Complicated Shadows

by James D F Hannah

  "He's fine. He's old and grumpy, but he keeps waking up every morning."

  "That man will be around to throw dirt on your grave."

  "The way things look lately, you might be correct."

  "Jesus, Henry, what are you getting yourself into now?"

  "Nothing, Magpie. Nothing at all."

  Everything got quiet. I thought the call had dropped.

  "Maggie?" I said. "You still there?"

  "Yeah. I'm here. 'Magpie.' Wow. Haven't heard that in a month of Sundays."

  "Sorry. I didn't—"

  "No, no, it's fine. You're the only person who's ever called me that, is all."

  "That's what makes it a pet name, Maggie. If everyone called you that, then it wouldn't mean as much."

  "True. It's so goddamn personal. Intimate."

  "Which we're not."

  "Divorce makes things significantly less intimate."

  I walked into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. I didn't even want the goddamn coffee, but I needed something to do, and I lacked for other options. Woodworking would have been too loud and awkward.

  "Can I ask you a question?" I said.

  "You're going to, regardless of if I say 'yes' or 'no,' so I'm not even sure why you'd preface it."

  "Always the problem with you fucking journalists. So literal minded."

  "Ask your question, Henry."

  Izzy wandered into the kitchen doorway. She wore a literal hangdog expression like she was embarrassed for me. I neither needed nor wanted my dog's pity.

  I said, "This guy you're seeing—"

  "Goddammit, Henry."

  "Wait. Give me a second. This guy you're seeing. How serious are you?"

  The connection got quiet again. I fought the urge to push, to fill in the silence.

  "There's something," she said. "Neither one of us are rushing to define the thing, but it's something. Please don't ask me if I love him."

  "I'm not sure I'd want the answer to that question."

  "What about you? Are you seeing anyone?"

  "I tried. Didn't do well. The market is tough in small towns for gimpy, nine-fingered ex-cops."

  "I bet there's a dating site for that."

  "And porn. About the guy—"

  "You don't quit, do you?"

  "In all these years, Magpie, ever known me to quit?"

  "Not even when you knew better."

  "Do you work with this guy?"

  "I do. He's an editor at the paper here."

  "Is he why you moved?"

  "He's not. I moved because I was tired of Morgantown, and West Virginia, and I needed the change. The fact he was here already didn't hurt."

  "He drink?"

  "He does."

  "You still drinking?"

  "I am. Does that matter?"

  "Probably not, but in my head, it might."

  "Your head is a dark place to be, Henry. You drinking wasn't the problem. You not drinking wasn't the problem, either."

  "What was the problem then?"

  "The problem was us. Or the problem was you and me, because there wasn't an 'us.' You changed after the shooting. I told myself you'd be okay, that you'd pull your shit together and do what you needed to get well, but you didn't. You fought it. You couldn't be a cop anymore, so you made yourself miserable, and you made me miserable. And when you stopped drinking, it got worse, and you blamed me for your unhappiness. The only moods you had left were resentful and angry. I hit my limit, and for me to drink away my hurt would have killed me. But I'm well aware what a bitch this makes me, because I'm the woman who left her wounded ex-cop husband after he got sober. I'm the person you root against in a movie. But our marriage stopped feeling right for me, Henry, that's all. The space your anger took up left no room for me."

  A voice in the background said, "Honey, everything good?"

  Maggie moved her mouth away from the phone and she said, "Yes, it's okay. Can you give me another minute or two?"

  I said, "Jesus, but he's there. I—"

  "What would have changed, Henry? Would you have stopped?"

  "Maggie, please."

  "Sign the papers, Henry. We sent out fresh copies the other day."

  "I'll check the mail for them. Thanks."

  There was a pause, and she said, "You planning on staying in Parker County?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I could be close to putting together something resembling a life here."

  "That sounds good, Henry. I know there's plenty on your plate by being there. Billy can be a trip. Plus the stuff with your mom."

