.
I clutched the wall as I shuffled out of the living room and toward the front door. I caught hold of the door knob as my balance gave way and opened the door.
She looked different from the pictures. She'd dyed her hair red, and it was all stuffed underneath a Cincinnati Bengals baseball cap. She'd lost weight and had dark rings underneath her eyes. She swam under the bulk of a heavy winter coat. But there was no mistaking who she was.
"Mr. Malone," she said. "I'm Bobbi Fisher. People tell me you've been looking for me."
I put on coffee, locked the bathroom door, and puked for a few minutes. When that ordeal finished, I took a shower hot enough to wipe off the first two layers of skin. I avoided looking in the mirror as I dried off. I wouldn’t like what would be looking back at me.
I dressed in the cleanest jeans and T-shirt I had and found Bobbi at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and petting Izzy. Izzy had plopped her head on Bobbi's knee, resting on its side, moving around as to give Bobbi's fingers the best access to the places in dire need of a scratching.
I poured myself a cup and sat down across from Bobbi. She took a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket. "Mind if I smoke?" she said. I told her I didn't mind so long as she gave me one. She was pretty when she smiled. Not a beauty queen, but in an honest, unpretentious way. I set a cereal bowl between us to use as an ashtray.
"How long have you been back?" I said.
“Since last night. Mitch and the girls didn't expect it, and the look on their faces when I showed up, you’d have thought they watched me crawl out of a grave.”
“Not an unjustified response. There's a county full of people expecting to find you in a state of decomposition somewhere, Ms. Fisher. You mind telling me what happened?”
She knocked ash into the bowl. "Me leaving was shitty, Mr. Malone, but I did what I had to do for my babies."
"Three months. You left three months ago, with your brother and his wife to raise your babies. Honey, you've lost any shot you had to get a 'Best Mom Ever' coffee mug next Christmas."
Her eyes met mine. "I've been crashing in someone's basement for those three months, and every night I've cried myself to sleep thinking about my girls, so don't act like you got any right to be a prick to me because you spent a little time asking questions about where I was."
"Then answer this question for me: What happened?"
She sucked down the last of her cigarette and lit a fresh one off of its dying embers. "I suppose you know I was fucking Richard Walters."
“Everyone seemed to know it but the police, and I’m sure they know now.”
She shook her head. "The asshole." She blew tendrils of smoke out of her nostrils. “I worked at McGinley and Kurt because I had some secretarial classes over at the community college, though they’re not ‘secretarial’ classes now; it's called being an 'administrative assistant,' which is funny since it’s still filing papers and getting coffee and getting your ass smacked by the boss." She drank coffee. "I guess Richie—that's what he said everyone called him—he made it clear he was after me, and I kept saying, ‘no,’ and he kept wearing me down, and 'no' turned into 'yes.' It worked for a while. We liked each other."
She helped herself to another cup of coffee. “I was at his house about a week before everything, and we were just got done fucking. He had this thing, he liked fucking in their bed, where he and his wife slept in, because he said it was a turn-on for him. Anyway, the doorbell rang, and he freaked out because it was Tuesday and we'd told everyone we'd be in Marli
ngton for a deposition. I thought it might be his wife but then again it's her house, so she wouldn't have much count to ring her own doorbell, would she?
"He looked out the window and said 'fuck' over and over. Told me to stay put. I'm naked, laying in another woman's bed, I'm not sure where the hell it is he thinks I'll go, so I watch while he throws on pants and a shirt and answers the door.
“I could hear 'em talking at the doorway, and Richie said he's told them to not come to his house. Then one guy told Richie that he's not the boss of this deal, that this is the Brotherhood’s operation, and people aren’t not happy with the way the buys are coming.
"I got up and cracked the door and looked and there were two guys there. Richie looked real nervous, pacing around, and the skinny guy, he was smiling, and the other guy, he seemed very serious. Richie told them everything was fine, for them to focus on the product and the money, and how he would take care of the rest. They walked outside, and I looked out bedroom window and watched them get into a car. The serious guy, he unlocked the driver's side door, stopped and looked up toward the house and he saw me in the window." Her body shook, as if fighting off a chill. “He had a look like he saw right through me. Like me being there mattered no more than a cat in an alleyway. Then they got in their car and started up and drove off.
"The next day, I took the girls to school, and he was parked across from my girls' school, smoking a cigarette. He was there when I picked 'em up at the end of the day, and he was there the next morning. When I came out of Kroger from buying groceries, Mr. Malone. It scared the fuck out of me."
"So you opted to bail and leave your girls here?"
Bobbi lit a new cigarette. "You think I'm stupid, or I’m a bad mother, but those girls are everything to me. I could have taken them and left, but I couldn't do anything to protect them. I've got a gun, but there's a world of difference between protecting me and protecting them. My brother, he was in the Army, over there the first time we invaded Iraq, and he's got nothing against killing someone, especially if it means keeping the girls safe. I called friends in Cincinnati, and they let me stay with them while I tried to figure things out. The girls were safer here, with my brother, than anywhere they'd be with me."
“So why d'you come back?”
She exhaled a cloud of smoke, seemed to contemplate it. "Missed my girls. And realized that being scared of dying ain't no way to live. First thing I did was see my brother and the girls, and he told me about you, so here I am."
"You let anyone else know you're back in town?"
"No one but my family.”
“Then I need you to make sure they don’t tell anyone. Don’t call the police, talk to the neighbors, nothing.”
"Why?"
"Because we need you to stay vanished a little while longer."
23
Woody didn't say anything as I walked into the noon AA meeting. He stood at the other side of the room, chatting up with a few of the regulars. He saw me and he gave me a nod, but he kept on talking to the other guys while I poured a cup of coffee.
