>>If that were true, any bulb would do.
Me: So why me?
No answer. For a very long time. So I went in another direction.
Me: Interesting fact. I’m right outside your door. Waiting. Me, Silvina.
>>Nice try. I’m in a car. Outside your place. Me, Langer.
Me: Nice try. I doubt Langer knows how to spell this good. And I’m in the penthouse suite of this luxury hotel in Singapore, with a guard at the door.
>>Seventh floor, right?
Now it was my turn to deflect.
Me: How do I find and kill Langer?
>>Not fond of him?
Me: Neither are you.
>>But I don’t like other people doing my work for me.
Me: That’s a big fat lie.
>>That hurts.
Me: Doubt it.
>>I don’t have a good location on Langer. Probably because I don’t have a good location on you.
Me: Nice try. How can you even text this phone? How did you do that? In the bar? Some sleight of hand?
>>No, through your Jill twin. But she only sold you out partway. I was supposed to be able to track you, too, not just text you.
So it hadn’t been my efforts. Just my conference friend feeling guilty and me ditching my work phone. How Hellmouth must have relished my use of that name in the bar.
>>How about this? You should tell me where you are, because Langer’s going to find you eventually.
Me: Not sure any of that is true.
>>I know one thing that’s true.
Me: What’s that?
>>I think you’d like to be Silvina.
Me: Dead?
>>A martyr. A dangerous martyr who lost perspective.
Me: You don’t know me.
But I knew that wasn’t true either, just from his choice of “Hellbender.”
>>I know you came up to find my room at that conference. I know that.
Somehow, that’s what got to me. The most insignificant thing. The way he kept pushing that at me.
Me: Other than a really shitty pickup artist, who are you?
No response. One last salvo across the bow a couple minutes later. I was in a houseboat, after all.
Me: I’m not sure why you decided to write your diary as texts to me the past four months. It’s kind of pathetic. Don’t you have any friends? A therapist?
I waited.
Nothing.
Tossed the phone onto the bed next to me, took out an area map. Even faux, Hillman had me thinking about the next leg.
I don’t know what had been holding me back. What better form of oblivion than to be lost in a virgin wilderness without people?
Mythic salamanders. Mythic me. I’d play detective in creeks and in rivers, look under rocks like back in the day. Forget anything that came after.
Except I hadn’t been able to ask Hellmouth the deadly question. The question I didn’t want to know the answer to.
What was the extent of the connection between Langer and Silvina?
[77]
Me and Shovel Pig and Bog and Road Newt needed to leave the houseboat behind. Another bleary morning, that was my first thought. Almost-Hillman seemed like a premonition. But I spent that day pretending to be a private eye. I went to the husband’s favorite places just as they opened for lunch, before they got busy. I asked around, in all the innocent ways I’d learned. I talked to waitstaff who were afraid of me or wary of me or amused by me. I went through the motions of showing a photo of Silvina. Langer. I never mentioned names. I tried to ask people, who I felt, by some intuition, had lived in the town a long time.
I built up a portrait of the husband as a good guy, a humble guy. A guy who was a little boring. Who people liked because he was a little boring. There are worse things than being a little boring. Although not many.
Where I could, I walked, despite the pain. The cold was good. Being wrapped in a greatcoat was good. The pale haze of the winter sky, the enrapturing mountains and forests peering down—all good, all so normal.
I usually stopped talking to people when I felt the compulsion to say “I’ve got a giant salamander in my room no one’s ever seen before.”
I usually stopped talking when I felt the need to start sharing anything. It happened. I may have come to realize I was a loner posing as someone normal. But I still needed to connect to people. Share with them, out of politeness. And I hadn’t made enough fictions about the private eye I was pretending to be. My background was paper thin so I wouldn’t slip up. Because it changed so often.
The doctor who had taken the bullet out of my shoulder in the back of his not-antiseptic van had said, “You’re lucky it jammed up against the muscle. You’re lucky it wasn’t higher caliber. You’re lucky you found me when you did.”