  "That's shit to deal with regardless of where I am."

  "Are you getting into another situation, Henry?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "That you think trouble finds you, when the truth is you invite it over. You let those doors fly open and usher it on into the room, ask it how it takes its coffee."

  "Things are happening, but I've got it under control."

  "Can you do me a small favor?"

  "Sign the papers. I will."

  "No, you asshole. Don't die."

  "I'll see what I can manage."

  "You do that. I've got to go."

  "Have a good rest of your night, Magpie."

  "You too, Baloney."

  The line went dead.

  Baloney. Talk about pet names. She'd called me that after our second date.

  I couldn't help but smile, even as I stared at the cell phone in my hand and tried to not think about what might be happening in Philadelphia.

  32

  Davies called me after 11. The news was on, but there wasn't much of anything to tell, so they filled up the time with stuff about the heat and a Little League team collecting cans for charity and Serenity becoming a sister-city with some place in Eastern Europe I'd never heard about.

  Pete's murder got a brief mention. No "there's no new information." Mostly "he's still dead," which didn't seem like news. Him not being dead after being dead would have been different.

  I answered the phone.

  "Agent Davies," I said. "How's the home front?"

  "It's been better. Partners are never happy to find mysterious strangers standing in the kitchen."

  "I don't guess there's any cold comfort in the fact you're playing for the other softball team, so to speak, so the best I can offer is the hope you'll let me watch."

  "If that were any more cold of comfort, I'd need a parka. What are you doing?"

  "Watching the news."

  "Anything interesting?"

  "A church group is selling homemade chocolate banana pops so they can go to Africa and give villages mosquito nets to fight malaria."

  "I guess not, then."

  A vehicle pulled into my driveway. Izzy, vicious watchdog she was, snored next to me on the couch.

  "Hold on," I said. I opened the end table drawer and took out a .45 and walked to the front door. Headlights approached from the distance. I slipped my finger into the trigger guard. A car stopped in my driveway, the headlights went dark. and a figure stepped out.

  "There's someone here," I said.

  "I know, dumbass," Davies said. The figure waved at me as it approached the house. The closer it got to the light, the clearer I could see it was Davies.

  I walked out on the porch. She looked at the gun in my hand. "Do you think you can please not shoot me? I'd appreciate it."

  She wore jeans and a Bluetooth earpiece and a light jacket to cover up her shoulder holster. Her eyes were glossy and rimmed with red. I disconnected the phone call.

  "You okay?" I said.

  "Great as so long as you don't shoot me."

  "I think we've established no one’s getting shot tonight."

  "Night's still young."

  "Hope springs eternal. What's wrong?"

  She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Nothing. Why?"

  "Because while I'm not the sharpest pencil in the drawer, I can tell you've been crying, it's after 11 on a school night, and I'm
positive you being here continues to violate Feeb protocol."

  "You live to dog-pile the shit on, Henry."

  "I'll mention you're the one who pulled up in my driveway and almost got shot."

  "You doing anything right now?"

  "Besides talking to you?"

  "Besides that."

  I shook my head. "The guy who isn't Johnny Carson is getting ready to come on."

  She shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans.

  "Price and Kaur are dead," she said. "Someone broke into Price's apartment tonight and shot him, execution-style. Kaur got into his car, turned the key in the ignition, and it turned into a fireball in his driveway." She twisted her head around until her neck cracked. "You want to come and talk to Isaac McCoy?"

  "I do."

  She motioned toward the trailer. "Then put your gun away, please."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "We moved McCoy this morning to a safe house outside of Clarksburg," she said as we hit the interstate. We took her VW.

  "It's a safe house within spitting distance of a major FBI facility," I said. "You should re-evaluate the term."

  "Proximity can be important. We use it to store assets before depositions and trials."

  "'Assets'?"

  "Witnesses. Informants. Whatever you want to call them."

  "I like the term 'people.'"