The meeting was a few folks bitching about the circumstances of their existence and the others grateful for whatever they had going on. When my turn rolled around, I passed. Woody gave the standard "Thanks, Henry," and moved on to the next drunk in line.
Everyone gathered outside to smoke after the meeting. Woody had his back against the stone, staring out at the parking lot.
"Bum a smoke?" I said.
Woody handed me the pack and matches. Once I had my cigarette lit, and he'd deposited everything back to their proper places, he said, "How you doing?"
"I'm sober today."
"It is one day at a time. I see you're choosing to rejoin the world?"
"Things came up."
"Must have been a hell of a lot of things. It's been a couple of weeks since I heard hide or hair of you. Plenty of shit going down in that time."
"I don't suppose you got your Christmas card."
Woody took a pull from the cigarette and dropped the butt to the ground and crushed it out. "I think you need to find a new sponsor, Henry. I'm not sure you want this, or you don't want it how I can help you."
"That's not it, Woody. It's—"
"No, that is it. That, and you're an arrogant prick, and an asshole, and you got shot and left the state police because you couldn't be 'Super Cop' anymore, and whatever else you tell yourself has wronged you in your life. Your mom, Maggie, all the other shit, that's the motherfucking past, Henry, and you need to treat it as such. You need to look at your goddamn here and now rather than—"
I leaned in close to him. "Bobbi Fisher is alive."
Woody stopped in mid-rant. He lifted his thick eyebrows into an expression that would have been surprise on most people, but on Woody, it instead registered as a mild interest. He looked around to see if anyone was listening. "What?"
"She showed up at my doorstep this morning. Boom, right out of nowhere."
"Nothing on the news about her being back."
"Because no one knows."
“How is she?”
"She’s fine, but she’s got an interesting story to tell about Walters and the Brotherhood, and it's something we can use to make things connect."
"And now you need help."
"A smidge."
"A smidge of that help would come from me?"
"A smidge of that smidge would indeed come from you."
"It suspect there will be several smidges involved in this."
"There are multiple smidges."
Woody lit a fresh cigarette. "Where's she at now?"
"Billy's house."
"That's a serious fucking smidge right there."
"Billy’s someone I trust to keep her safe."
"He might be the only person I know better armed than me."
"He doesn’t carry canister grenades."
"I can hook him up if he's so inclined." He crossed his arms over his chest. "You gotta tell me you will not bail again. This shit, if you can't handle it, you need to let someone know who can."
"I've got this. But I can’t do it myself, and I got big enough balls to say so, so I’m asking for help, which is why I’m asking if you want to go talk to the woman we have to keep safe from meth-cooking white supremacists?"
Woody smiled. "When you put it that way, the day gets a lot more interesting."
Billy had a shotgun resting on the dining room table and was reading the newspaper when Woody and I walked in. Bobbi was across from him, eating a sandwich and barbecue chips.
I introduced Woody to Bobbi. "You'll stay at Woody's while we figure out things with the Brotherhood," I said.
Bobbi gave Woody the up-and-down and took a drink of Mountain Dew. “This hippie’s place is safe?”
"The farm's secluded," I said, "and he's got dogs and guns."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
“Yes,” Woody said. “That’s the purpose of mentioning the dogs and the guns.”
Bobbi ate another chip and excused herself to the bathroom.
Billy put down his newspaper. "What you boys getting yourself into?"
"Just a little sniffing around," I said. "Nothing to worry about."
Billy took a comb from his pocket and ran it through his hair as he talked. "The Brotherhood, they the ones who beat you up, uglied you up worse than life already had done?"
I looked at Woody. "You hear this? Imagine what it was like when I was 12 and chubby."
Billy shoved the comb back in his pocket and picked his newspaper back up. "Never liked those assholes. Never knew no reason they had to go around, poking at niggers and Jews and whatnot."
"You using the n-word sort of makes you sound like one of them," I said.
Billy gave the newspaper a good shake. "I'm an old man, so I can say what I want. It's a word, same as any other, and it's only worth whatever you think it's worth. I got no issue with no one, don't care what color they are, so long as they ain't got no issue with me." H
e glanced over to Woody. "You planning on helping this idiot do whatever the hell it is he thinks he's gonna do."
Woody smiled. "He'll need some help."
Billy gave his head a slow, mournful shake. "You're both retarded. You can't fight ignorance like that, not when it's stirred in with meanness, and all of 'em, that's what they've got, is stupidity mixed up with anger and fear. All they’re looking for is folks to blame for why their lives are the shit storms they are, instead of looking at themselves."
I gestured down the hallway, toward the bathroom. "She's got kids. Someone’s gotta do something or she’ll just spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, being scared."
"We're all scared, son," Billy said. "It's choosing what to do with the being scared that makes you whatever you are."
24
Doria opened her front door, looked at me, then slammed the door shut.
Success.
I rang the doorbell.
"I own a gun, Henry," she said from the other side of the door. “Guns. Multiple. I’ll use ‘em. All of them."
"That seems excessive."
"You don't fuck with women in menopause; we'll run over you and blame it on soy supplements."
"I need to talk. It's cold out here, and my knee isn't for shit, so it's gonna be hard for me to get down there to beg and be able to get back up. You wouldn't put a cripple through that, would you?"
The door cracked open enough to show one eye and a sliver of Doria's face. "Did you just call yourself a cripple?"
"Do I strike you as a man washed over with shame?"
"None whatsoever."
"Then can we move past that part of things and get to the part where I come inside and explain myself and I throw myself at your feet and beg forgiveness?"
The door opened wider. Full face. She wore a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants. She made sweatpants look hot, goddammit.
"I like the part about begging for forgiveness. You can start with that."
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