But was I?
One thing I liked to do in a case like this is talk, under some pretense, to the mark. My car was so close to being junk in a scrapyard, I clearly needed a new one. Why not visit the husband at his job? I liked the comforting risk in that. I’d resisted only because Nora had been so insistent.
It made it feel like a bad lead. Too familiar.
* * *
Hellmouth texted me again while I ate a lousy chicken sandwich in the parking lot of Turtle Fred’s. It should’ve been comfort food, but the grease smelled like the skin I’d covered myself in against the flames. The crackle and snap of the pockets of fat.
I forced most of it down, tossed the rest out of the window, phone beeping.
>>Good afternoon, Jill. Want to meet up?
Me: No. I’m booked. But I have a question.
>>I probably don’t have an answer.
Me: Langer and Vilcapampa: how did that work? Before it went sour?
The evidence circumstantial, perhaps coincidental, but …
>>The usual way. Part of it worked. They both saw themselves as humanitarians. As people who understand the way the world worked.
Me: Deluded.
>>You don’t understand Langer. He began to see himself as an anarchist. Someone changing the world order.
Me: By killing animals?
>>Just the means. One set of means. Allowed him access to a forbidden world, rogue scientists, rogue players. The ones he thought would actually make a difference.
Me: Vilcapampa?
>>Vilcapampa made his early money off drugs and smuggling live animals for the exotics trade. Never totally got free of that, really.
Me: Another reason to be vague about the past.
>>And Langer got Vilcapampa illegal big game hunts. That sort of thing. Arranged it.
Me: A real humanitarian.
>>Like the devil is a humanitarian.
Me: And where do you fall in that spectrum?
>> And it was a while before Vilcapampa’s people realized they were in too deep with Langer. With Contila.
In that lack of answer about the Devil, I knew I should see the answer. It was right there, staring from the darkness, but I just couldn’t see it. Decided to pivot.
Me: Agency?
>>Pardon?
Me: You decide.
>>Clever. Langer had agency for a time, a clear agenda. A kind of Robin Hood. Help the poor, hurt the government, corporations.
Me: And who do you work for? Vilcapampa?
I knew he didn’t. Just wanted a reaction.
>>I forget. It escapes me.
Me: And Langer and Silvina?
>>It worked the usual way. All the parts fit just fine.
It took me a moment to process that. To understand Hellmouth meant Silvina and Langer had slept together. I began to type my surprise, thought better of it. Started over.
Me: And Silvina was drawn to, what, his sexy anarcho-sociopath qualities?
>>More that love-hate thing.
Me: Physical, then.
>>Very. You should see the surveillance photos.
Me: Show me.
>>Voyeur! Kinky. But I don’t have them anymore. Just trust me.
&nb
sp; Considered that a moment. Didn’t trust it. In what capacity would he have been privy to the intel? Felt, again, like a fed thing. Or Hellmouth had had a mole.
Me: She thought she’d turn him. Convince him. Use the Robin Hood impulse to pry him wide open.
>>Why do you care? It must bother you. Why does it bother you, Jilly?
Me: Don’t call me that … Then they split up.
>>Obviously. Silvina dumped him.
Me: Would you have slept with me?
>>Field work. Magic. Who do *you* work for?
So that made him uncomfortable. Good.
Me: No one.
>>Are you sure?
Me: What do you want?
>>Want or need?
Me: What is your purpose?
>>What. Is. Robot’s. Purpose.
Me: Yes.
>>
Me: Well?
>>Purpose is overrated. Along with mission statements. You know Larry died in the hospital, right? Allie’s gone missing.
Me: Was that you?
>>No, that was us. Working together.
Me: Fuck you.
>>I thought we already covered that. Oh—and Alex shuttered your company. You must have seen that.