  "Sometimes, the individuals in question barely qualify as human. Major players. Linchpins in criminal organizations that would make the Mafia blush."

  "Is this guy Wakahisa part of one of those types of organizations?"

  "I guess Price and Kaur told you about him."

  "They did. They said it was implied he would kill them if they didn't move faster on Cashbyte. I'm also confident his guys were the ones who came after Woody and me."

  "Wakahisa isn't what we would term a player yet, but he's on the rise upward. Reports have him now as a guy with money and an affection for having bodyguards. He specializes in financing criminal operations and then laundering the resulting money."

  "He's not Japanese mafia then? What is it called, Yakuza?"

  "You watch too many movies. Wakahisa is strictly out for the highest bidder. There's not much in the way of Japanese mafia activity in West Virginia, what with the absolute lack of, you know, Japanese people in the state."

  "Don't be such a smart ass, Davies."

  "Coming from you, that's funny. No, Wakahisa has been moving into digital currency for a few years now. Cashbyte is the perfect option for him. It lets him develop a business model where he can do transactions across the globe without worrying about law enforcement being on his ass."

  "He figures if he controls Cashbyte—"

  "He can charge for its use. The anonymity could make it the go-to for anyone trying to move money without detection. You're talking about the possibility of tens of millions of dollars a day, and Wakahisa can charge a few pennies from each dollar for the privilege, which criminal organizations will do because it's cheaper than traditional money laundering costs. You lose in the basic individual costs, but your volume goes up exponentially."

  I said, "Why are you doing this?"

  "Driving? Because I know where we're going."

  "You're violating I can't even fathom how many forms of protocol, and I'm not sure why. Based on a surface judgement of you, I'd have guessed your career means more than this."

  "I don't like how this has played," she said. "It's felt wrong for a while. Calhoun's death was a tipping point. I read the autopsy report. You were right in what you said at the house, that no one deserved anything like that." She glanced down at the dashboard clock. "We're almost there."

  I had more questions, but I didn't ask them. I guessed they were questions Davies wouldn't have wanted to answer.

  33

  The street was quiet, since it was after midnight and sane people were asleep, dreaming about the sex they weren't having, or living lives that didn't involve keeping their lips puckered up and pressed against the boss' ass. Me, I was noticing the number of houses on the street with "for sale" signs in the front yard.

  "This place didn't take the turn in the economy well," Davies said as we parked. "Kind of like everyone else, people bought more house than they could afford, then figured out there wasn't any way they could pay for it in this lifetime."

  We walked across the street to a small two-story house, blue with red trim, the lawn well-kept and green. Hedges were boxed off as if someone had used a level and a ruler to keep it even. In the glow of the streetlight I saw flowers in the boxes that ran along the walkway leading up to the front door. Part of me wished I knew what types of flowers they were, but now didn't seem a good time to Google it.

  "One of our agents, he likes landscaping, so he volunteered to do the lawn upkeep on the place," Davies said. "We won the neighborhood association award last year."

  "My mom had a green thumb," I said. "I found a scrapbook once, these newspaper articles about flower shows she'd won around the county, in the state. She was quite the thing in that little circle of people."

  Davies pressed the doorbell. She gave two short rings, a long ring, and then two more short bursts. "You get any of that skill?"

  "I killed a plastic fichus once."

  A litany of locks clicked, there was a faint beeping noise, and the front door opened enough for a sliver of light to escape. A man's voice said, "Hello?"

  Davies flipped open her ID and held up to the crack. "Thanks," the man said, and opened the door. He looked fresh out of the academy, with a military-grade buzz cut and even less fuzz on his face. He cast a look at me. "Who's with you?"

  "A consultant on the case," Davies said. "He wants to speak with the asset. I'm vouching for him."

  "That's against policy, Agent Davies. You're aware of this."

  "I do, and thank you for you reminding me, but I'm going to ask you to let us inside regardless."

  "I could be in a lot of trouble for this."