I put the phone down. Hellmouth was full of unpleasant revelations. Silvina. Allie. The company going under didn’t surprise me. I didn’t care, either. I did care whether Allie had been hurt.
I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t. Wanted a cigarette. No, I didn’t. Thankfully, I never allowed the bottles of booze to follow me into the car.
I could smell the sweet, subtle odor of tenrec following me from the warehouse. Curling around me, as physical as wire against the throat. I’d had to look that one up. Not knowing what a tenrec was had haunted me. But knowing hadn’t helped.
Part of me wanted to tell Hellmouth where I was and just get it over with. Whatever he wanted, whatever he was after.
Unless what suited Hellmouth best was me in limbo. In which case it didn’t matter.
[78]
Sometimes I feel as if we live in hell and don’t even realize it. The lacerations are endless. The lies we accept, the rituals we perform. All these useless acts.
All these worthless cases I thought were worth taking on. While the world burned. While Vilcapampa was taking god-knows-what measures—and not just against me, but, I imagined, against the remnants of Silvina’s network. If “Friends of” could be considered a network and if that network still had a purpose. While Hellmouth searched like some infernal floating eye. I might’ve put Ronnie in danger just by going to Unitopia. Everything I turned my attention to turned to shit.
Small beer. Small potatoes. Small towns. Where would these cases have gone without me? These needs and wants, these paranoid fears that half the time were actually something. But usually not worth the victim knowing the truth. What I really owed them was to put the truth in the widest possible context. To spread Silvina’s gospel, to overturn the comfort of the everyday with the knowledge of what would come tomorrow.
No matter who Silvina had been in bed with, literally and figuratively. No matter what Silvina had meant to do, no matter whether I agreed with it or not, I knew she was right about the state of the world. So maybe I was hiding in more than one way. Maybe I was hiding from the future.
The ethics of surveillance. The ethics of spying. Well, I’d thrown that all out the window with my small-beer cases. Everything existed in a tactical state of gray. You couldn’t untangle the passion from the logic, the underlying philosophy from the technology.
Fuck it. I had a job to do.
* * *
I arrived late in the day. The car dealership slumped across a lot on the edge of town, the kind of generic place with streamers and banners that fades into the background so easily. The streetlamps here were a sickly yellow that leaked light in strange patches. The competing green-gray of sky sparked against the steel of flagpoles and chrome of car hoods. I already knew the business wasn’t doing well—the financials were terrible.
The office Nora had mentioned was a kind of island: a shed on the west end of the property that looked like the kind of thing that’d get blown up in a TV comedy skit. With a stand of tall conifers to the right, under which loitered suspect-looking cars that no amount of fresh paint could stop from looking decrepit. Spilling out to the east, the rest of the cars seemed disjointed, unconnected. More like the failed exodus in an apocalyptic movie. A large wooden sign at the entrance proclaimed “Ed’s Bargain Deals & Extravagant Savings.” The paint had faded so much, I hardly noticed it.
I’d spent too much time figuring out where the threat might come from to feel comfortable with this setup.
I parked at the Dollar Store that abutted the dealership. This particular one wasn’t owned by Vilcapampa Corp, and the security camera faced toward the front door. I walked to the corner of the building, the stuccoed concrete a dull egg yellow. Stood there for a moment, checking the place out with my small scope. Any walk up to the shed would provide a clear line of sight for anyone watching for me.
After a second, three men emerged from the shed-shack-office. One was Nora’s husband. The other two registered as employees. One of them must be his trainee. The other one might be Ed. Nora hadn’t told me Ed owned the dealership, but no matter: it was a three-in-one deal.
I took a deep breath, like I was about to jump off a balcony. Walked around the corner, heavy on the cane, started across the gravel parking lot, husband straight ahead, stand of trees to the right, reassuring Dollar Store wall still to my left. I remember thinking it’d be some small challenge to meet all three and then tail the husband without them remembering me buying a car off them. I liked that.