  "Tell them I overpowered you."

  The young man smirked and stepped aside. He wore a Rush T-shirt, cargo shorts, and shoulder holsters with two nine millimeter pistols.

  The agent closed the door behind us, twisted the locks and punched in a code on a keypad next to the door frame. "The asset is in the living room, watching TV."

  I said to Davies, "The man has a name."

  Davies and the man exchanged glances. "Civilians," she said. As if that explained anything.

  In the kitchen, two agents stood around an island, eating sandwiches and playing cards. Both wore jeans and polo shirts and shoulder holsters, like they were heading off to play a round at the most hostile golf course in the world.

  We walked into a large living room with a giant wall-mounted TV. The guy who wasn't Johnny Carson played beer pong with Jennifer Lawrence. Somewhere in the recesses of my heart, I ached for a barely sober Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen's ugly suits, and Joan Embry from the San Diego Zoo, with an animal that might kill Johnny, or at least pee on him.

  Isaac McCoy stretched out on the couch, staring at the TV without interest, not because he cared who won beer pong but because there wasn't anything else on. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought he was checking out Jennifer Lawrence's boobs. I would have been. Maybe he was checking out the guy who wasn't Johnny Carson.

  "How you doing, Isaac?" Davies said. Nothing. Davies cleared her throat. "Isaac?" Still nothing. Louder, she said, "Mr. McCoy?"

  "I heard you the first two times, Agent Davies," Isaac said, his focus never veering from the TV.

  The young agent said, "He's been like this since—" The words cut off sharply.

  Isaac remained motionless on the couch. "Yes, I have been remote since my husband died," he said. The voice may as well have come from a statue. "Imagine that. How bizarre is it that I would have an emotional response to my husband's death, and I can't do anything except sit here with strangers with guns who stand around and refer to me as an 'asset,' like I'm
a goddamn gold brick?"

  Isaac hurled the remote across the room. The action startled the agents, and their arms reached across their chests, palms open to take hold of their weapons, acting as if by cardiac muscle. The remote shattered against the wall into pieces of plastic and microprocessors. McCoy's void expression crumbled like ancient stone, and his face flushed red, and tears raced down his cheeks.

  "And then my two best friends die," he said. "No. They don't die. They were fucking executed. I'm sitting here, and everyone I care about is dying!" He choked the words out in thick-breathed gasps, saliva foaming out of his mouth, and pushed his face into his hands and cried.

  I sat on the couch next to him and laid my hand on his back. He turned and buried his face into my shoulder and threw his arms around me and cried even harder. The sobs were loud, each one a tiny, piercing jab into a part of me I wanted to forget about, but instead it stirred awake and hurt in ways I'd forgotten possible.

  Davies and the young agent worked to look at anything else but this. Neither of them said anything.

  On the TV, a band I didn't recognize was playing a song I hadn't heard before.

  I let Isaac cry until he was done. It took a while. The guy who wasn't Johnny Carson went off and the guy who wasn't David Letterman came on.

  Isaac's face was puffy and red and wet when he pulled away from me. He wiped at his cheeks and the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand. On the front of my shirt, where his face had been, there were wet spots from tears and, I'd have bet, snot.

  He swallowed hard. "I'm sorry."

  There was a box of Kleenex on the coffee table, and I handed it to him. "You're good."

  He pulled a bunch of tissues from the box and blew his nose.

  "I'm Isaac," he said.

  "Henry. It's good to meet you, Isaac."

  "You with the government?"

  "I'm not. I was friends with Pete."

  Isaac's eyes turned bright and he bit on his bottom lip. He balled up the tissues tight into his hands. "How did you know Peter?"

  "From his days in the state police. He came to Parker County looking for you, and he called me asking for help."

  Isaac got more tissues and wiped at his nose. "I thought I’d get the chance to tell him, when this shit started, I wanted to let him know I was okay, but they said it was a bad idea, for his safety. They showed up and said I had to go."