I remember being puzzled in that split second. That infinitesimal moment when the gravel was kicking up dust, like something was underneath it. The gravel jumping. Staring at it like it was inexplicable, or even supernatural.
Until I realized. A silencer.
Bullets.
It was bullets.
* * *
A figure had risen from among the cars and conifers. Indistinct, like a phantom. Hillman? I dropped like a sack of potatoes, cane clattering to the side, pulled out my sidearm, returned fire. Saw the figure hesitate, hunch down.
That small motion. That tell. But it was enough. The triad by the office had seen the shooter, but not me. As I watched in surprise, all three drew concealed handguns and started firing back. My jaw dropped. I forgot for a second to seek cover. Like this was something that happened too often. Another fucking day at the office. Another normal afternoon of firing into the tree line. The rattle-ricochet of bullets off car metal. The splat-split of windshields cracking.
The figure in the conifers fell over, got up, returned fire. Couldn’t tell if they’d really been hit. Or just been caught off-balance.
I took that as my cue to get to my feet, grab my cane, and run back to the Dollar Store. No matter the agony of that. Slammed up against the corner, I dared a peek back out.
The gun battle continued. Percussive insanity. The figure in the conifers in retreat. I heard a car’s engine, the vehicle hidden by the trees. The figure running. The triad content to just feed the little forest bullets, but not pursuing. Framed in a strange light that lit the trunks of the trees golden green and cowled the canopy in shadow. As small ink silhouettes labored murderous below.
By the time the shooter had escaped and the triad had stopped shooting, I was in my car and driving away. Who the fuck started firing instead of hightailing it for the shed?
Only then did I feel the nick. Lucky. A bullet had grazed my left calf. Maybe in another time, another world, that would’ve felt traumatic.
But now it was just a distraction from all the rest.
I didn’t have to worry about Nora’s husband anymore, and neither did she. The last thing I’d seen was Nora’s husband’s head bursting open.
The parting shot. The last retort.
That would bring down attention
. Of all kinds.
* * *
That was my lasting memory of my birthday. I’d almost forgotten. There was no cake. There was no celebration. No one cared, not even me.
I guess my only present was not dying.
[79]
Silvina had no advice in her journal for the aftermath of gun battles. But I couldn’t find it in me to be shocked or surprised or anything other than numb.
I drove around aimless, just trying to put some distance between me and the dealership as I heard the wail of sirens. What should my next move be? I entered a maze of older neighborhoods, drove slow, kept moving. Doors locked. Windows up.
Nora had set a trap for me. Someone had paid her to set me up. And her husband clearly hadn’t been in on it. So maybe she already knew her husband was cheating on her and figured this might solve that, too, permanently? Or maybe this moment Nora was wailing like the sirens.
A whiff of something sharp and bitter from outside. The pangolin’s scales against my arm, the bristly skin between the plates, as we all burned. I put the air on recycle to get rid of it. A kind of magic. But it would remain there, in my head.
I had seen Hillman. It was all I had. The shooter had to be Hillman or one of his men. Or connected to him. I could drive back to the houseboat, gather my stuff, and get out. Like I planned to do anyway. The shooter didn’t know where my home base was or they’d have ambushed me there.
Manic, hyped up, awake again. Didn’t suit to run. That’d be setting up the same situation again. Next time, it’d be my head exploding in a parking lot somewhere.
No, not interested in running. Not yet. Not again.
* * *
I headed for the strip of town on the outskirts, with its row of shitty motels and gas stations. I remembered Hillman’s car. If I didn’t see it, I’d return to the houseboat.
Dusk, with the low sun fuzzed with mist and the gas station lights muffled. The whole coast felt too gloomy. It’d be easy to miss the car. What if Hillman parked around back? What if Hillman had left town?
Nothing at Snow White’s Motel, whatever that was, and nothing at the Marquis or the El Dorado or Mickey’s Irish Inn.
Hummingbird Salamander Page 23